Andrew Vachss - Choice of Evil

“What? So this was all a—”

“I don’t have any paper because there isn’t any. Just listen to me for a minute, please? My. . . friend looked. Just like you asked. There is nothing in there.”

“Not a single—”

“Not one single organized-crime figure whose child was kidnapped and not returned. Not one, period. But my. . . friend says maybe there’s a reason for that.”

“And that would be. . .?”

“NYPD only has local records. Kidnapping, it’s a federal offense. And there’s Mafia in other cities. She said what you need is an FBI contact. They’d have a record of every kidnapping and—”

“And you just happen to have a friend who works there?”

“No,” she said, almost sadly. “I don’t. But I thought the information would be. . . helpful. I mean, at least it’s something. A new place to look. . .”

I left her sitting there. She looked like a sad little girl. In a translucent mushroom cloud of menace.

“Why would you want this information?” Wolfe asked, not playing the game the way she always did. Away from me now. Maybe forever.

“What difference does that make?” I asked her. “You’re in the business. You sell stuff. I want to buy some of it.”

“You sell stuff too. And now you’re in stuff, aren’t you?” she asked, her gray eyes empty of even a hint of warmth.

“Not what you think,” I told her. “On the square.”

“What you’re into? Or what you’re telling me?”

“What I’m telling you.”

“Is Wesley gone?” she asked me bluntly, cobra-killer eyes unblinking.

“He’s dead,” I said. Wondering if she’d take that for an answer.

“Kidnappings. Ransom paid. Child never returned. No arrests, no clearances, no nothing. And the targets are all Family members?”

“Yes.”

“Going back. . . how far?”

Damn. Wolfe was the first one to think that way. Like a hunter. “Uh, twenty years,” I said, pulling it at random.

“That’s a big search.”

“A big price, you mean. It’s computers, right? How long could it take?”

“Everything wasn’t databased back then,” she said. “They only started keeping certain records recently.”

“But kidnappings. . . that’s been federale territory since Hoover was wearing a dress.”

“Sure. But, still. . . they have to code it in by hand from those days. It may not be all done yet. And if you want—”

“I don’t care what it costs,” I told her.

She stood there facing me, hands at her sides, clenched, not giving ground. “If I find out you’re in business with Wesley, I’ll take you down myself,” she said. Then she walked away.

“This one’ll take a while to come up,” Xyla told me, her eyes deliberately averted from the screen. “I can tell by the pre-coding when the message came in.”

“How’d you learn all this stuff?” I asked her, more to kill time than anything else.

“I had to pretty much teach myself,” she said. “It’s mostly men—boys, really—who understand it. And you can’t get them to teach you much.”

“Why not?” I asked. “I don’t mean to be offensive, but you’re a pretty girl. I’d think those kids would be falling all over themselves to—”

“The opposite.” Xyla laughed. “Cyber-boys are always flexing their little muscles, you understand? Like, if I go to the beach. . . I walk by, guys show off, understand?”

“Sure.”

“Well, it’s the same thing in Cyberville. Only the muscles they have, they’re not real. I mean, I can’t bench-press four hundred pounds. But I can do anything on a computer they can do—it doesn’t take strength, just knowledge. If they give me theirs, they can’t. . . pose, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And you figured that out yourself?”

“You want to know the truth?” she asked. “A man taught me. Not computers—what I just told you. And as soon as I snapped to it, I realized I’d have to learn the cyber-stuff myself. So I did.”

I saw the screen change. “That’s—”

“It’s coming up?” she interrupted.

“Yeah.”

“See you later,” she said, walking out of the room.

The killer continued his serial. The same way. I watched it come up, then started to scroll. . . .

I had been careful to act on a Monday. Not only are reaction times typically slower on Monday mornings, it is a major “sick day” for civil servants, and late starts are also common. In addition, USA Today does not have a weekend edition, and I wanted to give the targets maximum opportunity to post their answer as directed without having to wait. A Tuesday response was impossible, and even Wednesday was unlikely. A drive to the airport would be necessary. Anyone buying USA Today from a regular newsstand might attract attention in a small town, and anyone buying on two consecutive days certainly would. Such risks must be minimized.

Obviously, this is a part of the operation where a confederate would be invaluable. But even had I not ruled this out on practical grounds, I confess that my artistic sensibilities would be offended by the appearance of collaboration with others. I refer, of course, to *internal* appearance—externally, the appearance of having confederates involved in kidnappings is, indeed, one of the critical elements of success.

The nearest airport was approximately 77 minutes, depending on road conditions. [I was not willing to make the trip during the early-morning hours, at least not until there was considerable commuter traffic. The additional investment of time was worth the cover traffic would provide.] A minimum of three hours’ absence was thus required, so Wednesday was out of the question.

Fortunately, the child was quite capable of self-entertainment. The two-day wait passed uneventfully, and I did not have to resort to the tranquilizers some of the other children had required. At the age of ten—and a highly precocious ten she was, although her school records had not so indicated—boredom plays a significant role in counter-tranquillity. I asked the child if she wanted to play with any of the dolls I had purchased, realizing, from experience, that some children would eagerly accept a new doll while others only wanted their own—something I could not assure, depending on the circumstances of the original capture. The child refused, but made no reference to any doll of her own. Perhaps she was already outgrowing such things. . . .

Common thugs have “equipment” for their crimes. I have a repertoire. This includes a working knowledge of the developmental milestones in children and their unique linguistic capacities. One must be careful, for example, never to use “tag” questions when conducting interviews. One does *not* ask a child: “It’s really nice that it has stopped raining, isn’t it?” This common lawyer’s trick requires that the responder confirm the proposition in order to answer the question: i.e., to agree that it *had*, in fact, been raining, even if the child was not aware that it had been and could observe only the fact that it is *now* not doing so. I have also learned that an engaged child is a less anxious child, and so I delicately questioned my captive to ascertain her tolerance for engagement. As it developed, she was profoundly uninterested in what I had been assured were “age-appropriate” games.

However, I did have a variety of higher-level board games on hand, ranging in difficulty. Her favorite proved to be something called Risk, a strategy-based game not intended for children her age. . . . I had added it almost as an afterthought. I explained that Risk was not really designed for only two players, and she quickly grasped the concept of playing two roles simultaneously. I was prepared to let her win a moderate number of games, balancing a child’s natural competitiveness against the need to maintain intellectual challenge for her, but it proved unnecessary: There is sufficient luck in any game which involves rolling dice so that she managed to win legitimately a number of times. I noted with interest that she did not insist on keeping score, nor did she “celebrate” her victories.