Andrew Vachss: Safe House

This time her dark reddish hair was in two thick braids on either side of her head, tied at their tips with plain strips of rawhide. She was wearing a long red wool coat with a shawl hood. When I stood to help her off with it, I noticed it was all black on the inside. Reversible. No amateur, this one—the motorcycle hadn’t been some hippie’s idea of fun in the snow. Under the coat she had a thick goldenrod-yellow turtleneck sweater over tailored black wool slacks and short, crumple-top leather boots the same color as the sweater.

“They don’t have a menu here,” I told her. “Just tell them what you want.” Actually, they do have menus. But they’re plastic-coated and fly-specked, as disgusting-looking as the so-called food they serve citizens dumb enough to wander in here. None of those ever come back.

“Couldn’t you just order for us?”

“Sure,” I said, looking around for a waiter. The place was empty. I figured one of Mama’s thugs had already slipped around to the front and put the CLOSED sign up on the door. Then he’d arrange the dragon tapestries in the streaked window so that the red one was showing, telling the rest of the crew all they needed to know. The blue dragon meant cops, the red one meant danger. White was all-clear, but this didn’t qualify. The risk was mine. Mama’s too, but she was a volunteer. No point in giving Crystal Beth a free look at the rest of us.

Mama ambled over, snapping her fingers sharply as she moved. A waiter came out of the back with some ice water—the blue glasses were so clean they looked new.

“Can you recommend something?” I asked Mama, straight-faced.

“Recommend? You want food?”

“Yes. Food.”

“Okay. Food coming,” she said to me, barking something in waterfront Cantonese over her shoulder at the waiter.

We didn’t get the hot-and-sour soup—that was only for family. But one of the waiters unfolded a fresh white linen tablecloth over the corroded Formica, then set the table with ultra-modern Danish stainless cutlery, gleaming like it just came out of the tissue paper.

Mama checked the setup, nodded approval. The waiter brought a wild assortment of dim sum, plus some spring rolls so light the crackle of the skin was a surprise. Next there was beef in oyster sauce with disks of bok choy, some kind of lemon chicken with snow-pea pods, and fried rice with hefty chunks of crabmeat. All beautifully presented on ice-blue dishes. Mama even found a deep-purple orchid and placed it in a translucent white vase shaped like a genie’s bottle.

“It’s wonderful!” Crystal Beth exclaimed after quickly nibbling at a half-dozen different dishes.

Mama bowed, just the ghost of a smile around her mouth.

“What’s in these?” Crystal Beth asked her, holding up a half-eaten piece of spring roll.

“Big secret,” Mama said gravely. “Everything here big secret.”

“I’d keep it a secret too,” Crystal Beth assured her.

Mama bowed again, and went back to her register. The lights in the restaurant dimmed. A waiter came out and put what looked like a blue hurricane candle on the table, close to the wall. He lit the candle with a long red paper match, studying the flame until he was satisfied.

Crystal Beth chewed her food slowly, eyes on my face all the while. She didn’t say anything. The candle flickered to her left, so the dark line along her jawbone was hard to see clearly. I tried not to stare at it.

I guess that didn’t work. “It’s a tattoo,” she finally said. “You want to see it up close?”

“Yes,” I told her, surprised at my own honesty.

She turned her face all the way to her left. I moved the candle toward the center of the table and leaned over. The line came fairly straight down her jawbone, then formed a curlicue before it continued on around toward her square little chin. At the very tip it ended in what looked like a tiny crude arrowhead. I wanted to touch it, but I kept my hands flat on the tabletop.

“It looks . . . tribal,” I said.

“It is. It means I have a purpose.”

“But they did it when you were a girl, right?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I just . . . How could they know your purpose when you were a child?”

“They didn’t. But . . . they knew I would have one.”

“And that was true?”

“Oh yes. Very true.”

I returned the candle to its place near the wall. Her hands were small, the nails cut short and straight across, clear polish gleaming in the flickering light. Her face was fresh, free of makeup, deep-black pupils in her almond eyes. If she was uncomfortable not talking while she ate, she didn’t show it.

A waiter cleared the plates, slowly and ceremoniously. I didn’t know any of Mama’s people could do either one. Then he brought us each an egg cup of lemon sorbet and a small silver spoon.

“No fortune cookies?” she asked the waiter.

He gave her a blank look. That’s one thing Mama’s people were real good at.

“They don’t speak English,” I told her.

“I’m surprised this place isn’t jammed,” she said. “The food is unbelievable.”

“It’s . . . erratic,” I told her. “Cooks come and go pretty quick. This is more like a . . . school. If they get really good, they move on to one of the upscale places. Some nights, you could eat here and go right to the Emergency Room.”

That was the truth, but it had nothing to do with the food. Every once in a while some outsider checks out the hole-in-the-wall location and decides Mama’s would be a good place for a robbery. I was there when it happened the last time. A kid came in the front door holding an Intratec Scorpion, the favorite of homicidal triggerboys throughout the city—the gun’s a piece of garbage, but they love the look. The kid had mastered the urban-punk killing machine’s pose—he had his wrist turned so he was sighting down the back of his hand, the side of the pistol parallel to the ground. Just like in the movies. A genius move with a semi-auto—it guarantees the spent cartridges are going to fly right up in your face. But the triggerboy never got the chance to find that out. His body went into a Chinatown Dumpster. I don’t know what happened to it after that.

The waiter took the egg cups, put a large blue glass ashtray precisely between us. I took out my cigarettes, offered her one. “No thank you,” she said politely. “I have my own.”

She took a pack of rolling papers from her purse, tapped out some dark rough-cut tobacco from a green-and-white tin and expertly assembled the cigarette. She ran the trailing edge of the paper over the tip of her tongue and sealed the package, then rapped it against a thumbnail to tamp it down. I held a wooden match for her. She inhaled deeply, blowing the smoke out her broad flat nose.

“About my cousin,” she said.

I waited a few beats. Saw she wasn’t going to say anything more. Some kind of dance rules I didn’t understand. I tried to pick up the slack.

“Yeah. . . ?” I prompted her.

“What do you know about them, Burke?”

I liked that she said “Burke,” not “Mr. Burke” the way most people did. She never asked me whether it was my first or last name, just used what I gave her.

“Who’s them? ” I asked her.

“Stalkers.”

I shrugged. “There’s all kinds.”

“That’s what I thought too. Once. But I don’t think so anymore. They’re all the same. They get to make the choices. All the choices. That’s the most important thing to them. It’s all about power.”

What do you know about power, little girl? I thought to myself. What do you know about when the Beast gets loose? And loves the taste? Like in Rwanda. Or Bosnia. Or in some families. “Yeah,” I said aloud. “But—”