That's How I Roll

by Andrew Vachss

  The mind protects itself, so I understand I might be avoiding the truth. I understand that maybe it took nothing more than a single petty emotion to bring me down. Envy is a sin. Not because the Bible says so, but because it can make you do stupid things. When you’re born and raised like I was, you figure it out quick: if the only thing keeping you alive is your intelligence, acting stupid is committing suicide.

  So, despite my circumstances, I never coveted what others had. And when I learned how I could change those circumstances, there was no need for me to envy such things, anyway: houses, cars, jewelry, things like that. Things, that’s one key. But understanding yourself means you have to be able to open a two-key lock.

  You might be able to look back and see where you went wrong. But that’s a vision, not a tool. You can’t use what you see in your past to go back and change it. Sure, you can buy things you never had before, but you can’t change the “before.”

  When I found that second key, I realized envy is no sin—it can even be a motivation. Wanting what others have, that’s not wrong. It can make you strive. Work harder. Reach higher.

  You can change your own future.

  You might want a Cadillac. So might another man. You each envy the man who has one. And you each have choices. You can work and save your money until you have enough for that Caddy. You can steal money other people worked for; it spends just as good as money honestly earned. Or you can just sit there, stewing in your own bile. That’s poisonous stuff, bile.

  When two men each want a Cadillac, they can go their separate ways to get one. Usually, they keep going those separate ways for the rest of their lives.

  It’s only when you and another want the same thing—not an assembly line thing, something there’s only one of—that real sin knocks on your door. If you open the door, greed and possessiveness come right on in and make themselves to home. Once they’re in, they never leave.

  Two men want the same woman. This can bring blood, but that’s pretty rare. Most of the time, the man who’s not the woman’s choice gets over being rejected.

  Sometimes, the woman doesn’t even know she’s wanted by that man. He might believe he wouldn’t be her choice, and keep his own feelings to himself. So there’s no rejection to resent … or regret.

  But what about the man who does get what he wanted so bad?

  He could treat his woman like a princess. Be grateful every day of his life that he got so lucky. Work three jobs to buy her nice things.

  Or he could treat her like a slave. Not just making her work, but beating on her when she doesn’t work hard enough. Hard enough to support him when he quits his job or gets laid off. Hard enough to make him forget he’s got twice the stomach and half the hair he used to have.

  Some men, the only work they do is keep watch on their woman—go through the phone bills to see if there’s any strange numbers there; sit outside a tavern where she’s playing a few games of eight-ball with her friends to see who she leaves with; third-degree question her every time she comes back into the house.

  And some are too lazy to do even that much. They just keep their woman in the house. Cut her off from her friends, even from her own family.

  That sometimes works. But it’s got strong potential for backfire, too. If a man catches his woman in bed with another man, and he ends the affair with a pistol, the jury’s not going to treat him too harshly. They call it the “unwritten law.”

  But that only works for men. If a woman’s husband staggers in one night, drunk and nasty, a whore’s lipstick smeared all over him, she might be able to shoot him and get the law to treat her lightly, too. But only if she remembers to say he was acting like he was about to kill her. Self-defense. Around here, that means she only gets to fire once. A shotgun works a lot better than a pistol for that.

  Now that I’m taking stock, I have to face up to things like that. Admit that it might have been something as small and petty as my own possessiveness that brought all this down.

  “Might have,” that’s speculation. But this, this is absolute truth: I was never going to let anyone or anything take my little brother from me. That was never going to happen, no matter what the cost, or who had to pay it.

  ’d seen these same bears plenty of times—I’d been seeing them one way or another ever since I started earning money. The bears were all after the same thing. They all worked the same way. I’d seen them tear hives apart often enough. But this was the first time I’d ever been that hive-protected honey.

  The kind of men I did work for, some of them would talk about how terrible the bears could make it for you if you stopped them from getting their paws on the honey. How much strength it took to hold them off. How that tested a man, deep inside.

  Bragging? I don’t know. Maybe the men who never said a word about such things were the only ones who had really passed that test.

  But I didn’t have to believe any of those stories to know how to behave when those bears came for me. All I had to do was act the way the storytellers claimed they had.

  The whole thing was kind of stupid, because the one thing the bears did know was that I wasn’t going to talk. They never even hoped I would; it was as if something forced them to go through the motions anyway. Kind of like a dance, only with no music.

  t was also a race with no winners.

  The bears were racing to defuse one bomb, but all that time, I was busy building another. I even had a punch list, like the construction bosses always carried with them. I didn’t have a yellow pad, or an aluminum box to keep it in, but I had a better place to store things.

  Step One came naturally. The locals always get the first chance—not only do they know the territory best, they’re already inside it before word reaches beyond their borders.

  But this time, they knew they had to work fast, and that knowledge drove them something fierce. When you feel the Devil’s own breath on the back of your neck, you can’t even waste the energy it takes to turn around and see how close that hellhound is.

