Down in the Zero

by Andrew Vachss

  Mama nodded acknowledgment as she worked. After a couple of minutes, she put the rock down. Her smile was brighter than the light.

  "Very fine stone."

  "It's for real?" I asked her.

  "Oh yes. Blue–white, brilliant cut. Maybe VVS, VS for sure. Three carats, pretty close."

  "How much?"

  "A hundred thousand, quick." Meaning it was worth a quarter million.

  "What about the others?"

  Mama didn't reply. She reluctantly put the diamond on a corner of the cloth, reached for the green. She did the same routine, switched to the red. Finally, she took up the smooth black stone, rubbing it between her fingers. After a few minutes, she switched off the light, looked across at me.

  "All perfect stones. Ruby is pigeon blood, probably from Burma. Emerald is Colombian for sure. Very big stones to be so perfect."

  "What's this?" I asked, touching the smooth black stone with a fingertip.

  "Girasol," Mama said. "Black opal. From Australia."

  "There's more," I told her. "This is just a sample."

  "Passport," Mama said. I knew what she meant. There's no harder currency than fine gems. A universal language—you could turn these into cash anywhere from Bermuda to Bangkok.

  "I told you, bro, I know what I know. We tap that vein, we feel no pain."

  "It's not that easy, Prof. She had something else too." I showed him the diskettes. "You know what these are?"

  "Sure, schoolboy. That's the cake—the rocks are the take."

  "That's the way I see it too. We Hoover the place, she knows it was me. And she's got enough juice to buy trouble."

  "But if we know what she knows…"

  "Yeah."

  "Let's ride, Clyde."

  We picked up Michelle on the corner of Twenty–ninth and First. She climbed into the back of the Rover like it was a limo, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, settled back into the leather and lit a smoke.

  "What's on?"

  "I'm not sure yet. The Prof was right—the joint is rotten with money. I took some samples…gems. Mama says they're true blue. She's got seven figures stashed in the house."

  "Oh honey, you know just what to say to make a girl crazy."

  "It's trickier than that, Michelle." I showed her the disks.

  "Blackmail?"

  "That's my guess. I'm not sure. There's some tapes too. But either I put everything back or we're stuck with hit and run, see? We need a way to take a look."

  "My man can do it," Michelle said, confident.

  Terry let us into the junkyard, greeting the Prof and Clarence with elaborate courtesy as Michelle looked on proud.

  "Damn, boy, you getting big !" the Prof told him.

  The kid flushed. "I told you, Mom," he said, holding his back real straight. "How tall am I gonna be?" he asked the Prof.

  Clarence stepped forward, took both the boy's hands in his, turned them over, looked at the backs.

  "You be taller than me before you a grown man," he said quietly, the Island lilt clear in his rich voice.

  "For real?" Terry asked, joy all over his face.

  Clarence nodded gravely.

  The Mole was nowhere in sight when we pulled up to the clearing. Simba was lying down in front of the underground bunker, calm and watchful.

  "You want me to get him?" Terry asked.

  "We'll need to be in his lab for what we got to do," I told the kid. "Just go downstairs, ask him if it's okay, all right?"

  "Sure," the kid replied, pushing Simba to one side like the killer beast was a stuffed animal.

  I lit a cigarette in the South Bronx air, feeling safe like I always do around the Mole's base. Simba watched without interest.

  The kid stuck his head out of the bunker. "He says to come down."

  I went first, Michelle right behind. Clarence came last, walking backwards, one hand on his pistol…he doesn't feel the same way I do about the junkyard.

  The Mole was at his workbench. Michelle kissed him. His pasty skin turned a mottled red, his lank hair falling over his forehead. Michelle slapped at his upper arm in pretended disgust at the Mole's lack of romance.

  I put the computer disks on the workbench. The Mole looked at them and shrugged.

  "Can you read them?" I asked.

  He shrugged again. Picked one up, plugged it into a slot on his computer as he simultaneously kicked it into life. The screen flickered, settled down into a paper–white blank.

