Sacrifice

by Andrew Vachss

  31

  My Plymouth was waiting in the side yard of Jacques's joint.

  "You'll tell him?" I asked Clarence.

  "Don't you want…?"

  "Tell Jacques, I'll be around, give him a call."

  His mahogany face was set, eyes troubled.

  "It's okay," I said. "All over now. We found the truth—if the baby's not in the water, he's in the ground."

  "It wasn't the baby's body the old woman wanted, mahn."

  "It's all that's left."

  "No, my friend, there's one thing left."

  "Better ask Jacques about that first."

  "Do you know we love children, mahn? Our people?"

  "Yes."

  "My mother, she was handy with the switch, mahn. A strong woman." His pale tracker's eyes held mine. "And Mother, she had her men friends too. But never, never once, mahn, I tell you, would any of them ever raise a hand to me—it would be worth his life. I started this"—waving his hand panoramically in front of him, the hand so quick to hold an automatic or a straight razor—"for her, mahn. For the money. She is gone now. Every year, on the day of her birth, I honor her."

  I sat quietly in the car seat, waiting for the rest The bitch who raised me had no honor. But she had plenty of hotel rooms. Attica, Auburn, Dannemora…

  "What would make a woman do that, mahn? Let a man kill her baby in front of her eyes?"

  "The answers don't change things."

  "What would be justice, then, mahn? So the baby may sleep in peace?"

  I shrugged. He was such a young man.

  32

  I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge into my home country. A small truck rumbled ahead of me, the early sun orange against its quilted aluminum sides. When it parked, the sides would open into a portable coffee shop, serving the mass of humans who work the courthouse district. Morning brings citizens to the street, nervously plucking at the daylight like a protective coat, safe from the vampires for another day. Their city, they tell themselves. Night comes, and they give it back.

  I live under the darkness, where it's safe. Safe from things so secret that they have no name. Under the darkness—it's not territory you occupy—you take it with you. It goes where I go—where I've been. The orphanage. Reform school. Prison. Even now.

  There's others like me. Children of the Secret. Raised by so many different humans. Those who ignored us, those who tortured us. No place to run, so survival becomes all. For us, a religion. Nourished on lies so that we alone know the truth. An army of us. You can't see us, but we find each other. Like a special breed of damaged dog, responding only to the silent whistle.

  All things come to those who wait.

  Some of us wait in ambush.

  Burke isn't my name. It was my mother's, I think. Baby Boy Burke it said on my birth certificate. Weighed 7 pounds 9 ounces, born 3:03 a.m. Mother's age at birth: 16. Father: Unknown. Number of children born alive prior to this birth: None.

  I never looked for her, my mother. Never wondered if she believed she was doing the right thing by giving me up.

  I have plenty of birth certificates now—you need one to get a passport.

  Juan Rodriguez is the name on my driver's license. Juan's a citizen: pays his taxes, contributes to Social Security. He gets a parking ticket, he takes care of it.

  Juan owns property too, but nobody knows. A piece of a junkyard in the Bronx—not the Mole's joint, a little slab of dirt not far from Yankee Stadium. The deal is this: The guy who runs it pays me a salary. I endorse the checks and he turns them into cash. Keeps a piece of each check himself for his trouble. Kicks out a W–2 form for me every year, pays the Workmen's Comp, the Unemployment, all that. You can hide your sins, but the IRS will find the paper.

  Mama is my bank account. She doesn't pay interest, but she doesn't make bad loans to politically protected looters either, so my money is safe. Most of the cash gets converted into hard currency: gold, diamonds, like that.

  In case I have to use one of my passports someday.

  33

  Pansy's ice–water eyes flickered disappointment as I let myself in. She always looks like that when I'm alone—she was born to war.

  The phone on my desk never rings, at least not for me. It's not mine—the Mole wired it up from the loft downstairs. I can call out, as long as I do it early in the morning when the delicate souls who live below me are still sleeping off last night's chemicals. They can sleep easy, subsidized by their parents, immune to the NEA jihad.

