Choice of Evil b-11

by Andrew Vachss

  “Careful,” she said, showing me what she meant by moving slowly down a couple of steps into a sunken living room. She hit a wall switch and a soft rosy light suffused the entire room. It was long and narrow, with the far wall almost floor-to-ceiling glass, flanked on each side by a black acoustical tower. On the right, an audiophile extravaganza spread across a single shelf that flowed out of the wall so smoothly it must have been a custom job. Along the left, the major focal point was one of those giant-screen TV units with a trio of leather recliners and matching ottomans—one black, one white, and one red—arranged with their backs to the right-hand wall.

  “I’m not out at work,” she said, as if that explained the decor. “Have a seat.”

  The window glass looked fixed in place—they don’t have balconies that high up—so I took the chair closest to it, the white one, spun it so it was facing the door.

  Nadine walked over to where I was sitting, pulled the ottoman away, and perched on it, crossing her legs again. “Open it yourself,” she said, indicating the briefcase on the floor. “It’s not locked.”

  I popped the small brass latches at each end. Inside, nothing but paper. Photocopies. Crime-scene reports. Even down to the photographs. Maybe a couple of hundred pages in all. I started to leaf through them, asking, “Is this—?”

  “Just one case,” she interrupted. “My. . . friend says she didn’t know what the. . . I mean, she did know what you meant—the ‘polygraph-key’ thing—but she didn’t know which ones they would use. She said ninety percent of this stuff never made the papers, so they had a lot to choose from. And it isn’t her case, so. . .”

  “Ssshh,” I said, reading.

  Even in the soft-rose lighting, it was easy enough to figure out which of the cases it was. The best one for polygraph keys—one of the first ones—the guy who’d gotten the ice pick in the spine. A blown-up car wouldn’t give away much. Oh sure, if the lab guys were good enough, they might find the triggering device. . . or a clue to it, anyway. Maybe even tell you the type of explosive. But there’s nothing like a face-to-face homicide to produce a crime scene you can vacuum all to hell.

  And they had. I finally found exactly what I was looking for. The ice pick the newspapers had reported hadn’t been one at all. The weapon had been a ninja spike of some kind, a triangular piece of tempered steel with notches for finger grips at the thick end. On the top, where it was the thickest, there was an engraved icon, inset in red. I knew the color only because someone had written the word “red” with an arrow pointing toward it on the photocopy. I guess either the Department didn’t have color copiers or, more likely, Nadine’s playmate didn’t have access to one.

  “Have you got a—?”

  I looked up and realized I was talking to an empty space. Nadine had gone somewhere. I glanced at my watch. I’d been in that chair for almost two hours. I guess I’d gone somewhere too.

  The apartment was sealed-off quiet, no street noises penetrating the thick glass, the rich gray carpet muffling anything else. Where was she? There had to be at least a bedroom and a kitchen. Bathroom too. But I didn’t want to start cruising around. And everything past the circle of rosy light I had been reading by was a pool of blackness.

  “Nadine?” I called out, medium-voiced, pitched to carry past the living room, no more.

  No answer.

  It didn’t stink like a trap does. And the decor wasn’t a clue either. You walk into a room where everything’s covered in plastic, floor to ceiling, you better start shooting before they go to work with the baseball bats. But this. . .?

  Nadine was a girl who loved her games. I could walk out and take the papers with me. Or get up and look through the other rooms.

  I didn’t like the choices, so I pulled the cellular out of my pocket and dialed her number. I heard it ring, somewhere back through the walls. If there was a phone in the living room, I couldn’t see it. Or hear it.

  She had it by the second ring, her voice awake and sharp even though it was almost two in the morning. But some people wake up just like that, so I couldn’t tell.

  “Hello?”

  “You mind taking a little walk?” I asked.

  “Oh! It’s. . . sure. Just give me a minute.”

  I wanted a smoke, but I didn’t even think about going through with it. There wasn’t an ashtray in sight. And one of those air-filtering canisters sat in a far corner whispering its work.

