Andrew Vachss - Dead and Gone

I prayed for that click. When it came, I slipped inside and pulled the door closed behind me. There was a blur in the blackness as Max vaulted down. I felt him land next to me. Opened my hands to tell him I was …

I woke up inside Max’s temple. I recognized it right away. No disorientation. Just … weak. Sunlight slanted in through a window above me. I was under a sheet, naked. And safe, for the first time since I wrapped myself in Kevlar and went out to trade some money for a kid. I felt myself drifting off. Didn’t fight it.

Max was there when I opened my eye. I shaded that eye with my left hand, turned my head from side to side, signing “looking.” Then I pointed at myself. Max shook his head “No.” I used both hands, made the sign for opening a newspaper, moved my head to show I was scanning it. He shook his head “No” again. Then he put his fists in front of his eyes, opened them to make the sign for glasses. Thick glasses. The Mole. On his way.

I made a gesture of thanks. Max ignored it, stepping over to me, running his fingers all over my body, checking. When he pushed against any part of me, I pushed back, letting him test.

Then he moved away from me. Held his hands far apart, pointed two fingers at each other, and brought them together so they touched. I sat up. Tried the same thing. Missed by a few inches. Shook my head, concentrated. I couldn’t make the connection. I tried it again, slower. No go. One finger was closer to my body than the other. Instead of touching, they kept overlapping.

Max closed one eye. Used the other to make sure I was watching him. Then he brought his two fingers together so quickly it was like watching a vapor trail. They hit as precisely as if they’d been on rails. He pointed at me. Then at his wrist, where a watch would be if he wore one. Sure.

It would take time, but I could do it.

Max bowed slightly, disappeared.

I started to practice.

The Mole was cutting through the bandages on my head, using scissors with the lower blade in the shape of a spoon. As soon as he finished, Michelle unwrapped them, slowly.

I looked around the room. Nobody said anything.

“Do you want a mirror, honey?” Michelle asked.

“I … guess so. It’s that bad, huh?”

“It just … doesn’t look like you anymore, baby. They had to … you know, to …”

“I know.”

The mirror they handed me was a 2× magnifier. The man looking back at me had a shaven skull, crisscrossed with stitches. I knew there was a metal plate under there. Titanium, the doctors had bragged to their lab rat. The man’s left eye was hazel, with flecks of black. The right eyebrow had been shaved off. Underneath it was a weird bronze iris, marbled with yellow. The man was hollow-cheeked, pale. The top of his right ear was gone, neatly cut away. His right cheekbone was slightly indented around a small depression crosshatched with surgical staples.

My own mother wouldn’t recognize me , leaped into my thoughts. I cracked a joke to myself about how that was okay—I wouldn’t recognize her, either. A tear ran down my face. I guess the bullet had done something to the ducts. I wiped it away. Took in a deep breath, turned around.

“What happened?” I asked the Prof.

He didn’t move from the far corner, but his voice carried, a legacy from his preaching days. “The trap snapped, brother. It was a hit from the git.”

“Yeah. The kid … the one I was supposed to be buying back … he came out shooting. If it wasn’t for the wrapping, I was gone. He put a couple into me quick, knew what he was doing.”

“We couldn’t name the game until they was almost done, son. We had you on the Mole’s tracker-thing, but we had to hang back until they got into position. By the time they did that, you was already pulling in, so we got way back in the weeds. Figured we could block ’em out if they tried to get bogus and split. We heard the first shots before we could see anything. Then we started pumping back at where their truck was stashed. They scrambled. We moved in, scooped you up. One look, we knew we couldn’t handle it ourselves. So we got you over to the ER and split.”

“You didn’t drive all the way back into Manhattan?” I asked, avoiding what I needed to know.

“No way. We went straight to Lincoln. I don’t know why they transferred you over to the other place. Maybe they had some special stuff over there.…”

“But you found out where I was?”

“Sure. Wasn’t that hard. My boy Clarence knows half the damn nurses in the city.”

“When it was going down … could you tell how many there were?”

“The one guy who went over to get the money, he was the boss. There was at least two more in the truck they had, besides that kid.”

“They were good, too. I got hit a few times, even in the dark.”

“They came to kill, not to fight,” Clarence said, his island-voice blue with contempt. “When my father cut loose with his scattergun, they did not even return fire. If it was not for that one boss, they wouldn’t have even come over and—”

“—tried to finish me.”

“Yes, mahn. My father didn’t hit any of them—too far away for his weapon. But one I took, for sure.”

“Did they—?”

“Motherfuckers picked up their dead,” the Prof cut in, knowing what I wanted. “Pros. When we got there, their truck was flying out. We only had the one car, and we needed to get yours out of there, too. Plus, we had to get you to the hospital.”

“But you took …?”

“We took your dog, honeyboy. We wouldn’t leave her there. You know that,” he said gently.

“Where is she?”

“She is with us,” the Mole said. Meaning: buried in his junkyard.

“We got your car stashed,” the Prof cut in quickly. “And Clarence and I got into your crib, pulled out a bunch of your stuff. I don’t think the cops know about it, but …”

“You did the right thing. How much longer were you going to wait?”

“Before what?”

“Before you came and busted me out of that place.”

“Bro, we had no way to go. We knew where you was, but the place was crawling with cops. Nothing on the news. We didn’t know how to play it. I mean … maybe you wasn’t in no shape to be getting out; maybe you needed some more … work, whatever. And they couldn’t hold you forever, we figured.”

“I played it like I lost my memory,” I told them all.

“Yes, honey, we know,” Michelle said. “That ugly brute of a cop, Morales? He came into Mama’s one night. Told her: ‘I went to visit this guy in the hospital. Thought I knew him. Guy named Burke. But he didn’t know me. Didn’t know himself. Got some memory problem. From being shot in the head and all. I don’t know when he’s going to get better. But he’s real weak now … no condition to travel.’ So we knew what the score was. All we could do was wait.”

“They were waiting, too,” I told her. “For you. For any of you. Now we have to see what they do.”

“What can they do, bro?”

“They can play it straight, like I’m a patient with amnesia who walked away from the hospital. It won’t make America’s Most Wanted or anything, but it’d be good enough for the local news.”

“It’s been—”

“I know,” I said. “Max told me. Blank. So they’re playing it like they know the amnesia thing was just shining them on. But so what? There’s no bodies up there in the Bronx—nothing to want me for. And nobody followed me here.…”

That last was a question, and they all knew it. I’d done my best to check for tags, but I wasn’t sharp when I made my break. And part of me knew I’d done wrong—if I brought the law to where Max kept his family, it was something that couldn’t be fixed with a moving van.