Andrew Vachss - Safe House

And then he gestured for me to start again.

HERCULES

ME

PORKPIE

CRYSTAL BETH

HARRIET

VYRA

WOLFE

PRYCE

Max looked at the neat row he had fashioned. Then looked at me and held up the Vyra sculpture, reached over, and touched my watch.

I held up three fingers on each hand. It was maybe about six when I knew Vyra was in the safehouse.

Max shook his head no hard, looked another question at me.

I didn’t get it. Told him so.

He got up, went upstairs. He was back in a minute, with one of those cheapo calendars insurance agents send to everyone on the planet. He placed it carefully between us, held up the Vyra sculpture in one hand, probed his finger at this month’s calendar page with the other.

“When’s the last time I saw her before tonight?” I asked him, words and gestures together.

He nodded yes.

I showed him. Max switched the order, now placing Vyra first.

Then it was my turn to shake my head no. I made the sign of talking into a telephone, made the gesture for Mama so he’d know the call came in here, and picked up the Hercules sculpture. Then I touched another day on the calendar—one just before when I’d been with Vyra at the hotel. Herk had called the night before and left word about the meet.

Max’s face went into repose. But his hands were busy, fingers flying now. He was creating more sculptures, duplicates of the ones he’d already made, as precise as a cookie-cutter. If I hadn’t seen him do this before, when he made an entire origami chess set for his daughter, Flower, I would have been astounded. Even so, I had to shake my head in wonderment.

Max was like the rest of us. He had so many gifts. So many skills. He could have been anything. Should have been . . .

I felt his hand on mine, looked up and snapped out of wherever I’d been going. Max made the sign of a man being stabbed, showed me the sculpture he’d fashioned to represent the guy Herk had taken down. Then he made the sign of a frightened man—Harriet’s stalker. Showed me that sculpture too. Then he laid out a new configuration of the players:

CRYSTAL BETHVYRACRYSTAL BETHWOLFEPORKPIEMEMEPRYCEHERCULESHERCULESVYRADEAD MANPORKPIECRYSTAL BETHHARRIETSCARED MAN

I nodded that he was right, then held up three fingers, pointing at the stack of unused origami paper. Three more players. I went through it slowly, Max making the new pieces as I talked. I took them from him, placed them on the table so it looked like this:

CRYSTAL BETHVYRACRYSTAL BETHPRYCEPORKPIEMEMELOTHARHERCULESHERCULESLORRAINEDEAD MANPORKPIEVYRACRYSTAL BETHMARLAHARRIETLOTHARSCARED MANWOLFE

And then I started to see it.

Max took the sculptures for Vyra and Crystal Beth, moved them back and forth in his hands, eyebrows raised in question.

I told him I didn’t know. Didn’t know who came first, who started it, who was in charge.

He did the same with Lothar and Pryce. I gave him the same answer.

Finally he pulled the Pryce sculpture from the layout, placed it way off to the side. All by itself.

It was almost one the next morning when the phone rang.

“He called,” Crystal Beth said as soon as she heard my voice.

“And . . . ?”

“And I told him there was someone I . . . wanted him to meet.”

“That’s all you told him?”

“No.”

“What else?”

“Your name.”

“He didn’t ask any more questions?”

“No.”

“Didn’t ask who I was to you?”

“No.”

“Didn’t ask why you wanted me to meet him?”

“No. Nothing.” Her voice was . . . something. Sad maybe, I couldn’t tell.

“And he said . . . what?” I asked her.

“That it was okay. That he would do it. Tomorrow. At three-thirty.” Then she named a midtown deli on the East Side.

“All right,” I told her. “Let’s do it. You know the Barnes and Noble bookstore on Astor Place?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll meet you there at two, okay? In the coffee shop.”

“Vyra—”

“Isn’t coming,” I said.

I hung up on her silence.

Islept until almost ten the next morning. When I used the cellular to check with Mama, she told me Wolfe had called. There wasn’t any point calling back—when Wolfe went outlaw, she’d adopted a series of phone cutouts, same way all of us did. Pepper would catch the calls. And you could catch Pepper, if you could make the connections and move fast enough. But Wolfe would never be in that net. I decided to let it ride for now.

And do some riding myself.

Islammed a new tape into the cassette player, letting the blues take me to the Chicago stop on that deep dark tributary reverse-flowing out of the Mississippi Delta, carrying players and poets in its lush stream. Junior Wells doing Little Walter’s “Key to the Highway,” paying homage, father to son. Mighty Joe Young’s subdued, pain-seared version of “The Things I Used To Do.” Luther Allison and Otis Rush and J.B. Hutto chasing both Sonny Boys. Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. And the next wave. Dave Spector’s “That’s How Strong My Love Is” following the blood-spoor of Delbert McClinton as the Texas troubadour breached another border behind Lightnin’ Hopkins. Paul Butterfield lurking out-side “Yonders Wall.” Charlie Musselwhite barking out “Early in the Morning.” Buddy Guy coaxing witchfire from a slide guitar. Hoochie-coochie through the back doors. Jailhouses and graveyards. Part-time jobs and part-time women. Grown-upschoolgirls and black Cadillacs not every man could ride. All of them on Robert Johnson’s don’t-mind-dying hellhound trail.

When I’d had enough I switched to my girl. Judy Henske. Little Miss Magic, all six feet plus of her. Judy can bring it back from places the other torch singers couldn’t go at all.

I don’t share my music with citizens. They never get it. One time I was waiting in this joint for a guy who said he was a buyer to show up when I overheard some earnest dweeb talking about how “profound” the Beatles are . . . if you just listen to them. That’s when I started wishing bars had metal detectors.

That poor chump would never get it—you can’t get jellyroll from a white-bread bakery.

Just over the Brooklyn line, a guy in a red Jeep Cherokee cut me off. One of those deep-dish-overcooked fools who believed four-wheel drive would give you traction on ice. I tapped the brakes, let him slide by. He stuck a fist out the window, waving a kid’s baseball bat, screaming something I couldn’t hear before he sped away. I got a glimpse of his tags. Handicapped plates. I didn’t have to guess what his was.

Herk’s room was prison-clean. That’s one of the things you do Inside. Scrub every surface. Slow. Taking time the way the State took yours. And making some little space more your own. Inside, nobody calls it their cell. “My house” is what you say. And keeping it clean means keeping more than just the roaches and the mice at bay.

“Thanks for the books, brother,” he greeted me. “Sure helps.”

“It won’t be much longer,” I promised him.

“Burke, I could do . . . something, right? I don’t dig all this sitting around.”

“You got to lay in the cut until we scope what’s out there,” I told him.

“Yeah, I know. But I been reading the papers. Every day. And listening to this here radio. They ain’t got nothing on the . . . guy. I think I’m in the clear.”

“You could be,” I said. Thinking, if it wasn’t for the connect to Crystal Beth, he probably was. “But let’s play it this way for a bit longer, okay?”

“Your call,” he agreed. “But . . . if I’m gonna do more time here, you think you could get me some more books?”