  I made Pansy and me some breakfast from the scraps in the tiny refrigerator. Drank a little ginger ale to settle my stomach. Smoked a cigarette while Pansy went up to her roof.

  Slept through the day.

  34

  My sleep was full of refracted dreams. Like trying to read through a diamond.

  Belle's red Camaro flying at a wedge of police cars. Gunfire. The Camaro pulled to the side of the road. The big girl got out, hands held high. Prison wouldn't hold her.

  Flood bouncing a baby on her knee. A fat little baby. Japanese screen in one corner of the room, daylight pouring in. A hand on her shoulder. Not mine.

  Strega on my lap, wearing blue jeans and Elvira's Zzzzap! T–shirt. Crying. Me patting her, telling her it would be okay.

  The Prof's voice: "Nobody knows where he's going, but everybody knows where he's been."

  Candy: "Take the leash. Feel the power."

  Me standing over Mortay in the construction site, gun in my hand. Blood–lust shredding the fear in me. Asking the wounded death–dancer: "You still want Max?"

  Blossom's face close to mine, covering me with her body, moaning, her copper–estrogen smell filling the shark cage, machine–gun fire in the night.

  Lily and Immaculata, walking down the street, each holding one hand of the same little kid, swinging him between them.

  I woke up, shaking like the malaria was back.

  35

  I let Pansy back out to her roof while I took a shower. Dressed slowly, in no rush. Promised Pansy I'd bring her something back from Mama's.

  But first, another look. Time to collect a bargaining chip to put on Wolfe's table. I beat the late–afternoon rush–hour traffic out to Queens. Needed daylight to face what I had to do.

  The Plymouth rumbled to a stop on the shoulder of the Grand Central, right across from the highway mile marker I remembered from last night. I hit the emergency flashers, positioned the mini hydraulic jack under the frame, pumped the rear end of the big car off the ground, loosened the lug nuts with a T–handled wrench.

  I pretended to rummage through the trunk, checking the space around me. Nobody stopped to help—this isn't Iowa. Traffic droned on my left. The jungle waited to my right.

  I slipped on a pair of heavy leather gloves. Lined with a thin layer of chain–mail mesh, they'd handle fire or razors. The machete was Velcro'd to the back of the fuel cell, waiting. I took an army blanket–poncho from the trunk, pulled it over my head. One more 360 look around and I was into the jungle.

  The leather bag was swinging from the tree, bursting at its seams, the afternoon sun glistening on the hide. It seemed to squirm with life—like a cocoon ready to birth. I climbed the steep slope, reached up. I could just touch the lowest tip—no good. I climbed to higher ground, draped the nylon loop to the machete around my neck, and pulled myself onto the tree. Crawled out a thick limb until I was close enough. Grabbed the rope in one hand and hacked at the knot holding it to the branch. Three hard shots and it came free. I crawled backward off the tree limb, holding the bag in one hand like a fishing line with slimy bait at the end.

  I pulled the poncho over my head, wrapped it around the bag.

  Carried it in one hand back to the car. Everything went into the trunk. I merged with the traffic, U–turned at the overpass, headed back to Manhattan.

  36

  Driving home against the traffic, feeling the heat of the voodoo bag behind me.

  "When you're on the road, always look back cold." The Prof. Ta
lking to me on the prison yard years ago. Reminding me how suckers think they have to travel to see what they left at home. Prison even makes you miss hell.

  Everything I'd had in Indiana—a short–term lease on belonging—it was gone now. I was home. Driving through the war zone, bombarded by imagery. I flicked on the all–news radio station. A human beat his baby to death, cut the kid up, fed the parts to his German shepherd. The authorities took charge. Killed the dog.

  They say when a dog tastes human flesh, it'll always seek more. A dog like that, you have to put it down. When humans get the same way, we give them therapy.

  Liberals always know what to name things. To them, graffiti vandals are ghetto expressionists. Probably think mugging is Performance Art too.

  The mayor was saying something about the city being a gorgeous mosaic—all the lovely colors. Trying to govern from the fetal position, wearing shades. It looks different from ground zero.

