Blossom b-5

by Andrew Vachss

  I nodded, sticking a fork into the tuna. I ate slowly, watching the women work. One of those sugar-substitute girl singers came over the jukebox. Some sad song. No juice.

  The blonde came past my table, a tray in each hand, nicely balanced. Slender neck, broad, flat nose, thin lips. Ripple of muscle on her forearm. No polish on her nails. Her big eyes flicked at mine, went away. She walked smoothly, the loose skirt not quite hiding what Cyndi worked so hard to advertise. Blossom.

  Cyndi came back just as I was lighting a smoke. "Was it okay?"

  "Sure."

  "You want some dessert?"

  "I'll pass this time."

  "Then you'll be back, right?"

  "This is your regular station, this booth?"

  She gave me a little bounce, big smile. "Yeah. Sometimes you get lucky, huh?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Which one is your car?" she asked, leaning over again, looking out the window.

  "The gray one."

  "The Lincoln?"

  "Yeah."

  "Oh, you must be in a good business."

  "Good enough."

  "This one isn't so good. I start at the breakfast shift and work right through to six. That's when I get off."

  "I'll remember."

  "See that you do, honey." Dropping the check on the table, walking away, giving me a last look at what I'd be missing if I wasn't around at six.

  The diner's jukebox was time-warped. Patti LaBelle. "I Sold My Heart to the Junkman."

  I left a ten-dollar bill sitting on a four-dollar check.

  25

  DARKNESS DROPPED to meet the steel-mill smog. A blanket you could feel. I showered, changed my clothes. Lay back on the bed, redrawing the map Rebecca had given to me on the ceiling of the motel room.

  I looped the Lincoln past the strip bars on the Interstate, watching. Nothing. Pulled over on U.S. 30, got out and checked under the hood. I gave it another half hour, zeroing in so I could feel it if anyone came inside the zone. Still nothing. Anyone following me was better at it than I was.

  Time to move. I turned off the highway, found the blue house at the end of the block. The garage was standing closed at the foot of the driveway. I left the Lincoln in the street, slipped on a pair of thin leather gloves, used the key Rebecca had given me, opened the garage. Inside, a late-'70s Chevy sedan, key in the ignition. I started it up, eased it out into the street. Put the Lincoln inside, pulled my airline bag from the front seat, closed the door. Looked back at the house. The lights were on in the front rooms. Rebecca's cousins. I didn't know what she'd told them but I know what they'd tell the cops if anything happened. Nothing.

  The Chevy blended into the terrain, at home on the back roads. I followed Rebecca's directions to Cedar Lake. Found Lake Shore Drive. A resort area, mostly summer cottages. I stopped at a bench set into a wooden railing across from a funeral home. Smoked a cigarette and waited. The sign said Scenic Overlook. Told me the lake was 809 acres. Three miles long, a mile and a half wide. Twin flagpoles on either side of the bench. Electricity meter on a pole. I stood at the railing. Somebody had carved Steve & Monica inside a clumsy heart. I traced it with my fingers. Three bikers went by on chopped hogs, no helmets.

  Still quiet. Safe.

  The house was set on a sloping rise, right next to a railroad overpass. I nosed the Chevy up the dirt road, pulled around to the back. Turned the car around. As soon as I closed the door, the car looked like it'd been there for years, rusting to death.

  The house was dark. One back window had been repaired with a cardboard carton and some tape. I peered inside. Bulks of furniture, steady shadows, dirt and dust. Nobody lived there. I took a quarter out of my pocket, holding it between my fingers. Tapped it sharply on the steel door to the cellar. Three fast, three slow. Waited. Did it again. Convict code. We always find a way. A guy who did time on the Coast told me about scooping all the water out of the steel toilets, using the tubing as a communication line to the other blocks. Guys in solitary use a kind of Morse code. Takes a whole day to pass a message along. We played chess through the mail. Used little scraps of mirror to see what's happening down the tier. Hand signals. We'd find a way. And some guys, they'd be in solitary even when they hit the streets.

  Three answering taps, spaced the same way. I tapped back, this time six in a row, all quick. The padlock on the storm door was a phony— it rested alongside the rings, not through them. I pulled it open and stepped into the darkness.

