Andrew Vachss: Choice of Evil

For Richard Soney Allen

uncaged, finally

and for

Leslie Haines

who hauled the weight until she saw the sun, finally

Acclaim for ANDREW VACHSS

“Vachss’s reverence for storytelling is evident in the blunt beauty of his language.”

— Chicago Sun-Times

“From the unusual opening to the last page, Choice of Evil is absolutely original, strange, and just plain ole creepy. This is the best Burke adventure yet, and not to be missed.”

—Joe R. Lansdale, author of Rumble Tumble

“Vachss crafted a taut narrative of supernatural suspense. . . . Decompressing from this novel is a complex matter of sorting through issues and reactions. Most readers’ lives will never be quite this gritty. But transporting you to the unfamiliar, to the startling and reorienting, is really what good art’s all about.”

— LOCUS

“Andrew Vachss continues to write the most provocative novels around. His sentences fall like arrow-showers. In Choice of Evil, he ratchets up the suspense by confronting Burke with perhaps the worst and most complex villain to date.”

—Martha Grimes

“Thrilling. . . . Perhaps because Vachss considers it one of an artist’s duties to show us that which we don’t necessarily want to see, he shines a light unflinchingly into the monster’s heart, unafraid to go on record with his simple, profound thoughts on this world’s horrors.”

— Citybooks

“Andrew is one of the best writers, and Burke one of the greatest characters, of late twentieth century fiction. Choice of Evil is a tour-de-force in the grimmest sense of the phrase. Andrew’s ability to focus his spot-beams on the bleakest aspects of human nature has never been more intense.”

—Alan Grant, author of The Bogie Man

“Vachss seems bottomlessly knowledgeable about the depth and variety of human twistedness.”

— The New York Times

“Andrew Vachss has become a cult favorite, and for good reason.”

— Cosmopolitan

“[Vachss is] able to wring edginess from his portrayal of a society hovering beneath the reader.”

— The Village Voice

“[Vachss] does to pimps, pederasts, snuff film makers and porn industry purveyors what you know he’d like to do in real life, but seldom can. In other words, he decimates them.”

— The Detroit News

“Burke is the toughest talking first person narrator since Mike Hammer.”

— Los Angeles Times

I nosed the Plymouth carefully around the corner, checking the street the way I always do when I’m heading home. The garage I use is cut into the closed-off base of an old twine factory, converted into upscale lofts years ago. Above the designer-massaged floor-through apartments is what the yuppie occupants think is crawl space. That’s where I live.

A pal had tapped into their electricity lines and installed a stainless-steel sink-and-toilet combo. A fiberglass stall shower, a two-burner hot plate, a duct to the heating pipes below. . . and it turned into my home.

I’ve lived there for years, thanks to a deal I made with the landlord. His son got himself into a jackpot—an easy enough feat for a punk who thought ratting out his rich dope-dealing friends was a fun hobby—and ended up in the Witness Protection Program. I stumbled across him while I was looking for someone else, and I traded my silence for a special brand of rent control. Didn’t cost the landlord a penny, but it bought his punk kid an anonymous life. And safe harbor for me.

Some of my life is in that building. And when I saw the pack of blue-and-white NYPD squad cars surrounding the back entrance, I knew that part of it was over.

I just sat there and took it. The way I always do—fear and rage dancing inside me, nothing showing on my face. I’ve had a lot of practice, from the hospital where my whore of a mother dropped me—dropped me out of her, I mean—to the orphanage to the foster homes to the juvenile joints to prison to that war in Africa to prison again and. . . all of it.

It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing did. Somebody had dimed me out. And the cops would find enough felony evidence up there to put me back Inside forever once they connected it up.

I watched the cops carry Pansy out on a litter, straining under the huge beast’s weight. Pansy’s my dog. My partner, not my pet. A Neapolitan mastiff, direct descendant of the original war dogs who crossed the Alps with Hannibal. I had dreamed of having my own dog every night in prison. They’d taken my beloved little terrier from me when I was a kid, that lying swine of a juvenile-court judge promising me there’d be another puppy in the foster home they were sentencing me to. I remember the court officer laughing then, but I didn’t get the joke until they dropped me off. There was no pup there, and I had to do the time alone, without anyone who loved me.

I never saw my dog again, but I did see that court officer. It was more than twenty years later, and he didn’t recognize me. When I was done, nobody would recognize him either. That’s the way I was then. I’m not the same now. But I’ve only changed my ways, not my heart.

I’d raised Pansy from a pup. Weaned her myself. She would die for me. And it looked like she had. Standing up all the way. She’d never let another human being into my place when I wasn’t there.

I said goodbye the way we do down here—promising her vengeance. I was using the little monocular I always carry to get a close-up when the screen shifted focus: I saw Pansy stir on the litter. She was still alive. The cops must have waited for the EMS Unit—they carry tranquilizer guns. So I didn’t need the badge numbers of the cops anymore—I needed my dog back. I U-turned the Plymouth slow and smooth and aimed it toward a place where I could make plans.

“Honey, I called around for hours. We know where she is,” Michelle said, her lustrous eyes shining, reflecting the pain in me. She’s my sister—my pain is hers.

“Where?”

“The new shelter. The one in Hunter’s Point, just across the river? In Long Island City.”

“Yeah, I heard about it. It’s private, right? Part of the fucking Mayor’s giveaway plan.”

“Baby, relax, okay? Crystal Beth ran over there the second I called her. It could get a little stupid. . . Pansy’s got no license, no papers. . . but Crystal knows how to act. Just sit tight, and—”

“When did she leave?”

“Honey, stop. You’re scaring me. She’s been gone almost. . . three hours now. You don’t expect her to haul that monster on the back of her motorcycle, do you?”

“I don’t care how she—”

Michelle put her hand on my forearm, willing me to centered calmness, reminding me of all the years I’d invested in learning the path to that place.

“Can you get Max for me?” I asked Mama. She’d been hovering nearby since the minute I’d come in.

“Sure. Get Max. Come soon, okay?”

I just nodded.

“Burke, you don’t need Max for this,” Michelle told me. “Jesus! It’s not like they’re gonna care, right? So she doesn’t have a license. So Crystal Beth has to pay a fine. . . or what ever. It won’t take long. . . .”

I stayed inside myself, waiting. Felt Crystal Beth’s small hand on my shoulder before I heard her approach. Smelled her orchid-and-dark-tobacco scent. Didn’t move. She came around the table and sat down across from me.