Choice of Evil b-11

by Andrew Vachss

  “But not fly?”

  “Not in that. . . stage. We don’t know if it disappeared, or just evolved into something else. Like the eohippus into the horse, see?”

  “Sure,” I said. The kid was already talking like his father—what I really needed was a translator.

  “Look at the skeleton,” he said, pointing again. “From the sizes of the various bones, and the light, delicate structure of the limbs, you can see it was probably a fast, nimble runner. It wasn’t huge or anything, but it was well armed. See this?” he asked, pointing to a large, hook-shaped piece coming out of the toe joint. “They call it a ‘killing claw,’ so it was probably used to hunt other animals, not to dig in the ground or anything. Velociraptors had more than eighty teeth, some of them over an inch long, and each with a sharp, jagged edge. Awesome, huh?”

  “Were they. . . I don’t know. . . smart?”

  “Probably,” the kid assured me. “The brain was large and complex. That means that they were probably intelligent, with good hearing and eyesight, and even a good sense of smell.”

  “So they were like predatory birds—hawks and all—but they worked the ground, right?” I asked him. Thinking how human vultures never have to fly to feed.

  “We really don’t know,” the kid said solemnly. “Only one truly great specimen was ever discovered—a fossil. And it shows a velociraptor and a protoceratops locked in deadly combat.”

  “But nobody knows who started that one?”

  “Or who finished it either. Like a movie where you have to leave before it’s over. But, from all I read, it seems like velociraptor was a great hunter. And a great fighter too. The evidence. . . I mean, what they found. . . it had characteristics of both birds and crocodiles—that’s those rows of teeth and all. And those are both still around—birds and crocodiles, I mean. So I don’t think it died out, the way the bigger ones did—it was too well adapted to its environment. It probably just. . . evolved into something else.”

  Was that his message? I thought to myself. That he hadn’t died, just evolved? That he was a perfect predator for the times, and he’d move along once his work was done?

  “Which do you think?” I asked the kid.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you said it had characteristics of both birds and crocodiles, right? So it had to go in one of those directions if it was going to survive.”

  “Birds,” the kid said, unhesitatingly.

  “Why? Crocs are ancient. I mean, they go all the way back to. . .”

  “They both build nests, right? Birds and crocodiles. But only birds take care of their babies when they’re born. When the baby crocs are born, they’re on their own.”

  “And you think that’s the key to survival?”

  “For the higher life-forms? Sure. It makes sense, right?”

  “If it does,” I asked him, “what the fuck are we still doing on this planet?”

  The kid—this kid whose bio-parents had sold him like a used car—looked at me for a long moment. Then he said: “We’re not all like. . . that.” And then he glanced toward the bunker where his real parents were being with each other.

  I nodded, agreeing. But not believing. The human race is a race. And I’m not sure parents like Michelle and the Mole are winning it.

  “Would anyone be likely to recognize this?” I asked the kid, showing him the icon again, working for a smooth transition, moving as far away from the other as I could get.

  “Sure, if they knew anything about the subject. Like a paleontologist. But not from the name.”

  “Huh?”

  “ ‘Velociraptor’ was the name they used in Jurassic Park. You know, the movie? But the ones there were nothing like the real ones. If you said ‘velociraptor’ to the average kid, he’d never think it looked anything like this.”

  I lit another smoke. “You did great, Terry,” I told the kid. Thinking maybe I had something to make that polygraph key really sing, now that I had lyrics to go with the music.

  Michelle was quiet on the drive back, and I knew better than to break the silence. She could dissect my sex life for hours without batting an eyelash, and she’d turned every kind of trick there was before she took herself off the streets and went to the phones to make a living, but even mentioning her and the Mole together was total taboo.

  Terry was always a safe topic with her—she loved that kid way past her own life—and she would have been proud about how he’d helped me out. But she was so inside herself that I didn’t even tap on the door. Just took her absentminded kiss on the cheek before she slipped out in front of her place and then motored over to Mama’s.

  Red-dragon tapestry in the front window. Maybe Lorraine had found Xyla already. Or maybe not. I pulled around the back, flat-handed the metal slab of a door, and waited. One of Mama’s crew opened the door, a guy I hadn’t seen before. I could swear his face was Korean, but I knew how Mama was about things like that, so I kept the thought to myself. He said something over his shoulder and one of the guys who knew me answered him. The new man stepped aside to let me pass, his right hand still in the pocket of his apron. Whatever was out front wasn’t that dangerous, anyway.

  It was Xyla. Sitting in my booth, facing toward the back, working her way through a plate of dim sum someone had provided. Good sign. Mama served strangers toxic waste—her real customers never came for the food.

  “What’s up?” she greeted me. “Lorraine said you were looking for me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, sitting down. “Be with you in a minute.”

  It was less than that before the tureen of hot-and-sour soup was placed before me. I filled the small bowl myself, drained it quickly. I glanced toward where Mama was working at her register, but I couldn’t risk it—had two more bowls before I waved at the waiter to take the rest away. I didn’t offer any to Xyla, and she seemed to understand. . . just sat there, chewing delicately on her own food, waiting.

