Andrew Vachss - The Weight

By the time she got back to herself, it was dark out. I had made myself some soup, too. Then I found enough ways to get a decent workout. Made me feel better. But not that much.

I took a quick shower. When I came out, she was on the couch. “I don’t know what to do,” I told her.

“We’ve got to make a decision, Sugar.”

My mouth got all dry. “We.” Was that, we each had to make a decision, or we had to make one together?

“How many sets of clean ID do you have?” she asked me.

“Besides my own?”

“You have real-?”

“What I mean, I am Tim NMI Caine, for real.”

“NMI?”

“No middle initial. That’s what it says on my record. Timothy NMI Caine, a.k.a. Sugar.”

“Not counting that one.”

“All I’ve got is the one Solly fixed me up with-” I stopped myself even before I saw her mouth move. “I know,” I told her.

“I’ve only got that one clean set,” she said. “Lynda Leigh. There’s others, but those were for living with Albie. And after that note…”

“How old is it?”

“What?”

“Lynda Leigh. That set.”

“Oh. Well… I’ve had it for a long time. That makes an ID really strong, when you use it for things. Like credit cards.”

“Albie taught you to make ID, right?”

“So? What are you saying, Sugar?”

“I wonder how clean that Lynda Leigh stuff really is.”

“How can you even say that? Albie-”

“I know, you made it yourself, sure. But that was when Albie was still teaching you, right? So maybe, by the time he was teaching you, he didn’t have the… technique to do it himself anymore.”

“Yes, he did,” she said. Her eyes burned me like the tips of two cigarettes. “I made the ID, with him watching. He could lose his perfect touch, maybe, but he’d never lower his standards. That I know for sure.”

“I’m not saying this right, Lynda. I’m just saying, behind that note he left and all, isn’t there a chance those men who come to visit, they’ve got a copy of it all?”

“Then they’d know how to find me, Sugar. And Albie never would have left that note then, would he?”

“He couldn’t say two things in the same note.”

“But he did . He couldn’t know who’d see it, don’t you understand?”

“Sure. He could say some things. But, like you said, he couldn’t know who’d see it first. So he couldn’t tell you, ‘Nuke that Lynda Leigh ID,’ see?”

“You’re the one who doesn’t see! There’s a thousand ways Albie could have said that without them knowing what he was talking about.”

“You’re sure?”

She walked off. Came back in a minute and sat down in the same place. Only, she had a little piece of paper in her hands. I knew what it was. She motioned me to look over her shoulder, pointing with a red fingernail.

“Hah!” she said. “See?”

“See what?”

“See where he says, ‘You know where to go’? Albie never would have told me to come here if he’d shown that ID to those men. Never .”

“You’re right.”

“What? Just like that, you turn around and-”

“Didn’t he also say something about there was no will?”

Her long red fingernail moved. “Yes! Just like you said, Sugar. Right here. He says-”

“You see that? Albie was the smartest player in the whole game. Solly never had a chance.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about now?”

“Where’s Albie’s stamp collection, Lynda ?”

“What stamp collection? Are you crazy? What would Albie want with collecting stamps?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, that locks it down. Solly thought he had it going both ways. And he’d take either one.”

“What?”

“What if I’d just asked you, when I first showed up, I mean, ‘Where’s Albie’s little blue book?’ You’d say you didn’t know what I was talking about, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. I already told you what-”

“Wait. I ask you, and you say you don’t know what I’m talking about. Fine, that’s what you already told Solly by not mentioning it. So then I say, ‘Okay, then, what about his stamp collection?’ Now you really know something’s wrong, see?”

“Sugar, if you don’t tell me-”

“I will, if you’ll shut up a minute. See, all that time you’d be thinking I’m lying. Me, I’d know you’re lying.

“Be Solly for a minute. You send Sugar down to get a blue book. He has to come back with that book. You know Sugar. If he says he’ll do it, he’ll do it.

“Sugar doesn’t get a charge out of hurting people. He looks scary. You, you’re a girl Albie… keeps. Probably all Sugar has to do is lean on you a little bit. Only, you say there’s no book.

“That might be true. To Sugar, I’m saying. It might sound right to him. You’re a live-in girlfriend, the guy’s old enough to be your grandfather; why tell you any real secrets? And you made sure to play it that way, too. Remember that, Miss Plastic Tits?

“So, in Sugar’s mind, you might not know about that book. Why would Albie trust you that much? But there’s no way you wouldn’t know about the stamp collection. Which means you’re a stone liar. And you do know where that little blue book is.”

“So then Sugar wouldn’t mind hurting me, is that what you’re saying?”

“Wouldn’t mind tying you up and taking the house apart, piece by piece. The book’d have to be in that house, somewhere.”

“And if he still didn’t find it…?”

“In Solly’s mind? Sugar, he’d either make you talk or make you dead.”

“What a purely evil man.”

“Not evil enough, girl. I was the best Solly had, and I never had a chance against Albie, not even against his ghost. He had it set up so Solly’d play himself out of position, no matter what. Remember, you said those guys who came around, they were the real thing. Hard men, you called them.”

“They were.”

“That’s what Solly always said about Ken. That he was a hard man. If it was Ken coming around to see you, you know what he’d do? He’d find out the truth before he did anything. He’d look real close. And Albie, he left his mark on Solly. Put him right on the spot.”

She started to open her mouth, then brought her lips together.

“You know what Albie’s mark is, girl? That ‘will’ he was supposed to have sent to Solly. If the hard men showed up and found Albie gone, they would have called Solly, right? And Solly, first thing out of his mouth, he’d tell them all about the partners desk. But once the hard men saw that paper Albie left, he’s cooked. Solly’s getting himself some visitors. When they show, no mattter what story he tells, he’s a dead man.

“Solly, all those years, he still had Albie figured wrong. That’s why he’d tell those hard men about the desk in a flash. That’s a prove-in, that he knew Albie’s secrets. Only, it was Albie who knew Solly’s secrets. See?”

“Oh God.”

“Yeah. And now that we know that , we know what we have to do. It’s easy.”

“What’s easy?”

“Making choices. When you’ve only got one, I mean. My ID, it’s not worth crap to me, but it’s gold to Solly. My credit card’s a goddamned tracking unit, like it was stuck under my skin. Solly could find me, no matter where I went.”

“So what can we do?”

“We’re gonna burn my ID.”

“And I make you a new-?”

“Not burn it with a match, Lynda. Burn it by using it.”