Down Here

by Andrew Vachss

  “What does this have to do with—?”

  “Could we come inside for a little bit, ma’am?” Mick asked, in a voice I never would have recognized. “Unless this town has changed a lot since I was last home, I wouldn’t want to be talking about stuff like this out on the front step.”

  “I . . . All right,” the target said.

  Pepper and I watched in respectful silence as Mick danced with Eileen Eberstadt for almost an hour. We listened to her explain that her initial report had “all been a big mistake, like going to New York in the first place,” and how she “had nothing against anyone.”

  Mick countered gently, explaining that Wolfe, the only one who had ever prosecuted Wychek, was now being charged with shooting him, and any help she might be able to provide would be greatly . . .

  But the woman held firm, until I stood up and walked over to where she was sitting.

  “Everything costs,” I said, softly. “And everybody pays. The only question is when, and how much. There’s a lot of people behind Ms. Wolfe. Serious people. Very committed. You’ve got your reasons for lying—don’t waste my time,” I said, when she opened her mouth to speak—“and nobody cares about them. We’re not cops, and we’re not the bad guys, either. We’re not on anyone’s side except Ms. Wolfe’s. But we have a job to do, and now you’re it.”

  “I’m not going to—”

  “Just tell me what he took,” I said, even more softly. “Just tell me that one thing, and we’re gone.”

  I tossed “forever” into her long silence.

  “A skirt,” she said, looking down. “A little red pleated skirt. It was the bottom half of my cheerleader’s outfit. From high school.”

  “I got a call,” Davidson said.

  I didn’t say anything, just watched the smoke from his cigar turn blue in the band of sun that came in the top of his office window.

  “Toby Ringer, you remember him?”

  “That’s a long way back,” I said.

  “Sure. From when he was an ADA in the same office that’s prosecuting Wolfe now. Toby’s gone up in the world since then. Moved over to the feds. He was the boss of Narco there for a while, then he kind of dropped out of the public eye. But he’s the same man.”

  “Meaning . . . ?”

  “Meaning, you know how it works in our business. A man’s no better than his word. And Toby’s has always been gold.”

  “Okay,” I said, neutral.

  “So, anyway, Toby gives me a call, says we haven’t had lunch in a long time. How about Peter Luger’s, his treat?”

  “Did he pat you down when you showed up?”

  “Asked me to give my word that I wasn’t wired.”

  “This was about Wolfe, right?”

  “I’m getting to it,” Davidson said.

  I went quiet again.

  “Toby said it would be in my client’s interest not to push for discovery right now. He said, if we could be a little patient, he was absolutely confident—that’s the exact phrase he used—that the case would just go away.

  “I told him we weren’t interested in a case going away. That happens, the case can always come back. He said he meant go away for good. Disa-fucking-peer.

  “I told him he knows the game as well as I do. I can’t just sit on motions, or I end up waiving my right to them. He went over the time lines with me, said another few weeks and it would all be over.”

  “So he’s just trying to save you time and aggravation?”

  “I asked him the same thing. He fenced for a while. Finally, after he could see he wasn’t getting over, he told me Wychek’s going in the Grand Jury soon.”

  “How is that supposed to—?”

  “He’s not going in as a victim, he’s going in as a witness,” Davidson said. “His appearance has nothing to do with Wolfe, or her case.”

  “So?”

  “So, by way of preamble, first they’re going to immunize him. Full boat—use and transactional. Then he’s going to tell the Grand Jury that he made it all up about it being Wolfe who shot him. When the DA’s Office gets ‘notified’ of that, they then introduce a transcript of his statement during a presentation of her case. And No True Bill it.”

  “Sure.”

  “It sounds fishy to me, too,” Davidson said, tilting his chair back. “If we’re a target, we’re entitled to Grand Jury notice, and we haven’t gotten any. But it could work the way Toby says. A federal grand jury—investigating who knows?—brings Wychek in. He makes a statement under oath. Suppose he does say that he lied about Wolfe? The feds have to turn that statement over to the DA in Manhattan. And then they’d have to drop the case. If the statement ever came to light, they’d be cooked. Not just legally, politically.”

  “What’s in it for us, to wait?”

  “That’s where Toby stopped being blunt. But I got the distinct impression that Wychek is telling the DA’s Office one story and the feds another. And that they’re not sharing.”

  “He’s in federal custody?”

  “He’s not in anyone’s custody,” Davidson said.

  “You mean he’s still in the hospital?”

  “Nope. That’s why I’m inclined to go along with Toby. He said the DA’s Office is giving Wychek an allowance, maintaining him as a protected witness. But Wychek knows, long-term, it’s got to be the feds, if he wants the total package—new ID, maybe even a new face, some serious maintenance money, you know.”

  “So Wychek goes in the Grand Jury—the federal one—and then he gets gone?”

  “What Toby says.”

  “Toby say where Wychek’s staying?”

  “I never asked him,” Davidson said.

  “You had a successful trip?” Laura asked.

