Safe House

by Andrew Vachss

“In the morning, before the place opens, he comes back. I had to stay for his whole shift, until it got dark. Then I went with him.”

  “To . . . ?”

  “This place they got. A house. Just the other side of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge.”

  “You got the address?”

  “Nah. What happens is, you go to this bar, okay? Then you make a call from the pay phone over against the wall. There’s all kinds of clicks on the line, like it’s switching back and forth. You wait there. One of them comes by and picks you up. You get in the back of this van. No windows. Then you ride for a while. When you get out, you’re in this garage, like. There’s a doorway cut right into the house. I can tell from the way it’s set up, the house is supposed to be all closed up. You can’t even see outside.”

  “But when you want to leave . . . ?”

  “You got to tell them. Then they take you. Through the garage and all.”

  “They take you wherever you want?”

  “Nah, they ain’t no taxi service. They drop you off near whatever subway you want. Or a cab stand. But I know they gotta drive that van a good half-hour before we get to the house from the bar.”

  “So they could have followed you here?”

  “I guess . . .” he said, puzzled.

  I shrugged it off. If they had, they wouldn’t have learned much. Especially if they had monitored his calls to Vyra. “How many in the crew?” I asked him.

  “There was like maybe six of them there. Not counting Lothar. He wasn’t there when they talked to me. What they did, they asked me a bunch of questions. Just like you said.”

  “Any problems?”

  “Nah. They mostly asked me about . . . the guy. How’d I do it and all. How’d we find out he was a Jew. Everything else, I just told them what was . . . what was true, I mean. About it. They told me about it, so I said I’d do it. Do him, I mean. Like you said.”

  “Did one guy ask you all the questions? Was there a leader?”

  “I don’t . . . think so. I mean, they was all talking. Most of the stuff they asked me, I didn’t know the answers.”

  A warning bell went off in my head. “Like what?”

  “Like what they was up to, the guys that was supposed to be with me . . . the guys I was supposed to be with. In my cell, like? Understand?”

  “Yeah. What else did they want to know?”

  “Like, what Lothar said about them. Stuff like that. I told them the truth . . . nothing.”

  “Herk, they never searched you?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said brightly. “They did that. Just like in the joint. Finger-wave and everything. Before they started talking. One of them, he asked me where I got the tattoo.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “I told him an old Jewish guy gave it to me.”

  “Jesus.”

  “They thought that was real funny. They was all laughing at the guy who asked me.”

  I took a long, shallow breath, looking deep into Herk’s eyes. They came back innocent, like the big damn kid he was. “Herk, did they say anything about what they were planning?”

  “Nah. You know what? I don’t think they gonna tell me either. It’s like, I got to stay there, close anyway, ’cause they don’t know ’xactly what they gonna do with me. But they didn’t say nothing . . . uh, specific-like. Just . . . something’s gonna happen. I mean, everybody knows that. Knew that, I mean. In my crew. The one I was with that told me to—”

  “Yeah, okay, I got it.” I took a deep breath, making sure I had the big man’s full attention. “Listen close now, Herk. What’s Lothar’s weight? Can you tell?”

  “He ain’t no boss, Burke, I can tell you that. I don’t mean he’s like a flunkey or nothing, but he ain’t the big cheese, that’s for sure.”

  “Herk, think for a minute. Close your eyes. Try and put yourself back there. Just . . . listen, okay? We’re not looking for the boss, we’re looking for the brains, understand?”

  “Bro, when it comes to the brains in a crew, all I know, it ain’t never gonna be me.”

  “They all asked you questions, right?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Were any of them like . . . hostile? You know, on your case hard?”

  “Nah. Well, maybe this one guy . . . Kenny. But you could see he’s weak. You know how their voice gets a little . . . I dunno, jittery? No matter how hard they talking?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s Kenny. It ain’t him, that’s for sure.”

  “And it’s not Lothar?”

  “No way, man.”

  “Herk, listen real close now,” I said urgently, lighting a cigarette. “I—”

  “Can I have one too?” Vyra asked me.

