Choice of Evil

by Andrew Vachss

“This is a message from the Wolfpack Cadre of the Canine Liberation Front,” she proclaimed in a perfect liberal-twit revolutionary’s voice. “You may no longer imprison our brothers and sisters without fear of consequences!”

  “Look, I—”

  “Silence, lackey!” Crystal Beth snarled at him. “This is a jailbreak, not a debate.”

  A soft explosion rocked the back of the building. Then another.

  The attendant moved his lips like he was praying, but no sound came out.

  I walked past him. Saw Max’s broad back bent over as he severed the heavy lock on the door to the cage area. Then we both popped the cages open, one by one. The dogs milled about uncertainly, until one spotted the gaping hole in the side of the building. He ran for it, and the others followed.

  Pansy was there, her cage standing open. On her feet, daring Max to come closer.

  “Pansy!” I called to her. “Come here, sweetheart!”

  The big beast’s head shot up. She bounded over to me. “Good girl!” I told her, patting her huge head. Then I gave her the hand signal to heel and we merged with the river of dogs flowing to freedom.

  As soon as she saw the car, Pansy knew what to do. I popped the trunk and she jumped inside, curled up on the mat next to the padded fuel cell, and looked up expectantly. I handed her a giant marrow bone, whispering “Speak!” at the same time. I closed the trunk lid, knowing the air holes I’d punched in it years ago would let her breathe just fine. And if anyone heard her pulverizing the bone, they’d just think the old Plymouth had a bad differential.

  Even with us working the wrong side of the river, some citizen could have called the cops by then. We had to move fast. I stepped back inside the front door just as Michelle was taping up a cardboard stencil warning the world against the unlawful imprisonment of dogs. Clarence sprayed the blood-red paint with one hand, the other holding his pistol steady.

  “Don’t think about the phones after we’re gone,” I told the attendant, just to get his attention. As he looked up, Max materialized behind him and did something to his neck. He wouldn’t be making any calls for hours.

  “They all out?” I asked Clarence.

  “All gone, mahn. Every one.”

  “Scoop the Mole—he’s back there somewhere. Then get in the limo and fly. I’ll be right behind you.”

  I tossed a smoke grenade into the back of the joint and dashed for the Plymouth.

  I read all about it in the afternoon paper, Pansy stretched out next to me in Crystal Beth’s apartment. On the top floor of her safehouse.

  The papers were full of it—in all respects—for the next couple of days. The Mayor said it was terrorism. Pansy yawned when she saw his face. Even the camera was bored.

  Most of the dogs made it to freedom. The waterfront’s not fully developed over on the Queens side. Yet. Maybe some of them will form a pack like their counterparts had in the South Bronx—go feral, evolve their own breed.

  Like we have, the Children of the Secret.

  Some of them will bond. Some of them will prey on anything that crosses their path.

  Some of us do that too.

  I started rebuilding my life.

  “You know who this is?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” was all the answer I got.

  “You want to meet me? In the alley?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Say when.”

  “First thing tomorrow.”

  I hit the off button. Even if they traced the call, all they’d get would be the bogus number of the stolen cell phone—the Mole had installed a cloned chip to make it work.

  If anyone else had been listening to that few seconds of talk between me and a pit bull of a cop named Morales, they still wouldn’t know that “first thing tomorrow” meant midnight and the alley was Mama’s restaurant. And even if they did know it, they wouldn’t come there without a SWAT team—it’s not a safe place for strangers.

  He strolled in five minutes past midnight, a cheap brown suit and wash-and-wear white shirt with clip-on tie covering the surgery scars from the bullet he’d taken a few years back. A bullet from another cop: that homicidally insane Belinda. I’d left her dead on the rooftop of the building where they’d had their last meeting, making my getaway while Morales was being carted off by the EMTs. Later, the brass made it a tidy package by declaring Morales a hero. In their version, he’d killed Belinda in a shootout.

