Blossom b-5

by Andrew Vachss

  "He thinks he's safe in a gay bar," Vincent said, two fingers pressed against a cheekbone. "Like he's one of us."

  "That's the way I figure it."

  "What can I do?"

  "I need to talk to him. Not in the bar, okay?"

  "You want to take him out of there?"

  "Yeah."

  "He won't want to go?"

  I shrugged.

  Vincent rubbed his cheekbone again, thinking. "You did me a favor once. I consider you a friend, you know that. But I can't be part of…uh…your reputation is…I'm not saying I personally believe every silly rumor that jumps off the street, but…"

  "All I want to do is take him out of there. Without anybody noticing."

  "Burke…"

  "A little boy disappears. Five years later, a young guy calls me, says he knows where he is. Wants to trade him for cash. Scan it for yourself. What's it say to you?"

  He wouldn't play. "It's not important. Those…creatures…they have sex with children and they say such sweet things about it. Fucking a little boy isn't homosexual."

  "I know."

  "I know you know. Are you saying I owe you? From that business in the Ramble?"

  The Ramble is part of Central Park. An outdoor gay bar. One of Vincent's friends got caught there one night by a wolf pack. They left him needing a steel plate in his head. Good citizens, Vincent and his friends went to the cops. The badge-boys found the gang easily enough. Fag-bashers: pitiful freaks, trying to smash what they see in their own mirrors. One got the joint, the rest got probation. Then Vincent came to me. Max went strolling through the Ramble one night. The punks who'd walked out of the courthouse ended up in the same hospital as Vincent's friend. When the cops interviewed them, all they remembered was the pain.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "I have to make some phone calls," he said.

  10

  THE MEETING WAS for ten o'clock. The pay phone in the parking lot off the West Side Highway rang at 9:50. Vincent's voice. "He just went in. Alone."

  A smog-colored Mercedes sedan pulled up. Vincent's life-partner was in the front seat. "Please don't smoke in the car," he said. Didn't say another word to me, looking straight through the windshield. Dropped me off in front of the bar.

  The freak was in a back booth. Short curly brown hair dropped into ringlets over his forehead. Dressed preppie, older than he was. I pegged him for maybe nineteen. Greenish drink in a slim glass in front of him.

  "I'm Burke," I said, sliding into the booth across from him.

  "You have the money?"

  "Sure."

  He dry-washed his hands. Noticed what he was doing. Fired a cigarette with a lighter that looked like a silver pencil. "How can we do this?"

  "You give me the kid, I give you the money."

  "How do I know…?"

  "You called me, pal."

  "If I tell you where he is…how do I know I'll get the money?"

  I shrugged. "You want to come along when I pick him up?"

  "I can't. That's not the deal."

  "Is there a pay phone in this joint?"

  "I guess so…I'm not sure." He waved his hand. Heavy gold chain on his wrist. Slave bracelet. A waiter came over. Didn't look at me.

  "What will you have?"

  "A ginger ale. Lots of ice, okay?"

  "And for you?" he asked the freak.

  "I'm okay. Do you have a pay phone here?"

  "In the back. Just past the rest rooms."

  "Thanks."

  I lit a smoke, waiting. The waiter came back with my drink. A black cherry floated in the ice. All clear. I leaned forward. "We'll go to the pay phone. I'll call a friend of mine. He takes a look. While we wait, okay? He tells me he's spotted the kid…where you say he is, I give you the cash."

  "Right here?"

  "Right here."

  "You've got it with you?"

  "Sure."

  "Show me."

  "Not here. Out back. Okay?"

  He got up. I followed him. The corridor was shadowy with indirect lighting. Past the rest rooms. No sounds seeped from under the doors— it wasn't that kind of gay bar. The pay phone stood against the wall. I reached in my inside pocket. Took out an envelope. "Count it," I told him. He took it in his hands, opened the flap. He was halfway through the bills before he noticed the pistol in my hand. Blood blanketed his face. Vanished, leaving it chalk-white.

  "What is this?"

  "Just relax. All I want is…"

  Max loomed behind him, one seamed-leather hand locked on the back of the freak's neck. Pain took over his eyes, his mouth shot open in a thin squeak. I holstered the pistol, took the envelope from his limp hand. Max pushed the freak ahead of him. I slipped out the back door first, checked the alley where my Plymouth was parked. Empty.

