Hard Candy

by Andrew Vachss

  "Mr. Smith?" he asked in a pulpy voice.

  "That's me," I assured him.

  "She's with you?"

  "In the car," I said, tilting my head to show him the direction.

  I stepped aside to let him out. The light went on inside the station wagon when the door opened. Empty. He took a black attaché case off the seat next to him.

  "She's still a little dopey," I said, walking beside him.

  "No problem."

  I lit a cigarette, the cheap lighter flaring a signal to Max.

  "She's inside," I told the fat man, patting the Plymouth's trunk.

  "Let's see."

  "Let's see the money."

  He popped open the briefcase on the trunk lid. Clean–looking bills, nicely banded. And a small plastic bottle with a spray top, some white handkerchiefs, plastic wristbands—the kind they give you in the hospital.

  "Got everything you need, huh?"

  "Hey, look, pal. This kid isn't for me, okay? I'm a businessman, just like you. In fact, you got any more where this kid came from, you just let me know. I got customers waiting."

  His fat body slammed into the back of the Plymouth as Max took him from behind—a paralyzing shot just below the ribs, a lightning chop to the exposed neck as he went down. Vomit sprayed onto the Plymouth.

  I ripped open his shirt. No wire. Pulled his wallet from an inside pocket, stripped off his watch, passed up the rings, snatched the brief–case. And left him where he was.

  It didn't make the morning papers.

  20

  THE GILT LETTERS on the pebbled–glass door said "Simon J. Rosnak—Attorney at Law." Max and I stepped inside. The girl at the front desk was a cunty brunette with sparkle–dust for mascara and the kind of mouth that would make you throw out the postage meter so you could watch her lick the stamps.

  "Can I help you?"

  "I want to see Rosnak."

  "You have an appointment?"

  "No."

  "Well, Mr. Rosnak isn't in yet. If you'll leave your name and number…"

  "He's in. I don't have time." I glanced down at the console on her desk. None of the lights were lit.

  "You can't…"

  I walked past her. "Call a cop," I advised her, leaving Max behind to keep her company.

  I found a carpeted hall, followed it to the end. Rosnak was sitting at an old wooden desk, reading some kind of ledger. He looked up when he saw me, a tired–looking man in his forties.

  "What?"

  "I need to talk some business with you."

  "I don't know you. Speak to Mona. I'm busy."

  I sat down across from him. Lit a smoke. There was no ashtray on his desk. "I need to speak with you," I said, calm and relaxed.

  "Look, buddy, this isn't a supermarket. I don't know who sent you here, but…"

  "You represent Johnny Sostre?"

  "That's not your business."

  "Attorney–client privilege, huh?"

  "You got it."

  "Only one problem. You're not an attorney."

  His eyes tracked me. Camera shutters. Waiting.

  "You're not an attorney," I said again. "You went to law school, but you dropped out in your last year. You never took the Bar. You've been running a sweet hustle, representing wiseguys. They know you're not a lawyer. You try the case, do the best you can. You win, they walk. You lose, they wait a couple of years, then they discover the truth, right? You get exposed. They file an appeal. And the court lets them walk. Ineffective assistance of counsel, they call it. Never fails. Josephs did the same thing a few years ago."

  He watched me, waiting.

  I tapped cigarette ash onto his desk. "Only problem is, you got to have perfect timing. This scam works just one time, no repeats. You got…what? Ten, fifteen clients now? Got half a dozen guys already upstate doing time. You get exposed at the right time, all the convictions get reversed. And it's a few years later. Witnesses disappear, memory gets soft, people forget, evidence gets misplaced…you know how it works. But you move too soon, it's all for nothing. The DA still has everything he needs, and they just try the cases again. Besides, you're in the middle of a bunch of new cases. They discover the truth now, and you're out of business."

  He leaned forward. "The people I represent … you know who they are?"

  "Yeah."

  "You know they wouldn't like this kind of thing."

  "Don't tell them."

