Sacrifice b-6

by Andrew Vachss

  57

  I found Storm in her office at the hospital. She saw me coming, said something into the telephone, hung up.

  "We have ten days," I told her. "And then?"

  "Then he comes in."

  "You think that's enough time?"

  "I don't know— it's not up to me. I did what you asked."

  "Not all of it." Lily, walking through the back door, her face sweaty, hair mussed, like she'd been exercising.

  I lit a smoke. Lily was so worked up she forgot to frown at me. "Keeping him hidden won't do any good, Burke. Nothing will change in ten days."

  "What do you want, Lily. Spell it out."

  "He could go someplace else. Far away. Disappear."

  "Until he does it again."

  "No! Until he gets better."

  "You know what that would take…?"

  "I don't care. I could take him. He couldn't do anything to me…he's too little."

  "He'd try, Lily. When he got the signal, he'd try."

  "We could use the time," Storm put in. Her parents must have picked her name because she was always so calm. "Luke will need a defense when he comes in, Lily. He needs to see a psychiatrist, maybe a couple of them."

  "He wouldn't go to jail," I added.

  We left it like that. Nothing settled.

  58

  I felt it as soon as I hit the street— an inversion in the atmosphere. Heavy air, ozone-clogged. Muggy, with a bone-chill core. Like in prison, just before the race wars came. You felt it in the corridors, on the tiers. In the blocks, on the yard. Skin color the flag, any target an opportunity. The Man would feel it too, but the joint wouldn't get locked down until they had a high enough body count.

  I walked in the opposite direction from where I'd left the Plymouth, heading for the subway. Maybe it was just the neighborhood. Something going down, nothing to do with me.

  Early afternoon, subway traffic was light. I scanned the car, pretending to read the posters. All the services of the city: AIDS counseling, abortions. Cures for acne, hemorrhoids, and hernias. Food stamps, Lotto, 970 numbers, party lines. Another promised you could Ruin a Pickpocket's Day if you followed its advice: avoid crowds.

  When I came up for air at Fifty-ninth Street, it felt the same. Not the neighborhood, then.

  I turned into a little gourmet supermarket, wandered the aisles, watching. A woman in a cashmere sweater-dress with a gold chain for a belt searched out a can of politically correct tuna. A guy in a dark blue suit over a striped shirt, port-wine tie with matching suspenders made the same two turns I did. I stepped to one side and he rolled past, his eyes linked to the gold chain.

  Back outside. Streets thick with stragglers from lunchtime, shoppers. Crowds have a rhythm. You move through them the way you match your breathing to the sleeper next to you. Find the pattern and merge. I entered the stream, blending.

  Lexington Avenue. I flowed with the clot, ignoring the traffic lights. A man on the sidewalk, younger than me, squatting on a piece of cardboard, a huge glass bottle like they use in water coolers next to him, some coins and a bill visible at the bottom. Sign propped up next to the bottle, something about Homeless. Humans passed him by. I did too. Took a couple of quick steps past. Whirled, like I'd changed my mind, reaching into my pocket for some change.

  A dark-skinned black man in a black suit backed into a doorway just as my eyes came up. A fat white man was coming out and they bumped. The black man saw me watching and took off, running in the opposite direction. I ran to the street, saw a cab parked at the curb. Jumped onto the trunk, falconing from the high ground. Saw the black suit disappear into the front seat of a black sedan. Lexington Avenue is one-way, they had to go right past me. I stayed where I was. Every car that passed me by stared at the man standing on the cab. Except the sedan, a Chevy Caprice, one of those two-ton jobs with the rear fenders extending halfway down the tires. When it rolled by my post, the driver was staring straight ahead. And the passenger seat was empty.

  59

  A cab pulled to the curb, its hood popped open just a crack, latched in place to cool the engine. I jumped in, told the driver to head downtown. The driver didn't speak much English— I had the same problem with the No Smoking sign. Rolling downtown along Broadway, I started sorting it out.

  Just before we hit Herald Square a bike messenger sliced in from one of the side streets as the cab in front of us was changing lanes. They T-boned and the messenger went down. Traffic stopped…for the red light. The bike was a twisted piece of metal tubing— the messenger had blood running down his calf, just below the bicycle pants. The cabdriver got out, started inspecting his hack for damage. The messenger unwrapped a heavy length of chain from the bike, started limping toward the cab. The driver jumped back inside, took off just as the chain smashed through his back window.

  People watched as the bashed-in cab jumped the light, squeaking across the intersection to the blare of horns. The messenger stood in the street, swinging his chain. I heard sirens behind us.

  The light turned green and we took off.

  I caught a subway at Eighteenth Street, picked up my car, checked it over. Nobody had been playing with it. I drove carefully to Mama's, watching for heavy Chevys.

  60

  Ten days. I cut it shorter with Lily, leaving myself a margin. There's always an edge— sometimes it's not sharp.

  I went through Mama's kitchen, took my booth in the back. She was at her register. I caught her eye, held my fist to my ear, telling her I had to make some calls.

