The Weight

by Andrew Vachss

  I broke it down into zones. Safe zones, like you do in prison. You have to learn them for yourself. Prison’s a crazy place, and you better have it mapped if you want to move around and stay alive while you’re doing it.

  I figured it was the same way in Albie’s house. The safe zone was from the garage all the way through to the living room or the kitchen. The gym was safe, too.

  If you get caught in any place that’s not yours, you always have to have a good reason. In that little suite, I didn’t need to have a reason. Probably that was where they always put guests. But if I was in the kitchen, I’d better be eating. And if I was in the gym, I’d have to be working out.

  The living room was no good at all. What would I be doing in there? The place I was staying in had its own TV.

  I rechecked my map a few times before I got it. I already had all the cushion I needed. I don’t know how to check for bugs on a telephone, and I wasn’t going to use their phone anyway. I know you can hide those little cameras just about anywhere, but I didn’t care about them, either—what was anyone going to see?

  And even if they had cameras, they wouldn’t have an X-ray machine. Nobody could see through the closet doors. And Rena, she had to have been in there herself, to get all those sizes right. Having a good eye, that would never be enough.

  But by the time I went out the first time, I was wearing the stuff she’d picked out for me. So she’d already gotten in there, somehow.

  With no windows, the place stayed dark all the time. I know there’s cameras that can see in the dark, and I didn’t want to make anyone watching suspicious, so I left the lights on when I opened the closet door.

  I went through the clothes, all the new stuff. The closet was big, but I only used one of the two doors to get inside. What I wanted was to feel the wall behind the clothes. Just feel it, not look. I didn’t take a flashlight. Besides, if there was a camera, the light would have given the game away.

  The back wall wasn’t wood. Or, if it was, it was covered in soft black stuff, like a layer of foam. I kept going in and out of the closet, every time bringing a different piece of clothing and laying it out on the bed, like I wanted to see how it looked in the light.

  It took me a few tries, but I found it. Just a thin cut, but it went all the way down to the floor. Any decent burglar would have run across setups like that plenty of times: a fake wall, with a door behind it. The way this one was rigged, whoever was inside the closet couldn’t use it, only someone on the other side. Probably had a pull-ring, so they could go into the closet, do whatever they wanted, and disappear back out.

  A lot of work just to get clothing sizes. She couldn’t know if I was a light sleeper, so she must have been real quiet.

  For what?

  I flopped back on the bed, stared at the ceiling until my eyelids got heavy.

  Did Rena want to see if I was smart enough to figure out how she got the clothing sizes? Or did she want to see if I was smart enough not to mention it if I did?

  The only thing I knew for sure was that whoever built that setup, they hadn’t built it for me. I wasn’t the first person to be in that suite. Maybe, for the others, it wasn’t clothing sizes they wanted to check.

  It had to be “they,” because Rena knew about the deal before she put me in there. And the idea for it felt like something Albie would do—if he was that much like Solly.

  Maybe there was something I should be doing, but I couldn’t dope out what that might be. Fucking Solly. Go down there and nose around, huh? I haven’t been that many places, but I didn’t see why one place would be that different from another. Somewhere in this town, there had to be a joint where guys like me would go if they were looking for work—like a union hall for outlaws.

  I don’t mean a trouble bar, or a biker hangout. It would be a pretty quiet place. And they’d keep it quiet. The cops might know about it, but they could never put an undercover in there. I mean, he could walk in, all right—nobody was going to eighty-six him or fix him a Mickey Finn. But the place would go from quiet to dead silence, like the undercover had a neon sign over his head: COP.

  A place like that, you have to come in the first couple of times with someone. And not just anyone. Not one of those “around guys”; it would have to be someone who was already in. And they’d do all the talking.

  Someone says to you, “This guy, he’s a pal of mine,” that’s one thing. But if he says, “Remember the time you and me …” you get up and walk away before he finishes the sentence.

  So I was screwed. Even if there was places like that in Tallahassee, I couldn’t walk in cold.

  And this business of leaving my number around, that was bullshit, too. Like this Jessop was going to call me, right? Sure, whoever gave him a message would tell him what I looked like, and that would fit. But this Jessop, he knew me. That means he’d also know I’m not a guy who puts jobs together. So I’d come off as either a rat or a fool who wanted to talk him into some freelance work. Or even a guy who wanted more than his share.

  Jessop, he’d just get in the wind.

  That’s when it hit me. I could make a call of my own. It wasn’t even that late. If the lawyer wasn’t in court, he’d be in his office.

  I moved quick. Had the Lincoln back out of the garage and onto some road a few miles away in just a couple of minutes.

  The parking lot of the Time Saver store wasn’t full. I walked away from the car, in case it had some kind of wire on it. Then I called the lawyer.

  It took another few minutes for that girl to put me through. All that control stuff she had going, she was going to end up costing the lawyer more than money. But I figured he knew that.

  Turned out he knew a lot. “Let us be clear: this is an attorney-client conversation, in which I am reporting facts gathered by a person I employed to the person who employed me. That would be you.”

