Andrew Vachss - Safe House

But it was too late then. The wheels had come off.

The perfect killer was gone now. He went out with a sheaf of dynamite sticks wrapped in duct tape held high in his cold hand, standing like a homicidal Statue of Liberty just before the blast took him away. He took a whole mess of citizens with him for company. And left a note warning the cops not to follow him into whatever lesser Hell awaited.

I have that note. It was his last gift to me, a Get Out of Jail Free Card, if I played it right. But the only place to play it was from Death Row.

So he’s gone now. And I talk to him sometimes. In my mind. The only place any of us ever say his name.

Wesley.

I knew what Michelle meant. The whisper-stream flows everywhere, a toxic blend of rumor, legend and lies—but it always carries a current of truth too. It said there were only two pro snipers working the city—Wesley and El Cañonero. But El Cañonero only worked for the Independentistas, a man with a cause, a soldier under the flag of Puerto Rican liberation. Wesley worked for whoever paid him. A long time ago, I faced some men in a parking lot. One of them was a karateka called Mortay, a death-match fighter who wanted Max. And threatened his baby daughter to bring the Mongolian into the ring. One of the men died in that parking lot, picked off from the nearby rooftop. The whisper-stream said it was Wesley, working for me. It wasn’t. It was El Cañonero, but that’s what the whisper-stream does with the truth.

Crystal Beth might have tapped into it, thought I was the man for the job. Maybe it was me she’d been looking for all along.

“But Herk’s the wild card,” I protested. “He doesn’t run with us.”

“He did,” the Prof reminded me.

“That was Inside,” I told him. “No way that hippie chick has those kind of wires.”

“The other bitch, she knows your business?” the Prof asked.

I didn’t take offense. We don’t talk to outsiders, and I’d had all the lessons, but tight pussy makes loose lips sometimes, and the Prof was within his rights to ask.

“Nothing,” I said. “Zero. I’m a slumming fuck for her, that’s all. But who knows what kind of bullshit she’s cooked up in her head.”

“That’s the place for it, all right,” he agreed.

“What do you think, sweetie?” Michelle asked Clarence. That was her way, always. To build us up, all of us, spread the respect. If she hadn’t asked, Clarence would never have volunteered an opinion.

“I do not know,” he said carefully, uncomfortable on center stage. “But it seems to me, if this woman—the one who hired you, my brother—” he said aside to me, “if she somehow knew Hercules would be the one Porkpie would select for the job, she would still have to know it would end . . . as it did. And she could not know this. Nobody could know. It was not the plan. What if Hercules did not have his knife? Or if he was not so quick?”

The young West Indian slid out of the booth, stood on his feet, addressing us like a doctoral candidate at his orals, glad for the chance and nervous at the same time.

“If she was running a . . . If it is murder she wanted, why would she have been so satisfied when you did the work on that other man? Scaring him off, that is what she wanted, yes? I believe that is all she asked Porkpie for too.”

“So it was an accident that she grabbed me at Rollo’s?” I asked him.

“You do not go there enough,” he replied, more confident now. “It is not our place. I think, maybe, she was just . . . looking. And when she told the other one—”

“Vyra,” Michelle said. Like you’d say “maggot.”

“Yes, Vyra. When she told her, then this Vyra, she said, maybe, ‘I know that man.’ And then, perhaps, it all came together.”

“So, if Porkpie had passed the test, she would have brought him into it?”

“Ah, I do not know this girl, mahn. But she seems too clever for that. She must know the difference between a contractor and the hired help, yes?”

“Yeah, I think so too.”

“That goes together like barbed wire and panty hose,” Michelle said, venom dripping from her candy tongue. “Little sister don’t think so.”

“Little sister?” Clarence said, puzzled.

“Me, honey,” Michelle cooed at him. “I’m your little sister, aren’t I?”

“I . . . mean, if you—”

“You don’t see me as your big sister, do you, baby?” Michelle asked him, sugar-voiced, but the Prof knew better. He shot Clarence a warning glance.

Too late. “Not a sister, no,” Clarence said. “I mean, you know how I love you and respect you. But I always think of you as like my—”

“What?” Michelle asked, still sweet.

Oh Jesus . . . , I thought to myself, catching the Prof’s eye.

“Like my auntie. A sister to my—”

If Clarence hadn’t been honed to a lifetime of quickness, the flying bowl of fried rice would have cracked his skull.

It took us a good half-hour to get Michelle calmed down. That crazy, all-class broad would catch a bullet for Clarence as casually as she’d touch up her lipstick, but her self-image was baby sister—bossy baby sister, maybe, but not anybody’s aunt. While the Prof crooned confection into her ear, I grabbed Clarence and poured some survival truth into his.

I don’t know where he got them at that hour, but the armful of orchids—I warned him not even to think about some chump-change Reverend Moon roses—he came back with went a long way toward banking the fire.

Mama watched all this impassively. Treat her like she was younger than you and she’d show you where the “chop” in chop suey came from. And she thinks losing your temper is an Occidental thing anyway.

Hours to go yet. No point in leaving—the restaurant was the only number Crystal Beth had. I told Mama I needed Max, then I went to the bank of pay phones and started to work.

“A llo?” A young woman’s voice, distinctive French accent.

“Is Wolfe around?” I asked.

“Pretty late at night to be calling, chief.” Pepper’s voice, the accent gone. She’d recognized me, though. I didn’t know she did voices, but I could see why Wolfe’s crew could use that skill.

“Yeah, I know,” I told her. “I didn’t expect to catch her in. Can I leave word?”

“Sure.”

“Just ask her to call me.”

“Is this hot?”

“No. But it’s not social either.”

“Okeydokey.” She laughed. And hung up.

Last time I saw Pepper she was in Grand Army Plaza dressed in a pair of baggy striped clown pants, teaching a whole pack of little kids some kind of gymnastics. And walking point for Wolfe to set up a meet. Wolfe told me once Pepper was some kind of actress, but I’d never paid much attention. I guess she was, though. A real good one.

As soon as I put down the phone, Max was at my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him come up, but that’s nothing new—they don’t call him Max the Silent just because he doesn’t speak. As soon as he finished his soup, we went down to the basement. Mama keeps a long table set out there. “For counting,” she’d explained when I’d first asked her why.

I went through all of it. Slowly. Not because Max couldn’t follow otherwise, but so I was sure I had it straight in my own mind. Max shook his head impatiently, interrupting my hand signals. He got up, went over to a black lacquer cabinet in a dark corner of the basement, opened a drawer and came back with some sheets of cream-colored origami paper. Then he gestured for me to start over.

Every time I came to a name, I’d spell the sound out with my lips. And Max would fold paper. By the time I was done with the first pass, Max had a table-full of distinctive little paper sculptures. He had me say each name again. And for each one he held up one of the sculptures . . . until we were on the same wavelength.