Andrew Vachss - Hard Candy

"It works," the Mole said. "We have to tighten the front seat braces."

I stepped outside to get away from the smell. Waited for the Mole and Terry to join me.

The kid was first out. "What was that mess?" I asked him.

"Just fat they slice off the sides of beef in the meat market. They throw it out in big tubs. The Mole says it's pretty much like people, only without the bones."

Michelle would love it. The Mole lumbered out into the night air.

I looked over my shoulder at the car. "How does it work?"

"Two hydraulic pumps. Compressed air. When you hit the trigger, the back seat releases from the catches and slides forward on the tracks. Very fast. Into the wall behind the front seat."

"So if anyone's sitting in the back seat…?"

"Crushed. No escape."

"And the driver."

"Once it's strengthened, no problem. If you wear a seat belt."

I dragged deep on my cigarette, thinking about what my family had been telling me. About not acting like myself. Thinking about insurance. "Mole, could I borrow that car?"

"It has to be cleaned. Then we have to reset the trigger, wire it to a button on the dash, put slipcovers over the front seat. A lot of work. This was just an experiment."

"But you could do it."

"Yes." He hesitated. "The car, it's a killing machine. For Nazis."

"Mole, you know about Wesley. You know he's back and…"

"I know."

"Well? Can I…?"

The Mole's lumpy body stiffened as he looked up into my eyes. "Wesley's not a Nazi, Burke."

"Mole…"

"What he does, it's not for freakish fun. Not like them."

"You're saying he's like…us?"

"More like us than them," he said as he walked away, the kid trailing behind.

I left the Plymouth in the junkyard. Switched it for a dark blue Buick sedan with clean plates.

By the time I stashed the car in my garage it was four in the morning.

I let Pansy out to her roof one more time. Then I went back to sleep.

I WAS IN the restaurant early the next morning. Mama brought me a copy of the Daily News . The headline said "Sniper Killing on Staten Island." A middleweight mobster had been shot late last night in the living room of his home in Todt Hill. Watching television with his wife. All she heard was glass breaking. A neat hole in his head, right at the hairline. Police said the sniper must have worked his way onto the grounds, lain prone, and fired at a slight upward angle. There were a half dozen pieces about who the guy was, speculation about what it all meant.

Morehouse was on the money with his column. All the Strike Force charts and graphs don't mean a thing when there's a wild card in the deck. He ended it nicely: "Once the feeding frenzy starts, it doesn't matter where you rank in the food chain."

THE REPORTER finally called. Mama took the message. I rang him back.

"You got it?"

"Sure."

"Meet me…"

"Oh, man. Why can't you be civilized once? You know my address, come to my house."

"Not tonight."

"Okay, man. Talk to me. Be quick now, I got work to do."

"Tomorrow morning. Eleven o'clock. You know where the guys work on their cars under the FDR? Like around Thirty-third?"

"Sure."

"I'll be there."

He made a disgusted noise. Hung up.

NIGHTTIME. Strega's time. Could there be a good witch? Compared with Candy, Strega was as pure as driven snow. The kind they drive across the border in ten-kilo shrink-wrapped packages. Ice-pure.

I drove into Queens. Dialed her number from a pay phone.

"I'm waiting for you," was how she answered.

The empty spot in her garage was like the impression your body leaves when you get out of bed. The Buick fit.

She stepped into the garage as I closed the car door. Wearing a steel-gray seamless sheath that stopped at mid-thigh. Matching spikes. A single strand of black pearls. Her hair was wild, face scrubbed clean. Not quite ready to go out on the town. She took my hand, pulling me up the stairs. "Let's tell secrets," she whispered.

The living room was dark, pierced by thin beams from the track lighting mounted on the ceiling. The smoke from my cigarette spiraled up into the light.

She took my coat, slipped it off my shoulders, tossed it on the couch. Sat next to me.

"You don't carry a gun anymore?"

"Julio fixed that. I'm out on bail. I can't afford a fall."

"It doesn't matter. You don't need a gun here- it's safe."

"No man's safe around you."

She smiled a witch's smile- rheostated. "You're mine. I never hurt what's mine. Remember Scotty? Remember why I needed you? I never let anyone hurt what's mine. You wouldn't let anyone hurt me either. I know you."

Yeah, everybody knows me. "We had a deal," I said. "I kept my piece, you kept yours. This is another. Another deal."

"I know. I found him. The compound in Sands Point. It's out on the Island. It's a fortress, soldiers all over the place. Dogs. Electronic stuff. He stays in the basement. Julio said even if you dropped a bomb on the place, the don would be okay."

"Great."

"He can't even talk on the phone. He's too scared. He told Julio this man…Wesley?…is the devil. The real, real devil. He's going mad in his stone basement. He won't watch television- he thinks this man can see him through the screen. Julio, he thinks it's funny- the don would pay a million dollars for Wesley's head, but he doesn't even know what he looks like."

"Julio saw the don?"

"Oh yes. At the compound. Julio's got his own plan. He's going to make Wesley dead. Do what the don couldn't do. Be the boss . He'll never be my boss again."

"So he wins no matter what happens?"

"That's what he thinks. Ugly evil old man. He feels strong when he thinks of the don cowering in his basement, afraid of the dark. But when he thinks of me, his strength is gone. That's why he has to go. He thinks it's my time. Time to free himself But it's his time. I waited long enough."

"He's got to leave that basement sometime." Thinking of Train, safe in his house. With his human polygraph and his bodyguards who made little girls' bodies disappear.

She leaned into me, head against my chest. I'd never seen a black orchid, but then I knew what one smelled like. Her hand went to the inside of my thigh. "I'll tell you a secret now. In the chair."

"Jina…"

"Please."

Such a strange word from a witch. I sat in the big chair. She squirmed into my lap, lips against my neck. I heard every word, like she was talking into my brain.

"The don can't stay in the basement. He'd lose it all. The others, they'd know. And you know what happens then. When you drop the leash, the dog bites. So every Monday night, he meets with his captain. On the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge."

"How do they work it?"

"The captain's boys park on the Manhattan side. The don's boys park on the Queens side. Then they walk across. Soldiers in front, soldiers behind. They do their business and they go back."

"Every Monday night."

"At one in the morning."

She turned sideways so her thigh was across my lap. "I'm a good girl," she whispered in that witchy little girl's voice. Reaching for my crotch. Nobody home.

"Let the beast out," she said. "I know what to do with him."

"Ssssh" I said in the darkness. Patting her just above her hips, stroking her back. "It doesn't matter. There is no beast. You are a good girl, Jina."

Her hand came away from my crotch, pulled gently at a button on my shirt. "Sleepy," she said.

I shifted my weight. Her skirt rode up. A faint trail of light on her stockings. I wrapped my other arm around her, rocked her gently. "It's okay, girl."

She took my thumb into her mouth. Didn't bite it this time, or suck on it. Just left it there, touching it with her tongue. Made a quiet noise in her throat.