Hard Candy

by Andrew Vachss

  "How?"

  "She was murdered."

  "Oh. You know who did it?"

  "Yes."

  "Is he…the perpetrator…arrested?"

  "No. And he's not gonna be."

  "Why?"

  I held her eyes until she understood. "And that didn't end it for you?"

  "No."

  Lily combed both hands through her thick hair, pulling the mane off her forehead. "You don't know about grief, do you, Burke? You pay your debts, it's supposed to be all done, right?"

  I nodded.

  "Your friend…you loved her?"

  "Still do."

  She watched my face. "And she knew? You told her?"

  "Just before…"

  "That's not too late."

  I lit another cigarette, biting deep into the filter, cupping the match to give my eyes a rest from Lily. "She didn't have to die," I said.

  "You think it was your fault?"

  "It was my fault."

  "She was with you? In your life?"

  I nodded.

  "Then she knew…"

  I nodded again.

  "Burke, listen to me, okay? Some pain's not supposed to go away. That's the price. That's what it costs to remember her."

  "Aren't you going to tell me to remember the good times?"

  Lily's voice was sweet and quiet, but it made you listen. Honey–in–the–rock. "We all know you're a hard man, Burke. If it works so well for you, why did you come here?"

  "Nothing works all the time."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I played all my cards, Lily."

  "Then do what you do best."

  My eyes flicked up to her face, watching.

  "Steal some more," she said, a Madonna's smile so faint I couldn't be sure it was ever there.

  69

  A PLANE CAN run on automatic pilot, but it hits the ground when it runs out of fuel. Nothing was pushing me. I needed to get back to where I was before. Before Belle. The sands shifted—I couldn't find my own footprints. Throwing antacid tablets into a cauldron of boiling lye. Stealing and scamming didn't bring me any closer. Everything worked. The money kept coming in but there was no payoff.

  Even Wesley's fear–jolts wouldn't jump–start my battery.

  Dead and gone. Dead and gone.

  I called Candy.

  70

  SHE ANSWERED the door, left me there while she walked away. I knew her this time, even with the blond wig and the violet contact lenses. Much taller in four–inch spikes, ankle straps lancing across the seams that ran down the back of her dark silk stockings. She was wearing a wool minidress in some metallic green color, a heavy black chain around her waist as a belt. Swinging the long end of the chain in one hand, a leopard twitching her tail. Waiting.

  I walked as far as the couch, flicking the ashes off my cigarette in the general direction of the ashtray on the end table. She twirled, hands on her hips. "Sit down."

  I didn't like the sound. "Don't make a mistake," I told her. "I'm not the trick who just left."

  A smile blazed across her face. Perfect teeth, as real as the violet eyes. A sociopath's smile. A woman smiles at you…for you…it's like a rheostat…comes on slow until it hits full boost. Little tiny increments. Different every time. Hers was an on–off switch. She came to me, tilted her seamless face up to mine, tried to bring some feeling into those cash–register eyes, wet her lips. "I'm sorry, baby. I was teasing. Some men like to be teased. I just want to talk your language. Whatever that is."

  "Dónde está el dinero?" I said. Thinking of Wolfe. The beautiful prosecutor sitting in her office, a killer Rottweiler at her feet, my rap sheet spread out in front of her. "John Burke, Maxwell Burke, Robert Burke, Juan Burke…Juan? Say something in Spanish, Mr. Burke." I sang my theme song for her.

  Wolfe got it when I said it. Candy lived it. "I promised you a couple of things. You sure you only want the cash?"

  "Yeah."

  She curled up on the couch, her legs beneath her. I sat next to her, not too close. Her lacquered fingernails played with the buttons on the front of her dress. Opened one. Then another. The black lace bra stopped just above her nipples. "A lot sweeter than when you last saw them, huh? When we were kids. Remember?"

  What's real? Candy wasn't a woman before the surgeons did their work. And Michelle, the most woman I'd ever met, even with the spare parts they threw in as a dirty joke.

