Safe House b-10

by Andrew Vachss

  “What’s that?”

  “This ain’t a real cell, okay? Like, they all come from different ones. The scatter plan is we all go back where we came from. I mean, ZOG’s gonna be down on us like white on rice soon as this thing blows. It’s every man for himself. Every cell’s supposed to have something set for each guy. When he comes back, understand?”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking it through, looking for the hook. “You’re sure it’s Federal Plaza?” I asked him.

  “It’s what they say, bro. And they ain’t saying nothing else. They say everyone’s gonna blame the Arabs first. There’s a bunch of them went down for the World Trade Center, right? And they—the Arabs—they supposed to of sworn they was gonna do more. I guess they—the guys in the cell—talked over a lot of spots. Before I came in, I mean. But this is the only one they talk about now. They got maps, big blow-up maps so you can see every little building on the street. They got all the lights timed. They wanted to do it on a Saturday—d’you know that’s like the Jew Sunday, where they go to church and all? Anyway, they can’t do it then, ’cause the area’s too packed.”

  “That whole area is empty on Sunday mornings,” I said.

  “Yeah. That’s when it’s gonna be. That’s what they said.”

  “Damn! Why didn’t you tell me—?”

  “I don’t know which Sunday, bro. I thought you meant when they was gonna—”

  “Never mind,” I told him. “Herk, did you ever see the cars they’re going to use?”

  “Nah. But I know it ain’t just cars. They got one of them private garbage trucks. Not from the city, you know the ones I mean?”

  “Sure.” Private carters handled most of the commercial trash collection in Manhattan. Seeing one parked in the early-morning hours wouldn’t make a cop look twice.

  “And they got a semi too. From one of the moving companies.”

  “Jesus. They’re gonna pack all these with explosives?”

  “Yeah. I dunno what kinds, but I tell you this for sure, man—it ain’t no puny dynamite. The stuff they got, they say it’s gonna fucking level that building.”

  “It’s Twenty-six Federal Plaza,” I told Pryce.

  “It can’t be,” he said. “It has to be a diversion of some kind.” The muscle jumped under his eye. “Or they made Hercules . . . they know he’s a plant.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, maybe more hope than analysis.

  “Your friend’s not a genius,” Pryce came back, a trace of something like sadness vibrating at a low register in his thin voice.

  “He’s got an education,” I told him quietly. “Not your kind of education. Mine. Maybe he wouldn’t score so high on an IQ test, but he was raised in places where you had to know when they were coming for you if you were gonna survive.”

  “Maybe, but—”

  “—he’s as smart as that piece of shit Lothar,” I cut him off. “If they didn’t make him, they’re not gonna make Herk. Besides, I think they’re in too deep now. And remember, he’s got that credential. One none of them have. If they bought Lothar, they’ll buy Herk.”

  “Sunday morning adds up. It would minimize the loss of life, but that’s not such a bad thing from a public-relations standpoint. Oklahoma City angered even some of the extremists—so many dead children from that day-care center. . . . And any other time, they couldn’t be certain they could get enough vehicles close enough. But . . .”

  “What?”

  “You know anything about explosives?”

  “Not much. But I know people who—”

  “They could not significantly damage a building of that size without getting much closer than the street,” Pryce said in a tone of finality. “Unless . . .”

  “What?”

  “Unless the explosions were linked, somehow. Unless there was one single detonator for all of it. Maybe if they hit it from all sides . . .”

  “He said they were gonna—”

  “I know. And he said it wasn’t dynamite either. No homemade stuff. But they don’t have the technology to go nuclear. We would have picked that up on the wire way before this.”

  “You ever look closely at one of those giant garbage trucks?” I asked him. “You got two, three of them—and a goddamned semi—packed to the rafters with plastique . . .”

  “Burke,” he said, leaning forward, putting his webbed hand on my forearm, gripping tightly, “does Herk know who’s going to be holding the detonator?”

  “He didn’t say. It’s not gonna be him, that’s for sure.”

