Andrew Vachss - Safe House

“Which means what?” he said, only boredom in his voice.

I tapped the pack of cigarettes to take one out. A tiny black cylinder fell into my hand. “This is a flashlight,” I said in the same gentle tone of voice I’d been using. “If I had taken it out, shined it in your face at any time, we’d be done talking.”

“Nobody’s that good a shot,” he said. “Even with the window—”

I touched the flashlight, but I didn’t aim it at his face. A tiny dot of red light showed in the windshield. And then Max the Silent touched the back of his neck.

“Don’t turn around,” I told him. “Don’t do anything stupid. You’re not gonna get hurt, understand?”

“Yes,” he said, holding his head rigid.

“It wouldn’t take a bullet,” I said. “And it wouldn’t have to make any noise. Or it could make a lot of noise. But one thing would always be the same. You know what that would be?”

“No.”

“You’d never see it coming,” I told him.

He sat there without moving for a couple of minutes after Max pulled his hands away and went back into the night.

“This is a battlefield friendship,” I said quietly. “You and me. Your enemies are my enemies, that makes us friends, right? Or allies, anyway.”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to do my piece. Do it right. Like I promised. You too. No more threats. You already did your threats, and you’re gonna get what you want. Don’t do them anymore, okay?”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to have to meet again. You’re going to need to see the man I have. You’re going to have to know some things about him. That’s the only way we can play this, you and me. Together. The way I scan it, you’re a lone wolf. Whatever you know, you’re the only one. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s be clear. You want this cell. Lothar’s a chip. You’re going to ante that chip. I’m going to put up my man. He goes in. Lothar brings him in. You take care of that. I take care of getting you the information. I make sure the information is right. I guarantee you keep getting it even if Lothar turns unreliable. Information, that’s what you get from me. You cash that information when they all go. That about cover it?”

“Yes.”

“And when you get paid, I get paid.”

That got his attention. He shifted position for the first time since Max took hold of him, his lipless mouth twitching to match the muscle under his eye. “We never discussed that,” he said.

“Yeah we did. In the restaurant. Only thing we didn’t agree on was the price. How much is ZOG paying for hard-core terrorist cells these days?”

“It . . . depends. On a number of factors out of my control.”

“Sure. Look, I know we’re not fifty-fifty on this. All I could do is take a wild guess. And I’m not gonna do that. But I don’t think I’d be much off if I was thinking seven figures. . . .“

“That’s—”

“Sure, I know. Let’s just pretend I’m an agent. Your agent. Agents get a cut. Ten percent, right?”

“You want a hundred thousand dollars?”

“Yeah.”

“Done,” he said, no expression on his face.

Ihanded the parking ticket to the drone at the gate. He made an impatient gesture, waving his hands in aggravation. A small TV set flicked in his booth.

“What?” I asked him. Not friendly—people tend to remember anything unusual.

He pointed at a slot on the outside of the booth. I fed the ticket into the slot. A panel lit up: $4.00. I handed him a five-dollar bill. He managed to overcome his annoyance at me not having exact change long enough to hand me a single. Compared to him, the toll-takers on the bridges were complex mathematicians.

I exited the airport, taking the highway east toward Long Island. Did the same double-back I’d done coming in and picked Max up where I’d dropped him off.

On the way back, he made a series of gestures I hadn’t seen before. It took me a few tries before I got what he was telling me.

In the country, the morning sound of early spring is birds calling. Down here, it’s car alarms screaming their impotence. In either place, only the tourists pay attention.

The sun was bright and strong when I got up, spring’s promise closer to truth now. The refrigerator was empty, so I trudged over to one of those all-night Korean bodegas that pop up so often down here. They usually close just as quick, soon as they find out all the working people disappear after dark. Even the strip bars do most of their business in daylight.

I loaded up heavy on provisions, but Pansy scarfed most of it in one sitting.

When I called in, Mama said, “Girl call. Late.” Meaning earlier that morning.

“Vyra?”

“No. Other girl.”

“Okay. She say what she wanted?”

“Talk to you.”

“Did it go all right?” Crystal Beth asked as soon as she heard my voice on the phone.

“I’ll tell you all about it. Later, okay?”

“When later?”

“Tonight. Around . . . nine?”

“Good. Are you—?”

“You got room there?”

“Room?”

“For a . . . guest. Part of what we’re doing.”

“Sure. As long as she’s—”

“See you then,” I said, thumbing the cellular into silence.

“You wanted another chance,” I told him. “This is it.”

“Be a rat? That’s your fucking idea of another chance?”

“This isn’t being a rat, Herk. It’s like being a . . .” I searched for the word “. . . spy. Like behind enemy lines, during a war.”

“Dropping a dime is still—”

“This isn’t dropping a dime, okay? What we got is a bunch of lunatic motherfuckers planning to blow up some buildings, kill a whole bunch of people. The Man already knows about them. They been penetrated to the max. The Man already has a guy inside. Only thing is, he’s one of them, see?”

“One of who?” Herk asked. A reasonable question.

“One of the Nazis. Now, he’s a rat, see what I’m saying? Those are his boys. And he’s gonna dime them, just like you said. You know how it works. The Man’s gonna give him a free pass. New face, new ID, new everything. We play this right, that’s yours. Instead of his, yours.”

“Oh man, I ain’t doing no Witness Protection—”

“You’re not gonna be a witness, Herk. This isn’t about testimony. And you’re not gonna be in the Program either. You’re not gonna have a PO, nobody to report to. You get all the new stuff, a little bit of cash to get you started, and then you’re on your own.”

“What about the guy I—?”

“Forget that. It’s gonna be covered, all right? The Man won’t be looking for you. Not for Hercules, not for the new guy, whoever that’s gonna be. You, I mean.”

“Burke, I dunno. . . .”

“Listen, Herk. This all started with . . . you know. Okay, let’s say you slide on that beef. So what? Where are you? Back where you was, right? Nowhere. This here is what you said you wanted. Another chance. What you got going here that’s so fucking great?”

“Nothing, I guess. But . . .”

“You’re going back to the joint,” I told him. “Sure as hell, that’s where you’re going. You got no job, no trade, a long record. What do you know how to do except fuck people up? And you don’t even like to do that. You go back to the street, the wiseguys are gonna use you until the Man takes you down. You pull this off, you can be a gardener, right? Find yourself a greenhouse somewhere out west maybe. Start fucking over. ”

He paced the little room, listening to me. Then he finally snapped to what he was doing—practicing for his next bit, already boxed up in an eight-by-ten in his mind. When he looked over at me, I said: “It’s a dice-roll, partner. You throw a few naturals, you make your point and catch it, you’re golden. You’re crap out, and it’s over. One way or the other, you go into this, you don’t come out the same.”