Terminal

by Andrew Vachss

  “That law—that was then.”

  “I know. But it still works. Look at that guy from Connecticut. He commits a murder, what, twenty years ago? He was just a kid when he did it. But when they finally bring him to trial, he goes down as an adult.”

  Exhale.

  “But before they did that, they had to give him a hearing, see? Like he was still a kid. To find out if he was a good candidate for rehabilitation. It was just a farce, sure, but they still had to do it. In New York, for the sixteen-year-old, they wouldn’t even have to go through that dance.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Between a few years and forever?” the stranger said, only fear keeping the sarcasm from his voice. “Are you kidding?”

  “It’s really the same risk for all of them,” the AB man explained, patiently. “Whether they go down for five minutes or five hundred years, they’re done. Even if they beat the rap on some technicality, once the family of the murdered girl finds the right lawyer, they’ll all end up on Welfare.”

  “Oh,” the stranger said. “I see what you mean. But that makes it even better, then, don’t you see?”

  Exhale.

  “I mean, now that I think about it, you’re right. What they did to that girl…I mean, they were stone fucking skinners. When I found the body, I almost threw up. I don’t go for stuff like that. I’m a thief, not a—”

  Silence. Dead silence. The stranger had come perilously close to claiming in. To call yourself a thief in front of a real convict, especially a high-status one like an AB-OG, you were saying you were a righteous man. Trustworthy. Committed to The Life. Holding the values sacred. And this guy, he was just a low-grade scam artist who couldn’t even make a living at it. For some clubs, just claiming you’re a member could get you seriously dead.

  “Look,” the stranger said, hastily. “I’ve got everything you need. You—well, anybody you sent—they wouldn’t be bluffing. It did happen. They did do it. They’re all guilty. And they’re all rich.”

  Silence. Sound of a cigarette being lit. Exhale. Then: “I’ll get back to you.”

  “Better make it soon,” the stranger said. “There’s other people who’d—”

  “Don’t play that with me,” the AB-OG said. “Don’t ever do that.”

  “Maggot,” Michelle said, as quiet as acid in a beaker.

  “Doesn’t mean it’s not all true.”

  “Oh, I think it is, baby,” she told me. “They knew who to go to, the ones who did that little girl.”

  “Being scum don’t make him dumb.”

  “My father is correct,” Clarence said instantly. “I did a public-records search on some of the paper that man gave to you, Burke.”

  “And?”

  Clarence cleared his throat. “We have the names. The names this…person gave, anyway. Here:

  “Donald A. Henricks, born February 7, 1960. He would have been fifteen at the time of the murder.

  “Reginald William Bender, born July 31, 1960. He also would have been fifteen.

  “Carlton John Reedy, born May 17, 1959. He would have been sixteen that night.

  “And this…person. The one who wants to shake them down. His name is Percival K. Thornton. Born April 5, 1953. He would have been twenty-two—just as he said—on the night the child was killed.”

  “Okay. You already checked—?”

  “Do the three he named have money, mahn? The…informant was not lying there, either. Henricks owns so much real estate, through so many corporations, it is impossible to tell how much exactly, but—”

  “Maybe he’s cash-poor?” Michelle said, looking over from where she had been copying all Clarence’s information onto more blank pieces of oaktag—one per name. She didn’t use the lilac marker for any of them.

  “No, little sister. His house alone is worth several millions, and there is no mortgage. He owns two other homes: one in Montana, one in the Bahamas. No mortgages there, either.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. Now, Bender is an owner, too. Shopping centers, hotels—small ones, independent, very high-end—a horse ranch…too much to list, but he is wealthy, beyond dispute.

  “And Reedy, he declared an income of thirty-one-plus million dollars last year alone. He is an ‘investor,’ which could mean anything.”

  “That’s nice work,” I told him.

  “Oh, there is something more, mahn. Terry and I”—if he caught the Arctic blast from Michelle’s eyes, he ignored it—“we ran that pattern-recognition software. You know, the one we designed when you were looking for that—”

  “Yeah. And?”