  “In my business—actually, I’ll bet it’s a lot like your business—you don’t always know right away. You make an investment, then you wait to see if it pans out.”

  “That sounds a lot more like gambling than investment.”

  “Isn’t that what investment is, gambling?”

  “At some end of the continuum, it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A person who buys shares of stock—or of a mutual fund, or any similar instrument—is gambling. Their idea of ‘research’ is maybe fifteen minutes on the Internet . . . and that’s for those who even go that far. For most investors, it’s more like religion than it is science. They trust; they have faith; they believe. They believe in a broker, or a mutual-fund manager, or in something they heard on a TV program. Everybody in the business knows this is true, but nobody knows why.”

  “If people didn’t want to believe, they wouldn’t,” I said. “I don’t care if it’s a televangelist or a stockbroker; it’s easier for people to say ‘I trust you’ than to find out the truth for themselves.”

  “You make it sound like they’re all suckers.”

  “And volunteers for the job,” I agreed.

  “I’m not in any of that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t sell stocks or bonds. I don’t even analyze them. What I do is, I put deals together. There’s big sharks and little sharks, sure. But all the players are sharks, do you see what I mean? There aren’t any fish.”

  “Then where do the little sharks get their food?”

  “You haven’t asked about him at all,” she half whispered, her mouth against my ear. “Have you changed your mind?”

  We were lying on her bed in the dark. Me on my back, she on her stomach. It was the first time we’d had sex that she hadn’t lit a cigarette afterwards.

  “Changed my mind?”

  “About your book.”

  “No,” I said, my tone suggesting that would be absurd. “I’ve made the commitment. I took the advance. And spent most of it, too. Your brother’s case didn’t give me the idea for the book—it was something I came across during my research.”

  “But you said he’d be perfect.”

  “He might very well be. But I can’t believe he
’s the only one. There were two things that drew me to him—”

  “What?”

  “—and neither was the underlying fact pattern,” I went on, ignoring her interruption. “One, I have to be honest, was nothing but convenience. He was—at least, I thought he was—right here, and available for in-depth interviews. Everything about his case is right here, too: the court records, the local newspapers, the judge who sat on his case, maybe even some of the jurors. The second thing, of course, was him getting shot.”

  “Couldn’t you—?”

  “But, the more I think about it, I’m not so sure.”

  “Not so sure about what?”

  “Whether the hook is really such a good one after all. At first, I thought it was perfect. If you’re writing a book about overzealous prosecutors, what’s better than one who tries to kill a man they convicted, after the courts set him free?

  “But, in looking at these cases, you don’t see that . . . personal element at all. You see the criminal-justice system jumping the rails. You see cops concerned with their crime-clearance rate, just like you see prosecutors obsessed with their conviction rates. Working together. But that kind of mind-set is just as likely to tip the scales the other way.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, moving away from me and sitting up.

  “A prosecutor who wants a perfect conviction rate can give some plea bargains that are real bargains. I’ve seen cases where a defendant confesses to a couple dozen different crimes, and only gets sentenced for one of them.”

  “But that person would still be guilty, wouldn’t he?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Why would they ever—?”

  “Did you ever read about the Boston Strangler case?”

  “I heard of it. But it was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

  “The Sixties. A serial killer was at large. The public was panicked. The media—and this is the key to the whole dynamic—was demanding action. Everyone was on the spot. They already had this guy—Albert DeSalvo was his name—on a whole ton of sex crimes. Different MO—not a homicide in the bunch—but more than enough to give him a life sentence.

  “So now they’ve got DeSalvo in a prison where they evaluate defendants to see if they’re competent to stand trial. Out of the blue, he makes a deal to confess to all the strangling cases.”

  “Plead guilty?”

  “It was a little trickier than that. He ‘clears up’ the cases, gives the police information about the crimes, stuff like that. But the deal is, since there’s no other evidence he was the Strangler—no fingerprints, no blood, no body fluids, no witnesses, nothing—the confession can’t be used. So DeSalvo gets the same life sentence he would have gotten anyway, and everyone’s happy.”

  “I still don’t see what’s so horrible. I mean, what he did, of course. But he still went to prison for life.”

  “What if he wasn’t the Strangler?”

  “What? Then why would he—?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wasn’t there. But a lot of people, today, think he was lying about those crimes. Especially relatives of the victims. There’s a whole new investigation going on now.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” she said, her tone just below angry.

  “He was going down for the count anyway. And he wasn’t going to do an extra day for the Strangler’s crimes. Maybe he got some money . . . from a book deal or whatever. Maybe he just wanted to be famous—the cops get confessions like that all the time.”

  “Did the crimes stop after he was arrested?” she asked. I caught the faintest whiff of triumph in her voice—the cold-blooded researcher, confronting the “believer” with the hard facts.

  “They did,” I said. “But if he got the information—about the crimes—from someone else, that person could have been locked up, too. With DeSalvo. Maybe in the nuthouse.”

  “What does he say?”

  “DeSalvo?”

  “Yes. Well, what does he say about it, now that all that time has passed?”

