Down in the Zero

by Andrew Vachss

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Praise

  Epigraph

  DOWN IN THE ZERO

  About the Book

  About The Author

  Also By Andrew Vachss

  Copyright Page

  ACCLAIM FOR Andrew Vachss

  "Andrew Vachss bursts forth with more of the slashing prose that has earned him a reputation as one who gives no quarter in his exposure of the evils of the human mind. The man knows whereof he speaks."

  — Newsday

  "There's no way to put a [Vachss book] down once you've begun…The plot hooks are engaging and the one–liners pierce like bullets."

  — Detroit Free Press

  "The New York Burke inhabits is not borrowed from anybody and shimmers on the page as gaudily and scarily as it does on the street."

  — New York magazine

  "Vachss seems bottomlessly knowledgeable about the depth and variety of human twistedness."

  — The New York Times

  "Staccato prose, a mixed bag of Raymond Chandler style, James Cain sleaze and a voice that's pure Vachss—strident, sharp, a muscular rage raining down on a society in need of cleansing."

  — People

  "A compelling read…in this literary realm, bad things almost always happen to bad people… very bad people."

  — Creative Loafing (Atlanta)

  When winter vanished

  I searched, only to find you

  Missing and presumed

  DOWN IN THE ZERO

  The first two kids stepped off together, holding hands.

  By the time I got mixed in it, they had company down there.

  I'd been quiet a long time. Since I went into that house and killed a child.

  Killed a child. I can say it now. Every word.

  I took out each word and played with it. Over and over again, the way I used to do in prison. The way you try and take something apart, see what makes it work. Words. Like … in war, they call the bodies "casualties." I was in a war. Casualties. Casual. You think about it, it makes sense. No, that's wrong. It doesn't make sense. But it fits.

  Each word. One at a time. Over and over again.

  Facing it.

  I went into that house. Me. I knew what I was going to do in there.

  In Africa, I served with this Aussie. Malcolm, his name was. A cheerful guy, I once saw him greet a man in a bar by butting heads with him. An old mate, he told me, from Rugby days. I didn't know what he was doing in the middle of that miserable war—one of the rules was that you didn't ask. Malcolm was telling a story once, about someone who had done something to him. When he was just a kid, in Sydney. "I got my own back," he said. I finally figured out what he meant. Revenge. Get your own back.

  I went into that house to get my own back. When I was done, I left a dead kid as a monument to my hate.

  I told myself all the stories. Ever since. Every damn dead day. They were going to kill the kid anyway…had him all trussed up for the film they were getting ready to shoot. Shoot…a funny word for making a film. Not the films they were making, though. The right word, for them, what they were doing.

  Words. More bullshit, cold–comfort words.

  It was a gunfight, a shooting war—I told myself that too. But I went into that house to kill every last one of them. Whatever, whoever I found there, it was going down.

  I did it to defoliate the jungle of my childhood. To rip out the roots.

  I went in shooting.

  I wasn't trying to rescue the kid—I didn't know he was there. They were going to sacrifice him. Kill him and film it. Sell the films.

  Killing them, I sacrificed the kid myself.

  I got shot, getting out, took one in the shoulder. It didn't seem like enough.

  The kid was a casualty of war. Very casual. Gone.

  He didn't have a life to live anyway—I told myself that. Probably would have killed himself if he had the chance. Committed suicide. Gone over.

  That's how this last business started. With kids killing themselves.

  The old street dog shook himself and snarled at Spring, knowing he'd beat the odds for another year. In a wild pack, Winter takes them. He looked like his ancestors had been German shepherds, but a dozen generations later, he was a City Dog: lean, dirt–colored and sharp–eyed.

  I was his brother, hunting. I was watching the tall redhead—covered to her ankles with a long, quilted coat, but moving with the confidence that said she was packing something potent under it. Her hips, probably, from the brassy–sassy look on her face. On the other side of the street, a black kid, with a geometric design cut into the side of his fade. Wearing a white leather jacket with a big red STOP sign on the back. He was walking just behind her, tapping his heart, making sure the pistol was still there.

