Another Life

by Andrew Vachss

  When Clarence and I walked into the Prof’s room, the bed was empty. Clarence gasped some wordless sound. I felt it in a place I thought had frozen over years ago.

  “He’s around somewhere,” I told my younger brother as I walked him to the door. “Come on.”

  We found the Prof near the end of a long corridor. His right hand rested on some kind of thick metal pole that hit the floor on a triangle of rubber-capped legs, his left was around the tiny waist of a woman in a nurse’s uniform. They were slowly covering ground.

  “Taralyn,” Clarence whispered, his voice a blend of different sighs.

  “Recognized her from this angle, huh?” I said.

  I didn’t look at his face, but I felt like I was standing next to a sunlamp.

  We caught up with them just as the Prof lowered himself, with a little help, onto a free-form couch positioned to provide a magnificent view of the city at night. They can do amazing things with one-way glass these days.

  “You ever been in New Orleans?” he said, by way of greeting.

  I knew he wasn’t asking me.

  “No, Father,” Clarence answered.

  “You know those dumbass hansom cabs they got in Central Park? The ones for tourists?”

  “I have seen them,” Clarence said, caution seeping into his voice.

  “Burke here, he hates the whole idea. Hell of a way for a race-horse to spend his last days, right?”

  “Any days at all,” I agreed.

  “Well, now, see, in New Orleans, they got the same thing. Only they don’t use horses; they use mules. You know why?”

  “I do not,” Clarence said, being very careful now.

  Taralyn sat next to the Prof, as composed as if she was in church. But her eyes never left Clarence’s face as the Prof continued.

  “Gets too hot, sometimes those Central Park horses just keel over in the street. Supposed to have all kinds of rules about it, but you know how this city is about keeping the rich folks happy. Now a mule, it gets too hot, he pulls a work stoppage. That’s all there is. You can’t beat ’em and you can’t bribe ’em. Can’t trick ’em, either. Now, what am I telling you, boy?”

  “They should use mules here?” Clarence guessed.

  “They shouldn’t do that crap at all,” the Prof told him, nodding at me. “But that ain’t the point. What I’m telling you is, sometimes, people don’t understand the difference between stubborn and smart.”

  “Ah.”

  “You take this little girl here,” the Prof said, reaching for Taralyn’s hand. The gesture looked so natural that it couldn’t have been the first time. “Look like she couldn’t lift a bag of groceries, but she strong as a damn mule, son. Twice as stubborn, too.”

  “Mr. Henry!” the café-au-lait beauty protested. “You know very well that physical rehabilitation is not magic. If I hear one more story about roots and mojos and—”

  “Nothing but the truth, girl,” the Prof shot back. “You think those boys running around here in their white coats, they know everything?”

  “I do not. But I do know that you are to have exercise every day. Before the prosthesis can be fitted properly, you must be in—”

  “Now you see?” the Prof said to Clarence. “Son, please, I beg you. Distract this woman long enough for your brother to get me back to my room.”

  “Come on, old man,” I said to the Prof, extending my hand to help him up.

  “It’s like your long shot pays off, but when you show up to collect, you find out the bookie grabbed the first thing smoking, Schoolboy. What that old guy told you, it has to be right. Never fails: you strain out the trash, whatever’s left is pure cash. So, yeah, we got the winning ticket. Only we can’t turn it in for the payoff.”

  “By me, we already did.”

  “You mean this joint? Go bring me my sounds.”

  I carried the black Bose machine that could handle six CDs over to his bed. Following his gestures, I popped the lid. The CD inside was unlabeled. Watching the Prof for hand-signaled instructions, I closed it again. Immediately the LED glowed, as if the CD inside was spinning. But no sound came out of the speakers.

  “That’s the Mole-man’s,” the Prof said. “He started to tell me how it works, but Little Miss Michelle started in on him about shoes or something. All I know is, it throws off some kind of noise-canceling signal. When that CD’s in, whatever ears they got on us ain’t picking up nothing but a conversation between you and me. One we had, not the one we having, see?”