  Herk shot her a disapproving look.

  “What did I do?” she asked, innocently, looking out from under her false eyelashes, her hands clasped in her lap . . . but squeezing her elbows to emphasize the cleavage.

  “That stuff’ll kill you,” he said. “That’s why you don’t put weight on, all them cigarettes.”

  “You too? You think I should—?”

  “I think you should shut the fuck up,” I told her, turning back to Hercules, but handing Vyra a cigarette. “Now, listen,” I said again. “You know the difference between feelings and facts?”

  “I . . . guess.”

  I took a deep nose breath, drawing the oxygen all the way down to my groin, centering. If I couldn’t translate it down for Herk, I was lost. “Listen to these questions, okay?” I said, holding his eyes. “One: when did you go to the joint the last time? Two: was it worse than the time before? Three: what was the charges? Four: was your lawyer any good? All right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now answer them. One at a time. Concentrate.”

  “Okay,” the big man said, brow furrowed. “I last went down in ’91. For A and R. That’s assault and robbery,” he said in an aside to Vyra, who was still holding the cigarette I gave her, unlit. “It was worse the last time. ’Cause none a you guys was in there with me. But it wasn’t that bad. I mean . . . you know how it is. I got crewed up quick. And . . . and . . . oh yeah! My lawyer fucking sucked. Miserable-ass weasel they give me in the court. He had me pled out before I could draw a breath.”

  “Good. Now: which of those was facts, and which was feelings?”

  “They all facts, bro. The stone truth.”

  I had a piercing headache.

  Vyra got off the bed and stood next to Herk, one hand on his shoulder, the other holding the still-unlit cigarette. She bent her face close to his. “Is true love a fact?” she asked him.

  “Huh?”

  “If you love someone, a true love, that’s a fact, yes?”

  “Sure.”

  “But it’s also a feeling, right, Hercules? Love is what you feel, isn’t it?”

  The big man sat there pondering, Vyra’s perfectly manicured hand sitting on his hyper-muscled shoulder like a butterfly on a boulder.

  I didn’t say a word.

  “Yeah,” he finally said. “It is. Sure.”

  “Did any of them ask you what it was like in prison?” I asked him quickly, trying to catch the ripple from the rock Vyra had dropped into the pool.

  “Oh yeah, bro. Like, they was all interested in that. I figured it was ’cause none of them been—”

  “What about the other questions? When you went down, what you went down for?”

  “Nah, they was . . . Wait a minute. Yeah! One guy. Scott, that was him. He was the only one asking me about that fact stuff. Yeah! When I went in. Even what joints I was in. And—”

  “—and your date of birth?” I cut in, smelling blood. That’s the key to a criminal-records search, the foundation stone that unlocks all the data.

  “Sure did, bro! I ask him, what’s he want to do, send me a fucking birthday present? Couple of the guys laughed, but Scott, he still wanted to know.”

  “You told him, right?”

  “Sure. Why not?”
/>
  “He’s the man, Herk.”

  Vyra gave him a big wet kiss on the cheek. “You figured it out, honey!” she said.

  Herk grinned broadly, Vyra’s lipstick mark clear on his face. I made a grunting noise and his eyes swung back to me. “Whatever you do,” I told him, “don’t ask any questions. Keep your nose out of things, understand? They wanna tell you something, you listen. They don’t, that’s it.”

  “I got it, bro.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Burke?”

  “What?”

  “It’s gonna be all right, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah it is.”

  “You just tell me what to do and I’ll—”

  “I know. You got your own place yet?”

  “I’m staying with Lothar. Right in the porno store. Only upstairs. He got a whole apartment up there. You can’t even tell from the street. Pretty slick, huh?”

  “Yeah. Lothar try and make conversation with you?”

  “Just bullshit. Not about business. Well, not about . . . I mean, he got business of his own. Burke, did you know there was Nazi porno?”

  “Nazi porno?”

  “Yeah, like Nazis raping a girl. And torture stuff. Wearing those uniforms with what I . . .” He touched his chest. Where the tattoo was.

