Hard Candy

by Andrew Vachss

  He tapped my shoulder. Holding a slab of cash in each hand. Nodded. All there. He put one hand in his pocket, the other in mine. We'd split the front money too.

  I spun my finger in a circle, tapped the back of my neck. Anybody follow us?

  The blunt–faced Mongol tapped one eye. Shook his head no. But then he shuddered his shoulders like he got a chill. Something. Something you couldn't see.

  I checked the rearview mirror, moving through traffic. Max didn't spook at shadows. I pointed north. He nodded. Anyone following us to the junkyard would stick out like a beer drinker at a Jim Jones picnic.

  We crossed the Triboro, turned into the jungle. Nothing behind us. I whipped the Plymouth into a tight U–turn, pointed back the way we came. Max lit a smoke for himself, one for me.

  Half an hour later it was still quiet. The cops don't have that much patience. I took another route back downtown, dropped Max off near the warehouse, and headed back to the office.

  Pansy was glad to see me.

  52

  I FELT BETTER when I got up the next morning. Not good enough to bet on a horse, but like something bad was over. It was still early enough to risk using the phone in my office. My phone is just an extension run from the collection of deservedly unknown artists who live downstairs. They don't know about it—neither does Ma Bell. They probably wouldn't care if they did know—they don't pay their own bills.

  "Any calls, Mama?"

  "No calls. You come in today, okay?"

  "Anything wrong?"

  "Someone leave note for you."

  "So?"

  "Talk later," she said, hanging up.

  I took a quarter–pound slab of cream cheese out of the refrigerator, dropped it in the bottom of Pansy's bowl, covered it with her dry dog food. "I'll bring you something good from Mama's," I promised her.

  53

  MAMA WAS at the table almost before I sat down. She handed me a cheap white business envelope, the top neatly slit open. The note was typed:

  Burke: Be by your phone at 11:00 tonight. Don't have anybody take a message. Be there yourself. Wesley

  I drew a narrow breath through my nose. Let it out. Again. Feeling the fear–jolts dart around inside my chest, looking for a place to land. I lit a cigarette, holding the note against the match flame, watching it turn to ash. Wishing I'd never seen it.

  "You see him?"

  "A boy. Street boy. Around five o'clock this morning."

  "He say anything?"

  "Not see me. Push this under the front door, run away."

  "You opened it?"

  She bowed. It was okay. I knew why she told me to come in. She never met Wesley, but she knew the name. Every outlaw in the city did.

  "Burke? What you do?"

  "Answer the phone when it rings," I told her.

  54

  I SAT THERE quietly while Mama went to call Immaculata. To tell Max the devil was loose. Wesley never threatened. He was terror. Cold as a heat–seeking missile. He took your money, you got a body. Years ago my compadre Pablo told me about a contract Wesley had on a Puerto Rican dope dealer uptown. The dealer knew the contract was out. He went to a Santeria priestess, begging for voodoo heat against the glacier coming for him. The priestess took the dealer's money, told him Chango, the warrior–god, would protect him. She was an evil old demon, feared throughout the barrio. Her crew was all Marielitos. Zombie–driven murderers. They set fires to watch the flames. Ate the charred flesh. Tattoos on their hands to tell you their specialty. Weapons, drugs, extortion, homicide. The executioner's tattoo was an upside–down heart with an arrow through it. Cupid as a hit man.

  The priestess called on her gods. Killed chickens and goats. Sprinkled virgin's blood on a knife. Loosed her death–dogs into the street looking for Wesley.

  The dealer hid in her house. Safe.

  Blazing summer, but the kids stayed off the streets. Winter always comes.

  A UPS driver pulled up outside the apartment house where the priestess kept her temple. Her Marielitos slammed him against his truck, pulling at his clothes. Eyes watched from beneath slitted shades. They took a small box from the driver, laughing when he said someone had to sign for it.

  They held the box under an opened fire hydrant, soaking the paper off. One of the Marielitos held the box to his ear, shaking it. Another pulled a butterfly knife from his pocket, flashed it open in the street, grinning. They squatted, watching as the box was slit open. Looked inside. They stopped laughing.