  Morales was an old-time harness bull, a dinosaur who couldn’t evolve but refused to die. He’d flake a drug dealer, phony-up probable cause, whatever it took. And he carried a throw-down piece in case he had to smoke a suspect. A brutal man who saw it all in black-and-white. Mostly black—my color in his eyes forever. He wouldn’t pay for information—thought that was what God made blackjacks for—but he’d trade for it. And the weight of the debt he owed me was heavy on him, so we didn’t waste time with prelims.

  “What do they have?” I asked him, flat-out.

  “They know you lived there. Didn’t fucking know it till they tossed the place, though.”

  “I figured no landlord had enough juice to get NYPD to do evictions, so. . .?”

  “So the cocksucker called in a nine-one-one. Said he just discovered some Arabs was secretly living in his building. And that the place was a bomb factory.”

  “He didn’t warn them about my dog?”

  “Not a word, pal. But as soon as they started with the battering ram, they could fucking hear about it, so they waited for the Animal Control guys to get there before they finished breaking in.”

  “There weren’t any fucking bombs—”

  “Uh, I know that, all right?” he cut me short. “What they found was. . . well, bottom line, that you lived there. I mean you, Burke, okay? Not from the papers, from the prints.”

  “The papers. . .?”

  “Yeah. You better forget about Juan Rodriguez, pal. That ain’t you no more. Not this Arnold Haines guy either. Or any of the others. Man, you sure had yourself some serious ID.”

  “ ‘Had’ is right.”

  “Yeah, well. . .” He dismissed my problems with a short chop of his stubby hand. “Look, the guys who tossed your joint said it was clean as a prison cell. It wasn’t till your prints came up that they made you.”

  “And. . .?”

  He shrugged. “And you ain’t been on parole for years. No wants, no warrants. They found a bunch of letters—somebody’s been stinging freaks, promising them kiddie porn, stuff like that—but it was all run out of some PO box in Jersey. . .”

  That one’s gone too, I thought to myself.

  “Only thing they found that looked like a crime they could connect to you was the tapped lines,” he continued, “from Con Ed and all.”

  “I never did that. Probably the landlord himself.”

  “Yeah. That’s the way they figure it. Probably an off-the-books rental. You paid him in cash, right?”

  “Right. Speaking of cash. . .”

  “They didn’t find any,” Morales said, flesh-pouched eyes steady on mine. “Didn’t find no guns either. You got a problem with that?”

  “Not me,” I assured him.

  “That motherfucking landlord,” Morales muttered. “Coulda gotten a couple a good cops killed, they’d a broken in there with that dog of yours. . . .”

  “And they didn’t find any bombs.”

  “That too. That piece of shit’s lucky they didn’t charge him. But the punk-ass ADA said the cocksucker had a ‘good-faith belief’ or some other such crap. Still, little weasel deserves to be fucked up.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he warned me. “Right now, you walk away. Start over, I guess. Something happens to that one, Ray Charles could see through any alibi you come up with.”

  “I wouldn’t even know where to find him,” I said truthfully. “He sure doesn’t live in that building.”

  Morales nodded, not speaking.

  “Funny how people look at things,” I sai
d softly. “This landlord, he never said a word about my dog. You guys, you’re mad because a couple of cops could have gotten chewed up. Me, I know what would have happened if it went down like that—they would have shot her.”

  “Whatever,” Morales said, standing up to leave. He stuck out his hand for me to shake. That isn’t his usual thing, but I went with it.

  As soon as he was out the door, I read the little piece of paper I’d palmed when we shook hands. Just a phone number, Westchester area code.

  “He would have killed my dog,” I said to Crystal Beth later that night.

  “Burke. . . stop it! You’re so. . .”

  “Why did he have to do that? Pansy never did anything to him. We had a deal. A square deal. I always kept my piece of it.”

  “Maybe he didn’t—”

  “Didn’t what? He had to know I wasn’t around when he made the nine-one-one call. If the cops had knocked on the door with me inside, I would have let them in, let them look around, whatever they wanted. Or told them to come back with a search warrant, if I thought I could have gotten away with it. Or called Davidson, anyway. A lawyer comes over, the cops have to watch what they’re doing. He knows I would have told them something, and he didn’t want to take the chance. So he must have been watching, made sure I wasn’t there. But Pansy was. And he knew what she’d do. He was trying to get her killed.”

