Terminal

by Andrew Vachss

  I stood up as he approached, offered my hand.

  He took it. Gave me a “nothing to prove” grip. His hand was dry.

  We sat. He had a good-looking, professionally toned face, milk-chocolate eyes, strong chin.

  A waiter appeared.

  “A drink to start?” I asked Reedy.

  “Black,” he said to the waiter, holding up two fingers.

  “Gordon’s,” I told him. “Cold, no ice.”

  The waiter disappeared.

  “You know my name….”

  “Mine’s Gardener,” I told him. “A family name.”

  He made a question out of his expression.

  “My family’s been in the business for generations. Each one passes on what it learned to the next. Me, I’m the very, very best. I’m such a good gardener that I can do magic tricks with flowers. My specialty is the rose.”

  “What’s so—?”

  “I can create a whole rosebush without a single thorn. Not by hand-clipping each one off, like some do. I can actually make a rosebush that no thorn can ever grow on.”

  “That does sound like tricky work,” he said, as the waiter appeared with our drinks.

  “You ready, order?”

  “I’ll let you know,” I told him.

  He bowed slightly, disappeared again.

  “I heard you might be interested in my services,” I said. “But, you know how it is, you find the perfect gardener, you don’t tell your friends…because you don’t want him poached, right? So my business doesn’t rely on word-of-mouth. I know I have to show each new client what I’m capable of, and I can’t expect former clients to be references.”

  “That sounds like a very difficult business plan to execute,” he said, relaxed and casual.

  “Not if you have my kind of portfolio.”

  “Talk isn’t a portfolio,” he said, glancing at his watch.

  “Talking to you on your private cell—was that the kind of ‘talk’ you meant?”

  “Is that it?”

  “Not even close. Mr. LeBrock still work for you? Or did you fire him after DrepTech went under?”

  “I have no idea—”

  “DrepTech’s not your problem, is it? Not even check number 2078. Problem is the credit card LeBrock used to book his flight. And his hotel. And…well, you understand, I’m sure. Since you still own the real-estate investment company you set up. Sole owner. Then and now.”

  He stared at me for a long few seconds.

  “And then there’s that tape.”

  “Tape?”

  “Good play,” I complimented him. “And you’re right, either way. Even with the original in your hands, you wouldn’t be clear, not for an absolute certainty.”

  “I don’t see where you’re going with all this,” he said, lowering his voice just a notch.

  “The statute of limitations on anything he did, that’s run out decades ago. He’s not at risk. But even if he decided to just…disappear from your lives—all three of you, I’m talking about now—you couldn’t ever be sure he hadn’t left something behind. That’s the only reason he’s still walking around.”

  He looked down at his hands, then back up at me.

  “But there’s a way out. A permanent way. It’s so magical, only a true expert could get it done. Am I boring you?”

  His eyes burned violence. I smiled. Not a friendly smile—the smile you give another convict who just threatened you.

  “What if she was alive? What if he was sent to take her to the hospital, only he decided to have some fun with her instead, and ended up with a corpse on his hands? That does this,” I said, crossing and re-crossing my wrists to show black turning into white. “No matter what anyone might have done back then—all three of you, I mean—the statute has run. Criminal and civil.”

  He kept watching me. His drink as untouched as mine.

  “That’s my portfolio. His confession. Videotaped in real time. Not under duress. Too much detail for it to be anything but the stone truth. A guilty man, apologizing to innocent boys he put through hell all these years. I mean, they knew they hadn’t done…what happened. But they had trusted the wrong man to help. The wrong man, because he wronged them.”

  “Why would such a person ever…?”

  “Why would any of you care? Nobody’s ever going to see this confession unless he left a package behind. And if he did—which I can’t imagine: who could he ever trust with it, and who’d ever trust him, anyway?—the confession ends any problem. Stops it dead in its tracks. Kills it, you might say.”

  “It’s still talk” was all he said, but his voice was wound as tight as a garrote.

  “When I said ‘real time,’ that’s what I meant. You bring the price. And whoever you want to protect it. I bring you the show. Live. I come alone, and I walk away alone. Me with the price; you with the tape.”

  “And the—?”

  “He does what a lot of people do when guilt gets too much to bear, is my guess.”

  “What would an exercise like this cost?”

  “Six.”

  “You can’t mean—”

  “That’s only two apiece. Not one of you would miss it. And all three of you are going to want to be there when it goes down, anyway. See it for yourselves.”

  “I could probably—”

  “Stop it. I’m the best at what I do, but I’m not going up against a master outside my field. This isn’t negotiating; this is a specific price for a specific service.”

  “How long is the offer—?”

  “Why insult me? I haven’t insulted you. You want me to explain the enormous expenses involved at my end? Want me to justify the price? What I said is not an ‘offer.’ You want the service or you don’t.”

  “I’d have to reach out…”

  “Yeah, you would,” I said, paper in my eyes to cover the scissors in his…so I could drop the rock if he tried to cut the paper. “Because I’m not selling you something for six that you couldn’t sell the others for three each. I didn’t just come to you because you’re the smartest, or the most successful. You were born May 17, 1959. Ask your lawyer what that means in this state.”

