Another Life

by Andrew Vachss

  I nodded.

  “And you know how gang kids always go for payback, boss. Gas-in-glass, that’ll be it.”

  I nodded again. Gateman might be wrong about the Molotov—although I didn’t think he was—but it really didn’t matter. Any comeback they made wouldn’t be quiet. Win or lose, I was going to end up homeless.

  “Wait here,” I told him.

  “Sure, I know who you talking about, bro. Call themselves Los Diablos,” Jester said, grinning as only a man who’d seen the real thing could. “They got a little clubhouse in the basement of that building that’s coming down, only a few blocks away. Didn’t know they had themselves a bulldog, though.”

  “They called him ‘Tec.’ Probably short for ‘Tec-9.’ Either they weren’t carrying when Gateman threw down on them, or they didn’t have the stones to go for it.”

  “Pendejos flash steel when we show, it’s finito, ese.”

  “I wasn’t asking—”

  “That’s my dog they got there,” Jester said.

  “We can’t hurt them,” I said to Clarence. “They’ve got to still be able to move when we’re done. You sure you’re okay with this?”

  He fitted the silencer to his pistol, tested the trigger tension, nodded. I’d reached out for him before I’d left for Jester’s. I knew I was doing wrong, bringing Clarence in. I knew what the Prof would say if he ever found out. Because if this gang wasn’t going to listen, we were down to one option. That’s why Jester had a pickup truck waiting, its bed lined with heavy black plastic sheeting.

  Four-fifteen a.m.

  I went in first, a pistol in each hand. The basement was a blotch of murky darkness. You could smell humans down there, hear the muzzled sounds of marijuana-and-wine sleep.

  The big pit was good. He never barked, but I could hear him charging up the stairs. When he got close enough for me to be sure, I shot him in the chest. He stumbled, shook himself, and started to rise. I shot him with my other pistol, point-blank into his thick neck.

  The pit tumbled backwards down the stairs, rousing the gang. By the time they staggered themselves awake, they were bracketed inside a death triangle.

  I’d already pocketed the tranquilizer guns and switched to my .357. Jester had a double-barreled big-bore, cut down for close-up work; he held it in one hand as if it was weightless. Clarence played the laser-sight of his nine over each of them as I kicked the floodlight I’d placed behind me into haze-filtered life.

  “You fucked with the wrong man,” I said to the leader. I knew it had to be him—his eyes told me he’d already figured out what the silencer was for, but not his next move.

  He played for time. “Look, man—”

  “Do not say one damn word to me,” I cut him off, careful not to call him names. If I wanted him to go along, I couldn’t disrespect him in front of his boys. I was on a tightrope, and my balance had to be perfect: just a man doing a job, not someone with a personal stake in any of this.

  “That man in the wheelchair, he has friends,” I said, slow and clear. “A lot of friends. Our boss, he’s one of those friends. So we got our orders. The boss said it was our call, but if anything, and I mean anything, happens to his friend, it comes back on us. You know what that means. That’s why we’re here. We have to take something back to our boss. We can take your word, or we can take your heads. Pick one.”

  The leader didn’t hesitate. “The minute you leave, we count to a hundred and we leave, too,” he said. His voice was steady; I could see why he was in charge. “We leave, and we don’t come back. Never. Omar”—he tilted his head at one of the crew—“his baby momma’s in the Ravenswood projects; she do whatever he tell her. We go there tonight, start looking for another spot to set up in the morning. It’s easier to score over that side of the bridge, anyway. Look, on my life, we never cross your border again, okay?”

  “You need to watch someone die, just to be sure we’re not playing?” I asked him.

  “No, man. Just say what—”

  “What you said works. It’s a good plan,” I told him, letting him save face. “But, you understand, we gotta be sure. So we’ll be outside. Somewhere in the dark. We can count to a hundred, too. All”—I looked around, counting—“five of you don’t come out, anyone left behind is a corpse.”

  “Okay. Okay, sure,” he said, holding up his hands, palms facing me.

