Andrew Vachss - Mask Market

“Got to look past the cover, bro,” I said mildly, holding out a clenched fist.

Gateman tapped my fist with his own, acknowledging the mistake more than one man had made about him. Dead men now. Gateman is one of the reasons they have to make prisons wheelchair-accessible. He was a pure shooter, and he could conjure up the pistol he wore next to his colostomy bag like a fatal magic trick.

A couple of years back, the Prof had bet Max that Gateman could drill the center out of the ace of hearts at ten yards. Took a couple of weeks to set up the match, trucking sandbags down to the basement. The lighting down there was so lousy I could barely make out the white card, never mind the red heart in its center.

I should have known something was up when Clarence put down a hundred on Gateman. The Prof and Max were both hunch-players, but Clarence was a gunman. Still, I faded his action, saying, “No disrespect” to Gateman first.

Gateman braced himself in his chair, holding his compact 9mm Kahr in both hands, turning himself into a human tripod. He exhaled a soft sigh, then he punched out the center of the card with his first shot.

“Got something for tonight?” he asked.

“Just a guess,” I cautioned him.

“That’s all there ever is, right?”

“At the track, sure.”

“It’s all a bet,” Gateman said. “Everything. All that changes is the stakes, boss.”

I started telling him what I liked about Little Eric. By the time I was up to my two favorite trotters of all time, Nevele Pride and Une de Mai, duking it out at the International—I never saw that race; that was the year I spent in Biafra—Gateman’s eyes were starting to glaze over. He wanted action, not ancient history.

“On the nose, okay?” he said, shoving a twenty over to me.

A s I let myself back into my apartment, one of the half-dozen cell phones I keep on a shelf in separate charging cradles rang. I have each one marked with a different-colored piece of vinyl tape so I don’t make a mistake, but I don’t really need that system anymore, since I finally figured out how to give each one a different ring tone.

I pushed the button, said, “Lewis.”

“It’s me.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t sound happy, honey.”

“I was expecting another call,” I lied. Only one person had the number to the phone I was holding, and she was at the other end of the conversation.

“I won’t keep you. I just thought you might like to come over and see me later.”

“How much later?”

“In time to take me to dinner?”

“Ah…”

“Oh, come on, sugar. We all have to eat, don’t we? So why can’t we do it together?”

“I’m a private person.”

“There’s plenty of places we can go where you won’t—”

“There’s no place where you won’t draw a damn crowd,” I said, trying for the soft deflection.

“I won’t dress up, I promise. Please? You won’t be sorry.”

I let the cellular silence play over us for a minute. Then I said, “Eight, okay?”

“O kay !”

I hung up without saying goodbye. She was used to it.

T he easiest person in the world to lie to is yourself. Anyone who’s done time knows how seductive that call can be. The Prof warned me about it, back when I was still a young thug, idolizing the big-time hijackers who pulled major jobs and lived like kingsuntil the money ran out. Then they went looking for another armored car.

“You pick up a pattern, it’s harder to shake than a hundred-dollar-a-day Jones, Schoolboy. You let motherfuckers read your book, they always know where to look.”

I had a few hours before dinner, and I knew I wasn’t going to sleep where I’d be spending the night, so I grabbed a quilt and curled up on my couch.

O ne of the cells woke me. The ring tone told me it was family.

“What?” I said.

“There was a lot on that CD, mahn.”

“A lot of stuff, or stuff that’s worth a lot?” I asked Clarence.

“A lot of stuff for sure. I cannot tell you about the other, mahn. You probably want to look for yourself, yes?”

I glanced at my wristwatch. Couple of minutes after six.

“Could you bring it by tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

I cut the call. Showered and shaved. Put on a pair of dark cords with a leather belt polished with mink oil—a trick I learned from a couple of working girls whose private joke was that I’m a closet dom. A rose silk shirt—I know a sweet girl who gets them made in Bali for a tiny percentage of what I used to pay Sulka—a black tie, and a bone leather sport coat that was pulled out of inventory before it ever got the chance to fall off a truck. Alligator boots with winter treads and steel toes, and I was ready to walk.

I strapped a heavy Kobold diver’s watch on my left wrist, fitted a flat-topped ring onto my right hand: a custom-made hunk of silver housing a tiny watch battery that powers a series of micro-LEDs on its surface in random patterns. I slipped a black calfskin wallet into my jacket. It held a complete set of ID for Kenneth Ivan Lewis.

I shrugged into a Napapijri Geographic coat, a Finnish beauty like the ones they used in the Antarctic Research Mapping Survey. It’s made of some kind of synthetic, with enough zippers, straps, hooks, and Velcro closings to stock a hardware store. Weighs nothing, but it sneers at the wind and sheds water like Teflon.

By seven-fifteen, I was on the uptown 6 train.

I answered the doorman’s polite question with “Lewis.” He opened his mouth to ask if that was my first or last name, caught my eye, changed his mind.

“I’ll be right with you, sir,” he said, making it clear he wanted me to stay where I was while he walked over and picked up the house phone.

I couldn’t hear his end of the conversation…which was the whole point.

“Please go on up, sir.”

“Thanks.”

I took the elevator. The building was new enough so that it actually had the thirteenth floor marked.

I stood outside the door to 13-D, waiting. I didn’t touch the tiny brass knocker, or the discreet black button set into the doorframe.

“How come you never knock?” she said as the door opened.

“You’re going to look through the peephole before you open the door, right? And you knew I—or someone, anyway—was on the way up, so you’d be on the watch.”

“What do you mean, ‘someone’?” she said, standing aside to let me into the apartment.

“You don’t use video in this building. All the doorman had was a name. Anyone can use a name.”

“He described you, too,” she said, slightly sulky.

“And that description would fit—what?—a million or so guys in Manhattan alone.”

“Oh, don’t be so suspicious, ” she said, standing on her toes to kiss me on the cheek, right over the bullet scar. “That’s how you get lines on your face, being suspicious of everything.”

“Then my face should look like a piece of graph paper,” I said, putting my coat in her outstretched hands.

“I’m not dressed yet,” she announced, as if coming to the door in a lacy red bra and matching panties hadn’t been enough of a hint. “Go sit down; I’ll only be a few minutes.”

She turned and walked down the hall with the confidence of a woman who expects to be watched and is ready for it. I sat down in a slingback azure leather chair and watched tropical fish cavort in the flat-screen virtual aquarium on the far wall. I slitted my eyes against the vibrant pixel display until it became the kind of kaleidoscope you get when you press your fingers against your eyelids. I don’t mind waiting; it’s one of the things I do best.