  Down a flight of concrete steps, feeling my way. When I got down far enough, I reached up, pulled the storm door closed behind me.

  I hit the bottom of the steps, put a palm along the wall to guide me. A white burst of light in my face, rooting me where I stood. It snapped off, leaving bright-spangled lights dancing inside my eyelids.

  A switch clicked. Soft pool of light in a corner of the basement.

  "Thanks for coming, brother."

  Virgil.

  26

  HE LOOKED about the same. Thick black hair, combed back along the sides '50s style, hazel eyes, a long face, pointed jaw, dominated by a falcon's beak for a nose. Indians had visited his grandfather's turf and they hadn't all got themselves shot.

  Taller than me, a mountain man's build, the power in the bone, not the muscles. Big hands, thick wrists. The whole package built to survive the mountains and the mines.

  Or prison.

  He extended his hand, gave mine a brief squeeze, dropped it, and turned to stand next to me. Letting me see it for myself. My eyes adjusted, working in figure-eight loops from the pool of light. Small refrigerator against one wall, two-burner hot plate, canned goods stacked almost to the ceiling. Virgil handed me a flash. I swept the rest of the basement. It was as neat and clean as a lifer's cell. Three army cots, big portable radio with speakers on each side and a carrying handle, a pair of sawhorses with a rough plank across them for a table.

  Virgil took the flash from me, pointed it and followed the beam, me right behind. I left my bag on the floor, keeping both hands free. The basement had more than one room. We turned the corner, stepped into a small bathroom. Just a toilet and a drain in the floor for the shower someone had put together out of a length of hose draped over a hook. We walked through to the furnace area. An ancient oil burner squatted, dying of metal fatigue, its plug pulled years ago.

  Virgil spoke. "Come on out of there, boy. It's okay."

  The door to the oil burner opened from the inside. A kid stepped out, blinking his eyes at the light. A slightly built boy with close-cropped light hair, trembling.

  "Uncle Virgil…"

  Virgil ignored him. "This here's Lloyd," he said to me. "My wife's kin."

  The kid watched me like a bird watching a cat. A bird who couldn't fly.

  "Get on inside," Virgil said to him, stepping aside so the kid could walk in front of us.

  Back in the big room, Virgil nodded toward the left-hand corner. A triangle of packing crates, hubcap on the floor between them. I took a seat. Virgil settled in. "You too," he told the kid.

  He nodded his head at the corners of the basement. "This here's the living room. Over there's the kitchen, far side's the bedroom. You already seen the bathroom. Man who owns this house, he's kin of Rebecca's." He said her name the way they do in Appalachia, twanging hard on the first "e," dragging it out.

  "Ain't nobody gonna come around. We got electricity for at least another month, until they turn it off. Garbage goes in the plastic bags. We stack 'em back behind the furnace. Got enough food here for a long time. Anybody comes, it's me they find. Lloyd hides himself in the furnace. Reba'll come back for him, it comes to that."

  "You going to go quietly?" I asked him.

  He saw where I was looking. At the pair of long guns resting against the wall just behind him.

  He shrugged. "They don't want me for much of nothing. Helping a bail jumper, that's no kind of time. It just didn't seem natural to hole up without some firepower."

  "This an ashtray?" I asked,
pointing at the hubcap on the floor.

  "Yeah. The basement windows are all boarded up but there's plenty of cracks in them. It clears out pretty good."

  I lit a smoke, sneaking a glance at the kid in the flare of the wooden match. He was sitting soft, waiting. Like Terry, when I first rented him from a kiddie pimp. Not exactly like Terry: this boy didn't know why I came. And he did care.

  I looked across at Virgil. We'd done time together and he'd passed the test. More than once. The test of time, the test of crime. In my world, no difference. "What's my end?" I asked him.

  "I need to know some truth. Reba, she'd'a told you what happened over here, right?"

  I nodded.

  "First the cops thought it was Lloyd. Then they didn't. Now they back to where they was. It's Lloyd. In their minds. Me, I don't know about this stuff. Freak stuff. But you know them…"

  Them. Humans who kill for love. Torture for fun. They set fires to watch the flames. Black-glove rapists. Snuff-film directors. Trophy-takers. Baby-fuckers. Pain turns on the switch. Blood lubricates the machinery. Then the power-rush comes. And they do too.

