Andrew Vachss - Choice of Evil

Sally Lou had gone down around the same time Mortay did, all part of that same horror show that cost me my love and launched Wesley on his last rampage.

A lot of thoughts. But all I said to Strega was: “Yeah.”

“Well, Sally Lou was one of the ones who saw it. But LaMarca never turned it over. So Sally Lou, he asked around; like, what was the guy up to, right? And that’s when the word came back. He had a daughter. So they put it together. The filthy slime. He was—”

“I know,” I said, stroking her hair. “What happened to her? To the daughter?”

“Nobody knows,” Strega said.

Meaning she didn’t. But she knew everything else. And her answer to my next question was the last tile dropping into the mosaic. I could read it then, even through the haze of blood.

“It was almost fifteen years ago,” Wolfe said quietly. “September twenty-seventh, nineteen eighty-four.”

“I got him now,” I told her.

“You’re really working this?” she asked, disbelief the strongest element in her voice.

“I’m not a good liar,” I lied. “There’s nothing more for you to do. You got paid. We’re square. You think what you want about me. Make your judgments. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about it.”

“Why ‘maybe’?”

“I think you know,” I told her. “I think you’ve always known. You don’t want. . . me. I got that. I’m doing this for me. The way I do everything, right? For me, that’s what you think. But you had me wrong, and one day you’ll know that. Even if I don’t tell you myself.”

“Burke. . . wait!”

I just kept walking.

“Write it down on a piece of paper,” Xyla told me. “I can’t tell how to spell it from what you’re saying. And what if you’re—”

Her mouth popped open as her computer screen shifted.

>>name?<<

was all it said. And

gutterball felestrone. 50-50

is all she typed back.

“He did find me,” Xyla said. “Christ, he’s good. I could never have found him.”

“I did,” I told her. “Get ready. He’s going to come back. And pretty soon, I think.”

I guess he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t miss it. Gutterball’s last meal had been in his favorite restaurant, a mob joint deep in what of Little Italy still survived the all-borders Chinatown encroachment. Nobody walked in there and blasted him, but someone had gotten into the kitchen. Gutterball was dead before the EMS ambulance managed to bull its way through the clogged streets. Gutterball always had the same thing: spaghetti and sausage with oregano-laced sauce—gravy, he called it. The newspapers had all that. The autopsy report was made public. The sauce had a little extra spice in it, that night. “Enough ricin to kill a regiment,” the pathologist was quoted as saying. “After the first swallow, he never had a chance.”

“Would it be a true death?” I asked the woman. Her office was jumbled and serene at the same time. She had no desk, just a couple of easy chairs and a couch. No computer screen, not even a file cabinet.

“It. . . could. Do you know if there were any others?”

“No.”

“Do you know—?”

“I told you everything,” I said. “Everything I know. Doc said you’re the best there is. At. . . this stuff.”

She flashed a smile. “This ‘stuff,’ as you call it, is. . . variable. That is, it depends on so many things. From what you told me, all I can say is that it could be. But only if the subject felt completely, totally safe.”

“Safe? I don’t get it. I mean—”

“It would be a true death only if the dead person never came back—that is what you’re asking, isn’t it? And I’m giving you the best answer I can. As long as the. . . environment was safe, really truly safe. . . if the. . . original conditions never resurfaced, then, yes, it could be a ‘true death,’ as you put it.”

“How do you know he’ll—?”

“I don’t,” I told Lorraine. “But I have to be ready in case he does.”

“And you’re sure he’s the one who—?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll get a cot put in here,” she said. “The bathroom’s right through that door over there. You want food, just walk into the kitchen, I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks.”

“I would like to go with you,” Rusty said quietly. I hadn’t even noticed him before he spoke.

“It can’t work like that,” I replied, bowing slightly to show my respect for what he was offering.

“What kind of dog is that?” Xyla asked me.

“She’s a Neapolitan mastiff,” I told her. “Aren’t you, sweetheart?”

Pansy ignored me, watching Xyla. I saw a look pass between them. And I recognized it. “You love dogs, don’t you?” I asked Xyla.

“Oh, I do. I have a—”

“Yeah. Whatever. Listen, do not feed her, understand?”

“I wasn’t gonna—”

“Yeah, you were,” I told her. “It won’t matter. She wouldn’t take food from a stranger anyway.”

“I guess I’m busted,” she said, face reddening. It was a pretty sight in that machine-cold room, like a flower blooming at the base of a prison wall.

“I’ll call you when it’s time,” I told her, lying back on the cot and closing my eyes.

I wasn’t surprised when Xyla’s computer screen started blinking at 3:44 a.m. Sure. Let him think the machine was sitting in my house—that’s what the test was all about.

>>50-50<<

his message said. I told Xyla what to do, and she hit her keyboard:

yours $125K

Xyla was about to get up, but I put my hand on her shoulder, telling her he wasn’t done.

>>why target?<<

“He’s using ICQ,” Xyla said excitedly. “He’s there. I mean. . . somewhere. But he’s on the line.”

“He won’t stay long. Just type what I tell you.”

Cork unauthorized

His response popped up almost immediately.

>>next?<<

4 names. major money. but they want to deal direct

“What does that—?” Xyla asked.

“Ssshhh,” I told her. “He wants that too. You’ll see.”

>>understand. but no face-to-face<<

they don’t want that either. afraid

>>then?<<

want proof

>>*names* = proof<<

no. want proof he’s alive

>>*you* tell them<<

polygraph

>>understand. you know who i am?<<

think so

>>not *look* same<<

so?

>>how pass polygraph then?<<

only question: did i talk to him in person?

>>understand. you *do* know who i am.<<

yes

>>no more talk. next message, instructions for meet<<

got it

The screen flickered, glowed red, then yellow. Then Xyla’s computer just shut itself off.

“Fuck!” she snarled, flicking switches like a madwoman.

I watched her in silence. It was almost a half-hour before she pushed herself away from the computer, rolling her chair back across the room, sweat-drenched.

“He crashed it,” she said. “Thunderbolt. I’ve heard about them, but I didn’t know if they were real.”

“What’s a thunderbolt?”

“A giant spike. Electrical. It’s transmitted over the modem during ICQ. When the sender signs off, it’s activated.”

“You lost all your data?”

She gave me one of those “What are you, stupid?” looks young girls probably memorize in the cradle. “Of course not. That’s in a separate unit. I don’t leave anything connected. All he spiked out was my software. But there was a ton of that. It’s gonna take me a couple of weeks to. . .”