Choice of Evil

by Andrew Vachss

  I let my eyes tell her she was, in fact, just as fine from the waist down. “Now you are talking about committing a crime,” I said. “Whole bunch of crimes if I remember my legal training.”

  “You’re a lawyer?” she asked.

  “No,” I told her truthfully, “but I’ve been in plenty of courtrooms.”

  “So you’re not interested?” she asked, a quick lick of her lips telling me she knew how double-edged her words were.

  “In what? Solving some crimes? Or committing some?”

  “Right now, I’ll settle for either.”

  “I might be. . . in the first. If the money was right.”

  “What makes you think you could solve. . . I mean, find him?” Lincoln asked.

  “I don’t know, pal. What makes you think I can? Vincent?”

  “Vincent said you. . . do things for money. He said he. . . helped you with one, once.”

  “That’s nice,” I replied. “Only thing is, I don’t have any old stories for you, friend. You want to check me out, do what you have to do. Or maybe you already did that. But I don’t have a crystal ball. Or promises either.”

  “But you could try, couldn’t you?”

  “Sure. I could try. But I don’t do bounty hunting.”

  “What does that mean?” Nadine asked.

  “It means I don’t do COD, understand?” I said, holding her eyes. “I get paid for work, not for results. You want to pay me to look, I might do that. You want to pay me only if I turn him up—if it’s a ‘him’ at all—forget it.”

  They all went silent again. Nadine turned and walked back to her little table, showing off what every man on the planet was missing. I could tell she’d had a lot of practice.

  I went back to scratching behind Pansy’s ears. If they didn’t learn anything else from all this, they’d at least discover I could outwait a tree.

  Lincoln went over to a far corner. A number of them clustered around. The skinny blonde at Nadine’s table started to get up, but Nadine grabbed her wrist and wrenched her back down.

  I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Nadine and I played with each other across the distance. It was as good a way to pass the time as any.

  Lincoln finally came back. “We. . . can’t decide,” he said. “But we will. Soon. If we agree to your. . . terms, we’ll reach out for you.”

  “You don’t even know my terms,” I told him. “The money has to—”

  “The money, the money,” he said dismissively. “Don’t worry about money. Your terms are that you’ll. . . work. Like you said. Yes?”

  “Sure.”

  “You can find your own way out?”

  “Sure,” I said again, getting up. Pansy slowly got to her feet, then we walked toward the door. As we passed her table, Nadine shot out one hand, grabbed at my jacket.

  “Ahhh,” she said, mock-sorrowfully, “you didn’t even ask for my number.”

  “I already know it,” I told her. “And it’s a wrong one.”

  I went through the door into the alley. It was empty. Pansy was the only one disappointed.

  “I do not like them, mahn,” Clarence said, back inside Mama’s an hour later.

  “Them?” Michelle’s voice, scorpion-under-glass if you knew how to read it.

  Clarence did. And he wasn’t going anywhere near there. “No, my little sister, I do not mean their. . . sex. That is their business. I mean, I do not trust these people who come to Burke. Something is wrong with all. . . this.”

  For Clarence, that was a long speech. And for him to start a conversation was rarer still. I exchanged a long look with the Prof. Max just waited, as always.

  “You make the call, you got to tell it all,” the Prof finally said.

  “Yes, Father, that is what I am saying,” Clarence agreed, not understanding that the Prof was talking about him, not about the crew I’d just visited. “Why don’t they. . . fight the ones who attack them?”

  “Remember the Haitian guy over at the Seven-Oh in Brooklyn?” I asked Clarence.

  I didn’t have to say anything more. A couple of cops supposedly took him in the back room and sodomized him with a nightstick. An ugly-filthy Tontons Macoutes–style power display. Ruptured his bladder. Told him if he screamed they’d kill his whole family, muttering about “teaching niggers a lesson.” There’s a big Haitian community here, and they sure aren’t all nonviolent. But they stayed with peaceful demonstrations, expressing confidence that the authorities would get the job done.

  The young man nodded, his face unreadable.

  “Maybe it’s the same thing,” I said. “Maybe they’re waiting for the public to fucking get it, I don’t know.”

