Choice of Evil b-11

by Andrew Vachss

  “Can you get some? When you go out?”

  “I can,” I told her, remembering that every airport in the world sells such items.

  “What else?”

  “What else?”

  “I mean, besides cards. What other games?”

  “Oh. Well, there’s checkers. And chess.”

  “Do you have them?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Can you—?”

  “Yes, Angelique,” I said. “I can try to find a set while I’m out.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. Couldn’t you. . . make one?”

  “Make a. . . oh yes, I see. Actually, I have no such skills. But *you* do. So if I provided the schematic—”

  “What’s a schematic?”

  “It’s like a plan. A picture of how something works.”

  “You draw pictures?” she asked, an unreadable look on her face.

  “No, child. Not pictures, plans. There’s a great difference.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Realizing I should have anticipated just such a question and incorporated the answer in my prior explanation, I mentally resolved to concentrate with greater task-oriented precision. “A plan is something that can be drawn with instruments, say a ruler, or a protractor, or a T-square. A diagram. Art is freehand. Very individual. No two pieces of art are ever exactly the same.”

  “Can’t people copy art?”

  “Certainly they can try. But a true connoisseur could always distinguish between an imitation and the genuine article.”

  “What’s a connoisseur?”

  “A person who is especially knowledgeable about a certain subject. It could be food, or antiques, or even wild animals, for that matter.”

  “But it has to be a thing?” the child asked.

  “A. . . thing?”

  “Yes. Those are all things, right? Not something you do.”

  “Well, certainly, one could be a connoisseur of. . . oh, I don’t know. . . say, ballet. Or football. Those are not objects, they are performances. Do you understand?”

  “But could you do them yourself and still be one?”

  “I am not certain I—”

  “Could you, like, be an artist and still be a. . . connoisseur of art?”

  “Ah. Yes, to be sure. In fact, there are those who say one cannot be a great writer unless one is also a connoisseur of writing. . . as an art form, do you see?”

  “Sure! That’s me. I love to draw, and I love to look at. . . paintings and stuff. So I guess I’m a connoisseur, aren’t I?”

  “Well, that would depend on the criteria you employ.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I mean,” I corrected myself, “whether you had good taste. In other words, if you liked only very fine art, you could be a connoisseur.”

  “I like everything.”

  “Well, then, you—”

  “But I don’t like everything the same. I mean, I like some stuff a lot better. So could I be a—?”

  “Yes, child. That’s correct. You certainly could be. Shall I show you the. . . drawing of the game?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Using the edge of a hardcover book, I quickly roughed in a diagram of a checkerboard—sixty-four identical squares. Then I used a half-dollar to make a pair of circles. “See, Angelique? There will be thirty-two pieces, half of them one color and half of them another. And we put them on a board that will look like this. Do you think you could make one?”

  “Sure I could. But I’d need some construction paper. Do you know what that is?”

  “Not only do I know,” I told her, a trace of pride perhaps in my voice, “I have some right here.” [In fact, I always keep a plentiful supply for my captives, having found that making the sort of mess children create with brightly colored paper occupies some of them for long periods of time.]

  When I gave her the paper and a pair of scissors (with rounded tips) she set to work. When we took a break for the midday meal, she was so absorbed I had to summon her twice.

  The checkerboard was finished by mid-afternoon. I pretended not to notice the child’s progress, concentrating on the portable computer’s screen. [Yes, obviously, the computer will contain incriminating evidence. But should I be apprehended in the company of a captive, it would be coals to Newcastle.]

  “It’s ready!” she called out, and I got up to see her project.

  My astonishment was impossible to conceal. . . which was fortuitous, as it seemed to delight the child. The board was composed of what appeared to be several dozen layers, a multi-colored laminate (the top of which was a dazzling white) on which she had drawn the squares to perfection. My amazement, however, was reserved for the pieces themselves. Although each was a disk of the same size, and although the thirty-two of them were equally divided between a sort of Day-Glo orange and a misty blue (I had not disclosed to the child that the traditional colors are red and black), each piece was individually decorated with a tiny drawing. . . everything from butterflies to bears to houses and cars. The work was as complex and delicate as scrimshaw and, to my not-untrained eye, displayed no less skill.

  “This is absolutely remarkable,” I told the child.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Very much. It’s. . . magnificent.”

  “It’s for you, all right? To keep. Like a present?”

  “I will treasure it,” I told her solemnly, realizing even as I spoke that it too would be evidence and I could not keep it, but. . .

  “Can we play now?” she asked.

  “After dinner,” I promised.

  The screen switched colors. I knew what was coming, so I called out Xyla’s name.

