Blossom b-5

by Andrew Vachss

  The waiter took the bowls away. Returned the ashtray. I lit her smoke. Lit my own. "Tell me," I said.

  "After Virgil got out, we left Uptown. Moved out of Chicago. To Hammond, then to Merrillville. It's just over the line. In Indiana."

  "I know where it is."

  "He got work. In the mill. Things were good, Burke. I had a little girl. Virginia. She's almost ten now. And a little boy. He's called Virgil too, like his daddy. Virgil's a good man. You know that. Worked doubles when the mill was really pumping. When they cut back, he got this regular gig, playing the piano at a club in Chicago. We got a house. Ours. Not rented or nothing. Never did go back to Kentucky, get us some ground like we planned."

  Get us some ground— own some land of their own. Never happen here. I dragged deep on my cigarette. Waiting for her to find the rhythm, tell me the truth.

  "I got a cousin. Second cousin, really. My cousin Mildred's boy. Lloyd. He got himself in some foolishness back home. Drinking, cutting school, stealing cars for fun. Like kids do, you know?"

  I nodded.

  "Anyway, Mildred asked me, could Lloyd come up and stay with us for a while? He don't have no father, Mildred figured maybe Virgil'd settle him down some. We got room. I asked Virgil. My man, he didn't say a word. I wanted it, it was okay with him. That's the way he is."

  I remembered. On the yard, me moving on a group of blacks who'd surrounded a new kid, wishing I had the shank I kept in my cell. Feeling Virgil move right behind me. Never having to look back— I was covered. I knew the way he is. He wasn't raised in juvenile joints like me, but he played by the same rules. Stand up or stand aside.

  She lit a smoke from the butt of her first one. "Lloyd came to live with us. I got him into the high school. He was okay. Kind of kept to himself. Stayed in his room. Virgil got him a little part-time job at the 7-Eleven. He was saving for a car. Lloyd, he was real nice to our kids. Virginia really liked him. Like he was an older brother. I worried 'cause he never had him a girlfriend or nothing, but Virgil, he said a man grows at his own pace, not to fuss about it. Said I was so worried he'd take Lloyd over to one of the cathouses in Cal City. Wait downstairs for him. I told Virgil, he brings my cousin's boy to a whorehouse, he'd better find himself a motel room 'cause he wouldn't be sleeping in his own bed." Another thin-lipped smile. "I guess that cured me, though. Anyway, things were okay. Then it happened. There's this place where all the teenagers go to park. Like a lovers' lane? Out by the dunes. The cops found this young man and his girl. Shot all to pieces. The papers said it was a crazy sniper. Bullet holes all over the car. They started this big investigation." Her eyes sneered a coal miner's sarcastic respect for any investigation conducted by the government.

  I waited for the rest of it.

  "They were still poking around when it happened again. Not a mile away. Two more. Teenagers, the papers said. Just babies, really. Anyway, one of the kids at the school must of said something about Lloyd 'cause the cops came around. Virgil told them he was the boy's father, they could talk to him, they wanted to know anything. Cops asked, could they look in the boy's room? Virgil told 'em get a warrant. One of the cops, this big black detective, he spoke real soft. Made a lot of sense. The other guy with him, skinny, nasty man, he was real hostile. Said they'd checked, found Virgil had a record. He and Virgil, they nearly got into it right in my living room. The black cop, he told the other guy to wait outside and cool off. Sat in my living room, drinking my coffee, talking to Virgil, telling us he didn't give a damn about maybe finding some marijuana in the boy's room, not to worry. Virgil wouldn't move. You know how he is— like a mountain mule. Lloyd, he tried to say something to the cop, but Virgil told him to keep his mouth shut. Then there was a knock on the door. It was the skinny cop. He had a warrant in his hand. The black cop must of told him to go and get it. While he kept us occupied with his talk.

  "Virgil got mad. The way he gets. Quiet-mad. The black cop, he took out his gun, told Virgil they was gonna search Lloyd's room. They found a rifle. An old bolt-action .22. We didn't even know he had one. And some magazines. Filthy magazines…and a camouflage suit…you know, like that Rambo wears. They arrested Lloyd. Took him down to the juvenile place in Crown Point.