  “They were all born on a Sunday, mahn.”

  “They? All three of the killers?”

  “Them and the others. The man who wants to blackmail them. Even the little girl they killed. It was on a Sunday that they found her body, too.”

  “Damn that church,” the Prof said.

  We all went silent. Except for Max.

  He stood up, pointed at Clarence’s computer, at the Mole’s recording rig, at the paper spread out on the table, the walls covered with our writing. Then he walked to the wall himself, and drew a hollow rectangle on a blank spot. Max swept his arms, indicating he was including everything he had pointed to originally.

  Using rapid broad strokes, he blacked in the rectangle. When he stopped, more than half of it was still white. Empty. He filled the space with a huge question mark.

  We all watched, as attentive as yuppies getting an insider tip on a stock.

  Max tapped his own chest. He flowed into a kata so perfect that it was like watching vapor crush bone.

  He pointed at the Mole. Tapped his temple. Bowed.

  Pointed at the Prof. Spread his arms wide. Bowed again.

  He went through all of us. Everyone got their recognition. Their respect for what they did best.

  Except me.

  Max stepped to the chart with THORNTON at the top. Made the gestures of a man, talking, as if in conversation with another. Then he pointed to the question mark inside the rectangle again. And then at me. He covered his right fist with his left hand, bowed. Couldn’t be clearer.

  “Max has it straight,” the Prof said. “Ain’t but one of us that can throw that hard eight.”

  “I do not—” Clarence started to say.

  But the Prof cut him off: “This ain’t about the gun, son. Burke, he’s got the touch to open them up. You want a freak to speak, Burke’s the best there is.”

  “Because you taught—”

  “Listen to me, boy,” the Prof said. “You can only train a man so much. Like with fighters. You can teach a man to deliver a punch, but real power, that’s something you born with. And that’s never enough. See, being a puncher don’t make you a fighter, son. You got to have this”—touching his heart—“or you got nothing. If you can’t take it, sooner or later, you stop giving it. And you start giving it up—am I telling the truth?”

  “Yes, Father,” Clarence said. Getting it. Getting it now. The man he worshiped wanted only the respect he earned; he wasn’t some half-ass guru who snatched credit he didn’t deserve.

  The Prof turned and gave me a hard, deliberate look, meaning: “I know what you’re thinking, but stay out of this.”

  And he did know what I was thinking, as if he was inside my head. The second the Prof put “heart” and “fighter” together, my mind flashed on boxers who’d rather die in the ring than quit. Mike Quarry didn’t have his brother Jerry’s punch, but he had his heart. They’re both gone now, way before their time. Dementia from subdural hematomas. Too many punches to the head. “Boxer’s brain,” they call it, without a trace of sarcasm. Michael Watson, Gerald McClellan, Greg Page…a long list.

  But there’s another kind of heart some fighters have—the one you don’t see inside the ring. Wife-beaters, rapists, child-molesters. If they can make some promoter money inside the ring, who cares what they do outside it?

  Davey Hilton had been one of the three Hilton b
rothers, Canadians who followed their father into the pro ranks. They were all top-ten guys, real bangers, willing to take two to land one. Matthew was the best, but it was Alex who stopped Shawn O’Sullivan, a fast and tough Irishman I was sure would win a welterweight belt when I watched him get jobbed at the Olympics. Davey was holding one of the minor belts as a fifty-four-pounder when he was convicted of holding his two daughters in sexual bondage over a period of several years.

  They were the ones with heart—it took a lot to get on that witness stand and tell the truth. Rape was the least of it, and the jury dropped him for enough crimes to bury him. But the judge didn’t count him out. Not even a standing eight. The “champ” was out in less than five.

  Maybe his prison psychologist will quit and become his manager, like Tony Ayala’s had. Rehabilitation, it’s a wonderful thing.