  “Lothar’s into that?”

  “Big-time,” Hercules said. “I think . . . maybe . . . ah, never mind—I’m too fucking dim to be playing Sherlock Holmes and all.”

  “What?” I asked him, leaning forward, putting my damaged hand on his thick forearm. “Come on.”

  “It’s just a . . . feeling, like,” he said, glancing over at Vyra. “But I think Lothar was doing that stuff first. I mean, the porno. And those other guys . . . one of them, anyway . . . comes in the shop, or he hears about what Lothar’s got, I dunno. I mean, one of the guys from his first cell, not the one he’s in now. The one I was supposed to be . . . Anyway I think he wasn’t like . . . with them first. He’s not a guy with guns or bombs or nothing. He used to write stuff. . . .”

  “What stuff?”

  “I dunno. About the Jews and niggers and all.”

  “You get the impression he’s being cagey? Like maybe they got a bug in his apartment?”

  “Man, I never know when someone’s being cagey. That’s what the Prof always says. Me, I’m thick. I mean, I never knew him before, so how’m I gonna know if he changed, right?”

  “Right.”

  “When this is over, I’m going away,” he said quietly.

  “It’s a long way from over,” I warned him.

  “And it’s a long way I’m going, bro,” Hercules said. “Either way, I’m gone. Live or die, I’m done with this.”

  I left Herk there. Told him to hang around a minimum of a couple of hours. Watch TV or something. Vyra still hadn’t lit the cigarette.

  I took the stairway to my room. Ducked inside. The message light wasn’t blinking on the phone.

  Good.

  I called Mama. Nothing.

  Even better.

  I know what happens when there’s too many loose threads—somebody weaves them into a noose. Panic was my enemy, but I knew how to deal with it: Aikido. In my head. My spirit against the enemy.

  I stripped down to my underwear and closed my eyes, watching the loose threads dance on a tiny 3-D screen.

  A movie. Only I wasn’t just a spectator. Or even an actor. I was the director.

  Working on the final cut.

  No point trying to call Davidson. He doesn’t trust phones and he’d go so elliptical that it’d take him an hour to say hello. I went over to his office, told his receptionist that I had an appointment. She couldn’t find it on her calendar, so I told her to ask him, gambling that he wouldn’t be in with a client first thing in the morning.

  “You in trouble?” he asked without preamble as I closed his office door behind me.

  “Not me. Maybe not anybody, if you can do something for me.”

  “Something in court?”

  “If it goes right, it never goes to court. Some . . . negotiations.”

  “With . . . ?”

  “I don’t know the name of the AUSA. I’m not coming in at that end.”

  “And I’m not following you.”

  “Here it is,” I told him. “I got a friend. A good friend. He’s about to do something for the federales. Something big. The promise is immunity. For everything.”

  “Everything he’s going to do? Everything he’s already done? What?”

  “Everything everything. He’s not a rat. This is kind of an . . . undercover thing. All I’ve collected so far is a pack of promises.”

  “From the government?”

  “From a guy who says he can get that done. A free-lancer.”

  “Oh,” Davidson said quietly, a cubic ton of suspicion compressed into that one syllable.

  “Yeah, I know. That’s where you come in. My friend needs a lawyer. Somebody to drive the nails home. What I want, I want this guy, this free-lancer, to put up now. I want him to take you to someone—whoever—who can grant the immunity. And I want it. In writing. A cooperation agreement. Rock-solid, no loopholes. And the deal has to include a new ID.”

  “And a relocate?”

  “Yeah, we can say that. But my friend, he’s gonna walk away, sooner or later. The deal isn’t for protection, it’s for a new everything—name, face, Social Security, work history. And no testimony.”

  “No testimony? He’s going to access them to the kind of evidence that stands on its own?”

  “That’s the deal,” I said. “You can do it?”

  “I can do it if this free-lancer you’re talking about can deliver. If he really has that kind of influence. I understand what you want, but I don’t know what I’ve got to bargain with to get it.”

  “How about if I tell you?” I asked, lighting a cigarette.