  “What kind of name is Xyla?” I said, my tone telling her I really was interested, not putting her down. I wanted to start cutting her out of the herd if I could, form my own relationship, just in case Lorraine’s old hostility flared up and she tried to cut me out first.

  “My mom gave it to me,” she said, chuckling. “It comes from ‘Xylocaine.’. . . Mom said if it wasn’t for Xylocaine my old man never could’ve lasted long enough to get her pregnant.”

  “Damn! That’s cold.”

  “It was a joke,” she said, watching me carefully. “The kind you tell your daughter when she’s old enough to ask where her father is. . . and you don’t know the answer.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah,” she said, dismissing it—an old wound, healed. But it still throbbed when the weather was wrong.

  I’d made a mistake. My specialty with women. So I switched subjects as smoothly as I could. “I got the word I want you to use,” I told her. It’s ‘velociraptor.’ Can you—?”

  “Like in Jurassic Park? Sure. How do you spell that?” she asked me, pulling a little notebook from the pocket of her coat.

  I did it, thinking how on the money Terry had been.

  “Okay,” she said. “But why would he—?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I told her. “It’s just a word. One he’ll recognize. You got a secure address? For yourself, I mean. One he could go to with an answer if he wanted?”

  “I can make one,” she said confidently. “Take about a minute. No problem. What do you want me to do, exactly?”

  “Look, I’m no pro at this stuff. You said a couple of things, remember? One, people are looking for him on the Net, right? And two, he could be out there. . .”

  “Lurking.”

  “Yeah. Lurking. He could see the traffic. . . but without him banging in, nobody would know he was there?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. So I want to send him a message too. Only I don’t want to make it public. And I don’t have his address. You could post like a. . . I don’t know. . . general message
for him, only put it into encryption, so he’d need a program to open it and read it?”

  “I could do that. But if the message itself said it was encrypted, and I used one of the regular programs—to make it encrypted, see?—anyone could open the message if they had the same program.”

  “And he’d know that?”

  “Yes,” she said, in one of those elongated “Isn’t it obvious?” tones all young girls can do.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said, maybe trying to convince myself. “I’ll be able to figure out who’s who.”

  “Okay. So exactly what do you want to say? And is it context-sensitive?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Oh. Well, it just means, does it have to be exactly in a certain form. Like, if you wrote it like a regular sentence, you know, with capital letters and periods and all, and I just sent it in all lower-case, would that matter?”

  “No. I don’t care. Here’s all I want to say, all right?”

  She nodded, pencil poised.

  “You just address it to him, right? To ‘Homo Erectus,’ yes?”

  “Sure. And I’ll multi-post it. If he’s lurking on any of the newsgroups or on BBS stuff, he’ll see it.”

  “Okay, say this: ‘I am the real thing, same as you. Here’s proof: “velociraptor.”’ Put that in quotes, okay? ‘I am not a cop. I have something you need.’ ”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. If he sends you a message. . .”

  “Oh, I’ll get lots of messages,” she assured me. “Problem’ll be telling if any of them are him.”

  “I think I can do that. . . if he bites. Just get word to me. I’m counting on you, all right, Xyla?”

  “I’m straight-edge,” she said, finger flicking at one of her razor earrings.

  I sat there for a long time after Xyla left, thinking it through. Even if the killer got in touch, I wouldn’t be any closer to him, not really. Sure, he had to be in the city—or, at least, he had to have been in the city—to do his work. But he could have already vanished. All we really had was his footprints. And, like the Prof had said about Wesley, that trail only ran backward.

  Still, I couldn’t see this guy living some double life. Couldn’t see him as a stockbroker or running a bodega. He wasn’t making his own porno flicks, the way a lot of serial killers do. And he didn’t roam the way most of them do either. He had no definable piece of work he had to finish—the way a mass murderer who comes into the workplace shooting and then eats his own gun does, or a wife-beater under an order of protection who’s going to take himself out as soon as he blows her away.

  No, this one was a different breed. And he was. . . close. Had to be. As if he wasn’t so much compelled to do his work as to see its results.

  Maybe he was just nuts. Or I was. I couldn’t track him in my mind the way I could other kinds of predators. Those, I knew about. Spent my life with them. They raised me. I did time with them. And I studied them close—because I knew someday I’d be hunting them. That was the prayer I put myself to sleep with every night, from when I was a little child. That I wouldn’t be prey. Inside, where I ended up, there was only one alternative to that.

  That’s why he said he was doing it too—revenge. But I couldn’t connect with him. Couldn’t see him. . . feel him. Nothing.

  “Burke, you take this one, okay? Say important.”

  “Huh?” I felt Mama’s hand on my shoulder. Figured out she must mean the phone. Glanced at my watch. I’d been there. . . Jesus, almost three hours. That kind of thing happened to me every once in a while, but ever since I’d lost my. . . home, I guess. . . it was happening a lot.

  I got up, walked to the back, picked up the dangling receiver.

  “What?” is all I said.

  “It’s me.” Wolfe’s voice. “I have your stuff.”

  “Great. When can I—?”

  “Now, if you want. Remember where we were the last time you saw Bruiser do his stuff?”

