Choice of Evil b-11

by Andrew Vachss

  “It doesn’t matter. She’ll do—”

  “Yeah, I heard that speech,” I told her. “Got it memorized.”

  “Do you hate me?” she asked suddenly.

  “Hate you? For being a pain in the ass? Don’t be stupid.”

  “I wasn’t. I mean, I know I—”

  “Hate. You got any idea what that word really means, you spoiled bitch? The way you people talk. . . Someone’s mad at you so you say, ‘Oh, he’s going to kill me,’ right? We don’t speak the same language.”

  “ ‘You people.’ What does that mean?”

  “It means, not my people,” I told her.

  I was with my people when I told them the next piece the killer had sent me.

  “He kills kids?” the Prof asked, jolted.

  “Yeah. He says so, anyway. Not for fun. Like. . . cleaning up after himself. Or maybe just some techno-glitch, to a guy like him.”

  “You know guys like him, mahn?” Clarence asked.

  “Sure. So do you. People aren’t human to them. They’re just objects. Pieces on a chessboard. The only thing that holds guys like that in check is fear. They think they can get away with something—anything—they do it.”

  “Sure, mahn. There are plenty like that. But this—”

  “He’s just. . . better at it,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “Nah, bro, there’s more we know,” the Prof said.

  “What’s that?”

  “He wouldn’t be so loud if he wasn’t so proud,” the little man said.

  “I don’t know,” Strega whispered. She was in my arms, me carrying her. She wanted that, sometimes. I never knew why, but I always did it, walking her through that spooky house like she was a child I was trying to cuddle-coax back to sleep.

  “But you could find out,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

  “I can find out anything from. . . them. They have no secrets from me.”

  “Nadine said she had no secrets from you either.”

  “Ah, that one. She lied to you, Burke.”

  “About what?”

  “She told you some fairy story, right? She didn’t start out gay. . . .”

  “Yeah, she said something like that.”

  “You know how guys—the ones who don’t get it—say lesbians hate men?”

  “Sure.”

  “She’s not lying about that,” Strega said against my neck. “She hates men.”

  “That wouldn’t make her a—”

  “I don’t know if she likes women either. She likes sex. And women are the only ones she’s going to have it with.”

  “Yeah, I know. I heard all about—”

  “She’s not a dom either,” Strega said softly. “Not in her heart. The role’s playing her, understand? She’s just building walls. Like the way she builds her body.”

  “What?”

  “It’s safer where she is. Like I’m safe now,” she whispered against me.

  I rubbed my thumb in small circles at the base of the witch’s neck, quieting her while I thought about what she said. Walls. Prison. In there, everyone has to have a role. Predator or prey. No Switzerland option. You don’t have to fuck some kid to mark your territory, but some went that way. “Shit on my dick, or blood on my knife,” is what the wolves greet you with when you’re a young fish, a first-timer. That’s what drives so many of them into gangs Inside. That’s a role too. By the time I went in, I already knew the truth I later heard the Prof tell to so many new kids: “If they try, they got to die.” I had a shank in my waistband when I hit the yard for the first time. Being raised by the State in those prison-prep schools teaches you all that. But why would this woman need to. . .?

  “I get it,” I lied to Strega. “It’s not men she hates, just sex with—”

  “She’d have sex with you. She wants to, you know. Bad.”

  “I don’t know. She’s a game-player. I don’t know her game. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Because you don’t want her?”

  “Because I’m not playing.”

  “But you want to play with me, don’t you?” she asked, witchy.

  I knew who it was even as the phone was ringing at Mama’s. And I was on my way in a couple of minutes more.

  We had it down to a routine by now. I hardly had the match to my cigarette before he showed again:

  I have the child now, here with me. Her name is Angelique, but her school records indicate she prefers “Angel.” She is 10+ years, in apparently excellent health.

  The abduction was simplicity itself. The child is the first to be picked up each morning by the bus from the private school she attends. Her nanny accompanies her to the end of the drive, where the bus stops each morning, but my observations indicated that the nanny (a young woman who may have been selected for other than her child-care abilities, but I acknowledge that to be mere speculation on my part, albeit consistent with the pattern displayed by the girl’s father in other dealings) was always bored and inattentive, often to the point where she did not even respond when the child spoke to her.

  The private school is quite discreet. Their bus is virtually unmarked—a smallish vehicle, dark green in color, with the school’s name gilded subtly in Olde English script across the door panel.

  The regular driver had answered the knock at his door earlier that morning. He saw. . . well, me: Dressed in a standard-issue government suit, carrying a well-traveled briefcase. He let me in without complaint, albeit with an air of victimized resignation. Had the school thoroughly vetted its employees, they would have known their driver had a prior conviction for child molestation. Actually, he had been allowed to plead guilty to a lesser, statutorily euphemized offense, but the facts were there for anyone with the will to search them out. The driver had long since completed his parole (and it was in another state entirely), but he had grown acculturated to answering the questions of white males who had a certain look about them.