  It's not sex. Castrate the freaks and they use broomsticks or Coke bottles.

  I've been studying them all my life. Since I was a tiny little kid. They taught me. Nightmare walkers.

  Virgil was right. Whoever ventilated those kids in lovers' lane…

  "I know them," I said in the quiet darkness. The kid couldn't meet my eyes. Or wouldn't.

  "You're here to talk to Lloyd. When you're done, you tell me the truth. You'll know. Nobody's better at it than you. I know you did it before. For that lawyer. I remember you telling me about it. Never forget it. That's what I need now."

  I dragged deep on my smoke. "I'm in."

  Virgil nodded. Turned to the kid. "Lloyd, this man's my brother. You heard what he said. He's gonna talk to you. You're gonna talk to him. When it's done, I'm gonna know the truth. You got it?"

  "Uncle Virgil…"

  "What?"

  "I didn't do it."

  "You didn't do it, my brother will know. Then I'll get something together for you. Whatever it takes. You a member of the family. My wife's cousin. Blood kin. You didn't do it, we're behind you. I risked my house for you. My home. Where my children live. And it looks like I may be going back to jail for a little bit too. That's okay. A man's got no more than his family."

  "Will I have to go to jail?"

  "Jail? Boy, you better pray you going to jail. Only way you're going inside is you didn't do what they say you did."

  "Uncle Virgil," the kid's voice was a ribbon of broken glass, drooling out of his slack mouth. "I don't understand. What do you mean?"

  Virgil lit a cigarette of his own. I knew what he was doing. Getting his thoughts together, making sure it came out right. "Lloyd, you didn't do this…my brother tells me you didn't do this…then we come up with a plan. Some plans don't work out. And then people go to jail. You have to go to jail, you'll go like a man, you understand? That ain't no big thing. And you'll always have your people. Inside and out. Something waiting for you. Like I had."

  He took another hit on his cigarette, hazel eyes anchored on Lloyd. "But if you did it…if that was you sneaking around killing those kids…then I won't shame my wife by letting her know. I won't have kin of mine doing evil like that."

  "I…"

  "Lloyd, it turns out you did it, you gonna be what they call a fugitive. Only they never gonna catch you, understand?"

  "You mean…I'm going to run away?"

  "No. You did this thing, you not running any farther than this basement."

  27

  THE BOY slumped forward, covering his face with his hands. Shoulder blades bowed like broken bird's wings, dry-crying, chest in spasm. But he didn't say a word.

  I watched him for a minute. Virgil was granite. I knew he'd kill if he had to— that's how he came to prison. And I knew his word was good.

  I looked up. Caught his eye. "Virgil, I'm beat. Just got in from the Coast. This interrogation, it's going to take a long time. How about if I catch some sleep, talk to Lloyd when I get up?"

  He got it. "Whatever you say, brother. I could use some sleep myself. We got all the time in the world. Take the first bunk, the one over on the left."

  I got up, walked over to the cot. Folded my jacket into a pillow, lay back, closed my eyes.

  Virgil smoked another cigarette. "Lloyd," he said, "I need to take a shower before I sack out. I'll talk to you later."

  I heard the rush of the shower. Heard the kid get up, light himself a smoke. Heard the hubcap rattle on the cement floor as he ground it out. I rasped a breath through my nose. As many times as the nose had been broken, it was perfect for faking a snore. Virgil took his time, giving the boy every chance to bolt. He didn't go for it. By the time Virgil came back inside, I'd heard the kid's cot creak.

  Dead quiet. You could hear crickets chirp, a car pass on the highway. The summer heat didn't penetrate the basement. Faint whiff of diesel fuel on the air.

  It was worth the shot. If the kid tried to get out while we were asleep, we'd know.

  But if he didn't run, we'd know nothing. Sniper-blasting unsuspecting kids in a parked car wasn't the same as trying to get past Virgil in the dark.

  28

  I LET THE past play on the blank screen of my mind, regulating my breathing, focusing. Getting to the center. Virgil had called the right number— I knew how to do it.

