Andrew Vachss - Dead and Gone

“Why would you tell me this?” I asked her.

“To be fair. I know about you.”

“What could you know?”

“My … people, in New York, they say you are a man for hire.”

“Even if that were so—”

“But here, you are hunting for yourself. This is personal, not professional.”

“Why do you say?”

“Because of what you do not say. About money.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You hired me. I am a woman for hire, and you hired me. But you never discussed the price of my services. As if it did not matter to you. So either you are concerned only with your target, or you plan to cheat me. Or dispose of me.”

“You’re pretty relaxed for someone who’d even consider that last … thing.”

“All my life, I have had only minutes—minutes at the most—to make decisions about people. One day I will be wrong. That day I will die.”

“Is that … I don’t know, Buddhism or something?”

“It is the Zen of violence. It has no logic, only essence. There are no computations, no calculations. No facts. Therefore, no theories.”

“It sounds dangerous.”

“No. It is a total thing. Do you know the fear of not knowing? Do you understand the terror of being utterly without power, in the hands of those who might use you, might hurt you, might kill you … might do … anything?”

I looked at her, saw trace lightning the color of iodine flash in her black eyes. “Yeah, I do know,” is all I said.

“Yes,” she said, accepting my answer as truth. “So you do not wait for decisions to be made by others. You act . If you succeed, you hold the power of your decision. If you fail, you die. It is the only way.”

“The Tao?”

“If you like. The Way is not one way. We are born into this world differently, one from the other. There is no fate. No destiny. There is only random chance. When you act, you alter that randomness. It may be for your good; it may be for your death. But it is better to make the decisions for yourself. No matter the outcome, the fear is gone.”

“Fear is the key,” I told Gem later that night as she sat lotus-positioned on the carpet, a plain white tablet on her thighs. “Controlled fear. We have to spook them enough to get them out in the open, but not so much that they take off.”

“What they do not know, then?”

“Yeah, that’s the way I figure it, too. If we address it right to the drop box, they’ll know we have at least that much.”

“Do you know what you want to say?”

It was another hour before it was done. Gem worked silently, setting up her gear with the practiced, careful movements of a bomb-maker. First she sprayed some cleanser on the surface of the desk and wiped it vigorously with a silk scarf. “Formica,” she said, in a satisfied tone. “No fiber transfer.” She coated her hands with a trace of talcum powder and slipped on a pair of surgeon’s gloves. Next she took out a factory-sealed box of typing paper, opened it along one seam with a single-edged razor blade, and took out a sheet. She wrote quickly and precisely, using a cheap roller-ball pen, the kind they sell a few million of every year. “Purchased in Corpus Christi, Texas, about two years ago,” she said when she saw me looking at the English version she had copied from.

Gem’s handwriting was more like printing, only the slight serif on some letters and the right-hand slant hinting at individualism.

Sergei & Sophia–

Dmitri is dead. You are connected to this through the boy. There is danger for you. Dmitri kept records. For your own safety, we must meet. I will be in O’Bryant Square at the corner of Park and Washington on Monday afternoon, at 2:00 p.m. I will be wearing a bright-red jacket .

It was signed “Your Friend.”

Gem picked up a small can of compressed air. She sprayed the single sheet of paper thoroughly, using the gentle sweeping motion of a graffiti tagger, then folded it precisely in thirds. Next she opened a new packet of manila-colored Monarch-size envelopes—I could see they were the self-sealing type—and addressed one carefully. Then she inserted the letter, peeled off the strip to expose the adhesive, and rubbed her gloved thumb along the seam to make sure the seal was tight. The stamp came from a roll; a stick-on.

Gem slid the stamped, addressed envelope into a Ziploc bag and sealed it.

“If we mail it today—Tuesday—they will get it on Friday at the latest. That still gives us Saturday as a fail-safe.”

“If they check their box every day,” I reminded her.

She shrugged. I knew what that meant: they would or they wouldn’t—it was out of her hands. And there was always another Monday.

Later that day, I stood very close to Gem, holding the mailbox slot open and shielding her as she made the Ziploc spit out its contents.

“Do you know this town?” I asked her.

“Why? What is it that you need?”

“Unless you brought a red coat with you, it’s what you need.”

A smile played across her face. “I love shopping,” she said.

We found her a brilliant red coat—a hunter’s jacket, the guy in the store told her. She also found a pair of lace-up boots she fancied. And some other stuff.

We had a late lunch with Byron at a little restaurant he knew about. He held his lips in a whistling position as he watched Gem eat, but no sound came out.

“So you figure on me coming back no later than Sunday morning, okay?” he said.

“Perfect. Thanks.”

“Sure. Tell you what—drive me out to where I’ve got the limo stashed. I’ll take it back to Seattle; you keep the hot rod until I get back. The suite’s covered, no worries there.”

“You want me to meet you at the airport Sunday?”

“No need. There’s always plenty of cabs around at PDX. And that way, there won’t be any phone calls.”

“Speaking of …”

“How many you want?”

I spent the next couple of days prowling Portland. Knowing I didn’t have enough time to really learn the streets, but wanting to get a sense of the terrain. I’d checked the plaza where we’d set the meet—it was only a few blocks from the hotel—and I knew it couldn’t be boxed without a damn regiment standing by. The hotel was my trump—a place to duck into where I could just disappear.

Anyone interested might check the lobby, but no way the hotel was going to stand for a room-to-room unless it was the police asking. Whoever they might be considering for backup, I was sure the Russians weren’t bringing the law.

Gem always passed on coming along with me. Said she had some things to do. Sometimes she was there when I got back, sometimes she wasn’t. She must have found a greengrocer nearby—the living room smelled like a fruit stand from all the produce she had stacked in various spots. Refrigeration wasn’t a problem; Gem ate everything she scored the same day she brought it back. She asked me once if I wanted some pomegranates. I played along and told her no thanks. She ate them all, neatly and completely.

My first day of prowling turned up a bakery a few blocks away. A good one, from the smells. Picked out a half-dozen pastries. Plump ones, oozing with custard and cream. Gem gave me a sly smile and a wink, as if I’d just bribed her. And a tiny trace of a wiggle as she pranced over to the desk to arrange the pastries in a neat, precise row.

She washed them all down with hits from a huge bottle of water, talking between bites.

“You are in danger?” she asked.

“Yeah. I just don’t know from who.”

“But the people I am to meet—they will know?”

“They’ll know something. Maybe the solution to the puzzle, maybe just another piece of it.”