The Weight

by Andrew Vachss

  The girl at the front desk worked real hard to convince me, doing her job even when she saw I’d walked in with all that luggage. So I told her, “Yeah, I sure could use some help getting all this into my room.”

  “Suite,” she said.

  I almost said something stupid until I realized what she meant.

  The bellman helped me get all our stuff into the room. Suite, I mean—it was like another little apartment. No point being cheap with that credit card now.

  I sat there waiting. It wasn’t long before my cell phone made a noise. I didn’t bother picking up the call, just went by the door and opened it a crack. Lynda already knew what room I was in—I had texted her the number. She came down the hall like she owned the joint.

  I locked the door. Lynda was strolling around the place, checking it out. “Very nice,” she said.

  “Don’t get used to it,” I told her.

  I ordered for two from Room Service, letting the girl who took the order hear me ask Lynda what kind of dressing she wanted on her salad.

  I let the guy who brought the food up get a good look at Lynda while he was working me for a tip, describing each dish as he pulled off the metal tops like he was doing a magic trick.

  “They really give you the tips off credit cards?” I asked him, looking at the leather-covered bill he’d handed me with a little flourish.

  He didn’t say anything, just shook his head.

  “Guys like you and me, we know how things work, right?” I told him, shifting my eyes over to where Lynda was posing in her high-class-hooker outfit. I handed him a pair of twenties.

  “Yes, sir!” he said. “When you want the tray picked up, just call Room Service. I’ll make sure—”

  “Uh, I’m gonna be kind of busy, pal. I’ll just leave it outside when we’re done, how’s that?”

  “Oh, absolutely, sir. Why don’t I leave the serving cart right here? That way, you can just push it outside whenever you wish.”

  The hotel had entrances on two different blocks. The front desk was on the fancy-street side. I just walked down the stairs to the fifth floor, rang for the elevator, and stepped off to my right. Nobody paid any attention. People who want to be noticed make sure they hang out in the front lobby; it’s all set up for that, with couches and a little bar and everything.

  The subway was perfect. Like in any bad neighborhood, nobody sees nothing.

  “You got the—?”

  “I got it all.”

  “How far away are you?”

  “Too far to walk. But on the subway, maybe forty-five minutes.”

  “So I’ll see you soon, Jerome?”

  “That was my plan, too. Only I have to stop by the office first.”

  “This place is completely—”

  “Maybe for you. Not for me.”

  I hoped Solly was thinking about all those security cameras in his condo that he’d told me about.

  “What say I meet you at the office, then? I can make it all … suitable. We can have a drink there, talk things over?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  I watched the alley for almost an hour. No sign of Solly. So he’d been in his office all the time, just like I figured.

  Okay.

  I played blackjack on the door. When I heard the heavy clunk of the deadbolt, I stepped into the darkness.

  A soft light came on. Solly, behind his desk.

  “Sugar!” he said, standing up.

  I came around the desk so he could give me a hug. Then I sat down across from him in the guest chair. It wasn’t a partners desk.

  “So?”

  I took out Albie’s little blue book. Slid it across the desk like I was dealing out a card.

  Solly scooped it up while it was still moving. Took a quick look. “You never miss, Sugar,” he said. “This is perfect.”

  “There’s more.”

  “You mean …?”

  “Show me the tape first.”

  “Tape? What tape?”

  “I know you’ve got me on video, coming here. Time and date stamped, all that. So I figure maybe Solly’s got his office miked, too. Like you’re always saying …”

  He smiled like he was proud of me for being such a good listener.

  “You didn’t get what I said about making the place suitable? Or you didn’t believe it? Eh, macht nit. Go over to the bookcase on your left. The one with the thick pillars for sides.”

  I got up and did that. The pillars had Jewish writing carved into them, like on Albie’s prayer bag. They looked real old, like they were made before people nailed boards together.

  “Crouch down. Second shelf from the bottom. See the green book, Basic Accounting? Pull it out. Good. Now reach in and feel around for a little bump. Yeah? Just push on it, kid.”

  I heard a thunk! on the side of the bookcase. I went over there. The right side of the whole pillar had dropped. Same way Albie had his desk rigged, I thought. Bolted to the wood was a pair of metal boxes.

  “Top one is video, bottom is audio.”

  “This is fucking amazing, Solly.”

  “Well, now you know my secret, kid. I trusted you with that, I hope you’ll trust me when I tell you that, knowing you were coming, I turned everything off a half-hour ago, just like I said I would. You’re not being taped now, and every tape I ever had of you, it was shredded a long time ago.”

  “I trust you, Solly,” I said. Then I walked back to the desk.

  “That means a lot to me, Sugar.”

  “Besides, I’m going to tell you what happened down there. How I did exactly what you told me to do. So, even if there is a tape, it’s not gonna be one you’d want to show anybody.”

  “You’re a real piece of work, kid. How about something to take the edge off your nerves?”

  “No thanks, Solly.”

  “I wasn’t talking about booze. For your nerves, I got something much better.”

