Sacrifice

by Andrew Vachss

  I dropped them on the East Side. Found a pay phone, called Wolfe.

  160

  In the front seat of Wolfe's Audi, parked on Kew Garden Hills Road, just past the cemetery. The Rottweiler was lying down on the back seat, bored with the conversation.

  "Where's the switch for the recliner?" I asked her. "I need to move this seat back."

  "It's over here. I'll release it…move back real slowly."

  "How come it's over there?"

  "If there's somebody sitting where you sit, and they get stupid, I can pull this lever and the passenger seat falls straight back, into full recline." She reached into the back, patted her dog. "And there's Bruiser," she said, quiet smile on her face.

  I thought about being strapped in with a seat belt, lying face up like a man in a dental chair with a Rottweiler ready to pull teeth. Nice.

  "I may have a way," I said, lighting a cigarette, "to find Luke's parents. I met a guy, years ago. A networked pedophile. Does the whole trip: he's a 'mentor' to little boys, guides them along the path of sexual awareness, keeps these photographic icons as a monument to the joy they shared. You know what I'm talking about—a child molester with intellectual cover. Pedophilia—the cutting edge of sexuality—the last taboo—you've heard it all. He's a child advocate, he says. Children are being restricted by the archaic laws, what good is the right to say 'no' without the freedom to say 'yes.' All that."

  "Like you said, I've heard it before."

  "Yeah. Well, anyway, he's doing something for a foreign government. I don't know any more about it. Bottom line: the feds wouldn't drop him even if he fell for one of their stings. I offered him immunity if the locals ever glom on to him. Told him you'd back it up. That you'd tell that to his lawyer when you get a call."

  "You told him what?"

  "You heard what I said. It's a payoff Not for nothing. He turns up Luke's parents, he walks next time you pop him. If you ever do."

  "You know what you're asking me to do?"

  "Yeah. Lie."

  Wolfe looked straight out through the windshield, tapping her long claws on the wheel. French manicure: clear nails, white tips. I watched her blouse move with her breathing.

  "I can do that," she said.

  161

  I wasn't going to rely on the freak. Even if I'd played him perfectly, even if he went for the outside fake, I couldn't be sure he wouldn't come up empty. Luke's parents could be anywhere. As close as Manhattan, as far away as Holland.

  The Queen's image hovered at the edge of my mind. Roots. Obeah. Obey. Spirit calling. I let myself be the hunter, following the spoor.

  I put out the word. Independent collector looking for videotape. No commercial products wanted. Boys only. Hard stuff The real thing. Top prices paid. Salted the Personals columns with the right code words. Tapped into the computer bulletin boards I knew about. Checked the DMV. Two cars registered to the targets: an Infiniti Q45 and a Mercedes 380 SL. The address was a house in the Hamptons. Turned out to be a rental—they were paid up through Labor Day, but they hadn't been around for weeks. The rental agent was a cautious woman—she had a photocopy of their check against the chance it wouldn't clear. It had, though. Drawn on a corporation with a midtown Manhattan address.

  That turned out to be a room full of mail slots. An accommodation address, set up for forwarding. I unlocked the code with a fifty–dollar bill. A PO box in Chelsea. That would've stopped most people, but the Prof's semi–citizen brother Melvin works in the Post Office. They'd bought the box in their birth–certificate names, and the home address was listed. The one where they found Luke covered in his baby brother's blood.

  Dead end.

  I started over. The neighbors in the building had already been questioned by the cops. One lady didn't mind going through it again, asked if she was going to be on TV. Far as she knew, the poor kid's parents moved away to a safer neighborhood. One where a maniac couldn't sneak in your house at night and chop up your baby. She and her husband would move too, but the real estate market was so soft now.

