Andrew Vachss - Choice of Evil

I didn’t like what I did.

When I got to Davidson’s office, he had the cash waiting. I asked him if he’d heard anything from the cops. It took him about ten minutes to say “No.”

I got on the drums and sent word out to the Prof. I couldn’t get him to pack a cellular except when we were working a job, but I had years of experience finding him even when he was homeless-by-choice, so I wasn’t worried—he’d connect up sooner or later.

No point calling Wolfe. When she had the stuff, she’d get it to me.

So I drove back over to Mama’s to wait for word from Lorraine.

When I came through the back door and saw Mama wasn’t at her register, I knew Max was around someplace, probably in the basement. One of the waiters brought me a covered tureen of hot-and-sour soup, not saying a word. I know most of them by face, and that’s enough to get me through the door even if Mama isn’t there to vouch for me, but they treat me like I’m invisible anyway. I was getting the soup because they knew Mama believed I had to have some every time I entered the joint, but I could fucking well serve myself. . . . At least that’s how I translated the Cantonese he mumbled as he put the stuff in front of me.

Fine. I was on my third bowl—the house minimum—when Mama and Max came upstairs. I bowed a greeting to each of them. Mama sat down beside me as Max took the opposite bench.

I signed as much as I knew of what was going on to Max. I spoke the words too—I know Max can read lips, I just never know how much he’s getting.

Max looked pointedly at Mama. She snapped her fingers and barked something. Could have been Mandarin, Lao, Vietnamese, Tagalog—she speaks a ton of Asian languages I can’t even distinguish, and pretty good French and Spanish as well. A pair of her so-called waiters popped out of the back to clear the table. Then they wiped it down scrupulously, not the way they usually do. One of them brought out a black linen tablecloth and snapped it out over the surface. Then they vanished.

From inside his coat, Max took a small metal bowl with a faint yellowish tinge. He placed it carefully on the table between us. Next, he took a thick wooden stick shaped something like a pestle and struck the edge of the bowl as if it was a gong. Then he whisked the stick around the perimeter. A sound like I’d never heard vibrated in the air. It. . . stayed there, drawing me into it. The only way I can describe it, it was like I got when I looked into the red dot I had painted on my mirror. Outside myself. Away. Dissociating the way I’d learned to when I was a kid. When I couldn’t run from the pain. Where I go is the place where I think. About things I couldn’t if I was. . . here.

I pointed at the bowl, made a “What is this?” gesture.

Max held up both his hands, one spread out full, the other with just two fingers showing. Seven. Then he took out a quarter and tapped it, making the sign for “seven” again.

Then he made a hand-washing gesture. The sign for mixing, melding, blending. . .

“It’s made up of seven different metals?” I asked aloud.

“Yes,” Mama said. “Called ‘singing bowl.’ Very sacred. From. . .” She hesitated, catching a warning look from Max. “Tibet,” she finished.

I understood that part. Mama’s Chinese. Mandarin Chinese. She can trace her ancestors back to way before Christ, or so she says. In fact, she can trace any goddamned thing to her ancestors, from gunpowder to telescopes. It’s not political with her. She fled to Taiwan a long time ago, and she thinks the Chinese government—Mao Chinese, she calls them—are the scum of the planet.

Everyone takes Max for Chinese, but he’s not. He’s a Mongol, from Tibet. Something happened to him there when he was a kid. He wasn’t born deaf. He showed me once how they made him deaf, and it makes me sick to even see it in my mind. I don’t know if Max can’t speak, or he just refuses to—I never asked. He goes along with the game that he’s Chinese because Mama took him for her son. Mama wants to claim that it was the Chinese who invented haiku, that’s okay with Max. She wants to say Max’s daughter Flower is pure Mandarin, hell, royal Mandarin, no problem. But he was damn well going to claim this “singing bowl” for his own country. . . and Mama got it.

He handed me the bowl, showed me how to strike it, guided my hand in smooth whisks around the rim until I could make it sing too. Then he bowed and handed it to me. A gift.

I held it in my hand, still feeling it vibrate faintly. I could feel its age and its power. And I knew why my brother had given it to me.

I put it aside and we started to play casino. Max was into me for another ten grand by the time the Prof breezed in the front, Clarence in tow.

“What’s up, Schoolboy?” the Prof greeted me. “I know you been looking and cooking—the wire’s been on fire.”

I brought him up to date, even down to what Mama had been saying. . . or not saying.

“Can’t be.” The little man dismissed it with a wave of his hand.

I just shrugged.

“Why you doing this anyway, son?” the Prof asked.

“Fifty large. Paid up front. No refunds.”

“Cool. But why try ? The sting’s the thing.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’s all. . . connected, right?”

“How could this be connected, mahn?” Clarence, speaking for the first time.

“Whoever killed Crystal Beth, they were killing queers, far as they knew, right?”

“That’s what it say in the papers,” the young man replied, tone telling what he thought of that source.

“The next thing happens,” I said, ignoring his tone, “is that this ‘Homo Erectus’ guy starts killing them . . . fag-bashers, right?”

“That deal is real,” the Prof put in. “Man is taking heads, and dead is dead.”

“Okay, so the cops, maybe they thought I was involved. Some of them, anyway. But they know better now. . . even though I still think I could get rousted if they need headlines bad enough. But, if he could kill all of them, he’d get the ones who killed Crystal Beth in the bargain, right?”

“Bro, you too dense to make sense. He was gonna do all that, your move is: Get out the way, let him play.”

“Sure. But the people who hired me to find him, they don’t want to turn him in, they want to help him get away.”

“Maybe the boss plans a cross,” the Prof said.

“You mean. . . play for the reward? Nah. He’s already out a hundred G’s—Davidson got half.”

“Not for money. Who knows, bro? Everybody got game, but it ain’t all the same.”

Nadine flashed in my mind. I just nodded.

“I’m gonna meet someone,” I told them all. “Meet her right here. I think I got a way now.” Then I showed them the picture of the little dinosaur thing.

“What’s that?” Clarence asked.

“I don’t know. Not exactly, anyway. But I know who will.”

“Want to go for a ride, honey?” I spoke into the cellular.

“You mean. . . work?” Michelle asked, clearly less than excited about the prospect.

“I’m gonna visit an old pal. Thought you might like to tag along.”

“Someone I know?”

“No question about that, girl. I guess what everyone wonders is, how well you—”

“That’s enough of your smart mouth, mister. I’ll be ready in forty-five minutes.”

“Forty-five minutes? I’m just down the block. Come on. I’ll meet you out front in—”

“Forty-five minutes, you gorilla. Not one second sooner. I am not going anywhere dressed like this. Go amuse yourself or something.”

Then she hung up on me.

Aargh. I slammed in a forty-five-minute cassette, lay back, slitted my eyes against the midday glare, and let the music take me to someplace else. The Brooklyn Blues. East Coast doo-wop. The Aquatones’ classic “You” set the scene. . . and the river was flowing deep into “Darling Lorraine” by the Knockouts when I came to. Checked my watch. . . perfect.