Terminal

by Andrew Vachss

  I’d met him on Rikers a long time ago. I was being held for trial—a trial that never happened, when a pimp who’d taken a bullet developed a medical complication: loss of memory. Bishop, he was doing ninety days because…well, because of what he was. A softhearted judge had let him off with “probation and restitution” on his last job. He paid the restitution immediately…with a rubber check. Bishop was the kind of master planner who could always figure out how to come out on the bottom.

  “He’s supposed to be so smart,” I said to the Prof once. “I mean, he’s got, like, a Ph.D. or something, right?”

  “Why you think they call a diploma a ‘sheepskin,’ son?”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “A real teacher, he wants the ones he teaches to be better than he is. Smarter, sharper, slicker. Wants them to rise, okay? But all they teach those poor kids in college is rinse-and-repeat, see? That’s ’cause those teachers, they’re the kind of punks who stay up by keeping folks down. And they’ve got lifetime gigs doing it.”

  “So college, it’s a waste of time?”

  “It don’t have to be. It’s like the Good Book,” he said, switching from Professor to Prophet. “You got to read the book itself, not the book reviews, see? A teacher’s like a fighter—got to bring some to get some. When they can’t bring it, they just sing it. And most of those kids going to school, all they ever learn is to just sing along. Memorize the words, so they can spit them back out. How’s that gonna make you smarter?”

  “So a guy like Bishop…?”

  “Oh, he’s smart for real. But the motherfucker’s radioactive, son. Dealing with him, it’s like swimming in the swamp. You might pull it off once, but you try it too many times, something in there’s going to pull you down. You see that man coming, you cross the street, hear?”

  I never went to college, but I never forget what I’ve been taught. Any of it.

  I don’t forget the people who taught me, either. Any of them.

  I walked through the shadows, sadness-shrouded by how at home I felt there. And how I could heat this whole city in the middle of winter with the flames from all the bridges I’ve burned.

  My car was where it was supposed to be. So were the pits. This time, I was carrying top-quality tribute: a massive T-bone. The male and one of the females each took a bite and played tug until a slab came loose for each. My orca girl took a fat cube of filet mignon from behind my back.

  I drove my purple Plymouth to the badlands, stripped off its condom inside the chain-link as Simba came over to keep me company. I couldn’t just slog though the pack the way the Mole or Terry did—I needed the old warrior to walk point.

  The Mole had us on visual all the way. He was waiting outside. We both followed him down—me to his Father’s Day chair, Simba to the gorgeous sable coat Michelle had abandoned after deciding that wearing fur was a badge of low character. It was Simba’s curl-up spot now.

  “Nu?”

  “You know it’s done,” I said.

  “Not that. Was I right?” Meaning, was killing that piece of filth something I would have wanted to do, even if I didn’t have to?

  “Or?”

  “Or what?”

  “Or are you checking to see if your own people lied to you?”

  “I already know.”

  “How?”

  “I can feel it coming off you. So can Simba.”

  The beast made a throaty sound. I took it for recognition of his name; the Mole took it for agreement.

  “He was—”

  “I know,” he cut me off.

  “So his daughter—”

  “Yes,” the Mole said. “There is what you wanted.”

  I followed his stubby finger to the corner where it was pointed. Six more metal file cases, with carrying handles. Duplicates of the one he had given me originally.

  “The deal was for just this one—”

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “Those boxes are not another…job. They are what you wanted.”

  I met his eyes. Saw the truth.

  “You had the stuff all the time,” I said. Not an accusation, saying aloud what I just realized.

  “I was trusted,” he said. Three words—a thousand meanings.

  If the pits noticed that my Plymouth had been restored to its night-blending color scheme, I couldn’t see it on their faces. I had stopped by the flophouse first. No way I was going to tie up both hands trying to carry all those file boxes through the route I had to take. Or make six trips, either.

  By the time I got back, Max was sitting with Gateman. He took two boxes in each hand. I followed him up the stairs.

  We sat down at the poker table. Max spread his arms in an “Is that all of it?” gesture.

  “That’s what they say,” I told him.

  It took the Prof and Clarence almost two hours to show up. By then, Max and I had figured out that every single piece of paper in the file boxes was a copy, even the color photos. I was guessing Xerox didn’t make whatever the Mole’s people had used for the job.

  “Motherfucker!” the Prof burst out, when he saw the mountain. “What’d those fools do, rob a paper factory?”

  “It’s all on the case,” I said. “I don’t know how much work they really put in, don’t know how much of this is just cops playing CYA, but it’s all on Melissa Turnbridge, Prof.”

  “So you’re saying, if we’re not gonna cheat, we gotta check every fucking sheet?”

  I didn’t even answer him. The reason so few crimes actually get solved—if you don’t count informants, or fools who don’t clean up after themselves—is because of prejudice. Not black-white kind of prejudice—that’s what pins crimes on the wrong man, sure, but that’s not what muddies the water if you’re really looking for answers. I mean the kind of prejudice that makes the investigator start with a bent mind.

