Andrew Vachss - Dead and Gone

“Step away,” the man said.

“No. This is as far as I go without the kid.”

“You’ll get the fucking kid, friend. Just move off a few feet, that’s all.”

I did that.

“Get out here!” he snarled over at the Lincoln.

The passenger door opened and a kid got out. I couldn’t see him real well … only knew he was a boy because that’s what the Russians had told me. Real skinny. Wearing a dark jacket and jeans. His pale hair was shaved on the sides and spiked in front. The kid seemed to know what he was doing—walked to my left until he was out of the shadow and I could see him better.

“We trade steps now,” the man said. “One for one. You get closer to him; I get closer to the money. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Now.”

We each started walking, me slower than him. I still had the edge—the kid could move on his own, but the money couldn’t. As soon as I got close enough for the kid to hear me, I said: “Come over here to me. Everything’s going to be all right now.”

The kid started toward me. I stood my ground, turning my head slightly to watch the guy pick up the satchel. The kid made some kind of grunting sound. I looked back and saw him holding a pistol, aimed right at the center of my chest. I tried to dive and roll, but I was too slow—the first couple of shots hit me in the rib cage. I staggered back, groping the darkness like it was a handrail, felt another shot slam into me somewhere.

Then I heard Pansy’s war cry as she launched over the rutted ground, heading for where I’d fallen. The kid saw her coming, the hellhound on his trail. He turned and ran but Pansy hit the back of his thigh and pulled him down like a lioness dropping an antelope.

The guy near the money started shooting at me. It felt like a sledgehammer to my kidneys. He ran past where I was lying in the dirt, yelling something. I was fading, going dim.

Two more men piled out of the Lincoln. They both shot at Pansy. She dropped. But she struggled back to her feet, still locked on to her enemy. Pansy reared up high, threw her head back, and shook it violently until a chunk of the kid’s throat came loose in her jaws.

It all slowed down then. Pansy looked at me. I saw it in her eyes. She spat out what was left of the kid and started for the shooter nearest me. I couldn’t speak. I tried to hold her eyes. To say goodbye. They cut her to pieces with bullets. The pieces of her tried to get up. They kept shooting.

Then more shots came from another direction. The bass-voiced boom of a shotgun and the ccrraack! of high-speed ammo.

“We’re taking fire!” one of them screamed. Another voice, calmer and harder: “It’s been 911’ed. Finish it!” A man rushed over to where I was on the ground. I saw him raise his hand. A sunburst went off inside my skull. I rode the sound of the gunshot all the way into the black.

I felt it. Close now. That dull-gray, anonymous violence-shark that cruises every prison, slashing out at random, triggered by something too primitive to reason with. All you could ever hope for was to stay out of its way.

But I wasn’t back in prison. I was underwater. And the shark wasn’t some metaphor. The water wasn’t deep—I could see the surface a few feet above me. I was crouched behind a girder of some kind, waiting. Doing the death math: I was going to run out of oxygen soon. But the shark was hovering, gliding back and forth, waiting for me to show myself.

It wasn’t that far to go, but once I made my move, I was committed. My hands felt along the girder, looking for a weapon, knowing it was useless—this was a shark, not another convict. But I was helpless against my conditioning.

I found something … something sharp. I let myself float toward the surface, trying to keep my back against the girder. The shark whirled and came at me. I raised my hand to stab, but I was moving in slow motion and …

The shark was gone. I was in a tunnel. Like a subway tunnel, but clean. And no tracks. I wasn’t walking, but I was moving. Like on a conveyor belt. It felt peaceful and safe.

Then I saw the light up ahead. A beautiful circle of soft, gentle, pure white light. It was very bright, but not blazing—it didn’t hurt my eyes to look at it. The circle was surrounded by pink and gold ribbons, soft and gauzy, woven-together tendrils of light, framing the entrance. A sweet, safe place. No sharks there. I heard sounds. Not … music, I don’t know what to call them. All I knew was that they were calling me.

I opened my arms to pull the sweet light toward me. Then the pink and gold ribbons turned into blinking red-and-blue neon tubing, and I knew what had been calling to me. I was raised on whore’s promises—I’d know them anywhere.

The circle of white light was small now. I braced my legs on either side of it, my hands scrambling, looking for something to fight back with. I touched a thick cord of some kind. Metal, hard plastic. I ripped it free from whatever was holding it. A whip to drive back whatever wanted me. I couldn’t see a face, but I lashed at where one should be, my legs rigid against the sides of the circle.

I hit whatever it was. Felt it connect.

The light went out.

A mask on my face. As tight as my skin. Huge flat disks over my eyes. My hands … strapped down. Some bad S&M dream? No. I knew what it was. A dream, sure. But from when I was a kid and they …

But I wasn’t a kid anymore. I could hurt people now. I reached for them, clawing.

“Pavulon!” someone yelled.

I was in a bed. In a room filled with mist. Machines ticked and beeped and purred. I tried to move my hands. No good. Nothing worked. Captured.

I willed myself to stay calm. They’d have to get close sooner or later.

“You were almost gone.” A woman’s voice. A beautiful woman, I could tell from the sound. Her voice was a polished river stone, burnished by her life.

“I …”

“There are people who want to talk to you. Can you talk?”

“Uh …”

“Just to me. Try and talk. To me only. I will not ask you questions. You ask me , yes?”

“Hospital?”

“Yes. You’re in the ICU. My name is Rose; I’m the supervisor here.”

“What time is it?”

“About eleven. Eleven at night.”

The next day? I thought. Twenty-four hours? I remembered the meeting, the … Pansy! What happened to my …? But the nurse wasn’t one of us. “What day?” I asked her.

“The twenty-first. Of September.”

What? The meet had been the last day of August . “Who wants to talk to me?” is all I asked her. My voice sounded like someone else’s.

“The police,” she said, nothing in her voice.

“I’m … arrested? That’s why I can’t move?”

“No. You cannot move because you kept … fighting. There was a tube in your throat. You tore it out. And the IVs, too. That is why we had to use the restraints.”

“What’s ‘Pavulon’?”

“Ah. I knew you had some consciousness. Pavulon is a paralytic. You kept ripping loose of the restraints, attacking … something. It was a medical risk, but, if we had not done that, you would have died.”

“What happened?” I asked her, making her the trial horse for the lie I would have to tell the cops.

“You have no recollection?”

I recollected everything that counted: who I was, and what I had to do.

“I was driving in my car,” I said softly, testing the lie. “Then I … Was it an accident?”

“We don’t know,” she said. “You were dropped off in the ER by two men. They left before anyone could question them.”

“Tired …”

“Yes. You sleep now.”

“Burke?”

“Huh?”

Two white men in cheap suits.