  That look comes easily to me: My features are both unremarkable and mobile.

  The driver lived alone, in a small cottage owned by the school. Occupancy of the cottage and personal off-duty use of the bus apparently were intended to compensate for the inadequacy of his salary. . . barely past minimum wage.

  The driver’s death would be discovered rather quickly. It was not, as you might imagine, a gratuitous homicide on my part. Functionally, it accomplished two things: (a) immobilization, guaranteeing that he would not give the alarm before my work was completed, and (b) demonstrable evidence that the kidnapper would, in fact, kill. The latter tends to add emphasis to negotiations.

  I was well prepared with a cover story had the nanny questioned me, but none was necessary. The child ran toward the bus even as I approached, and the nanny turned her back and started toward the house before I had even opened the doors.

  The child said, “Where’s Harry?” and I told her Harry was sick—I was the relief driver. I knew from my research that such an emergency-substitution system was in place, but I could not know if it had ever been utilized during the period of time the child had been attending the school. Still, she made no protest, and took her seat calmly.

  Less than a quarter-mile from her house, I pulled over to the side of the road into a spot shielded by overgrowth. Within ninety seconds, the child was rendered unconscious—chloroform on a sterile handkerchief—and carried from the bus into the car I had waiting.

  There was some degree of exposure during the fifteen-minute drive to the house I had prepared, but it was minimal. The child was sleeping in the trunk, I could easily explain my presence should there be any inquiry, and I expected to be invisible, with my captive totally secured, before any of the other children’s parents called to complain about the bus being late.

  When the child awoke, it was near noon. Many children are frightened when they find themselves captured, but this one was quite stoic. I showed her the basement where she would remain, including the TV set (complete with video-game connectors), the private bathroom, th
e small refrigerator, and the convertible sofa. She nodded gravely as I explained she had been kidnapped; that it was like a game adults play. . . a game for money.

  She appeared to understand (and to readily accept) the concept of extortion.

  I told her that she was free to move around or do anything that she wished while I was present, but that when I had to leave—occasionally in order to complete the financial arrangements—I would have to restrain her. I showed her how the restraints worked, how comfortable they actually were, and how she could use the remote to work the television, and that she could easily reach the bathroom and refrigerator should she require either—I never expected to be gone for more than a very short time anyway.

  I asked her if there was anything I could get her to make her stay easier. She wanted books. I had anticipated this—her school records indicated she was a scholarly child. But, of course, any individual shopping for children’s books in the next few days would have aroused suspicion. Especially a stranger. I was prepared: With over one hundred separate titles, all age-appropriate and of great variety. The child seemed absolutely delighted with the selection. I told her she could take all the books with her when I released her, expecting even greater happiness. However, she said she would not be allowed to have so many books.

  When I asked her why that should be—after all, her life seemed filled with various—and, frankly, conspicuous—possessions, she just replied, “That’s what they say.”

  “Who is ‘they’?” I asked her.

  “Them.”

  I did not press the point, preferring to establish as harmonious a relationship as possible.

  The screen flickered, indicating he was done. I called Xyla in, and waited for the rest. It didn’t take long.

  >>Mortay? Wesley’s work? Yes or No?<<

  Was this maniac into myth-busting now? Mortay had been the reigning champ of the anything-goes death matches some degenerates were holding in a giant basement, but he couldn’t handle the whisper-stream saying Max could beat him. He put it all on the line. Threatened to kill Max’s baby to force a match. Right after he said that to me, one of his men was shot from a nearby rooftop. The real target was Mortay, but he’d moved faster than any human I’d ever seen, and the sniper picked off what was left. The sniper wasn’t Wesley. . . but that’s what everyone thought.

  Mortay finally got dead. Although the cops couldn’t be certain-sure about it, the whisper-stream knew. After I’d shot him a bunch of times in that deserted construction-site excavation, I’d kicked a grenade into his mouth, folded his hands over his face, and pulled the pin.

  In a way, that’s what started all this. I didn’t know until much later that Mortay was already on Wesley’s list. The freak was too out of control for the mob guys who paid him to make snuff videos—taking hookers right off the street for actresses—so they gave the work to Wesley. But before the ice-man could get it done, our crew had handled it ourselves. It cost Belle her life, and me my love.

  If I’d known the maggot was on Wesley’s list, I would have just stepped aside and waited for the inevitable. But after the way it went down, the whisper-stream gave me the hit-man tag. A street brand that I could never shed, not in some places.

  And then the stupid cafones who’d contracted with Wesley said they wouldn’t pay off, because he hadn’t done the job; I had.

  That’s when Wesley started killing them all.

  Was this guy asking me who was on the roof that night Mortay almost got smoked? Or was he trying to find out what kind of a man I was? Didn’t matter. No way I was going to have Xyla type El Cañonero’s name into her machine. He had been the only other pro sniper working the city then, but he wasn’t with me. He was a soldier for some Puerto Rican Independentistas, doing a job for me that night in exchange for something I would do for them. And I wasn’t going to say I did Mortay myself, either. So I played his question straight.

  no

  is what Xyla sent him.