  “Mahn, they do not get it. The Haitian guy, it happened when the Mayor was running for re-election, yes? And it was on the front page of the papers. Every day. Big coverage. TV, radio. No place to hide. Most of the time, when the. . . homosexuals get attacked, it never even gets out, you know? They don’t even go to the cops. Those little demonstrations, they are nothing.”

  I nodded, against my will, agreeing with him. Thinking of Crystal Beth. Dead and gone. Just because some freak who couldn’t face what was in himself had to go and. . .

  “This ‘Avenger’ guy, he is speaking sense to me, mahn,” Clarence finished my thought. “They kill your people, you kill them.”

  “Like the Israelis and the Arabs?” Michelle challenged, pink beginning to creep into her peaches-and-cream.

  “Israel is still standing, Little Sister,” Clarence said. “Would it be so if she waited for the United Nations to protect her from her enemies?”

  “That clue is true,” the Prof said. “Ain’t a motherfucker on the planet don’t know the Israeli bible.”

  Michelle looked a question at the little man.

  “Two eyes for an eye,” he answered her. Then he turned to the rest of us. “Been pretty quiet since this ‘Avenger’ guy started playing his number. . . .”

  “And that is who they want you to find, mahn?” Clarence asked me.

  “That’s what they say,” I told him.

  “But. . . what?” Michelle asked.

  “Clarence has got a point,” I said. “Why me? Sure, I was tight with Vincent, and he might have told them a few things. But they got beaucoup cash. Made that clear. Why not just. . .?”

  “They told you that part, Schoolboy,” the Prof said. “I think they’re for real on it. The Man wants to stop him before he hits again. But these boys, they want you to stop him before he gets caught. Better than wasting their cash on a lawyer.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter for now,” I told everyone. “They’ll get back to me if they want to play.”

  I didn’t want to play. I wanted to watch the slime who killed my woman die. I thought about that. A lot. Would Crystal Beth have wanted revenge? She was raised a hippie. Peace and love. But her father died protecting a runaway from a biker pack who said they owned her. And her mother followed him later, taking his killers along for the ride. Much later, Crystal Beth got into the business too. Running that safehouse for stalking victims. Until she became one herself. That’s when I came in. And by the time we were all done, the walls were splattered.

  Would she have wanted it? I couldn’t puzzle it out. So I faced the truth. I did. Me.

  But I didn’t have a clue. And if the cops did, they weren’t saying. So I thought I’d get myself an alibi and see if the Avenger would do some of his work while I was covered.

  I hadn’t been in the basement poolroom for years, but the old man nodded like he’d seen me yesterday. My cue was still in the rack, held in place by a tiny little lock. I took it down, unscrewed it, checked the hollowed-out compartment in the heavily taped butt. Empty. Nobody’d left me a message there for a long time.

  Been a long time since I’d played too, and it showed—only took ten minutes to attract one of the slowly circling sharks. I waved him off. I wanted witnesses, sure, but I wasn’t going to pay for them.

  Hours slipped by
. Toward the end, the cue ball was finally starting to obey orders. I spent the whole night working on my stroke, not paying any attention to pocketing the balls. It was after three in the morning when I settled my tab with the old man.

  Nothing on the news next day. Maybe he’d really gone quiet. Or, like one of the tabloids speculated, taken his own life. Dying of AIDS, that was another rumor.

  I didn’t buy any of it.

  I went to the track that night. Been years since I’d been to Yonkers. The whole place had changed. NO SMOKING signs everywhere. Quiet. Damn near empty. The horses were a sorry collection of low-rent claimers and nonwinners, with a few burnt-out old campaigners thrown in. Purses were real low too. Handicapping wasn’t the same either. They’d added a flexible rail, so the short stretch wasn’t the big factor it used to be—horses could pass on the inside coming home. And they ran at a mile and a sixteenth for some stupid reason. I had no experience with any of that, but I invested a few bucks, making sure I went to the same window every time.

  I didn’t hit one all night.

  Neither did he.

