Choice of Evil b-11

by Andrew Vachss

  “Where’d they find—?”

  “In a long-term parking garage on Roosevelt Island. A couple of days later. The way they figure it, the driver must have caught the Triborough and hooked back through Queens, come into the garage from the other side of the river. That’s probably where they had the switch car waiting.”

  “So the murder weapon was in the car. Don’t tell me they left a bullet in it?”

  “Oh, they found a slug, all right. In the back of the head of the guy in the passenger seat. The driver got the same dose. . . only from a different piece. A regular.22 short. The techs found that one too.”

  “And when they vacuumed. . .?”

  “Nothing. Both of the dead men in the front seat had sheets, but no trace of whoever was in the back. And the weapons were all purchased legally. One in Florida, the other two in Georgia. About three years apart. Straw-man buys. Local drunks or crackheads. All you need is proof of residence there. Then a quick run up Handgun Highway. No way to figure out how many times they changed hands since.”

  “The dead guys. Their sheets said. . . what?”

  “They were both made men,” she said. “Family guys.”

  “So somebody wanted the guy in the park and. . .”

  “Contracted it out, sure. That’s the way they’re playing it. That’s why not a word of this has leaked. It’s bad enough that this Homo Erectus maniac is slaughtering people. Now it looks like it all started over. . . something else. It wasn’t a fag-bashing after all.”

  “Christ.”

  “Yes. But that’s not all. What’s got everyone spooked isn’t the hit. It’s the word about the hit man.”

  “I don’t get—”

  “Yeah, you do,” she said flatly. “Who else does that but Wesley? Who else can shoot like that? Who else kills a bunch of people just to get one? Who else leaves the weapon right there when he’s finished? And maybe the boss wanted those other guys gone anyway. It’s just like Wesley to get paid for three jobs and hit the trifecta.”

  “Wesley’s dead,” I said.

  “Is he?”

  “You going for that handjob too?” I asked her.

  “They never found a body.”

  “Hey! He was inside a school, all right? Surrounded by half the cops in the world. Locals, mounties, feds. A couple of hundred people died in the blast. Remember? Not just the dynamite he had in his own hand; the truck he had parked right outside—the one with the poison gas. It was like a bomb hit the place.”

  “He could have gotten out. . . .”

  “Where? They had helicopters in the air. They checked for tunnels under the place and they had them all blocked. They kept a cordon around the site for weeks picking through the corpses. So they didn’t find his. . . whatever would have been left of him anyway. . . . So what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I know about the note. . . the one you turned over. But I also know you’re holding something back. You have to know something more about it than that note he left.”

  “Even if I did,” I said, hedging, “what difference would it make? It might get me out of a beef sometime, if I could add something to what they already know. But alive? Forget it. There’s no way.”

  “Listen to me,” Wolfe said, stepping so close her face went out of focus, voice dropping below a whisper. “The feds have a man inside. They turned him a long time ago. It’s a RICO thing. They’re looking for the whole Family. Probably got more than five years invested already. And this guy, he heard the boss set it up. On the phone. A pay phone—there was no tap in place. But. . . Burke, he was talking to Wesley. That’s who he made the deal with. Wesley’s not dead. Or he’s back, if you want to believe that. But one thing’s for sure—he’s making people dead. And that’s what Wesley does. That’s all he does.”

  “There’s got to be some other—”

  “That’s what they say too,” Wolfe told me. “After all, they ‘solved’ that mass murder up in Riverdale, right? Laid it on Wesley. That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it. But now. . .”

  “And you think I—?”

  “I don’t know what to think. I know you go back with him. I know he. . . did things with you, I’m not sure what. But I’ll tell you what they know down at One Police Plaza, Burke. When you turned in that suicide note of his, it may have gotten you off the hook for some stuff. They know where you got it. . . just not how. Or when. They don’t want you for any of these fag-basher killings. They don’t believe it was you, not for a minute.”

  “They think it’s. . . Wesley? That’s nuts.”