  The corporate checking account was on a commercial bank. I walked in, made out a deposit slip to the account number, put it together with a check for five grand made out to the corporation. The teller took it, stamped it in, went to his machine, came back and told me the account had been closed. I told him I was worried about that—here I had this debt to pay, didn't know what to do with the check. He didn't go for the bait, told me he didn't have a clue. Don't worry about it, he told me, it wasn't my problem.

  162

  They wouldn't give themselves away. Humans like that have two levels of immunity—the kind you can buy and the kind that comes from the pure sociopath's lack of guilt. True evil is invisible until it feeds. They'd laugh behind their masks at a therapist, breeze through any polygraph.

  Best guess is they wouldn't leave the country. Other places may treat pedophiles nicer on the surface, but nobody's got our brand of freak–protection written so deeply into the laws.

  I reached out for Wesley. The tracker's spirit came like it always does…riding the tip of my consciousness. I could never call up his face, but I'd always know his voice.

  "Where?" I asked him.

  "You know. Better than me."

  He left me with that. I played the tapes in my head. What I know. They always use multiple locations, move the kids around. They'd have a cave close by. And they'd need things humans need. Electricity, heat, water. Phones too.

  The DA could subpoena the Con Ed records, search Ma Bell. Wolfe had probably done it already, but I wasn't going to suggest it to her. I used a cutout, an ex–cop who's got a whole string of people inside the record room. Nothing on paper…a few quick taps at the computer keys and I'd know if they were listed.

  "You want all the utilities?" he asked.

  "All of them," I said. "Try the gas company too. And not just the city, okay? Give me Westchester, North Jersey, southern Connecticut."

  "You're talking a big tab, man."

  "I'm good for it," I told him, handing him a thousand in fifties. "The rest when you get back to me."

  It only took him three days. To come up empty.

  163

  They wouldn't be too far underground, not these freaks. Humans who prey on children lead lives of monumental duplicity. The neighbors are always shocked when a bust goes down—not those people. They'd be community leaders, political conservatives, but with a soft spot for civil liberties. Tight lives, tightly controlled—they'd only let go inside their evil circle.

  I called my pal Morelli, a crime reporter who came up hard. Asked him to leave me alone with his NEXIS terminal for a while. He said what he always says.

  "Anything for me?"

  I just shook my head.

  164

  He came back a few hours later. All I had to show for my work was an ashtray full of butts and a legal pad full of notes. Humans indicted for ritualistic abuse who had jumped bail, kiddie–sex rings exposed…some of the perpetrators not apprehended. Possibilities—they always find others like them.

  "Any luck?" Morelli asked.

  "Goose egg," I told him. "Thanks anyway."

  165

  I didn't say anything to Morelli about a newsclip I'd found. Sixteen–year–old girl. A babysitter in a nice lower Westchester neighborhood, she'd been arrested for sexual abuse of two little boys. The crime had taken place last year—the babysitter's name was being withheld because of her age. Full confession.

  I parked my Plymouth in the municipal indoor lot across from the Yonkers Family Court. Seven–thirty in the morning—the place was empty. I walked through the lot, down the stairs in front of City Hall. The stone steps were littered with humans who couldn't find a place to sleep on the park benches, clutching their plastic garbage bags full of return–deposit aluminum cans and plastic bottles, waiting for the recycling joint to open.

  I found a pay phone, dropped in a quarter. A very proper–sounding woman's voice answered. "Family Court."

>   "You alone?" I asked the voice.

  "Yes," she said, and hung up.

  The Family Court is in a regular office building on South Broadway. Nobody's allowed on the floor until it opens. I rang for the elevator, heard the gears mesh as the car started downstairs, and stepped through a metal door into the stairwell. When I got to the right floor, I gently pushed against the Fire Exit door. It was open.

  I made my way down the corridor, dressed in my lawyer's suit, carrying an attaché case. Anyone stopped me, I'd say I was looking to file some papers.

