Andrew Vachss - Dead and Gone

“Not a chance. It was dark. I never really got a look at his face. He started shooting right away.”

“Wolfe’s good people,” he said, out of the blue.

“I know.”

“Is she in this?”

“You spoke to her. What did she say?”

“She said she’s known you a long time. Sent along your sheet, but said it didn’t tell the whole story, so she filled in a lot of the blanks. Asked me if I’d do her this little favor.”

“So …?”

“So Wolfe doesn’t ask for favors. She trades. Unless it’s personal. She didn’t say anything about herself, just about you. So it comes out like you and her …”

“No.”

“Right,” he agreed. Too quickly. “She said as much. Said you and her … you weren’t going to be together. That you were a criminal in your heart.”

“But …?”

“But somebody has a bull’s-eye painted on you, and you needed to get off first.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Never is. Look, I’ll see you later. Midnight, one o’clock, how’s that?”

“Fine with me. I’ll be at the hotel …?”

“Sure. That works. Me, I got a date.”

I slipped the blue lens on the mini-Mag, played the light over the keypad to the in-room safe all good hotels provide nowadays. I didn’t want to open the safe—I wanted to see if anyone else did. The safe is programmed by the hotel guest. You pick whatever combination of numbers you want. But a pro knows what to do. Clean the keypad thoroughly, apply a thin coat of wax. When the mark opens “his” safe, he leaves marks. Most people pick a three-digit combo. They do that, it takes just a minute to box the trifecta, cover all six possible combinations. Of course, you do this after you’ve tried the mark’s birthday, if he’s left that info lying around.

It’s hard to tell if a hotel room’s been tossed. Some maids pick up every scrap, straighten every edge, put things away for you. Some don’t. The usual tricks—a hair pasted across an opening, a paper match wedged between two abutting layers of clothing—are a waste of time in hotels. But the safe … that will usually tell you if someone with access has been poking around. I carry what I need every time I go out—cash, passport, ID, tools—so if things go bad I never have to return to the room. Losing the gun would be no tragedy. It doesn’t trace to me, my prints aren’t on it. And the cash would always get me another.

The safe’s keypad was untouched.

I was kicking back in the room’s easy chair when the tap came at the door.

Clancy.

He walked in, pulled a chair away from the desk, carried it over to where I’d been sitting.

“How old do you think she is?” he asked me, as soon as I sat back down.

“She?”

“Marushka.”

“Thirty-five, forty?”

“She’s twenty-seven.”

“Okay.”

“Twenty-seven and frightened. Fear’ll age you quicker than booze.”

“But not overnight.”

“No. Not overnight.”

“So she was just a kid when she first came here.…”

“Yeah. She sends money home. There’s no jobs, she says. So she’s supporting her whole family.”

“Not so bad. She lives in a beautiful house, has a nice car all her own, plenty of time on her hands.…”

“Plenty of time to think, too. She gets deported, her whole family goes down.”

“Why should she get deported?”

“She’s sponsored. The people who own that house, all they need to do is withdraw.”

“She’d still have options.”

“What options? She’s got no special skills. No way she’d get an exemption.”

“You think the people who brought her here are threatening her?”

“No. I don’t think she has any contact with them.”

“She forwards their mail.…”

“I think that’s right. Almost has to be. But there’s no communication coming the other way. Her phone records—no long-distance calls, in or out. She’s got a cellular, too. Those are the best. For us, I mean. So long as the target uses his phone, you can find out where he’s using it from . I don’t mean the exact location, like Lojack or anything, but which city for sure. And sometimes right down to a tight grid. Anyway, her cellular, every call’s been made from the local area.”

“Did the people who own the place have cellulars?”

“They did. But they terminated service more than two years ago.”

“So that thread has snapped.”

“Yeah …” he said, dragging the word out. “Burke?”

“What?”

“She’s not in this.”

“Who?”

“Marushka.”

“I understand.”

He stood up. I packed my stuff while he waited. If he noticed the plastic-wrapped package I stowed in my duffel, he gave no sign.

Clancy dropped me off at the bus terminal on Harrison. I reached over to shake his hand.

“Thanks. For everything.”

“It was for Wolfe,” he said, keeping everything clear. “Besides, I figure, you get lucky, we may find the kid yet.”

“I know,” I told him, pulling a thick manila envelope from my coat pocket. I handed it to him.

His face flushed and his eyes went alligator on me. “I told you—”

“It’s for Licensed for Life,” I said.

He took a deep breath. Let it out his nose, slowly.

“I need a receipt,” I told him. “You’re a 501(c)(3), right? This is a charitable contribution.”

“You file with IRS?”

“Wayne Askew does.”

He reached into the back seat of his Nissan, found the right box, extracted a pad of receipts.

“Make it out for twenty-five hundred,” I said.

“That’s too—”

“There’s twenty large in that envelope,” I cut him off. “But Wayne Askew doesn’t earn the kind of money that he could donate that big to charity, so …”

“Christ!”

“It’s good to have something to believe in,” I said.

I took my receipt and got out. Clancy hauled my duffel out of the trunk. Stuck out his hand again. This time, his grip transmitted.

I bought a ticket to L.A. Round-trip, in case anyone was watching—in person or at an anonymous computer somewhere. A real bargain for two hundred bucks. The woman behind the barred window didn’t even look up as she slid it through the slot.

I had almost an hour before the bus left. Plenty of time. I finally found what I wanted—a tall, rawboned man with a lined Appalachian face. He told the guy on the bench next to him that he was going home. To West Virginia. Chicago was just another bitch who hadn’t kept her promises.

I slipped my cell phone into one of the big plastic bags he was carrying. The working class may be able to afford decent luggage now, but the out-of-work class has to improvise. I figured he might use the phone once he discovered it, but more likely he’d sell it. Either way, if anyone was wired in, good fucking luck to them if they thought they’d located me.

We chugged away around two in the morning, set to arrive L.A. just before nine the night after the next one coming—a few hours under two full days.

The bus was more than half empty. I settled in, grateful for the privacy.

Although it was a much longer run than Philly to Chicago had been, we made only one stop. Las Vegas, on day two, a half-hour layover. Just enough time to pick up all the high rollers who’d left their return plane ticket in the same pawnshops where they’d left their jewelry.

You could see it stamped on their faces—if they’d had just one more shot, they would have flown from Tap City to Fat City, nonstop. That wheel was about to turn, the slot they fancied was warming up, the dice couldn’t keep breaking against them.…

I was a crowded, morose trip into East L.A. And, from there, maybe a dozen miles and half an hour to another planet. Beverly Hills.