  Even so, they couldn’t just crash through the brush without worrying about how much noise they made. Knowing the territory best also meant everyone in that territory knew them, too.

  They would have liked to have the hive completely surrounded before they made their move, but they didn’t have that luxury. They had always been the top dogs here, but they knew that was due for a change.

  And quick, too.

  Bigger and more deadly bears were on their way; you could already feel the ground trembling under their weight. The locals knew they would never be able to drain the hive dry—the best they could hope for was to pull out anything that could hurt them before they were shoved out of the way.

  hose bigger bears had no need to poke and probe and look for openings. They didn’t have to pussyfoot around—no matter what popped out when they squeezed, nothing in that hive posed a danger to any of them.

  Why be subtle when you don’t care what kind of tracks you leave? When the bigger bears were all done squeezing, there’d be nothing left but a tiny little lump.

  Just big enough to stick that goodbye needle in.

  hen you’re arrested for murder, you don’t have much to trade. The rule is, you have to trade up, like when a drug addict gives up his dealer. But if you’ve done considerable killing, talking about who paid you for those services might make the Law so happy that they’ll spare your life in exchange. Or even turn you loose.

  But once you get down to murder for money, the Law’s not the only player at the table. No matter how high up those you talk to may stand, no matter what they promise, you know that even the rumor of you talking can end it all.

  Once the Law has you like they had me, you are going to die. There isn’t but one actual option left to you, only one thing you can still control. You get to decide who does the job.

  If you make the Law do it, all they can kill is your body. Your spirit lives, and your reputation carries on.

  When you die the right way, there�
��s no reason for anyone to seek vengeance on your loved ones.

  Just the opposite, in fact.

  he crime that finally brought me down made national news. But that was just because of the body count. National news doesn’t always bring in national Law.

  All the killings had been in one state, so there was no way the Feds could just ram their way in and take over. That’s what the local Law kept telling themselves, anyway. They ran around saying “jurisdiction” to each other like it was a holy word … the way people in the movies hold up a cross to banish vampires.

  That only works in the movies.

  eeping the Feds out of our business, that’s like a religion around here. But if a federal agent gets killed—they are coming. Get in their way and, no matter how big you are, lawman or not, you’re nothing but a pile of hot asphalt waiting on the steamroller.

  ll I could do was be patient. Deep inside, alone, watching the layers of protection I’d taken so many years to build up slowly come off.

  I knew this would happen someday. I thought I was ready for it, because I’d had so much practice. When I knew pain was coming, I could go someplace in my mind. Someplace else. From there, I could watch it happening, happening to me, but I didn’t feel it. I’d learned to do that as a child. Maybe not “learned,” because I hadn’t studied on it—one day, I realized it had just happened. After that, it always did.

  And now it was happening again. I was watching what the big bears were watching. Only, this time, what they were watching was an illusion. They weren’t getting any closer to what they really wanted. But the closer they thought they were getting, the easier it was for me to keep checking steps off my list.

  t seemed like everyone in the world wanted to talk to me. But even if they weren’t undercovers, they damn sure weren’t showing up because they cared about me.

  And I surely didn’t need any “spokesman.” There was no shortage of volunteers for that job.

  I didn’t worship “the media” the way most folks did. Longing for attention is for killers who haven’t been caught. Like that Zodiac sex fiend in California who kept sending letters to the papers. Or that Unabomber psycho who wanted to see his stupid “manifesto” in print. Now he has the rest of his life to read it.

  I’m nothing like them. I’m not crazy. I never wrote taunting notes to the police; I never got a thrill out of what I did. I was just an assassin, good at my trade. Like any skilled workman, I charged a fair wage for my work, and I never expected payment in full until I finished each job to the customer’s satisfaction. Contract killers aren’t all the same. The only thing we have in common is that we all commit murder for money. Speaking for myself, it was only for the money.

  But there’s more to this work than making people dead. The contracts always have other terms and conditions to them, and those hold forever. It didn’t matter if I was caught—as long as I didn’t cross those lines, I was free to strike any deal for myself that I could.

  Only I didn’t want a deal.

  ust as the local bears got their first turn at me, the local boss bear—the District Attorney himself—took his before anyone else.

  He came to the jail alone. Well, not really alone. He had a couple of assistants with him, and the Sheriff’s men were real close by all the time. They weren’t there to protect him; it was their job to bear witness to the act of Christian charity that the big boss was going to deliver.

  When everybody was in place, he reached down and shook my hand.

  “You’ll never face the death penalty in this county, Esau,” he said. “Folks around here, we all know what you’ve been through.”

  He never specified on that, but he sure as Satan knew why I hadn’t stood up when he’d held out his hand.

  I knew he would never try for the death penalty anyway. Not around here. Not for someone like me.