  We stepped outside. I heard bolts being slammed home behind us. I popped the trunk on the Plymouth. Wrapped the duct tape around the freak's mouth a few times, lifting the hair off the back of his head so it wouldn't catch. Max slapped the heel of his hand lightly into the freak's stomach. The freak doubled over. I put my lips right against his ear. "We're going for a ride. Nothing's going to happen to you. We wanted you dead, we'd leave you right in this alley. You're riding in the trunk. You make any noise, kick around back there, anything at all, we stop the car and we hurt you. Real, real bad. Now nod your head, tell me you understand."

  The freak's head bobbed up and down. The trunk was lined with army blankets next to the fuel cell. Plenty of room. He climbed in without a word. Max and I got into the front seat and took off.

  11

  I USED THE Exact Change lane on the Triboro, grabbed the first exit, and ran parallel to Bruckner Boulevard through the South Bronx to Hunts Point. Turned off at Tiffany, motored past the mini-Attica they call a juvenile detention facility at the corner of Spofford, and turned left, heading for the network of juke joints, topless bars, and salvage yards that make up half the economy of the neighborhood. The other half was transacted in abandoned buildings. They stared with windowless eyes above crack houses doing a booming business on the ground floors.

  We drove deeper, past even the bombed-out ruins. Past the meat market that supplies all the city's butcher shops and restaurants, past the battered hulks of railway cars rotting on rusty tracks that run to nowhere. Tawny flashes in the night. Wild dogs, hunting.

  Finally we came to the deadfall. A narrow slip of land jutting into the East River, bracketed by mounds of gritty sand from the concrete yards and the entrance road to the garbage facility. I wheeled the Plymouth so it was parallel to the river. Max and I climbed out. Rikers Island was just across the filthy water, but you couldn't see it from where we stood. We opened the trunk. Hauled the freak out, ripping the duct tape from his mouth. He was shaking so hard he had to lean against the car.

  "Take a look around," I told him.

  A giant German shepherd lay on her side a few feet from us. Dead. Her massive snout buried in a large paper McDonald's bag. Her underbelly was a double row of enlarged, blunted nipples. She'd sent many litters to the wild dog packs before her number came up. A seagull the size of an albatross flapped its wings as it cruised to a gentle stop near the dog. Its razor beak ripped at her flesh, tiny eyes glaring us to keep our distance. Some kind of animal screamed. Sounds like a string of tiny firecrackers closer still.

  The freak's chest heaved. He snorted a deep breath through his nose. It told him the truth his eyes wanted to deny.

  "This is a graveyard," I said, my voice calm and quiet. "They'd never hear the shots. Never find the body. Got it?"

  He nodded.

  "You bring something with you? Something to prove you know where the kid is?"

  He nodded again.

  Max reached inside the freak's jacket. A wallet. Inside, a Polaroid snapshot of a kid. Long straight hair fell down either side of a narrow face. The kid in the picture was wearing blue bathing trunks, standing on a dock, smiling at the camera.

  "
Tell me something…something so I know it's the right kid."

  The freak dry-washed his hands. "Monroe found him. A few years ago. In Westchester. He ran away from home."

  "I won't ask you again."

  "Lucas…that's what we call him…he told us everything. Just ask me…anything…I can…"

  "Tell me what his room looked like— his room at home."

  "He had bunk beds. His parents always thought they'd have another kid. Lucas, he said that bed was for his brother, when he came. And he had a whole G.I. Joe collection. All the dolls. And the Transformers. He loved the Transformers."

  "He have a TV set in his room?"

  "No. He was only allowed to watch television on the weekends. In the morning."

  "He have a dog, this kid?"

  "Rusty. That was the name of his dog. He cried all the time about Rusty until Monroe got him a dog."

  Yes.

  I lit a cigarette, feeling Max close, waiting. I handed the freak back the money envelope, feeling every muscle in his body soften as he took it.

  "Tell me something," I asked him. "How old were you when Monroe found you?"

  He didn't waste time playing. "How did you know?"

  "How old?"

  "Ten."