  Then she seemed to just materialize out of the side of the wall. Nude.

  “I was asleep,” she said, as calmly as if we were talking inside an office. “You were so. . . absorbed, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you,” I told her. “And I didn’t want to. . . invade your privacy.”

  My eyes never left hers. Still cobalt, hers were. So either she was lying about being asleep or they weren’t contacts like I’d first thought.

  “That was very considerate,” she said, calmly. “Are you all finished?”

  “Not quite yet. Have you got a magnifying glass of some kind? And a better light I could use for a minute?”

  “Sure,” she said, spinning on her heel and disappearing again.

  She came back with a large rectangular magnifier, the kind that comes with the Oxford English Dictionary inside that little tray at the top of the two volumes. And a clip-on gooseneck halogen light. “How’s this?” she asked, bending forward like a stewardess. In a porno movie.

  “Perfect, I think. Let me try it.”

  I attached the light, turned it on. Then I placed the magnifier over the photocopy of the icon. Blown up, it turned out to be a meticulously drawn little dinosaur with T. rex jaws and monstrous talons, but much shorter in every department—almost like a miniature.

  “I got it,” I told her.

  “You mean. . . you mean you know who he is?”

  “No. But I know something I can use to find him. Maybe. If he wants to be found.”

  “Wants to be—?”

  “It’s. . . complicated,” I told her.

  “And you can’t tell me?” she asked, perching herself back on the ottoman the same way she had hours ago.

  “Not now.”

  “But I did what you wanted, right?”

  “Yeah, you did,” I admitted. “In spades.”

  “So you believe me now?” she questioned, rubbing her eyes like a sleepy child, but showing me she was all grown up at the same time.

  “I believe you have a friend on the force,” I told her. “One that’ll do what you want.”

  “She did a lot, didn’t she?”

  “Sure did. This had to take some time. And it’d mean her job if she got caught.”

  “I know. Do you think they’d. . . suspect her?”

  “How would I know? I don’t know who’s got access to—”

  “I don’t mean suspect her of making the copies. I mean suspect her of being in with. . . him.”

  “Not a chance,” I assured her. “The sleaze tabs broke the mold when they published autopsy pictures of that little girl who was raped and murdered in her own home. Remember, the baby beauty queen?”

  “In Colorado? Oh God, yes! I couldn’t believe when they. . . and they still haven’t caught the people who. . .”

  “Yeah. Anyway, these pictures, they’d be worth a fortune to one of the rags. That’s what they’d think she was up to.”

  “Oh,” she said, sounding more relieved than I would have expected.

  “Anyway, she sure as hell can’t put these back, right? I mean, they aren’t originals. And there aren’t supposed to be any copies. So I’d better keep them.”

  “You?”

  “You want them around here?” I asked her. “It’d be insane to burn them—there might be a real clue in here somewhere, even though there’s stuff missing.”

  “Really? When I saw how much it was, I thought she got everything.”

  “Is that what you asked her for?”

  “No. I just. . . what you sa
id. The ‘polygraph-key’ thing.”

  “Well, you can tell her she came through, no question.”

  “Me too.”

  “You too, what?”

  “I came through too, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. I already said that. You made. . . you proved your point.”

  “So I can. . . help you with this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When do we start?”

  “We already did,” I told her. “I’ll get back to you, let you know when the next move is.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What did you expect? You want to put some clothes on and go running after him right now?”

  “Oh. I didn’t think you noticed.”

  “Noticed?”

  “My. . . clothes,” she said, trailing the back of her hand across her breasts.

  “Hard to miss,” I said.

  “Look good to you?”

  “I’m not that old.” I laughed.

  “I didn’t mean you were. . . old. You’re older than me, sure. But I can see you’re not too old to. . .”

  “No, you can’t see anything,” I told her. And it was the truth. Her eyes were on my crotch, but it was about as active as the Vanilla Ice fan club.

  “How come?”

  “What?”

  “How come I can’t see anything? You can see everything. And I know you like girls.”