  His eyes told me he’d already had that conversation.

  “You already know I don’t work alone,” I said. “So please don’t be stupid. You’re a businessman. This is business. If my phone doesn’t ring within five days, don’t try dialing that number again. It’ll be disconnected. And so will I.”

  He nodded. Not “I agree,” but “I understand.”

  The Maybach’s rear door swung open by itself. He stepped inside, and then he was gone.

  I didn’t look over my shoulder to watch the car move off, I looked across to Michelle. She flipped up her veil, put on a pair of sunglasses. I got up and walked into the restaurant, carrying my drink with me.

  I carried that drink all the way through the interior, heading toward the restrooms. I passed a Chinese kid wearing a white kitchen worker’s uniform. He nodded at me, took the drink from my hand.

  A door closed behind me, a door nobody but me could pass through. It was made up of the same group that were leaning casually against the walls of the basement I found by going down the steps inside a beaded curtain. I didn’t recognize any of the faces, but the gold silk shirts, buttoned to the throat, the fingertip-length black leather jackets, and the glossy high pompadours were as distinctive as Crip blue or Blood red.

  One of them stepped forward. I followed him down a dim corridor. He rapped twice on a door—I guessed it was a door; I couldn’t actually see it until it opened.

  Now we were in a tunnel. A short one. At the other end was the basement of an apartment building. We walked up the stairs to the lobby. By the time I rolled out into the street, I was an elderly man in a wheelchair, with a tired-looking Chinese woman in a nurse’s uniform pushing me down the block.

  “Motherfucker’s good,” the Prof said, late that night. “You only gave him a narrow slot, but he got it filled. Must have had a
whole team in place, ready to roll.”

  “One by one,” I said, looking around the table.

  “The two they had in front were real spooks,” the Prof started off. “Shadow men. They floated in soon as the man’s car moved out.”

  “They try and get inside?”

  “Not for two hours,” he said, impressed. “They watched you go in and just went gray, you know? Part of the scenery.”

  “I was gone before that,” Michelle said.

  “Me also,” Clarence said. “I hung around after my sister left, for another few minutes. Kept looking at my watch, like I was waiting for something. Then I reached in my pocket and opened my cell phone, like I was taking a call. Then I split.”

  Max stood up. Walked to the wall, drew a box on a piece of posterboard, made a little fence around the front, so we’d know he meant the restaurant.

  He held up two fingers, pointed to the front door. Arranged his face into an expression of total puzzlement, showing us what the two shadows encountered. Then he took the black marker and made a pair of dots behind the building, pointed to his eyes, made the gesture of a door opening. So they had men in place behind the restaurant, too. If they were waiting for me to step out that way, they’d be there a long time.

  I thought Max was done, but he used another board to draw a cube, pointed at the first drawing and shook his head to make sure we understood he wasn’t talking about the same building, then added a stick figure of a man…on the roof. He made his hands into binoculars.

  I made the sign of a man holding a rifle.

  Max shook his head “no.” This had been all about surveillance, not a hit.

  “Reedy’s got a deal with the feds?” I said, aloud.

  “No,” the Prof said.

  We all looked his way.

  “They—the ones I saw, anyway—they moved too good. If you blinked, you couldn’t be sure they were even there. If the government spooks had men that good, they wouldn’t be using them up on a favor for a friend.”

  “They don’t seem to be using them for much else,” Michelle said.

  “You not lying, girl. But these men…I can’t explain it exactly, but they were the kind of guys who wouldn’t work for no government salary. Maybe they did once—they were no kids—but they got that…neutral thing going.”

  “Freelancers?” I said.

  “The less they shout, the less I doubt, son.”

  I looked over at Max. He made a “this close” gesture to show me he hadn’t caught the glint of binoculars—he’d been on that roof himself. The Mongol pointed at the Prof, nodded several times. Total agreement.

  “They wouldn’t have gone inside without orders,” I said. “Breaking cover like that, it would be against everything they believe in. So he didn’t have any more people close enough. Otherwise, they hold their positions, and he sends in new faces.”

  “You set up a meet with him, he’ll have all the time in the world, Schoolboy. No way he does the payphone shuffle with six mil in a suitcase.”

  “I told him, if he brought the price, he could bring whatever he wanted to protect it.”

  “So what’s to stop them from just taking—”

  “I got that part figured,” I assured them all. “He already knows I didn’t turn into the Invisible Man on him without major help. And I told him I don’t work alone, anyway. He’s not going to risk a firefight over money. And when he sees what I’m going to deliver, he’s not going to worry about ever being tapped again.”

  “He’s going to call, baby?” Michelle asked. Not anxious, just asking for me to set the odds.

  “Sure as Satan, honey,” I told her. “He’s got five days, but we can’t count on him using them all. We’ve got to put it all in place, starting right now.”

  This time, when I finished bribing the dogs, the orca-blotched female came over and sat next to me. I risked patting her wedge head, hoping the old stud didn’t decide to go pit bull–istic on me for invading his turf twice in a row. He watched, but let it slide.

  It was too early to actually do it yet. But I felt the pull. So I walked around to the back of the two-pump gas station and rapped nine times, regularly spaced.