  "And now you re…"

  "Seventeen."

  "So when you got too old, the only way to stay with Monroe was to bring him someone new, yes?"

  His face broke, trembled for control, lost it. I listened to him cry.

  "Lucas, he's old enough now, isn't he? And you're out."

  He slumped down on the filthy ground near the car, head in his hands. "I could've helped him…find someone else."

  "Yeah. But Monroe, he's gonna let Lucas do that. And you, you wanted the money for a new start?"

  "He never loved me at all!" the freak sobbed.

  I squatted down next to him. "Where is he?"

  "I'll tell you everything." He started talking, his voice a hiss that he couldn't stop, spewing pus. When he got to the home address, I left Max standing next to him. Pulled the mobile cellular phone from the front seat. A gift from a nujack whose nine-millimeter automatic wasn't as fast as Max's hands. Punched in the number, hit the Send button. McGowan was right there. I gave him the address. "The kid's not going to want to go," I told him.

  He sighed into the phone. I cut the connection to McGowan.

  I walked back over to the freak. Looked down and let him hear the truth. "You're square now. Somebody did something to you, you did something to somebody else. It's over, okay? You're gonna need a lot of help now, understand? You got some real decisions to make. You'll find some phone numbers in your pocket later. Those people, they can help you, if you want the help. You don't want the help, that's up to you. There's another number. Wolfe, over at City-Wide. You want to testify against Monroe, she'll handle it. Set you up with anything you need. But this other stuff, it's over. You go back to your old ways, you re coming back here. Understand?"

  He nodded, watching me from under long eyelashes, trembling slightly.

  "You come back here, you're coming back to stay."

  I nodded at Max. He did something to the kid's neck. We put him back into the trunk. He'd wake up later with a bad headache and five hundred bucks in his pocket.

  12

  I MET MCGOWAN and Morales early the next morning. At the diner where they hang out. They hadn't been to sleep yet.

  "You found him?" I asked.

  "Yeah." McGowan's voice was dead.

  "Get him home?"

  "He said he was home. His name is Lucas. A special boy, he told us he was. A special boy. He's a poet. You wanna see his poetry?" He slid a slick magazine across to me.

  Boys Who Love it said on the cover. Picture of a kid sitting astride a BMX dirt bike, sun shining behind him.

  "Page twenty-nine," McGowan said.

  The poem was entitled "Unicorn." All about little buds needing the pure sunlight of love to bring them to full flower.

  "You lock the freak up?" I asked.

  "Yeah. He's got his story ready, this Monroe. He found the kid wandering around a shopping center. The kid told him he was being sexually abused at home. This Monroe, he saved the boy. Raised him like his own kid. Spent a fortune on him. Private tutors, the whole works."

  "And the kid won't testify, right?"

  "Right. We took him home. Saw his mother and father. Looked right through them."

  "What's next?"

  "Lily talked with him. She says he's 'bonded' to that devil. Harder than deprogramming a kid caught up in one of those cults. Gonna take a long time. We ran it by Wolfe at City-Wide. She says she's got enough to indict Monroe even without the kid.

  "And Lucas said there was another kid. Older than him. Layne. Wolfe wanted to know, maybe this Layne, he'd testify against Monroe…"

  His voice trailed off, making it a question. I shrugged.

  "I fucking told you," Morales said.

  "And the ten grand's gone too?"

  "Yeah."

  "Wolfe's the best. She was standing by. Got a telephonic search warrant. There was enough stuff in the house…pictures and all…Monroe goes down for a long time even without the kid's testimony. Wolfe says they can use that DNA fingerprinting, prove this kid is who the parents say he is. She asked if you were in this."

  "And you told her…"

  "No."

  It wouldn't fool Wolfe. She wasn't asking McGowan for information, she was sending me a message. The beautiful prosecutor played the game right to the edge of the line, played it too hard for the degenerates to win.

  But they kept coming. Tidal waves from a swamp the EPA could never clean up.

  Morales ground out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. Hard, the way he did everything. "Whatever he gets, it's not enough. Next to him, a rapist's a class act." His eyes held mine, waiting.

  "What're you saying?"

  "He's not saying nothing," McGowan snapped. "Just frustrated, that's all."

