Andrew Vachss: Hard Candy

Davidson came back to the counsel table. Whispered "Three days" under his breath.

The judge swept the tables with his eyes. "The defendant is remanded for three days. Three days, Mr. Assistant District Attorney. During which time there will either be a felony hearing or this matter will be presented to the Grand Jury. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"And if it is not, the defendant is to be released on his own recognizance, by agreement of the People. Yes, Mr. Gonzales?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Next case."

I shook hands with Davidson again. They took me away.

WHEN THEY CAME to my cell the next day and told me I had a visit from my lawyer I knew it wasn't Davidson. That wasn't the way he worked.

They brought me into a private room. Toby Ringer stepped in. Toby's a Bureau Chief in the Manhattan DA's Office. A stand-up guy, killer trial lawyer, homicide specialist. He plays the game square. I don't know how he's kept his job this long, but he'll never be a judge. Neither will Wolfe.

He offered his hand. I took it. And the three packs of cigarettes he pulled out of his briefcase.

"You know why I'm here?"

"No."

"The arrest won t stand up. We all know that, okay? Nobody thinks you smoked this Robert Morgan. Somebody dropped a dime, but the word is that he won't testify no matter what. But we do know Morgan was tied in with the Ghost Van, and we know the Ghost Van's gone. Couple of more guys gone along with it. You know the story."

"So?"

"That was your work, Burke. It's all over the street. Wall-to-wall. The word is you're a gun for hire now. Contract hitter."

I dragged on my smoke.

"I don't think that's true either, okay? But whoever blew up Sally Lou's operation, he left a big fat hole. And the wiseguys are stacking up to fill it. It was his time, anyway."

I looked a question at him.

"Yeah, there was a contract out on him. Four big guys have been hit in the past few months. And the Italians are getting real nervous. They can't figure out who's moving on who."

I shrugged.

"Yeah, right. Why should you care? Here's why we care. They're scared, Burke. So they went to the well. Dead bodies. And more coming. Wesley's back to work."

The little room went dark in the corners.

"That's who we want, Burke. Wesley. That's why I came out here. To give you the message."

"You bring any cheese with you in that briefcase?"

He took a breath. Snorted it out. "Save the speeches, hard guy. We all know you're not a rat. I'm telling you this for your own good."

"Sure."

He leaned across the desk, his voice a clean, sharp whisper. "Sally Lou, he was just a pain in the ass. The wiseguys- they could've just warned him away. But he got himself some muscle. Guy named Mortay. A very, very bad guy, I'm told. So bad he wanted a match with Max the Silent."

Nothing moved in my face. Toby didn't waste his time watching. "This Mortay, he went to see one of the big guys. In the middle of the night. Right past the guards, past the dogs, past the alarms. Woke him up in bed. Broke his forearm with one finger. Told him to stop playing with Sally Lou. They went to Wesley."

I watched Toby, waiting.

"Mortay was on Wesley's list, Burke. And Mortay's not around. Way I hear it, you're Wesley's competition now."

I went back to my cell.

Rikers Island. Even when summer's over, just as hot as Hell is supposed to be. I said Wesley's name in my mind and turned my cell into a refrigerator.

I DIDN'T GET any more visitors. They let me out when they were supposed to. I caught a cab back to the city. Switched to a subway, walked the last few blocks to my office. Pansy was right where she was supposed to be too- on guard. She made a growling noise in her throat, so glad to see me she vibrated. Doing a five-day bit wasn't any big deal to her, but she hadn't liked the food any better than I had. I opened the back door and she lumbered up the iron stairs to the roof. I folded the heavy sheets of vinyl I leave spread over a section of the floor into a giant garbage bag and tied it closed with a loop of wire. Opened the back window to air the place out. I had a system for leaving dry dog food and water for her when I had to be gone for a while, but depositing her loads was always a problem. That's what the roof was for. I took an aerosol can of pure oxygen from the bathroom and emptied it into the room she had used. It wasn't the worst thing I'd smelled in the past few days.

I TOOK a shower. Shaved. Opened the refrigerator and gave Pansy a quart of vanilla fudge ice cream. She snarfed it down while I made myself some rye toast. I fed it into my stomach slowly, sipping ginger ale. Scratching Pansy behind her ears the way she liked. Talking softly to her- praising her for protecting our home while I was gone. Working on calm.

Changed into a dark suit, a pale blue shirt, and a black tie.

Davidson's office is in midtown, a rifle shot from Times Square. The receptionist was a light-skinned black woman with a severe face. When her smile flashed, her face turned beautiful, then went back to business. She goes to law school nights, waiting for her time to come. I gave her the name Davidson and I agreed on. She buzzed back, got the word, told me to go ahead.

The meeting didn't take long. "What they got is a bad bust," he told me. "An unsolved homicide wouldn't make them that crazy, so it's something else running. You know what it is?"

"Maybe."

"Any chance…?"

I knew what he meant. "No," I told him.

"If they need us back in court, I'll get a call."

"Okay. We're square for now?"

"Yeah."

I shook hands and walked out. Davidson would do his piece, but he was a lawyer. For him, survival was a Not Guilty verdict. The jury of my peers was still out.

IT STAYED that way for a while. Hard looks. Role-playing. I felt Wesley's chill but it never got close to the bone. I drifted back to the anchor. Calmed down. Davidson said the murder charge would stay open, but they'd never press it. I worked the perimeter, nibbling. Some good scams were cooking all over town, but I didn't see my way in.

Another college kid killed his parents. Said "Dungeons and Dragons" made him do it. A creature killed a woman because she tried to leave him after twenty years. He told the cops she was his. His daughter. A beast slaughtered his girlfriend, raped and killed her teenage daughter, stabbed his seven-year-old son in the heart, and set fire to the apartment. The little boy lived. Identified him at the trial. The jury acquitted him. He went to court and demanded custody of the boy. The Transit Authority set up bulletproof token booths so they couldn't be robbed. Anyone who's done time knows what to do about that- you fill a plastic bottle with gasoline, squirt it through the slot, toss in a match, and wait for the clerk to open the door for you. One of them couldn't get the door open. A youth worker confessed to sodomizing more than three dozen boys over a ten-year period. The judge wanted to sentence him to a speaking tour. Gunfire crackled like heat lightning on streets where the franchise to distribute rock cocaine was disputed by teenage robot-mutant millionaires.

IMMACULATA sat across from me in the last booth. Max's woman. Mama was at her front desk with the baby, bouncing the plump little girl on her lap, telling her how things worked.

"It's okay now," Immaculata said, voice thick with something I didn't recognize.

"Sure."

"Max understands. He was just…hurt. That you left him out."

"I had to."

"I know."

"Yeah, you know."

"Burke, why be like this? You made a judgment… it was your call to make. It's over."