Andrew Vachss - Dead and Gone

I never thought of him by a name. Never thought of him as a person. He was always the Mentor to me. More than fifteen years ago, when I first met him. A little boy had been raped by a maggot in a clown suit. Someone had taken a Polaroid of it—and the child believed his soul had been captured. A witch named Strega hired me to get it back. I went down one tunnel after another, looking. And ended up in a junkyard bunker in the South Bronx.

“Mole,” I said, “I’ve got a picture I need to find. The way it was taken, Polaroid camera and all, it had to be for sale. If it goes in a magazine, then it’s in the stream of commerce and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

He looked up, listening the way he always does—silently .

“But I don’t think that’s the deal,” I told him. “I think it was taken for a collector—a private thing. If they put it in a magazine, someone could see it. Cause a lot of problems. I need some freak who gets off looking at this stuff. You understand? Someone who’s got shoeboxes full of pictures like that.”

The Mole nodded, not arguing with my logic. So far .

“So I need to talk to a collector, ” I went on. “A serious, hardcore pedophile. Someone with the money to buy things like this. This is a no-consent picture, understand? The freaks might trade copies back and forth, but this one would be too risky for general commerce.”

“I don’t know anyone like that.”

“Mole,” I said, keeping my voice level, “you have friends. Associates, anyway. People I did some work for a couple of times. When we first met.” No point mentioning names—they were all part of some wet-work group .

The Mole turned so he was facing me. “So?”

I was fast-talking now, knowing the door wouldn’t stay open long .

“So they have to keep files on freaks like that. Blackmail, whatever. They have to know what’s going down on the international scene—know who the players are. I know they don’t do law-enforcement or vice-squad stuff , but information … that’s something all the services want. Anything to give them a leg up … a handle.”

We made our deal. It took a while to set up, and I had to let the Mole come with me, but it finally went down .

A limestone-front townhouse just off Fifth Avenue, three stories high, level with the rest of the buildings on the block. Maybe thirty-five feet wide. A seven-figure piece of property in that neighborhood, easy. Four steps took us to a teak door, set behind a wrought-iron grating. The Mole’s stubby finger found the mother-of-pearl button, pushed it once .

We didn’t have long to wait. The teak door opened. A man was standing there, waiting. You don’t need a peephole when you have a couple of hundred pounds of iron between you and whoever’s at the door. I couldn’t see into the dark interior. The man at the door was tall and slender, both hands in the pockets of what looked like a smoking jacket .

“Yes?” he asked .

“Moishe Nineteen,” the Mole said .

“Please step back,” said the man. He had a semi-British accent, as if he’d been born here but gone to prep school over there or something .

The Mole and I stepped back so the iron grate could swing out .

We walked past the man inside, waited while he bolted the grate shut and closed the door. We were in a rectangular room, much longer than it was wide. The floor was highly polished dark wood, setting off overstuffed Victorian furniture, upholstered in a blue-and-white floral pattern. Only one light burned off to the side, flickering like it was gas instead of electricity .

“May I take your coats?” the man said, opening a closet just past the entranceway .

I shook my head “No.” The Mole wasn’t wearing anything over his jumpsuit .

“Please …” the man said, languidly waving his hand to say we should go up the stairs before him. I went first, the Mole right behind me. We were breaking all the rules for this human .

“To your right,” I heard him say. I turned into a big room that looked smaller because it was so stuffed with things. A huge desk dominated the space, standing on thick carved claws at each corner. An Oriental rug covered most of the floor—it had a royal-blue background with a red-and-white design running from the center and blending into the borders. A fireplace was against one wall, birch logs crackling in a marble cage. The windows were covered with heavy velvet drapes the same royal blue as the rug. Everything was out of the past—except for a glowing amber video terminal on a butcher-block table parallel to the desk .

“Please sit anywhere,” the man said, waving one arm to display the options as he seated himself behind the big desk. I took a heavy armchair upholstered in dark tufted leather. A large flat glass ashtray was on a bronze metal stand next to the chair. The Mole sat on the floor, blocking the door with his bulk, putting his satchel on the ground. He looked from the man to where I was sitting, making it clear that we had an agreement and he expected me to honor it. Then he pulled out a sheaf of papers and started to study some of his calculations—taking himself somewhere else .

“Now, then,” said the man, folding his hands in front of him on the desk. “May I offer you some refreshment? Coffee? Some excellent sherry?”

I shook my head. The Mole never looked up .

“A beer perhaps?”

“No,” I told him. I’d made a deal not to do anything to him, not even to threaten him, but I didn’t have to pretend I was his pal .

The man reached for a cut-glass decanter on his desk. Something that looked like a silver leaf dangled from just below the neck of the bottle, attached by a silver chain. He poured himself a wineglass of dark liquid from the bottle, held the glass up to the light from the fireplace, took a small sip. If he was any calmer he would have fallen asleep .

It was hard to make out his features in the dim light. I could see he was very thin, balding on top, with thick dark hair around the sides of his head. Heavy eyebrows jutted from his skull, hooding his eyes. The face was wide at the top, narrowing down to a small chin—a triangular shape. His lips were thin. His fingers were long and tapered, with a faint sheen of clear polish on the nails .

“Now,” he said, taking a sip from his glass, “how may I help you, Mr.…”

“I’m looking for a picture,” I told him, ignoring the request for my name. “A picture of a kid.”

“And you think I have this picture?” he asked, his heavy eyebrows lifting .

I shrugged. I should be so lucky. “No. But I hope you can tell me about that kind of thing in general. Give me an idea where to look.”

“I see. Tell me about this picture.”

“A picture of a kid. Little chubby blond-haired boy. About six years old.”

The man sat behind his desk, patiently waiting, making it clear I hadn’t told him enough .

“A sex picture,” I said .

“Um …” he mumbled. “Not such an unusual picture. Little boys in love do things like that.”

Something burned inside my chest. I felt the Mole’s eyes on me, got it under control, stuck a cigarette in my mouth, my teeth almost meeting in the filter. “Who would have a picture like that?” I asked him .

“Oh, just about anyone. It all depends on why the picture was taken.”

“Why?”

The man made a tent of his fingers, his semi-Bri t accent making him sound like a teacher. “If the picture was taken by his mentor, then it wouldn’t be circulated commercially, you understand?”