  “Sure. That’s right.”

  “Abner Jessop,” the lawyer said. “Would a DOB of 1961 work?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Six-four, one seventy-five?”

  “Perfect, so far.”

  “Priors back to ’79. Convicted of armed robbery, served eight years at Raiford.”

  “That’s in Florida?”

  “It is,” he said, like I should just shut up and listen. “Married in ’89 to one Lily Lee Macomb. Age listed as twenty-eight for him, fourteen for her.”

  “How can you get—?”

  “Parental consent,” he cut me off, like it was my second strike. “He’s got three children, none of them by the … woman he married.”

  “So he’d be paying child—”

  “In arrears, all three. State took his driver’s license in ’02. Restored it in ’06, when he got all caught up.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Prominent scar, left forearm. Confederate-flag tattoo over left pectoral.”

  “That’s him.”

  “Good. Two assault raps: one in ’91, the other in ’96. The first was tossed; complainant withdrew. The other, he used a knife. Six years in on that one.”

  “So he would have been out on—”

  “On parole, yes,” the lawyer said, cutting me off in case I was dumb enough to say a date. I’m glad he did, because that’s what I was going to say. “In fact, he still is.”

  All finished, so he waited for me to say something stupid. When I didn’t, he gave me an address. It would be the same one his parole officer had, so it was probably just a drop, but it was a ton more than I expected.

  “Thank you” is all I said.

  The lawyer hung up without asking for more money, so I knew we were done.

  When I got back, the Thunderbird was still missing. In my place, the clock said 4:54 with a half-moon. I changed into sweats, got a couple of bottles of water out of the refrigerator, and went to the gym.

  Like always, when I work out hard, I get to a place where my mind is burning same as my body. Usually happens when I keep going even after I’m empty. />
  But the only thing I came out of that workout with was this: Rena was smarter than me. I wasn’t going to be able to trick her into anything.

  I might make her tell me something, but I don’t have what it takes to do that. I mean, I could smack somebody around, scare the hell out of them, but for-real torture, the kind of guys who can do that, you don’t want to be around them. I don’t even understand how they can be around themselves.

  I remember talking to one of them once. He told me, the worst thing in the world is when you have to go all the way, because the other guy’s not giving it up. And then, after all that work, you find out later that he never knew in the first place.

  Just listening to that guy made me feel like a fucking pervert.

  Rena already said she knew where Albie’s books were. But she said “work books,” not “books.” And she didn’t say “stamp books,” either. Maybe she didn’t even know there was a book like Solly’s, never mind where it was.

  But I was just making excuses. When I told that cop, Woods, that if I found the guy who had really raped that girl I’d get him to tell me everything, I wasn’t lying. But only if he didn’t hold out too long. I never said that last part, because I wanted the cop to believe I’d do anything to get him the information he wanted. The truth is, I was going to skip all the stuff in the middle. If a broken arm or shattered kneecap would make him talk, great. But I wasn’t going past that. I’d just jump right over to where I wanted to be in the first place—killing him.

  I wished there was somebody I could talk to about that. Not about my feelings or anything, but how I could do it. Get that Rena to tell me whatever she knew, so I could go back and try to find the man Solly wanted dead.

  I wondered why I’d never brought that up to Solly.

  I was still thinking that over when the girl walked in.

  “You really love this place, huh?”

  “Who wouldn’t? It’s the best setup I ever saw in my life.”

  “You know what? I’ve been thinking. About what I told you before. You know, about how I couldn’t get Albie to ever use all this, but he sure liked watching me doing it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I liked it myself.”

  “Working out?”

  “No. I hate that. But being watched, that I liked. I know you think I stayed with Albie because of all the money. And I’m not going to say it didn’t matter. At first, I mean. But I don’t want you thinking Albie watching me work out was like some slobbery old pig watching me hump a pole.

  “I got something from Albie that I never got from anyone. He … appreciated me. He was always telling me I was beautiful. To Albie, I was still a young girl, like when we first met.

  “And not just that. It was always, ‘Read this, Rena.’ Or ‘Come and watch the news with me.’ We’d … talk about things. I got … I guess you could say I got an education. Not like college. I could have gone if I wanted, but I learned more from Albie. Being around him.”

  “Solly said he was a real smart man.”

  “Smart, that’s nothing. Albie was deep. He’d say something; I’d say, ‘Albie, I don’t understand.’ And you know what he’d say? ‘So go and think about it, Rena.’ And sometimes—a lot of times, in fact—I’d end up figuring it out. Then I’d go ask Albie if that was it … if I really understood it or not. And when I got it right, he was so … I don’t know … proud of me. I can’t even explain …”

  She started crying then. Moaning like she lost something she could never get back. If she was faking, she fooled me.

  I went over and sat next to her on the padded bench-press board. She turned into my chest. I just held her there until she stopped crying. I knew it was real, because she stopped little by little, not like she hit some ON/OFF switch.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just stayed there.