  The Mole tapped some keys, watched the screen. We found places to sit, left him alone to work. Terry showed Michelle some experiment they were working on—something about heavy water, whatever that is. The Prof settled back into a jailhouse wait–state. Clarence's bright eyes flicked over the bunker, taking in the strange machinery, a glazed look on his smooth young face. He'd been raised on Carib legends, but he never imagined voodoo like this.

  The Mole turned his head slightly. I bent to listen—the Mole never talks loud.

  "It's passworded," he said, pointing at the screen where it said [Locked] in bold black letters.

  "Can you get in?"

  "Eventually. Password could be anything. I can run a random program, try every combination."

  "How long would that take?"

  He shrugged again. "I don't have a big enough machine here. Could take a couple of weeks, even longer."

  "Damn! Can you copy the disk so I can replace it while you run through the combos?"

  "No."

  "Great." I stood for a minute, trying to think it through. People get lazy with stuff they have to remember, use their birthdays for safe combinations, like that. Maybe she…?

  "Try Cherry," I told him.

  His stubby fingers flew over the keys. The machine beeped. "No," the Mole said.

  "Try Rector's."

  "Spell?"

  I spelled it for him, with and without the apostrophe.

  "No," he said.

  I took a few more shots, all blanks. "I'll start it on random," the Mole said.

  I nodded glumly. Then I thought of the safe. "Could it be numbers?" I asked him.

  "What?"

  "The password, could it be numbers instead of letters?"

  "Yes."

  I gave him the combination to the safe. Watched his fingers as he tapped it in.

  "Yes," the Mole said as the screen flashed and words popped out on its surface like invisible ink when you hold the paper over a flame.

  The Mole copied the blue and red diskettes, gave me back the originals. "The rest is storage media," he said, holding the round disk and the tiny cassette in his hand. "Probably the others didn't get added yet. Take them back too—what I have will be enough to see what they do."

  I nodded agreement. "You have a VCR here?" I asked him.

  He gave me a sour look, craned his neck in the direction of a small–screen TV in the corner.

  "I told you it would come in handy, Dad," the kid said, a look of gleeful triumph on his face. He took the videotape from my hand, stuffed it into the slot expertly, hit some buttons.

  The tape was black and white, streaky at the edges.

  "Adjust the tracking," the Mole told him.

  "I know, I know," the kid said, absorbed, playing with a tiny dial.

  The camera opened on a pristine white bedroom. White walls, white sheets…even the bedposts were white. The camera zoomed in on one of them. A black leather strap dangled, waiting.

  "Go upstairs, Terry," Michelle said, her voice calm.

  "Ah, Mom…"

  "Now!" she snapped. The kid turned his eyes from the screen, testing. Michelle stared him down, not saying a word. He gave her a baleful look over one shoulder as he climbed back to the outside air.

  The only sound was the hum of the tape. A man entered the white bedroom, dressed in a conservative business suit. He sat down on the bed, hands on his knees, facing the way he came in. A woman walked in, her back to the camera. She was wearing a black–and–white–striped jacket with a peplum flare over a da
rk pencil skirt. Couldn't see her feet in the picture.

  "Infrared camera," the Mole said. "High resolution. They wouldn't need lights."

  A match flared as the Prof lit a smoke.

  The woman removed the peplum jacket, tossed it away. A scoop–necked white blouse was underneath. The man watched as she unbuttoned the blouse to display a black push–up bra. She said something to him. He looked down.

  The bra unhooked from the front. The woman dropped it to her side. The man looked up. The woman stepped to him, slapped his face hard with a roundhouse swing. She said something to him again. He dropped his eyes.

  The woman turned her back to him, reached behind her to unzip the pencil skirt. As she bent forward to tug it over her hips, the man

  slyly looked up. The woman arched her back, looking full into the camera.

  Fancy.