  “Honey, you can’t know that.”

  “I do know,” I told her. “What I don’t know is why. Not yet.”

  “¡Buenos días!” the cheery voice at the other end of the line greeted me.

  “You a Latina today, Pepper?” I asked her. “Pretty good.”

  “Thanks, chief,” she answered. “It’s a lot easier than being an alien, like I was in the last show.” Pepper works with Wolfe’s crew. She’s an actress, among other things. When she’s not teaching kids gymnastics. Or singing in a choir. Or working the lifeline between Wolfe’s outlaw-info outfit and the players who pay for her services.

  “I don’t need a meet for this,” I said. “Just some answers.” Then I gave her the landlord’s son’s name. “He’s in the Program,” I told her. “Can she get me—?”

  “Okeydokey,” Pepper said, as if I’d said something else entirely. Then I was listening to the fiber-optic hum of a dead phone line.

  “Call for you,” Mama said, nodding her head toward the bank of pay phones between the kitchen and my booth in the back.

  “Who?”

  “Girl. Say you know her.”

  I walked back, picked up the phone. “What?” is all I said.

  “He’s gone,” the woman said. Wolfe—I’d know her voice in a subway tunnel, even with the train coming.

  “Disappeared?”

  “Dead.”

  “From?”

  “The feds didn’t need an autopsy. He was Swiss cheese.”

  “Ah. Any suspects?”

  “Too many. He must have been big-time stupid to go into business for himself in Vegas.”

  “Thanks. How much I owe you?”

  “Two large will do it.”

  “I’ll have Max drop it by.”

  “No rush.”

  “You think I ratted him out?” I asked softly.

  “How did you get this number?” the landlord wanted to know, his voice trembling.

  “Oh, I always had your number, pal. Just answer my question.”

  “It had to be you. You were the only one who knew—”

  “He went into business for himself. Out there, I mean. Your kid, he had a disease. He liked being an informant, even when his own case was over. I had nothing to do with it. You wanted me out of there, all you had to do was ask.”

  “I. . .”

  “You knew my dog was there,” I said quietly.

  “Look, if I was wrong, I’m sorry. I mean, we can still work something—”

  “You’ll never see it coming,” I promised him, cutting the connection on my last word.

  That was it, then. Humans are the only pack that tolerates predators of its own species. Most think “family” is a biological term. Not my family. My family is my choice, and I belong to them like a wolf cub does to a pack. Only I’m grown now. All of us, grown. Only babies—some lucky babies—get that “unconditional love” the talk show psycho-flashers are always bleating about. We know better. For adults, there’s always conditions. And one of them is that the pack survive, that the house stay safe.

  We had killed to do that, all of us, together. And when it was over, Crystal Beth asked me if I was going to stay. Not here, not in this cesspool of a city where I was born—stay with her.

  I told her the truth then: I didn’t know.

  But I was there now. Me and Pansy. Trying. Living in Crystal Beth’s safehouse, seeing if it could maybe be my house too. That’s when it started.

  People don’t kill for no reason. What the cops don’t get is that sometimes no reason is the reason.

  They thought it was random, that first one. A target of opportunity. Like the victim of a bomb dropped from above the clouds, the pilot certain everything down below was the enemy. Killing things, not people. Following orders.

  But not all bombers are military. And some take orders only from inside their twisted-circuit heads.

  When people from the other side started to fall, the cops got it all distorted. And once they worked it backward to me, they were sure they knew the motive.

  It fit me like a good pair of handcuffs.

  It’s hard to say it even now. Hard to say her name. When Crystal Beth died, so did my chances.

  It didn’t happen the way she thought it might. It wasn’t one of the risks she knew she was taking. She wasn’t even supposed to be there. It didn’t have anything to do with that “purpose” she was always talking about; the one her mother had tribal-tattooed on Crystal Beth’s teenage face before she went out to meet her own destiny. Crystal Beth’s purpose was the safehouse. The network. Fighting stalkers and protecting their victims. Why even go to a gay-rights rally? I remember asking her, deep in the quiet darkness of her room on the top floor.

