Safe House

by Andrew Vachss

  No reason for him to be nervous. He’d had plenty of time to have an expert look at the cuff, tell him that there was no thread of Semtex wound through it. And that the wafer-thin battery would be damn lucky to last the thirty days.

  When he was finished shaving, he toweled off the area. I handed him one of the cortisone packets. He tore it open. “Make sure it’s flat,” I told him. “Once this cuff gets clamped on, any bumps are going to stay there until it comes off.”

  The white cortisone pad was thin and moist. He smoothed it down with the fingers of both webbed hands. “Okay,” he said.

  I locked it on.

  Fifteen minutes later, Lothar was done. The baby was getting antsy—he knew his mother was close and he wanted that comfort back—and Lothar finally figured out the kid’s only response to anything said to him was to gurgle a few times.

  Besides, Lothar had shown the cunt who was boss. He wanted to see his kid—he saw his kid. He handed the baby back to Max. The warrior’s face didn’t change, but I could feel his contempt all the way across the room.

  It was as lost on Lothar as Max’s ki had been.

  “Tomorrow you get the letter in your box,” Pryce told him. “There’ll be a number there. Pay phone. You call. Meet with Hercules. And then you bring him in.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Go downstairs with Alexander,” I told them, nodding toward one of the Cambodians. “He’ll stay with you until your car gets brought back around.”

  “Alexander?” Lothar said. “What kinda name is that for a gook?”

  “It’s a secret society,” I said to him quietly. “They always take the name of the last man they kill. This is his fifth one.”

  Lothar looked at me, started to open his mouth. Shut it. He glanced over at the Cambodian, who showed him a brilliant smile. Half his teeth were the color of lead. The rest were missing.

  They went downstairs. I watched as the white Taurus came up the street, watched the first Cambodian get out. They climbed in and took off. I didn’t insult Pryce’s tradecraft by writing down the license number.

  The phone buzzed in a minute.

  “Moving off,” said the Prof.

  “He said black hair was okay,” the baby’s mother was telling Crystal Beth as I came back to the second floor. “He hated it at first. He wanted it to be blond. Aryan. But later he said that Hitler had black hair.”

  “He’s gone now,” Crystal Beth said to her.

  “He scared me,” the woman replied. “Even here. With all these . . . people around. You don’t know him.”

  “I know him,” I told her. “You won’t see him again.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, tension wire-taut in her voice.

  “We’re sure,” Crystal Beth promised her.

  “What’s the kid’s real name?” I asked her.

  “Huh?”

  “His real name. Lothar called him Gerhardt. Is that what you named him?”

  “Oh! Yes, that’s what Larry named—oh, I see. You mean, I could name him . . .”

  “Whatever you want,” I told her. “Starting right now.”

  “How long do I have to—?”

  “This is for you too, right?” I told Vyra. “You can’t just go back to your life the way you usually do. Part of this deal was to get you off the hook, remember?”

  “Fine, I remember. But how long—?”

  “Two weeks, three maybe. What’s the big deal? This joint is beautiful,” I told her, glancing around the hotel suite. “You can handle the time easy enough.”

  “But I can’t stay inside for that long. My husband would—”

  “You don’t have to stay,” I said, thinking how long I’d stayed—lived—inside places smaller than this joint’s bathroom. “You got a private line there. When you go out, forward the calls to your cellular. When Herk calls, you’re here, understand? Make sure you talk that way on the phone. Then call me. And get your ass in gear so you can be back before he shows up.”

  “But what’s the difference whether I’m here or not? It’s just so you can meet with him. . . .”

  “Yeah. That’s right. But we don’t know who’s watching.”

  “I thought you had Pryce—”

  “It’s not Pryce we’re worried about now, Vyra.”

  “Oh, all right.” She sighed dramatically, snapping open one of the four suitcases she’d brought with her.

  She found a pair of magenta pumps and slipped them on. That seemed to make her feel better. Then she sat on the padded arm of a chair in the living room and watched as I made a full circuit of the place, checking.

  “You think I’m a hypocrite, don’t you?” she asked. But the tone of her voice made it clear she was accusing me of something.

  “Huh?”

  “What word didn’t you understand?” she demanded, getting to her feet. “Okay, I’m stuck in this. Because of that . . . man. Pryce. And his nasty little threats. But that business with . . . Lothar, or whatever name you call him. You know I drive a Mercedes. . . .”

  “So?”

  “So I’m a Jew. You know that. I never made a secret of it. That’s me, right? A Jewish American Princess. With big tits. And a rich husband. That about sums me up, doesn’t it?”

  “You tell me.”

  “And I drive a German car,” she went on like I hadn’t spoken. “What does that make me?”

  “It makes you a person with money,” I told her. “What the hell are you talking about? Nazis didn’t build your stupid car. The Germans today, they’re just . . . people. Like us. Americans, I mean. Hell, we probably got more Nazis here now than they do.”

  “But their ancestors—”

  “Don’t mean a fucking thing,” I cut her off. “Nobody’s ancestors mean anything. People are what they do, not what someone else did.”

