Sacrifice b-6

by Andrew Vachss

  "Huh?"

  "Shut up and do it. I'll talk to you two when we get back to the office."

  "We just thought we'd…" Floyd.

  He caught a warning look from Lola, cut it short.

  Rocco took the bag in his hands. An ugly low snarl came from Bruiser.

  "No!" Wolfe barked back at him.

  "I'll call you," I said to Wolfe.

  She stepped close to me. The breeze ruffled her hair. Orchid perfume. "Give me a number. I'll call you."

  I gave her Mama's number. She didn't write it down.

  "I'm not there much. Leave a message.

  "I know," she said.

  They were all still standing in the parking lot as I pulled out.

  45

  I made my rounds the next few days. Patternless, like always, in case anybody was interested. Somebody left a message for me at the poolroom. Wanted to buy guns. A lot of guns, full-auto only. Probably the ATF, checking to see if I was still in business.

  Dropped by the clinic in Brooklyn where they buy blood. I buy in small lots, but I outbid the Red Cross every time. The blood goes into small clear plastic packets. The way it works is this: The team hits a bank. One guy vaults the counter to grab the money while the others hold everyone down at gunpoint. The counter-vaulter cuts his hand going over, curses real loud, like it hurt. When the cops come, they send the lab for the spot where the blood spilled. DNA fingerprinting. They ever catch the robbers, the blood sample won't match. That's why rapists are the only humans you can count on to wear condoms in this town.

  I collect matchbooks too. From restaurants I've never visited. They make good souvenirs to leave behind at a crime scene.

  I never supply ideas, just equipment. Not a middleman, never in the middle.

  There's also good money in body parts. Any part. I once saw an ad for a kidney. One hundred grand cash, jump right over that long waiting list. Sometimes, people are poor enough and cold enough to pop out a kid's eye, make him a more pitiful sight. A better beggar. Predatory anthropologists figured it out— offered the same service but with full hospitalization for the kid. Even threw in a few bucks. And they sell the eyes over here. Everybody wins. Fetal tissue is the perfect transplant material— it'll bond to anything and the body won't reject it. I wonder if the "pro-life" mob knows an abortion could save more lives than the mother's.

  46

  Some women have beautiful eyes. Their girlfriends tell them it's their best feature. So they wear a ton of eyeliner, mascara…like that.

  Bonita bent over a lot.

  She works in a joint that serves food and wine, little stage in the back, performances every night. Stand-up comics, singers, short dramatic pieces.

  Bonita's an actress. Between jobs just now.

  I found a table against the side wall. Smoking section. I wonder if they have them in prison now.

  "Hello, stranger."

  "Hi, Bonita." She was all in black: a tube skirt over a body stocking, spike heels.

  "I called you a couple of times. Didn't that Chinese woman give you the message?"

  "Here I am."

  "Why didn't you call?"

  "I did. Got your answering machine."

  "So why didn't you leave a message?"

  "What's the point? You already have my number."

  "But then I'd know you called, honey."

  The girl couldn't act but she could read an audience. Just as I was asking myself why I came, she switched away to get me some ice water, shaking it hard enough to blow out the candles on the tables.

  "I'm on my break soon," she said when she came back. "We can watch the show together."

  "What show?" I asked her, barely controlling my enthusiasm.

  "Oh, it's so good. It's like a play, or something. Just wait. That's why it's so full tonight."

  I crunched a flaky croissant between my teeth, sipped the ice water. She left the little glass bottle on the table. I wondered if trendoid B-girls drank tap water when they hustled salad-bar customers for drinks.

  Bonita came back. Sat down just as the lights dimmed. I could see a couple of men setting up the stage. The lights came up. Tall, big-shouldered man was facing the audience, a Doberman lying at his feet. Looked like one of those Pacific Northwest lumberjacks, long brown hair, ropy muscle all along his forearms. He had a power drill in his hands.

  "I know how things work," he told the audience, mouth a thin line. "When they get broke, I fix them."

  The big man had a straight-ahead stare. Empty and flat, not challenging, not backing off either. Talking like it was coming from inside his head.

  He lived in the basement, he told the audience. Janitor. Lived in a lot of places, some of them not so nice. And he did some things in those places, not nice things. Now he just wants to live in his basement, fix whatever's broke. The crowd was quiet, listening to his story.

  The dog didn't bark, he told us. Some freak had carved him up when he was a puppy, cut into his throat. "But he still works," the man said. His voice had life in it, but subdued, an undertone of Wesley's dead-robot sound.

  There was a kid who lived in his building. Slow in the head, but a sweet boy. He was scared of monsters coming for him in the night, so the man made him a machine. Just a bunch of flashing lights on a box with a toggle switch. The kid liked the machine. Slept good for the first time.

  The kid went to a special school. His teacher, Dr. English, told the mother that the machine was a placebo. A fake, but one the kid believed in.