  I’d read up on this, and I knew the defense could ask for a change of venue—that’s moving the trial to another part of the state. But if I had planned on actually putting up a defense, I’d’ve never let that happen. I knew what the DA knew—no matter who they picked for the jury, as long as it was from folks around here, they’d never vote to execute me.

  They’d never vote to elect that DA again, either. They take insults like that real personal around here.

  That’s why the words tumbled out of his mouth like a rolling bakery line of fresh lemon tarts, with a little strand of barbed wire hidden in each one.

  I knew they’d come that way—you can’t use a harpoon when you’re fly-fishing.

  But they kept using the wrong bait. I couldn’t come right out and tell them what to use, either. I did that and they’d all think I was the one holding the casting rod.

  ’d known this time was coming. I’d known it for many years. The only excuse I had for the hive not being fixed up just right was that I hadn’t planned on those other visitors—there wasn’t any reason to expect them.

  The design did just what it was supposed to do: the more the bears dug at it, the stronger the hive got. Pull off one layer and the others would fold in on themselves, only wrapped much tighter. I was sure I’d made that honey armor-plated.

  But, like I said, I hadn’t built it expecting the Feds. I had counted on never having to deal with them, because I’d been so careful to stay away from anything that might draw their attention.

  It’s not like TV. This place could be home base for a dozen serial killers, and still the local Law would never call on the Feds for help. Around here, you could be anything from a U.S. marshal to a census taker; you’d still be a Fed.

  Nobody likes the Feds. That goes back a long way, and its roots are deep.

  But I shouldn’t have counted on all that to keep me safe.

  tep Two kind of came by itself. Once the Feds took over, they acted just as smug and arrogant as you’d expect. Came straight out and said it, first words. Anything anyone in this whole state could do for me, the Feds could do better. A lot better.

  They could even fix it so I’d never spend another night behind bars.

  When the locals were trying to get me to hand over the honey, they called it “cooperating.” That word tastes foul in the mouth, just saying it. Like collaborating with the enemy.

  The Feds were much smoother. They called it “debriefing,” like I’d been out on an undercover mission. That didn’t taste as bad. If I’d been with them all along, all the talking they wanted me to do wouldn’t be a killer pointing the finger at the people who’d hired him. No, it would be a special kind of federal agent, reporting in from the field.

  They even said they’d get that put in the papers, so everyone would know what a hero I’d been.

  I knew that what people would think of me had nothing to do with what they might read in the papers.

  Maybe that’s why the Feds can never get in deep enough—all they ever have is a bunch of paper reports. If they needed someone to infiltrate a terrorist network, they had to recruit one who was already inside. Never occurred to them that they should put their own terrorists out there, and let the networks recruit them.

  It’s not just that they aren’t patient enough, they’re too … disconnected, I guess is the best way to put it.

  They know how to put their own people in with certain groups, but they can only pull it off when their agents are the same as the people in the group. White, I mean.

  Maybe that’s why it never crossed their minds that I might have killed some of those people for my own reasons.

  t least the Feds were honest enough to tell me that they were determined to fill their basket, and they had a whole shopping list. But my name wasn’t on it. Never been on it, they swore.

  I did believe that last part.

  When I say “Feds,” I’m using that blanket to cover a whole slew of them. It seemed as if a new agency hatched every day. FBI, DEA, IRS, ATF … the only one they always called by its full name was Homeland Security.

  Way too many of them to accomplish anyth
ing. All they did was get in each other’s way. They kept telling me how they were all on the same side, but they kept going at each other like they were blood enemies … even right in front of me.

  I started seeing them all the same way I do preachers: real good at telling other people how to act—but they had some special, private deal with God, so they were exempt from those same rules.

  You want to buy yourself a real chance at salvation, well, you make sure you throw something in the collection plate. And chip in to buy the preacher his new car every year, too.

  I guess it sounds like I hate men of the cloth. I don’t, not really—I generally liked those I met personally. Except for the fat old swine who had hinted that what had happened to me and Tory-boy was God’s punishment for some sin.

  If any of the people I’d done work for had wanted that one killed, I would have given it to them cut-rate.

  The more I thought about that man, the more hate came into me, like lungs gasping for air when you’d been underwater too long. Whatever sin had been committed didn’t belong to me or Tory-boy. Anyone who couldn’t see that was too dirty in his own mind to be allowed to call himself a man of God.

  he way it ended with all those different Feds was when one of them told me that their task force was being disbanded because of “cooperation issues.” That was pretty funny.

  What happened was what always happens: the strongest bear drove the rest of them off.

  You’d think that would be Homeland Security, but it was the FBI team who came out on top. Didn’t even break a sweat doing it, either. It wasn’t a blood-drawing fight; hardly a tussle, in fact. You could see who had the real muscle just by listening to them say “good morning” to each other.

  ATF was the toughest to push out. They only left after telling the FBI team that they “expected a complete report.” But the way they said it, it was the same way some guys mumble threats under their breath as they’re walking away after backing out of a fight.