  Psychologists call that “cognitive distortion.” You view the world through a prism, refracting the images to fit your needs. That’s how freaks resolve their “internal dissonance.” They know sodomizing a baby is nothing but pain and terror for the victim. But not having a conscience doesn’t mean you don’t know right from wrong; it just means you don’t let stuff like that get in the way of your fun. Or, more likely, the pain is the fun.

  The “treatment community” believes this means the thought process of child-molesters is distorted. Baby-rapers don’t see a victim being used; they see a child being “loved.” And all children want love, don’t they? Isn’t love good for them?

  For decades, they’ve been building sex-offender treatment on the foundation of this quicksand: If we can just alter the poor man’s cognitive distortions, we can change his behavior. The treatment twits aren’t wrong about cognitive distortion—they just don’t understand that they’re the ones who have it.

  The whole concept was probably a deliberate plant, suggested to a therapist who believed some freak had achieved “insight.” The therapist repeats it, like a trained parrot, only he calls it a “discovery.” Eventually, “repeat-and-believe” becomes the formula, and, before long, there’s a whole new industry springing up.

  The pipeline opens, and the money flows. Politicians pass the “right” laws, judges do the “right” thing, and the right people get “treatment.”

  It’s the perfect scam, because people want it to be true.

  I just read this test some researchers conducted. Ah, it was a beaut. The researchers didn’t care about sex-offender treatment; their field was statistical measurement, and they wanted to know what sort of factors might affect results. So they asked this whole group of imprisoned baby-rapers who had been placed in a “treatment unit” a series of questions. The first job was to measure the percentage who reported “cognitive distortions” concerning sex with children. Amazingly, virtually all of them did.

  Then what the researchers did was to tell the “subjects” that they were all going to be given the same set of questionnaires again, only this time they would be polygraphed to see how many
had been truthful. And the only thing that would be disclosed to the Parole Board was whether they lied or told the truth.

  Get it? Maybe you don’t, but the freaks sure did.

  They passed the polygraph at an astounding rate. Nearly every one of them was absolutely truthful. That time, only a couple of them—probably the ones with the lowest IQs—still reported cognitive distortions. Baby-rapers only lie when there’s something in it for them.

  Actually, the whole “polygraph” thing had been a fraud. The researchers were interested in validity-reliability methods, not sex offenders. The real test was to see if people changed their answers when they had something to gain by telling the truth.

  And it sure told the truth about the whole “cognitive distortion” game.

  Sex-offender treatment is like performing an exorcism on an atheist.

  Making assumptions is the same as volunteering to be stupid. When I investigate, I’m never invested. I’m looking for whatever the truth is, because that’s the only combination that will open the safe I need to crack.

  “Put in the time you can,” I told them. “We won’t ever finish this in one shot. Everybody just come and go when you need to, okay?”

  Max stood up. Sat down again. Made gestures of a man rowing the arms of his chair.

  “You’re right,” I said. “No reason Gateman can’t help with this. Even Terry, if we can slip around—”

  “You bring her boy into this mess, his momma’ll set fire to your chest, Schoolboy. And put it out with an ice pick.”

  “He’s just at the research end, Prof. No way he goes past that, okay?”

  “I could send him documents,” Clarence said. “Over the—”

  “No,” I cut that off. “Nothing leaves this building except by way of the smokestack.”

  The way the Mole’s ancestors had. The thought ripped into my mind like a supercharged chainsaw, shredding the resentment I’d been nursing. His shadowy friends had made me take some life-or-death risks, sure. But they played for the same stakes, every day. Where would I draw the line if I thought someone was trying to exterminate my whole family? When it comes to fighting off genocide, there’s no rules.

  “What are we looking for, boss?”

  “I can’t say, Gate. Something that’s not right.”

  “Whole motherfucking thing’s not right,” he said, his eyes as cold as the custom 9mm semi-auto that he carried the same way an artist would carry a paintbrush. “You’re thinking—what?—the blue boys got paid?”

  “That plan won’t scan,” the Prof cast his veto. “Sure, a badge ain’t nothing but a license to steal, but something like this, there’s too many to pay to make them all stay away.”

  Max made the sign of a man writing something in a notepad, looked up, cocked his head as if listening, wrote some more.

  “Sure,” I agreed. “Reporters had to be all over this one, too.”

  “Yes, mahn,” Clarence confirmed, looking up from his computer screen. “The coverage was all very critical; the police took a lot of heat for this.”

  “Don’t forget the reward,” Terry added.

  I nodded in his direction. “A hundred grand the girl’s parents put up. Thirty years ago, that was enough to shake every tree in the forest.”

  Max rubbed his first two fingers and thumb together, then shook his head disdainfully.

  “The dragon pulls the wagon,” the Prof said, pointing his finger at Max as if acknowledging a major contribution to a big score. “The Max-man’s clue is true. Any of their fathers had even tried a bribe, their kid would’ve ended up taking a ride.”

  “You’re saying the cops really went after it?” Gateman said, skeptically.

  “I think they did. Come on, bro: would the locals ever call in the Feebs if they weren’t desperate? It’s the same as admitting they don’t have what it takes.”

  “FBI made the scene?”