  A dead giveaway, no matter how it played out.

  He wasn't my problem—I was there for the redhead.

  "I want to see if she's cheating on me," the client had said, looking me dead in the eye. "I'm a hard–core bottom, but whoever owns me, I own that, understand?"

  She was a short, delicate little brunette with improbable–violet eyes. Probably contacts.

  "Rena disciplined me with this," she said, brushing her close–cropped hair back from her forehead. "It used to be shoulder–length. You understand?"

  I nodded, holding her eyes.

  "I'm pierced too. Down there." Looking at her leather–wrapped lap.

  I didn't follow her eyes, waiting.

  "I want to know where she goes, who she meets, what she does. And I want to know soon."

  "Okay."

  "I don't need pictures, tapes, anything like that. Not legal proof. This is a lot of money for just watching—I expect you to watch close, agreed?"

  "Yeah."

  "I don't like dealing with men," the brunette said. "But Michelle said you were all right."

  "Michelle tell you I get paid for what I do?"

  "Yes, she told me everything."

  If I had a sense of humor left, I would have laughed at that.

  She slid an envelope across the tabletop. "There's five thousand dollars in there," she said. "What am I buying for that?"

  "What you said you wanted," I told her.

  Michelle came back a few months after I killed the kid. I don't know how she knew, but she did. She stayed with me for a couple of weeks. Pansy was still up at Elroy's, trying to get pregnant, so it was safe for Michelle to live in my office. Days, she visited Terry and the Mole in the junkyard bunker—nights, with me.

  I was up on the roof, looking into the Zero. She came up behind me, one red–taloned hand on my forearm, tracer–bullet perfume all around her. I had forgotten how pure–beautiful she was. I'd never asked her if she'd gone through with the surgery when she came back—never asked her why she came back at all.

  She stood close to me, wrapping her arms around me like a referee with a beaten fighter, whispering the same words. "You can always do it, honey," she crooned. "Tonight's not your night."

  Not this one, anyway.

  I stayed to myself. In my office. My cell. Did a lot of reading, the way I did when they had me locked down. Built up all this vocabulary I had no place to use.

  I didn't have the heart for any of my usual scams. I waited to save it for the pain.

  More than a year passed, and they never came around. Maybe they knew and just didn't care.

  It could be. I knew, and I didn't care.

  I twisted the ignition key and the cab's engine kicked over. I put it in gear and pulled away from the curb on Franklin Street, circling the block, canceling the rooftop OFF DUTY sign with a flick of my thumb. When I came back around, the redhead was still striding along. She hailed my cab and I pulled over.


  She climbed in the back seat, keeping one hand on a big black leather pocketbook.

  "Where to?" I asked her.

  "Central Park West and Seventy–seventh," she said in a hard, measured voice. "You know where that is?" she challenged, glancing at my hack license framed on the dash. Maybe she thought Juan Rodriguez didn't speak English.

  "Yes ma'am," I told her. "West Side Highway to Tenth okay?"

  "Isn't straight up Sixth shorter?" she asked, a hostile overtone to her throaty voice.

  "Lots of traffic now, ma'am. It's quicker the way I said…but anything you say, that's okay."

  "Oh, go your way," she snapped, lighting a cigarette, blowing a jet–stream at the yellow decal I had plastered on the partition between the front and back seats. The one that said No Smoking Please—Driver Allergic in bold black letters.

  When I pulled over on CP West, she tipped me two bucks—I guess she liked docile drivers.

  I watched her go into the high–rise. The doorman smiled as if he'd seen her before.

  I parked the cab at a hack stand, pulled my gym bag off the front seat and walked along until I found a bar that didn't have ferns in the window.

  "Absolut rocks," I told the bartender. "Water on the side."