  "We got him a lawyer. The papers said they got the sniper. I went to visit Lloyd. He was scared to death, Burke. They had to put him in a room by himself, all the other boys threatening him and all. I asked him straight out. He said he didn't do it. But he wouldn't look me in the face. Virgil said that don't mean nothing, the boy was probably 'shamed behind those magazines in his room and all.

  "The night it happened, Lloyd was out somewhere. We thought he was working, but it turned out that was his night off. He told the cops he was just off walking by himself. So he got no alibi. The lawyer said it didn't look good for him. We was still waiting on the bullet tests…the ballistics or whatever they call it…we got to go to court. The judge wouldn't set no bail. No bail at all. Remand, they called it. Then the bullet tests came back. And it wasn't from that rifle they found in Lloyd's room. That wasn't the murder weapon. So their case, it didn't look so good anymore.

  "We went back to court. This time, the judge made the bail. He set fifty thousand dollars on the boy. Virgil and I, we talked it over. We put up our house, and he came home with us.

  "Lloyd, he couldn't go back to school, with all this hanging over his head. Just a couple of weeks left anyway. Virgil told him to stay in the house until the trial. He couldn't go back home— the judge said he couldn't leave the state. Then one of the boys at school, he told the cops how he and some other kids used to sneak around at night in the lovers' lane. Just to watch the other kids going at it, you know? He said Lloyd used to go with them. He said, one time, Lloyd was real angry for some reason. Like he was mad at the girls. The papers got ahold of it. That was enough for the cops. The black detective, he called. Told Virgil to bring Lloyd back to court again. They were going to revoke his bail."

  She lit another smoke. "That's when Virgil run. He told me where he was goin'. Took Lloyd with him. He told me to find you."

  "Find me and do what?"

  "He said he had a question. Only you would know the answer. That's what he wants you to do. Answer the question."

  "And then?"

  "And then he'll know what to do."

  "The cops are looking for him?"

  "Every cop in the state, seems like. They got a warrant for Virgil too. Aiding and abetting a fugitive, the black cop said."

  "How'd you get here?"

  "I did what Virgil said. Took a plane to New York. Took a cab to Manhattan and then I called the number. I spoke to a Chinese woman. The woman who's sitting over there right now. She asked me to tell her where I was calling from. Pay phone. Told me to just wait there. Some Chinese men came up in a car, took me here. Then I just waited."

  "You know the question Virgil wants answered?"

  "No. But I know you'll know the answer. Virgil said so."

  "Where is he?"

  "You'd never find it. I'll have to show you."

  "No good. The cops'll be watching. Just tell me. Slow and careful."

  It took her a long time. I made her tell me again. "You don't speak to Virgil?"

  "No. He figured the phones'd be tapped."

  "Okay. I'll go and see him."

  "Now?"

  "Soon. You go on back. I'll find him."

  She grabbed my eyes with hers. "I know you will. And now I know you're Burke for real."

  "How d'you know?"

  "You didn't write anything down."

  5

  REBECCA WENT along with two of Mama's thugs. They'd take her to the airport. She didn't look back.

  Virgil would be okay wherever he was. He wasn't trained like I was, but I'd schooled him good, all that time we'd spent together in the cell after lights-out. He wouldn't make any rookie mistakes. He called, and I'd come to him. But I had to clear the slate first.

  6

  EARLY SATURDAY MORNING. I fou
nd the Prof at work. He was hunched over the tabloids in a restaurant booth in the DMZ, a block past Times Square, listening to Olivia. She's a heavy-built black lady, works as a cleaning woman, cook, hospital orderly…whatever rich people need. She plays stupid but she doesn't even come close. And she's got camera eyes.

  He felt me close in, whispered something to Olivia. She slid out of the booth, eyes down.

  "Remember Virgil?" I asked the little man.

  "The ridge runner? Sure."

  "He got himself a major beef. Out in Indiana. I got to go see about him."

  "You doing social work now?"

  "He's one of us."

  "Yeah, you're singing my song, but you're singing it wrong. My man's a stone citizen, Burke. He picked his home, let him go it alone."

