Andrew Vachss - Hard Candy

I held her for a long time while she slept.

"WAKE UP," is the first thing I heard. She was still there, face softened by sleep, hair tousled.

"I'm awake."

"It'll be light soon. Time for you to go."

"Yeah."

She got off my lap, pulled her skirt down. Shook her hair loose. The sleep fled her eyes. She bent forward, face inches from mine. The witchy hiss was back. "Julio goes too."

I nodded.

I WAS AN HOUR EARLY to the meet with Morehouse. Pansy prowled a tiny circle in front of the car while I was doing something under the hood. Nobody came close enough to find out what.

Morehouse pulled up in his Datsun, fifteen minutes late.

"I was looking for your other car, man. Been cruising the area for a half hour. I…what the fuck is that?"

"Pansy!" I snapped, throwing her a hand signal. She hit the deck, watching Morehouse like a Weight Watcher about to jump ship.

Morehouse's lip curled. "Was that a dog once? Before it swallowed a car?"

"I thought all West Indians loved dogs."

"No, man, you got it wrong. All West Indians are dogs. Just ask my girlfriend. Anyway, I got what you wanted."

"I just hope it's not that fairy story about the old man being holed up in a fortress in Sands Point."

Morehouse was too cool to give it all away, but his eyes slid away from me just far enough to let me know I'd hit the target. "Well, that's what's on the street."

"Yeah. And Donny Manes stabbed himself to death."

"Hey, man, that was the word. Is the word. From on high."

"From on the pad."

"I didn't say that."

"Okay. Thanks anyway."

"That's it?"

"What else is there?"

"Our trade, man. What is wrong with you? I'm not done- I can still come up with the winner. Italians dropping like World War II out there. You were right. Something's coming. And I want to be in the paper with it first."

"I get it, you'll get it, okay? I may have something else for you too. Interested in a cult that traffics in babies?"

"Adoption ring?"

"No. A breeder farm. Using little girls just about old enough to bleed."

"You know I am."

"Want to help out?"

"How?" Suspicion all over his face.

"Switch cars with me."

"What would you want with this old wreck?" he asked, waving his hand at his city-beater.

I pointed at his license plates. NYP. New York Press. Everyone in this city has special plates: doctors, dentists, chiropractors. Everybody but lawyers- it wouldn't be safe for them. "Your plates go anywhere. And even the Italians won't dust a reporter."

"What's this got to do with the baby-seller?"

"Everything."

He reached in his pocket. Tossed me his keys. "Registration's in the glove compartment."

"Mine too."

Morehouse was born to be a reporter. He walked to the Buick, opened the door, one eye on Pansy. He pulled the papers out of the glove box. "Who's Juan Rodriguez?"

" Quién quiere saber ?"

He laughed.

I snapped my fingers, opened the door to Morehouse's wreck. Pansy launched herself into the back seat. "I'll call you," I told him.

He stood close to me, voice low. "Burke, there's one thing they say about West Indians that is true. We do love children."

I PARKED Morehouse's car behind the restaurant, let myself in through the kitchen. Stashed Pansy in the basement. Grabbed the pay phone. Rang Wesley's number. Three times. Hung up.

I was on my second helping of soup when the phone rang. "What?"

"Time to meet."

"You got it?"

"Yeah."

"Tonight. Same deal."

"Right."

"Bring the Chinaman."

When Max came in, I was working on a plate of fried rice with Mongolian ginger-beef I told him we had a meeting that night. He had his own sign for Wesley: an X drawn in salt spilled on the table.

Mama gave me a gallon container of steaming meat and vegetables to take down to Pansy.

Max showed me a copy of the racing form. I shook my head. No. Not yet. But when he dug out a deck of cards, it was okay. We played gin until it got dark. Immaculata came in with Flower. Max took the child from her, parading into the kitchen to show the assorted criminals working back there his prize.

"Hi, Mac."

She leaned over. Kissed me. "Max is back, Burke. I don't know what you…"

I held up my hand. "It's not over yet."

"It doesn't matter. Whatever happens." She bowed. As if to fate.

I took Pansy back to the office. Showered. Changed my clothes. Lit a smoke and watched the darkness outside my window.

MAX RAPPED a knuckle against the windshield as I pulled off the road. I looked where he pointed- a tiny Day-Glo orange dot glowing to the side. It blinked off as I watched. I braked gently, waiting. The light glowed again. Okay. We left the Datsun by the side of the road, walked in the direction of the light, Max first.

Under the network of girders the wind made hunting sounds. The light didn't go on again, but Max walked like he was following a neon strip in the dark. He stopped when we came to a clearing in the jungle. Broken glass on the ground. Tire carcasses. Rotting pieces of car upholstery. Discarded furniture. Shipping crates. A bicycle without wheels. Max slapped his hand lightly against my chest. Stop. Here.

I lit a cigarette, tiny red light of my own. A siren screamed above us. An ambulance- racing the hospital against the morgue.

Wesley was in front of us, just a thin strip of his face showing.

"How's he do that?" he asked me.

"What?"

"He can't hear, right? But he don't make a sound when he moves."

"I don't know," I told him. Not blowing him off- it was the truth. "That's the real reason they call him Max the Silent."

"That isn't your car."

"Julio, he knows my car."

"Okay." Wesley sat down on one of the crates. I sat across from him. Max stayed where he was. Not watching Wesley, eyes sweeping the area.

"Tell him it's safe here," Wesley said. "I got trip wires strung all around except for the way you came in. And you're sitting on enough plastique to knock down the bridge."

"That's your idea of safe?"

"The cover's too thick. And if they charge, we all go together."

"Great."

Sarcasm is wasted on machines. "You got it?" he asked.

"The don is holed up. They have a compound of some kind in Sands Point."

"I know where it is."

"Yeah. But he never leaves the basement. And the place is set up like a bomb shelter."

"You sure?"

"Sure. He's scared to death, Won't even talk on the phone."

Wesley went as silent as Max. Time passed. Finally he spoke, voice just past a whisper but with no breath in it. "Fire fixes it."

"What?"

"The place burns bad enough, he has to come out."

"If he has it right, he won't have to. The place could burn to the ground, he'd still be okay in the basement. He has the cash to fix it that way. Some of those rich geeks, back in the fifties, they fixed up their basements like the Russians were going to drop the bomb any day. All the survival-freaks aren't living in the mountains. It wouldn't work."

"Yeah. Maybe you're right. I saw one of those basements once. Guy even had the place soundproofed."

"I got one more thing. The don, he has to meet his underboss. And he won't talk on the phone, remember? So every Monday night, he meets. On the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge."

"Out in the open?"

"Yeah." I told him what Strega told me. He made me go over it twice more, taking each word in a single bite, chewing it slowly.

"He probably stands behind the pillars…so even if we drove by in a car, there'd be nothing to shoot."

"Sure." Thoughts flashing. Who'd drive the damn car anyway?