Andrew Vachss - The Weight

I got up and did that. The pillars had Jewish writing carved into them, like on Albie’s prayer bag. They looked real old, like they were made before people nailed boards together.

“Crouch down. Second shelf from the bottom. See the green book, Basic Accounting? Pull it out. Good. Now reach in and feel around for a little bump. Yeah? Just push on it, kid.”

I heard a thunk! on the side of the bookcase. I went over there. The right side of the whole pillar had dropped. Same way Albie had his desk rigged , I thought. Bolted to the wood was a pair of metal boxes.

“Top one is video, bottom is audio.”

“This is fucking amazing, Solly.”

“Well, now you know my secret, kid. I trusted you with that, I hope you’ll trust me when I tell you that, knowing you were coming, I turned everything off a half-hour ago, just like I said I would. You’re not being taped now, and every tape I ever had of you, it was shredded a long time ago.”

“I trust you, Solly,” I said. Then I walked back to the desk.

“That means a lot to me, Sugar.”

“Besides, I’m going to tell you what happened down there. How I did exactly what you told me to do. So, even if there is a tape, it’s not gonna be one you’d want to show anybody.”

“You’re a real piece of work, kid. How about something to take the edge off your nerves?”

“No thanks, Solly.”

“I wasn’t talking about booze. For your nerves, I got something much better.”

“I don’t want any-”

“Jesus. You think everyone don’t know you’re a health freak? All you got to do is listen . You can do that, right?”

“Sure.”

“Try this, then. I, me, Solly, I planned the jewelry heist. When you got out, I asked you to do a couple of things for me. So, if this Jessop got his ticket punched, that’s on me, too. Think I’d put that on tape, kid?”

“I sure don’t. Okay, Solly. But what you said, that’s only half.”

“You had to-?”

“Kill the broad? Yeah, I did. You told her about that desk. What do you think was in it?”

“A few mil.”

“Just a note, Solly.”

“A what?!”

“A note. From Albie to her. Something about how she had to run away. Fast. With the book. The book, it was supposed to prove you were some kind of ‘traitor,’ only that part wasn’t for her. I couldn’t make any sense out of it.”

“So? Give it to me and-”

“That’s what I said to her, Solly. Only she wouldn’t.”

“So she’s…”

“I didn’t have any choice.”

“I understand. I would have done the same thing. Albie, he must have been going soft. In the head, I mean. Like Alzheimer’s, you heard of that, right? Crazy old man, he could have said damn near anything.”

“I didn’t want to do any of that.”

“Jessop, he didn’t give you any choice, either?”

“Choice, fuck ! You know where he lived? Right in that same town. And you know who told me that? Rena.”

“Her and him?”

“You got it. They were playing Albie like a fiddle.”

“I knew he was over the edge. Had to be. What a lousy way for a man like him to go out, wearing the horns.”

“I guess. Anyway, once I got her to tell me where I could find him, the minute I-”

“Wait,” Solly said, holding up his palm like a traffic cop. “Why did she tell you all this?”

“As soon as that note popped out, she knew she was going anyway. Come on, she knew who sent me, right? So I told her I could make it easy… or real, real hard.”

“She didn’t try to-”

“Sure. Probably thought it worked, too.”

“Ah! You’re a lot deeper than people take you for, Sugar.”

“Nobody needs to know that besides you, Solly.”

“Nobody ever will, kid.”

“Anyway, I go over to where this Jessop was living. Cheap dump. I wait for him to get back from wherever he was. Can’t miss him. He drives a red Corvette. Some pro, huh? As he’s getting out, I walk up to him. I got my hands open at my sides, so he can see I’m not carrying.

“He was, though. I got to him just as he was reaching for it.”

“Not much of a conversation, huh?”

“He won’t be having any conversations anymore. That’s what we wanted to be sure of, right?”

“Right,” Solly said, showing me again that we weren’t being taped.

“That note,” I said, getting up to dig a little piece of paper out of my jeans, “the writing is so tiny, I could only make out some of it.”

I was around to his side of the desk by then, holding the paper in my left hand to spread it out in front of him.

When Solly looked down, I slammed my right forearm across the back of his neck. Like I was a machete chopping cane. His forehead hit the desk on the way down. It was like breaking a broomstick over your knee-he was dead before he hit the floor.

I knew Solly had this big freezer bin in the back. For unstable goods, he told me once. I never asked what he meant by that-if he wanted me to know more, he would have said.

For once, I got lucky. All that was in there was a few little bottles, with corks in them. Looked like frozen water, but when I took them out, I put them down real careful.

Something else, too. A big Ziploc bag. When I wiped off the frost, I could see what looked like something wrapped in a black cloth. I pulled it open. The cloth wasn’t cloth at all-some kind of plastic weave, with a thin layer of foam under it. When I peeled that off, I found what looked like an old-style address book, the kind with the little rings along the spine. The blanket must have been insulated; the book was hardly even cold.

With the freezer empty, I didn’t even have to cut Solly up-just kind of folded him over and shoved him around until I could close the lid. Breaking those bones felt loud, but I knew it wasn’t really.

I snatched that address book and slipped it into my coat. I took the Ziploc and the wrapping, too. A good thief knows you never leave empty spaces; that’s the same as telling the owner someone found his stash. If everything still looks the same, it might take him a long time to look inside and find out he’s been robbed.

I looked at my watch. Lynda would be pushing that serving cart outside our door in five minutes.

I was back in the hotel by two in the morning, sleeping with my alibi.

Yeah, my prints were all over Solly’s basement. But if I’d known about that place for a long time, other guys knew, too. And I know, from listening to B &E pros, that the cops can’t tell when a fingerprint was left.

I could have gone in with latex on my hands or something, but Solly, he would have sniffed that out before I could get close to him.

It’s already done , is what I was thinking, just before I fell asleep. Fuck it .

I checked out early. Got one of those guys they have out front to find me a cab. He hit something on his cell phone. A minute later, a black sedan pulled up.

I handed the doorman a five and piled into the sedan like I didn’t know what he’d just pulled on me. A few blocks later, I handed over what the driver said was the “flat fee” to JFK. Sixty bucks.

Lynda was waiting for me at the United terminal. I stacked the luggage all around her. Then I just walked over to the cab line.

The “flat fee” back was a lot cheaper.

At nine on the dot, I walked into the bank. I didn’t speak to the manager, just emptied my safe-deposit box.