  >>Queensboro Bridge: (1) You present? (2) Caliber?<<

  I said some words to Xyla and she made them appear on the screen:

  (1) yes (2).223 Remington

  She hit the keys, and my message disappeared. Somewhere in cyber-space, I had just told a killer I was with Wesley when he’d done one of his hits. And proved it.

  You know how it is—you talk different things over with different people. I had no one to talk this over with. No point guessing what the next installment would be, or how it would end. I couldn’t make a move until he was finished with his story. If it was a story.

  Nadine called me at Mama’s. Asked: “Do you have anything yet?”

  “No,” I told her, and hung up, not even sure if I was lying.

  When I called Strega to ask her the same question, she just hissed at me, asked what I really wanted. So I hung up on her too.

  I know a brilliant guy when it comes to unhinged minds. Doc runs a little private clinic now, but I’d met him in the joint—he’d interned as a prison shrink. I could have asked him, I guess. But there just didn’t seem any point. He always said I knew more about freaks than he did.

  You could only ask the Mole techno-questions. And Michelle only emotional ones.

  Mama knew money. Max knew combat.

  The Prof knew it all. But he didn’t know this.

  I had the lines out. But I couldn’t do anything until I got a bite.

  I spent a lot of time with Pansy. Wondering how much time she had left. They say Neos are a long-lived breed. But Pansy had already gone past where they said. She looked okay—fatter, slower, maybe, but okay. I took her to a vet I know in Brooklyn. He’s not a guy I like—he works pit-bull fights for cash—but when it comes to medical stuff for someone you love, you look the other way. He said she was in good shape: heart, lungs, all that. Nothing wrong with her. “She’s just old,” the vet said.

  “Me fucking too,” I told him as I forked over the money.

  I was in the Plymouth, on my way back from wasting a couple of hours with a punk who said he wanted to buy three crates of guns. But he didn’t show me the cash and I sure wasn’t showing him any guns first. Reason the conversation took so long, neither of us knew if the other was ATF. He didn’t feel that way to me. Just some disturbo who wanted to
talk politics and had been thrown out of too many bars, so he set himself up as a buyer and got an audience that way. Pitiful stupid loser. When the ATF did drop him, he’d shriek “Entrapment!” all the way to Leavenworth.

  The cell phone throbbed next to my heart. I unholstered it, said: “What?”

  “Incoming.” Xyla’s voice.

  I punched the throttle.

  * There was no expectation of immediate response on my part. Indeed, the voice message transmitted had provided different directions entirely:

  We have your daughter. She has not been harmed in any way. This is not personal. We are professionals. Do not notify the authorities. This can be resolved very easily if you cooperate. Place an ad in the Personals column of USA Today which states: “Lost at O’Hare Airport: Saudi Arabian passport number 125689774. Repeat: 125689774. Reward for return. No questions asked.” When we see the ad, we will contact you by this same method. Any attempt to trace calls will be detected by our equipment and the subject will be terminated without further contact. You may, however, record any incoming calls so that you need not rely on your note-taking ability.

  I have found that allowing the target to tape calls provides them with a measure of reassurance. Even the most cooperative of victims can be subject to attacks of nervousness, and I would not want such a mental state in those whose *precise* cooperation would be required throughout the process.

  USA Today was selected because of its status as a “national” newspaper, available from a wide variety of totally anonymous outlets. The ad itself has the ring of authenticity: While I cannot be certain without hacking into the passenger manifests of various airlines—something of which I am certainly capable—logic compels the conclusion that some Saudi nationals have passed through America’s busiest airport within the two weeks or so preceding the placement of the ad. Further, because it is a common practice of contraband-traffickers to place apparently innocent ads which contain a series of numbers, those in law enforcement who scrutinize such placements on a regular basis would assume the ad I requested to be in that category, never connecting it to my actual intent.

  Finally, of course, no physical contact is required for me to read the ad. . . or to read subsequent entries in that same forum.

  My next task was to monitor local radio, alert to any news of the kidnapping. There was no such reference. Although I had little fear of being discovered accidentally, the thought of roaming search parties of self-righteous locals, any of whom would trade their paltry futures for a few minutes’ exposure on television, was not comforting to me. By then, the bus would have been discovered. But even had I been careless enough—and I assure you, I was not—to leave some indication of my brief presence, any bus occupied on a daily basis by a dozen or so schoolchildren would prove beyond the forensic capabilities of any local operation. In my work, I rely to some extent upon the jealousy and territoriality of local jurisdictions, and do not expect FBI involvement for a minimum of seventy-two hours. And the FBI, following its own procedures for excluding known prints, would be required to take exemplars from all of the children who habitually ride that bus. Amazing though it will sound to the uninitiated, my experience indicates that at least one of the families of the children who were not kidnapped will balk at this intrusion into their “civil rights,” thus delaying the process even further.

  None of that is of any consequence.

