Andrew Vachss - Choice of Evil

I thought the feds were wasting their time. The guys they were looking for weren’t even pros themselves, so they wouldn’t be tuned in. No working pro would care if a pack of Nazi asshole amateurs went down, but the finger was marked lousy now. No matter how it played out, he was done.

I didn’t know if Lincoln was bugging Davidson for “progress-report” crap, but it wouldn’t matter. We already had his money, and Davidson wouldn’t even bother telling me about things like that.

The more I thought about it, the more I figured this Homo Erectus guy was already well away. It had only been a couple of weeks—not enough to make the fag-bashers brave again, sure—but he hadn’t done his bit for a while, so he could be anywhere.

Maybe I was right about that. Maybe it was the other stuff that brought him back. Maybe he never left.

The other stuff was copycat. It started small: A child molester just released from prison had his address published in the paper—seems he decided the only suitable housing he could find was about a hundred yards from a kids’ school. Some people paid him a visit one night. And lit a fire. It was an amateur arson, but good enough to total the house. And if the freak hadn’t moved fast, he’d have been barbecued.

I knew it wasn’t the killer’s work. So did the cops, I was sure. But the papers didn’t. And they started playing it up again.

Smart fucking move. A while back, the papers decided to do a series on the Bloods. Not the real-thing, L.A. gangsta Bloods, this was about the East Coast version—a few guys who got together in the joint, awarded themselves OG status and started talking the talk. Probably began in response to the Latin Kings and the Netas—two Hispanic gangs who formed themselves Inside for protection, the same way it always starts. But the balance had shifted. Rikers Island was more Hispanic than black now. If the Latino gangs had joined forces, they could have ruled. Naturally, that didn’t happen. When I was Upstate, it was usually black against white, with the Latins trying to stay out of the crossfire. Now it was the whites’ turn to play that role. The papers did what they usually do: interview some “spokesman” and print it all like it was gospel.

Next thing was a wave of random slashings all over the city. Usually box-cutter jobs, usually to the face. Word was that you had to cut someone to be a Blood, and all these dumb-fuck kids wanted to be in. . . so they went out slicing. And when the cops responded to the media with their usual sweep-arrest thing, they scooped a lot of nasty little weasels, but no real Bloods.

The Bloods found out the wannabes were even imitating the triangular cigarette burns that proved you were in. And so they started issuing more press releases, working the pay phones in the jailhouses to call the newspapers collect, disclaiming any responsibility for the slashings, warning the wannabes they’d be “dealt with” as soon as they came Inside. And as long as they were on the line with the press, they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to dump on their Hispanic counterparts.

So the Latin Kings demanded equal time. And the newspapers were eager to comply. Each reporter dutifully printed the usual rant about how the gangs were community-improvement and racial-pride organizations. Sure, they could be violent, if they were forced to, but their purpose wasn’t crime, it was. . . uh, you know, political.

Sure. The papers, especially the columnists, provided a perfect forum for the Bloods and the Kings to death-diss each other publicly. All the leaders ended up in total lockdown, but the slashing continued Inside. And the publicity only got more kids wanna-being.

The Mayor pledged to wipe out the new scourge, convinced that winning the last election against the lamest candidate the Democrats had come up with in half a century made him a national model for city management. Yeah. Like the ATMs in New York City strip bars are proof of our “economic revival.”

Sure enough, the cops started finding Crips too. No, not the Compton Crips. This crew was mostly crack dealers flying colors.

Perfect. Now you had Hispanic kids approaching black kids, asking, “You a Blood?” and slashing away no matter what the answer. You had some kids afraid to wear red or blue, while others proudly flew the colors without the credentials, risking attack from both sides.

So, when the freak’s house got burned down, it wasn’t a big surprise that whoever wrote to the papers bragging about doing it signed off with “HE Rules!” Not pretending to be him, just with him.

Then the gates opened again.

The first four seemed unrelated at first. A stockbroker in his twenties, a middle-aged manager of the service desk at a car dealership, an unemployed guy who lived alone but wasn’t on welfare, and a woman who had once run a day-care center on the West Coast.

They all had two things in common. Each had been shot in the head at close range, in their own home. The papers weren’t saying, but the implication was that it was the same weapon too.

The other common denominator was computers—they’d all been involved in freakish cyber-stuff.

The stockbroker and the unemployed guy were after boys, haunting the chat rooms. The manager liked little girls. They didn’t find any evidence that he did any more than collect pictures of them. He was trading the pictures too. But if the cops learned the identity of any of the kids in the photos, they weren’t saying.

The woman was looking for “models.” Said she ran an agency, and promised girls big bucks for a few hours’ work. All she wanted was teens or younger. “Hairless” was her favorite description for the merchandise. One exchange the cops pulled off her computer’s hard drive was between her and a twelve-year-old who’d already been “posing” for a year. The girl had a little sister, and was negotiating a price for her, seeing her own market value dropping with age, moving up to agent status.

This time, as soon as he spoke up, the papers didn’t wait to print what he had to say.

Impostors beware! I do not seek converts. I am a hunter, not an evangelist. Those last four were all targeted for their crimes against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. A warning here: I am well aware that two of the targets met their victims through so-called “homosexual” chat rooms. This perversion will not be tolerated. Anyone who links homosexuality to pedophilia will be dealt with. Anyone. The other two were dispatched because their conduct fuels the fires of discrimination and violence against us. Finally, no crimes are to be committed in my name. None. Should my name be linked, in any way, to an incident of violence, the perpetrators will be viewed as antithetical to my mission. For all I know, the pedophile whose house was burned was targeted because of a misperception that he was “homosexual.” I have gone to great lengths to disabuse the world of the notion that molestation of children is “homosexual” even if committed by perpetrators of the same gender as the victim. That myth is homophobic. Homophobia breeds gay-bashing. And gay-bashing now brings death. The equation is simple. The rules have been explained. Unless a public disavowal of self-identification as “homosexual” by major pedophile organizations is forthcoming within the next two weeks, escalation will occur.

So he was here. In the city. Had to be. No way to do all those close-up hits without having someplace local to disappear into.

I spent a lot of time thinking. Almost like being back Inside. Only I wasn’t thinking about getting out, I was focused on getting in. Into him.

He wasn’t a chess player, not that kind of killer. No, he played outside the lines. Made the rules. So I went outside the lines myself. Off the chessboard. Considered what nobody seemed to be thinking about: All we had was the letters. And the murders. Did it have to be a man? Or even one man? There was nothing to show one man couldn’t have done everything he’d pulled off. . . no simultaneous murders in different parts of town, nothing like that. The letters were all in the same voice. No question about that. As distinctive as a fingerprint—egotistically individualized beyond the ability of any group-composition effort, no matter how shared their rhetoric. And too concise to be group work anyway. But if he did have partners, he’d know how to keep that off the screen.