  “It’s not you, girl,” I said.

  “Why not?” she answered, her soft voice as rich and round as her thighs. “You know I have. . . I mean, you know I did. . . with Vyra and all. It wasn’t her who started that, it was me.”

  Vyra was gone now. My old. . . what? Not girlfriend. Not even friend. Sex partner, I guess. I never saw any real piece of her until the wheels came off last year. When my own house was threatened by a pack of race-haters and my brother Hercules went into the fire to save us. Homicides happened. And when it was over, Vyra left with Hercules. To new lives, out of mine.

  But before she went, I saw her and Crystal Beth make love to each other. Right in this room, on this bed. I wasn’t a spy or a voyeur. They wanted me to stay, wanted to show me something. Much later, when Crystal Beth was sure I’d seen what was really there, she asked me if I was going to love her.

  I told her I didn’t know. Lying is encoded in my genes. I learned lying so I could keep them from hurting me. It didn’t always work, but it was all a little kid had. Later, I learned better ways.

  Couples who want to make a baby tell everyone they’re “trying.” It always makes me sick to hear that. . . like they’re making me watch them try. But I understand what they mean. I was trying to love Crystal Beth then. I’ll never know if I was going to get it right.

  “That doesn’t mean you’re gay,” is what I told her.

  “Because I’m a woman? That’s the way men think. If you have sex with another man, even once, then you’re gay for life. That’s the fear, isn’t it? When a little boy is raped, he’s afraid he’s going to be just like the rapist. . . only he doesn’t think ‘rapist,’ he thinks ‘queer.’ But if you’re a woman, it’s like. . . okay, right? Just an experiment. Just playing. You know what, baby? Gay people don’t like my way either. I’m not out enough for them. Not for the lesbians, anyway. If I still have sex with m
en, I’m not really, see?”

  “Really what?”

  “Not really real. Not. . . myself, whatever that’s supposed to mean. You know, ‘yourself’. . . the person someone else wants you to be. For them, not for you. Funny. Gay people are discriminated against, hated, feared. . . and they do the same thing to themselves. I’m bisexual. And they have no tolerance for me just as straights have no tolerance for them.”

  “So fuck them. Why go?”

  “Because they’re wrong. I belong there too. And I’m going.”

  “No, you’re not, bitch.”

  “Don’t sweet-talk me,” she whispered, flashing her smile in the darkness. “I took your orders when we were in the middle of. . . that thing. But it’s over. That’s over, I mean. This is me, now. Me, no matter what a pack of fools think.”

  “It’s not about being gay,” I said. “Who cares? But why go where you’re not wanted? It’s just another bullshit demonstration anyway—it’s not like it’s gonna change anything.”

  “Tell that to the Freedom Riders.”

  “Hard to talk to dead people,” I said, warningly.

  “This isn’t Mississippi, Burke. It’s not even close. The climate has changed. And it didn’t change by itself. We helped make it change. I’m going.”

  “Crystal Beth—”

  “Shush up, now,” she mumbled against my chest. “I’ve got something better for you to do.”

  It was just cracking light when I left the next morning. I looked down at Crystal Beth, sleeping on her belly, soft cheek against the pillow. Heavy-haunched and glistening in her own dew, her face open even with her eyes closed. I thought about giving her a kiss but I didn’t want to chance waking her up.

  I never saw her again.

  The papers had it pretty close to accurate. I know because I went down there. Not to the scene—to where I could find the people who saw it. People who wouldn’t talk to the law.

  Crystal Beth wasn’t even one of the speakers. She was just in the crowd, toward the back. Not a big crowd, maybe a couple of hundred or so. Right on the rim of Central Park, west of the Ramble. Protesting another fag-bashing episode, demanding the Police Commissioner send some undercover cops in there to stop it. The speaker was saying something about how they used undercovers to bust straights looking for hooker sex, but they wouldn’t spare any to protect gays. Talking about voting as a bloc. . . knowing as he spoke that you might tip an election for a local City Council seat with a threat like that, but it wouldn’t make the Mayor blink.