  “You scare me, Nadine,” I told her, letting her see the truth if she wanted it. “And nothing turns me off more than fear.”

  “It doesn’t everybody,” she said in a throaty whisper. “Some people get very excited by fear. Do you know what it’s like to be wearing a mask? A leather mask with only a zipper for your mouth and two little holes to breathe through? To be chained. And waiting. Not knowing what you’re going to get?”

  “You know what?” I told her, my voice quiet, but harder than any silly leather games she liked to play. “I do know. Not about your little masks and whips. But I know exactly what it’s like to be chained. And to not know what’s coming next. But knowing it’s going to hurt. Hurt real bad. And not being able to do a thing about it.”

  “You mean for real?” she asked, leaning forward, listening now, not on display.

  “Oh yes,” I promised.

  “When you were in. . . prison?”

  “Prison? Prison was a fucking joke by the time I got there. For me, it was like going to college after prep school. No. Not in prison. When I was a kid. A little kid.”

  “You mean your parents—”

  “I didn’t have parents. I had the State. That was my mother and my father and my jailer. I served time in POW camps before I was old enough to go to school. You like to play around in your little ‘dungeons,’ wear your costumes. . . . You try it sometime without mercy-words, try it when you can’t pick your partners, you stupid little game-playing bitch—see how much fun it is.”

  She gasped, swallowed some words. Sat back on the ottoman and looked at me like I was whatever had crashed at Roswell that the government wasn’t talking about.

  I took out a cigarette and lit it, hating myself for losing control. I bit deep into the filter, feeling the pain lance through my jaw, ready to grind the butt out on her pretty carpet when I was done.

  She didn’t move, a piece of white stone in the rosy light.

  I blew a jet of smoke into her face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You are fucking sorry,” I told her. Then I stood up. She started to do it at the same time and we bumped. She fell to the carpet. I didn’t look back.

  “Can you get word to. . . your friend?” I asked Lorraine over the phone.

  “Same place?”

  “Yeah. Whenever’s convenient for. . . your friend.”

  “I’ll reach out. When I link up, should I. . .?”

  “Just leave word. Whenever the meet’s made for at your end is okay—I’ll be here.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “Crazy, yes?” Mama challenged the minute I sat back down in my booth.

  “Yeah, Mama. Crazy. You’re right.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m going to see it through,” I told her. “And I’m going to get Max to help me,” challenging her now.

  “Good,” she said, surprising me. “Balance. Good.”

  Sure. I got it. At least Max wasn’t crazy. Thanks.

  I went back to my hot-and-sour soup. Mama disappeared. I don’t know how she reaches out for Max. There’s a lot of ways to get messages to deaf people, but Mama was a techno-phobe. She’d use an abacus to work percentages on six-figure scores without missing a beat, but she didn’t trust anything electronic, doling out words on the phone like they were her life savings.

  I went out the back door.

  Pansy was glad to see me. Always was, no matter what. If she thought I was crazy, she kept it to herself. I dumped the entire quart of beef in oyster sauce I’d taken from Mama’s into her steel bowl, waiting the thirty seconds it took her to make it disappear, then let her out onto the roof to do some dumping of her own.

  When she came back down, she stood next to me, both of us looking into the night. I wondered what she saw.

  I didn’t like what I did.

  When I got to Davidson’s office, he had the cash waiting. I asked him if he’d heard anything from the cops. It took him about ten minutes to say “No.”

  I got on the drums and sent word out to the Prof. I couldn’t get him to pack a cellular except when we were working a job, but I had years of experience finding him even when he was homeless-by-choice, so I wasn’t worried—he’d connect up sooner or later.

  No point calling Wolfe. When she had the stuff, she’d get it to me.

  So I drove back over to Mama’s to wait for word from Lorraine.