  They took the box inside to the priestess. A few minutes later, the dope dealer was thrown into the street, hands cuffed behind his back, duct tape sealing his mouth. He ran from the block.

  They whispered about it. In the bodegas, in the after–hours joints, on the streets. They said the priestess found the hand of her executioner inside the box, the tattoo mocking her. Chango was angry. So she found a better sacrifice than a chicken.

  The cops found the dealer a few blocks away, a tight group of four slugs in his chest, another neat hole in his forehead. Nobody heard shots.

  55

  MAX CAME Into the restaurant. Sat across from me. Made the same gesture of getting a chill through his back he'd made when I'd asked him about being followed. Now we knew. Gold tones shot through his bronze skin—the warrior's blood was up. He showed me a fist, stabbed his heart with his thumb. I wasn't dealing him out of this one. Max tapped my wristwatch. Shrugged. I knew what he meant: why wait? I shook my head, held an imaginary telephone receiver up to my ear. If Wesley wanted to come for me, he wouldn't play games. It had to be something else.

  Max folded his arms across his chest. I wanted to wait, he was waiting with me.

  I told Mama I'd be back before the call came through, catching Max's eyes. No games—I'd be there.

  56

  PANSY TORE into the gallon of meat and vegetables Mama had put together for her. No MSG. I closed my eyes and lay back on the couch. Watching the smoke drift toward the ceiling. Wondering how long it would be before the office got back to its usual filthy state. The way it had been for years until Belle hit it like dirt was her personal enemy.

  Wesley. We'd once worshiped the same god. But only Wesley had been true.

  It had been a long time.

  57

  I WAS BACK at the restaurant before ten. "Max still here," Mama told me. "In the basement."

  There's a bank of three pay phones past the tables, just outside the kitchen area. One of them is mine. People call, Mama answers. Tells them I'm not in, takes a message. It's worked like that for years.

  The phone rang at ten–thirty. I looked at my watch. It wasn't like Wesley to be cute. I grabbed the phone.

  "Yeah?"

  "You answer your own phone now?" Candy.

  "What?"

  "I have to see you."

  "I'm busy."

  "I know what you're busy with…it's about that. You want me to talk on the phone?"

  "I'll call you when I can come."

  "Call soon. You don't have a lot of time."

  58

  AT ELEVEN the phone rang again I picked it up, saying nothing.

  "It's you?"

  "It's me," I said to the voice.

  "We need to talk."

  "Talk."

  "Face to face."

  "You know where I am."

  "Not there."

  "Where, then?"

  "Take the bridge to the nuthouse on the island. Pull over as soon as you get in sight of the guard booth. Midnight tomorrow. Okay?"

  "Want me to wear a bull's–eye on my back?"

  "I don't care what you wear, but leave the Chinaman at home."

  "What's this about?"

  "Business," Wesley said, breaking the connection.

  59

  I FELT LIKE calling a cop. It passed.

  Max didn't like any of it. When he gets like that, he acts like he can't read my hand signals. Everything takes longer.

  None of our crew ever messed in Wesley's business. We d
idn't work the same side of the street. Max knew the myth; I knew the man. They both played the same. Finally, I got through to Max: if Wesley wanted me, bringing him along would just add another target. I played my trump card. Religion. Our religion. Revenge. If Wesley hit me, Max would have to square it. He bowed in agreement. I could always talk him into anything.

  And I wasn't going alone.

  60

  IT WAS ABOUT eleven when I pulled out of the garage the next night, heading for the East Side Drive. If the cops stopped me, they'd get license and registration from Juan Rodriguez. I had a Social Security card too. Juan always pays his taxes and his parking tickets. They wouldn't find dope and they wouldn't find a gun. Pansy made a sleek black shadow in the back where I had pulled out the lower seat cushion, growling to herself. Glad to be along. "Keep your voice down," I told her. "You're supposed to be a surprise."

