Andrew Vachss - Down Here

“You think your friend would do you another favor?”

“Molly? He’d do anything,” she said, confidently.

“Could he find out where they’re keeping Wychek?”

“Forget it, Burke,” she snapped out at me. “What are you going to do, put on a white coat and go visit him in the hospital?”

“I wouldn’t do anything like that,” I said, meaning it. I’d never been past the ninth grade, on paper, but I was always a great reader. And I had a working felon’s functional knowledge of the law. Slipping a little good-bye juice into that freak’s IV drip would bother me about as much as an Osama bin Laden heart attack, but it would only make Wolfe a bigger suspect.

“Never mind,” she told me. “I don’t need any help. Sooner or later, the prosecution is going to have to answer the discovery motions. We get a TPO, that’s the end of their case.”

“We already know the place. So you’re telling me, even if the time of occurrence turns out to be four in the morning, you’re covered, no matter what night it was.”

“At that hour, I’d be asleep,” she said, gray eyes level.

“That’s not an iron-clad—”

“Not alone,” she said.

“ Someone down here, boss. Asking for you. By name.”

“Good-looking young guy, light-brown hair, brown eyes, says he’s Terry?”

“Bull’s-eye.”

“Let him pass, okay? Thanks, Gateman.”

“ Damn, boy! What they feeding you at that fancy college? You must have growed half a foot since I last saw you!” the Prof greeted Terry as the kid stepped into my place.

“Hey, Prof!” the kid said, giving the little man a hug. He shook hands with Clarence almost formally, then turned to me. “Can I get a hand with some of my stuff? Pop dropped me off, but I couldn’t carry it all up myself. The guy downstairs, the one in the wheelchair, he said it would be safe down there with him. . . .”

“Oh, Gateman’s clue is true,” the Prof assured him. “Man can’t stand, but he can stand up, you with me?”

“Sure, but . . .”

“Plus, he can outdraw Billy the fucking Kid, he has to. That’s not trash, that’s cash. You underestimate the Gateman, you gonna choke on the joke, boy.”

“I will come with you, mahn,” Clarence told Terry, realizing the Prof would maintain the debate about the absolute security of Gateman’s domain for hours rather than spend ten minutes lugging heavy equipment up the stairs.

Terry took over one of the back rooms, and instantly drafted Clarence into assisting him. When they started talking a language the Prof and I didn’t understand, we strolled into the front room.

“Have a smoke with me, son?”

This was a real role reversal for the Prof. Ever since I was a kid, his idea of smoking was to smoke one of mine. The little man had hands faster than a cobra on crystal meth—he could usually get to my own shirt pocket before I could, even though he always gave me the first move.

But ever since I was shot, I haven’t really smoked. It’s not religious, and it’s not about health. Cigarettes just don’t taste like they used to. A lot of things don’t.

I still always carry a pack or two, and I’ll have one once in a while. Sometimes, it’s to remind people that it’s really me. The Burke they knew always smoked, and, with the new face, I’d had to work hard at convincing some people when I’d first come back. Sometimes, it’s misdirection. Like the way I drink. I order a shot of vodka with ice water on the side, and swallow the water, leaving just the ice cubes. Then I dump the vodka into the water glass, and let it melt out. When the bartender brings me a refill, the money I let ride on the counter automatically brings me fresh water, too.

Now, sometimes when I’m with an old friend, it just feels . . . companionable to share a smoke. A cigarette tastes pretty good then.

I took the Prof’s pack of Kools, still the favorite behind the Walls, and nodded approvingly at the lack of a New York tax stamp. I fired one up, handed him the still-burning wooden match so he could light his own.

As if the Kool brought back old memories, the Prof leaned way back in his wooden chair, balancing on its two rear legs, and said, “You know, back in the day, it never would have gotten this far. Skinner like that one, somebody would have shanked him on the yard, just for the practice.”

“Maybe he did it all in PC.”

“Punk City’s the right place for a fucking freak like him. But, you know, somebody wanted him bad enough, they could do him in there. Remember when Wesley—”

“Yeah.”

“Unless he was a real badass, maybe?” the Prof mused. “Big enough to run a wing by himself.”

“Wolfe says he’s about five-eight, a hundred and forty pounds, and flabby at that. ‘A chinless, beady-eyed little weasel-faced punk,’ I think she called him.”

“My girl probably nailed how he look, but that don’t say nothing about how he cook,” the Prof said, solemnly. “She don’t know the show, Schoolboy. Not like we do. We both done time with guys, look like they couldn’t break glass, but bad enough to make a gorilla kiss their ass, right?”

I nodded. It was true. There are some men who can turn your spine to water with a look. But I had seen those same men drop their eyes whenever Wesley came down the corridor.

“You gave me an idea, though, Prof. A place to get started. Be right back.”

Terry and Clarence were meshing like Formula One gears, paper flying from the stacked cartons to a long table. A giant scanner rested on its surface, cable-linked to a laptop computer with all kinds of wires running out of its back.

“You guys run across anything about Wychek’s prison record?” I asked.

“We have his . . . Where is that . . . Yeah! ” Terry said. “Is this what you mean?”

“No. That’ll show he was committed, but not where he landed. We know he went Upstate somewhere, but not which institution. That’s what we’re looking for.”

“If it is in here, we will find it, mahn,” Clarence promised.

“There’s an easier way,” Terry said. “New York State’s got a Web site for it. ‘Inmate Lookup Service,’ or something like that. All we need is a guy’s name and we can get his prison record.”

“You mean his whole rap sheet?” I asked.

“No, no, I mean, his . . . ‘institutional status,’ I think they call it. Where he’s being kept, what his sentence is, when he sees the parole board . . .”

“But Wychek’s out,” I reminded him.

“Sure. They’ll show him as ‘discharged.’ But they’ll still have the place he was discharged from, see?”

“Damn.”

“Sure. We just need a phone line. A landline,” he said, quickly, before I could offer him one of my cells.

“Not up here, kid.”

“What about the man downstairs?”

“Gateman? Sure, he’s wired up. But won’t you need—?”

“This is enough,” Terry said, holding up a laptop and some cords. “I’ll tell him you said it was okay, right?”

“Right.”

“Come on,” Terry said to Clarence. The two of them took off, Wally and the Beaver, on an adventure.

“ It was just like Terry said, mahn,” Clarence exclaimed, deeply impressed. “Only took maybe fifteen minutes and we got all

the—”

“It would have taken a lot less than that if your friend downstairs had anything but a molasses dial-up,” Terry cut in. “I’m not nuts about the DSL they’ve got around here, but—”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, when I’m ready for stuff like that, you’ll be the first to know.”

“ I am ready, mahn,” Clarence announced. “There is so much . . . value in it. Tell Burke and my father how you knew there was this place to find information about prisoners,” he said to Terry.