The Weight

by Andrew Vachss

  The cop pinned me with his eyes. Wasting his time—I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I’ll get back to you,” he finally said.

  “How?”

  “That’s a good question.”

  “I’ll call you, okay? Just say when.”

  The cop looked at his wristwatch. Maybe it had one of those calendar things in it.

  “I got two years until I pull the pin,” he said. “Retire. Me and the wife, we’ve already got a place picked out. Far from here.”

  “It was worth a shot,” I said.

  “I said two years, Caine, not two days. There’s benches by the other river, too. You know the Hospital for Special Surgery?”

  “I can find it.”

  “Just keep walking on Seventy-first; you’ll find a little bridge, takes you up to where you can look at the river over the FDR. Next Friday, two o’clock, I’ll be on that bridge.”

  “Me, too.”

  Walking around without a gun felt good. I never liked them—they always seemed to make things worse. But what I really didn’t like was guys who liked guns. Some of them, when they handed over what they were carrying so I could see all the special stuff for myself, it made me feel … slimy, like.

  Not the gun itself, the whole idea. Like the way those guys in the Sex Offender Treatment Unit would be talking about the stuff they did. Just listening, it was like some of their—I don’t know what to call it—like some of what they were would rub off on you.

  I don’t like being around the iron jockeys, either. I never felt right listening to them talk. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe I just don’t like most people.

  I got shot once, a long time ago. The slug went into my upper arm, never touched bone. The doc in the ER was an Indian. Not one of those guys you see in cowboy movies; from the country India. He said I must have done something very good in another life to have deserved such luck. I was a little fuzzy, but I could tell he believed what he was saying.

  Turned out, the bullet just went in one side and out the other. A nick, they called it. That Indian doctor said the only danger would be infection. Not from the bullet, from not keeping it clean.

  I remember asking him how come I couldn’t get an infection from a bullet. In prison, some guys would dip the points of their shanks in their own shit, so you could die from the poison after you were stabbed. I didn’t tell the doctor that, but I really did want to know.

  “A projectile launched at supersonic speed would generate so much heat that it would be sterilized,” he said.

  “What’s ‘supersonic’?”

  “Did you hear the shot?”

  “Yeah. After I—”

  “You heard the shot because it broke the sound barrier. That’s what makes it supersonic.”

  “Thanks.”

  He gave me a confused kind of look. But maybe it was the drugs they were pumping into me that made me think that.

  They didn’t even keep me. Just gave me a couple of more shots, cleaned it all out, and packed stuff inside before they taped me up.

  The cops came. I knew they would. The ERs, they’re supposed to call in any gunshot wound, even if you tell them it was an accident. There’s docs you can go to who won’t call it in, but they charge an arm and a leg, even if they don’t have to take one off.

  And—who knows?—they could be on some cop’s Rat Rolodex themselves. A doctor who gets nailed for writing scrips by the pound, he’d “cooperate” with the cops in a second—that prescription pad, that’s his moneymaker.

  So the rule is, if you got shot doing something that could drop you down a well, that’s when you take the chance. Say you’ve got a cop’s slug in you, no way you can let a hospital take that out.

  But with the bullet I took, I knew I was on solid ground.

  What I told the cops: I never saw the shooter. I got no beef going with anyone. Broad daylight, probably one of those punks trying out his new nine. Or maybe it came from inside one of the buildings I was walking past.

  What they told me: They can’t protect me if I don’t come clean with them. Maybe the next time, the shooter won’t miss.

  They were as bored as I was. Without a slug to put under their microscopes, there was nothing they could do, and we all knew it.

  Whatever they put in the wound finally dissolved, just like the doctor said. All it left was a little pucker mark, like a vaccination.

  But when I went back to the gym, some of the guys looked at the arm and said it was ruined. They were really sorry for me. I didn’t get it at first. I mean, soon I was back lifting the same weight I always had, so what was the big deal?

  One of them explained. He said that bullet had spoiled my skin. You could hide some stuff, like the blackheads they were always getting all over their backs and shoulders, but what I had would never look right.

  I asked him, look right for what?

  “You don’t compete?” He sounded kind of … disgusted, like I told him I didn’t wash my hands after I used the toilet or something. This was the same guy who was always telling me I had great genetics but I’d need some help if I ever wanted to get really big.

  I didn’t go back to that gym.

  Fuck it. Wasn’t like I was friends with anyone there or anything. I like working out by myself more, anyway.

  I guess it depends on what you want it for. These guys, they were more worried about how good a suit of armor looked than how good it worked. Not me.

  People think the worst thing about being locked up is that you can’t have the things you had on the outside. But that’s not it. Plenty of guys who hit the joint never had anything on the outside. So what did they lose, really?

  Freedom? How much of that do most people have, if you think about it? In prison, they tell you what to do. Outside, they do the same thing. Some people, they hate being told what to do so much that they end up Inside. Again and again. Time after time.

  What you really lose are choices. I’ve seen men stabbed over which TV program to watch.

