Andrew Vachss - Dead and Gone

“It was very bad manners on my part.”

“You were busy. Absorbed in what you were doing. And you were doing it for me , to boot.”

She swiveled her hips and draped her legs across my lap.

“You are a very forgiving man,” she said softly.

“And you’re a very sarcastic little bitch.”

“I meant it!”

“Yeah? Okay. Sorry. I just … overreact to that whole ‘forgiveness’ crap.”

“I don’t understand.”

I reached up, grabbed a fistful of her thick, glossy hair, pulled her face down so it was close to my mouth. “Is it important?” I asked her.

“To me, yes. It is very important.”

I leaned back. Gem dropped into my lap. I took my hand from her hair and put it around her shoulders. She made a little noise. Then she settled in against me, waiting.

“When I was a kid, people … did things to me,” I told her. “Ugly, vicious, evil things. But I didn’t die from any of them. When I was older, I spent some time in a war. I didn’t die from that, either. You know what they call me?”

“A man who—”

“No,” I said, cutting her off. “A ‘survivor.’ For both. And that’s wrong.”

“Why is it wrong? You did survive.…”

“No. In war, they’re supposed to try and kill you. Not in families. It’s not the same. And that stupid label, it makes us all the same.”

“Children of war and …”

“Children of the Secret. All of us who were raised by fucking beasts. Like it’s a brand we can’t shed. But we don’t all go the same way. Some of us, we … copy whatever was done to us. Some of us just hurt … ourselves. And some of us, we hunt … them.”

“So. You are one of those … hunters. And you do not forgive.”

“In therapy—the kind they give you when you’re a kid and they know you’ve been … hurt—they tell you, if you want to heal, first you have to forgive. You have to ‘let go’ of your rage.

“But you know what, little girl? When you’re a kid, when they hurt you and hurt you and fucking laugh when you cry about it, rage is your friend. It stands by you. Stays close. Carries you when you can’t walk on your own. It’s cold and clear and … clean . When everyone else is lying, it gives you the truth. And the truth is, any fucking ‘therapist’ who tells you to forgive the people who hurt you—they’re working for the enemy.”

“I have no enemy to forgive. Or to hate.”

“You’re a child of war, like you said. But your parents did their job, honey. They did their best to keep you safe. You can’t hate a whole national insanity. But tell me you wouldn’t kill Pol Pot if he was standing in front of us right this minute.”

“I … don’t know.”

“I would.”

“You? Why? You had no—”

“I’d kill them all , sweet girl. I swear I would. Every one of them.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know what to call them. Torturers, maybe. The freaks who like to play with electricity in dungeons. The gang rapists. The death-camp guards. The secret police. The mutilators. It doesn’t matter what you call them. I’d know them. Every single one. And if I could ever get them all in one place, I’d be the biggest mass murderer in the history of this planet.”

She shuddered against me. “Wouldn’t that make you as bad as—?”

“To some people. Not to anybody who counts with me.”

“Is that why you are looking for …?”

“What did you think, Gem? Somebody tried to cap me. I don’t know why, but I’ve got to figure they’ll try again.”

“They could not find you now,” she said, urgently. “You said so yourself.”

“There’s two ways to be safe, child. One is to hide. The other is to hunt. When I was a kid, I only had one way. I figure, whoever they are, they had their chance. Now I want mine.”

She pressed herself against me so hard it felt as if our clothes had melted from the heat. I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t my turn.

“I told you,” she whispered, finally. “I told you, before. Ever since I was a small child, I made decisions very quickly. I don’t wait. I am your woman now. So even though I know what you want … I will help you do it.”

After she went back downstairs—she called it “going below,” but even the sound of that made me nervous—I tried to make some decisions of my own. In my world, people deal themselves in—or out—all the time. But there’d be no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I was chasing. What I wanted was more of what Pansy had taken with her last breaths.

I didn’t know what Gem did for money, but I figured her for an outlaw—no way she’d be connected to Pao’s network otherwise. And my best guess was that the Mexicans were about as legal as angel dust. So it all came down to her backing my play because she was my woman.

I couldn’t work that part out. I guess, when Gem made decisions, she didn’t just make them quick, she made them alone.

Gem got The Oregonian on Sundays, and always picked up Willamette Week , too, an alternative paper that covered a different beat. I spent a lot of time reading them, trying to feel my way into the territory.

One day, I came across a piece about a con who stabbed another inmate. Turns out, in Oregon, you shank another guy Inside, you have to attend mandatory “anger management” classes.

I almost fell off my chair laughing. Prison stabbings have about as much to do with anger as rape does with sex. Knifings are always about a debt, or revenge, or self-defense against a rape. Or territory. Or a new guy blooding into a gang. Thing is, unless the joint is race-war tense, nobody carries all the time—it’s a sure ticket to the hole. You want to stick somebody Inside, you plan it carefully. Even though the favorite target is the back—that spot between the bottom of the ribs and the pelvis, so bone doesn’t turn the blade—you still need cover if you’re going to get away with it. And a place to toss the blade as soon as you’re done.

I’ve known prison assassins with a dozen kills and no busts. Wesley was the master. Nobody ever saw him mad. Nobody ever saw him coming, either.

The Oregonian handled straight news real well. Good combination of local and wire-service copy, although most of the coverage was about Portland, and the weather got a lot more attention than it would in New York. The Willamette Week was more about culture, and it told me one thing I filed away—Portland was a blues town, for serious.

But nothing in the personals of either one looked even remotely promising.

I went back to working the phones.

I was on the line with a guy in Detroit who said he knew a guy who knew a guy and—if I had the money—he might be able to bridge a connect for me … when one of the other cellulars buzzed. I hung up on the hustler, said:

“What?”

“Call for you, okay? Say you go Al-blue-quirk-key.”

“Albuquerque?”

“Yes. What I say. You go Thursday. Go to airport. Two o’clock afternoon, walk outside to parking lot. See big car with stripes like tiger. You wait there. Okay?”

“This Thursday, the next one coming?”

“Say, ‘You go Thursday.’ ”

“The person who called, what did he—?”

“Not man, woman. I say, ‘Who calling?’ She say: ‘Give message to Winston.’ Then say what I just say now, okay?”

“Okay, Mama. Thanks.”

I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes for a minute. Maybe it was longer. When I opened them, Gem was standing in front of me. “Can that computer of yours do airline schedules?” I asked … before she could ask me anything.