Andrew Vachss - The Weight

The money was enough for a prepaid cell and a night at this hotel every loser in the city knows about. One step above a flophouse, and they still charge over a hundred a night. Taxes, you know.

I didn’t even bother to undress. The room made my cell look ritzy. The lock wouldn’t stop a drunk who forgot his room number, never mind a guy who knew where to kick. No phone.

I could smell the disinfectant they probably hosed down the dump with every day. Didn’t see any roaches, but I wasn’t going to take a chance on bedbugs-or worse-in that foul-looking pad they called a mattress.

After I fixed the place so I’d get some warning if anyone tried to visit me, I rolled up my jacket on the floor and closed my eyes.

The next morning, I found a pay phone.

“What?” is all the guy at the other end said.

“I’m an old pal of Solly’s,” I said. “Haven’t seen him for quite a while. About five years.”

“Ain’t no Solly here, friend.”

“Let me leave you my number, just in case he walks by.”

When he didn’t hang up, I knew I was connected.

I went back to that fleabag. They kick you out at eleven-thirty in the morning, pounding on the doors like they had search warrants. When I hadn’t heard anything by noon, I checked in for another night, just to be off the street.

The same desk clerk took my money. If he remembered me from the night before, you couldn’t tell. I signed the register with a different name. He didn’t look at it, just gave me the key and the usual speech about how I’d be held responsible if… It was a long list; I walked off while he was still talking.

My new cell rang a little after dark. I pushed the button, heard: “Don’t say my name.” Solly’s voice.

“Okay.”

“Say something that’ll show me you’re who I think you are. Nothing stupid, understand?”

I knew then that Solly had already recognized my voice from the “Okay.” Solly liked me. He knew I was certified stand-up. Hell, he knew I’d just finished proving it all over again. But he never had too high an opinion of my IQ.

“Thanks for the warning,” I said.

I could hear him chuckling before he said, “You got a place?”

“No.”

“Good. Why don’t you drop by? We’ll talk over old times.”

“When?”

“I’ll keep a light on for you.”

The light was at the back of an old apartment building, hanging over the stone steps down to the basement. It sat inside a little cage of wire mesh. You couldn’t break the light by accident, and if you tried to poke something through the wire, a pair of giant navigation lights like they use on fishing boats would blast off right in your eyes.

There was a camera mounted behind the door. The lens was like the peephole for an apartment door, and the camera’s motor drive would start firing as soon as the lights went on. A cable ran from the camera to some kind of computer. Solly once told me that even if someone used a battering ram on the door, their pictures would be in a safe place before they could get to the computer, so I guessed the computer automatically sent the pictures someplace else.

I didn’t know all this because Solly trusted me. I know why he told me. Me and anyone else who knew where to find him. That’s why I called and got the okay from him first.

Even so, I stood under the light long enough for him to see whatever he needed. Then I rapped two knuckles on the door. Three times, tap-tap-tap. I waited a couple of seconds, then I did it again. Seven, that time. Another wait before I slapped my palm against the panel. You had three shots to hit blackjack, and a flat palm counted as an ace.

I heard the metal-against-metal sound of a deadbolt being thrown open. Heavy metal. I didn’t wait after that. Just turned the knob and stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind me.

The room was so dark all I could make out was the shape of a man behind a desk.

“What more do you need?” I said.

“I didn’t get to be this old taking chances,” Solly said. Not from behind the desk. That shape was a dummy. If you walked in shooting, you’d be punching holes in some plastic thing with clothes on it. Solly would be off to the side, one of those old Jew submachine guns in his lap. One long burp, everything on the wrong side of the barrel is dead.

And if more men were waiting outside, Solly still had an out. There was a second room behind the first one. Nothing in there but a giant freezer and piles of old books. And a door that would take him out to the hall. By the time anyone got a flashlight working, he’d be upstairs, in the apartment he lived in.

I’d never been in that apartment. Couldn’t even tell you what floor it was on. Or even if Solly was telling the truth about it. What he told me was all I knew. I never asked him any questions.

“So?” Solly says. “Come on over and sit with an old friend.”

A soft light showed me Solly’s chair and another one, empty. One, only. Solly never let more than one person at a time in his basement.

That’s what he told me, anyway.

I sat down. The chair looked old. It was comfortable, though. And soft, real soft. You sank deep down into it. Like sitting in quicksand.

There was some kind of little table to my right. Fresh ashtray, little box of matches.

“Go ahead,” Solly told me. “Don’t worry about the windows. I got a machine, filters out the smoke.”

What he meant was, the basement windows had all been bricked up.

“I gave it up.”

“Yeah? Good for you, kid. You want something to drink, maybe?”

“No thanks.”

“Relax, okay? I was gonna do anything, I could have done it already.”

“I know.”

“You got the money, right?”

“The money you sent me Upstate? Yeah. I appreciate that. Made the time a lot easier. Those magazines, too. I never heard of cons subscribing to magazines before.”

“Depends on the joint,” Solly said. “Some, you can mail in just about anything. Others, you’d be lucky to get even a letter from your own lawyer.”

“Yeah. Well, like I said, Solly, I’m grateful and all, but-”

“-where’s the rest of your money, huh?”

“I don’t care where it is.”

“You didn’t use to be this cute, Sugar. What’d you do, take one of those college courses while you were away?”

“I’m not the one being cute here, Solly. Everyone else got their money. Me, I waited a long time for mine. I don’t even know how much there is, but we had to have cleared enough to give me a vacation. A long vacation.”

“You don’t want to work anymore?”

“Fuck, what is this? I don’t know how big a pie there is to slice, but I know it won’t be enough for me to live on the rest of my life, okay? So, yeah, I’m going back to work. But not for a while. There’s something I’ve got to do first.”

“What are you-?”

“Just give me my fucking money, Solly.”

“Ah. Now, that’s the Sugar I know. You want the numbers; I got the numbers. The stones came out to around five mil, retail. Even when loose stones are GIA-registered, you can still usually get about half for them. Overseas, I mean.”

When Solly said “overseas,” I knew he meant Asia. Just something I found out on my own. Solly never tells people anything, except what to do.

“So,” he said, “figure around two-point-five. Take off expenses, came out to a little more than two. You, Big Matt, and Jessop did the job, so it’s a three-way split.”