Andrew Vachss - Safe House

“That’s right.”

“Only it’s different this time, Burke. Real different.” He took a deep breath, thought showing on his face, the heavy bone structures prominent under the flesh. The white flesh. Part of the passport he’d use to slip past a checkpoint very soon. “In there,” he said, “the trick was, like, not to come back, you know what I mean? We was gonna do crime, right? All of us. We was thieves. So we made plans. This time it’s different.”

“How?” I asked him.

“This deal here, it’s my last crime, Burke. I swear to fucking God. We pull this off, it works like you say, I’m done. And you know what else?”

“What, Herk?”

“This ain’t like before. This time I’m listening real good.”

“You don’t like my shoes?” Vyra asked Hercules, standing at the foot of the stairs, one red spike heel on the floor, the other propped one step up, posing.

“I didn’t notice ’em,” Herk said, moving past me toward her, standing close. “That first time, the shoes was the first thing I seen. Coming down. This time I was looking at you.”

“At me?”

“At your eyes,” Herk told her. “I never seen a color like that.”

Vyra’s eyes were an everyday brown. She clasped her hands under her breasts, cocked her head, said “Really?”

“Yeah. They’re the same color as . . . Ah, you wouldn’t understand. It wouldn’t sound so good to you.”

“Tell me,” Vyra said, taking her foot down to stand in front of him, looking up from under her eyelashes.

“Peat moss,” Herk told her shyly. “You know peat moss? Like for growing roses? It’s so . . . rich. Rich and strong. That’s the color.”

On my climb upstairs, I figured out how the amorous fool got away with stuff like that. He meant it.

“If I had lost the bet, I would have shined every last one of her damn shoes,” Crystal Beth said ruefully, waving her arms to indicate the pitiful cleaning job Vyra had done.

“I believe you,” I said.

“Ah, that’s Vyra.” She laughed. “She has no discipline.”

“And no purpose?”

“You’re not . . . making fun of me?”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Sometimes people . . . tease. They don’t mean anything by it, but it still . . . hurts.”

“Crystal Beth?”

“What?”

“Would you do me a favor?”

“Sure, honey.”

“Go sit down. In that chair.”

She did it, a questioning look on her upturned face. I walked over to the bed, sat down myself. “Now get off your fat ass and come over here,” I told her.

She giggled, bounced over to where I was sitting.

“What?” she asked, laughter in her eyes.

“It’s never really the words,” I said softly. “Not the plain words. It’s what they mean. I make a crack about your fat ass, it doesn’t bother you, right?”

“Well, I am at my winter weight. . . .”

“Cut it out, girl. It didn’t bother you because you know I think you’re beautiful. If you really thought I was making a nasty crack about your weight, your feelings would be hurt, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes,” she said seriously.

“That’s the difference. I know it and you know it. And I would never rank on you about your purpose. You’re sure I think you have a great butt. . . . You’re not so sure I take you seriously. That’s it, right?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Right?”

“Yes,” she said, head down.

“I do, little bitch. I swear.”

“Oh, Burke. I know. . . . But you’re wrong about Vyra. She doesn’t have a purpose, but she’s looking for one. That’s more than most people ever do.”

“It’s more than I ever did,” I told her.

“Come here,” Crystal Beth said softly, opening her arms.

Lightning tore the sky that night. It was about nine. Pansy and I were watching TV, some show that had a dog in the cast. One of those perky, cute ones that get to talk in a human voice. Like “Baywatch,” I guess. Across the bottom of the screen, a string of words crawled: SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING IN EFFECT IN SUSSEX AND UNION COUNTIES UNTIL 8:30 P.M. DETAILS AT 11:00. Even Pansy sneered at it.

I found one of those trash-news shows. They had an interview with some money-for-pussy slut telling the world that she’d written her book about how her politician boyfriend liked to dress up like a French maid and clean her house because she wanted all her fellow Americans to be aware of what kind of man was making important decisions about their lives. The hardest trick that whore ever turned—coming up with a pious reason for selling secrets. Probably her pimp’s idea.

I didn’t like the idea of that politician much either. Who wants a government official dumb enough to trust a whore?

Then they did another “exposé” of strip bars invading middle-class communities. Devoted about three minutes to shots of anonymous thonged buttocks and beyond-genetics boobs, then about fifteen seconds to the winter-dressed picketers outside. I wondered, if surgeons could do brain implants, would anybody get them?

The show closed with some geek who writes incest-torture comic books shrieking that he’s the new John Peter Zenger.

Sure wished I had cable.

The cellular rang just before midnight.

“It’s me,” Crystal Beth said. “He just called.”

“He wants a meet now? Don’t say where on the phone. I’ll be—”

“No. Tomorrow afternoon. Can you—?”

“I’ll be there before twelve,” I promised her.

As I patted Pansy before I took off the next morning, I felt a tremor. Didn’t know how it was transmitted, from her to me or the other way around. But I felt it, and I trusted it.

So I stashed the Plymouth on Houston. Leaned up against a building to kill some time. Lit a smoke. A woman in a loden-green wool coat with fancy horn buttons down the front walked by, making a sour face at my cigarette. The after-trail smell from her perfume was enough to gag a coroner.

A few minutes later, I took the subway to Bleecker Street. I couldn’t set up a box for any meet with Pryce. Not a tight one, anyway. If he smelled it, he’d disappear. But I could make it hard for him to do the same to me.

On the subway I watched a man with his arms folded inside a dirty white sweatshirt, seeking the comfort of the straitjacket he remembered so fondly, his face going insanely serene when he found just the right position. Like the way a newly sprung convict moves into a one-room apartment even if he can afford more. There’s something soothing about the familiar, even if it’s ugly.

“Where’s he want to meet?” I asked Crystal Beth as soon as she let me inside.

“He didn’t say,” she answered. “He’s going to call at three and—”

I nodded, cutting her off. And felt myself relax. That’s what had been spooking me—no way a man like Pryce tells you the address of a meet fifteen hours in advance unless he has enough personnel to keep the place under watch all that time.

As we walked past the second floor, I heard a door open behind us. I didn’t turn around.

“Where’s Vyra lurking?” I asked when we got to her place.

“She doesn’t come every day. Sometimes I don’t see her for a week or so. It depends.”

“I wasn’t trying to get into your business,” I told her. “I just wanted to know if she was going to make one of her appearances.”

“You could, you know.”

“Could what?”

“Get into my business. You’re already in my . . . life. Don’t you want to know about . . . me and Vyra?”

“No.”

“It was my . . . idea, I guess,” she said, as though I’d answered the other way. “She’s not gay. Well, I guess I’m not either. She’s not bi—I was the first time she ever . . .”