  The Prof took my slight nod for what it was, turned back to Clarence: “Now, Burke here, you should have seen him in the ring. Slippery? My man made an eel look like sandpaper. And fast? He could put four on you before you could blink. But that one-punch knockout power? Not there. Just not there. Understand?”

  “But what does that have to do with—?”

  “Burke’s got the magic,” Michelle confirmed. “He can…I don’t know how to say it…. He can be them. They’ll say things to him….”

  “I have seen this for myself,” the Mole agreed.

  Max swept the room with his eyes—he’d seen it, too. Satisfied, he sat down.

  “This AB guy—the one who made that tape—he was just there to listen,” the Prof said, thoughtfully.

  “And you think the guy who told the story was lying?”

  “Is Clarence Thomas black?” the Prof countered.

  “If you mean his color—”

  “Now you driving the nail, son!”

  “It sounds right,” Michelle explained. “But that doesn’t make it right.”

  “So this…all of this; none of this…is enough?” Clarence said.

  “Scamming—pro scamming—is a special art,” the Prof explained. “Once you figure out the stupidity level of the mark, you adjust your game, see? You think this AB guy, he’d answer an ad in the papers about earning five grand a week for stuffing envelopes? This is a hard man. Been around. Even if he wants to believe—and Lord knows he does; he has to—he’s not going for any quick-fix trick. But, against this boy”—pointing at the THORNTON chart—“he’s so overmatched they shouldn’t let him in the ring.”

  “He’s lying,” Michelle said, as certain as the Prof. “We just don’t know about what…and how much.”

  “And if this AB boy wants us to get down, he’s got to come around,” the Prof said.

  “I’ll put it to him,” I said.

  When you talk about a fighter’s class, you’re not talking about his weight. There’s bantams with hearts strong enough to pump out a flooded basement, and heavyweights who can beat a man okay, but turn to jelly if the other guy takes it…and hits back.

  Life is a fight, but not everyone’s a fighter. Otherwise, bullies would be an endangered species.

  I sat alone that night and worked on a plan. On a whole bunch of plans. Wolfe’s crew could get me a complete breakdown on all three targets in a finger-snap. No way Clarence is as good as they are for that. Wolfe’s people use special tools to unearth ancient bones, an artist’s brush to clean them off, and, when they finally put the pieces together, they always fit.

  But computers have their uses, and none of the three rich boys—grown men now—were underground. Sure, maybe they had assets hidden. Probably did, considering the kind of money they got to play with. But we didn’t care where they got their money, we just wanted some of it. According to Thornton, what we were after was such a small chunk the marks wouldn’t even miss it.

  I’d asked Clarence what he found out for me. And got this:

  “I am…I am still a student, mahn. Terry, now, he knows how to do things I could never—”

  “So bring him in. What’s the problem?”

  “Well, even Terry, he is not the very best. He would be the first to say so himself.”

  “You’re saying we need the very best? Just to do a simple scan on these three guys?”

  “When you are fighting a mind war, the more you know—”

  “The harder you throw,” I finished one of the Prof’s adages for him. “So?”

  “Well, we could ask—”

  Stepped in that one, didn’t you, sucker? I mentally kicked myself. Clarence’s unrequited love for the cyber-slinger we all called the Dragon Lady was no secret. “Yeah, fine. Ask your girl to show you some more tricks,” I said, surrendering. “But whatever it costs, that’s coming out of your share.”

  The Islander tried to keep from grinning, but he couldn’t pull it off.

  I told myself I didn’t want to go to Wolfe’s crew because the fewer people who knew, the better—the urban survivalist’s version of the Golden Rule. But once you start lying to yourself, the danger is that you’ll get too good at it.

  So I just faced it. Faced it and took it: The last time I’d asked Wolfe’s cell to do a job, I’d ended up seeing Wolfe in person. That’s when I told her I was back to being myself. To being the man she first knew. The one she…I never finished that part: she’d drained my tank before I could get out of first gear.