  I ground out my smoke, waiting.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  "One time," I told him. "One time only. Fifty large, and I'm gone."

  "You're crazy."

  "But not bluffing."

  He fumbled with some papers on his desk. "I need some time."

  "This is Tuesday. Friday, you get the cash. I'll call, tell you how to drop it off."

  I got up to go. Looked down at him. "I'll save you some phone calls. Burke."

  "Who's Burke?"

  "Me."

  Friday, the juicy brunette took a cab to Chinatown at lunchtime. She got out, and the crowd swallowed her up. When she caught another cab, she didn't have her pocketbook with her.

  21

  I WAS AT Mama's when a call came in. Julio. I called the old gangster back at the social club he uses for headquarters. His dry snakeskin voice sounded like a cancer ward.

  "You did me a service once, I don't forget. So this is a favor, Burke. You stung Rosnak. He went crying to the boys. I squared it, okay? There's no comeback on this one. But give it a rest—stay out of our business."

  I let him feel my silence. The phone line hummed.

  "You hear what I'm telling you?"

  "Sure."

  "You found out some things. Okay, a man's entitled to make some money, he finds out some things. You made enough money. Stick to citizens."

  I hung up.

  22

  THERE WAS money out there. The city was a boom town. Drugs, not oil. The prospectors drove triple–black Jeeps, wore paper–thin Italian leather, mobile cellular telephones in holsters over their shoulders. Music in their brain–dead heads: Gotta Get Paid. Gold on their bodies, paid for with bodies on the ground. Babies got killed in the crossfire. Children did the shooting. Cocaine was the crop, in countries whose names they couldn't spell. And here, crack was the cash. Named for the sound it made when it hit the streets.

  "Gold on their wrist, a pistol in your fist," the Prof rapped, trying to pull me in. Easy pickings. It wasn't for me.

  I couldn't let it go. I read a copy of the Penal Law Davidson gave me. Incest. The legislature put it in the same class as adultery. I guess they thought a kid should Just Say No.

  23

  I MET MICHELLE in Bryant Park, next to the Public Library right off Times Square.

  "I'm going away for a while," she said.

  "Okay."

  "To Denmark, Burke. I'm going to have it done."

  "You got enough cash?"

  "Yes. I've been saving for a long time. You impressed?"

  I nodded.

  "It has to be. I'm not having my boy grow up an outlaw, Burke."

  "You're going to take him from the Mole?"

  "I wouldn't do that. He's ours, not just mine. I know that. But that's no life for him. I want him to be something."

  "The Mole's something."

  Her hand on my forearm, lacquered nails shining in the late autumn sun. "I know, baby."

  I lit a cigarette.

  "I won't be any different," she said.

  "I know."

  "But you are."

  I didn't say anything.

  "You don't want me to go, say the word."

  "Go."

  "You can get me the papers?"

  "A passport?"

  "And… later…I want to adopt Terry. Make it legal."

  "Why?"

  "Why? You know what I am. Trapped all my life in this body. I can change that. Be myself. The boy…I don't want him to grow up like…"

  "Like me?"

  "I love you, Burke
. You know that. I'd never walk away from you." She kissed my cheek, walked away.

  24

  ONCE I COULD always find something on the sweet side of the edge I lived on. It was gone. Even in prison, there were some things you could laugh at. That was then. The Plymouth drifted back to Mama's. I pushed a cassette into the slot. Janis Joplin. Pure estrogen filtered through sandpaper. Begging some man to take her pain, twist it into love. Throwing her soul at a barbed–wire screen until it diced.

  I heard Belle's little–girl voice. "Rescue me."

  She'd asked the wrong man.

  25

  "SHE CALL AGAIN," Mama greeted me.

  I looked a question at her.

  "Woman say her name Candy, remember? Little Candy from Hudson Street. Very important."

  "Nothing's so important."

  Mama's eyes were black, small hard dots in her smooth round face. "Baby important, okay? Baby safe now."