  The door opened. The man inside was short, with legs like tree stumps and a chest you could project movies on. Looked like a double-wide trailer that had been crushed to half-height. He was some kind of Latino, crossbred with who-knows-what. A businessman whose business you didn’t want to know. I always called him Jester, after the image blue-tattooed on one of his python biceps.

  We had been just two businessmen, doing business the way it’s done here. Goods for services. Cash, not conversation. Just enough talk to make the deal; just enough respect to keep to it.

  That had all changed one afternoon. I was out back, under the Plymouth, checking a fitting on the transmission cooler. Jester was inside the enclosure with me: grooming his dogs, crooning to them in a language I understood, even though I couldn’t tell you a single word. The beasts were chained to separate thick steel posts, just in case some strange dog wandered through the open gate.

  We heard the music before they showed, the throbbing of the mega-bass speakers turning the whole scene into a movie soundtrack. A bad movie. A blinged-out Escalade with spinner twankiedeuces pulled in, and a trio of gold-roped gangstahs stepped out.

  “Hey, bro!” the leader said. I could tell he was the leader from the way the other two flanked him, posing. Probably even choreographed their drive-bys. “Word is, you got the baddest fucking pit in the whole city. Now, see this, I’m putting together a major match. Got a place the size of a fucking arena, babe. We doing it tournament-style, like K-1.”

  Jester said nothing. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was wearing the kind of expression only being Inside can bring. I saw his feet shift, though. Slightly, but just enough.

  I stayed where I was, exchanging the socket wrench I’d been holding for my short-barreled .357.

  The leader took Jester’s silence for something it wasn’t. “Look, man,” he said, confidence flowing like an unfurling ribbon through his Suge Knight–wannabe’s voice, “here’s how it gonna go: Forty dogs enter; one dog leaves. Got it? No entry fee. And for the winner? A hundred grand, cash money. Your dog that good? Or was what I heard not the word?”

  “Oh,” Jester said, like he was having trouble with English. “You want to fight my dog?”

  “Sí, sí,” the gangstah said, mockingly. His boys laughed on cue.

  “Bueno!” Jester said. “He’s right over there, maricón. You just walk back to that cage”—meaning the chain-linked spot where I’d parked my Plymouth—“you step in, I unhook my dog, you can fight him all you want.”

  The gangstah was even dumber than his blue-and-white crocodile shoes. “No, you fucking taco—”

  I slid out from under the Plymouth, took up a position behind the rear fender just as Jester snatched the gangstah’s throat in one hand, holding him off the ground like he was a can of spray paint, ready to write a message. The other two backed away, then whipped out their shiny semi-autos. Still posing, but lost without a script.

  “Put down the pieces,” I said, from cover. “Put them down, and everybody gets to live.”

  It went quiet enough for them to hear my .357 being cocked.

  “Vito!” I yelled over to my imaginary confederate behind them. “Hold your fire. These guys just didn’t know the score.” I addressed the punks with the pistols.

  “Whoever shoots, dies,” I said, very calm. “You come here, you show no respect. One more stupid move and you niggers are all dog food.”

  The leader made a frantic gesture. The chrome pistols went to the concrete. Gently. I stepped out of the shadows—not enough for them to see my face, but they couldn’t miss the .357. It was all they were looking at, anyway.

  Jester dropped the leader like a sack of smelly garbage, took a step back. The pits were both snarling in fury, ramming themselves against the chains, threatening to snap the ste
el with their combined power.

  “This place is protected, understand?” I said, in my best Sopranos voice. “It belongs to us. You didn’t know before; now you do. Next fucking yom we see close to this joint, it’s gonna take him days to die. We got your plate, we’ll have your name in an hour. We got your pictures, too. You’re on the list now. You want to keep breathing, stay the fuck away.”

  When they left, smoking the tires, Jester turned to me. His face said, “I could have handled it.”

  My face said, “I know you could.”

  That was a few years ago; before the orca pup had been born.

  Tonight, I asked him, “That little female, the black one with the white spots?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I really like her. Any chance you might consider letting me buy her from you?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. Not threatening, thinking.

  “I got to ask Nova about it first, ese.”

  “Nova?”

  “El jefe,” he said, pointing at the huge stud.

  “Why d’you name him Nova?” I asked, frankly curious.

  “Is short for ‘Casanova,’” Jester said, grinning. Then his face turned cold. “You know I never fight my dog.”

  “Fuck, no. But I figure someone did—he’s half scar tissue, that old guy. Maybe you, uh, ‘rescued’ him. A man who does something like that, I’d admire him for it.”

  He gave me a long look. Not challenging, searching. “I think maybe you the right man for Rosita.”

  “Thank you,” I said, respectfully. Thinking, I have to ask Pansy, too.

  Then I walked home, alone.

  “Watch this,” I told Thornton.

  I took a chair in front of the videocam we had set on a tripod. The boom mikes were already in place, invisible to the viewer.

  I faced the camera squarely. “My name is Wesley,” I said, hearing the iceman’s voice come out of my mouth. “You think I’m gone, don’t you, suckers? Bang!