Safe House

by Andrew Vachss

  We sat in silence as I left his mind and tried to go into theirs. Be a race-hating beast. It only came up one way.

  Herk was going to die.

  After all this, Herk was going to die.

  “The leader, the one with the detonator, he’s going to blow them all up,” I said. “That’s the way you see it too, right?”

  “What else could it be?” Pryce asked me. He reached in the side pocket of his jacket, pulled out a street map of lower Manhattan. With a yellow highlighter, he drew a box around Federal Plaza. “Let’s say they park the rigs here. And here. And here. All right? Maybe half a dozen drops in all. One man to each vehicle. Each one of them has park-and-run orders. The detonator man is waiting, probably in a van of some kind—maybe the same one they use for transport from that bar—not far away. They each park their individual vehicles, get out and just walk away. When they’re all assembled back at the van, it takes off. Then the detonator man hits the switch.”

  “Only he’s not gonna wait,” I said.

  “No. Waiting increases the risk. On all counts. And if any of them is captured, he could bring down the whole deal. Leaderless cells only work but so far. Whoever was captured, he’d know something. And the plan is to create anarchy—taking credit for the bombing would work against that. One Nazi in custody blows that whole deal.”

  “Then it’s time to take them down?”

  “How can we do that? Hercules doesn’t know the address where they’re holed up. Just that bar you told me about. I doubt we could stake it out—it sounds like the whole place belongs to them. Probably some of the surrounding property too. And if they’re really close, I don’t think he’s coming out again anyway.”

  “But if we don’t—”

  “We couldn’t risk planting a transmitter on Hercules,” he said, intercepting my thoughts. “If they found it, they’d just cut and run.”

  After they killed Hercules, I thought.

  “But if we could find the place without using a transmitter—”

  “Without the explosives, we don’t have a case anyway,” he cut in. “Lothar’s gone,” he reminded me. “So we don’t have any conspiracy testimony either. Hercules wouldn’t be much good to us even if he decided to go on the stand—yes, I know,” he said, holding up his hand in a don’t-interrupt gesture—“the agreement says he doesn’t have to. But even if he did, we have to be able to take them with the goods. And alive, if we can.”

  I wondered if he was really that stupid. Or thought I was.

  “Oh,” Vyra said when she answered the door to the suite, disappointment clear in her face.

  “Has he called?” I asked, no preliminaries.

  “No. Have you—?”

  “Nothing. Listen, Vyra. If you give a damn about Herk, listen as good as you ever did. I need to talk to him. It’s worth his life, understand? If he calls, if he shows up, you got to let me know right then. No playing around, no grabbing a few minutes for fun . . . right then. That fucking second, you understand me?”

  “Is he—?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t know anything. He may not be able to come out again. We’re getting close. This is Thursday. It could be as close as this weekend. But if he does get a call to you . . .” The next thought hit me so hard I had to sit down, think it through. Then I said: “Vyra, did you give him anything when you saw him?”

  “Give him anything?” she demanded, an undertone of hysteria slipping in. “I gave him my—”

  “Listen to me, you stupid bitch,” I said quietly, grabbing her by the hands and pulling her down next to me. “This isn’t about pussy. It’s about a man’s life. My brother’s life. Now, answer my question. Did you give him anything? A watch? A ring? A shirt? Anything.”

  “Why do you—Oh, don’t!” she squealed, holding her hands in front of her face. “He wouldn’t take any . . . I . . . oh my God, I did give him something. A scarf. My pink chiffon scarf. He wanted it. He said it smelled like me. He took it with him when we last . . .”

  “Yes!”

  “Burke, what’s wrong with you. Why does it—?”

  “Vyra, baby, I’m sorry if I scared you. I wasn’t trying to. Just to make you see how important this is, all right? Now listen to me. Are you listening?”

  “Yes. I swear.”

