Andrew Vachss - Pain Management

Lune had unraveled the failed murder plot’s tapestry for me. And I’d made a noose out of the threads.

“Yeah,” I told Gem. “If I’m right, it won’t be that hard to pick up. Just take a long time.”

“I could help.”

“You’ve already helped. A ton. And I know you want to . . .”

“What?” she asked, sharply.

“I don’t know,” I finished lamely. “Go back home.”

“Burke, it is you who wants to go back home.”

“This place, it isn’t for me.”

“I know.”

“But I don’t know how things are back home anymore. I don’t know how I’d . . . make a living. I was working off a . . . reputation, I guess. But the street thinks I’m dead. Been gone for a while. I wouldn’t want people thinking I’m a goddamned ghost. I’ve been through that one already—when that maniac I told you about decided to bring Wesley back.”

“Home is not a place.”

“That sounds better than it plays, little girl. My family, they’re rooted there, understand? That’s where they’re . . . safe. Where they know how things work. There’s things you just can’t . . . relocate, I guess.”

“So—what, then? You go back and . . .”

“. . . and maybe put them all in a jackpot. Don’t you get it, Gem? Word gets out that I’m . . . back, I guess, and who knows what that kicks off? My family, they’d be right in the middle of it.”

“That would be their choice.”

“No. You don’t get it. They wouldn’t see it that way. If I was in it, they’d be in it. I’m the one who has to decide. Nibble around the edges, maybe. Test the waters. . . .”

“So why have you not, then?”

“I want to finish this thing here.”

“The missing girl?”

“Yeah.”

“And that is all?” she asked, her dark, fathoms-deep eyes empty of accusation.

“That’s right.”

She got up, left the room. In a few minutes, I heard the shower going.

“If you are going to search newspapers,” she said later, “there is a database.”

“Like NEXIS?”

“Yes. Or one could check Reuters and the AP and even various international services easily enough.”

“You mean with the computer?”

“With the Internet, yes.”

“It’s probably not that simple.”

“I am not simple, either,” she said, a trace of annoyance showing in her voice.

The cell phone in my pocket made its noise. Gem stalked off. Maybe to give me some privacy, maybe to underscore how little I was pleasing her.

“What?” I answered.

“It’s Madison. Ann vouched for you. And I have the proverbial good news and bad news.”

“Can you say it on the phone?”

“Sure. The person you were asking about got in touch.”

“And . . . ?”

“And she says someone she trusts is going to set up a meeting between you and her.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“The bad news is, you were right. There was a connection between my work and what she was looking for. But it doesn’t have anything to do with her. Not with her self, see?”

“Not exactly.”

“That’s the bad news. I can’t tell you what she told me. I promised not to. But it is very, very serious.”

“You wouldn’t have called me if you couldn’t tell me something, ” I said.

“Do you know what ‘empathy’ means?” she asked.

“It’s when you feel someone else’s pain.”

“Close enough. That’s her problem. And that’s all I can tell you,” Madison said.

I was just starting to ask her another question when she hung up.

“I need to get in the street,” I told Gem.

“I understand. Do you not want me to—?”

“I do want you to help. I apologize if I gave you any other impression.”

“You are very formal to a woman who has you inside her.”

“I . . . That doesn’t have anything to do with—”

“You act like a very stupid man sometimes, Burke. You know I was not talking about your cock. Or you should know.”

“I’m just screwing this up, Gem,” I told her, feeling hollow.

“Then do what you know how to do.”

“I . . .”

“You know how to hunt. That’s what you do. What you are. I will get my pad. I will write down what you tell me. And then, while you are doing whatever it is you . . . must, I will get the information you want. Yes?”

“Yes,” I said, not wondering where the guilt had gone to anymore. Not with it sitting on my shoulder like a fucking anvil.

The way Madison had related the information told me her conversation with Rosebud hadn’t been over the phone. The girl was close by; I was sure of it.

Anyway, I knew enough about her now. Rosebud wouldn’t ever get too far away from Daisy.

And she had said she was going to talk to me.

I just didn’t know what I was going to do when she stopped talking.

“I’m not doing it,” I told Ann.

“Why?” she demanded, hands on her hips.

“I don’t need you anymore. There’s no chance of a payoff. I’m in contact with the girl—through other people—and she’s going to come in.”

“Just like that?”

“I never said I would—”

“The money isn’t enough?”

“A hundred grand, against the hundred years I’d have to do if I got popped? No.”

“But that’s not the real reason, is it?”

“No. I already told you the real reason.”

“That you think I want you for a fall guy.”

“Or you’ve got a martyr complex.”

“The opposite,” she said. “I lose these”—flicking a hand across her breasts dismissively—“I might as well have had plastic surgery. Nobody who knew me here would ever recognize me. Once this is done, so am I.”

“How could that be? No matter how big the score, it can’t be enough to take care of all the—”

“I’m not giving up the struggle. I’m just going after it in a different way, once this last job is done. It’s not as if we’re alone. Some places—VA hospitals, for example—they know how to deal with pain. And they do it. There’s also—”

“VA hospitals?”

“Don’t look so surprised. The VA hospital system probably knows more about pain management than any other place on earth. Some of them, like the one in Albuquerque, they’re like . . . beacons in the night, for us. And Sloan-Kettering has been lobbying for changes in these stupid DEA laws that won’t allow them to administer enough—”

“Politics?”

“That’s right, politics. That’s where the change is going to be made. But I said politics, not politicians. You think there’d be any difference, no matter who was in office?”

“Me? I think the last two guys who ran for president were a pair of mutants.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they’d been line-bred for generations, like the way you’d do a bird dog or a racehorse. They never had any other purpose, right from birth. Problem is, you breed a dog to fetch birds, he might do it perfect, but he couldn’t shoot the birds, see?”

“No.”

“Politicians are bred to run for office, not to run the office once they get it. That, they don’t have a clue about.”

“That’s right !” she said, her voice juicy with promise. “They’re all whores.”

“I don’t think that’s fair to whores,” I told her. “All they do is fuck for money. Most of them would draw the line at the stuff the average politician takes in stride.”

“You think all politicians are sick?”

“Like mentally ill? No. What they are is litmus paper. They turn color depending on what’s poured over them. You think any of them actually have a position on anything ? George Wallace first ran for office with the backing of the NAACP. After he lost, he vowed he’d never get out-niggered again. The only ones who truly have a position are the fascists. They’re for real . . . which is why they’ll never get elected. And neither will that narcissist Nader. Some ‘green’ party he’s running—all he accomplished was to vampire enough dumbass liberal votes to elect a guy who’d sell the Grand Canyon to a toxic-waste dump operator.”