  The place was nearly empty. I left the change from my twenty on the bar, waited until the bartender was down at the other end, drank most of the water, poured some of the vodka into the water glass. I picked up my gym bag and carried it into the Men's Room. It was empty.

  I took off my leather jacket, pulled the sweatshirt over my head, took off the oversize chino pants. Underneath, I had on a pair of dark gray wool slacks and a light gray silk shirt. I took an unstructured navy blue linen jacket from the gym bag, shrugged into it, checked for fit. Then I peeled off the phony mustache, squeezed some gel into the palm of my hand, ran it through my hair. When my hair got heavy and greasy enough, I combed it straight back, secured the little ponytail with a rubber band. I put the cabdriver clothes in the gym bag, walked out of the Men's Room and out the front door of the bar.

  The doorman was still at his post, dressed like a lieutenant in some banana republic, standing with his hands behind his back.

  I closed up the space between us, hands open at my sides, palms down.

  "How you doing?" I asked him.

  "Okay, man. What's up?"

  "I'm looking for a little information. Lightweight stuff. Thought maybe you could help me out…

  "You the po–leece?"

  "The police this polite?" I asked him, holding out my hand to shake.

  He did it, palmed the three twenties I had folded up.

  "Woman came in maybe twenty minutes ago. Tall redhead. You smiled at her—she's been in before?"

  "I'm not sure, man."

  "Yeah, you're sure. You didn't know her, you'd have to play the role," I said, glancing at the sign posted at the door: ALL VISITORS MUST BE ANNOUNCED.

  "I don't know her name, just…"

  "I know her name, pal. Which apartment does she go to?"

  He tilted his head back, looked into my eyes.

  I looked back.

  He took his hand out of his pocket, looked over the money I'd passed him.

  "It's enough," I told him.

  "She goes to twenty–seven–G, man. Every time."

  "Who's there?"

  He looked back at the money in his hand.

  "Fair enough," I told him. "I got a couple more, make it a flat yard, okay?"

  He nodded. I handed him two more twenties.

  "Miss Kraus," he said.

  "Just her?"

  "Yeah, she lives alone, man. Suzanne Kraus. She does something in advertising, I think."

  "Yeah. She a good tipper?"

  "Not as good as you, man.

  The redhead came back twice more in the next five days. There's a nice bench across the street on CP West—you can sit there for hours, your back to the park, taking the sun. Nobody pays much attention.

  I met the brunette in a Village tearoom on a Friday afternoon. Her eyes were a blissful blue this time. I went over every place the redhead had been in the past few days. When I got to the CP West address, her mouth went into a flat line.

  "Suzanne," is all she said.

  "Twenty–seven–G."

  "Yes, I know."

  I sat there, waiting. Finally, she leaned over, dropped her voice. "I need something else done," she said.

  "I don't do that kind of work," I told her.

  What happened?" Michelle asked me that night.

  "She wanted me to take the redhead out," I told her.

  "Burke, you didn't…?

  "No."

  "I'm getting a place, honey. I've got to go back to work. On the phones."

  I didn't say anything. Got up and walked outside to the rusty old fire escape. Climbed to the roof. Pansy used to dump her loads up there every day, but she'd been gone for a while and the hard chemical rains had done the job—the smell was almost gone. I leaned over the railing, looking down.

  "What is it, Burke? You've been up here for hours." Michelle… I hadn't heard her come up behind me.

  "Nothing."

  "What nothing?"

  "Nothing nothing. I'm just looking into the Zero."

  "What's this 'zero,' honey? You said it before…I don't get it."

  "Nothing. Zero is nothing. That's what's down there. Nothing. After you're done. Nothing. It's not good—it's not bad. Just…zero, see? Maybe there's people there, I don't know."

  "Who knows? Who knows those things? What do you care? It's not for you."

  "You ever think about dying?" I asked her.

  Moonlight bounced on her cheekbones, never touching her big, dark eyes. "I have," she whispered.