  One night, the kid started screaming and he didn't stop. An ambulance took him away. The man visited him in the hospital. The kid told him the machine wasn't any good anymore.

  The man said he was sorry— he'd build him a better one.

  The man said he knew how things worked. Did some checking. Seems this Dr. English used to work at another school up North. The school had been closed behind some sex abuse scandal. Some teachers indicted, Dr. English resigned. The man called the kid's school. Dr. English was out. Broke his arm in a ski accident. Funny, the lady on the phone said, Dr. English only came to their school from his old job because he hated the cold weather.

  The boy lived on the second floor. There was a fire escape leading to the ground.

  We watched, listened as the man put it all together. Watched as he painstakingly drilled holes through the center of two hard rubber balls, strung a loop of piano wire between them. Tested it by snapping it in his hands.

  The man was getting dressed. Dark jacket, pair of gloves, a black watch cap on his head. When he pulled it down, it turned into a ski mask. "Tonight, when it gets dark, I'm going to show this Dr. English a machine that works."

  The stage went dark. Somebody gasped in the audience. Then the applause started. Built to a peak. Stayed there.

  The man came back out. The announcer took the mike, called his name. David Joe Wirth, A pretty girl at a front table stood up, waved a fist at him, her dark ponytail bouncing. He smiled. They left the front together.

  I watched the crowd. Wondered how many of them shared the Secret.

  47

  Later, in Bonita's studio apartment on the fringe of the Village.

  "My roommate will be back soon," she whispered, sliding the tube skirt down over her hips.

  Later, at her kitchen table. "Did you get it?" she asked me.

  "Get what?"

  "The play. The one we saw tonight. I didn't, the first time he did it. See, the teacher at the school, he was molesting that little boy. And the boy's mother, she trusted him. That's why the machine didn't work…the one the janitor made for him…the monsters weren't all in his head like they thought."

  "Yeah, I got it."

  "Isn't it disgusting…what some people do?"

  "Yeah."

  "I wonder where she is, Tawny. I thought she'd be home by now."

  "It's okay, I gotta take off myself."

  "She's going away next weekend. You could spend the night…"

  "If I don't have to work,
I'll call you."

  "You better," sitting in my lap now, squirming.

  "Bonita, I feel pretty stupid about this, but…"

  "What?"

  "Well, I wanted to buy you a present…just to show you how much I care and all. A charm for your bracelet…I saw one I really liked…a little gold heart…"

  "Un-huh…"

  "Yeah, but by the time I got to the store, tonight, it was closed. So, I was wondering…I don't mean to be crude or anything…you know the crazy hours I work…Could I give you the money, let you pick it up for yourself?…I mean…"

  "Oh, you're so sweet, honey. I don't mind at all."

  I handed her five fifty-dollar bills, folded in half. She put them on the table without looking.

  "You have to go right now?" she purred, squirming some more. Maybe she wasn't such a lousy actress.

  48

  I cut myself shaving the next morning. Took a plump leaf from the aloe plant on the windowsill, punctured it with my thumbnail, smeared it on, watching Pansy sneer at my clumsiness. Thinking of Blossom and her goddamned health advice.

  Ate slowly. A rosette of michetta roll, hard crust, hollow inside. Only place you can get them in New York is this Milanese bakery in Brooklyn, on the Bushwick border. Real Italians. I'd been going there for years— never heard them say Mamma Mia once. I smeared cream cheese on each piece as I snapped it off. Drank my ice water, swallowed the beta carotene and vitamin C.

  Blossom again.

  If I ever went over her back fence one night, I wouldn't need cash. Or lies.

  I snapped out of it, looked over to the couch. "Want to go for a ride, girl?"

  Pansy's tail thumped happily.

  Saturday morning, bright and clear. We took the Willis Avenue Bridge to the Hutch, headed north. All the way to the wilds of Dutchess County, almost a two-hour drive.

  Teenage girl hitching by the side of the road. I thought of a maggot who picked up a girl like that in California. Raped her, chopped her hands off so there wouldn't be fingerprints, and dumped her in a culvert. The little girl lived, somehow. The maggot's already been paroled— it's not like he robbed a bank or anything. I read he got arrested again in Florida. For shoplifting. The paper said he stole a hat, but he'd paid for another item he had in a bag. A box of diapers.

  I knew I was close when I saw the clapboard shacks standing just off the dirt road. A trio of chopped-down Hogs sat outside one shack, ape-hanger handlebars sprouting like stalks from the chromed engines. One of those prefab metal sheds sat behind the shack. They'd be cranking up the heat inside, making meth, choking on the ether fumes. The bikers figured out the dope business a long time ago— the real problem is getting the stuff across the border, so they cook their own right here.

  The last house made the others look like Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. Set well back from the road on a winding, narrow approach, it sagged from depression. Tar paper covered most of the windows, missing shingles pockmarked the roof, the whole sorry mess rotting from termites who had long since fled to better pickings. If it burned to the ground, the coroner would call it suicide.