  The way to establish an alibi is to be visible. But I’d spent my whole life being the opposite—even in prison, where profile maintenance can get you dead real quick—and when I made my list, I didn’t come up with much. I’m not known as a gambler, so making the rounds of the various games in town would get me too noticed.

  If I wanted to play the slots, I could always go to one of the strip clubs, but those siliconed androids wouldn’t remember one john from another if the cops ever asked, and they sure don’t give receipts. Baseball interests me about as much as antique-collecting. And the movies are a good place to hide, not be seen. My crew would always stand up in court, but there wasn’t one of them that didn’t have a sheet or wasn’t known to be my partner. Not good.

  I asked around. Got offered a sure-fire deal from a sleazoid lawyer I know. His client wanted some video of his wife in the sack. . . with anyone but him, he wasn’t particular. All I had to do was romance the woman—“She’s an ugly old pig,” the lawyer told me, “probably even go for a guy like you”—and they’d get me an alibi that’d pass anywhere. It was good money. I hated to let it slide. But I recouped a bit by going to see the woman and telling her what her husband had planned. She was real grateful. And she wasn’t anything like what the lawyer had described. I might have gone back to see her again if she hadn’t offered me major money to kill her husband.

  I thought about getting locked up for something petty, but that bullshit only works in movies. Nobody who’d ever been Inside for a minute would go back just to prove his whereabouts. Besides, the killer was off the job. Or quiet, anyway. And I couldn’t alibi myself twenty-four-seven if I was sleeping alone.

  I was still thinking it over when he went back to work.

  This one was harder to connect. Fact is, the cops probably wouldn’t have put it together on their own. It was at a college residence, uptown. The usual stuff:

  ALL FAGS MUST DIE!

  spray-painted on a dorm door. The same door someone had been slipping nasty little notes under. Somebody threw a rock through the kid’s window too. All reported to the campus cops, but not to NYPD. They had some suspects, but not enough proof to go to the Student Court or whatever other impotent nonsense they used there. The gay kids had a demonstration in the Quad. Got some local coverage. But nothing happened—no ID on the perps.

  But the hunter must have figured it out. The target was alone in his room. On the third floor. It was a hot night—I guess he left the window open while he slept. Maybe he felt the first burning slice of the razor, maybe not. In the morning, they found him in strips.

  Turned out the kid who died was one of the suspects. But that wasn’t enough for a connect until the hunter launched another communiqué at the papers.

  Night will not protect you. The darkness holds no safety. Your shield is now my sword. Another of you has joined his cowardly comrades. Do not deceive yourselves. The design is not deterrence—it is extinction. Either we will be allowed to live in peace or you will not be allowed to live. The next one will be close to home. Welcome to a new food chain, prey.

  There was one big difference to this note. Apparently he didn’t care for the “Avenger” title the media came up with. So this time it was signed: “Homo Erectus.”

  The tabs went crazy. “Profilers” filled the talk show stages. Gay groups got center stage. . . and used it to go on and on: They understood how this killer felt, blah-blah, but they were very careful to denounce violence, playing their role. All the editorials read the same: Fag-bashing is bad, so is killing. Two wrongs don’t make a right. The kind of trenchant, cutting-edge stuff that makes them so relevant. The “re-enactment” shows ran fake violence-video of the murders, but they didn’t have an image of the killer, so the “Most Wanted” stuff went unanswered. Rewards increased.

  The father of the kid who got razor-ripped called a press conference, saying his son was the innocent victim of a maniac. That can of spray paint the cops found in his room—the one with his fingerprints all over it—so what if it was the exact same brand that had been used on the gay kid’s dorm door? Was that proof? Even Jeffrey Dahmer got a trial, for God’s sake! What kind of country was this, anyway?

  And, of course, he sued the school.

  I kept adding to my new refuge. Never anything bigger than I could lug in the Plymouth. The Mole looked like one of those TV aliens with his huge goggles as he arc-welded away. Max wasn’t any good with techno-stuff, but he understood mechanics and leverage as perfectly as he did his own kinetics, and the loading-bay door he designed pulled up into the roof, silent as cancer, when I touched the dashboard switch the Mole installed. Now I could turn the corner, cut my lights, and, if I timed it right, slip inside the building as if I’d just vanished. Much easier than in my old. . . place. I didn’t have to carry the spotlight anymore either. A pair of them blasted on automatically as soon as the Plymouth’s front end broke the motion-detector beams. If you weren’t ready for it, you’d go instantly blind. Nice for uninvited visitors.