  “Yes, Father,” Clarence answered. “Many of the later news accounts refer to them, some by name.”

  “So what’re we looking for?” Gateman asked, again.

  “See this?” I said, pointing to the transcript of my conversation with Thornton. Everyone had a copy. “It should match. Well, not match, but not be…” I paused, trying to put words to the pattern-recognition software that keeps people like us alive. And makes us the best hunters on the planet. “Look, you’re rolling down the street,” I told them, signing for Max as I spoke. “Something’s just…wrong, okay? Some…disturbance in the visuals. Nothing major. Wrong posture on the guy near the lamppost. Wrong jacket for this time of the year. A flash of color you’ve seen somewhere before, earlier that same day, in another part of town. This isn’t like when a hawk’s in the sky and all the animals go quiet and still. Citizens won’t ever see it. But we will.”

  “Like when a guy hits the yard walking robot?”

  The Prof was talking about how a man who expects to be facing a blade will wrap himself with layers of newspaper under his jacket. Maybe not thick enough to turn a shank, but enough to stop it from getting all the way in.

  “Just like that,” I confirmed. “Something that draws your eye, tells you something’s off. Yeah?”

  The Prof nodded. Max and Gateman, too. Clarence was a lot younger, but he’d come up as a gunman, and he got it, too. For Terry, it was a theorem, not an experience. Still, he had his father’s mind and his mother’s soul—I knew he’d find his way to the same place. I didn’t want to tap any trigger-point in his past, but I couldn’t pretend it was anything other than what it was.

  Even though we all wanted him to walk a different path, we knew he might someday need what we could teach him.

  I took the subway to a three-bedroom, two-bath rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side. It was occupied by an elderly lady with half a dozen diseases ravaging her wasted body. She didn’t have long, and she knew it.

  Death didn’t scare her, but she wasn’t the type to hoard her pain pills, either. She knew, the second she checked out, the rent would rocket from $595 to maybe four grand, minimum. And that’s if the owner didn’t “improve” the unit, upping it even more.

  The building’s owner would end up as swine-swollen as a CEO treating his “boys” to a night in an upscale strip club to celebrate the company’s latest creative-accounting triumph. Nothing like glancing over a glass of sucker-priced champagne to convince yourself it’s your raging testosterone that’s attracting such a cooing herd of for-sale flesh to your table.

  But this pig had a problem—the old lady’s nephew. He occupied two of the bedrooms. And because she’d adopted him when he was nine, he’d inherit the right to keep occupying the place…at the rent-control price.

  The nephew was around thirty years old. What his parents had done to him had bent his neurons and snapped his synapses. He had an incomprehensible mind, a one-occupant world of torture, degradation, and horror.

  He never left the apartment.

  He never had guests.

  His brain didn’t register the past. He thought he’d been born when puberty struck, and the warp opened.

  But his aunt’s mind was still as clear as Bush’s agenda.

  And she never forgot.

  So when she gasped out, “Theodore, this man is very special to me. You must do whatever he asks,” between hits of oxygen, all the damaged boy said was “Yes, Auntie.”

  While he was waiting for me in his rooms, I again swore to the old lady that my lawyer—a bull elephant named Davidson—had the battle plan against the landlord all mapped out, and was looking forward to it. Her nephew was always going to have his home.

  “I’ll be watching,” the old lady said.

  I believed her.

  “I hate what they do to animals,” the nephew said. A demon-eyed wraith, he had a voice that was pure Asperger’s, utterly devoid of emotion. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” I said, knowing there’s always a toll.

  “What do you hate?”

  “Zoos.”
<
br />   “All zoos?”

  I told him about my idea for virtual zoos. He nodded, bored. Not because the idea was so simple, but because his idea of protecting animals was to eliminate humans. He held his misshapen head in his hands for a minute, then looked up at me.

  “You know those games where you can buy points from other players?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Online,” he said, as if that explained everything. His fractured-iris eyes searched mine, instantly registered my level of knowledge, readjusted. “Some of the games have thousands of players, all over the world. If you’re good, if you have skills, you can acquire different things. Like weapons, for example. Or maps to where they might be. You can sell these—to other players, I mean. For actual cash. So if you spend money, you increase your chances of winning.”

  “I get it.”

  “I’m designing a game. Right here,” he said, pointing to a computer housed inside a transparent casing full of vibrantly colored wires. “In my game, the prize—if you can get it—is that you can destroy it all.”

  “The game?”

  “Yes. People spend an incalculable number of hours playing. It’s kind of like The Sims, but what you do impacts the other players. If you can get enough points, you get to take the whole game down. It could take years to do it, but all those people, all they invested, it would be gone. Not just the money, everything.”

  “But if the players knew something like that could happen, why would they—?”

  He gave me a look of profound pity.

  “You want a poison pill,” the nephew finally said, a couple of hours later. He had been listening to me, asking questions, listening some more. He was never impatient, never annoyed. I meant less than a cockroach to him, but when his auntie told him to do something, the one pipeline to humanity still inside him opened. He’d kill a planet to hear her say, “Thank you, Theodore. You’re such a good boy.”

  “What’s a—?” I asked.