Andrew Vachss - Safe House

I docked the Plymouth about five car-widths away, stepped out and walked to the Taurus. Saw it was a SHO model, about thirty-five grand worth of high-speed anonymity. Quick enough for pursuit work, generic enough for shadowing, comfortable for stakeouts. A pro’s choice, even the color—more white cars than any other out there now. The windows were deep-tinted—couldn’t see inside. But I figured he could see out, so I just stood there, looking at the windshield, holding my hands far away from my body, my jacket zipped up tight.

Nothing.

I heard pebbles crunch, sensed movement behind me. Not stealthy—letting me know he was coming. I turned around slowly. Pryce was walking toward me from the corner of the lot, hands as empty as mine.

I wondered if his heart was too.

“Sorry,” he said as he got close enough to speak. “I had to take a leak.”

I spread my arms wider, going for a Christ-on-the cross position. “Let’s get this part over with quick,” I said. “It’s too cold to be standing around playing games.”

He stood there looking at me, his featureless face calm. “I couldn’t do an adequate job out here,” he said. “You know that.”

“Then do what I’m gonna do,” I told him.

“Which is?”

“Don’t say anything you don’t want on tape.”

He nodded. “Fair enough. You want to talk in the car?”

“Sure.”

In the silver leather passenger seat, I turned my right shoulder to the windshield so that I was almost facing him. “Okay if I smoke?” I asked him.

He turned the ignition key, hit the switch for the power windows. The glass behind me whispered down. Step one. He shifted position so that he was facing me. Two. “I’ve got an idea,” I told him. “But first I have to know some stuff.”

“Ask your questions,” he said.

“It all comes down to this,” I started, exhaling a heavy puff of clove-cigarette smoke in his direction. His expression didn’t change, but he pushed the switch, taking his own window down. Three. “Is this Lothar guy the whole machine, or just a tool?” I finished.

“He’s a tool,” Pryce said without hesitation.

“Tell me what you’re willing to,” I said. “If there’s blanks, then I’ll ask, okay?”

He scratched absently at the tip of his nose. Phantom itch? Like you get from an amputated limb. Or plastic surgery. The tip of the nose changes the face radically, a doctor told me once. “Larry James Bretton,” he said. “Now known as Lothar Bucholtz. He changed it legally. I don’t believe his wife knows about the surname, but he’s been calling himself Lothar publicly for some time now. General failure. Trained as a printer, but fired from three straight jobs for using company facilities to put out various propaganda sheets for extremist groups. He doesn’t write the stuff himself—he hasn’t got brains enough even for the intellectual challenge of using ‘nigger’ and ‘kike’ in the same sentence. But he’s a true-believer all the way. You know the party line: If the government can be destabilized, if the artificial restraints come off, the streets will run with blood. Knock ZOG off and the kikes won’t be able to stop the niggers fromslaughtering them. Muscle beats brains in the short run, the way they figure it. Of course, the niggers won’t be able to run a government. . . . That’s when the true Aryans come in, the race warriors. With the weapons they’ve been hoarding, they’ll be able to carve out a few states as their own.”

“Your basic Helter Skelter scenario,” I said. “A Charlie Manson update.”

“Right. Not many of them acknowledge it, but he’s their visionary all right. Okay, next they’ll get foreign aid from wealthy countries who support their mission, especially the Arabs—after all, exterminating Jews should give them perfect credentials.” He waved a hand dismissively, anticipating me. “Yes, I know, the A-rabs are mud people too. But that’s just the first step in the master plan. After they ship all the niggers back to Africa—the ones they don’t just outright kill in the camps with the kikes—they’ll run the show here. The Day of the Rope will eliminate all the race-traitor whites. Next step is acquisition of nuclear weapons,” he said, face flat but his voice loaded with sneer, “and then it’s time for the A-rabs to pay the piper. Finally, there’ll be a natural link between all the North European tribes—the Aryans, right?—and the true Americans, their descendants. Not the Indians, of course . . .

“Lothar’s people are divided as to the next step. Some of them want to retain all the mud people in South America and Africa and Asia as slave labor. Some want to just kill them all—you know, nerve gas, poison the water supply, the ovens . . . the usual.”

“Sure.”

“Anyway, when they’re not hyping up some of those retarded skinheads into bashing cruising gays or mixed-race couples with baseball bats—or recruiting on military bases—they’re sitting around plotting how to make Oklahoma City look like a pipe bomb in a bus-station locker. And my boy Lothar is a real live member of an action cell.”

“Bombers?”

“Oh yes. Major bombers. Domino bombing—you know what that is?”

“No.”

“A couple of dozen targets. Virtually simultaneous targets. Congress. The FBI. Post offices. Communications centers. Airports. Train stations. The whole infrastructure. That’s Phase One.”

“And Phase Two?”

“The way they figure it, the military has to respond. National Guard first, but soon there’ll be warplanes in the air. And where are they going to respond to? Wherever there’s riots. Whoever starts the looting. And they know who that’s going to be. With the communications cut, it’s all going to be word of mouth. They don’t have the troops for guerrilla warfare, but they have the weapons. Lots of weapons. They’ve been stockpiling for years.”

“That plan is Swiss cheese,” I told him.

“It is,” he agreed. “But it’s going to be America that gets the holes punched in it.”

I felt a chill on the back of my neck. Probably the night air. I wondered if Pryce was feeling it too. I lit another nasty clove cigarette from the stub of the last one just in case he was thinking about zipping up his window.

“And Lothar’s yours?” I asked him.

“All mine,” he said. “But if he’s taken out of the play, it won’t work.”

“What won’t work?”

“ZOG likes to play dominoes too,” Pryce said, the muscle under his right eye jumping hard.

Iworked it around in my head for a minute. And it didn’t add up. Not for what I needed. “You’re not telling me Lothar’s a government agent,” I said flatly.

“No. He’s not,” Pryce replied.

I passed up the invitation. “But he’s not gonna roll either,” I said, no trace of a question in my voice.

“Why do you say that?”

“Couple of reasons. If he rolls, the best he can hope for is immunity. And that means the Witness Protection Program. Okay for some guys, maybe. But he’s not gonna be able to do his Master Race crap there. And he’s not gonna get his son either. Even if you could find a bent judge to give him custody, the media would have you for breakfast.”

“He’s not going to get immunity,” Pryce said. “He’s not going to testify at all. When the bust goes down, he’s going to slip through the net. Go into the underground. The sole survivor. He’ll be a hero. And he’ll have his son with him.”

“He’s stupid enough to buy that?”

“He’s stupid all right, but it’s the truth. It’s already set up. He’ll leave the country. England first, then Germany. They’ll take him in, never fear.”