  “If Herk calls, if he’s on his way to see you here, you call me immediately, got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “But if he calls and says he can’t get away for a while, or anything like that . . . if he’s not coming for a while, you tell him this, okay? Tell him: Wear your scarf. Tell him you miss him, and he should wear your scarf. For you. So you can be with him. You understand?”

  “I . . . do.”

  “Vyra, forget everything, okay. Everything. There’s no yesterday now. You have to get this right. I’m counting on you.” Then I bent and kissed her on the cheek.

  “I promise,” she said.

  How many Nazi bars could there be within thirty minutes of the other side of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge? Astoria, maybe? It was a mixed neighborhood with a lot of small local joints. Long Island City had everything from warehouses to topless bars and artists’ lofts. Maybe they were even over near the waterfront, past the Citibank Tower. But . . . if I asked around, if word got back to them . . . that could do it for Herk too.

  So all I had was Vyra’s promise. Vyra, the liar I’d always known her to be.

  Herk had to get out, or get to a phone one more time.

  And he had to be right about Vyra.

  Crystal Beth put her head down and took another experimental lick. I was dead.

  “Did I do something?” she asked, tilting her head to look up my body toward my face as I lay on my back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Seeing the cellular phone in my mind, willing the goddamned thing to ring.

  “No,” I told her, wondering for the hundredth time if the batteries were still good, if I shouldn’t have gotten a backup clone to the same number from the Mole, if I shouldn’t have told Herk the last time to . . .

  “Did I not do something?” Crystal Beth wanted to know, still not moving.

  “It’s not you,” I said. “It’s me.”

  “You’re worried about—?”

  “Yeah,” I cut her off, thinking what an inadequate word “worried” was for what I was feeling.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not, honey?”

  “Because it’s not yours, Crystal Beth. Not anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked in a challenging voice, propping herself up on one elbow. “I’ve been in this since—”

  “Whatever happens now, it’s not going to be you. Or any of your stuff. Pryce isn’t going to rat you out. You or Vyra or your network. Nothing.”

  “But you got yourself into this for—”

  “For my brother. For my family. Not for you.”

  “But you love—”

  “Them.”

  “And you love me too,” she said aggressively, her hands on my shoulders, hauling herself up so her nose was right on my forehead. “Me too. Don’t you?”

  “Crystal Beth . . .”

  “It’s not what you say, it’s what you do, remember?” she whispered against me. “Why can’t you be honest with me?”

  “Like you are with me?” I asked, pushing her away so I could sit up. And watch the cellular, sitting there across the room plugged into the portable charging unit, smirking its silence at me.

  “What. Do. You. Mean?” she asked, each word a bullet in a cocked revolver.

  “You’re so honest,” I said sarcastically. “Such a good hippie, you are. All peace and love and truth, right?”

  “I would have told you about Vyra if she hadn’t—”

  “And about Rollo’s?” I said quietly.

  She got off the bed and walked to the black window, her body glowing in the faint light. She bowed her head, clasped her hands in front of her. L
ike a child being punished, made to stand in the corner.

  I watched her thick, rounded body. That gravity-defying butt. Belle jammed across my mind. Not as a word, or even an image. Just a . . . flitting . . . gone. I felt the flashback coming and put it down. Away from me now. But not gone, I knew. Never gone. That big girl. Going out to die . . .

  I . . . stopped. Focused on Crystal Beth’s pigtails standing out stark against her shoulderblades. But it was like watching a hologram—the image shifted, and now it was Herk’s face against her back, framed by the pigtails, trusting.

  Crystal Beth turned, breaking the spell, and came back to the bed.

  “Do you want me on my knees?” she asked.

  “I told you, it’s not you. I can’t—”

  “Not for that,” she interrupted, her voice hushed and delicate. “To apologize. I wronged you. I had good reasons, once. But they . . . I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I want to tell you. Do you want to listen?”

  “Yeah.”