  “There’s three cars outside, too,” I told him, holding up a cell phone. “You don’t all stay together . . . pop!”

  They didn’t make a sound.

  I pocketed the phone, pulled out two rubber-banded packets, and tossed them on the floor. “There’s five hundred cash in there, plus a dozen MetroCards. You all walk over to the subway, even if you see a cab along the way.

  “That one,” I said, pointing at a kid with one leg wrapped in heavy rags, “he has to limp, too fucking bad. You leave him behind . . .”

  The leader nodded. The kid Gateman had shot nodded harder.

  “You stay together. You do not jump the turnstile. You do not get yourselves arrested this side of the bridge, not for anything. Got it? All right, there’s just one more thing . . . .”

  Backlit like we were, all they could see was the hardware.

  “We need your pictures,” I told them. “Polaroids. Just keep facing me. It’s not gonna hurt; we wanted you dead, we would have done it already.”

  They all took the flash in the face without moving. One of them even turned sideways after the first shot.

  “You know why we did that,” I told the leader. “Our whole crew’s gonna have copies by tomorrow morning. And don’t even think about running your mouths, ever. We can find you on Rikers even easier than we did here.”

  Jester walked over to the tranq’ed-out pit, knelt, and scooped him up with one arm, keeping his shotgun trained on the gang. Then he hoisted the pit gently over his shoulder. One punk’s mouth dropped open at the sight.

  “Whose dog is he?” I asked.

  “He mine,” a dark-skinned kid in a red tank top said, probably thinking the money I’d tossed on the floor was some kind of payment.

  Jester stepped forward and hooked him to the gut. The kid dropped, but he didn’t pass out. The real pain wouldn’t come for a while yet. Jester dropped to one knee, leaned in close. “I ever hear you got yourself another pit, you gonna die real slow.” He stood up, kicked the kid in the ribs, and backed away to give us cover.

  “You can take that one with you, too, or just leave him here,” I told the leader. “But when you walk into an ER once you get across the border, you better tell a real good story.”

  “Drive-by,” the leader said, smoothly. “We over near the Plaza, just chillin’. A bunch of white boys jump out of a Jeep, swing on us with baseball bats. Hector here gets hit in the stomach. We all running when we hear a shot, and Tony catches one in the leg.”

  If this was a crew that carried off its wounded, maybe their leader was the real deal. Or maybe he was just good at math—we weren’t going to do one of them and let the rest just walk away.

  I had counted up to ninety-one when all five stumbled out of the basement. One was limping, but still moving pretty good. The dark-skinned kid had both hands pressed to his stomach.

  I was in the alley next to the flophouse, behind the wheel of my Plymouth. Gateman was inside, with Rosie. Clarence was behind the mirror.

  The cellular throbbed against my chest.

  “They walked a long way,” Terry reported. “Sat together on the ‘1’ Train until Forty-second, then they all got on the ‘7.’ I didn’t—”

  “You went deeper than you needed to,” I told him. “It’s over now. Get gone.”

  Rosie watched with only mild interest as I used a small sledgehammer on the cell phone. Gateman said he’d take care of the disposal. Clarence went back to the hospital.

  I returned the Plymouth, docked it, and then reported to Jester.

  “I already got a spot for this one, ese,” he said, tilting his head toward
the big pit, still unconscious, double-chained inside the cinderblock garage where Jester kept his office. Putting him out back would have been premeditated murder. “By tomorrow, he be in good hands.”

  I tapped my heart with my fist. Twice.

  The next morning, I entered the hospital through the service entrance, held still for the retinal scan, then punched in the numbers that would match it.

  Inside, I moved past a guard. His weapon was holstered, but his palm partially covered a big red button. He was holding it down the way you do a grenade after the pin’s been pulled. Even if an intruder managed to slip past the scanners and put one between his eyes, his dead hand would still trigger the alarm. Instantly, the intruder would be caged. And whoever was watching the monitors would make sure the dozens of tiny jets implanted in the ceiling had gassed him into unconsciousness before signaling the capture team to move in.