  Nobody did. She was waiting in the file room, a patrician woman with a proud, erect carriage, wearing a long–sleeved dress with lace at the cuffs and the throat. The boss clerk, she always got there early and left late—a disgrace to civil servants everywhere. I bowed slightly. She held out her hand. I opened the attaché case, gave her a Xerox of the newsclip. She read it carefully, nodding slightly. Then she walked over to a bin labeled "Pending" and searched through the folders. Pulled one out, showed it to me. I didn't touch it.

  She walked over to the photocopier, ran off a half dozen pages. Smoothly and efficiently, the way she does everything. I put the pages in my case. Bowed again.

  She turned her back on me, returned to her work. I don't know what she thinks of me, this lady. Nothing much ever shows on her face. But she knows what I do.

  166

  The papers I took with me had everything I needed. The kid's name was Marianne Morgan. Lived with her mother and father, attended a private school in Larchmont.

  The next day, I called a guy I know. He's a caseworker in the local child protection unit, been there for years. He's also a major–league cockhound—some guys only like blondes, he only likes them married. Five–thirty in the morning, he answered the phone on the first ring. Probably just getting back home. I told him what I wanted. We made a meet for that night—he said he was coming into the city anyway.

  167

  I got there first—a bar on First Avenue in the Sixties. Ordered a mineral water, shot of Absolut on the side, looked around. Mostly an after–work crowd: men and women in matching pinstripes, talking about deals.

  He was only a few minutes late. Slid in next to me, grabbed the vodka off the bar, tossed it down.

  "I got the Intake notes," he said by way of greeting.

  "With you?"

  "In here." Tapping his temple.

  "How'd you get a JD Intake? I didn't think that stuff went across agency lines."

  "It doesn't. It should…they're the same kids…but it doesn't. Turf bullshit…you know."

  "Yeah. So?"

  "So she was a CPS referral first. Told her guidance counselor at school she was having sex with her father."

  "How long ago?"

  "In late '88, just before the Christmas break. She didn't want to go home from school."

  "What happened?"

  "She told the investigator the whole thing. Her father was a mirror freak. She hated the mirrors. Then, when we sent her to a validator, she recanted. Pulled back on the whole thing, said she made it up because she didn't want to get in trouble for her grades."

  "It got dropped?"

  "Yeah. Then she called the Hot Line herself about six months later. Told them the same story."

  "And dropped it again later?"

  "Right."

  "You think it was true?"

  "Hell, yes. We get recantations all the time, especially from teenage girls. She just couldn't pull it together. The way I figure it, she got herself busted so it'd be out of her hands."

  "So she's in custody?"

  "No. Her parents hired a lawyer for her. See, she was fifteen when it happened…with the kids she was babysitting…so she gets tried as a juvenile even though she's over the age now. The Family Court judge cut her loose. Gave the parents of the kids some Order of Protection. She has to report to a Probation Officer once a week pending trial, that's all."

  A woman walked past, a young woman with too much butt for the jeans she was wearing—she was squeezed in there so tight the little back pockets wouldn't stay parallel to the center seam.

  "Keep your mind on business," I told him. "Hard to talk with your mouth hanging open like that."

  He snapped out of it, refocused his glazed eyes. I ordered another drink.

  "You got the name of her Probation Officer?" I asked him.

  "Wouldn't do you any good, Burke. She skipped out a couple of weeks ago. She's listed as a runaway now.

  I was thinking of another question to ask him when he got up, shook hands goodbye, and went sniffing after the woman in the jeans.

  168

  Lying with my head against some pillows piled up at the end of Bonita's bed, smoking a cigarette, eyes half closed. Bonita on her knees, facing away from me, looking back over her shoulder, admiring the dimples over her heart–shaped butt. Her body still gleamed from oil and sweat.

  A long time ago, I had a girlfriend. A poet, she was. "I can always see the end of everything," she told me. Explaining why she cried when we had sex.

  Things don't end for me, they loop. Same stage, new players. A homing pigeon released from a poisonous coop, hung up in the sky. Waiting for them to open the door again. Watchful for hawks.

