Dead and Gone

by Andrew Vachss

  “Please! Spare me your incompetent attempts at political analysis. Hitler marched Jews into the ovens because … why? They were defectives. As were Gypsies, homosexuals … a long list. But you never saw pedophiles on that list, did you?

  “Extremists don’t fit themselves along a continuum, Mr. Burke. They don’t form lines; they form a circle. And the ‘sexual liberation’ frauds who include children among their ‘causes’ eventually met the Nazis who think incest preserves the race. Pedophiles don’t have politics,” he said, contemptuously. “They only have … preferences. This is business, pure and simple.”

  He took a long, deep refueling breath and went on: “Any businessman understands it’s not enough to know your product; you also have to know your market. And I have been successfully marketing information to pedophiles for years. There are states where sex with a child under eleven can get you twenty-five years in prison … unless it’s your own child. Then, if the DA can be persuaded to charge ‘incest’ instead of ‘sexual assault of a child,’ the offender can expect probation. Do you know which states have the loosest requirements for running a day-care center? Which organizations don’t do background checks for those who volunteer to work with kids? Which jurisdictions make it easiest to get a foster child? Which won’t prosecute polygamy?”

  I didn’t answer him. Truth is, I didn’t know the answers.

  “I didn’t think so,” he said, after a pause. “But I do. And do you know how to package a pedophile for probation? Or for early release if sentenced? Do you know how to teach these sickening men how to avoid mouthing their cognitive distortions when they’re interviewed?”

  “Cognitive distortions?” I asked, stalling—I needed time to deal with the info-overload.

  “The classic example,” he answered, “goes something like this. People are primarily motivated by desire for pleasure. Children are people. Children seek pleasure. Sex is pleasure. Children seek what they want by communicating their desires. That is why so many children are deliberately seductive—they are seeking pleasure, for themselves.”

  “And people buy that crap?”

  “Law enforcement doesn’t. Just the treatment centers that make a living from it. My task is to make sure the … client doesn’t repeat any of it, regardless of his personal belief system.”

  “So you sell them the keys?”

  “Certainly. And each client subset is different. With the incest offenders, we have to eliminate their expressions of a profound sense of ‘entitlement’ to their own children. Learning to feign remorse is critical to their survival, once apprehended.”

  “Christ!”

  “Of course, the worst are the ‘true believers.’ You’re familiar with their rhetoric, I’m sure.” His voice switched to a singsong parody of a memorized litany: “ ‘Those children who later claim to have been harmed by a loving sexual experience with a caring adult are not victims of sex, they are victims of programming, playing the victim role as dictated by self-interested therapists, and exploited by greedy lawyers. The media never report that there are numerous studies which show that the child participants themselves, interviewed later as adults, did not consider their earlier experiences to be harmful in any way at all. The only “perversion” going on is the perversion of love.’ ”

  “Nice.”

  “Be honest, if only with yourself. I sell these people images—pictures and videotapes. And if they are later caught with such product, I sell them information on how to minimize the consequences. And, of course, if their status warrants, I sell their names to certain foreign governments before there are any consequences. In short, I prey upon them. Are your own operations any different?”

  “I promise them kiddie porn, sure. But I never deliver.”

  “And so you are better than I, somehow? Morally superior? I don’t produce the pornography, I procure it. Do you think the people from whom I obtain the product would go out of business if I stopped buying? Parents sell their children all the time. All over the world.”

  “What’s all this got to do with Nazis?”

  “Are you really this dense? If you want to preserve the bloodlines, you do what the royals always did. Keep it in the family. It’s called inbreeding. Or, if you prefer, incest.

  “Anyway, the whole ‘Nazi’ concept is nothing more than a marketing tool. It isn’t about politics, it’s about packaging. A skillful profiteer always tailors his product to the market. Does the phrase ‘National Socialism’ register with you? Hitler was all about German dominance. Do you think he would have welcomed Greeks or Poles or Italians as ‘Aryan’? They might have been at the end of the line for the ovens, but, rest assured, they would certainly be on that line.

  “Modern merchants understand that young people are where the money is. So, instead of limiting their pitch to the genetically correct, they simply change the definitions. Today, any kid who could conceivably call himself ‘white’ can qualify … even a good number of Hispanics.”

  He was right. And tapping a deep vein, too. Even when I was a kid, the dark-skinned Puerto Rican kids they brought into the lockup would only speak Spanish, making certain the cops didn’t take them for blacks.

  “Am I really telling you anything you don’t know, Burke?” he went on, completely composed. “How many crates of nonexistent weapons have you sold to these imbeciles? I’m selling them a nonexistent Valhalla-on-earth where they can practice whatever perversion suits their disorders. Only I operate on a grander scale than you could ever have conceptualized.”

  “Then why have me killed?”

  “Because, until this very moment, you didn’t know one single word of what I just told you. No, you thought I was some sort of super-pedophile. And you wanted to kill me, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted, way past gaming now.

  “I acknowledge that the scheme you hatched—that phony ‘immunity’ I was fool enough to purchase—was a clever one, although I suspect the woman was the real instigator.”

