Andrew Vachss - Down in the Zero

"What?" I said into the speaker.

"Where's Charm?" A man's voice, suspicious.

"You got the wrong number, pal," I told him, growling like I'd been interrupted.

He hung up. I put the phone back where I got it, sat down and lit a smoke. Before I was finished with it, I heard the phone again.

I let it ring until it stopped.

Charm? Another player…or just another name Cherry used?

Two more hours, three more cigarettes, the phone in the closet stayed quiet. Maybe it was a wrong number for real.

I was up with the first light, wondering what day it was. Hard to tell out there— people who don't work a regular nine–to–five don't have a good sense of weekends. I looked out the front window. At the head of the driveway there were two mailboxes. I walked out there. Turned out one of the mailboxes was for the local newspaper. It was empty. The regular mailbox only had some bills…no personal letters. I brought everything inside, left it on the kitchen table.

I wanted a shower, but I checked on the kid first. He was in the same position. I moved close, some little flicker warning me he might be gone. But he was okay, breathing deep, his mouth hanging open, slack.

The garage door was standing open, the cars untouched. The keys were in the kid's Miata— maybe he was expecting valet parking.

I walked through the apartment, watching close this time. Nobody had been there.

I showered and shaved, thinking about kids killing themselves. About the kid I'd killed.

I was at the kitchen table by the time the kid came downstairs. His face was blotchy from sleep, eyes wary from his dreams.

"You stayed here last night?" he asked.

"On the couch, in the living room."

"I'm sorry…I didn't mean for you to— "

"That's okay. You want some coffee or something?"

"I'll get it," he said, turning his face away from me.

He put a couple of Pop–Tarts in the toaster, hit the switch on the coffeemaker, took a long pull at a wax carton of orange juice. I found a box of rye crackers, poured myself a big glass of water from the bottle in the refrigerator.

"What's those?" he asked me, nodding his head in the direction of the pills I had taken out of my pocket.

"Vitamin C, beta–carotene, vitamin E."

"You take them every day?"

"Sure."

"How come?"

"An old girlfriend of mine, she's a doctor. Told me if I was gonna smoke, this is what I needed to do."

"Be better to quit smoking," he said, with all the superiority of someone who fucks up his life twelve ways from Sunday but doesn't share your bad habits.

I didn't say anything, just crunched my crackers, popped the pills, chased them down with the water. The kid joined me at the table, started on his meal without much enthusiasm.

"You expect the cops?" I asked him.

"No, they didn't come around before, why should I?"

"I don't know. I don't know how things work around here. It's just that if they do, you may need to explain me…what I'm doing here, see?"

"Sure. I'll say you're the caretaker. It won't be any big deal."

"It could be if they run my sheet."

"Huh?"

"I've got a record, kid."

"Oh. I mean…I kind of figured that."

"Did you?"

"Well, from what my mother said…"

I looked a question at him, waiting.

"She didn't say you were a criminal or anything. Just that you could…take care of things. I know in her business, she had to deal with some pretty heavy people, so…"

"Her business?"

"When she was young. Before she had me. In England, where she lived."

"What business was that?"

"You know," he gave me a quizzical look. "She was a gem dealer. Traveled all over the world. That's when she met you, right? When you worked as a bodyguard?"

"Right," I told him.

"Were you…close with my mother?"

"It was a long time ago, kid."

"I know, but…"

"What? You want to know if we were lovers?" Softening it for him if that's what he needed.

"Lovers? Like romance? No. I want to know did you have sex with her?" he asked, looking at me head–on for the first time that day.

"That's your mother's privacy you're talking about," I said.

"Privacy? My mother? You have to be kidding. I was just curious, that's all. She never has sex with men."

"She must have…at least once."

"Yeah, with a turkey baster," he laughed, a feathery undercurrent to his voice. "Artificial insemination. My mother's gay. She told me, a long time ago. She said she wanted a baby, but she didn't want a man. That's why I was wondering…if she ever did."

"I get it," I told him, not answering his question. "Your father, was he…?"

"No. It was an anonymous donor, she told me. She was married once, but it was for money. The guy was gay too— he wanted her for a beard. I guess the joke was on him, huh? I don't know who my father is.

"You mean your biological father?"

"That's what I mean— I don't know whose genes I have in me."

"Neither do I," I told him.

"You were adopted?"

"No."

"Then how …?"

"I was raised by the State. In an institution."

"Like a foster home?"

"Like a jail."

"Oh." He got up, busied himself with loading the dishwasher for a minute. "You ever wonder about it? Who your father was?" he asked over his shoulder.

"No."

"I do," he said, coming back to the table. "All my mother could tell me was that he had a very high IQ. It was a special sperm bank. Very expensive. She had it done in Switzerland."

"You already got all you're going to get from him," I told the kid.

"What do you mean?"

"The color of your eyes, your hair, maybe your height, I don't know. Physical characteristics. And your basic intelligence. Some hard–wired personality traits, stuff like that."

"What's 'hard–wired'?"

"You know how some folks have a basically happy temperament, some are more stubborn than others…like that. Nothing major."

"You mean that?"

"It's true. You can pass along DNA, but not behavior, understand? Blue eyes, blond hair…sure. But if a rapist and a murderer got together and made a baby, and if that baby got raised by good citizens, the kid would be one too, see? You get what you raise, not what you breed."

"But with horses, they always breed the champions. To get better horses."

"Those aren't better horses , kid. They're horses better at doing the stuff people want them to do, see? If you put those blueblood, inbred nags out on a prairie, they'd be the first ones the wolves would take down."

He sat there for a couple of minutes, playing something around in his head, more alert and focused than I'd ever seen him. "In school, we had that. Genetics. I don't remember much about it. Hell, I don't remember much about any of it."

"You passed all your courses?" I asked him. Shifting gears, setting up to blindside him.

"Sure," he said, with a "Doesn't everybody?" look.

"What are you going to college for?"

"I don't know. My mother says if I learn anything, it will be good. You can always use what you learn, that's what she said."

"But she doesn't care what?"

"I don't think so. She never said."

"What does your mother do now?"

"I'm not exactly sure," the kid said. "Something with international finance— that's why she travels so much."

"She travels alone?"

"I…guess so. She never said."

The kid was relaxed, talking. Softened around the edges from all the guidance–counselor questions. I lit a smoke, blew a stream at the ceiling. "Who's Charm?" I asked.

"She's Fancy's sister. Her twin sister, actually, but they don't look alike. She…" He gave me a puzzled look. "How do you know about her? Was she here?"

"No. There was a phone call for her. Last night. On this," I said, getting up and bringing the cellular phone back from the closet.