  “I don’t want any—”

  “Jesus. You think everyone don’t know you’re a health freak? All you got to do is listen. You can do that, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Try this, then. I, me, Solly, I planned the jewelry heist. When you got out, I asked you to do a couple of things for me. So, if this Jessop got his ticket punched, that’s on me, too. Think I’d put that on tape, kid?”

  “I sure don’t. Okay, Solly. But what you said, that’s only half.”

  “You had to—?”

  “Kill the broad? Yeah, I did. You told her about that desk. What do you think was in it?”

  “A few mil.”

  “Just a note, Solly.”

  “A what?!”

  “A note. From Albie to her. Something about how she had to run away. Fast. With the book. The book, it was supposed to prove you were some kind of ‘traitor,’ only that part wasn’t for her. I couldn’t make any sense out of it.”

  “So? Give it to me and—”

  “That’s what I said to her, Solly. Only she wouldn’t.”

  “So she’s …”

  “I didn’t have any choice.”

  “I understand. I would have done the same thing. Albie, he must have been going soft. In the head, I mean. Like Alzheimer’s, you heard of that, right? Crazy old man, he could have said damn near anything.”

  “I didn’t want to do any of that.”

  “Jessop, he didn’t give you any choice, either?”

  “Choice, fuck! You know where he lived? Right in that same town. And you know who told me that? Rena.”

  “Her and him?”

  “You got it. They were playing Albie like a fiddle.”

  “I knew he was over the edge. Had to be. What a lousy way for a man like him to go out, wearing the horns.”

  “I guess. Anyway, once I got her to tell me where I could find him, the minute I—”

  “Wait,” Solly said, holding up his palm like a traffic cop. “Why did she tell you all this?”

  “As soon as that note popped out, she knew she was going a
nyway. Come on, she knew who sent me, right? So I told her I could make it easy … or real, real hard.”

  “She didn’t try to—”

  “Sure. Probably thought it worked, too.”

  “Ah! You’re a lot deeper than people take you for, Sugar.”

  “Nobody needs to know that besides you, Solly.”

  “Nobody ever will, kid.”

  “Anyway, I go over to where this Jessop was living. Cheap dump. I wait for him to get back from wherever he was. Can’t miss him. He drives a red Corvette. Some pro, huh? As he’s getting out, I walk up to him. I got my hands open at my sides, so he can see I’m not carrying.

  “He was, though. I got to him just as he was reaching for it.”

  “Not much of a conversation, huh?”

  “He won’t be having any conversations anymore. That’s what we wanted to be sure of, right?”

  “Right,” Solly said, showing me again that we weren’t being taped.

  “That note,” I said, getting up to dig a little piece of paper out of my jeans, “the writing is so tiny, I could only make out some of it.”

  I was around to his side of the desk by then, holding the paper in my left hand to spread it out in front of him.

  When Solly looked down, I slammed my right forearm across the back of his neck. Like I was a machete chopping cane. His forehead hit the desk on the way down. It was like breaking a broomstick over your knee—he was dead before he hit the floor.

  I knew Solly had this big freezer bin in the back. For unstable goods, he told me once. I never asked what he meant by that—if he wanted me to know more, he would have said.

  For once, I got lucky. All that was in there was a few little bottles, with corks in them. Looked like frozen water, but when I took them out, I put them down real careful.

  Something else, too. A big Ziploc bag. When I wiped off the frost, I could see what looked like something wrapped in a black cloth. I pulled it open. The cloth wasn’t cloth at all—some kind of plastic weave, with a thin layer of foam under it. When I peeled that off, I found what looked like an old-style address book, the kind with the little rings along the spine. The blanket must have been insulated; the book was hardly even cold.

  With the freezer empty, I didn’t even have to cut Solly up—just kind of folded him over and shoved him around until I could close the lid. Breaking those bones felt loud, but I knew it wasn’t really.

  I snatched that address book and slipped it into my coat. I took the Ziploc and the wrapping, too. A good thief knows you never leave empty spaces; that’s the same as telling the owner someone found his stash. If everything still looks the same, it might take him a long time to look inside and find out he’s been robbed.

  I looked at my watch. Lynda would be pushing that serving cart outside our door in five minutes.

  I was back in the hotel by two in the morning, sleeping with my alibi.

  Yeah, my prints were all over Solly’s basement. But if I’d known about that place for a long time, other guys knew, too. And I know, from listening to B&E pros, that the cops can’t tell when a fingerprint was left.

  I could have gone in with latex on my hands or something, but Solly, he would have sniffed that out before I could get close to him.

  It’s already done, is what I was thinking, just before I fell asleep. Fuck it.

  I checked out early. Got one of those guys they have out front to find me a cab. He hit something on his cell phone. A minute later, a black sedan pulled up.

  I handed the doorman a five and piled into the sedan like I didn’t know what he’d just pulled on me. A few blocks later, I handed over what the driver said was the “flat fee” to JFK. Sixty bucks.

  Lynda was waiting for me at the United terminal. I stacked the luggage all around her. Then I just walked over to the cab line.

  The “flat fee” back was a lot cheaper.

  At nine on the dot, I walked into the bank. I didn’t speak to the manager, just emptied my safe-deposit box.