  He was quiet for a few minutes. I didn’t say anything. You could almost watch him think. Finally, he leaned back against the seat cushions of the Taurus and closed his eyes. “I don’t think Lothar is going to be the last of them to die for the race,” he said.

  We sat in silence as I left his mind and tried to go into theirs. Be a race-hating beast. It only came up one way.

  Herk was going to die.

  After all this, Herk was going to die.

  “The leader, the one with the detonator, he’s going to blow them all up,” I said. “That’s the way you see it too, right?”

  “What else could it be?” Pryce asked me. He reached in the side pocket of his jacket, pulled out a street map of lower Manhattan. With a yellow highlighter, he drew a box around Federal Plaza. “Let’s say they park the rigs here. And here. And here. All right? Maybe half a dozen drops in all. One man to each vehicle. Each one of them has park-and-run orders. The detonator man is waiting, probably in a van of some kind—maybe the same one they use for transport from that bar—not far away. They each park their individual vehicles, get out and just walk away. When they’re all assembled back at the van, it takes off. Then the detonator man hits the switch.”

  “Only he’s not gonna wait,” I said.

  “No. Waiting increases the risk. On all counts. And if any of them is captured, he could bring down the whole deal. Leaderless cells only work but so far. Whoever was captured, he’d know something. And the plan is to create anarchy—taking credit for the bombing would work against that. One Nazi in custody blows that whole deal.”

  “Then it’s time to take them down?”

  “How can we do that? Hercules doesn’t know the address where they’re holed up. Just that bar you told me about. I doubt we could stake it out—it sounds like the whole place belongs to them. Probably some of the surrounding property too. And if they’re really close, I don’t think he’s coming out again anyway.”

  “But if we don’t—”

  “We couldn’t risk planting a transmitter on Hercules,” he said, intercepting my thoughts. “If they found it, they’d just cut and run.”

  After they killed Hercules, I thought.

  “But if we could find the place without using a transmitter—”

  “Without the explosives, we don’t have a case anyway,” he cut in. “Lothar’s gone,” he reminded me. “So we don’t have any conspiracy testimony either. Hercules wouldn’t be much good to us even if he decided to go on the stand—yes, I know,” he said, holding up his hand in a don’t-interrupt gesture—“the agreement says he doesn’t have to. But even if he did, we have to be able to take them with the goods. And alive, if we can.”

  I wondered if he was really that stupid. Or thought I was.

  “Oh,” Vyra said when she answered the door to the suite, disappointment clear in her face.

  “Has he called?” I asked, no preliminaries.

  “No. Have you—?”

  “Nothing. Listen, Vyra. If you give a damn about Herk, listen as good as you ever did. I need to talk to him. It’s worth his life, understand? If he calls, if he shows up, you got to let me know right then. No playing around, no grabbing a few minutes for fun . . . right then. That fucking second, you understand me?”

  “Is he—?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t know anything. He may not be able to come out again. We’re getting close. This is Thursday. It could be as close as this
weekend. But if he does get a call to you . . .” The next thought hit me so hard I had to sit down, think it through. Then I said: “Vyra, did you give him anything when you saw him?”

  “Give him anything?” she demanded, an undertone of hysteria slipping in. “I gave him my—”

  “Listen to me, you stupid bitch,” I said quietly, grabbing her by the hands and pulling her down next to me. “This isn’t about pussy. It’s about a man’s life. My brother’s life. Now, answer my question. Did you give him anything? A watch? A ring? A shirt? Anything.”

  “Why do you—Oh, don’t!” she squealed, holding her hands in front of her face. “He wouldn’t take any . . . I . . . oh my God, I did give him something. A scarf. My pink chiffon scarf. He wanted it. He said it smelled like me. He took it with him when we last . . .”

  “Yes!”

  “Burke, what’s wrong with you. Why does it—?”

  “Vyra, baby, I’m sorry if I scared you. I wasn’t trying to. Just to make you see how important this is, all right? Now listen to me. Are you listening?”