  I thought about Blossom. So truly beautiful a woman it was a pleasure just to watch her dress in the morning. How even her sweat was blonde. A flash of pink in the night before a sex–sniper went down. Hard innocence.

  Fresh and new. But only for me. No plastic slipcovers on her soul.

  I thought about promises.

  Down here, innocent doesn't mean naive. It means Not Guilty.

  Bonita was telling me something about moving to another place. A place of her own. Where we'd have more privacy. But money was tight. If she could just swing the first couple of months' rent and security…licking at her lips, like the idea made her hot.

  Knocking at her door, I'd wondered why I'd come. Soon as I had, I wondered again.

  I closed my eyes. Not sleepy. Tired.

  169

  Heat boiled asphalt and tempers, the summer sun fried dreams. Gunfire rattled the windows of high–rise slums from Brooklyn to the Bronx. A teenager shot a boy his own age in Harlem. "It was about a diss," he told the cops.

  Another teenager was stabbed to death on the subway. On his way home from his part–time job. His neck chain and bracelet were taken. "I begged him not to wear his gold on the train," his father told the TV reporter.

  On Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, I came out of a storefront off another cold trail, hit the sidewalk. A white Cadillac at the curb, its flanks scored with gouges from a vandal's key. An old woman walked by, saw me looking, made a sad sound with her lips. "You cain't keep nothin' nice in this city no more," she said, moving on.

  170

  I chased dead trails. Followed a rumor about a safe house for pedophile priests. Where they take them for therapy until the heat's off And put them right back in another parish, never saying a word to the congregation.

  If there's a devil, he's laughing at this new way to recycle garbage. And if there's a God, somebody should sue him for malpractice.

  171

  I took a puddle–jumper plane up to Marcy, the state joint for the criminally insane. Sat in the visiting room listening to a psychopath who'd dissected a kid with an electric knife tell me he knew how to find any devil–worshiper in the country. Just get him out, he'd lead me right to the people I was chasing. I told him I couldn't do that…but maybe I could pull some strings, get some time cut off his sentence. He smirked at me—he wasn't that crazy.

  172

  Showed the mug shots around, asked everyone. Drew blanks at every turn. I rattled every cage I could think of, but all I got back was the snarl of beasts.

  173

  It was eight days before he called. Mama answered, told him I wasn't around. He wouldn't leave a message, just said to make sure I was there, same time tomorrow. Said to have her tell me it was my friend calling.
/>   He called the next day. Heard my voice, said an address into the phone, hung up.

  174

  That should have wrapped it.

  I waited for Max to show up, got in the car, went over to Lily's. I was going to give her the address, let her deal with Wolfe, stand back.

  But when I got to SAFE, Lily took me into a back room without me saying a word.

  "I got it," I started to tell her.

  "It doesn't matter. Not now."

  "Why?"

  "There's parts I don't know. Wolfe said to meet her. She wants to tell you herself."

  175

  I called Wolfe. Followed instructions. Almost daylight when I pulled into her driveway. She opened the door, already dressed for work, makeup in place.

  "You want coffee?"

  "No, thanks."

  "I'll just finish mine, then, okay?"

  "Sure."

  She sat at a round wood table, sipping from a white china mug. The ashtray next to her had a couple of lipsticked butts in it already, scraps of phone messages at her elbow. The Rottweiler curled at her feet, face on the floor between his paws, looking like a fatalist.

  "I got their address," I told her.

  "I know. I knew you would. It's no go."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means I got sold out," she said. "There's no way to prosecute them for what they did to Luke—we try and put him on the stand before he's fused, he's going to split wide open. And if we wait, his story won't fly. What jury is going to go for devil–worship? That's why they use all that…all the trappings."

  "We don't have any of the tapes. They know what they're doing—the camera angles won't have his face. Or theirs. Not theirs, for damn sure. Buyers only care what the victim looks like."

  "You knew this going in. What about the…?"