  The back way opened into an atrium that reached straight up to an all-glass ceiling. This was the break room for doctors and other high-ranking personnel, featuring a dozen different seating arrangements, a coffee urn that looked like it cost more than a Korean car, and a long table of fresh-baked pastries. Mini-trees in individual planters were scattered all around, each with its own auto-mist system. The floor was rubber-tiled; the walls were lined with glowing fiber-optic bands.

  “Nothing but the best” was the message. One of them, anyway.

  I had started over to the elevator when I noticed Taralyn, sitting by herself at a table in the corner. She smiled and waved. I knew it wasn’t an invitation, just her natural Island politeness. I returned the courtesy and was about to move off when I spotted a medium-height white man strolling over toward her.

  His suit coat was open, displaying a shoulder holster. Regulation haircut, gym-sculpted body. He moved with the flat-footed shuffle of a man who expected people to step aside.

  Good luck with that, I thought to myself, figuring a woman like Taralyn must have years of experience repelling advances. But then I caught a glimpse of Clarence, his back to the scene, waiting patiently for an opening near the coffee urn, a cup and saucer in each hand.

  I immediately flowed into a change of direction. Thunder was booming, and our house needed a lightning rod. I moved the way Max had taught me, covering the ground quickly without looking like I was in a hurry. I got there too late to hear whatever the bodybuilder had already said, but I heard Taralyn’s response real clear: “No, thank you. I am waiting for someone.”

  The bodybuilder’s hearing wasn’t as good as mine. He picked up a metal chair with one finger, spun it expertly so it reversed, then straddled it and sat down across from Taralyn.

  “Maybe I’ll just wait with you,” he said. His voice was too thin for his body—steroids will do that.

  “Please—” Taralyn started to say. But by then I was in position behind him. I leaned forward and spoke in a barely audible voice, adding a tinge of anxiety to assure him that I was no kind of threat. “The young lady is waiting for her fiancé,” I told the tough guy. “You see?”

  He turned his head to look at me, not deigning to twist his whole body, letting his eyes send out the warning. Just in case I was too slow to understand, he popped the biceps of his suit jacket, adding an exclamation point to his unspoken threat.

  “Yeah, I see. And I think I’ll wait along with her,” he said. “That all right with you, pal?”

  “Not really,” I said, apologetically, as I slid my right thumb and index finger deep into his wedged trapezius. I like bodybuilders; all that definition makes it easier to place the nerve blocks.

  “This young lady’s fiancé, he’s one of those crazy-jealous guys,” I said, very quietly. “You know the kind I mean, right? And he’s over getting her some coffee, so this is kind of an awkward situation. How about if you and me find another spot?”

  Despite the macho nonsense, this guy was the real thing—he had the kind of pain tolerance you don’t get from lifting weights. “Sounds like a plan,” he gritted out.

  “Great!” I said, dropping my left hand inside his jacket, just above the hipbone. “Let’s go.”

  He stood up, slipping out of the nerve block on his neck as he did. But there was nothing he could do about my left hand without taking all kinds of risks. That wouldn’t stop him in the street, but in this place, the risk was much higher—I was an invited guest, and he didn’t know who had issued the invitation.

  We passed Clarence on his way back to Taralyn’s table—I don’t think he even noticed us.

  When the elevator car arrived, I stepped inside, releasing the bodybuilder and turning to face him as I backed to the wall. I wasn’t surprised when he followed.

  “Who’re you?” was all he said.

  “Someone who just saved your life,” I told him.

  “Is that right?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “How much longer?” I asked the Prof.

  “Damned if I know, Schoolboy. I ain’t in no hurry. Only help I could be to you on this job is what I’m already doing, anyway.”

  “It won’t always—”

  “Yeah, it’ll be different,” the old man said. “Different way, but the same play. Soon as I finish learning how to use that new leg, I’m out of here. You tuned in?”

  “You’ll be ready to go when you can walk out.”

