Andrew Vachss - Safe House

“Here?” Herk asked, smiling at Crystal Beth.

“In the basement,” I told him. “We’re gonna rig something down there.”

“There’s a toilet,” Crystal Beth said helpfully. “I think it works. And there’s a sink, and a—”

“Whatever,” I cut her off. “We’ll make it work. It won’t be for more than a couple of days, max.” Then I turned to Hercules. “You can’t come upstairs,” I told him. “Not for nothing, period. This is supposed to be an all-women’s joint, understand? Nobody else can see you. Got it?”

“I got it,” he replied, not bitching.

“We’ll take my car to the meet. Pryce has already seen it. And I’ll bring you back. By then, the guys will have it set up downstairs, okay?”

“Sure, Burke. Like you said.”

“You’ve been reading that stuff I left with you?”

“Yeah. It ain’t all that complicated. Just . . . stupid, like.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Jews run everything, right? That’s what the books said. They run the government, the newspapers, the TV, everything, okay?”

“Okay . . .”

“And these guys, they fucking hate the Jews, and . . . Ah, excuse me, miss. I didn’t mean to . . . curse, like. I’m an ignorant asshole sometimes.”

Crystal Beth’s laugh was a merry sound in the room. “That’s all right,” she said.

Goddamn Hercules. He probably could have been the world’s greatest pimp if he didn’t love women so much.

“Go ahead,” I prompted him.

“Okay, so I’m the Jews, right? And I got all this power, right? And these Nazis or whatever, they wanna wipe me out, right? So how come I don’t just wipe them out?”

“Good question,” I told him. “But not a question you want to ask these guys you’ll be with.”

“Oh yeah, I know. I was just—”

“Herk, this is no game. Don’t be wondering anything. No talking, all listening, got it?”

“I got it.”

The phone rang. Crystal Beth walked over to pick it up. Hercules watched her like a kid in an ice-cream forest.

“Hello.”

There was a long pause as she listened, brushing away her hair to get the receiver right against her ear.

After a minute or so, she said: “I understand. Nine-E as in ‘Edward,’ right? I’ll tell him.”

She hung up. Gave me an address on the East Side in the Seventies. “He said to ask for Mr. White,” she said.

“When?”

“Right now, if you want. Or anytime between now and four in the morning, that’s what he said.”

So Pryce didn’t know I had Herk with me, was giving me time to pick him up. Good.

I turned to Crystal Beth. “If I so much as hear a motorcycle . . .”

“I got enough bruises for one night,” she said softly, stepping close to me, sticking her nose into my chest. “Anyway, you have to bring . . . Hercules back, don’t you?”

“Stay put,” I told her, the warning still in my voice.

We all came downstairs together, walking silently past the closed doors on the second and third floors. Lights were on in the basement. We went down the stairs and saw an army cot with a full bedroll all set up. A folding table and matching chair were in place, plus a small TV set, a radio with a cassette player, a little cube of a refrigerator, a hot plate and a bunch of books . . . race-hate literature to comics. Herk’s duffel bag was standing next to the cot. Looked like my place.

“It’s great!” Hercules said.

I held out my hand to the Mole, palmed what he had in his. We all walked upstairs together, then out the back door. Crystal Beth closed it behind us.

“You got those keys made fast, Mole,” I told him in the street, slipping them into my pocket.

“Where are the Nazis?” was all he wanted to know.

The apartment building had a circular driveway in front with a drop-off area protected by a canopy. I cruised past it twice, just checking. Then I found a parking place about a block away and we walked back together.

The uniformed doorman wasn’t asleep. A bad sign, made me edgy. I told him we were there to see Mr. White in 9-E. He raised an eyebrow. I didn’t respond.

“Two gentlemen to see you, sir,” he said into the house phone, eyes never leaving my face. He was a tallish man in his fifties, built blocky, like an ex-athlete who hadn’t kept up the training regimen. His hair was buzz-cut, gone mostly gray. His eyes were small, porno-movie blue. They didn’t blink.

He listened, no expression on his face. “Go on up,” he said. “Last elevator on your left.”

The walls of the elevator car were mirrored, with rows of tiny lights inset into the ceiling. A bell in the control panel pinged a greeting when the car reached the ninth floor.

The door to 9-E was right across from the elevator. It opened before I could knock.

“Come on in,” Pryce said, stepping to one side so we could.

Just past the foyer, there was an oversized living room with a broad expanse of glass facing east. Might have been a river view behind it but I couldn’t tell from where I was standing. The main furniture was one of those sectional leather sofa-chair combos, muted ecru, extending in a J-curve toward the window. A pair of complicated-looking chairs were positioned right across from it, strips of tan leather pulled taut over black wrought iron. A free-form glass coffee table sat between them, all set off nicely by the thick wine-colored carpet. The walls were bare except for some old movie posters from the Forties, framed in chrome.

Pryce waved his hand toward the sectional, taking one of the suspension chairs for himself. Herk and I sat down. I slid over a few feet so that Pryce couldn’t watch us both without turning his head a bit.

“This is your man?” he asked without preamble.

“This is Hercules,” I said.

He swiveled his head to Herk. “And you’re a Nazi?” he asked suddenly.

“I’m an Aryan warrior,” Herk said, no hesitation. I was proud of him.

“What does that mean?” Pryce stayed on him.

“It means I love my race. I would die for my people. And kill for them too.”

“Your . . . race?”

“The white race,” Herk said, trying to keep his voice calm like I’d schooled him, but unable to keep the juice bubbling out—he was proud of himself, a kid eager to show he’d learned his ABCs.

“Define ‘white,’ ” Pryce said.

“Huh? What’s so fucking hard? White.”

“So not blacks and . . . ?”

“And not browns and not yellows and not reds and not no other fucking shade, okay?” Herk told him, a step shy of aggressive.

“And Jews?”

“Jews? They ain’t white people. They ain’t people at all.”

Pryce went “Ummm . . .” like he was considering this newly presented wisdom. “Tell me about the man you killed,” he said finally.

“I don’t know nothin’ about no—”

“You first,” I interrupted, holding Pryce’s eyes.

“This is a leaderless cell,” Pryce said, like he’d never asked the homicide question. “A super-cell, in point of fact. It’s been in place just a few months. There are only a half-dozen or so members, and they all have conventional lives. Relatively conventional. The meetings are in various places, but they use a bookstore in lower Manhattan for an information drop. They’re only in New York until—”

“What’s a super-cell?” I asked him.

He nodded like a college professor who got asked a moderately intelligent question—one that showed the students were paying attention. Finally. “Each of them is a . . . representative,” he said. “From one of the original leaderless cells scattered throughout the country. Eventually, each of them will return to his base area to a pre-determined residence and await contact. Their home cells may have changed composition or personnel by then. Or they may have disappeared. But if they are contacted when they return, each member of the super-cell passes the word. The date for the unified action.”