  “You never went after her, though.”

  “Why should I? She’s a stupid policewoman in her heart. She did her job. I went to prison. She’s done with her work. Besides, I know what happened to her. What good’s a prosecutor without a jurisdiction? She’s out of business, permanently. But you … in a way, you represented the last impediment to me acquiring enough money to disappear and live, literally, as a king. With you alive, I’d be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”

  “How long—?”

  “Was I planning this? I hatched the final plans for Darcadia in my prison cell. They took my freedom, but not my resources—my government friends saw to that, too. I thought it would be a perfect irony for you to be murdered by one of the children who appear to mean so much to you.”

  “That kid … he was one of—?”

  “He became one of them. His parents sold him.… Well, more accurately, I should say his mother sold him. She wanted her child to grow up as a warrior for his race. Despite the money she garnered from the transaction, I believe she was quite sincere in her Nietzschean politics. In fact,” he said, somewhere between a laugh and a sneer, “she plans to join us on Darcadia someday. The boy’s father was not a factor. A weak, ineffectual man. He told himself his child was going to some sort of military school. But he knew.

  “In any event, the child was sold, for a considerable sum, I may add, to what I call a ‘fusion’ group—one that merges its pedophilia with whatever ideology seems to permit or promote it. Nazis seem to make ideal candidates. Although I assume that pedophiles without the correct racial credentials find some other ways to band together,” he said, contempt heavy in his voice.

  “In this case, the buyer was an assembly of warrior pedophiles who desire to emulate the Spartans in all ways important to them. The child was ‘kidnapped,’ as you know. By the time he was a teenager, his indoctrination was complete. And, I was told, his skills were excellent. That plan should have worked.”

  “It did. He put
a few rounds in me. They just didn’t do the job.”

  “I see. In any event, it was I who arranged the sale. And, in so doing, discovered this ‘fusion’ principle. I investigated further, and learned that there are many such groups. That, in turn, eventually gave birth to Darcadia. And,” he said calmly, “to the reason to have you taken out.”

  I let the silence sit there, building. Then I said, “You don’t need me dead anymore,” so still inside myself I wouldn’t have bounced a polygraph needle.

  “Because …?”

  “Because more fucking power to you, pal. This whole Darcadia thing is nothing but a whale-scale scam, right?”

  “What else would it be?”

  “I get it. I get it now, anyway. Besides, you want to hear something funny? I wasn’t ever after you. I didn’t know where you were, and I didn’t care. I thought you were doing a long jolt, and that you’d get protection from the Israelis again once you got out. I’d done all I wanted to do when I Pearl Harbored you with that immunity thing. I wasn’t going to risk Mossad on my ass just for the fun of blowing you away.”

  “So we were both mistaken, it seems.”

  “Yeah. I did think you were a baby-raper. But if I went around killing every one of those …”

  “Point taken. But I assumed you had some personal stake, after going to all that trouble just to get me into a brief prison sentence.”

  “Personal? I hate them all. And that’s no secret, right? Look, what’s the point? It looks like we both have to gamble here. You’ve got a crew of halfass Nazis who think you’re the next Führer waiting on you in that boat. They’re ready to blow us all into dust if you don’t come back. Sure. But I still get to decide if you come back. You go back there and give the order to total us, they’ll do it. So, if I think that’s what you are going to do, we might as well just sit here and wait for it … together. No way I’m going to let you snuff us all and live to laugh about it.”

  “And if I give you my word—?”

  “You know what?” I said, leaning forward. “I’d take it. What’s in it for me to blow the whistle on you? The freaks aren’t going to pay me—even if they believed me, and fat fucking chance of that. Besides, if the feds knew what you were really up to, they’d probably pay you to keep tabs on your own suckers.

  “And the way you play things, I know you’ve got your back covered. I’m sure you’ve got a few of them in on it with you. I mean, even some of the Nazis themselves know it’s a scam, too, right?”

  “Obviously. In fact, two of them are on my ship right now. They have been very helpful,” he said, voice heavy with contempt for his stooges. “There were three of them originally, but one didn’t survive that little encounter with you. The dog was a surprise.”

  “So there’s nothing I could do to screw up your play,” I told him, my voice calm even as my mind screamed to Pansy that I’d finally found the puppets who killed her. “And I couldn’t find you again even if I wanted to. You go back to stealing from them your way, and I’ll go back to mine. Besides, even with those machine guns, you can’t kill us so easy as you think.”

  “I don’t understand that last part.”

  “You can’t board us from that Zodiac—you’d be mowed down like wheat. And if you get back to your ship and tell your storm troopers to blast away at long range, it’s going to take a while. You’re not packing anything that could make a whole boat just go boom! But we are …” I said softly, letting the bluff float gently in the air between us.