  “Because he’s dead?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll go you one better. Because how would he get paid? Where’s the money? Wesley never killed anyone for fun in his life.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you should put your ear a little closer to the ground. If you did, you’d hear something real interesting.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a body-count fund.”

  “Are you for real? What kind of—?”

  “All I know is they call him the Trustee.”

  “Like in prison? One of those guys who—?”

  “No. Like from an estate. The word is, some crazy rich old queen left a fortune in cash to this ‘Trustee,’ all right? And his only instructions were he wanted fag-bashers murdered. So the Trustee reached out to Wesley and. . .”

  “Offered him so much a head? Change your medication.”

  “You explain it,” she challenged. “And you may have to. . . in court. Watch your back, Mr. Askew.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your new ID,” she said, handing over the briefcase. “If your. . . partner is back in town, or back from the dead, or whatever. . . it doesn’t matter. The way they’re thinking, they already know who’s doing all this. And you’re the only connect. Don’t worry. You’re about as bust-proof as a diplomat. For now. They’re letting you dangle. Understand?”

  “Yeah. But I—”

  “Don’t even tell me,” Wolfe said, voice cold. “If it’s not what it looks like, I’ll have plenty of time to apologize.”

  I just stood there while she got back in her car, her face grim. As the Audi pulled away, the Rottweiler looked at me like he was just waiting his turn.

  “From where I sit, I like the fit,” the Prof said. “You want that kind of fun, Wesley’s the man to get it done.”

  “He’s dead, Prof,” I said. Tired of saying it.

  “What do we know, bro? I mean, we wasn’t there. All we saw was a bunch of stuff on TV. Explosions. That green cloud of whatever crap he let loose. Wesley, he was never like. . . people, you know? There’s an old hoodoo. . . ‘Reaching Back,’ they call it. But even if you believe in that stuff, someone has to want you to come back. And they have to bring one to get one too.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Just what it sounds like, son. The legend is there’s supposed to be a Gatekeeper. Could be a man, could be a woman. Could be anyone, anyplace. And nobody knows how to find ’em either. But, if you look hard enough, they’re supposed to appear. Anyway, you want to bring someone back, you got to bring some to get some, understand?”

  “No.”

  “The way it’s told, you can’t bring no good people back, okay? Just the evil ones. And the way you got to do it, you got to bring them one soul for every soul the evil one took, see?”

  “No,” I said. And not because I couldn’t understand what the Prof was saying.

  “Burke, mahn, my father is telling you true,” Clarence put in. “There is the same legend in the islands. If a man has killed many times, and you want to bring him back across, you too must kill as many times as he has. So the Gatekeeper will allow the passage. A trade, understand?”

  “Yeah, I understand. Bujo bullshit is what I understand. I want that, I’ll go shopping in a botanica. You ever see it happen?” I asked him.

  “See this? No, mahn. It is not to see. Not for me. My loss was my. . . mother, mahn. And if I thought
I could return her by taking a life, I would have done that. You know I would. But it cannot work that way. My mother was good. In her heart and in her spirit. Where she is, the Gatekeeper has no power.”

  “If that was true. . . and it isn’t, for chrissakes. . . but if it was, somebody’d have to kill a whole ton of motherfuckers to bring Wesley back.”

  “And this Homo Erectus guy, he ain’t doing that?” the Prof challenged.

  “Not enough. Anyway, why would he want Wesley back?”

  “Sometimes, if the killer dies too easily, the family. . . the family of the people he killed. . . they want him back,” Clarence said.

  “So they can—?”

  “Yes, mahn. So they can send him over again. But with much pain.”

  “That would make them as bad as. . .”

  “Sure,” the Prof cut me off. “That’s why it so crazy. Don’t make no sense. I ain’t arguing with you ‘bout that. Not saying it true. But I know this. Some people believe things. And if they believe things, then they do things.”

  “So you think this maniac is trying to raise Wesley from the dead? Because he wants him to die all over again? Only. . . hard this time?”