  "I never saw them when we were kids," I told her.

  It was the truth. Foreplay was for people with money. People who had doors you could close. Elephants don't fuck the way rabbits do. Predator pressure sets the rhythm.

  "You want to see them now?"

  "No."

  She shifted her hips, moved against me, face in my chest. "Pretend you just got out of prison," she whispered. "You could do all the things you dreamed about every night."

  Her perfume was thick, with a sharp underbase, like it came from inside her body. The last couple of times I got out of prison, I knew where to go. What to do. But the first time out… it was like she said.

  I tossed my duffel bag on the bed in the cheap hotel and hit the street. I needed a gun. And a cabdriver who wouldn't get a tip. But first things first. The skinny whore in the screaming–red dress was waiting in a doorway a block from the hotel. Dishwater blond, hard–boned face, yellowish teeth, blue–veined hands, two bracelets on her narrow wrist, junkie's eyes. She was probably young and plump and dumb and sassy when she got off the bus from West Virginia.

  "You wanna have a party, honey?"

  I looked at her face.

  "Ten and two, baby. I french, I do it all…come on."

  I felt the street. Every doorway had one like her.

  She knew it too. "It might as well be me, mister."

  Another hotel. Two dollars to the clerk. No register to sign. I followed her up the stairs to the second floor. She put the key in her purse, left it open, waiting. I handed her the ten bucks. Peeling wall–paper, swaybacked single bed against one wall, bare mattress. She took a yellowed sheet from the top of a pile on a straight–backed chair, flicked it open, covered the bed. She never turned on the light. Street–neon washed against the streaked window. She pulled the paper shade down. Reached down to the hemline, pulled the cheap dress over her head. Dark elastic garters at the top of her stockings, joyless little breasts in the dim light.

  "You want something special, honey? A little half 'n' half?"

  No need.

  "Let me look at you, baby. Milk it down for you one time, okay? Can't be gettin' burned; I got me a big habit to support." Reaching over to me, her thumb hard against the underside of my cock. "You all ready to go, huh, baby? I like a man all ready to go. You ain't no kid all charged up on beer, huh?"

  Yes and No.

  She fell back on the bed, still holding me in one hand, tied us together, rocked back to the base of her spine, grabbed her knees. "Come here, baby. It's riding time."

  It didn't take long.

  This. Fucking. Nothing.

  "I DIDN'T just get out of prison," I told her.

  "Just the money?"

  "Just the money."

  "I know you, Burke. I know you forever." It sounded like a threat.

  "We've been through that."

  "You're not here just for the money."

  "I'm not here at all, you don't tell me what you want."

  She took a breath. Her breasts blossomed. "Train," she said.

  "What's that mean?"

  "Not what you think."

  "I don't have time for this." I started to get off the couch. She threw herself across my lap. I reached under the wig to the back of her neck, squeezed. Hard. Pulled her face up to mine. Her eyes were measuring, calculating. "You like that? You want to hurt me?"

  My hand came off her neck by itself.

  She locked my eyes. Saw the truth. "No, that's not you," she whispered. "Hard man, soft center. I know you. Remember the kitten? I was with you when you found it. In t
he basement, remember?"

  SIMON. He was in the gang with us. A freak. Liked to hurt things. Especially small things. Liked to set fires too. Nobody said anything. Simon was a good man in a rumble, quick with a razor. We weren't running a therapeutic community. The kitten was hanging from a noose made out of a coat hanger, ripped from chin to balls, its guts trailing out all the way to the floor. Making sounds no living thing should make. Candy was with me. We were hurrying down there for the darkness and the sex when we heard the tiny shrieks.

  I remembered. I unhooked the kitten. Laid it on the concrete floor. Found a brick. Pounded its head into flat jelly. I didn't know how to stop its pain, so I made it all stop.

  I found Simon out on the flatlands that night. Burning something on a spit over a little fire. I didn't want to know what it was. I left him there. When I threw the tire iron into the street it was so slick with pulp that it skidded for half a block.