  “There’s going to be wreckage in the water,” I promised him. “Maybe even survivors. And the second anyone starts shooting, a full description of your boat goes out to the Coast Guard, together with our GPS. The message’ll say that we were attacked by terrorists on a ‘training mission.’ How many fucking Zhuks are floating around out here? Sure, I know, we’re out past the twelve-mile limit. You trust the feds enough to think they’re going to turn back at the border? Especially with no one watching …?”

  His face was all the answer I needed.

  “You know what?” I told him. “It might make you feel good to kill me, but it wouldn’t do a thing for anyone else on your boat. All it could do is get them Life-Without or a needle in the arm. And no matter what you say about them, they can’t be that fucking stupid. Go out on deck. Signal them to pick you up, get in your boat, and go your own way. I promise you, we’ll never see each other again.”

  I didn’t offer to shake hands—that would’ve been too much. He sat back in his chair. I could see him thinking it over. And I let him see I was doing the same math.

  “I don’t trust you,” he finally said. “Not personally. But I do trust you to be a lot smarter than the dimwits I’ve been using. Exposing Darcadia wouldn’t do a thing for you. In fact, I expect you’ll make some little forays of your own, trying to poach on my territory.”

  “The flock’s big enough for us both to fleece.”

  “Oh, the flock is enormous, no question. But if you’re proposing any sort of partnership …”

  I held up both hands in a “No way!” gesture, but he went right on talking: “… forget it. I believe I have convinced you that I’m no more a pedophile than you are. But I maintain my belief that you are a disturbed, dangerous individual. And I wouldn’t want you within a thousand miles of anyplace where such people gathered in groups.”

  “Well, like you said … be pretty hard to bomb an island that doesn’t exist.”

  “You caused me to go to prison. I took that as the cost of doing business. You seem healthy enough, although your face—”

  “—is part of my cost of doing business,” I told him, meaning it. “Besides, we each hold the other’s hole card.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know the truth about Darcadia, sure. But you know I’m not dead.”

  “Ah. Well put, then. Besides, I believe it is just about time for me to, as they say, move on. Most of the juice has been squeezed out of the lemon. Only the prospect of one last giant financial repast tempted me this time.”

  He got to his feet. I stayed where I was.

  “May we never meet again,” he said.

  “We won’t,” I told him. “I swear it.”

  He turned his back on me. Held that pose for an extra second. Then climbed the stairs to where his Zodiac was waiting.

  Max appeared in the stateroom, signaled to me that the Zodiac was on its way back to its home.

  I made the sign of a man shooting a rifle. Max nodded and left. Levi was down in the stateroom a minute later.

  “You nail it?” I asked him.

  “Right to the mast,” he assured me. “I’d never used an air rifle at a distance like that, but it was a big target—sticks way up there, nice and thick. And with three shots, prone, off a bipod rest, it was a sure thing. Gordo locked on to the frequency, said he could hear the whole thing as it was being transmitted to their ship. If I hadn’t gotten it full-confirm, I would have gone back to Plan A.”

  I’d hoped the freak would say enough to hang himself, but I hadn’t guessed within a hundred miles of his real game. Once that started to come out, I’d signaled for Levi to try and attach the transmitter.

  Plan A was a lot more straightforward. Gem had taken the honored visitor’s slicker from him and stowed it away before bringing him to me. She would have returned it to him marked with a dye that would fluoresce its entire back under the scope Levi would be using on his beloved custom Bedeaux.

  But the flying transmitter had found its mark. The collection of life-takers waiting for the Chancellor of Darcadia to return to his ship had been passing the time listening to our whole conversation. And they’d know Ruhr and Timmons were the ones closest to the man who’d been screwing them all along.

  Some movies, you don’t wait around for the ending.

  “Tell Flacco to open her up,” I said to Gem.

  We found a berth somewhere along the coast that Flacco and Gordo knew about. I paid them what Gem told me to. Th
ey were going to sail the old man’s boat back to its home, with Max aboard.

  An old station wagon came by the motel and picked up the little girls. Gem dealt with it.

  Levi vanished without saying goodbye … and I wouldn’t have offered him money, anyway.

  I phoned the clinic. Randy and Michelle would haul the old man back to Key West. She’d make the Mole come along, too. The Prof and Clarence would cover their route. They’d all be in place before the boat got back.

  And then they’d all head back home.

  “I must return to my house,” Gem told me. “There are things I need to attend to; things that I have neglected.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you will come with me.”

  “Gem …”

  She just stared at me, unblinking.

  It wasn’t a good time for me to go back home. And I couldn’t operate where Gem lived. But Portland was close by. And that town looked ripe for the kind of work I do.

  As far as New York was concerned, I was dead. So, for now, I figured I might as well be dead and gone.

  And once I learned Portland better, there were a couple of Russians in Lake Oswego I wanted to visit some night.

  So I could tell them how their son turned out.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social caseworker, and a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for youthful offenders. Now a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youths exclusively. He is the author of twelve novels, two collections of short stories, three graphic series, and Another Chance to Get It Right: A Children’s Book for Adults. His work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, the New York Times, and numerous other forums.

  Further information about Andrew Vachss and his work is available on his website, “The Zero,” at www.vachss.com.