  I took the East Side Drive to the exit for the Triboro, paid the toll, and hooked the turn onto the short bridge for Randalls Island. Followed the signs to Wards Island, then to the Kirby Psychiatric Institute. Home to the criminally insane. The Plymouth trolled under the maze of connecting ramps running above us. I spotted the guard booth about a quarter mile ahead. Behind the booth was a network of state institutional buildings, the size of a small town. Huge sewage disposal plant to my left. Everything Wesley needed.

  I pulled over, sliding the Plymouth a few yards off the road. Killed the lights. Flattened my hand in front of Pansy's snout to tell her to stay where she was. Left the door wide open. Lit a smoke.

  He came out of the night like he must have come the very first time. Wearing military fatigues in dark gray with black camouflage splotches. Dull black jungle boots on his feet, a soft hat in the same camo–pattern pulled down to his eyes. Black slashes below his eyes. Hands covered in dark gloves, held where I could see them. His voice was like his clothes.

  "You came alone?"

  "My dog's in the car.

  "Call it out."

  I snapped my fingers. Pansy bounded off the seat, landing next to me on all fours, head tilted up to watch Wesley's groin. If she fired, she wouldn't go higher than that.

  My eyes shifted back to Wesley. To the Uzi in his hands, held tight against the strap around his neck. "Tell it to get down," he said, the barrel pointed between me and Pansy, ready to squirt us both into chunks of dead flesh.

  I made the sign and Pansy hit the deck.

  "Why's the dog here?"

  "What d'you care? She can't talk."

  "Put her back in the car. And lock it."

  I pointed to the car. Pansy jumped into the back seat. I slammed the back door. Put my key in the lock and twisted it, left and right. Stood aside as Wesley tried both doors, Pansy's huge head looming behind the glass, tracking him. The second twist of the key had popped the trunk. If I called her, she'd come out that way.

  "Go ahead," he said, pointing into the underbrush. I followed a narrow dirt path, feeling him behind me. We came to an abandoned pickup truck, rusting to death, its nose buried in one of the I–beams holding up the overpass.

  "Sit down," he said.

  I hoisted myself up to the pickup's open bed, legs dangling. "Can I…?"

  He held his finger to his lips. I counted to fifty before he spoke again.

  "Yeah, you can smoke. I know you not carrying."

  I took one out, bit hard into the filter to stop my mouth from trembling. Fired it up, cupping the flame. Wesley stood facing me, legs spread, hands behind him. The Uzi was gone.

  He didn't look like much. If you didn't know, he could walk up to you—you wouldn't know him till you felt him. The same way cancer works.

  "Why am I here?"

  "You totaled a freak. Mortay."

  I waited. A tiny gleam of white at his mouth. Wesley's smile. "You think I'm trying to get you to confess? Working for the Man?"

  "I know you, Wesley. You don't ask questions."

  "Yeah I do. I always ask who. Never ask why."

  "Okay."

  "We go back a long way, Burke."

  "This a reunion?"

  "You know what I do. Ever since I got out the last time. They give me a name, I do my work. This Mortay, he was off the rails. He had to go. I was tracking him when you went nuts and blew him up."

  Toby Ringer had told me the truth. Belle died for nothing. If Wesley was tracking Mortay, all I had to do was wait. All for nothing. "I didn't know," I said, working to keep my voice from cracking. I never said truer words.

  "They don't want to pay me," he said. Like God was dead.

  "So?"

  "So I don't work for them anymore." His body shifted slightly. I thought about the Uzi. Dismissed it—on the best day of my life, I wasn't fast enough. "You got in the way with that freak. You fucked things up. That's one time. It happens. But now the word's all over the street—you're in business. My business."

  "I'm not—that's not me."

  "I know. You're a hijacker. A sting artist. You got friends." His dead man's voice made the word sound like a perversion.

  "What's your problem?"

  "Train. You know him."

  "Yeah."

  "He's on the spot. He has to go down. You've been sniffing around. Either you're working for him or you're looking to take him out."

  "No. I had a contract. I pulled a girl out of his joint."

  "I saw that."

  "That's it. There's no more."

  "You know what he does?"

  "No."

  "Don't find out."