  "You think the federales will play Let's Make a Deal with this freak?"

  "They could. He knows a lot. Networked all over the place. He even had one of those computer programs where you send images over the wire to a laser printer."

  "Good." You do enough bragging about where the bodies are buried, you could join the crowd.

  Morales weighed in. "Yeah. Fucking great. He drops a pocketful of dimes on his brother freaks, does a few soft years in a federal rest camp, sees one of those whore-psychiatrists, comes out and gets a job in a day-care center or something. Maybe writes a book."

  I shrugged.

  Morales took it as a challenge. "You think those fucking therapists can fix a freak like him?"

  "No. They know what to call it, that's all. Pedophilia. Like it's a disease. They had a disease named after hijackers, maybe I would of gotten past the Parole Board the first time."

  Morales wouldn't let it go. "A few years ago, they'd have to lock slime like that away from the regular cons. Not no more. Baby-raping motherfuckers like him need to resist arrest more often."

  McGowan shook his head sadly. He got up to leave, Morales trailing in his wake. The cops tossed bills on the table for their breakfast and split. I watched the smoke collect near the ceiling of the diner. Thinking of something Wesley once told me.

  Something he once called me.

  13

  I WAS AS CLOSE to square as I was going to get. I could go on vacation, not worry about the mail piling up on the doorstep.

  But a responsible businessman doesn't take a vacation unless his desk is clean. After a half hour of dodging potholes deep enough to have punji sticks at the bottom, the Plymouth poked its anonymous nose off the BQE at Flushing Avenue. Heading through Bedford-Stuyvesant. Some people call it "do or die Bed-Stuy." Those people are called something else. Escapees.

  On to Bushwick. A bad piece of pavement even by city standards: if you went down on these streets from less than three gunshot wounds, the hospital would write "natural c
auses" on the death certificate. Just before the intersection at Marcy Avenue, a three-story shell of a wooden building, blackened timbers forming X-braces, decaying from the ground up. Next to it, an abandoned Chinese take-out joint. Hand-painted sign: Houes of Wong. Parked in front, a car full of black teenagers, baseball caps turned on their heads so the bills pointed backwards. Waiting for night.

  The going rate for three rocks of instant-access cocaine is five bucks. The dealers won't take singles, makes too much bulk in their pockets. The bodegas operate as war-zone currency exchanges: a five-dollar bill costs you six singles.

  I crossed Broadway, past a pet store that advertised rabbits. For food. A rooster crowed from somewhere inside one of the blunt-faced buildings.

  A Puerto Rican woman strolled by on the sidewalk, wearing a bright orange quasi-silk blouse knotted just below her midriff, neon-yellow spandex bicycle pants with thick black stripes down the sides stretching almost to her knees. Backless white spike heels, no stockings. She was fifteen pounds over the limit for a yuppie aerobics class, but on this street, she was prime cut. She acknowledged the men calling out to her with her lips and her hips, but she never turned her head.

  Another couple of blocks. The projects. An olive-skinned little boy was playing with a broken truck in a puddle near a fire hydrant, making it amphibious.

  Most of the businesses were war casualties, liquor stores and video rental joints the only survivors.

  And the crack houses. Fronted by groups of mini-thugs hoping to grow up to be triggerboys. Watching the escape vehicles slide by, Mercedeses and BMWs, seeing themselves behind the wheel. Ghetto colors slashing the grime, not telling the truth.

  Gut-grinding poverty. Sandpaper for the soul.

  Pigeons overhead, circling in flocks. Hawks on the ground.

  Make enough wrong turns and you're on a no-way street.

  A no-brand-name gas station on the corner. It pumped more kilos than gallons. A big dirt-colored junkyard dog was entertaining himself, dropping a blackened tennis ball from his mouth down a paved slope, chasing it once it got rolling. A trio of puppies watched in fascination.

  The sign outside said Custom Ironwork. A sample covered the front door. I rang the bell. Door opened. Guy about five feet tall answered. Red Ban-Lon shirt, short sleeves threatened by biceps the size of grapefruits. He either had a pin head or a twenty-inch neck. One dark slash was his full supply of eyebrows. His hands gripped the bars like he could bend them without a welding torch.