Andrew Vachss - Choice of Evil

I knew all about that.

I also knew one place I could get what I wanted. . . if Nadine’s friend was really all she said she was.

“He was a man,” Morales said, surprising me out of my thoughts.

“Who?” I asked him.

“Wesley,” Morales said, touching the brim of his hat as a goodbye. Or maybe a salute.

Driving away, I shoved in a cassette and let the blues flow over my thoughts. What’s a “man” to Morales, anyway? Someone who walked his own way, I guessed, same way Morales himself did. What was he saying, then? That this Homo Erectus guy. . . wasn’t?

It was like trying to knit a sweater from cigarette smoke. I gave it up.

The whisper-stream isn’t all lies. I’d never heard of this “Gatekeeper” the Prof had talked about, but I knew who might. Queen Thana, the voodoo priestess who had told me the truth about myself. My destiny. And, maybe because I understood she already knew—I guess I never really will know why—I told her the truth about myself, too. What happened to me when I was a little kid. First time I ever said it out loud. She told me I was a hunter. That was true—I’d been looking for a missing baby when I’d come to her, following a twisty-scary trail. She told me two more things: I had to be what I am—I could change my ways, but I couldn’t change myself. And not to come back.

After that, it all happened. I went into a house of beasts looking for a captured kid. At least, that’s what I told myself. But I went in shooting. Killing, really. The only gunfight was at the end. And if they hadn’t had guns down in that basement—where a kid was trussed up for the sacrifice, the videocams ready to turn blood into money—it would have been just killing then, too. In the exchange, they all died. Even the kid.

I’d gone into that house hunting my childhood. Not the ones who did those things to me. They were gone. I couldn’t dig them up and kill them again. But their descendants. Their heirs. Their. . . tribe. When it was done, it almost did me too. No rationalization worked. I know who killed that kid. I know it was me. I know I didn’t mean to. I know they were going to kill him anyway.

None of it helped.

For a long time, I wouldn’t touch a gun. I prayed for Wesley’s ice to come into my soul. He was my brother. We had suckled at the same poisonous breast. Only he could save me from going down into the Zero, it was pulling at me so hard.

Things happened since then. A lot of years. And the last time I held a gun in my hand, it was to protect my family. I never got to pull the trigger. Michelle was closer, and she got off first. And roared away on the back of Crystal Beth’s motorcycle as a team of feds drove a convoy of explosives toward the Hudson River.

That was 26 Federal Plaza, the giant downtown government building that houses IRS, FBI, INS—everything the New Nazis hated. That’s what Morales had been talking about. But it was just talk. Nobody really cared, not with hundreds of Hitler-worshippers in prison. . . and the plot to make Oklahoma City look like a pipe bomb defused.

I was rambling. Not out loud—that would have scared me. But in my head, still. And I didn’t like the sound.

Queen Thana wasn’t the only witch I knew. And now I had to see if Nadine’s friend was going to bring me the offering I’d need for the other one.

“Can you stop by sometime?” Lorraine’s voice, on the phone at Mama’s, as casual as if she wanted me to pick up a bunch of forwarded mail that had piled up for me at her house.

“Sure,” is all I told her.

I hung up. Walked through the back of Mama’s kitchen into the alley, climbed in the Plymouth, and headed over to the place I still thought of as Crystal Beth’s safehouse.

I didn’t recognize the woman who answered the door downstairs, but she must have been expecting me because she forked over a folded piece of paper and slammed the door in my face.

Under a streetlight, I opened the paper. Just an address. I got back in the Plymouth.

I guess I was expecting a dyke bar, but it turned out to be a little diner—one of those aluminum-sided things—standing right off the Red Hook waterfront like a leftover from the Fifties. Inside, I could see they’d ripped out all the old fixtures and set up a bunch of wooden tables so it looked like a regular restaurant.

The crowd was dressed too good for the neighborhood, but I knew it was only a short drive from Brooklyn Heights and other trendy sections, so I wasn’t that surprised—New Yorkers are real adventurous when it comes to eating.

A woman behind the counter saw I was alone and waved her hand in the direction of some empty tables. I took the smallest one I could find—round, with a butcher-block top. I opened the menu and looked around.

I couldn’t tell what the game was. The diner was in a borderland, but the clientele was all from one side of the line. Yuppies are major consumers, but most places won’t let narcotics in the door. Mama has the same rule, and I never asked why. Could be morals, could be the untrustworthy nature of the traffickers. Or how easily homicide comes into play when you fuck with poppies or powder. It doesn’t matter. Truth is, every thief knows, it’s not for nothing they call it “dope.”

Maybe it was a restaurant for real. A waitress came over, asked if I wanted anything to drink. I asked her for some lemonade by touching it on the menu with my finger. She nodded and moved off.

Then I spotted the big guy in a corner, drawing something. I’d seen him before, in another joint. The one where I’d first met Crystal Beth. He looked over at me, like he was bored from working, giving his eyes a rest. His head moved about a quarter of an inch. I sensed someone just behind my left shoulder, but I didn’t look up.

“In the back,” a voice said.

I got up, saw the voice belonged to a stocky woman with an expressionless face.

“I’ll follow you,” I told her.

She shook her head. No.

I walked down a narrow corridor, past the restrooms, to a door marked STORAGE.

“That one,” the woman said.

It opened when I turned the knob. I stepped into an empty room. It was absolutely bare, except for a pocket door. I stood there, knowing there was a lens watching from somewhere, my hands open at my sides.

The flat door slid into the wall. I stepped through.

Lorraine was standing there. “Thanks, Trixie,” she said to the stocky woman. “You got here quick,” she said to me.

“Quick as I could,” I answered her.

Then I saw why she had called. Xyla. Sitting by herself in a corner of the room in one of those orthopedic computer chairs they have for people who spend hours in front of the screen. And the screen was huge—looked like a TV instead of a monitor. The entire wall was nothing but cyber-machinery: lights blinking, hard drives whirring, modem connections buzzing and howling. . . searching for openings.

I walked over behind Xyla’s chair. The screen in front of her was filled with numbers and letters and symbols, all strung together, like they’d turned an autistic kid loose at the keyboard.

“I got him,” Xyla said, not turning around.

“You sure?” I asked her.

“Pretty sure. I got. . . let me check. . .” She hit the keys so fast her fingers were a blur. “. . . four hundred and eighty-eight responses. But most of them were just to the addy—they couldn’t even open the message I sent, just wanted to talk, you know. He’s got his own home page now, so I figure maybe one of his fans—”

“What’s a home page?”

“A website. Like some companies have. You know: www, whatever, dot com? It’s a domain. A webmaster runs it, and it’s only devoted to one topic. We have. . .” She glanced over her shoulder at Lorraine.