  As she stood slightly to one side, the camera came in on the man's face, full and clear.

  I didn't know him, but he'd recognize himself quick enough when they showed him the tape.

  Fancy turned to the man, now wearing only a pair of black panties over a garter belt and dark hose. She stopped, walked off camera.

  Came back holding a riding crop in one hand.

  The man stood up and stripped, quickly. He lay face down on the bed as Fancy secured his hands with the restraining straps to the head–posts.

  She worked him over with the riding crop. It went on for a while. Then she stopped, stood hands on hips, saying something to him.

  The man turned his head. Fancy hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her panties, slipped them down over her legs. She walked to the side of the bed, slapped the man's upturned face, bunched up the panties and stuck them in his mouth.

  Then she went back to work.

  The man finished lying on his belly, his back all lacerated, hips jerking in harsh spasms. The camera zoomed in and out erratically, sometimes focusing on a place where nothing was happening. When Fancy finally unhooked him, he rolled off the bed, the gleaming evidence of his orgasm displayed in the classic Times Square tradition— freaks hate it when you fake it.

  The last shot was of the man sitting on the bed, looking into the camera with a dazed look on his sweaty face.

  "There's more?" Michelle asked.

  "A lot more," I told her.

  "Audio too?"

  "Yeah."

  "This is some sophisticated operation, baby. That's a fixed camera with a remote—a setup like that, you could run it without an operator, so long as the action lasts long enough."

  "I know. I met the woman."

  "She want you to play too?"

  "Yeah."

  "It figures. This is the latest thing," Michelle said. "Super–safe sex. No penetration. In fact, no skin–on–skin, you get right down to it. You find a girl who works pro doing this, she probably likes it herself. Most of them, they just found a way to make it pay."

  "That's what we need too…a way to make it pay," I told her. The Prof nodded agreement. Clarence watched us. The Mole was busy doing something at his workbench—he hadn't even watched the tape.

  I packed everything up, walked topside with the Prof and Clarence, leaving Michelle downstairs. Terry wasn't around.

  "What do you think?" I asked the man who taught me so much when I was a kid.

  "I think they make a date, play it straight. Even a sap will turn off the tap, you push too hard. You can't keep going back to the well."

  "You think they turn over the whole deal, no copies?"

  "For that kind of cash? Sure. They must have a real solid rep."

  "Like people know they pull this stuff?"

  "Remember a few years ago…when that maniac was carving up gays down by the pier?"

  "Sure," I told him. A serial killer, heavy into mutilation, stalking the sex–for–sale streets down by the river. The body count was getting up there, the headlines were screaming, and the homosexual community was in panic. A couple of them came to me, said there was good money in it if I could come up with the killer. They didn't have much faith in the cops.

  "Remember that guy Robbie?" the Prof asked. "Remember how he ran it down."

  I lit a smoke, bringing it back. Robbie owned a small art shop in the area—he was one of the first guys I spoke to when I started the job.

  "Nobody's cruising anymore, right?" I'd asked him.

  "Oh please !" he snorted. "That's not going to change. A maniac might scare the hustlers, but not those looking for love. Besides, you know someone like that's out there, it adds a little jolt, understand?"

  "You think people into that let's–meet–and–beat stuff know somebody's playing with cameras, Prof?"

  "Could be, schoolboy. Long as nobody actually got burned, it'd probably just be a turn–on for them. They know they got to pay for their play anyway, what's the difference?"

  "It's a sweet racket. They get paid at both ends."

  "Listen, homeboy, whatever that kid's mother is, she ain't stupid. We need some proof, and we need some truth."

  "I'm going back there tonight. I'll replace all the stuff."

  The Prof stepped close, put his hand on my shoulder. "Burke, listen good—if you got the right climate, the weather don't matter, see?"

  "No. What's it mean?"

  "Take a look, but be ready to book. If you can't walk light, stay outta sight."

  "Look, Prof…."

  "I mean it, bro. I'm not liking a damn bit of this."