  “That clue is true. Only a man who’s been behind the wall can feel it all. Clarence, he thinks it’s about medicine . . . not that he’s paying attention to anything but that girl he gonna marry.”

  “He’s asked her?”

  “Remember what I told you when you knew you were going to the Double K that first time?” he asked. He was using prison-speak for Kangaroo Kourt, the “Disciplinary Committee” that got to decide if the ticket some hack wrote on you was valid. It always was; the only thing that mattered was what it was going to cost you.

  “Even in the bing, the canaries still sing,” I answered him.

  A grin transformed the old man’s face. “You don’t forget nothing, do you, son? You get written up, you know you gonna get some time in the hole—ain’t no fair allowed in jail. When we named them, we left off the last ‘K,’ but you know what they say.”

  “I’m—”

  “Nigger ain’t a color, boy. There always be a way for them to pick us out of a crowd. Hell, back then, if you shanked some motherfucker, they’d lock you down even if they knew you didn’t have no choice. But at least they always kept it in the house. Today, they actually put your ass on trial for that. I mean, take you down to the same court that sent you down.”

  The old con shook his head in disgust. “Making your time harder, okay. But giving you more time, that is seriously wrong.”

  “It’s true,” I said, remembering that first time I went before the Disciplinary Committee. The guy I’d stabbed had it coming, and the guards sitting there all knew it. So, okay, they had to give me some time in the hole, but that wasn’t for what I’d done, it was for getting caught doing it.

  “You know that three-strikes bullshit they got now?” the Prof said scornfully. “A small-timer with two falls on his sheet don’t even think about that until it’s all-or-nothing. Like that cop in California who got smoked ’cause the numbnuts who grabbed him and his partner figured they were headed for the gas chamber anyway.

  “You put the death penalty on kidnapping, you telling the snatch-men not to leave no witnesses. That’s why some useless junkie or a two-bit booster ends up blowing a cop away. He suddenly realizes he’s going down for life-without even on a lightweight beef, so what the fuck? When you know you gonna die if you don’t try, ain’t but one thing to do.”

  “Hold court.”

  “Amen.”

  When I stepped off the elevator, the bodybuilder was waiting for me. I stood where I was, sensing the wall behind me, hoping he’d bull-rush, give me a chance to convert his energy to injury. But he closed the distance between us slowly, one near-tentative step at a time. I watched his eyes. Su
ddenly he stuck out his hand. Open.

  I expected a bonecrusher move, so I just looked blank, giving him nothing.

  “Look, buddy,” he said, “that little . . . thing before. I already forgot it. I hope you have, too. I wasn’t trying—”

  “Do I know you?” I said. Not cold, quizzical.

  He blinked rapidly a couple of times, twisted his lower lip, turned his back, and walked off. I watched him leave the building, wondering if he was pumped up enough to be waiting around outside.

  That’s when I glanced over at the table where Taralyn had been sitting. Pryce motioned me over.

  “It’s hard to find good help these days,” he said, as I sat down across from him. “They can follow orders, but you have to use small words. Tell them to fill up the car, you have to make sure they understand the gas goes in the tank, not the backseat.”

  “Yeah. Why stay in the closet when it’s got a glass door?”

  Pryce’s eyes were veiled. “It’s that obvious?”

  “Where’d you find him, in a skinhead compound?”

  “Close enough.”

  “So he’s not on the books?”

  “He thinks he is. But the kind of thinking he does . . .”

  “You don’t care who you use, do you?”

  “What are you, one of those ‘bushido’ boys? You think killing a man with a sword is more honorable than shooting him in the back? Dead is dead. It’s not the tool; it’s the job. You use whatever works.”

  “Like me.”

  “Like you. Get over yourself, Burke. You think killing a few vermin makes you an avenging angel?”

  “I’m only working for you because—”

  “Did I ask? I made an offer; you accepted it. You’re a contract man. How you get paid makes no more difference to you than how you get the job done makes to me.”

  “I’m doing what I was paid to do.”