Andrew Vachss - Only Child

“That is insane, mahn.”

“It is,” I agreed. “And Mama’s not. So I say we take a look.”

First thing, we needed a local base. A place where any of us could come and go without attracting the spotlight. You can buy some privacy just by living in certain areas. But that also buys you regular police patrols, maybe even some private security force thrown in. And, worse, the kind of neighbors who act neighborly.

Gated communities and trailer parks share the same secrets. Humans hurt their babies everywhere. Beat their wives, violate their daughters, sell their sons. But we wanted an area where people worried about the DEA, not the IRS.

Michelle rented us a house in a little village nestled between two other towns, one white and one black. I didn’t know much about Long Island, but I’d done enough business with assorted racist groups from out there so that I wasn’t surprised by the clear division.

Max and I made the drive out in my new ride. I’d taken the Honda back to the Mole. Told him it just wouldn’t work for what I needed it for. And that was true. What I didn’t tell him was that a few weeks of driving that mobile appliance was squeezing the sap out of my tree.

I got the new car for eleven hundred bucks. One grand was the finger’s fee for the sweet spot he’d scoped out—an underground parking garage in a small apartment building on the East Side. Room for only about three dozen cars, most of those belonging to tenants. The open rental slots were always full by nine. By ten, ten-thirty every day, the NO VACANCY sign would be out. And the lone attendant would be having his coffee and a buttered roll, faithfully delivered by the Korean kid from the nearby deli. The extra hundred was for the kid’s college fund.

By noon, the attendant would come around, probably figuring he’d just dozed off for an hour or so, big deal. I’m sure the cops hadn’t arrived until the owner of the brand-new Porsche 911 Turbo came to pick up his car that evening. And started screaming.

By then, the Porsche was all pieced out. And I was driving my barter, a l969 Plymouth two-door post that had gone through half a dozen life changes since it rolled off the assembly line as a Roadrunner. Its last owner obviously had been in the long-haul contraband business. The beast’s undercarriage was a combination of an independent-rear-suspension unit pirated from a Viper, and subframe connectors with heavy gussets to stiffen the unibody...and let it survive a pretty good hit, too. Huge disks with four-piston calipers all around, steel-braided lines. The cavernous trunk had plenty of room, despite housing a fuel cell and the battery, but I didn’t find the nitrous bottle I’d expected.

Maybe that was because a 440 wedge, hogged out to 528 cubes, sat under the flat, no-info hood. I’d balked when Lymon first told me it was a crate motor, but he’d jumped all over my objections, taking it personally. Lymon’s a car guy first; thieving’s just his hobby.

“That motor ain’t from the Mopar factory, man,” he said, contempt cutting through his Appalachian twang. “Al deKay himself built this one.” I knew who he meant—a legendary Brooklyn street-racer, rumored to have switched coasts. “You got yourself an MSD ignition and a brand-new EFI under there,” he preached. “Nascar radiator plus twin electric fans, oil and tranny coolers—this sucker couldn’t overheat in the Lincoln Tunnel in rush hour. In July. Reliable? Brother, we’re running an OEM exhaust system, H-piped, through a pair of old Caddy mufflers. Costs you a pack of ponies, but it’s as quiet as a stocker with those hydraulic lifters. This piece, boy, you don’t need to even know a good wrench—you want, you could fucking weld the hood shut.”

It was tall-geared, running a 3.07 rear end—which Lymon proudly gushed was “full cryo” while I pretended I knew what he was talking about—and a reworked Torqueflite off a column shifter. Oil-pressure and water-temp gauges had been installed in the dash slot that formerly housed the pitiful little factory tach. The replacement tach, one of those old black-faced jobs, was screw-clamped to the steering column, with a slash of bright-orange nail polish at the 6000 shift point.

The bucket seats had an armrest between them that you could pull up to sit three across in a pinch. What you couldn’t see was the chromemoly tubing that ran from the rocker sills through the B-pillars right up under the headliner to form a rollover hoop.

The windows had a tint that looked like Windex hadn’t touched the glass for years. The outside lamps of the quad headlights had been converted to xenon high-lows, like switching a cigarette lighter for a blowtorch. The inside units were actually aircraft landing lights, but you’d have to be close enough to notice the nonserrated clear glass with the telltale dot in the center to tell.

No power windows, no air conditioning. The radio was the original AM/FM. If I wanted tape or CD, I’d have to bring a portable with me when I rode.

From the outside, it looked like different things to different people. To a rodder, it would look like a restoration project—the beginning of the project, with the Roadrunner’s trademark “meep-meep” horn more hope than promise. To anyone else, it looked like a typical white-trash junker, just fast enough to outrun the tow truck. Steel wheels, sixteen-inchers all around, shod in Dunlop run-flats, with dog-dish hubcaps on three of them. Rusted-out rocker panels. A dented grille hid the cold-air ducting on either side of the radiator. Steering wheel wrapped in several layers of padded white tape. The front end was all primer, the rear the original red, since gone anemic. The left tailpipe was trimmed so that it looked like a replacement mill—probably a tired 318—was providing the power.

It looked right at home on the patch of dirt that would have been the front lawn if the house we’d rented had been in a better neighborhood.

Michelle hung around long enough to fully express her utter and total unhappiness with the dump. Nobody was dumb enough to point out that she’d been the one who rented it. She worked her cell phone, harassing the Mole unmercifully until he agreed to drive out and pick her up. I love my sister, but it wasn’t the first time I’d been glad to see her wave goodbye.

Max and I went back to our life-sentence card game as if we’d never been interrupted by my disappearance. He was into me for a good six figures, but that didn’t faze him—he’d been down more than a quarter-million years ago, when he caught one of those mythical lucky streaks even the most degenerate gambler never dares to dream of. Once he felt it lock in, the Mongol kept me in my seat for hour after hour, afraid of offending the gods by changing anything. When the run finally had played itself out, he was damn near even. But it didn’t take him long to get back under the gun, especially after I’d taught him casino as a break from gin. Max with gambling is like me with women—love’s not the same as skill.

He even dragged out the score sheets he always carries around like a religious medal. We had long since agreed to settle up when we met on the other side, and Max figures a running tab guarantees, no matter how long I’m gone, we’ll be together again someday.

Today’s game was part of the proof.

Nights, we rode. Me driving, Max charting. We knew what we were looking for—a place big enough to store a couple hundred humans. Remote enough so there would be no casual traffic, and close enough to the drop point to make it a quick trip. We found what we wanted easy enough. Only thing was, we found it a dozen times in the first few tries.

Back at the house, I held my hands apart, then slowly brought them together, looking a question at Max. He shrugged, no closer than I was to any factors we could use to narrow down the search.