  "I thought…"

  "Yes. You think, you think what is right. Big girl, you love her, she's gone. High price."

  "Too high."

  "No. Babies die first, soon no people, okay?"

  I put my fingers on each side of my head, holding it like an eggshell with cracks. I wanted to howl like Pansy, grieve for my woman. For myself. Nothing came.

  Mama stayed with me. One of the waiters came over, said something in Cantonese. Mama ignored him. He went away. I felt the trembling inside me, but it wasn't my old pal this time. Not fear. I wasn't afraid. Too sad to cry. Nothing left alive to hate.

  I looked over at the only woman I had ever called Mama. "Max could have beaten him."

  "Maybe."

  "I didn't know the answer, Mama."

  She tapped my hand to make me watch her face. See the truth. "You don't know the answer, you must be the answer."

  "Who said that? Confucius?"

  "I say that," she said.

  When she got up, she left a piece of paper in front of me.

  26

  I USED A pay phone off Sutton Place. Not my neighborhood, but the best place to call from. The feds wouldn't tap these phones—they might net somebody they knew. I looked at the slip of paper Mama gave me. Seven numbers, a local call. I pushed the buttons, working backward from the last digit. Mama writes all numbers backwards—she says it's Chinese bookkeeping.

  She answered on the third ring. In a throaty low purr sweet enough to kill a diabetic.

  "Hello, baby."

  "You called me?"

  "Burke? Is that really you?"

  "It's me."

  "You know who this is?"

  "Yeah."

  "Can I see you?"

  "Why?"

  "I have something for you."

  "Nothing I want."

  "You remember me?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you know I've got something you want."

  "Not anymore."

  "Yes, yes I do. I got something you want. Love or money. One way or the other."

  "No."

  "Yes. You wouldn't have called otherwise. I know you. I know you better than anyone."

  "You don't know me."

  "Come over and listen to me. I won't bite you. Unless you want me to. Friday afternoon."

  I didn't say anything.

  She gave me an address.

  I hung up.

  27

  I DROVE BACK to my office. My home. Let Pansy out onto her roof. Lit a cigarette and looked out the window, feeling the airborne sewage the yuppies called a river breeze.

  I think her real name was Renée. Or Irene. She always called herself Candy. I couldn't bring her face into my mind but I'd never forget her. She was just a kid then. Maybe thirteen years old. But you could run Con Ed for a year on what she wanted.

  She didn't have what she wanted then. None of us did. So we fought young animals just like us—fighting over what we'd never own. We called things ours. Our turf. Our women. The street forked at the end. Where we found what was really ours. Mine was prison.

  Girls like Candy were always around. We didn't have pistols or shotguns then. Just half–ass zip guns that would blow up in your hand when you pulled the trigger. But you could break a glass bottle into a pile of flesh–ripping shards. Squeeze a thick glob of white Elmer's Glue into your palm. Twirl a rope through it until it was coated end to end. Then twirl it again, through the glass. Wait for it to dry and you had a glass rope. When you got real close, you could use half a raw potato, its face studded with double–edged razor blades. Car antennas. Lead pipes. Cut–down baseball bats with nails poking through them. Sit around in some abandoned apartment, drink some cheap wine, pour a few of the red drops on the ground in tribute to your brothers who got to the jailhouse or the graveyard before you did. Toke on throat–searing marijuana. Wait for the buzz. Then you meet the other losers. In a playground if they knew you were coming. In an alley if they didn't. The newspapers called it gang wars. If you made it back to the club, the girls were there. If you got too broken to run, you got busted. And if you stayed on the concrete, maybe you got your name in the papers.

  When I went to reform school, she wrote me a letter. A poem, just for me. Signed it that way. "Love, Candy. Just for you." Nobody had ever done anything like that for me. The feeling lasted until I found out it was the words from some song she'd heard on the radio.

  Little Candy. A whore in her heart even then. Just what I needed to cheer me up.