  The Prof could never forgive anyone who'd rather work than steal. People like that, they couldn't be trusted.

  "I got to do it."

  "Yeah. You always got to do it. That white trash holding any cash?"

  "It's not like that."

  "Never is, seems like. You went to school, but you still play the fool. A rhino ain't a racehorse."

  "What's that mean?"

  "Means you can't operate outside, bro'. The city, the streets. Even the jailhouse. You know all that, right? But you can't pay your bills in the hills. You got a subway complexion, son. And you smell like concrete. You ain't gonna fool nobody. You can't even buy yourself heat out there, turns out you need it."

  "So I'll live by my wits."

  "That what they call being half safe?"

  "I know what I'm doing."

  The little man ignored me. The way he always does when he's on a scent. "What you want to mess with all those beady-eyed, inbred Bible-thumping farmers?"

  "Virgil was with us," I told him.

  "Was was yesterday. This ain't. The straight track never goes back."

  "I'm not asking you to come along."

  "That's right. Be crazy by your ownself. You know how to work it. Lay in the cut, work the shadows. Talk loud and you draw a crowd."

  "Okay."

  The Prof snorted his disgust. "I ain't your parole officer, bro'. Why you reporting in?"

  "Backup."

  The little man nodded. "You need a loan, pick up the phone."

  "The Mole, okay?"

  "I'll give him a play. Once a day."

  "Thanks, Prof."

  He extended one hand to the counter, helped himself to my cigarettes, pocketing the pack as he lit one. Nodded his head and went back to his hustle.

  7

  I HAD ONE more job to wrap up before I left the city. The call had come in a few weeks ago and I'd been dancing with the freak ever since. He'd called a few times. Always the same thing: told Mama he had some information he wanted to sell. About a missing kid. He wouldn't leave a callback number. Wouldn't say when he'd call again. Wouldn't drop the kid's name.

  Mama reads phone voices the way some Gypsies read palms. She'd been screening my blind dates ever since the first call, years and years ago. When I thought I could scam my way through this junkyard of a life. "Twisted man," she'd said. Voices came through the phone wire to Mama's filter all the time. Dope dealers, gunrunners, porno merchants, mercenaries and missionaries, cops and gangsters. They all knew where to find me.

  They thought.

  If Mama said the man was twisted, he'd bounce every needle on a psychiatrist's scale.

  One night, I'd been there when he called. In the basement with Max. Mama called me to the phone. I picked it up.

  "Okay. Talk to me."

  "This is Burke?"

  "Yeah."

  "I got something." A young man's voice. "Something I want to sell."

  I let him feel the silence. Feel what was in it. Waited.

  "A missing kid. I know where he is. What's it worth?"

  "To who?"

  "That's not my problem. That's yours. You make the connection, get the cash. And we'll trade."

  "Trade for what, pal? Is there some kind of reward out for this kid?"

  "No. He's been gone a long time."

  "So?"

  "So I figure…you talk to his people …see if they're willing to pay. I don't…I can't call them myself. I don't even know where they are."

  "Give me a name."

  "Not a chance."

  "The kid's name, pal."

  "Oh."

  The line went quiet again. I cleared my mind, listened: the freak's bad breathing, wires humming. No background noise. A pay phone, somewhere quiet.

  "Jeremiah Brownwell."

  "Never heard of him."

  "Just check it out. I'll call you back."

  8

  THERE'S ALL KINDS of registries for missing kids, from federal to local. None of them would tell me what I needed to know to put this together. I called the cops.

  The postcards show the Brooklyn Bridge from the top. From the bottom, it wouldn't attract any tourists. There's an opening at ground level along Frankfort Street just past Archway Seven. Big enough for a football game. A long time ago, they rented out the space. You can still see what's left of the faded signs: Leather Hides, Newsprint, Packing and Crating. One Police Plaza to the north, high-rise co-ops to the south.

  Four in the afternoon, the moist heat working overtime. The streets would overflow with yuppie traffic in a short while, heading for South Street Seaport bistros to unwind, cool down after a hard day worshiping the greed-god. When it got dark, the urban-punk killing machines would become sociopathic clots in the city's bloodstream, preparing themselves to defend their graffiti-marked territory. Merciless and coarse, their only contribution to society would be as organ-donors.

