Andrew Vachss - Down Here

I felt a sudden stab of pain in my forearm. Max, using his rebar forefinger to tell me what my eyes had just picked up—the lead horse, exhausted, was drifting wide . . . and Dino’s Diamond was charging the inside lane like a downhill freight.

It was photo-close, but Max’s horse got a nose in front at the wire. Max stood up and bowed to the valiant warrior who had found his way home one more time. His flat Mongol face was split in a broad grin.

I spent the next few minutes acknowledging the celestial perfection of Max’s handicapping methods, admitting that we should have wheeled his pick instead of mine—sharing in my brother’s joy.

Dino’s Diamond paid $35.20, making us major winners, no matter what happened in the Double. Max would brag on this one forever, starting with Mama.

It was one of those times; anyone I’d have to explain it to, I wouldn’t want to.

They had just called the trotters for the second race when Sands sat down next to me.

“ There’s three more,” he said, without preamble.

“Three more not in the—?”

“Yeah.”

“Why not?”

“No complaining witnesses.”

“Then how would you know they were cases at all, never mind his?”

“One of them, he was almost caught in the act. But the vic denied it ever happened.”

“A hooker who—?”

“No. Stop asking questions. I can’t hang around here. Just listen. It was on the Lower East Side. A neighbor hears sounds of a struggle. Glass breaking, a scream. She calls it in; she’s too scared to go out and see what’s happening herself, so she turns off all the lights in her apartment, peeks out the window. And there’s the perp, going down the fire escape. She doesn’t get enough for an ID, but it’s our man, no question, right down to the ski mask and the gloves. In fucking July.

“By the time that one went down, everyone knows there’s a serial rapist making the rounds, so the uniforms don’t bother to knock. The door goes right in. And there’s the vic, still tied up, blood coming out of her. Nails on one hand all broken. She must have put up a hell of a fight. Place is ransacked, too.

“But the woman, she says nothing happened. She was playing with the ropes—‘experimenting,’ is what it says in the report—then she fell down and hurt herself. Utter, total bullshit. But she doesn’t budge an inch.

“The uniforms don’t know what to do. Fuck, neither would I—whoever heard of something like this? I mean, sure, people playing sex games, they get carried away, someone gets hurt . . . so they don’t tell the truth about how it happened. Anyone who works ER around here is going to see a few of those every year. But this one, with the witness and all, it was for real, all the way.

“So they call in the detectives. Nothing. They even try a social worker. Blank. Zero. Nada.”

“Christ.”

“The second one, she gets found by her aunt. Comes to pick her up in the morning for church, can you believe it? We get a statement. Same pattern, right down to the mouthpiece.

“Then, a week or so later, out of the blue, the vic calls up, says she doesn’t want to ‘press charges.’ Like it was some bitch-slap incident or something.

“Okay, so the plainclothes guys go to see her, too. A total washout. She’s not talking. Not saying it didn’t happen, just saying she’s not going to cooperate.”

“So they figured she probably knew the perp?” I said.

“That is what they figured. And we were going to put surveillance on her. If she was covering for the guy, or, better yet, blackmailing him, we could end up with a solid ID.”

“What happened?”

“She moved. To fucking Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Lock, stock, and barrel. They tried to get a wiretap going, but the judge laughed at them, said they were a mile short of probable cause. And what was the crime, anyway?”

“Maybe she just wanted out of New York,” I said. “Some people do that, put a lot of distance between themselves and . . . whatever happened to them.”

“I don’t know,” Sands said.

“You said three.”

“Yeah. The first one, who denied anything happened? She turned up, later. Dead.”

“You think it was Wychek?”

“He was already locked up by then,” Sands said. “For the one Wolfe nailed him on. Besides, something else was going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was tortured,” Sands said, voice flat and hard, a shield against his feelings, like the booze. “Somebody worked her over with a stun gun. Or electricity. Had those burn marks all over her . . . in the worst spots.”

“In her own apartment?”

“Nobody knows where it was done. Where they found her was in a building that was getting rehabbed over in Williamsburg. One of the workers spotted her, hanging, when he opened up in the morning. It was in the papers.”

“She was hung?”

“Not to kill her. They did that with a bullet. Two of them, one in each eye.”

“A message.”

“Yeah. Maybe it was for the third one.”

“Huh?”

“Her best friend. Roommate. Wasn’t home when the rape—the one she said never happened—went down. That one—the third one— just plain disappeared. The detectives looked for her as soon as the original vic wouldn’t cooperate. On the books, she’s a missing person.”

“Missing and presumed.”

“Yeah.”

“So the homicide case is still open, too?”

“Yeah.”

“You got names and—?”

“I see you already got a pen,” he said, nodding toward the program.

Max nudged my shoulder, bringing me back from wherever I’d gone. I looked up at the board. The third race was two minutes to post.

Max pointed to the info I’d jotted down, held up three fingers, made a questioning gesture.

“I don’t know,” I told him. I drew a stick figure of a man, surrounded by a ring of swastikas. “But it looks like Wychek’s friends may have started taking care of him earlier than we thought.”

Max hadn’t left my side, so I knew he hadn’t gotten a bet down since the second race. I turned to that page in the program, made a “What happened?” gesture.

He held up the ticket. All the answer I needed. If my horse hadn’t gotten home first, he would have torn it up.

I found a place in the program with some white space showing, handed it to Max. He diagrammed the race for me in increments, drawing it as clear as a video.

My mare had left hard, cranked off a good first quarter, put some real distance on the field without a challenge, and maintained strong fractions until her second time past the clubhouse turn. Then they all came at her, slingshotting around at the top of the stretch. She was fading fast, but still game, staggering home a half-length ahead of the nearest horse. Paid $8.80 to win, anchoring our four-hundred-and-change Double, a personal record.

Max held up his hand, fingers spread, to emphasize that we didn’t just have it, we had it five times!

Neither of us wanted to stay around after that. The minute they get ahead, suckers say they’re “playing with the track’s money.” That’s why they’re called suckers.

“ Anything new?”

“Stone-fucking- wall, ” Davidson said. “Cocksuckers must think they’re playing with an amateur.”

“I spoke to Wolfe; she doesn’t seem worried.”

“I wouldn’t play poker with her, I was you.”

“Yeah, I know. So you’re saying . . . ?”

“I’m saying that somebody’s cooking up something. I don’t give an obese rodent’s rump what that is, so long as it isn’t my client on the burner.”