  First to SAFE. They called Immaculata to the phone.

  "It's me. Is Max around?"

  "Yes."

  "Ask him to take a look around. Outside."

  "For what?"

  "Watchers."

  "I understand."

  Another quarter in the slot. Like Atlantic City, except nobody called me sir.

  Jacques came on the line.

  "You know my voice?"

  "Not so many white men call here, mahn."

  "You have people watching me?"

  "No, mahn. For sure. You have been a friend."

  "That past tense?"

  A cloud passed over the sun in his voice. "We were watching you, mahn, you would not know to ask."

  "Any chance of Clarence free-lancing?"

  "No chance. No chance at all. You have enemies, my friend?"

  "I don't know yet. Maybe I'm just spooked."

  "That is a racist slur, mahn?"

  "Lighten up…I mean, look, a crew's been following me, I think. I'll know for sure later— there's not that many places they could watch."

  "Our people?"

  "I didn't talk to them, just saw them."

  "We just look alike, mahn."

  "Who does your material, Jacques? Listen up: I got a crew on me, maybe it has something to do with you, understand?"

  "Let us know, mahn. Everybody knows, West Indians, we pay our debts."

  One more call. I couldn't make it from the restaurant. I told one of the cooks I'd be right back. He said something in Chinese.

  61

  Found a pay phone near the OTB on the Bowery. Dialed Albany, listened to the operator tell me the toll for the first three minutes, forked over the coins. Good thing the State gives commissioners private lines— I'd use up the money I had on deposit just getting past the secretary.

  He grabbed it on the first ring.

  "What's wrong now?" Resigned good humor, a faint bluegrass flavor to his speech.

  "Trouble on 7-Up, Doc. Microwave Marvin's not coming out of his house— the fool thinks he's got hostages in there with him."

  "Who is this?"

  "Your old typist, Doc. Please don't say my name on the phone."

  "Good to hear from you, hoss. You must be on the bricks, talking like this."

  "Yeah. For now, anyway. I need you to see someone, Doc. Give me an opinion."

  "I don't make house calls anymore."

  "This'd be outside. I need you to do your trick
with the girasol."

  "I've been hearing stuff about you, over the years. Never could be sure, jailhouse gossip and all that. What do you want me to look at?"

  "A baby killer."

  "Forget it. That's what I heard about you. You want information, go to the library."

  "Not a freak who kills babies, Doc. A baby killer, you understand?"

  "You mean…a killer baby?"

  "Yeah. That's exactly what I mean."

  "I'll be in the city in a couple of weeks. Some stupidass budget meeting. Give me a call at…"

  "There's no time, Doc. None at all."

  "Look…"

  "Sophie would want you to do this, Doc."

  "You calling in the marker?"

  "If that's the only way."

  "I'll be on the early train tomorrow, son."

  62

  I let myself back into Mama's joint. It was like I'd never left. It's always like that. I came home from jail one time— walked in, sat down in my booth. Mama came and sat down across from me, serving her soup. Maybe that's why she doesn't age— in her spot, she controls time.

  I called around. Left word for the Prof, dropping seeds on the ground. He'd turn up. Michelle used to do that kind of thing for me, fronting between our world and theirs. She'd be back. I knew my sister— missing, not lost.

  Then I called the Mole. To make a reservation.

  When Mama made no move to come over, I got up, went to the register. Luke was sitting next to her on a padded stool. You couldn't see him until you got close.

  "Hello, Burke," he said, his frail, strangler's fingers grasping an abacus.

  "Hello, Luke. Mama's teaching you how to work that thing?"

  "Yes. It's fun."

  "Very smart boy, Burke," Mama said. "Teach him how to use beads, never could teach you."

  "I was never good with math."

  "Math is money," Mama said. Like God is Love.

  "I've got to talk with you."

  "Okay. You want soup?"

  "Sure."

  She patted Luke's fair hair, voice softening. "You go in kitchen, baby. Tell cooks bring some soup to Mama."

  "I don't speak Chinese," the little boy said. Being serious, not a wiseass.

  "Speak like Max, okay?"

  A smile brightened his face. "Sure!"

  He trotted off. We took our seats.

  "Baby not right," Mama said, tapping her temple with one manicured nail.

  "Why do you say?"

  "This morning, Mac bring him by to stay with me. Very good boy, sit quiet, read a book, okay? But later, talk funny. Baby talk, babble-babble. His name Susie, he says. I say, that a girl's name. He say, I'm a little girl…pretty little girl. He sound like a little girl, Burke. Ask me to play with him. I just hold him. Then he says, why you holding me, Mama? Luke, boy's voice. I ask him, what about little girl? He look at me like I crazy. Just been sitting, reading his book, he say to me."

  "Yeah."

  "Not surprise?"

  "No."

  "Baby need a doctor."

  "I know, Mama. I found him one. Tomorrow, okay?"

  She bowed agreement.