  “But you think I’m . . . weak, don’t you?”

  “Vyra, what is this?”

  “It’s still about money. My husband would dump me if he found out about me and . . . Crystal. He told me that once. He thinks when women . . . it’s the most disgusting thing in the world. That’s the only threat to me—money. It’s different for the rest of them.”

  “That’s the way it is,” I said. “You wouldn’t be in this if you hadn’t put money into Crystal Beth’s operation. And you did that because you . . . well, for whatever reasons you had.”

  “Good reasons.”

  “Okay. Whatever you say.”

  Vyra walked away from me. Sat down on a straight chair facing a corner, sulking. I left her there, went back to checking the place for problems.

  “Are you still mad at me?” she finally asked. Not turning around—talking over her shoulder.

  “Mad at you? For what?”

  “For Crystal? For what we—”

  “That’s your business,” I told her.

  “You were with her too.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s it? ‘Okay’? What does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t want to argue with you. Not now. When this is all done, you can throw a fit if that’s what you want.”

  “What do you want, Burke?”

  “I want this to be done.”

  “Me?”

  “What?”

  “You want me?” she asked, standing up and turning around. “You want me to take my clothes off now? This is a hotel room, isn’t it? That’s us—you and me. That’s what we do.”

  “Not now.”

  “You mean not ever, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

  “Well, you better think about it. What happens after—?”

  “Vyra, this isn’t the way to do it, putting pressure on me.”

  “You think she’s better than me, don’t you?”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t be such a swine. Crystal! Because she has that . . . purpose she’s always talking about. Me, all I do is spend money, yes? Maybe, if you listened to me once in a w
hile, you’d hear something. I’m a person too.”

  “I played square with you,” I told her. “I never hustled you, never scammed you, never took your money, nothing.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “Nothing.”

  “It’s too late for that now.”

  “You’re not getting another chance,” she said, unbuttoning her blouse to play what everyone had been telling her was her trump card since she’d been thirteen.

  “Whoever does?” I asked her. Then I walked out the door.

  “Just be yourself,” I told Hercules for the fiftieth time. “Don’t get fancy. Don’t get cute. They’re not gonna ask you about the other guys in your cell. Anyone does that, you just pin him. With your eyes, okay, don’t chest him. Like, why the fuck would he be breaking security with a question like that, understand?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  “Your life, Herk. Whatever it was, that’s what you say. The truth. You went to the kiddie camps, you went to the joint, you went . . . wherever. Don’t change anything.”

  “Okay.”

  “This guy you took out. You did it because he . . .”

  “. . . was a Jew. A secret Jew.”

  “You think he was with ZOG?”

  “Nah. He was just a wannabe, you know?” the big man said, slipping smoothly into the party line. “He wanted to be with us. But he couldn’t be. None of them ever can. It’s blood. They was born different, they gonna die different. A whole lot of them gonna die soon.”

  “Good! Now, look, all we know for sure is that they’re in the area. Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, I don’t know, but close. What you’re doing, you’re breaking camp, all right? They’re gonna find you a new place to hole up. Understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They can’t be keeping that tight a rein—fucking Lothar seems to be able to go out whenever he wants. Besides, you got the big ticket—you’re a certified life-taker, they’re all gonna know that. They’re not geniuses, but they know undercover cops don’t kill people just for front.”

  “Just be myself, tell the truth,” Herk muttered, working his mantra.

  “You get to a phone, you call Vyra,” I told him. “At the number I gave you. You know where the hotel is. Whatever time you can get away, you meet her there. Don’t ask her, tell her. That’s your bitch, understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s where we’ll meet, you and me. No place else.”

  “Okay.”

  “You got money?”

  “I think—”

  “Herk, how much cash do you have, exactly?”

  It only took him a minute to count it. “Twenty-seven bucks.”

  I gave him eight hundred in various bills and a few subway tokens. “That’ll hold you,” I told him. “Take this too.” I handed him a roll of quarters. He squeezed it experimentally, then tested the clenched fist against an open palm, nodded an okay to me.

  “Don’t get caught carrying anything heavier,” I said. “You get popped, Pryce is gonna think we did it on purpose. Then the dime goes down the slot. And we don’t have Porkpie yet.”

  “I ain’t no shooter,” he said.

  “No shanks either,” I warned him.

  He nodded again, unhappily this time.

  “It’s us and them, brother,” I said, dropping my voice like we were back out on the yard. “They got their plans, we got ours.”

  Then I told him ours.

  “All we can do now is wait,” I told Crystal Beth.

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know. That piece is out of my control. But it’s down to weeks, not months.”

  “I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this. How do you tell?”

  “Tell what?”

  “If you’re strong enough.”

  “You’re as strong as you act,” I told her.

  Wondering if I was.

  “He’s in.” Pryce’s voice on the phone. I glanced down at the receiver the Mole had given me. It looked like one of those mini-TV sets. When I thumbed it on, the screen showed a hollow black circle on a gray background. Inside the circle, a blinking dot, like the cursor on a computer. Wherever Pryce was, he was within range.

  “You sure?”