  “They’re bugging a recording?” I said, shaking my head in wonderment.

  “Hope so,” the Prof replied. “But, just in case, keep it all light salad, get me? Nice round olives, no pits.”

  I nodded. Said: “I’ve got no contacts I can trust overseas.”

  The Prof motioned me to lean in close, whispered so softly it was barely a breath.

  I stepped back.

  “That’s the truth,” I agreed. “But the only way I’m going to get to even ask is—”

  “One call could do it all, son. But you down to your last dime, and even less time,” he cautioned, just as Clarence walked in.

  “Why’d you leave that little girl?” the Prof demanded.

  “Father, she works here. She cannot just . . . go for a walk whenever she desires. This is her job.”

  “Sit down, boy,” the old man said, hard-core serious.

  I took a seat, too, in case the Prof needed me. That might happen, I heard Michelle snicker, somewhere inside my head.

  “The little girl ain’t no crime-man’s wife, Clarence. You understand what I’m telling you?”

  “Father, I—”

  “No way I’m leaving this junkyard of a planet without some grandchildren,” the old man cut him off. “That ain’t up for negotiation. This one,” he said, nodding in my direction, “he disqualified himself from that job before you was even born.”

  I didn’t know if the Prof was talking about my commitment to crime or my vasectomy, but I did know it didn’t matter.

  “Listen up, now,” the old man said to Clarence. “You a natural stud—you my son, what else could you be?—but all you ever had so far was girlfriends. Burke, he had women. That Belle girl, Jesus rest her sweet soul, now, she was a crime-man’s woman. Never a doubt, right down to the minute she cashed out.”

  My chest hurt from the memory. Belle. A rock-candy girl, born without choices or chances. The day her older sister told her she was also her mother, she told Belle to run for her life. Her mother-sister knew “Daddy” had decided Belle was grown enough to be next on his list. Belle was still scrambling through the swamp when she heard the gunshots that ended the life of the woman she had always called Sissy.

  After that, she did whatever it took. Drove getaway cars for heist artists, took off her clothes on grungy stages for money. Always running from what was inside her.

  We found each other in the dark. It was Belle who told me that most baby alligators never live past a few days. As soon as they’re hatched, they charge for the water, but there’s too many things blocking their path. Even the ones who make it, there’s things waiting for them in the water, too. Very bad odds. The way Belle told it, the few gators who manage to grow big enough to be safe spend the rest of their lives getting even for their brothers and sisters who didn’t.

  It all ended the night I killed a man who was blocking our family’s path to the water. The same night Belle went out in a blaze of police gunfire, drawing the cops away from me, the way her mother had drawn her father away from her. The father who had infected her with that “bad blood” she always believed she carried. Believed it so strong she would never carry a child of her own.

  The Prof’s voice took me right back to when we’d settled that account, years before Clarence became part of us:

  I was standing on the upper level of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, waiting in the night. Back to the wall, hands in the empty pockets of my grimy raincoat. Under the brim of a trash-bin fedora, my eyes
swept the deck.

  A tall, slim black youth wearing a blue silk T-shirt under a canary-yellow sport coat. Baggy pants with pegged cuffs that broke perfectly over creamy Italian shoes.

  Today’s pimp, waiting for the bus to spit out its cargo of runaways. He’d have a Maxima with tinted windows waiting in a nearby parking lot. Rap about how hard it was to get adjusted to the city, how he was the same way himself when he first hit town. Now he’s a talent scout for an independent film producer. If the girl wanted, he’d let her stay at his place for a few days until she got herself together. Plenty of room there: projection TV, VCR, sweet stereo, too. Some fine liquor, even a little coke. High-style. “The way it’s done, babe.”

  Another black guy, this one in his late thirties. Gold medallion worn beneath an unbuttoned red polyester shirt that would pass for silk in the underground lights. Knee-length black leather coat, player’s hat with a tasteful red band. Fake gators on his feet.

