Andrew Vachss - The Weight

“So forget the fancy suits. Get a nice leather jacket-a nice one, I’m saying. Go to Bally on Madison, spend some money. Clean pair of jeans, good sneakers. Not like the kids wear, like… you know, athletic shoes? Simple black ones. There’s a store a few blocks from Bally. Mephisto. All they sell is shoes, and they’ll have what you need.

“And a white shirt. Not a stiff one, like mine,” he said, holding out his hand so I could feel his cuff-it was like a smooth-faced brick. “Silk is best. No custom-made stuff, just off the rack. A good rack, though. You wear a shirt like that, no tie, under that leather jacket, you’re good to go.”

“Okay,” I said. I’d lived a lot of years without stuff like that, but Solly, he was setting up jobs before I was born.

“Next, you get yourself another leather jacket. Heavier one. Pair of work boots, steel toes. Scuff ’em up so they don’t look new. Lose the good shirt, wear a pullover. Now you’re a guy who works with his hands for a living. Between those two looks, that’s all you’ll ever need.”

“You said there was something I could do about-”

“Way ahead of you, kid.” He handed me something that looked like a skinny tube of lipstick. “Just fill in the scar with this. Not too much; you want it to look natural. The scar’s so white you really can’t see it until you’re up close. Unless you get a flashbulb exploding in your face, nobody’ll even notice. I even got you a present.”

He handed me a long, narrow little box. Inside, a pair of glasses. I put them on. But I didn’t see anything different.

“ ‘What’re these for?’ is what you’re thinking, am I right?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not a… disguise or anything.”

“No? That’s exactly what it is. These glasses, they got no prescription. Just plain glass. With a tiny little bit of tint, like the ones they make for indoor-outdoor. You know, the brighter it gets, the darker they get? Go look at yourself in the mirror over there.”

That’s when I saw what Solly meant. The glasses didn’t change my face or anything, but you couldn’t see my eyes through them. I mean, you could see them, but not good enough to see the colors.

“Get used to them,” Solly told me. “I got three more for you, exactly the same. Wear them all the time. After a while, it’ll be just like brushing your teeth in the morning.”

“Thanks, Solly,” I said. And I meant it-compared to Solly, I was still an amateur.

I was unlocking my car when the woman came out.

“Those look good on you,” she said.

“What?”

“The glasses. When did you start-?”

“Oh. No, I always wear these,” I told her, “they’re prescription.” This one doesn’t miss much . “But it takes a while to make them up in the flexible frames I like. I just got these back.”

“You work some strange hours,” she said.

“Yeah, I do.” Nosy, too . “But that’s what this business is. The people I train, they’ve got important stuff to do. If I want to make a living, I need to understand that their schedule’s more important than mine.”

“I guess that pays pretty good.”

“Better than you might think,” I told her. I had a decent bit of cash upstairs. Not hidden, like I had done with that closet years ago, just stuck in different places, like one of my jackets and my gym bag. I figured she’d find it anyway. I was worried about snooping, not stealing, and I figured not having loose cash around would only make her suspicious.

“It sounds like you never have too much time for yourself.”

“Sure, I do. See, I work whatever hours the clients want, but that’s only when they’re here. In New York, I mean. They go away, I do, too. Like a long vacation. One time, I was gone almost three months.”

“Wow!”

“Well, like I said, they pay good. And I’m careful with my money; I don’t throw it around. If you don’t waste money on… things , you know, then you can pretty much travel anywhere you want.”

“That sounds-Ah, I’m holding you up, aren’t I?”

“A little,” I said, looking at my new watch. It gets a signal from some atomic station, and it’s always on the nose. It wasn’t flash, either.

“Well, nice talking with you.”

“Me, too,” I said. Then I got behind the wheel and turned the key. She walked back into the house like she was sure I’d be watching.

“Do you have an appointment?” the girl behind the glass-top desk asked me. She was slim, dark-skinned, with shiny black hair. She wore it pulled up, held with a little heart-shaped diamond clip.

“No, I’m sorry. A friend of mine told me about Mr. Ramirez, and I thought I’d ask him about this… thing. I guess I should have called.”

“Well… he is working on a very important case. A brief to the United States Court of Appeals. But let me just try…”

She punched a number. Talked in Spanish. So fast that I couldn’t even make out a single word. I only know a couple of words, anyway-everyone who’s done time knows those.

The conversation went on too long. By the time she said it was okay to go on back, I figured out that she was the lawyer’s girl, not just some secretary.

He stood up when he saw me come in. Reached out his hand. I shook it. He made a little move, telling me to sit down across from him.

First thing I did was slide one of my business cards across to him. He glanced at it. Nodded to tell me he got the message-he’d never seen me before.

It was a seriously upscale office. Thick carpet on the floor, real wood on the walls, big window behind him. My money was on one-way glass.

“Look at the door behind you,” he said.

I turned, saw it had some kind of thick padding on it.

“Soundproof,” he said.

“Nice.” I doubled my bet on the one-way glass in his window.

“Gloriana said you wanted to see me?”

“Yeah. I want to do something, but I can’t do it myself. It’s completely legit, only I’m not the kind of guy who can go around doing it without taking a chance.”

“So mysterious?”

“Nah. I’m just… I don’t always know how to make things sound the way I want them to come out.”

“Ah?”

“I need to hire a private eye. A good one. Probably the kind a high-class lawyer like you would use on a big case.”

“You want this private eye to do… what?”

“I just want him to find somebody.”

“Somebody around here?”

“I don’t think so. I really don’t have very much to go on.”

“Tell me what you have.”

I did that. Gave him all the scraps Solly had, plus a description. I’m good at stuff like that. I see something once, and I’ve got it forever.

Jessop was a little taller than me, probably six four or so. We’d both been wearing the same kind of work boots, so I figured the measurement was right. I was about two sixty-five then, and Jessop was maybe a hundred pounds short of that.

That job had been hard work. Hot as hell. After a while, we took our shirts off. Then I could gauge his body real easy. Skinny, but all muscle. Not pop-out muscle; all ropy, like.

I thought me and Big Matt were going to do all the heavy work, and they’d picked this guy because he was skinny enough to slip through places we couldn’t fit. But he was seriously strong, pulled his weight. I guess Albie must have known that he could.

Jessop had some ink, but you couldn’t tell much from it. Confederate flag on his chest, right over his heart, but no “88” or shamrock or other race stuff.