  “They left together.” Meaning Lothar and Hercules. The meet had been set for the bookstore where Lothar worked, a porno joint in lower Manhattan. “I won’t know any more until I’ve had a chance to debrief.”

  “I’ll be here,” I told him.

  I didn’t know if I had hours or days to wait. I felt like a convict who just got a parole date. Not the good part, the go-home part. No, the part where you had to walk real soft, stay out of trouble, turn away from challenges. One slip and it’s all gone. And every other guy in the joint knew it.

  So I didn’t go back to my old grounds. Even stayed away from Mama’s. Waited at Crystal Beth’s.

  That’s when the tour started. I didn’t ask her why she’d wanted me to come along, figuring it was a way to kill some time. And maybe make some money.

  The young woman was wearing a tan cashmere sweater under a matching blazer of a slightly darker shade, nervously fingering a string of pearls as if she knew they were too old for her. “It started with letters,” she said, pointing at an expandable wine-colored leather portfolio sitting at her feet.

  I pulled one out. It was on heavy stock, pale blue with marbled veining running random throughout. The writer’s name was engraved at the top left, small black lettering, all lowercase. At the bottom right: address, phone, fax and e-mail. The text was typed: justified margins, a heavily serifed font.

  You have such beautiful boys. I can’t resist them. They are so seductive, so entrancing, I find myself drawn to them. But I assure you, my pedophilia is purely intellectual, a never-to-be-realized urge of which I am in full control. Please help me understand the objects of my love. Vital statistics would be such treasures to me. Their birthdays, their heights and weights. And I want to know them too. I already know Jonas loves model airplanes and Lance keeps tropical fish, but I want to know more. Please indulge me. Fantasies don’t hurt anyone. But the pain of not knowing more about your perfect boys is real indeed. Thank you for understanding.

  It was unsigned.

  “Jonas and Lance were heroes,” the woman said to me. “They saved a puppy from drowning. They got their pictures in the local paper. That’s when it started . . . when he started writing to me.”

  “Did you ever answer him?” I asked her.

  “Oh no. I was . . . terrified. I took his first letter right to the police. But they said he hadn’t committed a crime.”

  “And the letters kept coming?”

  “Yes. Not just to me. He wrote to the boys’ school and asked for copies of their report cards. The school turned his letter over to me. They never answered him either. He wrote to the newspaper, to the reporter who had interviewed the boys, and asked him for information too. He wrote to everyone.”

  “But he never made contact?”

  “He . . . Oh, I see what you mean. Not . . . direct contact. I’ve never seen him.”

  “You have . . . financial resources?”

  “Yes of course,” she said. “I know all about . . . him now. He’s never been arrested. He doesn’t work. Has some sort of private income. This kind of . . . thing.” She shuddered, then gathered herself. “It’s his ‘hobby,’ that’s what he told the investigators we hired. It’s not against the law.”

  “So why did you—?”

  “Run? He posted a reward. For information about the boys. Especially pictures of them.”

  “Posted?”

  “On the Internet. To one of those pedophile boards. I don’t know how he did it. I never saw it. But one of the bodyguards we hired for the children caught a man taking a video of them at a soccer game. He told my . . . investigators that there was a reward for the pictures, and he was just trying to make some money. That wasn’t against the law either.”

  “And you figured it wa
s just a matter of time before he . . . ?”

  “Yes. I’m only here temporarily. We have . . . resources. As you said. But I found out where he got his money, and that . . .”

  “The private income?”

  “No, not that. He’s done this before. And one of the boys’ fathers . . . one of the other boys, I mean, the ones he . . . watched before . . . I really don’t know all the details . . . but he . . . the boy’s father . . . had this . . . man’s address and everything, and he went to his house and . . . hurt him, I guess. Beat him up or something.”

  “I’m still not . . .”

  “The man—the boy’s father, not the . . . man. He went to jail. For assault. And the . . . person who writes these filthy letters, he sued the boy’s father. And he got money. A lot of money. I can’t imagine why a jury would ever . . . but . . .”

  “And you think that’s what he’s doing? Setting himself up for enraged parents to go after him so he can sue?”

  “Yes! He lives in this little town. His whole family does. They’re very prominent. They’ve lived there for over a hundred years. And the police will protect him. They already have. There’s nothing I can do about . . . him. So we’re leaving.”

  “You’re going to get new birth certificates for the kids, change everything just so he can’t find you again?”

  “The only thing we’re going to change is our address,” the woman said firmly. “I know he could find us again. So we’re leaving . . . America. We’re going to live overseas. My husband already has a job . . . there. And my family will help us too. We’re going where he can never hurt my boys.”

  “I—”

  “Crystal Beth said you knew . . . these kind of people. About them, I mean. Would you feel safe? If it was your children?”

  “No,” I told her honestly.

  “My husband just wants to kill him, he’s so angry. But if he beats him up, we already know what’s going to happen. And nobody’s going to actually kill someone for writing letters.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I told her, lying as calmly as a mouse-watching hawk.

  They didn’t all have children. They didn’t all run for the same reason. But they all ran from the same thing.