  It was around midnight when I pulled into the garage. The red Miata still wasn't there. I couldn't tell if the kid had come and gone, or hadn't come back at all.

  The apartment over the garage looked the way I left it.

  I walked back over to the main house. It was empty. The hair I'd plucked from my head and anchored with a tiny dot of spit was still in place across the marble seam of the safe. I put everything back.

  I had just walked into the apartment over the garage when the phone rang. I picked it up, said "What?" and waited.

  I heard some breathing, then the line went dead. I closed my eyes, drifted off.

  Later that night, I heard a car pull in. My watch said 3:15. I heard a door slam, walked over to the glass panel in the door. The kid was moving across the lawn, not too steady.

  I gave him five minutes, then I went across. The back door was standing open. The kid was sitting at the kitchen table with the lights off, staring at the far wall.

  "You okay?" I asked him.

  "I called," he said. "I kept calling. You weren't here. I didn't want to come back until I knew."

  "That was you on the phone before?"

  The kid nodded. "I was going to go up to your place, but I didn't want to wake you up."

  "What's going on?"

  "Diandra's dead. It happened…I guess a couple of days ago. We just found out."

  "Who's Diandra?"

  "Diandra Blankenship. She jumped. Off the Old Mill Bridge. Onto the rocks."

  "How do you know?"

  "They were all talking about it. At the party. We were going to do a couple of tanks, just chill, listen to some tunes. But nobody could really get into it."

  "You knew her?"

  "Yeah. A little. She was a year behind me in school."

  "Didn't the cops come around?"

  "Not to the party. They talked to some of the kids. Myron said Brew said they talked to him. She didn't leave a note or anything."

  "Get some sleep," I told him.

  "Are you going to…"

  "I'm going to be right here. Downstairs on the couch. All right?"

  He nodded, getting to his feet, moving like he was carrying too much weight.

  I didn't know enough. That's where the real risk is—that's why the hardest currency in the world is information. I knew people who had killed themselves—suicide isn't a rare thing in jail. I knew some who did it on the installment plan too—there's hustlers who turn street tricks, use the money to buy dope to make themselves forget. I remember asking one
about it once. I was looking for a runaway—he was looking for some cash, so we made a deal.

  "Spell 'needle,'" he told me, like it was a secret code.

  I played it straight. "N–e–e–d—"

  "Stop right there," he said, looking through my face.

  I got it then.

  But it didn't add up. Rich kids get bored enough, they might do damn near anything, but you don't snuff yourself because there's nothing else to do that day.

  And there were too many of them doing it.

  Maybe an hour passed. I smoked a couple of cigarettes, watched the occasional car flit past the front window. I took the pencil flash, found my way upstairs. The kid was asleep, face down on his own bed, still dressed.

  A light rain started to fall. I lay on my back on the living room couch listening to it tap against the windows.

  A burring noise, soft, like an expensive phone. I picked up the nearest receiver…dial tone. The sound kept repeating, so faint it barely registered. I got up, closed my eyes so my ears would work better. Maybe it was some fancy alarm clock. The wall phone in the kitchen had two lines. I switched between them…dial tones on both. The sound kept coming. I stood dead–still, trying to sonar it out. A narrow closet was built into the archway between the kitchen and the living room…there! I opened the door—the sound was louder. I went through the stuff in the closet and found it. In the side pocket of a black leather coat—a cellular phone, as thin as a paperback book. I pulled up the antenna, flipped it open.

  "What?" I said into the speaker.

  "Where's Charm?" A man's voice, suspicious.

  "You got the wrong number, pal," I told him, growling like I'd been interrupted.

  He hung up. I put the phone back where I got it, sat down and lit a smoke. Before I was finished with it, I heard the phone again.

  I let it ring until it stopped.

  Charm? Another player…or just another name Cherry used?

  Two more hours, three more cigarettes, the phone in the closet stayed quiet. Maybe it was a wrong number for real.