  "I PAID that off."

  "Yeah. You kept your name. But I remember. You cried for an hour over that kitten. Cried like a baby. You were shaking so hard I didn't think you'd ever get up. You were going to do the same thing to Simon. Remember how you swore that? And how you told the others it was your kitten Simon tortured? Liar! You never had a kitten—you don't even like them."

  She sounded like the judge who told me I was a menace to society.

  "That never happened," I said, lighting a cigarette. "Your mind is all fucked up."

  "I kept your secret. I could have told…"

  "Who'd listen to a little cunt like you?"

  "Anybody who wanted it—and they all did."

  "'Cause they paid?"

  "That's the way you tell."

  "That's the way you tell. That's all you know."

  "I know you," she said, the dress sliding off her shoulders.

  I got up to leave. She stood before me, stepping into my chest. I remembered the basement. How she watched while I cried. How she never touched me—waiting to see who'd win. It wasn't hard keeping my hands from her body. Just from her throat.

  I turned sharply away from her, my shoulder cracked against her jaw.

  "You never knew how to hold a woman," she said.

  "I know how to hold what matters."

  "A gun?" she sneered.

  "A grudge," I told her, stepping out of the whorehouse.

  71

  COLD FIRE inside me. Ugly acid, all the way to my eyes, burning off the haze. I felt them cut through the darkness as I neared my car. Everything in sharp–edged black&white. I wanted to talk to whoever took Belle from me and offered this sociopathic slut in return. Just for a hair–trigger minute.

  A lump of shadow against the building wall a few feet from the passenger side of the Plymouth. I stepped forward fast on my left foot like I was going to charge, locked on the pavement, pivoted, and threw myself behind the car, turtlenecking like a gunshot was coming. Heard a grunt, a body slamming into the passenger side. Silence. Steel–palmed hands clapped once, twice. Max.

  He was standing on the sidewalk, a body at his feet. His hands went parallel to the ground, palms down, patted the air twice. The body was alive. I knelt down to take a look, Max watching my back.

  A small body, wrapped in a Navy pea coat, hooded sweatshirt inside covering the head. Dark gloves. Jeans and sneakers. I pulled the hood away from the face. Elvira, the wolf–child. Eyes closed, face blue–toned in the streetlight. I pinched her lower jaw—her tongue slid out. I looked up at Max. He tapped his diaphragm with two stiffened fingers. Just the wind knocked out of her. I touched the face of my wristwatch. Max's finger made one full circle, flashed his hand open and closed. She'd been waiting over an hour—since I'd parked the car.

  I opened the passenger door and we put her into the front seat. I motioned for Max to climb in behind her. He bowed, brought his hands together, and disappeared. He was doing his work, not mine.

  72

  BY THE TIME I got near the river she was sucking in ragged gulps through her mouth. I hit the power–window switch to give her some air.

  "Breathe through your nose. Shallow breaths. In and out. You're okay."

  "I'm going to be sick…"

  I pulled over. Went around to her side and helped her out. She walked toward the water under her own power. I smoked a cigarette while she left her supper in the parking lot.

  Michelle had left one of her old street–trick kits in the back of the Plymouth. I gave the girl one of the premoistened towelettes to wipe her face. Handed her the airline–size bottle of cognac. "Rinse out with this," I told her.

  I moved the car deeper into the darkness, backing it in against an abandoned pier. Dropped my own window, listening for sounds a human would make. Nothing. I lit another smoke. She still had some of the cognac left, sipping at it, watching me, color coming back in her face.

  "What was that?"

  "What was what?"

  "What happened to me?"

  "You set off the burglar alarm."

  "I thought I was going to die."

  "You could have—you're playing with dangerous things."

  "I had to talk to you."

  I snapped my smoke out the window, watching the little red dot through my black&white eyes. "So?"

  "I have to go back."

  "To Train?"

  "Yes."

  "So go."

  "It's not that easy. She'd send you after me again."

  "How d'you know?"

  "She said so. You work for her, right?"