  Then he was done.

  I had my mouth open to call Xyla when she walked in. Almost like she knew how long it was going to take me.

  “Question coming?” she asked.

  “Always has, so far,” I replied.

  It took less than a minute.

  >>Last address?<<

  Whose address did this maniac want? Mine? Wesley’s? Wesley never had an address. The last time I’d seen him face to face, it was in an abandoned building he was using as a staging area. . . before his last strike. Was he trying to tie me to. . . No, what was the point? All this. . . information. Fuck it. I spoke to Xyla and she made it appear on the screen.

  Meserole Street

  My answer to his last question had been a pair of guesses. Even if I was right and he was asking about Wesley, the ice-man’s last hideout wasn’t actually on Meserole Street, it was just off the corner. But I couldn’t give you the number of the building if my life depended on it. That neighborhood probably didn’t even have a goddamned zip code.

  He was getting cute now. No reason for it.

  None I understood, anyway.

  “Not a single one,” Wolfe said.

  That was all she said. I felt. . . surrounded. We were in the no-man’s-land under the Williamsburg Bridge. Someone I didn’t recognize was standing off to one side, holding a revolver. It was pointed at the ground, but I was close enough to see his left hand on his right wrist. And that the piece was cocked. Mick was somewhere behind me. Max had always figured him for a karateka of some kind, but we’d never known for sure. Pepper was in the front seat of her car, watching, the motor running.

  Me, I was alone.

  Wolfe was looking at me, a glowing red neon I Don’t Trust You! sign in her gray eyes. Cold gray now.

  “Can you—?”

  “On what you gave me, no.”

  “Then I—”

  “Just give me the money,” Wolfe said.

  I guessed I’d sent the killer what he wanted. When I opened the next message, he was right back. . . continuing from where he’d left off.

  When I returned—allegedly from making a telephone call from some remote location—the child was munching calmly on some cookies, a glass of juice at her elbow, her face half buried in one of the books I had procured in anticipation of her stay. If the restraints bothered her in any way, it was not apparent.

  “Did you call them?” she asked, looking up as casually as if I had been a legitimate member of her household who had gone out to perform some mundane task.

  “I did,” I told her. “But there will be no response from them for a minimum of forty-eight hours. This whole process will take a certain amount of time.”

  “How much time?” That was a reasonable question, especially from a child’s perspective. Usually, I am careful to keep the estimate quite short (bearing in mind, of course, that even the modified form of sensory deprivation attendant to keeping a captive away from all sources of natural light is sufficient to completely blur the concept of “days”), but I sensed that this child was simply asking for information, and not emotionally invested in the response.

  “It could be as long as two or three weeks,” I said.

  “Is it ever longer?” she asked.

  I watched her eyes, aware that innocence is often a mask. Had she deduced my true calling from my prior conversation? Or was she somehow baiting me into revelation? Could she simply be curious? I decided to make no assumptions. . . .

  “Why do you ask that? Do you think I have done this sort of thing before?”

  “Oh, you must have,” she said, her little face perfectly serious. “You know everything about it. Nobody’s very good at something the first time they try it, are they?”

  “Well,” I explained, “there is a difference between talent and skill.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Let us assume you have a natural talent for. . . oh, I don’t know, say painting, all right? Now, you would be quite good at it as soon as you picked up a brush. That is, you would have a natural. . . aptitude for it. But the more you practiced, the better you would become.”

  “I have a natural talent,” the child piped up.

  “And what is that?” I asked her.

  “I can draw.”

  “Can you?” I asked, simply to engage the child. Her work on the checkerboard pieces rendered her declaration quite superfluous.

  “Yes, I can. I don’t mean trace, or color either. Not like a baby. I can draw.”

  “What do you draw?” I asked her, drawing her (pun intended) further away from the potentia
lly frightening aspects of her situation.

  “I can draw anything,” she said with the smug confidence of the very young.

  This disturbed me. I pride myself on being fully equipped, studying the child I capture well in advance to be prepared for any eventuality. For example, I once took a child who was diabetic. It was greatly reassuring to inform the parents on my very first call that I was aware of the problem and our “nurse” was on hand with all appropriate medications. Improvisation is not my forte, and leaving the hideout to obtain materials was out of the question. Still, I asked the child: “What do you need to draw?”

  She looked at me questioningly, but said nothing. Clearly, she required a further explanation.

  “What. . . materials?” I asked. “Paper, pencils. . . what sort of implements do you require?”

  “Oh!” she said brightly. “I have everything. Right in my backpack.”

  A momentary flash of paranoia—that is, paranoia in the classic psychiatric sense, not the functional hyper-vigilance which is the trademark of a successful practitioner of my profession—overcame me for an instant, but then I told her she was free to get what she needed.