  I pulled the Plymouth into the side yard, gunning the engine, sliding on the dirt, letting him know I was there. Turned off the ignition and waited— I wasn't going to jump out too fast.

  He came around the side of the house, a tall, rawboned, slope-shouldered man with a doofus mustache. Hair cropped short, wearing tiny round sunglasses. A rifle in one hand, a dog on a chain in the other— a white pit bull with a ring of black fur around one eye and one black ear. The animal didn't look a bit like Spuds McKenzie.

  Elroy. He lived back in the woods. Off the land, he said. He'd jack deer by spotlight at night when they came to the salt lick he'd set up. Blow ducks off the water with his shotgun. Anything that had fur, feathers, or scales. He wasn't a hunter, he was an armed consumer.

  Even the bikers cut him considerable slack— people said he ate road-kill sandwiches.

  I hit the window switch, let him have a good long look.

  "Burke!" he boomed out.

  "Yeah, it's me. Put the gun down, okay?"

  "Sure."

  "And tie that animal up."

  "Barko wouldn't hurt anyone," he said, sounding insulted.

  "I got Pansy in the car," I told him, by way of explanation. I climbed out. The pit bull watched me with only mild interest, but his ears were cocked. He had Pansy's scent, growled a challenge.

  We walked around behind the house. Elroy had his own prefab shed too. Maybe they came with the original houses.

  "You have the paper?" I asked him.

  "What's your hurry?"

  "That paper isn't going to move itself, Elroy."

  "Come on," he said.

  We walked past the shed toward the woods. Two more pit bulls were anchored to metal stakes set in cement. One had an old tire in his alligator jaws, waving it around in triumph as the other watched.

  "Aren't they beauties?" Elroy asked.

  "They are, for sure. You training them?"

  "Yeah! Want to see?"

  "Okay."

  "Barko's really my best one. Just wait here, I'll get him."

  He came back leading the dog. The other two yapped in anticipation, pawing the ground. A low-slung four-wheeled cart stood on a level patch of ground, piled high with solid-concrete blocks. Elroy took an elaborate leather harness from a hook on a nearby tree. It was lined with some spongelike material. As soon as he took up the harness, Barko began running in little circles, overcome with excitement.

  "Come on, boy! Time to work!"

  Barko trotted over on his stubby legs and Elroy fitted him up. He attached two short leads from the harness directly to a U-bolt on the front of the cart. Barko stood rigid at attention, waiting.

  "Okay, baby…pull!" Elroy yelled.

  The pit bull surged forward, straining against the harness, fighting for traction. When all four legs locked in, he began to inch forward, dragging the cart behind him, foaming a bit at the mouth, Elroy screaming, "Full Pull, Barko! Full Pull!" Soon the little tank was slogging forward, like a man wading through setting cement. Barko never faltered, chugging ahead until Elroy ran to intercept him, kicking a wooden wedge under the cart's wheels. He unsnapped the harness, held the dog high over his head in both hands.

  "The winner… Barrrko!" I swear the dog grinned.

  "That's what you're training the dogs for?"

  "Sure. You don't think I'm gonna let my dogs fight, do you? This is the latest thing. They get ninety seconds to pull the weight fifteen feet— that's a full pull. Barko's going in the middleweight class this fall."

  "Pit bull tractor pulls?"

  "Yeah, man! You know how much Barko just lugged across the finish line? One half ton, man. A thousand pounds. And that was on grass— the regulation pulls're on a piece of flat carpet. Better traction, smoother roll."

  "Unreal."

  "He's still working. The record's a little over one full ton, man. Twenty-one hundred pounds."

  "What pulled that, a Clydesdale?"

  "A pit bull, Burke. A forty-eight-pound bitch, in fact. That's the middleweight class, not the open. Some of those damn Rottweilers, they could pull a house."

  "Jesus."

  "Yeah, they're amazing, huh?"

  Elroy dropped Barko to the ground. I saluted him. He trotted back to the front.

  "Pansy's in the car," I reminded him.

  "Barko's no dog fighter."

  "He's a pit bull."

  "It's all in how you raise them, man."

  Some of Elroy's receptor sites were burned out, but he knew the truth.

  "Let's look at the paper," I said.

  49

  It was spread out on a long clean table in the shed. Bearer bonds, beautifully engraved. Face value, ten grand each. Elroy had been a counterfeiter, but his last stretch in the pen had cured him of playing with funny money. Now he just worked in small lots: bonds, deeds, certificates. Takes some real skill, and you need specialists to m
ove it, but the risk is lower.

  "How many you got?" I asked him, turning the paper over in my hands, admiring the craftsmanship.

  "Three point five million, you add it up."

  "You know how the quick flip works, Elroy…you're looking at maybe a hundred grand your end, tops."