  She went to her knees, looking up at me sitting on the bed. “I didn’t tell you about Rollo’s because it wouldn’t be right to endanger the others. I had people to protect. We’re all part of the same . . . I don’t know how to explain it to you. The network, that’s one thing. There’s a lot of us in it. But there’s something smaller. Closer. Family. Like yours. Mimi and T.B. And Rusty.”

  “Rusty?”

  “The big guy, the one who’s always drawing.”

  “Oh yeah, him.”

  “There’s others too. Cash—you didn’t see him, he wasn’t in that night—he does the . . . marketing for us. Gets the word out so people know where to find us, make the connections. We even have a radio station . . . well, not really a station, but we’ve got people on the air—Bad Boy and Autopsy—they broadcast out of Salt Lake. There’s a code we use. On the Internet too. Mimi’s sister Synefra set it up. . . . Look, we’re . . . one. I wasn’t trying to trick you. Or . . . maybe I was, I don’t know. I’m not good at it. Vyra said you were . . . someone who could help us.”

  “Vyra’s in your family?”

  “No. The others don’t . . . I love Vyra. She’s really a sweet, wonderful girl. You don’t know her.”

  “That’s what Herk said too.”

  “He’s right. Sex doesn’t mean you know someone. But once you . . . did what you did—for us, I mean—I could have told you. I should have told you. I apologize for that. I don’t want secrets from you.”

  “What difference does it make now?”

  “Families can . . . merge,” she said softly. “Families can come together. No matter what you say, no matter what you said, anyway . . . you have a purpose. You have a purpose now.”

  “So?”

  “My mother and father were from different tribes. But they . . . merged. They were . . . partners. I want to be your partner.”

  “Come here,” I said, holding out my hand to her.

  When she came to me, I told her what it would cost to be my partner.

  When Pryce walked in the front door of Mama’s restaurant, he instinctively held his hands away from his body. Whatever he was, he had a pro’s nose—he knew he was one wrong move away from an unmarked grave.

  He walked the gauntlet, past Mama’s register, past Clarence and Michelle sitting in one of the front booths, past Max the Silent wearing a waiter’s apron, past the Prof, although he couldn’t have seen the little man unless he looked under one of the tables. If he had, he would have seen the double-barreled sawed-off that was the Prof’s trademark back in his cowboy days.

  They had his face now. Had his walk, his webbed fingers, the skull beneath his skin. Had him all, every piece of him. And soon they’d have his voice. They could pick him out of a crowd even with the best plastic surgeons in the world doing their work.

  And he knew it.

  But he kept on coming, right to my booth in the back.

  Mama kept her position at the register. I’d already had my soup. And she didn’t serve it to outsiders.

  He sat down. The muscle under his eye jumped. I knew by now it wasn’t an anxiety tic. Probably the last plastic-surgery job had gone a little wrong, damaged some of the nerves in the area. I wondered why they’d never fixed his hands.

  “I know how to do it now,” I told him, no preamble. “But now it’s time to find out who you are.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked, even-toned.

  “You ever wonder,” I asked him, “if it’s only terrorists who have enough balls to drive a truck loaded with explosive?”

  “I don’t get your meaning.”

  “I’ve got a plan. But it needs something I don’t have. Six heroes.”

  “Heroes?”

  “Six men—six people, I guess they don’t need to be men—willing to drive trucks loaded with death.”

  “You don’t mean—?”

  “It’s the only way it can work,” I said, watching my unsmoked cigarette burn in the glass ashtray. “Lothar ever tell you who was in charge?”

  “No. He said it was a collective. Everyone equal.”

  “I think it’s this guy Scott. But it doesn’t really matter. It’s got to be the way you figured it. Six of them drive the rigs, plant them around Federal Plaza. The last one, he’s in the van, waiting for the pickup. Only thing is, there isn’t going to be any pickup. Soon as he knows they’re in place, he’s going to hit the switch. There goes the building. And the evidence.”