  "Me too. I thought about it a lot. I always thought, I had a fatal disease or something, knew it was gonna do me soon, I was gonna take a whole lot of motherfuckers along for the ride, you know? There's places I could go. Like Wesley. Walk into the room strapped to a

  satchel of dynamite. Let 'em see what was gonna happen first."

  "Wesley was crazy."

  "What am I, Michelle? Dead already, I think. I don't even have that dream anymore. Like it's too much trouble. I could just go into the Zero, be done with it."

  "Nobody's there, baby. Nobody's waiting."

  How could she know? The last time I went hunting, I killed that kid. But I'd never made a promise to him before he died. I never knew his name. There was nothing to do.

  I flipped my cigarette over the railing. Watched the little red dot spiral into the Zero.

  What I really miss is fear. It used to be my friend, fear. Been with me ever since I could remember. It kept me smart, kept me safe. I worked the angles on the edges of the corners. Lived on the perimeter, striking from cover, sneaking back over the border. A guerrilla without an army. A wolf without a pack. Tried to take my piece out of the middle. Walked the underbelly without a flashlight, fear coming off me like sonar, keeping me from stepping on the third rail.

  I was always scared. They taught me that. I think maybe it was the first thing anybody taught me.

  I used to feel the electricity in me. Fear–jolts. Zip–zapping around inside me, jumping the synapses, making the connections.

  Keeping me safe.

  When I looked at that house of beasts in the Bronx, when I started my walk, the fear wasn't with me.

  It hasn't been there since.

  I just don't fucking care.

  The betrayal business was booming. Michelle found me work all over town. I was always a patient man, but now I was a stone. It didn't matter how long anything took.

  Peter was a hardworking guy, nervous and jumpy, always doing the same things. A rabbit of habit. Every morning, he caught the 5:05 from Bethpage, out on Long Island. I picked him up there a couple of times, eyed him over the rim of my newspaper, dressed in a commuter suit, invisible. He never talked to anyone. Always caught the E or the F train from Sutphin Boulevard
in Jamaica, rolled it all the way into Fifty–third and Fifth, walked the rest of the way to his office. He worked for an insurance company, something with numbers.

  His wife told her hairdresser that Peter had something on the side. She could tell, she said. The hairdresser told his friend, and his friend told Michelle. She made the arrangements.

  He didn't do anything on the LIRR. Nothing. I started to wait for him on the subway, down the line a few stops at the Union Turnpike station.

  The mornings had a held–over night chill to them, as refreshing as the air conditioning in a morgue. I'd wait on the platform, dressed like a city nomad, my nostrils stuffed with Vicks so I could handle the smell.

  On the subways now, the scariest sound isn't a gun being cocked— it's that liquid–center TB cough.

  Sometimes he was on the E, sometimes on the F. Always in the last car. The F isn't as good as the E for skells to sleep. Homeless riders hate the new R–46 cars—the seats are orange and yellow, hard plastic, with indentations for your butt, splayed all around the cars with no more than three seats in a row at any point. Most of the E trains have the old–style cars, with flat–bench seating for six in a row—much easier to stretch out and snooze.

  I got to know the regulars. A pair of Latins with impressive mustaches—they always sat next to each other, never spoke, never read the paper. Central Americans, not Puerto Ricans, their posture was military. They just watched—one to the right, the other to the left. Maybe for the roving gangs of dead–inside kids who never go out without their squeeze bottles of gasoline to set fire to sleeping bums. A smooth–faced black woman with two little kids, dressed in a nurse's uniform—I guess she dropped them off at the babysitter's before she went to work herself. A young white man with a shaved head, always reading karate magazines. A Korean woman, only her sloe eyes visible above the surgical mask she wore…a fresh white one every day. A huge black man, palms on knees, knuckles so torn lighter skin showed beneath…as if he was wearing star sapphires on his hands.

  Once you get a seat that early in the morning, you want to stay there—nomadic psychos use the space between the connecting doors at the end of each car as a urinal.