  You get to make some choices, but those are only between bad and worse. One of the heavies asks you to do something. Say no, and somebody in there gets told to kill you. Or at least fuck you up so bad that you end up wearing a diaper or breathing through a tube in your throat.

  You could ask for PC. Or you could do what you got told to do. Either way, you’d be alive. Protected, even.

  You’d also be nothing.

  So, if you have to kill somebody, you might as well start with the guy who started your problem.

  Having to sit and wait until I could meet with the cop again, that was okay. Truth is, I didn’t even want to go out—I wanted to be where it was safe. I had that apartment. With a TV where I could watch whatever channel I wanted to.

  So I worked out. Watched TV. I didn’t cook, just brought home takeout. There were like a hundred different places for that—I never even had to go to the same one twice.

  I drank a lot of water. The kind that comes in bottles.

  I tried to figure out what the cop would do. Maybe I would have been better off with his partner, the black guy. He was closer to my age, and you could see that the rape stuff had made him angry, like he took it personal.

  But it hadn’t been the black guy who’d figured out why my alibi for that rape was no good. That older cop, Tom—the other guy was Earl—Detective Tom Woods, he snapped it right away.

  In my whole life, I never gave up a man I worked with. But the guy who owned that jewelry store, I didn’t know him. Never even met him.

  I kept thinking about whether that would be enough to make it right. It’s hard when there’s no rules for something you have to do, because you still have to do it.

  He was already on the bridge when I showed. Even in the heat, he was wearing an old-style raincoat, had to weigh a few pounds. Probably miked to the max. Which meant I’d have to dance around with every word out of my mouth. Even if the big cop had done the right thing, I knew his kind; if anything happened to the guy who’d ac
tually raped that girl, I’d be good for that one. Extra good.

  While I was still deciding how to play it, he got off first: “It’s no go.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “That girl, she may have been … say, unsure of herself before. Even after the plea. But now it has to be you. In her mind, I mean.”

  “But if I could just—”

  “The court gave her a Permanent Order of Protection, okay? You go anywhere near her, and you’re going back in.”

  “But if—”

  “If you contact her, same thing. Or someone doing you a favor contacts her. She gets a letter, a phone call, a fucking e-mail … it’s gonna be on you.”

  “But you know I didn’t do it.”

  “And I’m going to tell her that?”

  I looked at the river. People’s boats were going by. Mine was sinking.

  “What if I knew something?”

  “About the—?”

  “Yeah.”

  The big cop took a step back, like some invisible pair of hands had pushed him off.

  “Now you’re going to give up—?”

  “Come on.”

  “Yeah. What would be the point? You were willing to do that, you could have skipped your last jolt altogether.”

  “The statute of limitations, it’s run.”

  “Meaning the other guys with you on that job haven’t, huh? Could be true, for all I know. The owner, no way that little slime-ball’s leaving town—they’re going to keep his ass in court for years.”

  “How could they—?”

  “Not for the crime. The lawsuit. The insurance company’s not going down without a fight, not for that kind of scratch. That jeweler, he’s been living small. Claims he can’t make a living be cause that heist of yours wiped him out.”

  “You don’t want him?”

  “For what? Like you said, it’s too late for us to charge him with anything.”

  “So why bother to talk to me at all?”

  “You didn’t plan that job, Caine. No offense, but I never liked you for that part either.”

  I looked out at the river.

  “If we knew who put that one together, we could probably tie him to dozens of jobs.”

  I shrugged.

  “We couldn’t even arrest him. But we could put him out of business.”

  “You said, putting the job together, that wasn’t me. You that sure?”

  “Like I said, no offense, but … yeah, I’m that sure. Now, that guy’s name, that would be worth something. Maybe even something like me and my partner visiting that girl.…”

  “Yeah. Only, not the same way you’d ‘visit’ the guy you think set up the job you think I was on.”

  “Who said anything about rough stuff? I just mean, we go over and have a talk with the man. We explain what we know. Tell him we’ve got all kinds of warrants. And all the time in the world. So we sit on him, see who comes and goes. He doesn’t get hurt. But he does go out of business.”

  “I get it.”

  “So I talk to the girl, and you—”

  “No.”

  “How bad do you want this guy, Caine? You did his time, remember?”

  “Not that bad.”

  It was the cop’s turn to look out at the river. After a minute or so, he turned around.

  “Don’t get me wrong on this, okay? I know who you are. You’re one of the bad guys. No hard feelings. Nothing personal. I’m not talking about any particular crime, I’m talking about who you are. But, for what it’s worth, I know you never raped that girl.”

  “It’s worth a lot to me.”

  We looked at each other for a little while, like we had nothing else to do.

  He put out his hand. I took it. More like a grip than shaking hands, but …

  I couldn’t be sure what he meant with that move. But I knew what it added up to: I shouldn’t ever call him again.

  What the fuck is wrong with you?

  Like a tape playing in my head. A loop, going around and around, with no OFF switch.

  I held on to the railing for a long time after the cop left. Something solid.

  That was me, a few minutes ago. Solid. A man you could count on.

  It was all I had, that … I don’t know the word for it. More than a rep, it was who I was. Not a part of me, inside all of me. Something you couldn’t separate out.

