Andrew Vachss - Choice of Evil

“Me fucking too,” I told him as I forked over the money.

I was in the Plymouth, on my way back from wasting a couple of hours with a punk who said he wanted to buy three crates of guns. But he didn’t show me the cash and I sure wasn’t showing him any guns first. Reason the conversation took so long, neither of us knew if the other was ATF. He didn’t feel that way to me. Just some disturbo who wanted to talk politics and had been thrown out of too many bars, so he set himself up as a buyer and got an audience that way. Pitiful stupid loser. When the ATF did drop him, he’d shriek “Entrapment!” all the way to Leavenworth.

The cell phone throbbed next to my heart. I unholstered it, said: “What?”

“Incoming.” Xyla’s voice.

I punched the throttle.

* There was no expectation of immediate response on my part. Indeed, the voice message transmitted had provided different directions entirely:

We have your daughter. She has not been harmed in any way. This is not personal. We are professionals. Do not notify the authorities. This can be resolved very easily if you cooperate. Place an ad in the Personals column of USA Today which states: “Lost at O’Hare Airport: Saudi Arabian passport number 125689774. Repeat: 125689774. Reward for return. No questions asked.” When we see the ad, we will contact you by this same method. Any attempt to trace calls will be detected by our equipment and the subject will be terminated without further contact. You may, however, record any incoming calls so that you need not rely on your note-taking ability.

I have found that allowing the target to tape calls provides them with a measure of reassurance. Even the most cooperative of victims can be subject to attacks of nervousness, and I would not want such a mental state in those whose *precise* cooperation would be required throughout the process.

USA Today was selected because of its status as a “national” newspaper, available from a wide variety of totally anonymous outlets. The ad itself has the ring of authenticity: While I cannot be certain without hacking into the passenger manifests of various airlines—something of which I am certainly capable—logic compels the conclusion that some Saudi nationals have passed through America’s busiest airport within the two weeks or so preceding the placement of the ad. Further, because it is a common practice of contraband-traffickers to place apparently innocent ads which contain a series of numbers, those in law enforcement who scrutinize such placements on a regular basis would assume the ad I requested to be in that category, never connecting it to my actual intent.

Finally, of course, no physical contact is required for me to read the ad. . . or to read subsequent entries in that same forum.

My next task was to monitor local radio, alert to any news of the kidnapping. There was no such reference. Although I had little fear of being discovered accidentally, the thought of roaming search parties of self-righteous locals, any of whom would trade their paltry futures for a few minutes’ exposure on television, was not comforting to me. By then, the bus would have been discovered. But even had I been careless enough—and I assure you, I was not—to leave some indication of my brief presence, any bus occupied on a daily basis by a dozen or so schoolchildren would prove beyond the forensic capabilities of any local operation. In my work, I rely to some extent upon the jealousy and territoriality of local jurisdictions, and do not expect FBI involvement for a minimum of seventy-two hours. And the FBI, following its own procedures for excluding known prints, would be required to take exemplars from all of the children who habitually ride that bus. Amazing though it will sound to the uninitiated, my experience indicates that at least one of the families of the children who were not kidnapped will balk at this intrusion into their “civil rights,” thus delaying the process even further.

None of that is of any consequence.

Then he was done.

I had my mouth open to call Xyla when she walked in. Almost like she knew how long it was going to take me.

“Question coming?” she asked.

“Always has, so far,” I replied.

It took less than a minute.

>>Last address?<<

Whose address did this maniac want? Mine? Wesley’s? Wesley never had an address. The last time I’d seen him face to face, it was in an abandoned building he was using as a staging area. . . before his last strike. Was he trying to tie me to. . . No, what was the point? All this. . . information. Fuck it. I spoke to Xyla and she made it appear on the screen.

Meserole Street

My answer to his last question had been a pair of guesses. Even if I was right and he was asking about Wesley, the ice-man’s last hideout wasn’t actually on Meserole Street, it was just off the corner. But I couldn’t give you the number of the building if my life depended on it. That neighborhood probably didn’t even have a goddamned zip code.

He was getting cute now. No reason for it.

None I understood, anyway.

“Not a single one,” Wolfe said.

That was all she said. I felt. . . surrounded. We were in the no-man’s-land under the Williamsburg Bridge. Someone I didn’t recognize was standing off to one side, holding a revolver. It was pointed at the ground, but I was close enough to see his left hand on his right wrist. And that the piece was cocked. Mick was somewhere behind me. Max had always figured him for a karateka of some kind, but we’d never known for sure. Pepper was in the front seat of her car, watching, the motor running.

Me, I was alone.

Wolfe was looking at me, a glowing red neon I Don’t Trust You! sign in her gray eyes. Cold gray now.

“Can you—?”

“On what you gave me, no.”

“Then I—”

“Just give me the money,” Wolfe said.

I guessed I’d sent the killer what he wanted. When I opened the next message, he was right back. . . continuing from where he’d left off.

When I returned—allegedly from making a telephone call from some remote location—the child was munching calmly on some cookies, a glass of juice at her elbow, her face half buried in one of the books I had procured in anticipation of her stay. If the restraints bothered her in any way, it was not apparent.

“Did you call them?” she asked, looking up as casually as if I had been a legitimate member of her household who had gone out to perform some mundane task.

“I did,” I told her. “But there will be no response from them for a minimum of forty-eight hours. This whole process will take a certain amount of time.”

“How much time?” That was a reasonable question, especially from a child’s perspective. Usually, I am careful to keep the estimate quite short (bearing in mind, of course, that even the modified form of sensory deprivation attendant to keeping a captive away from all sources of natural light is sufficient to completely blur the concept of “days”), but I sensed that this child was simply asking for information, and not emotionally invested in the response.

“It could be as long as two or three weeks,” I said.

“Is it ever longer?” she asked.

I watched her eyes, aware that innocence is often a mask. Had she deduced my true calling from my prior conversation? Or was she somehow baiting me into revelation? Could she simply be curious? I decided to make no assumptions. . . .

“Why do you ask that? Do you think I have done this sort of thing before?”

“Oh, you must have,” she said, her little face perfectly serious. “You know everything about it. Nobody’s very good at something the first time they try it, are they?”

“Well,” I explained, “there is a difference between talent and skill.”