Andrew Vachss: Down in the Zero

"No!" she snapped. "Kiss it or whip it, that's all there you get. I don't do vanilla sex."

I stepped back again. Finished the smoke. Ground it out on the dresser top.

"Well?" she demanded, her voice thick.

"I don't like the choices," I told her.

She looked over her shoulder, still on her hands and knees. "It looks like you do," she whispered.

"That's my body," I said. "Not me.

She dropped her face to the sheet, arched her back. Her dark sex bloomed in the candlelight, framed in marble. "Last chance," she whispered. Sugar threats.

I shook my head. It was as though she could see it without looking. She backed toward me, backed all the way off the bed. Stood up. Walked over, put the dress on like it was a coat, bent at the waist and zipped it up. Snuffed out the candle with two fingers and stalked out to the front room.

I followed her. She was pulling on the long coat. I grabbed her from behind. She ground her hips into my crotch. I slipped my hands into the side pockets of the coat. Pulled out a bunch of keys, stepped back. The keys were all anchored to a piece of wood in the shape of a tiny cane. I rifled through the keys, picked out the one to the apartment, pulled it off the ring. She turned to face me. I handed her the rest of the keys. She held the keys so the tiny cane dangled.

"You know what this is?"

"No."

"It's birch. Get the idea?"

"Yeah."

"You think so? Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime. When you're ready."

She walked out, leaving the door open. I stood in the doorway, watching her walk to her car. It started up, moved off, no headlights.

I walked back through the wreckage to the back room, turning on the lights. Her black silk thong was on the floor of the bedroom. I picked it up.

It smelled like handcuffs.

I got dressed, putting rich–bitch games out of my mind, centering on the job. I crossed the yard back to the big house. A burglar's dream— I had a key, and the cops wouldn't stop even if they saw lights on. I slipped on a pair of surgeon's gloves— all I'd need to slice this piece of cake.

It had to be her room. Whatever she was now, Cherry was a working–class girl— she'd need to keep the good stuff close. I worked the teakwood chest of drawers first, moving from the bottom up the way I'd been taught. It saves time— that way you don't have to close one drawer before you move on to the next. Nothing. I pulled out each drawer completely, checked for something taped underneath. A blank. I couldn't find an inset panel anywhere. Tapped the wood frame— it rang solid.

I went over the carpet section by section. It was seamless, a double–thick pad underneath. The nightstand by the bed supported an ice blue telephone in some free–form futuristic shape and a black clock with green hands, no numbers. The hands pointed to 4:45. In the base of the clock was a window with a digital readout— 7:45. I let it roll around in my head, kept working.

Inside the nightstand I got lucky. A thick stack of bills, all hundreds, neatly banded. I quick–counted it— ten large. The bills looked Treasury–fresh, but the serial numbers were random. Toward the back of the little drawer, a black leather address book. I tossed it on the bed, kept looking.

I took the mattress off the bed. Nobody home. The box spring was next. Another blank. I checked the headboard for a compartment, using my pencil flash to spot a seam. It was made from the same teak as the dresser, and just as solid.

Only one picture on the wall. A sepia–toned photograph of a woman, her back to the camera. She was dressed in a dark Victorian suit, some kind of velvet it looked like, with a long skirt and long sleeves. Her hands were clasped in front of her, head slightly bowed. I took it off the wall, hoping for a safe. The paint was undisturbed— whoever cleaned the joint removed the picture every time they dusted.

Nothing left but the closet. I did the footwear first. She had everything from thigh–high boots to running shoes, but they were all empty. Then I went through the clothes, piece by piece. Found a string of pearls in one coat pocket, a pair of used theater tickets in another. Tissues, a blue chiffon scarf, a lipstick–size spray atomizer. I pointed it away from me, pressed the tiny button. Some kind of citrus perfume.

Against the back wall, I found a black silk cape with an attached hood. The lining was red. In a side pocket, a gray business card. Normal size, but twice the weight. In steel blue copperplate script: "Rector's." And a phone number. I put it on the bed next to the address book.

There was no lock on the bedroom door. I walked quickly through the rest of the floor. No locks anywhere. It wasn't doors that covered that house's secrets.

Back in Cherry's bedroom, I opened the address book. Nearly every page was filled with distinctively shaded block letters. The ink was a dark blue— looked like a fountain pen. I found the culprit in the nightstand drawer, a fat black Mont Blanc.

None of the names meant anything to me at first. I took it page by page. Nothing under "Burke." "Fancy" was under "F," but the phone number wasn't the same as she'd written on her After Dark card. Not quite the same.

Page by page. I came to a strange listing. "MERC" is all it said. I looked at the number. Looked at it again. It was the pay phone that

rings in Mama's restaurant, written backwards. A man for hire, that's what I must have seemed like to her back in England a lifetime ago. Some people grow, some just age.

I turned back to the page with Fancy's number. Read it backwards. It matched her card.

Was the code that simple? I found a listing for Rector's. Compared it to the card. It didn't match, backwards or forwards.

I went over to the control panel in her closet. Pushed buttons at random. String music came from the speaker again. Not the longhair stuff this time— Santo and Johnny's "Sleepwalk"— '50s steel guitar spooling softly strange in that lush room.

I laid down on her bed, staring at the ceiling, surprised not to find a mirror. Glanced over at the clock again. 5:19 on the dial, 8:19 on the digital. Three hours' difference.

Where the hell would that be?

I reached for the phone. Dialed the number on the card I'd found in the cape. A woman's voice answered, pleasant but loaded with the promise of something harder: "Rector's."

I hung up. Dialed the number under that name in her address book. A recorded message: "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Check the number and…"

I hung up on that one too. It's the message Ma Bell sends when the exchange isn't local.

I checked the book again. No area code. Maybe she didn't use them at all. But…no, she had a lot of them— Chicago, L.A., Houston— even some foreign ones.

I closed my eyes. What's your secret, bitch? I asked her.

When I opened my eyes, the clock said 5:51. A long time to be out. I got up, put everything back the way it was. The closet speaker was playing something slithery…something I didn't recognize.

I went back to the bed, picked up the book, started to punch the number she had listed for Rector's into the control panel. Four buttons into the sequence I heard a sliding noise. I looked in its direction. A panel was opening in the seamless pink marble of the bathroom tile over the tub.

I went over, took a close look, not touching anything. I've been trained by the best— if you don't figure out how to close the wound, the autopsy will be too easy. I pushed the buttons again, in the same order. I heard the faint sound of an electrical motor, but the panel stayed open.

Okay. I tried it in reverse, last digit first. The panel slid back, closing with a barely audible click. From where I stood, I couldn't see where it had opened. You don't get craftsmanship like that from a local handyman— it had to be the work of the original architect.