  When I came through the back door and saw Mama wasn’t at her register, I knew Max was around someplace, probably in the basement. One of the waiters brought me a covered tureen of hot-and-sour soup, not saying a word. I know most of them by face, and that’s enough to get me through the door even if Mama isn’t there to vouch for me, but they treat me like I’m invisible anyway. I was getting the soup because they knew Mama believed I had to have some every time I entered the joint, but I could fucking well serve myself. . . . At least that’s how I translated the Cantonese he mumbled as he put the stuff in front of me.

  Fine. I was on my third bowl—the house minimum—when Mama and Max came upstairs. I bowed a greeting to each of them. Mama sat down beside me as Max took the opposite bench.

  I signed as much as I knew of what was going on to Max. I spoke the words too—I know Max can read lips, I just never know how much he’s getting.

  Max looked pointedly at Mama. She snapped her fingers and barked something. Could have been Mandarin, Lao, Vietnamese, Tagalog—she speaks a ton of Asian languages I can’t even distinguish, and pretty good French and Spanish as well. A pair of her so-called waiters popped out of the back to clear the table. Then they wiped it down scrupulously, not the way they usually do. One of them brought out a black linen tablecloth and snapped it out over the surface. Then they vanished.

  From inside his coat, Max took a small metal bowl with a faint yellowish tinge. He placed it carefully on the table between us. Next, he took a thick wooden stick shaped something like a pestle and struck the edge of the bowl as if it was a gong. Then he whisked the stick around the perimeter. A sound like I’d never heard vibrated in the air. It. . . stayed there, drawing me into it. The only way I can describe it, it was like I got when I looked into the red dot I had painted on my mirror. Outside myself. Away. Dissociating the way I’d learned to when I was a kid. When I couldn’t run from the pain. Where I go is the place where I think. About things I couldn’t if I was. . . here.

  I pointed at the bowl, made a “What is this?” gesture.

  Max held up both his hands, one spread out full, the other with just two fingers showing. Seven. Then he took out a quarter and tapped it,
making the sign for “seven” again.

  Then he made a hand-washing gesture. The sign for mixing, melding, blending. . .

  “It’s made up of seven different metals?” I asked aloud.

  “Yes,” Mama said. “Called ‘singing bowl.’ Very sacred. From. . .” She hesitated, catching a warning look from Max. “Tibet,” she finished.

  I understood that part. Mama’s Chinese. Mandarin Chinese. She can trace her ancestors back to way before Christ, or so she says. In fact, she can trace any goddamned thing to her ancestors, from gunpowder to telescopes. It’s not political with her. She fled to Taiwan a long time ago, and she thinks the Chinese government—Mao Chinese, she calls them—are the scum of the planet.

  Everyone takes Max for Chinese, but he’s not. He’s a Mongol, from Tibet. Something happened to him there when he was a kid. He wasn’t born deaf. He showed me once how they made him deaf, and it makes me sick to even see it in my mind. I don’t know if Max can’t speak, or he just refuses to—I never asked. He goes along with the game that he’s Chinese because Mama took him for her son. Mama wants to claim that it was the Chinese who invented haiku, that’s okay with Max. She wants to say Max’s daughter Flower is pure Mandarin, hell, royal Mandarin, no problem. But he was damn well going to claim this “singing bowl” for his own country. . . and Mama got it.

  He handed me the bowl, showed me how to strike it, guided my hand in smooth whisks around the rim until I could make it sing too. Then he bowed and handed it to me. A gift.

  I held it in my hand, still feeling it vibrate faintly. I could feel its age and its power. And I knew why my brother had given it to me.

  I put it aside and we started to play casino. Max was into me for another ten grand by the time the Prof breezed in the front, Clarence in tow.

  “What’s up, Schoolboy?” the Prof greeted me. “I know you been looking and cooking—the wire’s been on fire.”

  I brought him up to date, even down to what Mama had been saying. . . or not saying.

  “Can’t be.” The little man dismissed it with a wave of his hand.

  I just shrugged.

  “Why you doing this anyway, son?” the Prof asked.

  “Fifty large. Paid up front. No refunds.”

  “Cool. But why try? The sting’s the thing.”