  A long time ago, I had this fool dream of being a private eye, working off the books. This young lawyer reached out for me through Davidson. I met them both in the parking lot near the Brooklyn Criminal Court. Davidson made the introductions. Vouched for me. He let the young lawyer speak for himself.

  "I represent Roger B. Haynes." Like I should have heard of the guy.

  "Eighteen-B," Davidson interrupted. Telling me the young lawyer was assigned to the case, not privately retained. Any money for me was coming out of his pocket.

  "He was arrested for the rape of a little girl. The rape took place right near the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. In broad daylight. The girl ID'd him in a lineup. There's plenty of medicals to prove she'd been raped, but nothing to connect Haynes to it."

  "SODDI?" I asked him. Some Other Dude Did it.

  "That's what he says," Davidson growled.

  "It's true," the kid said. "Haynes was in New Hampshire when it happened. At a flea market. He was buying stock for his store. A dozen people saw him. There's no way he could have driven back in time to commit the rape."

  "So what d'you need me for?"

  The young lawyer tilted his head at Davidson. "He says you know these people…child molesters and all. I thought…maybe you could ask around…maybe there's one of them working that area."

  I shrugged.

  "He's got priors," Davidson said.

  "For what?" I asked the young lawyer.

  "The same thing. But that was years ago. He did his time. He's even off parole. And he's been discharged from therapy."

  "Cured, huh?"

  "Yeah, cured. You think it's impossible? Would you want to be arrested every time the cops had a hijacking case open?"

  Davidson chuckled. "He's got you, Burke."

  "He's got a baby-raper."

  "You mean you won't help?"

  "What do I give a flying fuck if some skinner falls for something he didn't do? Probably didn't pull enough time on his first bit anyway."

  Davidson lit his cigar. "It wouldn't shake me up if he went down either. But if he didn't do this one, it means the guy who did, he's got a free pass."

  I thought it through. "You got any money?" I asked the young lawyer.

  "I could go five hundred."

  "For that, I'll talk to your guy. You walk me in there, tell them I'm your assistant or something. I'll talk to him. He's telling the truth, I'll look around for you."

  "How will you know?"

  "I'll know," I assured him.

  He looked at Davidson. The h
usky man nodded.

  "Okay," the kid said. "When can you go?"

  "When can you pay?"

  "I'll write you a check right now."

  Davidson thought that was almost as funny as I did.

  29

  I LOOKED MORE like a lawyer than the kid did when I met him the next morning on the steps of the Brooklyn House of Detention. The guards let us pass without a question. Getting into jail is always easy.

  They brought him down to the Attorneys' Conference Room. He was medium height, nice-looking in an undistinctive way. Powerfully built, well-defined upper body in a white T-shirt. Shook hands firmly, looked me deep in the eye, moving his lips to make sure he got my name right.

  "Rodriguez, huh?" He smiled. "You don't look Puerto Rican."

  "You don't look like a baby-raper," I said, lighting a cigarette, flicking a glance at his face over my hands cupped around the wooden match.

  His expression didn't change, no color flashed on his cheeks. Calm inside himself. He was used to this— a therapy veteran.

  The young lawyer pulled his chair away from the table, sat back in a corner, his yellow legal pad open on his lap. My play.

  I worked the perimeter, tapping softly at the corners. The way you crack a pane of glass during a burglary— the quieter you go in, the easier you go out.

  "You were up in New Hampshire when it happened?"

  "Yes. Buying stock for my store at the flea markets."

  "What kind of store do you have?"

  "I call it Inexplik. Not really antiques, anything people collect. Glass bottles, baseball cards, first editions, dolls, knives, Hummel figurines, commemorative plates, proof sets…like that."

  "You have anything special in mind you were looking for when you were up there?"

  "Well, there's always things you look for. I mean, I know what my regular customers want and all. Like Barbie dolls…you can always sell them. But you have to keep your eyes open, spot hot items before people know what they're worth. Like those plastic compacts women used to carry around in the '50s. The kind with mirrors on the inside? They come in all shapes and colors. Right now, you can get them for a song, but they're going to be very, very collectible soon."