  I caught the LIRR outbound. At that hour, it wasn’t even half full.

  From the station, I walked over to the lot where I had the Toyota stashed. The guy was a little surprised to see me so soon, but I told him the job had gone sour, and acted like I wished there was someone around for me to hit.

  He got a little jumpy then. But when I didn’t ask for any money back, he even smiled.

  I drove the Toyota to JFK, parked in the short-stay lot.

  It took me two trips, because I wanted to move fast and look normal. Lynda went along on the last leg. She barely fit, and the Toyota’s back window was completely blocked, but we didn’t have far to go from there—I knew a motel that took cash.

  We transferred everything to the room. Place like that, you can’t leave luggage in a car. Even the trunk, you’d be taking a chance. But out in the open, it’s as good as gone.

  When that insurance spook visited me Upstate, he’d left his card. I tore it into tiny pieces, then I got rid of the pieces in different spots. But the number that he wrote on the back, I put it in the one place they can’t search.

  He answered on the second ring.

  “You came to visit me once,” I said. “That offer you made, is it still good?”

  “Absolutely.”

  There wasn’t a trace of … anything in his voice.

  “It’s really that important to you, Sugar?” Lynda asked me.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is. It’s never really … gone from me.”

  “What if she still believes that you—”

  “That’ll be her choice. I’m no head doctor, but I figure, girl’s been through what she’s been through, just getting to make a choice, that’d be pure gold to her.”

  Lynda looked at me for a long time. Like she was trying each eye on by color.

  “You’re right,” she finally said. “Only, what if they don’t manage to convince her? Sure, she gets to make that choice. But if it really goes the way you want, won’t she think the man who … did that to her, won’t she think he’s still around?”

  “I never thought of that,” I told Lynda. “But what can I do? It’s one package. No bargaining. I’m not asking for much, considering what they put on the table the last time.”

  “That was years ago, baby.”

  “I guess I’ll find out, then.”

  “We’ll find out,” Lynda said, putting her little hand on top of where I’d made a fist out of my right.

  He was where he said he’d be: a booth way in the back of this diner on Queens Boulevard, far away from any windows. “You can’t miss it,” he’d told me. And he was right; it was the biggest diner I’d ever seen in my life.

  “You’re looking good,” he said, shaking my hand. “And those glasses, that’s a very fine touch.”

  “Solly fixed me up with them. And a bunch of other stuff, too.”

  His face was almost a perfect mask, but when I said “Solly,” he’d given it away. So they probably knew all along, but didn’t have a shred of proof.

  I hoped they had. Known it all along, I mean. Being a thief doesn’t just mean stealing, it means knowing who you’re stealing from—my first fall taught me that. If the insurance people knew that jewelry job had been Solly’s, they hadn’t bothered to tell the cops.

  Or maybe they had, for all the good that would have done them. From where they’d look at it, Solly’s been in the business longer than I’ve been alive, and the Law has never touched him, not even once.

  “You said the deal was still good?”

  “Conspiracy charges have a statute of limitations just like robbery. Only difference is, the time doesn’t start to run until the conspiracy is discovered. And that’s exactly where the case is now—in discovery.”

  “It takes that long?”

  “It can, depending on who you—”

  “Okay, I get it. Only, I don’t want the same deal.”

  “Because you already did the time and—”

  “No. Just listen, ok
ay? I don’t want your money; I want your protection.”

  “From who?”

  “Solly. He’s probably got spotters on the street looking for me right now.”

  “I don’t suppose you want to explain that?”

  “Good guess. There’s a few other things, too.”

  The waitress came over. The menu was as thick as a damn dictionary. I got a Caesar salad with chicken, no dressing; he got a steak, fries, onion rings.

  Soon as she left, I told him the rest of what I needed. “I’m not going to give you a statement. If you’re recording this, you’ll have to edit out the part where you offered me a quarter-mil to lie in court so you could get the case against your company thrown out. And you’d also have to—”

  “I’m not recording anything, Mr. Caine.”

  “At least that’s my real name, Mr. Robert Johnson.”

  “How long do you want to play this out? All you’ve given me so far is a list of what you won’t do.”

  And Solly’s name, I thought. That’s when I was sure they’d known all along.

  “I’m not going to testify,” I told him. “But I can give you enough to prove that jewelry-store job was a setup from jump. It was the owner’s idea. He’s the one who found Solly, not the other way around. I know how much we got away with, and it’s nothing close to what he’s suing you for.”

  “You know this how? Whatever you got from a fence doesn’t mean you got the actual value.”

  “That’s right. That’d always be right. But I’ve got the actual value.”

  “You mind telling me how?”

  “Solly. You know what a GIA certificate is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I didn’t. But Solly did. Solly always knows what things are worth. That’s why he gets half off the top: he sets up the jobs, he moves the loot—even cash money, you have to sell at a discount; it could be marked, see? And he supplies everything you need to do the work, too.”

  “This ‘Solly’ would be?”

  “Solomon Vizner.”

  He was on the hunt now. But he didn’t want to spook the canary before the song was over. “That name doesn’t mean anything to me, sorry.”