“Look, I—” the attendant started to speak.
“Silence, lackey!” Crystal Beth snarled at him. “This is a jailbreak, not a debate.”
A soft explosion rocked the back of the building. Then another.
The attendant moved his lips like he was praying, but no sound came out.
I walked past him. Saw Max’s broad back bent over as he severed the heavy lock on the door to the cage area. Then we both popped the cages open, one by one. The dogs milled about uncertainly, until one spotted the gaping hole in the side of the building. He ran for it, and the others followed.
Pansy was there, her cage standing open. On her feet, daring Max to come closer.
“Pansy!” I called to her. “Come here, sweetheart!”
The big beast’s head shot up. She bounded over to me. “Good girl!” I told her, patting her huge head. Then I gave her the hand signal to heel and we merged with the river of dogs flowing to freedom.
As soon as she saw the car, she knew what to do. I popped the trunk and she jumped inside and curled up on the mat next to the padded fuel cell and looked up expectantly. I handed her a giant marrow bone, whispering “Speak!” at the same time. I closed the trunk lid, knowing the air holes I’d punched in it years ago would let her breathe just fine. And if anyone heard her pulverizing the bone, they’d just think the old Plymouth had a bad differential.
Even with us working the wrong side of the river, some citizen could have called the cops by then. We had to move fast. I stepped back inside the front door just as Michelle was taping up a cardboard stencil warning the world against the unlawful imprisonment of dogs. Clarence sprayed the blood-red paint with one hand, the other holding his pistol steady.
“Don’t think about the phones after we’re gone,” I told the attendant, just to get his attention. As he looked up, Max materialized behind him and did something to his neck. He wouldn’t be making any calls for hours.
“They all out?” I asked Clarence.
“All gone, mahn. Every one.”
“Scoop the Mole—he’s back there somewhere. Then get in the limo and fly. I’ll be right behind you.”
I tossed a smoke grenade into the back of the joint and dashed for the Plymouth.
I read all about it in the afternoon paper, Pansy stretched out next to me in Crystal Beth’s apartment. On the top floor of her safehouse.
ABOUT THE TITLE
In Burke, Andrew Vachss gave readers of crime fiction a hero they could believe in, an avenger whose sense of justice was forged behind bars and tempered on New York’s meanest streets. In this blistering new thriller, Burke is drawn into his ugliest case yet, one that involves an underground network of abused women and the sleekly ingenious stalkers who’ve marked them as their personal victims.
Burke’s client is Crystal Beth, a beautiful outlaw with a tattoo on her face and a mission burned into her heart. She’s trying to shield one of her charges from a vengeful ex with fetishes for Nazism and torture. But the stalker has a protector, someone so informed, so ruthless, and so connected that he need only make a few phone calls to shut down Crystal Beth’s operation for good—and Burke along with it. Sinuous in its complexities, brutal in its momentum, Safe House is Burke at the edge of his nerve and cunning. And it’s Vachss at the peak of his form.
ANDREW VACHSS
Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social caseworker, a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for youthful offenders. Now a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youths exclusively. He is the author of numerous novels, including the Burke series, two collections of short stories, and a wide variety of other material including song lyrics, poetry, graphic novels, and a “children’s book for adults.” His books have been translated into twenty different languages and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, The New York Times, and numerous other forums. He lives and works in New York City and the Pacific Northwest.
The dedicated Web site for Vachss and his work is www.vachss.com
BOOKS BY
ANDREW VACHSS
Flood
Strega
Blue Belle
Hard Candy
Blossom
Sacrifice
Shella
Down in the Zero
Born Bad
Footsteps of the Hawk
False Allegations
Safe House
Choice of Evil
Everybody Pays
Dead and Gone
Pain Management
Safe House
Copyright © 1998 by Andrew H. Vachss
Excerpt from Choice of Evil copyright © 1999 by Andrew Vachss
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover, in somewhat different form, in the United States by Alfred. A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1998, and in trade paperback by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1998.
Vachss, Andrew H.
Safe house / Andrew Vachss.
p. cm. — (Vintage crime/Black Lizard)
1. Private Investigators—United States—Fiction. I, Title. II, Series
PS3572.A33S25 1998
813’.54—dc21 97-50557
CIP
Random House Web address: www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-375-71912-7
v3.0
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