Andrew Vachss - Dead and Gone

We followed him through. And started walking again until we came to a sheer-faced rock ledge.

The Indian motioned for us to stay where we were. Then he and the dog moved off until they were out of sight.

The Latina kept checking her watch. Or, at least, looking at some dial she wore on a band around her wrist. I wasn’t near enough to see, and didn’t plan on closing the gap.

Finally, she nodded at the blonde, who stood up and said: “You’ll have to carry your own stuff now. It’s not far. And we have to keep our hands free, all right?”

“Sure,” I said. But, this time, Gem snatched her little suitcase before I had a chance.

The blonde went first, climbing on what looked like random cuts in the rock. Normally, watching a woman climb stairs is one of life’s great treats, but the muffling of her camo-suit and the fading sun’s occasional glint off her scattergun killed any of that for me. Gem was behind me, with the Latina bringing up the rear.

As we topped a ridge, I could see down into a cleft in the rocks big enough to hold a large building. And when I looked closer, that’s what it was. Like a Quonset hut, a damn big one, painted the same color as the rock formations surrounding it. The only thing that drew my eye was the antennas. There were enough of them to bring cable to a small city. All different heights and thicknesses, with a random assortment of satellite dishes as well.

“He’s in there,” the blonde said.

We had to stoop to get through the door. Inside was a small, square room, as antiseptic as a decompression chamber. The women racked their shotguns on either side of the doorway, took off their camo-suits, and stood silently, hands clasped behind their backs, like some parody of parade rest.

“Have a seat,” the Indian said, pointing to what looked like a transplanted church pew against the far wall. “He’s working on something now, but he’ll see you soon.”

“Would you like some coffee, or something to eat, while you’re waiting?” the blonde asked.

“Please!” Gem said, making it clear she was saying yes to all the above.

The Latina glared at the blonde, but she didn’t say anything.

The blonde went out of the room, came back in a few minutes with a coffeepot in one hand and a tray of fancy cookies in the other. “Just a second,” she said, and went back out again. When she returned, she had coffee cups and saucers, and plates for the cookies. Which was a good thing, since it prevented Gem from simply putting the tray in her lap and going to work on the goodies.

I passed on the coffee, but I had a couple of the cookies. “These are wonderful!” Gem told the blonde, her mouth full.

“Aren’t they? Juanita makes them.”

The Latina rewarded her with a glass-cutter look—apparently, her domestic skills were supposed to be a secret. But before she could acid-tongue a response, the Indian returned.

“You can go in now,” he said.

Gem and I both stood up. The Indian shook his head. “Just you, Burke.”

The place was a lot bigger than I’d been able to tell from the outside—a labyrinth of rooms opening off other rooms, most of them loaded with equipment: file cabinets, computers, something that looked like a giant periscope. There were people around, too, but they all seemed too busy to look up from what they were doing. I kept my eyes down, not knowing the rules. At the end of one of the long corridors was a pair of swinging doors, like saloons used to have in old Westerns. The Indian pushed through. I was right behind.

A man was seated behind what looked like a triple-size drafting table. He looked up. Studied my face for a second, and … connected. Flashing us both back to where we’d started.

Inside, it was. Not the orphanage where they’d started me off, not the juvie joints I’d graduated to. This one they called a hospital.

It was different, all right. Everything was softer. The words, I mean. They didn’t call the windowless cells “solitary.” Even padded the walls for you. And, instead of clubs, the guards carried hypos full of quiet-down juice.

My trip to the crazy house started when I was locked up for thieving. One of the look-the-other-way “counselors” said they had a new program for kids like me. I was too young to be paroled to the streets, and I had no parents, so they had these special foster homes. For kids who’d had “trouble with authority,” as he put it, not even bothering to hide the sneer.

And I was just a kid then. Foster home—it sounded pretty good to me. At least the “foster” part. I already knew what a “home” was. I’d been in a couple of them. They were the same as the institution, only they didn’t have bars on the windows.

Same rules, though: always walk light and be ready to move, fast.

I ran away from the first one they dumped me in. I probably could have stayed out forever except for some lousy luck. I was steering for a hooker, only the john turned out to be a cop. Not an undercover looking to make a bust, just a freak with a taste for pain and a badge to take it on the house. I always hung around outside the ratty hotel room where Sandi took her tricks. If it worked out good, sometimes she gave me a little extra on top of what the johns paid me for “finding” them a girl.

Of course, when Sandi wasn’t working, I switched from legit steering to mini-Murphy. I’d bring the johns to another hotel, then tell them I always held the money for my sister—she was nervous about getting robbed up there. I’d give them the room number and a key that wouldn’t fit any of the doors … and run like hell the second they started climbing the stairs to the top floor.

When I heard Sandi scream that time, I wasn’t too worried, at first. She always made noises when she worked. Told me the johns liked that. But in a minute, I knew it was for real. I was old enough to know what it sounds like when someone’s doing … the things people do to kids. This was the same. I pounded on the door, real hard, yelled, “I’m calling the cops!”

The john ripped open the door. Sandi was lying on her stomach. The back of her was all bloody. The john told me to shut the fuck up, gave me a hard slap to the face. I came up with my knife in my hand. He laughed. But when he saw I knew how to hold it, he backed up a little, being careful. I grabbed an ashtray from the dresser and threw it as hard as I could. It missed him by a mile. But it went where I aimed it—right through the window. It was only on the second floor. I heard the fat pig at the front desk yell something. The john looked like he didn’t know what to do.

Time stopped, freezing us all, until we heard footsteps pounding up the stairs.

Cops. In uniform. They took over. One of them pulled me outside the room and cuffed me. He didn’t say anything.

I could hear Sandi inside. “That’s not him,” she said. “He came in after this other guy was … doing it to me.”

“That’s your statement, miss?” one of the uniformed cops asked her.

“Yes,” she said. The door swung open and I could see inside. Sandi had a sheet wrapped around her shoulders.

“That little bastard pulled a knife on me,” the john said, pointing at me.

“I saw you—” I started to say, but a look from Sandi cut me off.

So they took me back to the institution. And, after a while, they tried me on another foster home.

That’s when it happened. That’s when they … did what they did. To me. Whenever they wanted. It was summer. No school. Nobody ever came around to check on me. I was theirs.

But no matter how bad they hurt me, I never forgot what Wesley had told me the very first time we were locked up together. One night in the dorm, we saw a kid twice our size make a little one suck his cock in the shower. “They all have to sleep sometime,” the ice-boy whispered to me.