  “So we have to interdict—”

  “No. Sure, they’re going to have to convoy it—in case one of the rigs breaks down or something. And they have to all be in place before they detonate too. But what makes you think everything’s parked right near where they’re holed up? Odds are they don’t want to be bringing trucks over the bridges at that hour. Trucks aren’t allowed on the Brooklyn Bridge anyway. They got to have at least some of them stashed in Manhattan. Or just the other side of the Battery Tunnel—there’s plenty of warehouses around there. And the van, it has to be close by, right on top of the action. I don’t know the range of the radio detonator they’ve got, but it can’t be that far, especially with all those tall buildings around. What we need to do is take them down as soon as they park and separate. And we have to do it quiet. If the guy in the van hears shots, he’s gonna hit the switch and book.”

  “But if the detonator man doesn’t hear anything, he’s going to wait a little bit and—”

  “And blow it up. I know. That’s where your heroes come in. Some people say you’re a bounty hunter. A free-lancer working for cash. Maybe that’s true. I don’t know. But you had enough juice to make the cops and the media play along with the Lothar thing. So I figure you’re something else.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as a . . . I don’t know a name for it. But every government needs people who can work outside the law. And I figure, that’s you.”

  He didn’t say anything. The muscle jumped in his face a couple of times, then went as quiet as he was.

  “There’s only one thing that’ll absorb that much explosive without killing everyone around,” I told him. “Water. You need to clear a path. Right to the river. The Hudson’s the closest. It’s only a few blocks. You need to take out the drivers. No gunshots. No noise. And you need six people to drive the rigs right to the river. Right into the river, it comes to that.”

  “Six people to drive trucks loaded with explosive? Knowing that any second they could just vaporize?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “And what about the man in the van?”

  “He’s the only one who we don’t know where he’ll be, right? He’ll be close, but that’s all we can count on. The way I figure it, he’ll probably wait until the first one of them comes back. That’s the only way he’ll know they’re all set up. Or maybe he’ll just have some time limit of his own.”

  “It would have to be volunteers. . . .”

  “Sure it would. You got that kind of people?”

  “Yes,�
�� he said, no inflection in his thin voice. Not saying anything about the hard part. Anyone who’s served in the military knows the U.S. government will let you die. They watch soldiers die all the time . . . for some general’s ego or some country’s oil. But there was only one way to stop all the Nazi drivers without making noise. And if that went wrong, it wouldn’t just be expendable soldiers who lost it all. Whoever gave those orders . . .

  “I need something else,” I told him.

  “More than . . . ?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  When I told him, he didn’t say anything.

  “It’s time to lay them all out,” I said. “Face up. You got a handkerchief on you?”

  He took a clean white one out of the side pocket of his suit jacket, not saying a word.

  “Stand up,” I said. “Put your right foot on the chair over there.”

  He did it. I took out the key to the ankle cuff and twisted it. The white patch was underneath, undisturbed. “Take the handkerchief,” I told him. “Peel that off. Carefully. Wrap it up tight. Don’t touch it.”

  He did that too. At a gesture from me, he sat down again.

  “When you get back to wherever you’re going, get that to a lab.”

  “What will they find?”

  “You know what a Nicoderm patch is?” I asked him.

  “Yes, a time-release dose of—”

  “That one is too. Only it’s not nicotine it was dispensing. You left that one on for thirty days, you’d be a dead man.”

  He didn’t say anything, but the pupils of his eyes deepened.

  “We’re all in now,” I said. “No more bargaining. No more threats. We’re a unit now. A hunter-killer team. I don’t know your game, but you know mine—I need Herk out of there. Alive.”

  “But we can’t—”

  I leaned forward and told him how he could.

  And wished I had a god to pray to that I was right.

  Fantasy haunts prison. At night, inside the cells, if you could see the pictures playing on the screens inside men’s heads, you’d see everything on this planet. Other planets too.