  "Wrong."

  "Oh."

  I waited. She sipped the cognac.

  "You got money?" I asked her.

  "I can get some. How much…?"

  "Not for me. For cab fare. I'll drop you off near a good corner. Go where you want to go. I won't be coming after you."

  She went quiet again. I lit another cigarette. "What's the rest, Elvira?" I asked her.

  "I don't believe you," she said in a quiet, subdued voice. "She never tells the truth."

  "It's not her talking."

  "And I know about you, Mr. Burke."

  "Say what you have to say, little girl. I got things to do. And you're not my friend."

  "Can I have one of your cigarettes?" Stalling, like a kid who doesn't want to tell you she did something bad.

  I gave her one. Fired a wooden match before she could try the dashboard lighter.

  She took a deep drag. "I know what you do," she said.

  "That right?"

  "Yes, that's right. Danielle told me."

  "I don't know any Danielle."

  "I don't know what her street name was. We're not allowed to use street names in the family. She was a hooker. You came and took her away. A long time ago."

  "Away from what?"

  "Her old man. And you brought her home. To a big house on Long Island. Her father paid you to do it."

  I shrugged.

  "I know you. I know things you know and I know things you don't know."

  Her mother's rap, a few years early. "I haven't heard one yet."

  She dragged on the cigarette, a soft glow lighting her face for a second. Calm now. Watching me.

  "Her old man's name was Dice. A sweet mac—he never made his girls turn hard tricks or anything. Let them go shopping whenever they wanted. You were waiting for them when they came back to the hotel room. You must've had a passkey or something. You pointed a big gun right in Dice's face. Told him you were taking the girl. There was another guy with you. Big guy—he didn't say anything. Dice tried to talk to you and you started whaling on him with the gun. Danielle said she could hear the bones break in his face. She'll never forget it. You took all her old man's money and jewelry. Then you put her in a car and drove her to Long Island."

  I shrugged again.

  "Why'd you do that?"

  "You think it's right to fuck fourteen–year–old girls?"

  "Her father did. The man who paid you the money to bring her back. He loved to do it. In the basement. Danielle told me
he had a special room for it. She only has one nipple—he burned the other one off. To teach her not to run away again."

  I didn't say anything. Shuffling the memory cards. Going right past Dice and the sleazy hotel room. Looking for that address on Long Island. The world was still black&white, but a piece was out of place.

  "And Train saved her?" I asked.

  "Train saved us all. Men like Danielle's father. Powerful men. They're always after him. It's not that they don't understand. They know. And they hate him. Our family too. They hate us all. And they use men like you to do their dirty work for them."

  "How'd he save you?"

  "You think you're smart, don't you? You think you know everything. You don't know everything. We're saving for a place. Our place. Not in this miserable country. Where we can be free. We're in a war. You make sacrifices in a war. Not everyone will be able to go, but that's all right."

  "And you all live in that house in Brooklyn? Raising money for your new country? You sell flowers on the street? Phony magazine subscriptions? Blowjobs in parked cars? What?"

  "Whatever we do, that's okay. It would never be as bad as what people did to us."

  "Sure."

  "Sure. You don't know. You're a mercenary. That's what Train calls you. You only serve yourself—you have no honor. Your god is cash."

  "That house must be pretty crowded, what with Train saving the world and all."

  "We don't all live in the house. Some of the older ones, the best ones…if they show the commitment, prove themselves…they work other places. For our family. Outriders. The special people. I'll be one someday."

  "Danielle's an outrider?"

  "No. She lives with us. Outriders are special. I only met one. She went to prison for seven years for the family. And she never said a word. That was her commitment. That proved her true."

  "So how come this family let you go?"

  "It was a test. I know it was a test. We have to act for ourselves. Train isn't running a mission or a runaway shelter. It's only for those who are worthy. I had to find my own way back."

  "Which is why you're running this game on me?"

  "It's not a game. I thought if you knew what we really did, you wouldn't bring me back again."

  "I don't know any Danielle."