Andrew Vachss - Hard Candy

Wesley. We'd once worshiped the same god. But only Wesley had been true.

It had been a long time.

I WAS BACK at the restaurant before ten. "Max still here," Mama told me. "In the basement."

There's a bank of three pay phones past the tables, just outside the kitchen area. One of them is mine. People call, Mama answers. Tells them I'm not in, takes a message. It's worked like that for years.

The phone rang at ten-thirty. I looked at my watch. It wasn't like Wesley to be cute. I grabbed the phone.

"Yeah?"

"You answer your own phone now?" Candy.

"What?"

"I have to see you."

"I'm busy."

"I know what you're busy with…it's about that. You want me to talk on the phone?"

"I'll call you when I can come."

"Call soon. You don't have a lot of time."

AT ELEVEN the phone rang again I picked it up, saying nothing.

"It's you?"

"It's me," I said to the voice.

"We need to talk."

"Talk."

"Face to face."

"You know where I am."

"Not there."

"Where, then?"

"Take the bridge to the nuthouse on the island. Pull over as soon as you get in sight of the guard booth. Midnight tomorrow. Okay?"

"Want me to wear a bull's-eye on my back?"

"I don't care what you wear, but leave the Chinaman at home."

"What's this about?"

"Business," Wesley said, breaking the connection.

I FELT LIKE calling a cop. It passed.

Max didn't like any of it. When he gets like that, he acts like he can't read my hand signals. Everything takes longer.

None of our crew ever messed in Wesley's business. We didn't work the same side of the street. Max knew the myth; I knew the man. They both played the same. Finally, I got through to Max: if Wesley wanted me, bringing him along would just add another target. I played my trump card. Religion. Our religion. Revenge. If Wesley hit me, Max would have to square it. He bowed in agreement. I could always talk him into anything.

And I wasn't going alone.

IT WAS ABOUT eleven when I pulled out of the garage the next night, heading for the East Side Drive. If the cops stopped me, they'd get license and registration from Juan Rodriguez. I had a Social Security card too. Juan always pays his taxes and his parking tickets. They wouldn't find dope and they wouldn't find a gun. Pansy made a sleek black shadow in the back where I had pulled out the lower seat cushion, growling to herself. Glad to be along. "Keep your voice down," I told her. "You're supposed to be a surprise."

I took the East Side Drive to the exit for the Triboro, paid the toll, and hooked the turn onto the short bridge for Randalls Island. Followed the signs to Wards Island, then to the Kirby Psychiatric Institute. Home to the criminally insane. The Plymouth trolled under the maze of connecting ramps running above us. I spotted the guard booth about a quarter mile ahead. Behind the booth was a network of state institutional buildings, the size of a small town. Huge sewage disposal plant to my left. Everything Wesley needed.

I pulled over, sliding the Plymouth a few yards off the road. Killed the lights. Flattened my hand in front of Pansy's snout to tell her to stay where she was. Left the door wide open. Lit a smoke.

He came out of the night like he must have come the very first time. Wearing military fatigues in dark gray with black camouflage splotches. Dull black jungle boots on his feet, a soft hat in the same camo-pattern pulled down to his eyes. Black slashes below his eyes. Hands covered in dark gloves, held where I could see them. His voice was like his clothes.

"You came alone?"

"My dog's in the car.

"Call it out."

I snapped my fingers. Pansy bounded off the seat, landing next to me on all fours, head tilted up to watch Wesley's groin. If she fired, she wouldn't go higher than that.

My eyes shifted back to Wesley. To the Uzi in his hands, held tight against the strap around his neck. "Tell it to get down," he said, the barrel pointed between me and Pansy, ready to squirt us both into chunks of dead flesh.

I made the sign and Pansy hit the deck.

"Why's the dog here?"

"What d'you care? She can't talk."

"Put her back in the car. And lock it."

I pointed to the car. Pansy jumped into the back seat. I slammed the back door. Put my key in the lock and twisted it, left and right. Stood aside as Wesley tried both doors, Pansy's huge head looming behind the glass, tracking him. The second twist of the key had popped the trunk. If I called her, she'd come out that way.

"Go ahead," he said, pointing into the underbrush. I followed a narrow dirt path, feeling him behind me. We came to an abandoned pickup truck, rusting to death, its nose buried in one of the I-beams holding up the overpass.

"Sit down," he said.

I hoisted myself up to the pickup's open bed, legs dangling. "Can I…?"

He held his finger to his lips. I counted to fifty before he spoke again.

"Yeah, you can smoke. I know you not carrying."

I took one out, bit hard into the filter to stop my mouth from trembling. Fired it up, cupping the flame. Wesley stood facing me, legs spread, hands behind him. The Uzi was gone.

He didn't look like much. If you didn't know, he could walk up to you- you wouldn't know him till you felt him. The same way cancer works.

"Why am I here?"

"You totaled a freak. Mortay."

I waited. A tiny gleam of white at his mouth. Wesley's smile. "You think I'm trying to get you to confess? Working for the Man?"

"I know you, Wesley. You don't ask questions."

"Yeah I do. I always ask who. Never ask why."

"Okay."

"We go back a long way, Burke."

"This a reunion?"

"You know what I do. Ever since I got out the last time. They give me a name, I do my work. This Mortay, he was off the rails. He had to go. I was tracking him when you went nuts and blew him up."

Toby Ringer had told me the truth. Belle died for nothing. If Wesley was tracking Mortay, all I had to do was wait. All for nothing. "I didn't know," I said, working to keep my voice from cracking. I never said truer words.

"They don't want to pay me," he said. Like God was dead.

"So?"

"So I don't work for them anymore." His body shifted slightly. I thought about the Uzi. Dismissed it- on the best day of my life, I wasn't fast enough. "You got in the way with that freak. You fucked things up. That's one time. It happens. But now the word's all over the street- you're in business. My business."

"I'm not- that's not me."

"I know. You're a hijacker. A sting artist. You got friends ." His dead man's voice made the word sound like a perversion.

"What's your problem?"

"Train. You know him."

"Yeah."

"He's on the spot. He has to go down. You've been sniffing around. Either you're working for him or you're looking to take him out."

"No. I had a contract. I pulled a girl out of his joint."

"I saw that."

"That's it. There's no more."

"You know what he does?"

"No."

"Don't find out."

I lit another smoke, watching my hands near the flame. They didn't shake. Wesley took you past fear.

"Wesley, I got no beef with you. You know that. You want to know something, ask me. And let me go."

"You know why I wanted you out here? You're a fucking nut-case yourself, Burke. You got this Jones for kids. I know about the day-care center too. Out in Queens. Why didn't you use the Chinaman on Mortay?"

"He wasn't around."

"Something about a kid, right?"

I just watched him.

"Yeah, you're bent. Remember when we were coming up? Learning the rules? You don't work with drunks, you don't work with dope fiends, you don't work with skinners, right? You don't work with nobody who's off the track. Now it's you- you're off the track."