  I spent some of the money I’d stashed, fixing the place up. Gave a little chunk of it to Michelle for clothes, and she went through it like a dope fiend the night before detox.

  And I kept the lines out too, but I didn’t hook anything. When you’re in the freak-scamming business, you meet a lot of humans who hate gays, but you also meet a lot who hide behind them. . . like those “man-boy love” groups who masquerade as homosexual and try and march in the gay-pride parades—as if fucking a boy is the same as making love with a grown man.

  I was at the table, ready to play, but all I drew was blanks.

  If I got a hint, I was ready to do some ugly things. If I thought anyone in particular knew the answer, they were going to tell me. But I didn’t have. . . anything.

  I knew better than to go back to working my scams until I got the new ID. And I didn’t really need the alibi anymore. Morales had nailed it—mail bombs weren’t my style, and whoever took out that last one was either a ninja or in a lot better shape than I was. The federales knew I had the horses in my stable—the Mole could fit enough bang-stuff into a suitcase to take down a big building. And Max could climb walls like I could climb stairs. But they weren’t showing any interest, and I didn’t expect any. Whoever—or whatever—this Homo Erectus was, it was all local.

  Still, I made the rounds. Shot a lot more pool than I had in years. Took Max with me down to Freehold to watch some real trotters—the Meadowlands is closer, but only the half-mile tracks really show you any action—and even hung out in some after-hours joints.

  After a while, I didn’t know what I was waiting for, so I told myself it was the ID.

  I was in the restaurant, playing another round of our life-sentence card game with Max. It was gin for a long time, but we’d switched to casino ever since Max had a once-in-forever winning streak and refused to play anymore for fear of insulting the gods.

 
; For once, Mama wasn’t lambasting him with her incompetent advice—he’d brought his daughter Flower with him and the little girl was watching, patient and quiet. Like her mother, except the child was actually interested in the game, missing nothing. Max was convinced she’d bring him luck. But casino’s not like gin, and there was no wave of fortune for him to catch. Oh, he could win a hand once in a while, but he’d never get close to breaking even. The trick was making my deliberate blunders slick enough so he wouldn’t snap that I was tanking the game. I don’t do that often, but, with Flower sitting there watching me with those grave and glistening eyes. . . no choice. He got back a couple of thousand off his deficit before Immaculata came in there to collect the little girl.

  “Are you ready for the museum, child?” she asked, her face blazing with love.

  “Could we wait a bit, Mother?” Flower asked politely. “I am helping Daddy.”

  “And how are you doing that?” Immaculata asked.

  Max signed “good luck” to her. She bowed, and took a seat next to me. Mama brought her some tea, serving it personally, a sign of deep respect. Their elaborate thank-you ritual took long enough for us to play another couple of hands.

  “Are you. . . all right now? In your new place?” Immaculata asked me.

  “Yeah, it’s fine, Mac,” I told her. “Better, even. It was time to go anyway.”

  “Ah,” she said, as if she understood. That I was lying.

  Needless to say, with Immaculata added to Max’s arsenal, I started losing every damn hand. Max would have sat there for hours—when he hit a winning streak, he went absolutely immobile, convinced that any alteration would change his luck. But Immaculata wasn’t having any. “It is time to go now, Flower,” she said.

  “Yes, Mother,” the child said. She stood up and kissed Max on the cheek. Max signed that he loved her, that he would always protect her, that she was the most precious thing in his life. The child’s face reddened slightly, just a trace of embarrassment showing.

  Watching them took me away.

  When I was little, I was in custody. They called it an orphanage, but we all knew what it was. All except those chumps who thought they were going to get adopted one day by the privileged people who came around and looked us over like it was a petting zoo. They didn’t want any of us—they just wanted babies—but we got displayed anyway. I hated them all. By that time, hate came easy.