  “Yes. I swear.”

  “If Herk calls, if he’s on his way to see you here, you call me immediately, got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “But if he calls and says he can’t get away for a while, or anything like that . . . if he’s not coming for a while, you tell him this, okay? Tell him: Wear your scarf. Tell him you miss him, and he should wear your scarf. For you. So you can be with him. You understand?”

  “I . . . do.”

  “Vyra, forget everything, okay. Everything. There’s no yesterday now. You have to get this right. I’m counting on you.” Then I bent and kissed her on the cheek.

  “I promise,” she said.

  How many Nazi bars could there be within thirty minutes of the other side of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge? Astoria, maybe? It was a mixed neighborhood with a lot of small local joints. Long Island City had everything from warehouses to topless bars and artists’ lofts. Maybe they were even over near the waterfront, past the Citibank Tower. But . . . if I asked around, if word got back to them . . . that could do it for Herk too.

  So all I had was Vyra’s promise. Vyra, the liar I’d always known her to be.

  Herk had to get out, or get to a phone one more time.

  And he had to be right about Vyra.

  Crystal Beth put her head down and took another experimental lick. I was dead.

  “Did I do something?” she asked, tilting her head to look up my body toward my face as I lay on my back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Seeing the cellular phone in my mind, willing the goddamned thing to ring.

  “No,” I told her, wondering for the hundredth time if the batteries were still good, if I shouldn’t have gotten a backup clone to the same number from the Mole, if I shouldn’t have told Herk the last time to . . .

  “Did I not do something?” Crystal Beth wanted to know, still not moving.

  “It’s not you,” I said. “It’s me.”

  “You’re worried about—?”

  “Yeah,” I cut her off, thinking what an inadequate word “worried” was for what I was feeling.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not, honey?”

  “Because it’s not yours, Crystal Beth. Not anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked in a challenging voice, propping herself up on one elbow. “I’ve been in this since—”

  “Whatever happens now, it’s not going to be you. Or any of your stuff. Pryce isn’t going to rat you out. You or Vyra or your network. Nothing.”

  “But you got yourself into this for—”

  “For my brother. For my family. Not for you.”

  “But you love—”

  “Them.”

  “And you love me too,” she said aggressively, her hands on my shoulders, hauling herself up so her nose was right on my forehead. “Me too. Don’t you?”

  “Crystal Beth . . .”

  “It’s not what you say, it’s what you do, remember?” she whispered against me. “Why can’t you be honest with me?”

  “Like you are with me?” I asked, pushing her away so I could sit up. And watch the cellular, sitting there across the room plugged into the portable charging unit, smirking its silence at me.

  “What. Do. You. Mean?” she asked, each word a bullet in a cocked revolver.

  “You’re so honest,” I said sarcastically. “Such a good hippie, you are. All peace and love and truth, right?”

  “I would have told you about Vyra if she hadn’t—”

  “And about Rollo’s?” I said quietly.

  She got off the bed and walked to the black window, her body glowing in the faint light. She bowed her head, clasped her hands in front of her. Like a child being punished, made to stand in the corner.

  I watched her thick, rounded body. That gravity-defying butt. Belle jammed across my mind. Not as a word, or even an image. Just a . . . flitting . . . gone. I felt the flashback coming and put it down. Away from me now. But not gone, I knew. Never gone. That big girl. Going out to die . . .

  I . . . stopped. Focused on Crystal Beth’s pigtails standing out stark against her shoulderblades. But it was like watching a hologram—the image shifted, and now it was Herk’s face against her back, framed by the pigtails, trusting.

  Crystal Beth turned, breaking the spell, and came back to the bed.

  “Do you want me on my knees?” she asked.

  “I told you, it’s not you. I can’t—”

  “Not for that,” she interrupted, her voice hushed and delicate. “To apologize. I wronged you. I had good reasons, once. But they . . . I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I want to tell you. Do you want to listen?”