  Yesterday’s pimp, waiting his turn. This one would have an old Caddy, promise to make the girl a star. The audition would be in a no-see hotel just down the street. One with metal coat hangers in a closet that would never hold clothes.

  Once a wide-eyed runaway got off that bus, she could go easy or she could go hard. But she was going.

  Two youngish white guys, talking low, getting their play together. Hoping the shipment of fresh new boys wouldn’t be past their sell-by dates.

  A blank-faced Spanish kid: black sweatshirt, hood pulled up tight around his head, felony-flyers on his feet. “Carry your bags, ma’am?”

  A few citizens, waiting on relatives coming back from vacation, or a kid coming home from school. A bearded wino picking through the garbage, muttering.

  The Greyhound’s air brakes hissed as it pulled into the loading port.

  Night bus from Starke, Florida. A twenty-four-hour ride, changing buses in Jacksonville. The round-trip ticket cost $244.

  I know; I paid for it.

  The man I was waiting for would have a letter in his pocket. A letter in a young girl’s rounded handwriting. Blue ink on pink stationery.

  The slow stream of humans climbed down, most carrying plastic shopping bags, cartons tied together with string, shoulder-duffels. Not a lot of leather luggage rides the ’Hound.

  He was one of the last off the bus. Tall, rawboned man, small eyes under a shock of taffy-honey hair. Belle’s eyes, Belle’s hair. A battered carryall in one hand. The Spanish kid never gave him a second glance. A cop might have, but there weren’t any around.

  I felt a winter’s knot tighten in my chest.

  His eyes swept the depot like a prison searchlight.

  I moved to him, taking my hands out of my pockets, showing them empty. He’d never seen me before, but he knew the look.

  “You’re from Belle?” he asked. A harsh voice, not softened by the cracker twang.

  “Yeah. She sent me to bring you to her,” I answered, turning my back on him so he could follow, keeping my hands in sight.

  I ignored the escalator, took the stairs to the ground floor. Felt the man moving behind me. I knew Max was behind him; shadow-quiet, keeping the box tight.

  My Plymouth was parked on a side street off Ninth Avenue. I opened the driver’s door, climbed in, reached over, and unlocked his door. Giving him all the time in the world to bolt if he smelled something wrong.

  But he climbed in next to me right away. Glanced behind him. All he could see was a pile of dirty blankets.

  “No backseat in this wagon?”

  “Sometimes I carry things.”

  He smiled, long yellow teeth catching the neon flash from a topless bar. “You work with Belle?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “She’s a good girl.”

  I didn’t answer him, pointing the Plymouth to the West Side Highway. I lit a smoke, tossing the pack on the seat between us. He helped himself, firing a match off his thumbnail, leaning back like a man in charge.

  I turned east across 125th, heading for the Triboro Bridge.

  “Y’all got nothin’ but niggers ’round here,” he said, looking out his window.

  “Yeah, they’re everyplace.”

  “You ever do time with them?”

  “All my life.”

  I tossed a token in the Exact Change basket on the bridge and headed for the Bronx. The Plymouth purred off the highway onto Bruckner Boulevard, finding its own way to Hunts Point.

  He watched the streets pass, said: “Man, if it ain’t niggers, it’s spics. This here city’s no place for a white man.”

  “You liked the joint better?”

  His laugh was short and ugly.

  I motored on, past blacked-out windows in abandoned buildings—dead eyes in a row of corpses. Turned off the main drag and headed toward the Meat Market. Whores working naked under clear plastic raincoats waved at the trucks as they passed by.

  He just watched.

  We crossed an empty prairie, tiny dots of light glowing where things that had been born human kept fires burning all night long.

  I pulled up to the junkyard gate. Left him in the car while I reached my hand through a gap in the razor wire to open the lock.

  We drove inside and stopped. I got out and relocked the gate. Then I climbed back inside, rolled down the window, and lit a smoke.

  “What do we do now?” he asked.

  “We wait.”

  The dogs came. A snarling pack, swarming around the car.

  “Damn! Belle’s here?”