  “Sure.”

  “An hour?”

  “I’ll be there,” I promised.

  There’s places along the Hudson River where you can pull over. Sort of big parking lots. Maybe the city planners thought the rich folks on Riverside Drive would promenade over for picnics, who knows? Today, the spots are used for everything from romance to rape. Daytime, they’re pretty full, especially when the weather gets nice. At night, it’s a little different, but there’s enough room to give everybody space to operate, and the assortment of cars parked there didn’t set off any of my alarms.

  I backed the Plymouth into an empty space—too near the middle for my taste, but the corners were already occupied. I was twenty minutes ahead of the meet, so I kicked back and watched.

  It wasn’t long before that rolling oil refinery Wolfe calls a car rumbled in. I shuddered as she reversed, slowly and deliberately, then backed in so she was close to me. . . but this time she missed by a couple of feet. I opened my door and waited, not surprised to see that malevolent Rottweiler of hers jump right out the passenger-side window and pin me balefully, waiting for the word.

  “Bruiser, behave yourself,” Wolfe told him. Not a command I’d ever heard for a dog before, but the brute seemed to understand, visibly relaxing. At least as far as I was concerned—his heavy head swiveled as he swept the surrounding area, maybe remembering the last time Wolfe had met me here. Some clowns in a four-by didn’t see me—just Wolfe standing alone—and thought they’d try their luck. Then they saw Bruiser coming for them—a skell-seeking missile already locked on to his target—just in time and peeled out before he could do his job.

  “I got it,” Wolfe said by way of greeting.

  I hadn’t expected a hug and a kiss, but this was a bit cold-edged, even for her.

  “You also got a problem?” I asked her, getting right to it, ignoring the cheap white plastic briefcase she held in one hand.

  “I might have,” she said evenly. “The word’s out that your. . . friend may be back.”

  “You believing rumors now?”

  “Not any more than usual. But I know a trademark when I see one.”

  “Spell it out,” I said quietly, understanding now why she wanted the meet outdoors.

  “I’m still. . . in touch,” Wolfe said. Not news to me. The cops Wolfe had worked with for so many years hadn’t broken off contact when she’d gone outlaw. They knew what she trafficked in, and they’d made more than one beautiful bust off info she’d provided. The only way she could walk into a courtroom and own it the way she had for so long as a prosecutor would be as a defense attorney, and she just wouldn’t go the side-switching route like so many ex-DAs. So, even though her license was gathering dust, she was still law enforcement in the eyes of a lot of working cops.

  “What is it you want to say?” I asked her, watching her gray eyes.

  She took out a cigarette, waited for the wooden match she knew was coming from my end, hauled in a deep drag, leaning back against her Audi’s crumpled hood, and blew a jet of smoke into the darkness.

  “You trust me?” she finally asked.

  “Yes,” I told her. No hesitation. I could maybe never tell her how I really felt about her, but I could tell her that. And even as that one simple word left my mouth, I knew it was a commitment. . . that I’d have to prove it.

  “The drive-by—the one that started this all?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Two shooters. Plus one driver, okay?”

  “Far as I know. Although the driver could have been shooting too. . . so maybe one less man.”

  “Seven victims, two fatal.”

  “I thought it was less, but. . . okay.”

  “One of them, your girlfriend. This Crystal Beth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only her ID didn’t say that. It said she was someone else.”

  I shrugged. The woman asking me the questions was holding a briefcase full of documents as phony as a talk show host’s tears for the pathetic parade of damaged creatures
she used and abused every day.

  “You know one of the guns was a Tec-9, right?”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “You hear a lot. But not enough, I don’t think. You know what the other piece was?”

  “No,” I said, focusing now.

  “It was a Magnum Research Lone Eagle.”

  “Oh Jesus. . .”

  “Chambered for.22 Hornet.”

  “So it had to be a—”

  “Hit. That’s right. An assassination.”

  I lit a smoke of my own, more to have something to do with my hands than anything else. She was right—what else could it be? Magnum Research is a subsidiary of Israeli Arms. And the piece she was talking about was a Mossad special: single-shot, with a rotary breech like an artillery cannon. You rotate the breech cap to expose the chamber and slide in the cartridge, then you lock it up again. No way to reload it in the time a car would pass by. . . impossible. But a sharpshooter, even using open metal sights, could hit a half-dollar at a hundred feet from a moving car with a piece like that. And nobody could be sure the car even was moving before the spray from the Tec-9 started.

  “They found the slug?” I asked her.

  “A piece of it, anyway. He was hit right in the base of the skull, dead before he dropped.”

  He? “So it wasn’t Crystal Beth who—?”

  “No. The way they have it doped, she was hit by cover fire. The target was the guy who got the special delivery.”

  “If all they have is a piece of the slug, how could they know it was a—?”

  “They have the weapon,” Wolfe said softly. “It was in the car.”

  “The. . . what?”

  “The car. The drive-by car. It was a Lincoln Town Car. You know, the kind most of the limo services use. . . not a stretch, a regular sedan. Black. Tinted windows. About as noticeable as a taxicab in that part of town. . . real good choice.”