  “He’s not saying anything,” I told her. “A few years after he went to prison, he was stabbed to death.”

  “Oh my God. Who did it?”

  “Nobody knows,” I said. “Or, at least, nobody was ever charged with it.”

  Laura bent over to light a pair of candles on an end table. “Can you see me?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “Perfectly. But I’d rather have a closer look.”

  “You will. But, first, could you close your eyes? Just for a minute?”

  “Sure,” I said, dropping my eyelids, but leaving a slit open at the bottom. I learned how to do that when I was a kid—the trick is to keep your eyelids from fluttering.

  Laura dropped to her knees, pulled out the lowest drawer in a dark wood bureau. She rooted around for a few seconds. When she stood up, she held something clasped in her hands.

  She came over to the bed, climbed on next to me, and knelt, keeping her back very straight.

  “What do you do when you’re afraid of something?” she said, very softly.

  “What do people do, or what do I do, personally?”

  “You.”

  “It depends on what it is that I’m afraid of.”

  “Tell me.”

  “If it’s something I can avoid, I do that. If it’s something I can’t, I try to overcome it.”

  “How?”

  “How? I don’t know. It depends on what it is.”

  “Give me an example?”

  Oh, I could do that, I thought. I could give you enough “examples” to haunt your dreams for the rest of your life.

  But I’m a Child of the Secret. We don’t talk to outsiders. Except when we lie. Because They taught us well. We know we’re never safe.

  And just because you’re one of Us doesn’t mean you can’t also be one of Them.

  “Public speaking,” I said. “I was scared to death to get up in front of—”

  “That’s not fear,” she cut me off, sharply. “That’s a . . . phobia. Didn’t you ever—?”

  “A bully,” I said. “How’s that?”

  “That’s very good,” she said. Kneeling, with her hands clasped.

  “When I was a kid,” I said, feeling the dot of truth inside my story expand the margins of the lie, “I was scared all the time. Of this one guy. He took stuff from me. Just because he was bigger. Just because he could do it. And he hurt me, too.”

  “Did you tell your parents?”

  “It wasn’t the kind of thing I could tell my parents about,” I said. More truth, wrapped in a mourner’s cloak.

  “What did you do?”

  “I tried to stay away from this other guy,” I said. “But he made it impossible.” Yeah, I thought, “impossible,” when you’re a little kid, and the other guy is the teenage son of the degenerate freaks who have custody of your orphaned body.

  “What happened, finally?”

  “I hit him with a baseball bat,” I lied.

  “Oh! Did you hurt him badly?”

  “Bad enough so he never bothered me again,” I said. The baseball bat was true enough. I didn’t tell Laura how I had followed it with a can of gasoline, and a match. By the time I was done, every human living in that house of demons was, too.

  “Good! I hate bullies, don’t you?”

  “Ever since I was old enough to know what they are,” I said, switching to pure, undiluted truth.

  “See what I’ve got?”

  I opened my eyes. She was holding up a pair of handcuffs.

  “Being . . . restrained has always terrified me. I . . . I keep these as kind of a test. Usually, I’m afraid to even look at them.”

  “You were handcuffed once?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, way too much certainty in her voice. “Nothing like that. I’ve always been this way. When I was a little girl, and they played cowboys and Indians, I would never let anyone tie me up.”

  “Some things, it’s good to be afraid of. Just common se
nse.”

  “Maybe that’s why I went into my line of work. There’s a lot of risk—one day, you’re getting a huge bonus; the next, you’re out of a job—but there aren’t any . . . restraints.”

  “Maybe you just like the risks. I’ve known people like that.”

  “Maybe I do,” she said. “Do you know how these work?”

  “See how much faith I have in you?” she purred. “With my hands behind my back like this, you could do . . . anything.”

  “If you trust me, you know I won’t.”

  “I know you would never do anything to hurt me,” she said. I wondered if she realized how much she sounded like one of the no-research investors she had been sneering at.

  “I wouldn’t, Laura,” I said, guiding her shoulders down.

  “I could still ask him,” she said. It was much later; the candles were burned out.

  “Okay.”

  “You don’t sound very enthusiastic, J.”

  “I guess I’m . . . not, actually. I thought he was the one who would have been enthusiastic. Most people want to tell their stories, especially if they believe it’s going to make them look good.”

  “But you haven’t lost interest completely?”

  “No, of course not. But I can’t put the whole project on hold waiting for—”

  “Oh, I understand,” she said, squirming in close to me.

  “It’s not that big a risk,” Wolfe said. “If Toby’s . . . prediction doesn’t come true, it’s not like the DA has a better case against me. Besides, I trust him.”

  “Toby?”

  “Yes. Who else?”

  “Not me, I understand.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you think my arteries are hardening—the ones to my brain. Your pal, Molly? No way he made copies of all the files he had in his storage unit. And no way you didn’t. You never trusted anyone in administration when you worked there. Probably got copies of every single piece of paper that ever went through your hands, somewhere.”