  “She’s here,” I told him. Pure truth.

  The Mole lumbered through the pack, knocking the animals out of his way with his knees as he walked, the way he always does. He came up to my open window, peered past me at the man in the front seat.

  “This is him?”

  “Yeah.”

  The Mole clapped his hands together. Simba came out of the blackness. A city wolf, boss of the pack. The beast stood on his hind legs, forepaws draped over my windowsill, looking at the man next to me. A low, thick sound came out, as if his throat was clogged with unswallowed blood.

  “We walk from here,” I told the man.

  His eyes were ball bearings. “I ain’t walkin’ nowhere, boy. I don’t like none a this.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Too bad for you, boy. You look real close, you’ll see my hand ain’t empty.”

  I didn’t have to look close. I knew what he’d have carried in his satchel—Greyhound doesn’t use metal detectors.

  The dirty pile of blankets in the back of the Plymouth changed shape.

  The man grunted as he felt the round steel holes against the back of his neck.

  “Your hole card is a low card, motherfucker.” The Prof’s voice, big-chested powerful for such a tiny man. “I see your puny pistol and raise you one big-ass scattergun.”

  “Toss it on the seat,” I told him. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Where’s Belle?” he said, frightened now, evoking the name of his property like it was a prayer. “I came to see Belle.”

  “You’ll see her. I promise.”

  His pistol made a soundless landing on the front seat. The Mole walked around and opened the passenger door. The man got out, the Prof’s shotgun right behind. I walked around to his side of the car. “Let’s go see her,” I said.

  We walked through the junkyard until we came to a clearing.

  “Have a seat,” I told him, pointing toward a cut-down oil drum. Took a seat myself, lit another smoke.

  He sat down, reaching out a large hand to snatch at the pack I tossed over to him out of the air. Good reflexes, lousy survival instincts.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “We wait,” I said, again.

  Terry entered the clearing. A slightly built little boy wearing a set of dirty coveralls. “That him?”

  I nodded.

  The kid lit a smoke for himself, watching the man. The dog pack watched, too. With the same eyes.

  The Mole stumbled up next to me.
The Prof by his side, holding his sawed-off like an artist with a paintbrush.

  “Pansy!” I called. A Neapolitan mastiff lumbered out of the darkness, 160 pounds of muscle and bone. Her midnight fur gleamed blue in the faint light, baleful gray eyes pinning as she walked toward the tall man like a steamroller approaching freshly poured tar.

  “Jump!” I snapped at her. Pansy hit the ground, her eyes still locked on her target.

  I looked around one more time. All Belle’s family was in that junkyard. All that was left, except for Michelle. And she’d already done her part: not just writing that letter—she’d been waiting in the shadows next to my Plymouth, in case the guy had spooked and made a run for it.

  The Prof handed me a revolver. It warmed my hand.

  I stood up.

  “They got the death penalty in Florida?” I asked the man.

  “You know they do,” he said. No fear in his voice; he still thought he was being tested.

  “They got it for incest?”

  His eyes flickered as he realized he’d already been graded. “Where’s Belle? Let me talk to her!” His voice was a feathery whine.

  “Too late for that,” I told him. “She’s in the same ground you’re standing on.”

  “I never did nothin’ to you.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  He tried a feeble stab: “I got people know where I am.”

  The Prof sneered, “Motherfucker, you don’t even know where you are.”

  “You want the kid to see this?” I asked the Mole.

  Light played on the thick lenses of the underground man’s glasses. “He watched her die.”

  I cocked the revolver, wanting Belle’s father to hear the sound.

  He didn’t panic, kept his voice low, trying to sound reasonable. “Look, if I owe, I can pay. I’m a man who pays his debts.”

  “You couldn’t pay the interest on this one,” I told him.

  “Wait! I got money stashed. I can—”

  “Save it for the Parole Board,” I told him.

  The hammer dropped. The man I had waited too long to kill jerked backwards off the oil drum. I fired twice more, watching his body shudder as each hollow point slug went home.