Andrew Vachss - Dead and Gone

You think it’s different now? I thought to myself, but kept quiet as Brick continued:

“He’s a hit man. But not freelance. Only kills for the cause. We have it confirmed that he’s worked overseas. Trips to the U.K.—he’s a suspect in the assassination of an IRA official—and France, and Germany, for sure. Maybe others.”

“So no way they’re connected to the skinhead kids who tried to grab Gem?” I asked.

“We can’t say that,” he cautioned. “They’re not on the same level, no question. But every contract hitter has to make his bones sometime. Ruhr wasn’t any older than the kids you described when he started whacking people.”

“Sure,” I said. “Looks like he grew up Inside.” I pointed to the swastika tattooed on the side of his neck. “That’s a jailhouse job. And an old one—see how blobby the ink is?”

Brick just nodded agreement.

“And the connection to the Russians?” I asked him.

“Well, they’re not Russian Jews , so they wouldn’t be excluded, necessarily. You know, for years we’ve been hearing about a Stalinist organization, but nothing specific ever shows up.”

“You mean inside Russia?” Gem asked him.

“No. I mean, sure, there probably is something like that going on there; who knows? But I was talking about outside the country. Didn’t you ever wonder? Stalin was a bigger murderer than Hitler ever was. A greater fascist. Plus, he won. He survived it all, while Adolf snuffed himself in a bunker, sniveling to the end. How come Stalin never gets the kind of freak-worship Hitler does?”

“He wasn’t about race,” Byron said. “He was about power.”

“So?”

“So what appeals to lowlife, beady-eyed, chinless, inbred, failure-flunky trash is the idea that they’re genetically superior to the rest of us.”

“And the cream will rise to the top?”

“Sure. Once they scrape off that crust of mud.”

“This isn’t about politics,” Brick reminded us. “It’s about what a pair like Ruhr and Timmons are doing in the picture.”

“You’re going to ask around your—”

“Sure,” he told me. “But our agency’s not supposed to be working Stateside, remember? Our intel on home-grown Nazis isn’t as good as … Well, you understand what I’m saying.”

“I do,” I told him. “Thanks.”

“What’re you going to do now?” Byron asked me.

“I got places I can look, too,” I said. “But I have to go home to start.”

“How safe would that be?” Brick asked. Telling me that Byron hadn’t kept anything back from him.

“I’m dead,” I answered. Then I told them both about Morales’ message.

“That I can check,” Brick told me. “If you’re not listed as dead on the law-enforcement computers by the time I get back, I’ll get word to Byron, and …”

“I’ll reach out for you, brother,” Byron finished.

Our last night in the Governor, the window opened again. Gem was sweet and smooth about it, sliding off my limpness as if she’d finished herself, anyway.

“It happens to most people when they’re … under great stress,” she said, gently. “With you, it is the opposite, yes?”

“I … think so.”

“It’s not dissociation, is it? I mean, you know where you are and—”

“Yes. It’s just the way you described it. I can see everything I’m doing, but I can also see myself seeing it. Like I’m watching. Then a little box opens. And the more it gets filled, the bigger it gets. Until that’s all I can see.”

“That’s not like … not like the way I heard about it. From others.”

“What’s so different?”

“The trigger. As I said, some events cause so much fear that you—that people, I mean—cannot tolerate them. So they go somewhere else within themselves.”

“Sure. That’s dis—”

“Not … always. Some people can control it. So no matter what is happening to them, they are … outside it, do you understand?”

“Yeah. I do. But when I get afraid, it’s not like that.”

“Afraid? When have you been afraid?”

“My whole life.”

“I don’t mean as … a child. Recently?”

“All the time. Some times more than others, that’s all.”

“When the skinheads—?”

“Yes.”

“Even in the poolroom?”

“Even then.”

“And there was no window?”

“No. When I’m … in danger, or when I feel I might be, that’s all there is. The danger. I focus on it so tight nothing else could ever have a chance to get in.”

“But with me …?”

“It’s the … opposite of danger, I guess.”

“Those are the best words anyone has ever spoken to me,” Gem said. She kissed my neck, snuggled in against me.

She was deep into dreamless sleep in a few minutes. But I could feel her tears against my skin.

“Do you really have any leads?” Gem asked me the next morning, managing to talk with her mouth crammed full of food and sound ladylike at the same time.

“Not a lead, a person. Someone who just might be able to get me the answers. Make the connections, anyway.”

“Are you going to see this person now?”

“No. It’s not that easy. I don’t know where he is. He moves around a lot. I have to send out feelers, wait for the lines to form.”

“That is why you are going back to your home?”

“I’m not going back to New York,” I told her, watching her ocean eyes for any flicker of surprise.

“Oh?” is all she said.

“I’m not sure it’s as safe as I made it out to be, even if Morales got it done and NYPD has me down as dead. And I couldn’t look for this person I need any more efficiently from there. It all has to be done over the phone.”

“Then why did you tell—?”

“Brick? I don’t know him. It’s Byron I know. And Byron I trust.”

“But Brick did a lot to—”

“He did. And I’m grateful. I owe him, no argument. But that’s not the same as trusting him.”

“You trust Byron. And Byron trusts—”

“Byron trusts him, that’s right. And he took some real risks—”

“Lovers do incredible things for each other,” Gem said, solemnly.

“But lovers fall out,” I reminded her. “And when they do, things change.”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” I agreed. “But there’s other reasons, too.”

“What are those?”

“Brick is a pro. But even pros make mistakes. If he thinks I’m back in New York, that’s all the information anyone can get out of him. He’s an agency man. My name may trip some wires inside his shop. He has to be loyal to them. And loyal to Byron, too. I don’t want to put him in a cross. This way, it gets tight, he can tell them what he knows, and it still won’t be a problem for me.”

“So where will you go, then?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“But this room—”

“Sure. I have to leave the hotel. But that’s all. I’m going to stick around.”

“And do what?”

“Lurk.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Here’s the deal, little girl. I can look for … this person I need over the phone. And I can work that from anywhere. But I can’t be sure of finding him at all.”

“Oh.”

She went back to packing, fussing over the task long after she should have been finished. I’d been ready to go for an hour, but I didn’t say anything.

“If you cannot find this person you seek …?” she finally asked.

“Then I’m going to go back and visit those Russians.”

“Oh,” she said again, still not closing her little suitcase.

I went back to waiting.

Minutes passed before she said, “You don’t have to … lurk close by, do you?”