  “Yeah.”

  She went to her knees, looking up at me sitting on the bed. “I didn’t tell you about Rollo’s because it wouldn’t be right to endanger the others. I had people to protect. We’re all part of the same . . . I don’t know how to explain it to you. The network, that’s one thing. There’s a lot of us in it. But there’s something smaller. Closer. Family. Like yours. Mimi and T.B. And Rusty.”

  “Rusty?”

  “The big guy, the one who’s always drawing.”

  “Oh yeah, him.”

  “There’s others too. Cash—you didn’t see him, he wasn’t in that night—he does the . . . marketing for us. Gets the word out so people know where to find us, make the connections. We even have a radio station . . . well, not really a station, but we’ve got people on the air—Bad Boy and Autopsy—they broadcast out of Salt Lake. There’s a code we use. On the Internet too. Mimi’s sister Synefra set it up. . . . Look, we’re . . . one. I wasn’t trying to trick you. Or . . . maybe I was, I don’t know. I’m not good at it. Vyra said you were . . . someone who could help us.”

  “Vyra’s in your family?”

  “No. The others don’t . . . I love Vyra. She’s really a sweet, wonderful girl. You don’t know her.”

  “That’s what Herk said too.”

  “He’s right. Sex doesn’t mean you know someone. But once you . . . did what you did—for us, I mean—I could have told you. I should have told you. I apologize for that. I don’t want secrets from you.”

  “What difference does it make now?”

  “Families can . . . merge,” she said softly. “Families can come together. No matter what you say, no matter what you said, anyway . . . you have a purpose. You have a purpose now.”

  “So?”

  “My mother and father were from different tribes. But they . . . merged. They were . . . partners. I want to be your partner.”

  “Come here,” I said, holding out my hand to her.

  When she came to me, I told her what it would cost to be my partner.

  When Pryce walked in the front door of Mama’s restaurant, he instinctively held his hands away from his body. Whatever he was, he had a pro’s nose—he knew he was one wrong move away from an unmarked grave.


  He walked the gauntlet, past Mama’s register, past Clarence and Michelle sitting in one of the front booths, past Max the Silent wearing a waiter’s apron, past the Prof, although he couldn’t have seen the little man unless he looked under one of the tables. If he had, he would have seen the double-barreled sawed-off that was the Prof’s trademark back in his cowboy days.

  They had his face now. Had his walk, his webbed fingers, the skull beneath his skin. Had him all, every piece of him. And soon they’d have his voice. They could pick him out of a crowd even with the best plastic surgeons in the world doing their work.

  And he knew it.

  But he kept on coming, right to my booth in the back.

  Mama kept her position at the register. I’d already had my soup. And she didn’t serve it to outsiders.

  He sat down. The muscle under his eye jumped. I knew by now it wasn’t an anxiety tic. Probably the last plastic-surgery job had gone a little wrong, damaged some of the nerves in the area. I wondered why they’d never fixed his hands.

  “I know how to do it now,” I told him, no preamble. “But now it’s time to find out who you are.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked, even-toned.

  “You ever wonder,” I asked him, “if it’s only terrorists who have enough balls to drive a truck loaded with explosive?”

  “I don’t get your meaning.”

  “I’ve got a plan. But it needs something I don’t have. Six heroes.”

  “Heroes?”

  “Six men—six people, I guess they don’t need to be men—willing to drive trucks loaded with death.”

  “You don’t mean—?”

  “It’s the only way it can work,” I said, watching my unsmoked cigarette burn in the glass ashtray. “Lothar ever tell you who was in charge?”

  “No. He said it was a collective. Everyone equal.”

  “I think it’s this guy Scott. But it doesn’t really matter. It’s got to be the way you figured it. Six of them drive the rigs, plant them around Federal Plaza. The last one, he’s in the van, waiting for the pickup. Only thing is, there isn’t going to be any pickup. Soon as he knows they’re in place, he’s going to hit the switch. There goes the building. And the evidence.”