Andrew Vachss - Strega

"I got to my feet. I stood up. My voice was all fucked up from not saying anything for so long, but it came out good and steady. It was so quiet everybody heard me. 'Tell me your name, nigger,' I said to him. 'I don't want to kill the wrong nigger when we go on the yard, and all you monkeys look alike to me.' As soon as the words came out of my mouth I felt different-like God came into me-just like I'd been praying for.

"Then they went fucking crazy -screaming like a pack of apes. But it was like they were screaming on some upper register…and underneath it was this heavy bass line, like in music. A chant, something. It was from the white guys in the other cells-some of them right next to me. They hadn't made a sound through all this shit, just waiting to see how I'd stand up. I couldn't hear them too good at first-just this heavy, low rumbling. But then it came through all the other stuff. 'R.B.! R.B.! R.B.!' "

Bobby was chanting the way he'd heard it back in his cell, hitting the second letter for emphasis…"R. B .! R. B .!"pumping strength back into himself.

"They kept it up. I couldn't see them, but I knew they were there. There for me . They didn't say anything else. I started to say it too. First to myself. Then out loud. Real loud. Like prayer words.

"When they racked the bars for us to hit the exercise yard-one at a time-I walked out. The sunlight hit me in the face-I almost couldn't see. I heard a voice. 'Stand with us, brother,' it said."

Bobby looked at me. His eyes were wet but his hands were steady and his mouth was cold. "I've been standing with them ever since, Burke," he said in the quiet garage. "If you got a beef with them, you got one with me."

IGOT TO my feet. Bobby stayed where he was. "I already told you-I got no beef with your brothers. I want to ask some questions, that's all. I'll pay my own way.

Bobby pushed himself off the floor. "You think you could find the Brotherhood without me?"

"Yeah," I told him, "I could. And if I was looking for them like you think, I wouldn't come here, right?"

He was thinking it over, leaning against the car, making up his mind. Bobby made a circuit around the Plymouth, peering into the engine compartment, bouncing the rear end like he was checking the shocks. "When's the last time this beast got a real tune-up, Burke?"

"A year ago-maybe a year and a half-I don't know," I said.

"Tell you what," he said, his voice soft and friendly, "you leave the car here, okay? I'll put in some points and plugs, time the engine for you. Change the fluids and filters, align the front end. Take about a week or so, okay? No charge."

"I need the car," I said, my voice as soft and even as his.

"So I'll lend you a car, all right? You come back in a few days-a week at the most-your car will be like new." I didn't say anything, watching him. "And while I'm working on your car, I'll make some phone calls. Check some things out, see what's happening with my brothers…"

I got the picture. The Plymouth could be a lot of things-a gypsy cab, an anonymous fish in the slimy streets-whatever I needed. This was the first time it would be a hostage.

"You got a car with clean papers, clean plates?"

"Sure," he smiled, "one hundred percent legit. You want the Camaro?"

"No way, Bobby. I'm not planning to cruise the drive-ins. You got something a little quieter?"

"Come with me," he said, walking to the back of the garage. I followed him to a door set into the back wall, watched him push a buzzer three times. The door opened and we were in the chop shop-bumpers and grilles against one wall, engines on stands against another. Three men were working with cutting torches, another with a power wrench. The pieces would all come together on other cars, building a live car from dead ones, Frankenstein monsters that looked like clean one-owners. I followed Bobby through the shop. He opened another door and we stepped into a backyard surrounded with a steel-mesh fence. Razor-ribbon circled the top, winding itself around barbed wire rising another two feet off the top. "Reminds you of home, don't it?" he asked.

In the backyard there were three cars-a dark-blue Caddy sedan, a white Mustang coupe, and a black Lincoln Continental. Bobby made an offhand gesture in their direction. "Pick one," he said.

I passed over the Caddy without a second glance. The Mustang had a shift lever as thick as a man's wrist growing out of the floor, topped with a knob the size of a baseball. Another dragster. The Lincoln looked okay. I nodded.

Bobby opened the door, reached in the glove compartment, and pulled out some papers. He handed them over-the registration was in his name.

"You get stopped, you borrowed the car from me. I'll stand up on it. I got all the insurance, recent inspection. You're clean on this one."

Sure I was-if Bobby told the cops he lent me the car. If he said it was stolen…

"Is it a deal?" he wanted to know.

"One week. I make those phone calls. Then we'll see," he said.

"What do you get for a stolen-car rap these days?" I asked him.

"Figure maybe a year-two at the outside."

"Yeah," I said, looking at him. He had me in a box, but not one that would hold me for long. "I'll show you the security systems on the Plymouth," I said, holding out my hand for him to shake.

"You won't know your own car when you come back, Burke," Bobby said, his hand on my shoulder, leading me back to the front garage.

"I always know what's mine," I reminded him.

We had a deal.

THE LINCOLN was a big fat boat. Driving it was all by eyesight-you couldn't feel anything through the wheel-like they used Novocain instead of power-steering fluid. The odometer had less than six thousand miles showing. Even the leather smelled new.

I stopped next to a pushcart restaurant, loading up on hot dogs for lunch. There wasn't any point hiding the car-even if Bobby had called it in stolen, the plates wouldn't bounce unless they pulled me in for something else. I was in his hands-for now. He could make the Plymouth disappear easily enough-but if he fucked me around I could make him disappear too. I get real angry if someone makes a move on me when I'm playing it square. The way I have to live, I don't get angry too often.

When Pansy came back downstairs I gave her four of the six hot dogs, chewing on two of them myself, washing them down with some ice water from the fridge. Putting it together in my head-finding the little boy's picture would be like finding a landlord who gives too much heat in the winter. I had to have an angle, and Bobby was my best shot.

I keep my files in the little room next to the office. Six cabinets, four drawers high, gray steel, no locks. There's nothing in there that would get me in real trouble-no names or addresses of clients, no personal records. It's all stuff I pick up as I go along-stuff that could help me at some point. Gun-runners, mercenaries (and chumps who want to be), heavy-duty pimps, kiddie-porn dealers, con artists, crooked ministers. I don't keep files on crooked politicians-I don't have enough space, especially since I have to sleep in that same room.

But I do keep files on the flesh-peddlers-they can't run to the cops when they get stung, it's not in their program. Those merchants sell two products: people and pictures. I checked the magazine file-the kiddie-porn rags were all the same, mostly kids doing things to other kids, smiling for the camera, playing with fire that would burn their souls. Occasionally an adult would intrude on the fantasies of the freaks who bought this stuff-an anonymous cock in a little kid's mouth, a thick hand holding a kid's head down in a dark lap. The pictures were all the same-recycled endlessly behind different covers. The kids in those pictures would all be at least teenagers by now. Recruiting other kids.