Andrew Vachss - The Weight

“Okay.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“I don’t know. Twenty… seven?”

“I’ve been with Albie, it would have been exactly twenty years next month. What does that tell you?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m thirty-nine.”

“Okay,” I said, flashing on what Margo had told me about that age being the one any woman would lie about.

“That’s all?”

“Uh… you know why I’m here, right?”

I had to ask her like that. Fucking Solly never told me what to expect, so I didn’t know what she was expecting, either.

“Jessop.”

“That’s it.”

“Sure it is,” she said, as she stretched her hands high, like it was some kind of exercise. When she brought them down, she had another cigarette in her hand.

“You lost me,” I told her.

“Ssshhh,” she said as she blew out a long stream of smoke. “Go take a shower. Shave. Change your clothes. Call Solly-there’s some throwaway cells in the dresser. Take a nap. Whatever you have to do. I’ll be back here by… eight. We’ll have something to eat, okay?”

“Sure.”

We looked at each other for a few minutes. When she blew a smoke ring at the ceiling, I got up.

I did most of what Rena said. But I didn’t call Solly. I’m scared of cell phones. I know they can do all kinds of things with them. Anyway, Solly might still think I was carrying the one he gave me.

One good thing about prison, it teaches you what to do when you can’t do anything.

That little suite was like upscale solitary. I remember wishing solitary could be solitary, but the noise in there never stopped. Never . And the smells, they never changed, either.

“Wake up.”

I hadn’t even heard her coming.

I opened my eyes. She was standing in the doorway. Either she was smart enough never to touch a sleeping convict or she just plain didn’t want to get close to me, I couldn’t tell.

“I’m not Room Service,” she said.

“I fell asleep, okay? It’s not like I disrespected you. Save the speeches.”

“Then-”

“Then nothing. I’m not playing some guessing game. I came here to do something. You met me at the bus station, brought me here. I appreciate you doing that. But that’s enough.”

“Enough work on my part, or enough of my big mouth?”

“Both.”

She stood there for a few seconds. “You want the food, or what?”

We ate in that big kitchen, sitting on bar stools, chrome with thick black leather padding, using that slab of granite for a table. I still didn’t know anything about the stove, because my dinner was a big wooden bowl of salad, with slices of onion, radishes, celery sticks, and chunks of white chicken mixed in. There was also a little plate of garlic breadsticks.

Hers was the same, but her bowl was a lot smaller.

I had a glass of that enhanced water. She left the bottle on the countertop. Whatever she was drinking was a dark-cherry color. I didn’t think it could be wine, because she really slugged it down.

“Thank you,” I said when I was done. “It tasted real good.”

“No big deal; it’s pretty much what I eat all the time. I just cut you a bigger piece off the same loaf.”

I got up. Put my bowl and glass and the little plate in the sink, the bottle of water in the refrigerator.

“What about mine?” she said.

I closed my eyes for a second. Took a couple of quick-and-shallow breaths through my nose. “What’s the game?” I asked her.

“Which game? There’s always a game. Lots of them. Going on at the same time. Sometimes, one inside another.”

“That’s cute. You’re cute. This is your house. I get all of that. What I don’t get is why you keep trying to insult me.”

“Insult you? Like you said, it’s just a game, Wilson.”

“How about if I don’t like your games? I got to find this Jessop. So just tell me what you’re going to do… what you’re willing to do, okay?”

“What could I do?”

“Fair enough. Is it all right if I stay here while I’m looking for him?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Uh-huh. And could I borrow the car you picked me up in?”

“For what?”

“I have to look for somebody. I can’t call a cab to do that. That car, it looks like a thousand other ones. If the registration-”

“It’s in my name. So is this property, matter of fact.”

“You have a Xerox here?”

She just nodded.

“So I make you a copy of my driver’s license. You give me a phone number that the cops can call if I get stopped. That’s all the cover I should need.”

“You don’t know your way around.”

“This town’s not that big. I’ll find the kind of places I want easy enough.”

“What kind of places would those be, strip bars?”

“That’d be one kind, yeah. I don’t need his picture; I’ll know him when I see him.”

“And then what?”

“Whatever Solly told you.”

“Solly didn’t tell me anything.”

“There you go.”

I guess she liked doing stare-downs. Probably practiced on her mirror. I got up and walked out.

Maybe fifteen minutes later, she stepped into the little suite she’d put me in. I’d noticed before there was no lock on the door-I left it standing open, so she’d know I had.

I was coming out of the shower, wearing this fluffy white robe I found in the bathroom. She strolled over to the closet. Went through all my stuff in about thirty seconds.

“None of this is going to work.”

“Work? For what?”

“For you not looking like a stranger in town.”

“What do I care about that?”

“You care because you already look like a bad guy. A big bad guy. A guy who wears sunglasses indoors. You put on that stupid Sopranos stuff of yours, you’ll stick out a lot worse.”

“I don’t-”

“Sure, you do. What’s your plan? Visit the kind of places where Jessop might hang out? Think you’ll get lucky and spot him? Or maybe you just want word to get around? Leave your phone number, maybe he’ll call?”

“You got a better one?”

“A much better one. I’ve got Albie’s workbooks. His ledger, he called it.”

“So he’d have this guy’s contact info, right?”

“Probably. I never opened them.”

“So why can’t we just-?”

“Because you and me, we’ve got a problem.”

“Do we?”

“How could we not, Wilson? All we know for sure is that Albie and Solly, they trusted each other. We don’t know how much they trusted either of us .”

“That’s not my problem.”

“Oh, I think it is,” she said, walking over and sitting on the bed. I didn’t see a cigarette in her hand. I guess I’d been expecting one.

I stood there, waiting.

“You’d rather try it your way?” she finally asked me.

“I’d rather look at those books. Only, you don’t seem to want me to.”

“I didn’t say that. What I was talking about was trust, remember?”

“I remember. But I got no answers for you. I don’t know how deep Solly trusts me, and I damn sure don’t know how it was between you and Albie.”

“Albie’s not here.”

I felt ice under my feet. Thin, slippery ice. I knew if I said the wrong thing I’d either fall down or fall through. But I didn’t know what the right thing was. And if I just waited, I’d freeze to death.