  I lit another smoke, watching my hands near the flame. They didn't shake. Wesley took you past fear.

  "Wesley, I got no beef with you. You know that. You want to know something, ask me. And let me go."

  "You know why I wanted you out here? You're a fucking nut–case yourself, Burke. You got this Jones for kids. I know about the day–care center too. Out in Queens. Why didn't you use the Chinaman on Mortay?"

  "He wasn't around."

  "Something about a kid, right?"

  I just watched him.

  "Yeah, you're bent. Remember when we were coming up? Learning the rules? You don't work with drunks, you don't work with dope fiends, you don't work with skinners, right? You don't work with nobody who's off the track. Now it's you—you're off the track."

  Tracks. I was a kid again in my mind. In a subway tunnel. Me and Rupert facing each other. Chins on the tracks, bodies spread out behind. The rest of the gang waited off to the side. I heard the rumble of the train, felt the track tremble under my jawbone. Watching Rupert. Last one off the tracks was the winner. Sixteen years old. Don't mind dying. I read my tombstone: Burke Had Heart. Better than flowers. Rupert's face a few feet from mine. He'd offered a knife fight, I bumped the stakes with the train tracks—the tunnel. No matter what happened, I'd have a name. It wouldn't hurt, I told myself. The train roared at us, coming hard, a hundred–ton mindless life–taker. Light washed the black tunnel. Rupert jumped back. Me! My legs wouldn't work. Hands grabbed my ankles, jerked me off the track, cracking my jaw. The train shot past.

  That night, on the roof, Candy took my cock in her mouth for the first time.

  "I was the last off the track," I reminded him.

  "Yeah." A robot's voice. He knew the truth. Even when we were kids, Wesley knew the truth. He'd been there. His hands on my ankles. If he hadn't pulled after Rupert jumped back, I'd still be there. "Train's a dead man. My dead man. You get in the way again, you go with him."

  "I'm not in the way."

  His face moved closer, watching mine. No psychiatrist could read his eyes—you can't take a census when there's nobody home. I held his gaze, letting him in. See the truth, monster. See it again.

  He stepped back. "You're not good enough," he said. Not putting me down, just saying it. "You still do that trick? Where you memorize something without writing it down?"

  "Yeah."

  He said a number. "You call this number. Anytime. Let it ring three times. Hang up. Do it again. Th
en you wait by the number I have for you."

  "I don't need to call you."

  "Yeah you will. I know how things work. You used to know too."

  He put his gloved hands together, looking down at the temple they made. "Kids…what fucking difference does it make, Burke?"

  Once I thought it did. Prayed to that god in the orphanage, in the foster homes, in reform school. Somebody would come. Be my family. I found my family in prison. Prayed to another god. Belle in my mind. Rescue me. Sure. The first god ignored me. The second came close enough for me to have a good look. "It doesn't make any," I said to him.

  "You're a burnt–out case," the monster told me. "You're done."

  "Okay." Nothing to argue about.

  "Train's safe for a bit. I'll get to him. But first I got a whole lot of Italians to do."

  "Do what you have to do—I'm not in it."

  His eyes were tombstones. With no date of birth and no epitaph. "I know how things work. You'll get a call, hit man. Then you call me, got it?" The Uzi came into his hands again. "Stay where you are for a few minutes."

  He didn't make a sound moving off past the pickup, away from the Plymouth.

  I sat staring into the darkness. Counting the years. Lit another smoke. It was snatched out of my hand. Max the Silent held it to his own lips.

  61

  DRIVING HOME, Max was full of warrior's fire. Full of himself. He grabbed my wrist, tapped the face of my watch, shrugged his shoulders. Sneered. "Anytime," he was saying. Anytime we wanted. Max would cancel the undertaker's ticket.

  Too many boxes inside too many boxes. If Max could roll up on Wesley in the dark, I wasn't the only burnt–out case on the set.

  I dropped Max off and headed back uptown.

  62

  I FOUND THE PROF in an after–hours joint by the river. He caught my nod. I waited outside for him. The little man hopped in the front seat, tossing his cane into the back. Pansy's snarl swiveled his head.