  In this city, race-hatred so thick you could cut it with a knife. Some tried.

  I waited on the abandoned loading dock, playing the tapes again in my head. There's supposed to be a kid inside every adult. When women talk about men being little boys inside, they say it with a loving, indulgent chuckle. Or they sneer. I knew the little boy I'd been— I didn't ever want to see him again.

  The car was the color of city dust. It bumped its way onto the concrete apron. The front doors opened and the cops rolled out. McGowan and Morales. NYPD Runaway Squad. They strolled over to where I was waiting, McGowan tall and thick, hat pushed back on his head, cigar in one hand, Irish smile on his mobile face. Morales was a flat-faced thuggish pit bull— more testosterone than brains. If he was a shark, he'd be a hammerhead.

  I dropped to the ground, leaned against the loading dock as they approached.

  "You okay?" McGowan asked in that honey-laced voice that had charmed little street girls and terrorized pimps for twenty years.

  I nodded, watching Morales. We'd gone a few rounds a while back, then touched gloves when it was over. He wouldn't turn on me for no reason, but he'd never need a very good one.

  "Is it for real?" I asked.

  McGowan puffed on his cigar. "Jeremiah Brownwell was reported missing almost five years ago. He was seven then. With his mother at a shopping mall in Westchester. Just vanished. No ransom demand. Not a trace."

  "So it was in the papers?"

  "Yeah." Reading my thoughts. "Anyone could've picked it up."

  "Was there ever a reward posted?"

  "Not that I know of. It was before all this missing children stuff in the media. The kid's parents hired a PI and he put the word around. That's all. The kid's picture was in the paper."

  "He won't look like that now. If it's him."

  "No."

  Morales leaned forward, chest out, forehead thrusting. Like he was getting ready to butt the bridge of my nose into my skull. "What's the deal? What's the motherfucker want?"

  "Cash."

  "Where d'you come in?"

  "He wants me to see if the kid's parents will put up the money. Make a switch."

  "What's ours?"

  I ignored him. "You speak to the kid's folks?"

  McGowan took over. "Yeah. They'd pay. Something. What they have. It's
not all that much."

  "If it's him…he's not going to be the same kid."

  McGowan's face was grim. "I know."

  "They still want him?"

  "They want what they lost, Burke."

  "Nobody ever gets that back."

  McGowan didn't say anything after that. Morales' ball-bearing eyes shifted in their fleshy sockets. "The fuck that called you. It's extortion, right?"

  "I'm not a lawyer."

  "A lawyer's not what that guy needs."

  McGowan shot his partner a chill-out look. Like asking a fire hydrant to run the hundred-yard dash.

  "They got any sure way to identify the kid?" I asked.

  "Pictures, stuff like that. Things only the kid would know. Name of his dog, his first-grade teacher…you know."

  "Yeah. The freak…the one who called me…he says he wants ten large."

  "They can do that."

  "No questions asked?"

  "No."

  "Win or lose?"

  "Yes."

  "Let's take a shot."

  "That's one thing we can't do," McGowan said, a restraining hand on his partner's forearm. Morales had flunked Probable Cause at the Police Academy— his idea of civil rights was a warning shot.

  "I'll give you a call," I said.

  9

  THE FREAK kept dancing. It took another few days to calm him down. I let him pick the place. A gay bar off Christopher Street. He told me what he'd be wearing, what he looked like. When he'd be there. "Bring the cash," he said. Hard guy.

  Vincent's apartment was on West Street. The outside looked like a set from Miami Vice.

  Glass brick, blue-enameled steel tubing wrapped around each little terrace. I stood so the video monitor would pick up my face, pressed the buzzer.

  Inside it was turn-of-the-century England. Vincent's twin pug dogs yapped at my heels until I sat down on the dark paisley couch. He's a big man, maybe six and a half feet, close to three hundred pounds. Long thick sandy hair combed straight back from a broad face.

  "You know nothing about this person?"

  "Just what I told you on the phone," I said.