Dead and Gone

by Andrew Vachss

  “Please sit anywhere,” the man said, waving one arm to display the options as he seated himself behind the big desk. I took a heavy armchair upholstered in dark tufted leather. A large flat glass ashtray was on a bronze metal stand next to the chair. The Mole sat on the floor, blocking the door with his bulk, putting his satchel on the ground. He looked from the man to where I was sitting, making it clear that we had an agreement and he expected me to honor it. Then he pulled out a sheaf of papers and started to study some of his calculations—taking himself somewhere else.

  “Now, then,” said the man, folding his hands in front of him on the desk. “May I offer you some refreshment? Coffee? Some excellent sherry?”

  I shook my head. The Mole never looked up.

  “A beer perhaps?”

  “No,” I told him. I’d made a deal not to do anything to him, not even to threaten him, but I didn’t have to pretend I was his pal.

  The man reached for a cut-glass decanter on his desk. Something that looked like a silver leaf dangled from just below the neck of the bottle, attached by a silver chain. He poured himself a wineglass of dark liquid from the bottle, held the glass up to the light from the fireplace, took a small sip. If he was any calmer he would have fallen asleep.

  It was hard to make out his features in the dim light. I could see he was very thin, balding on top, with thick dark hair around the sides of his head. Heavy eyebrows jutted from his skull, hooding his eyes. The face was wide at the top, narrowing down to a small chin—a triangular shape. His lips were thin. His fingers were long and tapered, with a faint sheen of clear polish on the nails.

  “Now,” he said, taking a sip from his glass, “how may I help you, Mr.…”

  “I’m looking for a picture,” I told him, ignoring the request for my name. “A picture of a kid.”

  “And you think I have this picture?” he asked, his heavy eyebrows lifting.

  I shrugged. I should be so lucky. “No. But I hope you can tell me about that kind of thing in general. Give me an idea where to look.”

  “I see. Tell me about this picture.”

  “A picture of a kid. Little chubby blond-haired boy. About six years old.”

  The man sat behind his desk, patiently waiting, making it clear I hadn’t told him enough.

  “A sex picture,” I said.

  “Um …” he mumbled. “Not such an unusual picture. Little boys in love do things like that.”

  Something burned inside my chest. I felt the Mole’s eyes on me, got it under control, stuck a cigarette in my mouth, my teeth almost meeting in the filter. “Who would have a picture like that?” I asked him.

  “Oh, just about anyone. It all depends on why the picture was taken.”

  “Why?”

  The man made a tent of his fingers, his semi-Bri t accent making him sound like a teacher. “If the picture was taken by his mentor, then it wouldn’t be circulated commercially, you understand?”

  “His mentor?”

  “A mentor, yes. One who teaches you, guides you through life. Helps you with problems … that sort of thing.”

  I looked at him, picturing a little dot of cancer inside his chest, keeping my hands still. I raised my own eyebrows as a question.

  “Men who love boys are very special,” the man answered, his voice reverent. “As are the boys who love them. It is a most unique and perfect relationship. And very little understood by society.”

  “Could you explain?” I said, my voice flat.

  “When a boy has a sexual preference for men, he is at grave risk. The world will not understand him. Many doors will be closed to him. It is the task of a dedicated mentor to bring the tiny bud to full flower. To help nourish the growth of the boy into manhood.”

  “By taking pictures of the kid having sex?”

  “Do not be so quick to judge, my friend. A true mentor would not take such a photograph for commercial purposes, as I said before. Such pictures preserve a unique and beautiful moment. Children grow up,” he said, his voice laced with regret for the inevitable, “they lose their youth. Would not a loving parent take pictures of his child, to look upon in later years?”

  I didn’t answer him—I didn’t know what loving parents did. The State raised me. And the State takes a lot of pictures—they’re called mug shots.

  “It is capturing a moment in time,” the man said. “A way of keeping perfection with you always, even when the person is gone.”

  “You mean people … people like you … just want to keep the pictures? Not sell them or anything.”

  “People like me …” the man mused. “Do you know anything about ‘people like me’?”

  “No,” I said. The deal was I couldn’t hurt him—nobody said I had to tell him the truth.

  “I am a pedophile,” the man said. The same way an immigrant would one day say he was a citizen—pride and wonder at being so privileged blending in his voice. “My sexual orientation is toward children … toward young boys, specifically.”

  I watched him, waiting for the rest.

  “I am not a ‘child molester,’ I am not a pervert. What I do is technically against your laws … as those laws now stand. But my relationship with my boys is pure and sweet. I love boys who love me. Is anything wrong with that?”

  I had no answer for him, so I lit another cigarette.

  “Perhaps you think it’s simple,” he said, his thin mouth twisted in contempt for my lack of understanding. “I love boys—therefore, you assume I am a homosexual, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t,” I assured him. The truth, that time. Homosexuals were grown men who had sex with other grown men. Some of them were stand-up guys, some of them were scumbags. Like the rest of us. This freak wasn’t like the rest of us.