  A different rhythm too. Some Oriental kids haunt the libraries—others fondle their automatic weapons and visit the restaurants, asking for contributions. Hispanic hit–men, pretty in pastel, posture like blood–hungry peacocks in the discos while their brothers and sisters work double–shifts in the sweatshops to afford an education for their children that their ancestry will bar them from using. Some white kids plot their privileged futures in prep school while skinheads join the only club that will have them. Black doctors on their way to the hospital walk past children of their color spending their lives on concrete, going to the hoop, the crack–monster patiently waiting for their dreams to die. The baddest of the B–Boys form sidewalk posses, naming themselves after video–game killer–machines. They rat–pack citizens, taking them down like wild dogs, ripping, snatching. Gotta Get Paid. Rustling, they call it. Nitrous oxide and amyl nitrite have parties with never–connected kids who think devil–worship is something you can do part–time.

  Only the names change. Nothing deadly ever really dies. Crank makes a comeback at rock concerts—Jello–shots are invited to all the right parties. Fatal fashions.

  And the kids go down. Gunfire in the ghettos—cluster suicide in the suburbs.

  Welfare hotels: crack dens with security guards, where residents rent out their babies as props to beggars. The older kids can't get library cards from those addresses, but they're welcome in the video arcades in Times Square. Where even the night is bright. And where it's always dark. Like in the subway tunnels, where the rats fear the humans who stalk the platforms, muttering their secret codes, looking for women to push onto the tracks.

  Back alleys where abandoned babies in garbage cans are the lucky ones.

  The sun shines the same on them all: yuppies on their pristine balconies, working on their tan; below them, winos on their urine–stained cardboard pallets, working on being biodegradable.

  This isn't a city—it's a halfway house without a roof. Stressed to critical mass.

  I was driving with camera eyes, taking snapshots. Three young men wearing silk T–shirts, their hair cut in elaborate fades, short on the sides, long in back. Lounging against a black Eldorado, the sparkling car resplendent in gold trim right down to the chains framing the license plate. Two decals on the trunk lid… USA and Italia. So nobody would mistake their ride for one of the moolingiane.

  Dark–skinned vatos refuse to speak English when they're busted, protecting against the same fatal mistake.

  The Chinese have a word for Japanese…means something like snake.

  Only our blood is all the same color. And you can't see that until it's spilled.

  Fear rules. Politicians promise the people an army of blue–coated street–sweepers for a jungle no chemical could defoliate.

  And behind the doors, breeder reactors for beasts. The walls of some buildings still tremble with the molecular memory of baby–bashing violence and incestuous terror.

  I know all this. And more. But it was the bag in the trunk that shuffled the fear cards in my deck.

  37

  I stowed it in Mama's basement. She watched me unwrap the poncho.

  "You know what this is?" I asked her.

  "Spirit bag—bad spirits."

  "Yeah. You smell money, Mama?"

  "No," she said.

  I worked the pay phones upstairs, reaching out my probes for the Prof, leaving word.

  38

  Driving back, I exited Chinatown, turned right at Pearl Street. A pair of guards stood in their blue vinyl jackets, BOP in yellow letters across the back. Bureau of Prisons. Pistol–grip shotguns on slings over their shoulders. The MCC, the federal jail, sits on that corner. As blank–faced as the guards.

  It looks the same inside.

  39

  I tried Mama from the hippies' phone a little before six the next morning. The Prof had called in, left word to see him anytime before ten.

  I found him explaining the scam to Agatha. The Prof has organized more domestics than any union ever could. Newspapers were covered with red circles, I looked over his shoulder. All ads for lawyers. You had a car accident? Slip and fall in front of a supermarket? Your baby born brain–damaged? Give us a call. No fee unless successful. The stuff about "expenses payable at conclusion of case" was in much smaller type. He was running the game down, Agatha nodding her head, focusing, getting her act together.

  "You want this to last, you got to move fast," he was saying to Agatha. "Fiona's gonna be at the hospital. Say what you got to say, don't let them play. One call, that's all. Got it?"

  She nodded. He gave her a handful of quarters and she waddled off to the pay phones.

