Andrew Vachss - Hard Candy

Tracks. I was a kid again in my mind. In a subway tunnel. Me and Rupert facing each other. Chins on the tracks, bodies spread out behind. The rest of the gang waited off to the side. I heard the rumble of the train, felt the track tremble under my jawbone. Watching Rupert. Last one off the tracks was the winner. Sixteen years old. Don't mind dying. I read my tombstone: Burke Had Heart. Better than flowers. Rupert's face a few feet from mine. He'd offered a knife fight, I bumped the stakes with the train tracks- the tunnel. No matter what happened, I'd have a name. It wouldn't hurt, I told myself. The train roared at us, coming hard, a hundred-ton mindless life-taker. Light washed the black tunnel. Rupert jumped back. Me! My legs wouldn't work. Hands grabbed my ankles, jerked me off the track, cracking my jaw. The train shot past.

That night, on the roof, Candy took my cock in her mouth for the first time.

"I was the last off the track," I reminded him.

"Yeah." A robot's voice. He knew the truth. Even when we were kids, Wesley knew the truth. He'd been there. His hands on my ankles. If he hadn't pulled after Rupert jumped back, I'd still be there. "Train's a dead man. My dead man. You get in the way again, you go with him."

"I'm not in the way."

His face moved closer, watching mine. No psychiatrist could read his eyes- you can't take a census when there's nobody home. I held his gaze, letting him in. See the truth, monster. See it again.

He stepped back. "You're not good enough," he said. Not putting me down, just saying it. "You still do that trick? Where you memorize something without writing it down?"

"Yeah."

He said a number. "You call this number. Anytime. Let it ring three times. Hang up. Do it again. Then you wait by the number I have for you."

"I don't need to call you."

"Yeah you will. I know how things work. You used to know too."

He put his gloved hands together, looking down at the temple they made. "Kids…what fucking difference does it make, Burke?"

Once I thought it did. Prayed to that god in the orphanage, in the foster homes, in reform school. Somebody would come. Be my family. I found my family in prison. Prayed to another god. Belle in my mind. Rescue me . Sure. The first god ignored me. The second came close enough for me to have a good look. "It doesn't make any," I said to him.

"You're a burnt-out case," the monster told me. "You're done."

"Okay." Nothing to argue about.

"Train's safe for a bit. I'll get to him. But first I got a whole lot of Italians to do."

"Do what you have to do- I'm not in it."

His eyes were tombstones. With no date of birth and no epitaph. "I know how things work. You'll get a call, hit man. Then you call me, got it?" The Uzi came into his hands again. "Stay where you are for a few minutes."

He didn't make a sound moving off past the pickup, away from the Plymouth.

I sat staring into the darkness. Counting the years. Lit another smoke. It was snatched out of my hand. Max the Silent held it to his own lips.

DRIVING HOME, Max was full of warrior's fire. Full of himself. He grabbed my wrist, tapped the face of my watch, shrugged his shoulders. Sneered. "Anytime," he was saying. Anytime we wanted. Max would cancel the undertaker's ticket.

Too many boxes inside too many boxes. If Max could roll up on Wesley in the dark, I wasn't the only burnt-out case on the set.

I dropped Max off and headed back uptown.

I FOUND THE PROF in an after-hours joint by the river. He caught my nod. I waited outside for him. The little man hopped in the front seat, tossing his cane into the back. Pansy's snarl swiveled his head.

"Get down, hound. You ain't bad enough to try me."

Pansy made some noise I hadn't heard before. Maybe she was laughing.

I left the motor running, jumped into an all-night deli and ordered three brisket sandwiches on rye, hold everything. In the car, I threw the bread out the window, squeezed the brisket into a ball the size of a melon. Tossed it back into the pit. Pansy made ugly sounds as she finished it off. She ventured an experimental whine, trying for seconds. Saw it wasn't playing with the home crowd, and flopped down to grab some sleep.

I nosed the Plymouth back down to the waterfront, found a quiet place and pulled over. The Prof fired a cigarette, waiting.

"I saw Wesley."

" Damn ! Up close?"

"Close as you are right now."

"You ain't dead, so you came out ahead."

"Yeah."

"What'd he want?"

"The freak. The freak who wanted the duel with Max. Wesley was on his case. Way before we started."

"So…"

"Yeah. If we'd just gone to ground, holed up, it would have passed."

"You couldn't've known, brother. No man knows Wesley's plan."

"I know."

"He knows the freak is dead. He has to know. Fuck, even the cops know. So what's he want?"

"He wants to get things straight. Says the freak was on his list. A contract, right? And the guys who hired Wesley, they don't want to pay."

"That ride is suicide."

"Yeah. Wesley said he's going to be doing a whole lot of Italians soon."

"Who cares? Let him do a few for me while he's at it. They ain't us."

I lit my own smoke. "He gave me the name of another guy he wants. The same guy I took that little girl from a couple of days ago."

"So?"

"So he doesn't want me in the way. He thinks I'm working his beat now. Hitting for cash."

"Oh."

"I think I squared it."

"You must've, man. With Wesley, you fuck around, you're in the ground."

"You think he's crazy?"

"Not middle-class crazy, bro'. Wesley, he's not…he ain't got but one button, and he pushes it himself."

I looked out over the water toward Jersey. "Wesley said I was a burnt-out case. You think that?"

"Wesley's the coldest dude I ever met. But that don't make him the smartest."

"What's that mean?"

"Like Michelle said, man. You not being yourself. Ever since…"

"I'll be all right."

"Who says no, bro'?"

"Wesley…"

"Wesley. Whatever my man's got, they ain't got no cure for. It's like he's got a couple of parts missing. He looks like a man, but he's something else."

"Something…"

"Else. That's all I can call."

"You don't come like that stock from the factory."

"Don't get on it, Burke. I didn't know Wesley when he was a kid."

"I did."

"Burke, if you not crazy, you putting on a great act." The little man lit a smoke. Drew it in slowly, taking his time. Like you do when you got a lot of it to spare.

"This is the one true clue, brother. Wesley, he's the Mystery Train. Nobody knows where he's going, but everybody knows where he's been."

"I…"

"You got no case, Ace. I don't know nobody who ever walked away from a meet with Wesley. He's telling you something. Something just for you. Listen to the lyrics, brother."

I threw my smoke out the window.

Time passed. Wesley said I was off the track. And the Prof was saying that's where I needed to be. Out of the way.

"You got it handled?" he asked.

I nodded, thinking about kids.

I DIDN'T EXPECT ANYTHING to happen soon. Wesley ran on jailhouse time.

Survive. That's what I do. The biggest piece of that is waiting. Knowing how to wait. Before Belle, I was the best at it. Drifting just outside the strong currents, keeping out of the pattern. Moving in on the breaks, never staying long. In and out.

But if you just stayed in your cell- that was a pattern too.

MAX WASN'T at the warehouse when I pulled in. Immaculata was upstairs, in the living quarters they fixed up above Max's temple. She had a stack of mail waiting for me. One of Mama's drivers handles the pickup from my P0 box in Jersey, drops it off every few weeks. Mac bounced her baby on her knee while I smoked and went through the pile.