  He watched my face, looking for a clue. “You believe my orientation to be so unusual? Let me say this to you: some of the highest-placed men in this city share it. Indeed, were it not for my knowledge of such things—of powerful men with powerful drive-forces in their lives—I would not have the protection of you people,” he said, nodding his head in the Mole’s direction.

  The Mole looked straight at him, expressionless.

  “Any boy I love … any boy who returns that love … benefits in ways you cannot begin to understand. He grows to youth and then to manhood under my wing, if you will. He is educated, both intellectually and spiritually. Prepared for the world at large. To such a boy, I am a life-changing force, do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I said. Thinking I finally knew what to call Mr. Cormil after all these years. A “mentor.”

  “And I would … I have taken pictures of my boys. It gives us both pleasure in later years to look at this icon to our love, as it once was. A boy is a boy for such a short time,” he said, sadness in his voice.

  “And you wouldn’t sell these pictures?”

  “Certainly not! I have no need of money, but that is not the point. It would cheapen the love. Almost immeasurably so. It would be a violation of the relationship—something I would never do.”

  “So nobody would ever see your pictures?” I asked him.

  “Nobody outside my circle,” he replied. “On some rare occasion, I might exchange pictures of my boys with others … like myself. But never for money.”

  “You mean you’d trade pictures? Like baseball cards?”

  The man’s eyes hooded again. “You have a crude way of putting things, sir. I know you do not mean to be offensive.…”

  I nodded my head in hasty agreement. I didn’t want him to stop talking. The Mole’s head was buried in his papers, but I could feel him telling me to watch my step.

  “My boys enjoy knowing they give me pleasure. And it gives me pleasure to show their love for me to other men who believe as I do.” He took another sip of his drink. “To be sure, there may be an element of egotism in exchanging photographs with others. I am proud of my … achievements. But—and I am sure you understand—one must be very discreet at all times.”

&nbs
p; I gave him another nod of agreement. I sure as hell understood that part.

  “There are those who produce pictures of children for purely commercial purposes, ” he continued. “Not those who share my … life-style, if you will. But no true boy-lover would buy such pictures. They are so impersonal, so tasteless. One knows nothing of the boy in such a picture. Not his name, his age, his little hobbies.… Commercial photographs are so … anonymous. Sex is only a component of love. One brick in a foundation. Do you understand this?”

  “I understand,” I told him. It was true that Satan could quote Scripture, as the Prof was always saying. “Would a person ever destroy his pictures … like if he was afraid there was a search warrant coming down or something?”

  “A true boy-lover would never do that, no matter what. I can assure you that if the police were battering down my door at this very instant, I would not throw my memories into that fireplace.”

  “But the pictures are evidence.…”

  “Yes. Evidence of love.”

  “People get convicted with evidence of love,” I told him.

  A smile played around his lips. “Prison is something we face all the time. A true believer in our way of life accepts this. Simply because something is against the law does not mean it is morally wrong.”

  “It’s worth going to prison for?” I asked him.

  “It is worth anything and everything,” he said, rapt in the purity of his love.

  “The people who … exchange … pictures of boys. You’d know how to get in touch with them?”

  “We have a network,” the man said. “A limited one, of course. You see the computer?” he asked, tilting his head toward the screen.

  I nodded.

  “The device next to it, with the telephone? It’s called a modem. It’s really quite complicated,” the man said, “but we have something called an electronic bulletin board. You dial up the network, punch in the codes, and we can talk to each other without revealing our identities. And photographs can be transmitted the same way.”

  I gave him a blank look.

  “As I said, it’s really quite complicated,” he said smugly.

  I could feel the Mole’s sneer clear across the room.

  “Could you show me?” I asked.

  “Very well.” He sighed. He got up from behind the desk, bringing his wineglass with him, and seated himself before the computer. He took the phone off the hook and placed it facedown into a plastic bed. He punched some numbers into a keypad and waited impatiently, tapping his long fingers on the console. When the screen cleared, he rapidly tapped something on the keyboard—his password, I guessed. “Greetings from Santa” came up on the screen in response, black letters against a white background now.

  “Santa is one of us,” the man said, by way of explanation. He typed in: “Have you any new presents for us?” The man hit another key and his message disappeared.

  In another minute, the screen blinked and a message from Santa came up.

  “Seven bags full,” said the screen.

  “His new boy is seven years old,” said the man. “Are you following this?”

  “Yes,” I told him. Santa Claus.

  The man went back to the screen. “This is Tutor. Do you think it’s too early in the year to think about exchanging gifts?”

  “Not gifts of love,” came back the answer.

  The man looked over his shoulder at me. I nodded again. Clear enough.

  He pushed a button and the screen cleared once more. He returned to his seat behind the desk, glanced at the Mole, then back to me. “Anything else?” he asked.

  “If the boy’s picture, the one I want, was taken for sale, not by a boy-lover—I couldn’t find it?”

  “The original? Not in a million years,” the man said. “The commercial producers will sell to anybody. Besides, those pictures are not true originals, you see? They make hundreds and hundreds of copies. The only way to find an original is if it was in a private collection.”