  When you’re interrogating a suspect, you can sometimes get him to tell you the truth by letting him think you already know it. Did the killer really understand the “blowgun dart” message I’d sent him? Or was he playing me, waiting patiently?

  And was he asking me about Mortay because he already knew the truth, testing to see how reliable my answer might be to something he didn’t know, down the line?

  No way for me to even guess. But I knew this much: It was still Wesley, to him, all Wesley, somehow.

  “Nothing,” Hauser told me two days later.

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

  “I mean nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Not one case meets your search criteria. There were cases where a child disappeared. . . but no ransom demands. There were cases where there was ransom demanded and paid, and the child was later found. . . dead. But nothing along the lines you told me to look for.”

  “Fuck!”

  “You’re still on this, right?” Hauser asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “So I’m still in it if there’s something I can—”

  “You have my word,” I told him, and hung up.

  His next message just picked up from where the last one left off. I was as locked to it as if the previous one had still been on the screen, seamless.

  Children vary as widely as adults. Perhaps more so, as they are still in the process of formation, and their possibilities and potential have not yet adapted to the dictates of socioeconomic survival. This child, however, was different in a way I had not observed previously. Some children go almost mute with the trauma of separation, some are garrulous. But, always, they are intensely self-absorbed—understandable, I acknowledge, in the circumstances under which I come into contact with them—wondering “What is going to happen to me?” to the exclusion of all else. This child, however, expressed such an apparently genuine interest in the mechanics of my art that I found myself in discussions which had an eerie “peer” quality about them.

  [Of course, had she been older and more sophisticated, she would have concluded that discussing the specifics of my methodology with a person who could later describe same to the authorities would be counterindicated. Indeed, the fact that I remained unmasked throughout should have been sufficient to provide a clue as to each child’s fate. None seemed to notice. Or, perhaps, they were determined not to notice—I am not a psychologist.]

  But this child seemed utterly fascinated with the mechanics of kidnapping. And hers was not the gory fascination of a child, but the mature fascination of an interested adult. This was no difficult deduction on my part. Indeed, her first question was:

  “Aren’t you worried they could trace the ransom note?”

  I was temporarily taken aback by her question, but, rather than ensuring my silence, it seemed to almost compel me to disclosure. An egotistical desire to share my art, perhaps? I do not believe so. After all, that is the purpose of this journal.

  Still, I showed her how I used only electronic ransom notes. I tape complete television series—sit-coms are the best because they are more likely to possess the requisite longevity—in order to acquire a word bank. “All in the Family,” “Leave It to Beaver,” “The Brady Bunch” had sufficient running time to provide all I needed. Next, I use a digitizing apparatus to separate the individual words. The final edit assembles the note. The child had a little bit of difficulty following me—I realize that my vocabulary is occasionally excessive and that I tend toward the pedantic—but when I explained that my technique was the same as clipping words from newspapers and pasting them to paper, she grasped the principle perfectly. When I demonstrated—by forming the message “Angelique is a pretty girl” from “The Brady Bunch” (actually, the best source of girl’s names, for some reason unknown to me—I have never actually watched an episode) word bank—she clapped her hands.

  After she had something to eat—I let her choose from a variety of foodstuffs I had assembled. . . it reduces the feeling of powerlessness in the captive—I showed her that
the messages were on micro-cassettes. All I had to do was dial the target’s home number and, when the phone was answered, play the tape. Good luck to the FBI and its so-called “voiceprints.”

  “My father has a. . . thing on his phone,” the child piped up. “They’ll know where you called from.”

  Was she mocking me? It didn’t seem so—her little face was serious. Almost. . . concerned.

  So I took out some more of my equipment and explained how a blue-box system worked. A telephone recognizes a hyper-specific series of electronic beeps. When I dial out using the box, it goes into an 800 loop—the best ones to use are those which have chronically heavy traffic. . . any of the conventional credit-card services will do—and re-emerges locally, so whatever rudimentary device of her father’s the child was referring to would only recognize the 800 number (which is based in a faraway state) if it recognized anything at all.

  “Are you going to call from here, then?” the child asked.

  I patiently explained that, while I could, indeed, call from the location in perfect safety, there was no phone installed. Sophisticated technology is a two-edged sword, and taking chances is for amateurs.

  “So you have to go out?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Shouldn’t you take me with you?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “So I couldn’t. . . escape.”

  I assured the child I was more than satisfied with the restraint system I had established, speaking to her as if she was a colleague in the enterprise rather than its victim. . . which seemed to best match her own affect. Obviously, I realized that she was attempting to beguile me into giving her an opportunity to attract attention once we were outside, but I was not angered. In fact, I had a sincere respect for her wit. And for her will to survive.