  “It ain’t strong,” the Prof conceded. “But it may not be wrong neither. What we gotta do, we gotta find out more about the guy who died.”

  “You mean the guy in the park? With Crystal Beth?”

  “Yeah. That’s the one. Not the others, that’s not Wesley. Some of those guys this new guy did, they died slow. Wesley did a lot of hits, sure. But they was like. . . surgery, okay? He wouldn’t torture nobody—he was a killer, not a freak. Except for that one. . . on Sutton Place, remember?”

  I did remember. Impossible to forget an image that I never saw but that was still whispered about. This was back when Wesley had the only kind of dispute he ever cared about—he hadn’t gotten paid. So he started killing people. When that wasn’t enough, he decided to spook them, start them running wild. Same way a stalking cheetah shows itself to a herd of antelopes—the stampede reveals the cripples. He got into the Sutton Place apartment of a connected guy’s daughter. When her husband came home from work, he found what was left of his wife. . . arms and legs spread wide on their bed, wired to the posts. With her severed head propped up between her legs, staring at him. They say he’s still in a padded room.

  That started the stampede Wesley wanted. He’d left a message—on the bedroom wall, in the woman’s own blood—saying the butchery was the work of some lunatic cult, but that was just to dazzle the cops. The wiseguys knew he was promising a whole lot more.

  And he kept it up, right to the end. They never found him. Wesley went out by his own hand. Not because they were closing in—they were too busy hiding to look for him. And not because he was afraid—the ice-man didn’t have any of that in his once-in-an-eon DNA. He left because he was tired. Sick and tired. He didn’t want to be here anymore, it was that simple.

  A lot of us felt like that. Some of us all the time. And some of us went out that same way. But only Wesley decided he knew who the “them” was that we—all of us State-raised kids—blamed for what had happened to us.

  Wesley was pure hate. The kind that metastasizes, year after year. The kind that never goes away, no matter what treaties are signed, no matter whose hands are shaken, no matter who intervenes. Permanent. As deep as your father’s father’s father’s father’s firstborn.

  Only difference is, Wesley’s father was the one he hated. The one we all hated—the State. That viciously uncaring, humiliating, experimenting, lying, exploiting, torturing, unstoppable juggernaut. Wesley’s hate was a match for all that. He was us—distilled, crystallized, hardened beyond comprehension, focused past megalomania.

  When Wesley went out, he wanted company: the seeds “they” were cultivating for the next generation.

  So even if the poor insane bastard on Sutton Place who’d come home to that horrible greeting wanted to bring Wesley back, to give him a greeting of his own. . . and even if the legend was true, and even if he could find this Gatekeeper. . . he couldn’t ever bring enough for the tolls, like the Prof said.

  It didn’t leave me anywhere.

  Wolfe wouldn’t help me anymore. Maybe she wasn’t sure. . . but I could tell, from the way her gray eyes looked at me just before we parted, that the weight was mine to carry. And I’d have to carry it a long way before we could ever be. . . whatever we were to each other. . . again.

  She’d given me all I was going to get. The new ID. And the information.

  So I made the phone call.

  “Why do you want to come here?” Nadine asked me. “You didn’t seem so. . . fascinated the last time.”

  “You said you wanted to be in on it,” I told her. “There’s more to do now.”

  “You mean you—?”

  “Not on the phone.”

  “Can you come tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now?”

  “What happened?” is how she greeted me, still wearing her business clothes, even though she’d had plenty of time to change.

  “I may have found a way to—”

  “Find him and—?”

  “No! To get a message to him. And to put enough in it so he’ll read it, anyway. Now, what I need is to put something in the next one so he’ll want to see me.”

  “And you want me to. . . what?”

  “Your friend on the force?”

  “Yeah. . .?” she said, warily.

  “I need some other stuff. Not about the murders, okay? She doesn’t have to go near any of that. Not anymore. But there’s another case. The one that kicked all this off.”

  “The drive-by?”