  “Say I didn’t give a damn if the picture was an original, okay? If I showed you a picture of the boy, would you ask around, see if you could find the picture I’m looking for?”

  “No,” he said. “I would never betray the trust of my friends.” He looked at the Mole for reassurance. The Mole looked back, giving nothing away.

  “And you don’t deal with any of the commercial outlets?”

  “Certainly not,” he sniffed.

  This freak couldn’t help me. “I understand,” I said, getting up to leave.

  The man looked at me levelly. “You may show yourselves out.”

  The Mole lumbered to his feet, standing in the doorway to make sure I went out first.

  “One more thing,” the man said to me. “I sincerely hope you learned something here. I hope you learned some tolerance for our reality. Some respect for our love. I trust we can find some basis for agreement.”

  I didn’t move, willing my hands not to clench into fists.

  “I am a believer,” the man said, “and I am ready to die for my beliefs.”

  There’s our basis for agreement, I thought, and turned my back to follow the Mole down the stairs.

  It all came back, in thick blocks of memory, exploding silently, like mortar rounds hitting near you when your ears are already so clogged with fear-blood that you’re deaf. And when I replayed the tapes in my head, I understood why it had to be him. Because I’d gone back to see him years later. Not to kill him, to try and play him into doing something. And he’d gone for the bait.

  “You!” he said, a whisper-hiss of surprise.

  “Can I talk with you?”

  “We’ve already talked.”

  “I need your help.”

  “Surely you know better than that.”

  “If you’ll hear me out … it’s something you’ll want to do. And I have something to trade.”

  “You’re alone?”

  “Yes.”

  He touched one finger to the tip of his nose, deciding. Then a twisting gesture with his other hand. I heard a heavy deadbolt slide back, tugged gently on the wrought iron, and the gate came toward me. I stepped inside.

  “After you,” he said, gesturing toward the staircase.

  The room hadn’t changed. Old-money heavy, thick, and dark. Only the computer marred the antique atmosphere—a different one from last time, with a much bigger screen that blinked into darkness as I glanced at it, defying my stare.

  “Notice anything new?” he asked, pointing to the chair I’d used last time.

  I sat down and eye-swept the room, playing the game. In one corner, a rectangular fish tank, much longer than it was high. I got up to look closer, feeling him behind me. The fish were all some shade of red or orange, with wide white stripes outlined in black.

  “This is different,” I said. “What are they?”

  “Clowns. The family name is Pomacentridae. They come in many varieties. The dark orange ones are perculas,” pointing at a fat little fish near the top. “And we have tomatoes, maroons, even some flame clowns—my favorites.”

  The flames had red heads with a white band just behind the eyes—the bodies were jet black. They stayed toward the bottom of the tank.

  “Saltwater fish?” I asked him.

  “Oh yes. Quite delicate, actually.”

  “They’re beautiful. Are they rare?”

  “More unusual than they are rare. Clowns get along wonderfully with other fish. That is, they never interact—they stay with their own kind, even in a tank.”

  “They don’t fight for territory?”

  “No, they don’t fight at all. Occasionally, a small spat among themselves, but never with another species.”

  I watched the aquarium. Each tribe of clowns stayed in its own section, not swimming so much as hovering. I saw his reflection in the glass fade as he went over to a leather armchair and sat down. I took the chair he’d first indicated, faced him.

  He regarded me with mild interest, well within himse
lf, safe where he was.

  “You said you had something …?”

  “Yeah. The last time we talked, when you told me your … philosophy. About kids.”

  “I remember,” he said stiffly. “Nothing has changed.”

  “I know. I listened. You told me you loved little boys then. I came because I need to see how deep that love goes.”

  “Which means …?”

  “What you do, what others like you do, it’s all about love, right?”

  He nodded, wary.

  “You don’t force kids. Don’t hurt them … anything like that.”

  “As I told you. What is wrong with our behavior—all that is wrong with our behavior—is that it is against some antiquated laws. We are hounded, persecuted. Some of us have been imprisoned, ruined by the witch-hunters. Yet we have always been here and we always will be. But you didn’t come here to engage in philosophical discourse.”

  “No. Just to get things straight.”

  He got to his feet, turned his back on me. Tapped some keys rapidly on the computer, too fast for me to follow. He hit a final key with a concert pianist’s flourish. The machine beeped.

  He got up, went back to his easy chair.

  “You’ve been logged in. Physical description, time of arrival, your code name, everything. It’s all been transmitted. And the modem is still open.”

  “I didn’t come here to do anything to you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Listen to me,” I said, leaning forward, keeping my voice low. “Can we not be stupid? I said I didn’t come here to do anything to you, and I meant it. But don’t fool yourself—the Israelis aren’t your pals. I don’t know what you did for them, what you do for them … and I don’t care. But all they are is a barrier. A deterrent, like a minefield. Somebody wastes you, they aren’t going to get even. Understand what I’m saying?”