  28

  HER BUILDING was a co–op in the Thirties, near the river. We watched it for a couple of days, seeing how it worked. The doorman handled both ends of the building. No problem. On Friday, the Prof rang the service bell at the rear. When the doorman left his post, Max and I stepped inside, past the sign that said "All Visitors Must Be Announced." I took the elevator to the sixteenth floor, Max took the stairs. He was there before I was. We walked up five more flights to the top floor. He stood off to the side as I knocked. I heard the peephole slide back. The door opened. "It is you," she said.

  I didn't know the woman. Candy had been a slim, dark–haired child. Her body hadn't caught up to her hormones then. But I'd never forget her eyes: yellow, like a cat's, tipped at the corners, glowing under heavy dark lashes. This woman looked about thirty—ten years younger than she should have been. Her black hair was as short as a man's, soft and fine, framing her face. Barefoot, she stood as tall as my jaw. Her eyes were a bright, china–doll blue. The woman had an hourglass figure—the kind where the sand takes forever to get to the bottom but has plenty of room to spread out once it arrives. She was wearing a pair of ragged blue–jean shorts and one of those little T–shirts that stop around the diaphragm. Pale flesh covered her stomach, muscle rippled just below the skin when she spoke.

  "It's me, for real."

  I shook my head. "Who gave you my name?"

  "Burke! It's me. You don't recognize me?"

  I let my eyes travel over her. "Not a line."

  She fluffed her hair, ran her hands quickly over her face, across her breasts, down past her hips, patted the front of her thighs. "It's all new."

  "Some things you can't change," I told her, reaching behind me for the doorknob.

  "You don't remember me at all," she said, sadness in her voice.

  I closed one eye, watching her with the other. Tapped the closed lid. It was the only chance she'd get.

  "Oh! Damn! I forgot. Wait a minute."

  I didn't move. She put a hand on my arm. Nails cut short, no polish. "Please."

  I watched her walk over to the window, tilt her head back, reach into her eyes. Pull something away from each one. "Come here, Burke. Just for a minute… okay?"

  I went to the window, the carpet soft under my feet. The late afternoon sunlight came through the window. "Take a better look," she said, her voice soft.

  The yellow cat's eyes watched me.

  "Contact lenses." A little girl's whisper, giggling at soft conspiracies.

  Candy.

  29

  THERE W
AS a white phone on a glass table near the couch. One of those Swedish designer jobs, big round numbers in four grids of three. I left her standing by the window, picked up the receiver, and dialed the number of the pay phone on the corner. I scanned the joint while the phone rang—it looked like the waiting room in an expensive clinic. The Prof answered. "Call you back in fifteen minutes," I said, and hung up.

  I sat down on the couch. Lit a cigarette, watching her. Thinking how I should look through the place first. But it didn't feel like a trap. And a woman who could change herself into something new could hide a microphone anyplace.

  "What do you want?" I asked her.

  She came to the couch, sat at the opposite end, curling her legs under her like a teenager.

  "Maybe I just wanted to see you."

  "Write me a letter."

  She shook her head slightly, a fighter shaking off a punch. "I was just a kid."

  I shrugged.

  "You're still angry with me?"

  "I'm not angry with anyone. I don't know you."

  "But…"

  "I remember you. It's not the same as knowing you, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "What do you want, Irene?"

  "I haven't been Irene for a long time. That's one of the things I changed."

  "What do I call you?"

  "Whatever you want. That's me—I can be whatever you want. There's all kinds of candy."

  "That's what you do now?"

  "That's what I do."

  I looked her over again, seeing it. "You got a closet full of wigs too?"

  Her smile flashed. She scissored her legs off the couch, held out her hand to me. I grabbed her wrist instead, my thumb hard against the nerve junction. She didn't seem to notice. I left my cigarette burning in the ashtray. She led me down a carpeted hall, stepped into a room nearly as big as the living room. One wall was floor–to–ceiling mirrors. "My closet," she said.