  But this thing, it was all about money. And no matter what story I might try to tell Wolfe about bringing a little girl’s killers to justice, no matter how many layers of lead I wrapped around it, she’d see through it.

  That last time, I hadn’t been lying when I’d told Wolfe I was doing the right thing, for the right reasons. But, like always, I’d left things out.

  I’d done a lot of thinking ever since that last job. A lot of thinking about myself. About how I saw things. Why I did them. Who I was.

  Now I knew. And I wasn’t going anywhere near Wolfe. Not because I had crossed some borders that she wouldn’t; because I lived on the other side of hers.

  “I did learn some things,” Clarence reported, happily. “The only reason those newspaper clippings were in the database was because they were added. The database itself was not even in existence when—”

  “And we care about this because…?” Michelle said, just short of sarcastic.

  “It is a small town,” Clarence said. “With its own newspapers. It would be quite an undertaking—”

  “All it takes is coin to join,” the Prof cut him off. “Look, son, we already knew this was a rich ville. That computer thing of yours, it’s real nice and all, but Burke used to get that same stuff out of libraries all the time. They got it on…what, Schoolboy?”

  “Microfiche,” I said. “Sometimes, if the town is small enough, they actually keep a copy of every issue they ever printed. Old-time newspaper guys called it the morgue. The Internet may get it quicker sometimes, but it’s not any better than—”

  “With all respect,” Clarence said, “the Internet is a tool. Like you are always saying, what good is something you don’t know how to use? What I learned was that there is a way to locate old Web sites, ones that used to be available but have been taken down. You will not find such things in any library.”

  “I still don’t see—”

  “Little sister, please,” the young man said, the Island sweetness sugaring his voice. “Just take a look.”

  The now-dead Web site had been WhoKilledMelissa.com. The screen of Clarence’s laptop filled with a photo that looked as if it had been scanned from a yearbook, with HELP US FIND HER KILLER! scrolling across the bottom of the screen in a blood-red font. At the top were icons of various weapons: pistol, knife, strangler’s rope…. Clarence demonstrated how playing the cursor over each icon showed what they would open into, stuff like:

  Contact Us • The Crime • Help! • Suspects?

  There were a lot of those links. We patiently watched as Clarence opened “Suspects?” but it held nothing except mug shots of convicted sex kill
ers. All they had in common was that they weren’t in custody at the time of the girl’s murder, and that the killing “fit their known pattern.”

  Total crap. TV “profiler” bullshit.

  I spent an hour clicking links before I realized what I was really looking at. So I asked Clarence to run a certain name, just to be sure my nose was working. Sure enough, the site had been set up by one of those “true crime” quickie-paperback specialists. Apparently, this “journalist” couldn’t crank out her usual couple of hundred pages of cribbed newspaper accounts—plus the obligatory photos and autopsy reports—as fast as the market demanded anymore. So she had decided to ride the “Unsolved Mysteries” train, panning for gold.

  Since she was nothing resembling an investigator—excuse me, “criminal investigative reporter”—she had thrown up the Web site. Probably hoping someone from the girl’s past would give her enough to cobble together another piece of porn that would have Jack Olsen spinning in his grave.

  That old site was now as dead as Melissa Turnbridge. I even looked at its message board, but it was just the usual collection: from ghouls salivating over “More details, please!” to conspiracy theorists—the Monarch Program just barely edging out the Illuminati—to suggestions for casting when this all got turned into a movie. Not a hint of contact by anyone we were interested in. Still, I had to ask:

  “Was the site hacked down, or just—?”

  “The domain name lapsed,” Clarence said. “And there were no new buyers. That means the person who put it up just let it die a natural death.”

  “That’s worth something right there,” I said, aiming it at Michelle’s caustic comments about Clarence consulting the Dragon Lady, but feeling it inside my heart, where the beast-killer always lurks.

  “Is this going to mean another milkshake?”

  “No,” I said into the cancer-man’s prepaid, onetime cell. “Just you and me. No more Q and A. There’s something you need to do. Get done, anyway.”