Andrew Vachss - Hard Candy

They were marking out territory in the wrong neighborhood. This turf belonged to a Rasta posse. The last crew from Brooklyn had ended up extremely dead. That's the only War on Drugs going down around here.

I found the house. Knocked four times on the side door. Stepped into a basement. Nobody said a word in English- a couple of the men muttered in something that sounded like French. They pointed to a suitcase. Opened it. I looked inside, counted. They pointed to a phone. I called Jacques.

"It's me. They got one twenty-five."

"New or used?"

"Used, not in sequence. But I got no blue light with me, pal."

"That's okay, mahn. Put them on."

The guy who pointed at the suitcase listened to Jacques, said something to the others. They went out through a different door than the one I'd used. I sat down to wait. I'd told Jacques that the cash looked good, but I wasn't vouching for it. If it was funny money, I was taking the same risk he was- my five grand would come out of the suitcase.

I sat down to wait. Put my hand in my pocket for a smoke. The guy waiting with me said, "Easy, easy." I took it out real slow. I had the match to my cigarette before I realized the guy wasn't talking to me.

It was less than two hours later when they came back.

I hit the street with the suitcase. Before I got to the corner, a dark sedan pulled over, flashing its high beams on and off. The window came down. An Island voice said, "Burke?"

I got in the back. It took off smooth and easy. At the next corner, an identical car pulled in front of us. There'd be another one behind. I didn't look. We stopped at a light on Queens Boulevard. A guy in the front got out of the car carrying the suitcase. He handed it over to the car in front, got back in as the lead car took off in a squeal of rubber.

They dropped me off in Times Square. Handed me an envelope. I walked to the Plymouth by myself.

I WALKED BY myself a lot then. The court case was pending, but not hanging over my head. Davidson was right- if I didn't do something stupid, I was okay.

I didn't feel okay.

After a few more dead days, I called Candy.

SHE OPENED the door, wearing an apricot sweatshirt that came down almost to her knees, face sweaty, no makeup. No contact lenses either, yellow cat's eyes patient.

The apartment looked the same. Fresh rosebuds in a steel vase on the coffee table. The air smelled sharp, ionized. Like after a hard rain.

I sat on the couch. She curled her legs under her, wrinkled her nose when I lit a cigarette. I waited.

"I have a daughter," she said.

I dragged on the cigarette, watching the glowing tip.

"You don't seem surprised."

"I don't know you."

"I know you. You're the same. So am I."

"Okay."

"She's almost sixteen years old. Always had the best. The very, very best. Designer clothes, dance lessons, private schools. The last school she went to, they even had a rule about boys in the rooms. You had to have one foot on the floor at all times."

Candy's mouth curled- her laugh didn't come from her belly.

"Imagine that, huh? I was older than her before I knew people fucked lying down. Remember?"

I remembered. The dark stairwell at the back of the building where she lived with her mother in a railroad flat on the top floor. Candy standing one step higher than me, her back to me, her skirt bunched around her waist. I remembered taking down a drunk in an alley just past a waterfront bar with two other guys from the gang. Thinking my share of the loot would buy her a sweater she wanted. And me another few minutes on those stairs.

"Her name is Elvira. Pretty name, isn't it? I wanted her to have everything I didn't." She waved her hand, taking in the sterile waiting room to her office. "That's what I started all this for."

I watched her lying eyes, waiting.

"A few months ago, she ran away from school. She's staying with this cult. Over in Brooklyn. I don't know much about it…even what it's called. The man who runs it, he's called Train. I don't know how he got to her. I went there once. They wouldn't let me speak to her. I told them she was underage, but they must know something about me. Maybe she told them. Call a cop, they said."

I lit another smoke.

"I want her back. She's mine, not theirs. She's too young for this. She needs help. Maybe even a hospital. She…"

I cut her off. "What do you want from me?"

She tilted her chin to look up at me. "Get her out of there. Get her back."

"I don't do that stuff."

"Yes you do. You do it all the time. It's what you do. What you used to do before…"

I looked a question at her.

She pointed a finger at me, crooked her thumb. "Bang bang," she said softly.

I shook my head.

"All you have to do is ask , okay? Just go there. See the man. Ask him to let Elvira go with you."

"And if he says no?"

"Then I'll do something else."

"Do something else first."

"No! I want to keep my life. Just the way it is, okay? Just ask him."

"Why should he go along?"

"It doesn't matter. He will. I know he will."

I got off the couch, walked over to the window. It was dark outside, lights spotting the building across the street. Nothing was right about her.

"Say the whole thing," I told her.

"You go there. You ask him for Elvira. He gives her up. You bring her to me."

"He says no?"

"You walk away."

"No more?"

"No more."

"What kind of cult is this? They have the girls hooking, begging, selling flowers, what?"

"I don't know."

"How do you spell this guy's name? Train."

"Like a subway train.

I lit another smoke. "You said you'd pay me."

"I said I'd give you whatever you want."

"Money's what I want."

"Tell me the price. I'll have it here for you when you get back."

I smiled.

She didn't. "Half now, half when you come back."

"Five now."

She padded out of the room on her bare feet. I punched the redial number on the white phone, memorized the number that came up on the screen, hung it up gently before it could ring at the other end.

Candy came back in, handed me a thick wad of bills wrapped in a rubber band. I put it in my coat pocket.

"Here's all I know about him," she started, curling up on the couch again.

I DID IT RIGHT. Habits die hard. Like the woman I loved. The building was an old meat-packing plant in the shadow of the triangle formed by Atlantic and Flatbush, on the edge of the gentrification blot spreading east from Boerum Hill. A nonprofit corporation owned it. Four stories. The ground floor was a loading bay for trucks. The front-facing windows were new, vinyl-trimmed. The sides were flat-faced brick. The back windows were covered with iron bars. Front door was steel, set a few inches into the frame. The City Planning Office had the records. The place had been gut-renovated four years ago. The top floor had a domed skylight.

Traffic was light in and out. Most of the visitors were young. White. Empty-handed.

I went to see a guy I know. An ex-cop who doesn't pretend he's honest. For three hundred bucks, he told me the place had six separate phone numbers and two pay phones.

"You want the numbers, the toll calls?"

"How much?"

"A grand gets you the numbers, and one month's bill for each number."

"I'll let you know."

Four cars registered to the corporation. Two vans, a station wagon, and a Mercedes sedan.

Five hundred bought me an IRS scan. The corporation called itself Mission 999. It declared almost three hundred grand last year in contributions, none larger than a couple of thousand. The guy I paid told me that it had never been audited.