Andrew Vachss - Dead and Gone

“Just a little drop,” I told him. “For luck.”

“All right, mahn. So that would be one Python with—”

“Two,” I cut him off.

“Ah,” is all he said, getting it.

I spent every day working. For breaks, I stayed inside my head, trying to connect the dots.

I found out one thing I needed to know. The way I usually learn things—by making someone sad. Only this time it wasn’t me doing it to myself.

If Max or his wife, Immaculata, had any problems with me staying there, or even with the crew coming by all the time, they never let it slip.

I guess they never even said anything about me being there to their daughter, Flower. I’ve known her since the day she was born. The child spoke Vietnamese and French, thanks to her mother, and could sign back and forth with Max even faster than I could. Mama, who insisted the child, being her grandchild, was pure line-of-descent Mandarin back to before they put up the Wall, was teaching her one of the Chinese dialects. English she picked up from the rest of the world. Her impeccably polite manners were those of a warrior: Respect, not subservience. Understanding, not awe.

Sometimes Flower called me “uncle,” but that was only in the presence of strangers. She knew her parents and I were part of a family. A family of choice, the only kind us Children of the Secret ever trust. Only Mama insisted on a formal title. Very formal. It was “grandmother” in English, and whatever it was in the other languages seemed to satisfy her.

Max can read lips, but I never know how much he’s getting, so I always sign along when I talk. I was standing with my back to the beaded curtains that close off the dojo from the rest of the floor, pacing a little. Max stood across from me on the mat, watching, immobile as stone. I was telling him about where I was stuck.

I was just getting to the part about how I had been dealing with Dmitri long before it happened, middlemanning shipments of weapons he was selling. His clients were a crew of Albanians up in the Bronx who wanted to make a contribution to the Kosovo relief effort. Dmitri had the ordnance; I had the contacts. We did business, and business was good.

Suddenly, I heard, “Burke! Burke! You’re back!” and the sound of running footsteps. Flower burst through the curtains, ran a little bit past me, whirled, and went “Oh!” She froze, her eyes locked on my face. My new face. “I thought …” she said, her voice trailing off.

“It’s me, Flower,” I told her, keeping my voice soft and gentle.

“What happened? Oh, Burke, your face, what …?”

She started to cry then. I tried to take her to me, but she ran to Max. The Mongol scooped her up like she was cotton candy, held her close to him, communicating with tender touch. He must have seen it coming. Max maybe can’t hear, but he can feel vibrations as if his whole body was a tuning fork—I’ve seen him listen to music by putting his hands on the speakers. So he had to have known Flower’s footsteps.

And he must have known that her mother wouldn’t be far behind. When Immaculata swept into the room, one long red-lacquered fingernail leveled at his chest, Max quickly kissed Flower, then gently lowered her to the ground.

“What is wrong with you?” Immaculata said to him, voice quivering, her gesturing hands eloquent with anger.

Before Max could answer, she knelt and spoke directly to Flower. “It is Burke, child. Your Burke. Don’t be frightened. There was an accident. Burke was hurt. But he’s getting better now, all right?”

The little girl looked up at me. “It’s true,” I told her. “There’s nothing to be frightened of.”

“I’m not scared,” she said solemnly. “It looks like it … hurts you.”

“Nah. Let’s face it, I wasn’t all that good-looking to start with, right?”

But I was aiming at the wrong spot. That might have gotten a giggle from a teenager, but Flower was too young and too old to respond that way. “No man is as handsome as my father,” she said. “But you always looked … like … I don’t know … not like this.”

“I won’t always look like this, Flower. Promise.”

“I don’t care how you look,” she said, stamping her little foot. “I just don’t want you to hurt .”

Immaculata shot a glance at Max over the child’s shoulder. It was short of fatal, but not by a whole lot.

Max made a gesture for “true,” tapped his ear, pointed to Flower. Then he made the sign of pouring one test tube into another, holding up the receiving vessel to the light, checking the results.

Immaculata nodded, slowly. Getting it, but not liking it much. I’d been asking everyone if my voice sounded the same to them—it sure as hell didn’t to me. They’d all assured me that I sounded the same, but Flower, innocent Flower, she was the perfect test. She hadn’t seen me since I’d been there. But when she’d heard my voice …

“I’m sorry,” I told Immaculata, trying to take the weight for Max.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I understand. And so does Flower.”

The little girl nodded, solemn but not distressed anymore.

“Thank you,” I said, bowing. Max understood the thanks were for Immaculata, and the bow for him. I knew what it had cost him to use his precious child in any kind of experiment. But he was right—it was the only way to tell.

I didn’t need my voice to say goodbye to Pansy. The Mole showed me where she was buried, her grave nestled in a triangle of rusting steel girders, long lengths of rebar wound through it to make a wreath. It was strangely beautiful, like the charred ground beneath a launched rocket.

Mama had given me a box of brilliantly colored little papier-mâché constructions. “Burn when you say goodbye to puppy. Be waiting for her in new place.” Each was a perfectly rendered miniature. Everything Pansy could ever want, even an exact replica of her treasured giant rawhide bone. And a sheepskin mat that looked as if it had been cut from the original.

I’d seen those symbolic representations for use at funerals in Chinatown shops, but never ones like these. Mama had to have custom-commissioned them. And brought them over to Max’s place herself. It was the first time I’d ever seen her outside her restaurant.

“What about the play money?” I asked, expecting her to tell me a dog wouldn’t need money.

“Real puppy. Send real money,” she said. And handed me a thousand in crisp new centuries.

We all have our beliefs. Mama lived hers.

Standing there, I realized I couldn’t say anything. I’d said it all while Pansy was with me. Said it the only way that ever counts … with my behavior. Nothing to say, but I stood there for a long time. First trying not to cry. Then letting it go.

Belle was there, too. In that same graveyard. Belle, who loved me and died for me. I didn’t miss her any the less after I’d settled her score. Didn’t hate myself any the less for having put her in harm’s way, either. But I gave her the respect she’d earned, honoring that she’d gone out the way she’d wanted to.

Belle had drawn a pack of squad cars off me, out-driving the best NYPD had and making it back to where we were supposed to meet. But they’d poured enough lead into her that all she had left was the strength to say goodbye.

You can never really balance the scales. Taking a life doesn’t return the one the killer took. But any death of a loved one is a test of faith. And my religion is revenge.

With Belle, he’d been easy to find. I knew who he was. Her father. I knew what he was, too. So killing him was even easier.

With Pansy, I didn’t know who. Not yet. But when I did, it would play out like this: they were gone, or I was.