  Luke marched in with a tureen of soup as the register phone rang. Mama got up to answer it.

  "Here's the soup, Burke."

  "Thank you." I helped myself. The kid sat across from me, self-possessed.

  "Luke, tomorrow I'm going to visit an old friend of mine. A couple of old friends, actually. You want to come along?"

  "I guess…"

  "We can do something you'd like to do first, okay? What would you like to do?"

  His little face concentrated. Then he rubbed his head, like it hurt. "I'd like to go to the zoo," he said. "I always wanted to go."

  63

  We found a bench in Grand Central, a half hour before the Albany train was due. Doc had been the prison shrink back when I was Upstate on my second bit. The better class of cons, hijackers, thieves, the professionals, we all liked him. You couldn't gorilla him out of medication and he wouldn't write you a phony rehab statement for the Parole Board like the wet-brain we had in one of the federal pens, but he was stand-up all the way. I remember once, a young white dude, he climbed onto the tier railing, started screaming he was going to take the dive, check out of the hotel for good. Some of the cons, they shouted at him, go ahead and jump, motherfucker, don't be talking about it, do it. Cheered him on. Some of us just watched. The guards too. Doc shoved his way through the crowd on the ground floor, talking softly, urgently up to the guy, telling him it could be fixed, whatever was wrong. But the youngster took off, and he couldn't fly. The sound when he hit the floor…first the whump! of his body, then the crack of his skull. One-two. A piece of his brain jumped around on the concrete, still full of electricity, looking for answers.

  Doc ran T-groups for the rapists. I was typing reports in his office once, scamming with both fingers, hunting and pecking a go-home for a guy who'd paid me the usual twenty crates of smokes. Doc came in, face all red. He's a medium-sized man, husky, big chest, thick wrists. Hair cropped short, wears glasses.

  "You give the skinners some new insights today, Doc?"

  "The group is done, Burke."

  "How come?"

  "Because I plain hate the slimy motherfuckers, boss. They ain't sick, they're mean. They didn't teach me that part in medical school."

  I liked him from then on. Once saw him go right into a cell with a con who'd ripped the toilet loose from the wall, he was that far out of his mind. And Doc talked him quiet. Saw him stop the screws from whaling on some poor bastard who'd just stopped— wouldn't move, gone catatonic. Now Doc runs the whole show for the State, manages all the joints for the criminally insane.

  Sophie did her time in the psycho ward. She didn't start out there, but they told her what a ticket cost and she bought one. Bit off one of her own nipples and spit it out the cell bars. Doc ran a bunch of brain scans on her, figured her for some kind of seizure disorder. Started her on the medication, and Sophie was coming back to the world. But she terrorized the joint— when she went off, she didn't feel pain. But she sure handed it out. Doc found out she'd had a daughter. Kid would be about fourteen, wherever she was. Asked me to find her. Bring her to the joint, let her mother see her.

  Took me almost a month, but I found the kid. On her knees in an alley, waiting for the next trick, not even bothering to get up while her pimp negotiated price with me. I paid the pimp what he was due, brought the kid to Lily. After a while, I took her up to see Sophie, like Doc wanted.

  At first, Sophie didn't seem to know her. Then her eyes snapped open. She lunged at me, screaming. Doc had the hypo ready.

  "It was worth a try," he said, later.

  The little girl's okay now. Maybe she'll see her mother again. On Visiting Day.

  Some of the little girls don't make it. Louisa looked up at me from her hospital bed. Sixteen, she was. Huge eyes in what was left of her face. The lost child had turned one too many car tricks. Bad skin and weak bones, held together with scabs and scores. Dying now, and she knew it.

  "Anything I can do?" I asked her. "Anything you want?"

  She turned her skeleton's face to me, no-soul eyes on the medical chart clipped to her bed. Where her death sentence was spelled out. AIDS. "I'd like my father to fuck me. Just one more time."

  She died before she could say his name.

  64

  The train came in, only about ten minutes late. I took Luke's hand. If he bolted in that place, I'd never catch him. I wished Michelle was with us.

  Doc had a dark blue Lands' End canvas bag slung over one shoulder, nothing else. He wasn't planning to stay. We shook hands.

  "Doc, this is my friend Luke. Luke, this is Doc."

  The boy stuck out his hand, clasped his left hand over Doc's right as they shook. The way I'd done.

  The Bronx Zoo is nice and quiet during the weekday. Luke loved it all: the bears, the monorail that ran through a replica of an Asian forest, the jungle cats. I f
illed Doc in while the kid happily took a camel ride.

  "Luke's video-phobic, went rigid when he saw a camera. Don't know much about his parents— a black-market adoption. He killed his baby brother, stabbed him to death. His eyes roll up sometimes. He loses time. In a foster home, he strangled a baby. Doesn't know anything about it. Or the stabbing, either. Genius IQ. Yesterday, he was a baby girl for a while. Doesn't remember that either. The DA knows, wants him to come in. We've only got a little time."