  I left ten grand with Davidson, with the other half to come when the deal was done. He hadn’t said anything about cutting his price once I told him what was going on, but his whole posture shifted behind the big desk. Davidson was a stand-up guy with the best credentials you can have in our business—a track record. And he was a hell of a lawyer. Most of the time, I hold back some of the truth when I talk to him. But he’d lost relatives to the death camps, and I knew what the truth would do this time. I wouldn’t want to be the government lawyer who tried to get in his way.

  Back at my place, I tried to think it through.

  Mousetrap. Box. Closed-end tunnel. It all came up the same on my screen.

  Pryce had me cornered. He had too many pieces on the board.

  My mind ached with the strain from trying to slip out of the maze. My face hurt—sharp, spiking pain in the nerve cluster below the cheekbone. I couldn’t figure out what was going on until I realized how tightly my teeth had been clenched. When I finally fell asleep, fever-dreams snapped me wide awake.

  I knew what to do then. Stared at the red dot on my mirror until I fell into it. Stayed down there, safe and dissociated.

  When I resurfaced I was calmer.

  But still trapped.

  “Are you afraid?” Crystal Beth asked later, lying next to me in the dark.

  And that’s when I knew what was wrong. Why I couldn’t think my way out.

  I wasn’t afraid.

  The first thing I remember about being a baby is terror so total that fear became my one true friend. Always with me, never leaving my side. Warning me, keeping me vigilant. Distrustful. A layer of protection between the terror and me—the little tiny bit that was me then.

  Fear never abandoned me. I took it with me everywhere I went. Everywhere they sent me. The State—my true parent—sending me to surrogates who continued its vicious work. The orphanage. Foster homes. Reform school. Prison looming as inevitable in my future as college was in the lives of the privileged.

  Fear came there with me too. A friend I internalized so deep the wolf packs that ran wild through the joint co
uldn’t smell it. That’s because it wasn’t on me, it was in me. I cherished it, nurtured it, encoded it into my own DNA. My face flattened, my hands stopped shaking. My heart went slow and cold.

  I came into prison with a life-taker’s rep. They test reps in there. I kept mine. It cost a lot, but it wasn’t me who paid.

  I got to where I never broke a sweat. My voice stayed within a tight, narrow range. I could stare down a cobra. But the fear-bolts always roamed loose in my body, firing off bursts whenever danger was around.

  In prison, I lived in danger, adrenaline crackling through my synapses like turbo-boosted cocaine. It kept me alive.

  My one goal, then.

  Out in the World, I kept the fear. But I played it different. I learned to show the fear when it would do me some good. Trained myself to act, role-playing along the tightrope of survival.

  Fear never left me. Until now.

  I felt abandoned all over again. Deserted. Without my old friend, I couldn’t plot, couldn’t plan.

  So why wasn’t I afraid? I was boxed, all right. Couldn’t see a way out. So why . . . ?

  “Burke! Burke, wake up. Are you all right?”

  Crystal Beth, shaking my shoulders, gentle but serious. I opened my eyes.

  “Are you all right?” she asked again.

  “I’m fine,” I told her. “I must have drifted off, that’s all.”

  “Drifted off? You were . . . not here. I mean, you weren’t actually sleeping, I could tell. Just . . . zoned out or something.”

  “What’s the big deal?” I asked her, wondering why she didn’t recognize the same thing she did herself.

  “It’s been hours you’ve been like that,” she said, answering the question she didn’t know I’d asked. “I didn’t want to . . . disturb you. I didn’t know. But then you finally fell asleep. And I got scared.”

  “I’m fine,” I told her again. “It happens to me sometimes. When I have to think.”

  “My mother said the shamans . . . Oh, I don’t mean you. . . . I mean, you were . . . in a trance, like. Awake, but not here. One minute we were talking, the next you were gone.”

  “Can I have a glass of water?” I asked her, more to shut her down than because I was thirsty.

  “Sure, baby.”

  She came back with a cone-shaped paper cup. The water was cold and clean. “Thanks,” I said.