Andrew Vachss - Down in the Zero

"I told you, bro, I know what I know. We tap that vein, we feel no pain."

"It's not that easy, Prof. She had something else too." I showed him the diskettes. "You know what these are?"

"Sure, schoolboy. That's the cake— the rocks are the take."

"That's the way I see it too. We Hoover the place, she knows it was me. And she's got enough juice to buy trouble."

"But if we know what she knows…"

"Yeah."

"Let's ride, Clyde."

We picked up Michelle on the corner of Twenty–ninth and First. She climbed into the back of the Rover like it was a limo, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, settled back into the leather and lit a smoke.

"What's on?"

"I'm not sure yet. The Prof was right— the joint is rotten with money. I took some samples…gems. Mama says they're true blue. She's got seven figures stashed in the house."

"Oh honey, you know just what to say to make a girl crazy."

"It's trickier than that, Michelle." I showed her the disks.

"Blackmail?"

"That's my guess. I'm not sure. There's some tapes too. But either I put everything back or we're stuck with hit and run, see? We need a way to take a look."

"My man can do it," Michelle said, confident.

Terry let us into the junkyard, greeting the Prof and Clarence with elaborate courtesy as Michelle looked on proud.

"Damn, boy, you getting big !" the Prof told him.

The kid flushed. "I told you, Mom," he said, holding his back real straight. "How tall am I gonna be?" he asked the Prof.

Clarence stepped forward, took both the boy's hands in his, turned them over, looked at the backs.

"You be taller than me before you a grown man," he said quietly, the Island lilt clear in his rich voice.

"For real?" Terry asked, joy all over his face.

Clarence nodded gravely.

The Mole was nowhere in sight when we pulled up to the clearing. Simba was lying down in front of the underground bunker, calm and watchful.

"You want me to get him?" Terry asked.

"We'll need to be in his lab for what we got to do," I told the kid. "Just go downstairs, ask him if it's okay, all right?"

"Sure," the kid replied, pushing Simba to one side like the killer beast was a stuffed animal.

I lit a cigarette in the South Bronx air, feeling safe like I always do around the Mole's base. Simba watched without interest.

The kid stuck his head out of the bunker. "He says to come down."

I went first, Michelle right behind. Clarence came last, walking backwards, one hand on his pistol…he doesn't feel the same way I do about the junkyard.

The Mole was at his workbench. Michelle kissed him. His pasty skin turned a mottled red, his lank hair falling over his forehead. Michelle slapped at his upper arm in pretended disgust at the Mole's lack of romance.

I put the computer disks on the workbench. The Mole looked at them and shrugged.

"Can you read them?" I asked.

He shrugged again. Picked one up, plugged it into a slot on his computer as he simultaneously kicked it into life. The screen flickered, settled down into a paper–white blank.

The Mole tapped some keys, watched the screen. We found places to sit, left him alone to work. Terry showed Michelle some experiment they were working on— something about heavy water, whatever that is. The Prof settled back into a jailhouse wait–state. Clarence's bright eyes flicked over the bunker, taking in the strange machinery, a glazed look on his smooth young face. He'd been raised on Carib legends, but he never imagined voodoo like this.

The Mole turned his head slightly. I bent to listen— the Mole never talks loud.

"It's passworded," he said, pointing at the screen where it said [Locked] in bold black letters.

"Can you get in?"

"Eventually. Password could be anything. I can run a random program, try every combination."

"How long would that take?"

He shrugged again. "I don't have a big enough machine here. Could take a couple of weeks, even longer."

"Damn! Can you copy the disk so I can replace it while you run through the combos?"

"No."

"Great." I stood for a minute, trying to think it through. People get lazy with stuff they have to remember, use their birthdays for safe combinations, like that. Maybe she…?

"Try Cherry," I told him.

His stubby fingers flew over the keys. The machine beeped. "No," the Mole said.

"Try Rector's."

"Spell?"

I spelled it for him, with and without the apostrophe.

"No," he said.

I took a few more shots, all blanks. "I'll start it on random," the Mole said.

I nodded glumly. Then I thought of the safe. "Could it be numbers?" I asked him.

"What?"

"The password, could it be numbers instead of letters?"

"Yes."

I gave him the combination to the safe. Watched his fingers as he tapped it in.

"Yes," the Mole said as the screen flashed and words popped out on its surface like invisible ink when you hold the paper over a flame.

The Mole copied the blue and red diskettes, gave me back the originals. "The rest is storage media," he said, holding the round disk and the tiny cassette in his hand. "Probably the others didn't get added yet. Take them back too— what I have will be enough to see what they do."

I nodded agreement. "You have a VCR here?" I asked him.

He gave me a sour look, craned his neck in the direction of a small–screen TV in the corner.

"I told you it would come in handy, Dad," the kid said, a look of gleeful triumph on his face. He took the videotape from my hand, stuffed it into the slot expertly, hit some buttons.

The tape was black and white, streaky at the edges.

"Adjust the tracking," the Mole told him.

"I know, I know," the kid said, absorbed, playing with a tiny dial.

The camera opened on a pristine white bedroom. White walls, white sheets…even the bedposts were white. The camera zoomed in on one of them. A black leather strap dangled, waiting.

"Go upstairs, Terry," Michelle said, her voice calm.

"Ah, Mom…"

"Now!" she snapped. The kid turned his eyes from the screen, testing. Michelle stared him down, not saying a word. He gave her a baleful look over one shoulder as he climbed back to the outside air.

The only sound was the hum of the tape. A man entered the white bedroom, dressed in a conservative business suit. He sat down on the bed, hands on his knees, facing the way he came in. A woman walked in, her back to the camera. She was wearing a black–and–white–striped jacket with a peplum flare over a dark pencil skirt. Couldn't see her feet in the picture.

"Infrared camera," the Mole said. "High resolution. They wouldn't need lights."

A match flared as the Prof lit a smoke.

The woman removed the peplum jacket, tossed it away. A scoop–necked white blouse was underneath. The man watched as she unbuttoned the blouse to display a black push–up bra. She said something to him. He looked down.

The bra unhooked from the front. The woman dropped it to her side. The man looked up. The woman stepped to him, slapped his face hard with a roundhouse swing. She said something to him again. He dropped his eyes.

The woman turned her back to him, reached behind her to unzip the pencil skirt. As she bent forward to tug it over her hips, the man

slyly looked up. The woman arched her back, looking full into the camera.

Fancy.

As she stood slightly to one side, the camera came in on the man's face, full and clear.

I didn't know him, but he'd recognize himself quick enough when they showed him the tape.

Fancy turned to the man, now wearing only a pair of black panties over a garter belt and dark hose. She stopped, walked off camera.

Came back holding a riding crop in one hand.

The man stood up and stripped, quickly. He lay face down on the bed as Fancy secured his hands with the restraining straps to the head–posts.