  “Yes. But I don’t want anything about that one either. At least, not anything direct. The cops. . . they know a lot more than they’re letting out. Not because they got a sudden dose of class, or because they want to play it professional. This piece, the one they’re holding back, the media would have them for lunch if they knew about it.”

  “And you want her to. . . get it?”

  “Not ‘it.’ Not the whole thing. Just a name. And whatever information they have about the name. That’s all.”

  “How is that going to—?”

  “I’ve got a. . . theory. Probably a long shot, I don’t know. But it’s the only card I have to play. I’ve been looking everywhere,” I lied, “asking everyone. But there isn’t a trace of this guy. He’s about as lone a wolf as it gets. No partners. Whatever stuff he’s using he got a long time ago. Like he’s got a warehouse full of it or something. Like this isn’t anything new.”

  Her eyes flickered when I said that. Flickered, not flashed, the blue going from cobalt to cyanotic and back, switching on and off for just a split-second. If she noticed me staring, she didn’t react.

  “Anyway, she can do that, right?”

  “I. . . don’t know.”

  “I thought you said she’d do anything you—”

  “Anything she can do,” Nadine snapped back. “I’m not insane. If it’s there, and if she can get it, I’ll get it, sure. But I don’t know. . . . She told me they have, what do they call them, ‘firewalls’ or something, inside the department. ‘Access Only’ places, when they’re working on stuff. Mostly political, I guess, but she doesn’t know. And I sure don’t.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” I told her, with a confidence I didn’t feel. “I even know where it probably is. NYPD has the same thing as the feds—some Organized Crime unit, whatever they’re calling it this week, I don’t know, but it would be the same thing. That’s where she has to look.”

  “He would never. . .”

  “He? I thought you said—”

  “Not my. . . friend. Him. He would never have anything to do with organized crime.”

  “Not even to kill a few of them?”

  “Oh! But why would he. . .?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s true. But before I can ask my questions, I need what I to
ld you.”

  She stood up and started to pace, unbuttoning her jade silk blouse, leaving the off-white blazer on over it. The black bra underneath was frillier than I expected, for some reason I didn’t focus on. “Sometimes it’s hard to breathe in all this stuff,” she said. “When it’s hard to breathe, it’s hard to think.”

  There was so much truth in what she said that I focused on that, slitting my eyes as she walked back and forth. She stopped at one point, stood on one leg, and pulled off her shoe, then switched legs to do the other, so she was in her stocking feet. By the third circuit, she was down to sheer pantyhose.

  “Men hate these, don’t they?” she said suddenly.

  “Huh?” I’d been somewhere else. Not far away, but just. . . apart.

  “Pantyhose. Men hate them, don’t they?”

  “Hate? That’s a pretty strong word for clothing.”

  “Okay, fine. Men don’t like them, all right?”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “You ever see pantyhose in a skin magazine?” she asked me. “It’s all garter belts and fishnet stockings and thongs, right? Pantyhose, it’s too. . . practical. Like shoes. You think men would wear spike heels? They hurt once you have them on for a while. But they make your legs look good, so what the hell, right?”

  “What do I—?”

  “That’s, of course, if they’re interested in big girls, right?” she snarled, angry beyond anything I could imagine having done to her. I couldn’t figure what had ignited all that, so I just rode it—waiting, knowing there’s always a reason in the eye of the tornado. . . if you’re around long enough to take that look.

  “Some of them like little plaid pleated skirts and Mary Jane shoes and white socks. . . and white cotton panties too. A garter belt would spoil all that, wouldn’t it? The. . . image, I mean. That’s what it’s all about for. . . them. Whatever they see. Their eyes. You know even blind men are like that? I have a friend. A dancer. She says they get blind customers in there too.”

  “And this is all about. . . what?” I asked her, as neutral as I could, no sarcasm anywhere near my voice.

  “It’s all about. . . this!” she snapped at me. “This. . . killer, you call him. Whatever name you call him. He’s a man. But he’s not like the rest of you.”