  “You know what else?” she said, after she got her breath. “Never once in his whole life did Albie raise his hand to me.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “An old guy like him, I could probably break him in half if he ever tried.”

  Fuck me, that was what I’d been thinking.

  “You didn’t know him. Albie was a hard man. People would come here to talk to him. Some of those people, you’d get scared just looking at them.

  “I don’t mean they were … big or anything. You can see guys like that in any club. You know, bouncers—just big guys with muscles. These men I’m talking about, they were like off a different planet. Their eyes. The way they moved. It felt like, if you touched them, you’d get freezer burn.

  “In a way, they all looked alike. I can’t explain it, but they really did. Very … controlled, I guess you’d say. But mostly it was the cold. You know how people get in bars? All mouthy, ‘I can kick your ass’ stuff. These men, you could see they’d never say anything like that. They wouldn’t have to—they had those life-taker eyes.”

  “I’ve seen that.”

  “Wilson … that’s not your name, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You trust me enough to—?”

  “Sugar. That’s what people call me.”

  “Okay. Sugar, no disrespect, but I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.”

  “I have seen those eyes, Rena. The same ones you’re talking about.”

  “In prison, right?”

  I just nodded.

  “Tell me about them.”

  “Them?”

  “The people who had those eyes. They weren’t all the same, were they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know what people are in for, don’t you?”

  “I guess so. Most of the time, anyway.”

  “So you don’t mean murderers, necessarily?”

  “For those eyes? No. There’s people you know you can’t fuck with. Just by looking at them.”

  “Guys like you?”

  “No. I mean … ah, you can’t tell by this,” I said, flexing the arm I had around her. “It’s not size. Or even strength. It’s that … you said it yourself, a coldness, like. You know, someone like that, he will kill you, no matter what it costs him. That’s what I mean.”

  “I understand. But that’s not what Albie’s friends were like. The men you’re talking about, they’d kill you only if you did something to them, right? The ones who kill for fun, for the thrill or whatever, they didn’t have those eyes?”

  “No,” I said, thinking about this psycho locked in Ad-Seg the same time I was there. I don’t remember his name, but he was always shouting out the names of the girls he’d killed, saying this one was better than that one, because it took her longer to die. I passed right by him one time on the way back from the shower. His eyes were like a foaming mouth on a dog.

  “Albie’s friends, you could see it. And not just in their eyes. Everything about them. They’d kill you if they were … I don’t know, if they were supposed to. And it wouldn’t mean anything to them. They wouldn’t get a kick out of it, and it wouldn’t make them upset, either. They’d just do it.”

  “They were all like that? Albie’s friends, I mean.”

  “Every single one. Albie was very polite about it, but I always knew they were going to speak Jewish—Yiddish or Hebrew, I mean—and I wouldn’t understand a word. Maybe that’s why they didn’t care if I was around. Or not.”

  “Were you scared of them?”

  “No. No, I never was.”

  “That is different from the guys I was talking about.”

  “So you understand? What I said about Albie never hitting me?”

  “Yeah. I do—now.”

  “You sure? Because I’ll tell you something: I don’t care if you think I’m some minor-league Anna Nicole. But you can never think Albie was some old fool.”

  “I wouldn’t ever think that. Solly said—”

  “Well, now I’m saying. And we never got married, anyway.”

  Later, when
I was alone, never got married kept running through my head. Solly said he had Albie’s will, but he never said who was supposed to get what.

  If Albie took care of Rena with his will, she wouldn’t see a penny unless Solly showed the will in court or whatever they have to do.

  Rena, she had to know that. So why didn’t Solly just put it on the line? Just buy that little book?

  It had to mean Rena didn’t even know there was a little book, the twin to the one Solly had. Because, if I just told her there was money in it for her, why would she care if I tore up the whole house looking for it?

  It was a real mess to start with. And now I had to think about those friends of Albie’s showing up, too.

  I don’t do good like this. If you tell me what my job is, I’ll do it. And if I get caught doing it, I’ll never tell on you. But I’m not one of those guys who can just work things out as they go along.

  Maybe I couldn’t find this Jessop, but I found a place to buy a prepaid cell easy enough—I didn’t want to use any of the ones in that suite.

  “I’m still down here,” I said.

  “You called to tell me this?”

  “I called to ask you about that … paper you have. The one that says where all your friend’s stuff is supposed to go.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause if there’s enough of that stuff going to the person I’m staying with, and I could say that, then maybe I could get permission to look for it. You know, even if I had to bust through drywall or something.”

  “Meaning, nobody there can tell you where what I want is, because they don’t know themselves? Or are you getting held up?”

  “I can’t tell. Not for sure.”

  “So?”

  “So, if nobody does know, then I got to smash up stuff. And I can’t do that unless they let me do it.”

  “I get it. And I got a trump card, too, it comes to that. But you try and find out first, understand?”

  After Solly hung up on me, I used that bat—the aluminum one—in the trunk of the Lincoln to splatter the cell phone.

  Then I drove back to where she lived.