  I lit a cigarette, sipped the cup of hot chocolate the waitress brought over, waited.

  "Here's the slant on the plant, brother. You know Fiona? Works the trucks in the meat market? She's in the hospital. Some psycho chased her right up on the curb with his car. Broke her leg, ripped up some stuff inside. She's gonna need operations for days."

  "So she needs a lawyer?"

  "For what, man? The citizen who hit her, he disappeared. It'll go as a hit–and–run…those ain't no fun."

  "Where's the money?"

  "Agatha calls up about a dozen of these lawyers…the ones who advertise, dig it? She tells each one that Fiona is her daughter, okay? Sixteen years old. Tells them she was hit by an Exxon truck on her way to school. Ain't a shyster in town wouldn't grab that one, right?"

  "Right."

  "So Agatha tells them some sleazy lawyer got tipped to the case by one of the ER nurses, right? And the lawyer came to the hospital, signed up the case. Now Fiona, she's only sixteen, okay? Agatha wants to know if this is legit, see? She don't like the idea of vultures moving in on her poor baby. Wants a new lawyer."

  "So?"

  "So the lawyer, he calls the hospital. Verifies that Fiona's a patient, had some real harm done to her, vehicle accident. The boy thinks he got money in the bank. Agatha tells him she'll sign the retainer, no problem. Sweetens the deal a bit—tells the lawyer that Exxon already sent a guy over to the hospital, offered her a hundred grand to sign a release, see?"

  "Okay, so she gets fifty different lawyers on the case. So what?"

  "Here's where we score. Agatha tells the lawyer she needs some cash to tide her over. Got to quit her job, spend every minute with her baby–child in the hospital, needs cab fare to visit her, buy her some presents, keep her spirits up, all that. Some get the message, some don't."

  "So what could she get, couple a hundred bucks?"

  "Yeah. Couple a hundred bucks. Maybe ten, fifteen times before today's over. Not so shabby."

  "Does it bounce back on the kid?"

  "What kid? Fiona's twenty–five if she's a day. Been turning tricks since she came in from the sticks. They come around, ask her some questions, she don't know nobody named Agatha. Her poor mama been dead a long time."

  "It's a lot of work for a little piece of change."

  His eyes went sad. "Thought you'd dig the play, man. Stinging lawyers. And no risk."

&nb
sp; "Yeah, but…"

  "Maybe you got a better plan, 'home? Let's see now, what would a big–time thief like you need for a major–league take? How about a pistol and a getaway driver…then all you'd need is a liquor store."

  "I wasn't downing your play, Prof."

  "You ain't got the bail, you stay in jail, chump. You know why they call some plans foolproof, schoolboy? 'Cause even fools like you couldn't fuck it up."

  "I got something else now."

  "I wasn't offerin' to cut you in, Jim."

  "Hey, I'm sorry, okay? It's a good plan."

  His eyes held mine, alert now, homing in on the target. "You not getting a touch of that fever again?"

  "What fever?"

  "Monster fever, man. A kid gets done, it's just fuel for your duel, fool. You hear the bell, you go to hell. Like before that mad dog Wesley checked out. When you almost jumped the track."

  I lit a smoke, cupping the match even though we were indoors. "I'm done with that," I said quietly.

  After Belle died, I was heart–torn sad for a while. Missing what I'd lost. When I learned the truth…that it had all been for nothing…I lost myself. I'd hunted Mortay and it cost me Belle. And while I was stalking, scared, another hunter was in the shadows. Wesley.

  Wesley never missed. He was a heat–seeking missile—he took your money, you got a body. Every time. If I'd just waited, stayed down, kept clear…

  After that, I stopped being myself for a while. Needed a regular shot of risk–driven adrenaline to keep me alive. It almost made me dead.

  "That's finished," I told him.

  He held my eyes long enough to satisfy himself. Nodded. "What is it, then, schoolboy? You got something on?"

  "Maybe." I brought him up to date, weaving the threads I'd gathered into a tapestry. Keeping it short and clipped, watching his face. He'd raise an eyebrow if I dropped a stitch.