  Years ago, I remember, I heard about this guy. He hated the government, blamed the government for everything that wasn’t the way he thought it should be. I think his brother was on the run for blowing up abortion clinics or something like that.

  This guy, he had one of those electric saws they use on lumber. Only, instead of a board, he put his arm down and pulled the saw right through it. Cut off his own hand. He even made a tape of himself doing it, so he could mail it to the FBI, show them how serious he was.

  See? A piece of him got taken away, but he was still himself. More of himself, really.

  He may have been a nutcase, but he didn’t give up anything. Me, a couple of minutes ago, I almost had.

  That guy, he gave up his own hand, not somebody else’s.

  And I’d just come so close to giving up somebody else’s that it scared me.

  I had to get away from there.

  All the way back to my apartment, I blocked it off. I thought about all kinds of things: girlfriends I’d had, fights I’d been in, stories Eddie used to tell on the yard. Anything, so long as it wasn’t about work. I didn’t want to think about that until I was someplace I could sit for a while.

  I even thought about the time I got tricked into an arm-wrestling match with a guy who’d hurt his good hand in a car wreck. It was still in a cast, so we went left-handed. I didn’t find out until a couple of days later that the fucking hustler was a natural southpaw.

  The guy who told me was Buddha, the wheelman. This place—just a dump of a bar where guys like me hung around when we weren’t working—it was never loud, never any fights. The reason for that was the same reason that it wasn’t a place where you’d bring a girl.

  They had a table for arm-wrestling, with pegs and all. The guy who ran the place, Nathan, the deal was this: if you wanted to do something for money—they had darts, and a full-size pool table, even a place to play cards—Nathan was the ref. And you didn’t argue with Nathan. Not because he was such a hard guy, because that was the rules. Anyone who could walk into that place knew the rules.

  I never did stuff like that for money. It’s just stupid. You win, then there’ll always be some other guy who wants to try you. And then another one after that. And if you lose, what good comes out of that?

  This guy, he outweighed me by seventy-five pounds, easy. I don’t make the same mistake about fat guys most people do. Some guys, they can power-lift like gorillas, they still stay fat. Fat-looking, I mean. No definition at all. Big round arms, thick around the gut. But strong. Real strong.

  I’d never seen this guy before, and I could tell nobody else had, either. I could feel how bad people wanted me to take him on.

  “How do you do it?” I asked.

  That was fair—the table was there, all right, but nobody had ever seen me on it.

  That’s when Buddha tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and followed him over to the table. Buddha showed me how it worked. When I thought I got it, I sat down.

  “A little side-bet?” the fat guy asked.

  “Not for me,” I told him. “You look like a pro at this.”

  The fat guy grinned. One of his front teeth was chipped. He sat down across from me. Nathan came over and wrapped this strap around our wrists. My elbow was on some padded thing; the other guy’s, too. Buddha told me my elbow had to stay on that pad or I’d lose.

  “When I let go,” Nathan said.

  The fat guy jerked so hard I almost couldn’t hold him. But I did. I just stayed like that, same way you pull against the bars in prison. You can’t bend the bar, but it’s a great isometric.

  The fat
guy’s face got all red. A vein came out across his forehead. He called me some name, but I couldn’t make it out, what with everybody yelling at the same time.

  Butterfly, I thought to myself. In my mind, I was back in the gym, pulling the two pads together, over and over again. I’d gotten to the middle, where the pads meet, so I should release to set up another rep. But I couldn’t do that, so I made like I was doing a shoulder cross, pulling my right hand against the peg and my left toward my right shoulder.

  To the fat guy, I was the prison bar. Maybe he was gassed from struggling, maybe he saw it coming, I don’t know. I just pulled. Smooth and slow, like you’re supposed to do, not jerking the weight like the fat guy had tried to do to me.

  Even after I felt him start to give, I didn’t speed up, just pulled all the way through until I touched down.

  The fat guy mumbled something, and we shook hands. Left hands, ’cause his other one was in that cast.

  I could tell the people watching were happy, but nobody really said anything to me.

  Except Buddha, later. That’s when he told me what the fat guy’s hustle was.

  “How’d you know?”

  “I’ve seen his act before. That other guy with him? He’s the moneyman. Backs his boy against anyone who wants action. He’s slick. Never does anything lame like asking for bets, but he’ll cover anything you put down. If you ask him for odds, he’ll give a little—three-to-one is about as far as he can go without tipping his play.”

  “Why didn’t you tell—?”

  “Like I said, I’ve seen his act before. The way they work it, they just pick a guy who looks like muscle. Every joint like this place, they always got guys look like you. Only, this time, I had the sleeve ace, not them. I know you don’t have a power arm, Sugar. Lefty, righty, makes no difference to you.”

  “I guess not. But I still don’t see why—”

  Buddha put ten C-notes on the table between us. “Your cut,” he told me. “I got the three-to-one, on a grand. The money guy, he saw me take the cash out of my shirt pocket, figured me for a degenerate gambler. You know, the kind who bets on any fucking thing, because they gotta have action going all the time.”