Andrew Vachss - Safe House

And go their separate ways, until the next time.

A temporary alliance of predators.

I had called Pryce a lone wolf, and he hadn’t argued. But professionals never correct mistakes you make about them. And what had Wolfe called him? A bounty spotter? Maybe . . .

I kept his hands pinned to the table with my eyes, waiting.

When he couldn’t wait any longer, he said: “And then there’s the money.”

“Which you can’t front,” I responded, back to where I was.

“How could I front it? I work on spec. All the risk is on my end. There’s no contract. Strictly COD. You know how that works. It’s all on the come, but I’ll go fifty-fifty when it shows. What could I do to convince you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Name it and it’s yours,” he said. “But I have to have that baby.”

“Any surprises?” I asked Herk. We hadn’t talked all the way down on the subway, but now we were in the Plymouth. Heading north.

“Nah. He’s a weak little punk, Burke. All that stuff about being a warrior and dying for the Race. His fucking ‘brothers.’ Like I don’t know he’s gonna give them all up, right?”

“Yeah.”

Silence after that as the Plymouth ate up the miles.

“You ever know any of them?” he asked suddenly.

“Nazis? Sure. When I was in—”

“Not them. Jews. You ever know any Jews?”

“Herk, for Chrissakes. Who do you think put that tattoo on your chest?”

“Oh. Yeah. I wasn’t—”

“Vyra’s Jewish,” I told him.

“Vyra?”

“Yeah, Vyra. The girl with the shoes.”

“ She’s Jewish?”

“Sure. What’s so—?”

“I dunno. I never thought about . . . I mean, listening to that Lothar and all. Reading them books you got me. I never thought about girls being Jewish.”

What do you say to that?

“Can you do it?” I asked the Mole.

“It wouldn’t be precise,” he said calmly.

“But you could make it look like this?” I asked, pointing to a sheet of graph paper on which I’d roughed out a sketch. “And it would work?”

“Yes,” he said, giving me a look of mild surprise.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

“It’s very . . . intelligent,” the Mole said.

“What’s this?” Pryce asked, taking the thin flesh-colored wrap from my hand. It was three days after I’d gone to see the Mole.

“It’s an ankle cuff,” I told him. “The latest thing. Weighs less than a quarter of what the old ones did. Space Age plastic with titanium wire. For monitoring pedophiles in those outpatient programs. You put it on, I seal it, it stays on until I take it off. If you have it cut off yourself, that’ll break the signal.”

“And you expect me to wear this?”

“That’s the deal,” I said. “You wear this, I know where you are. Not precisely, but close enough.” He couldn’t know how much of a lie that was. The major dope cartels use satellite tracking systems that can show the precise location of a tiny boat in hundreds of miles of empty sea. But they have the millions to hire Silicon Valley whiz kids to write the software, and billions’ worth of product to protect. Me, what did I have?

He thought it over for a minute. “And what good would that do you?” he finally asked.

“If you try and run with my money, I’ll know it. And I’ll find you easy enough.”

“How do I know you won’t just—?”

“Take you out when you deliver the cash? I don’t expect you to trust me either. You can mail it. I’ll give you an address. The cash shows up, you’re off the hook.”

“But you’ll still be able to track me.”

“Only for about thirty days—that’s all the battery’s good for. You can have it cut off as soon as you’ve sent the cash. The transmitter doesn’t have that much of a range. I’d know you ran, but I wouldn’t know where to.”

“But in the interim . . . ?”

“I already found you,” I reminded him. “I found you tonight. Every time we’ve been alone, it’s like I found you, right?”

“So I wear this bracelet and you give me the baby?”

“You wear this bracelet and I let Lothar see the baby.”

“Yes.”

“And one more thing.”

“Which is?”

“I need an address.”

“Yes?”

“Porkpie hasn’t been around lately,” I explained it to him.

“Once Hercules goes in,” he said quietly. “And Lothar sees the baby.”

“Deal.”

He took a breath. “You don’t expect me to put this on now?”

“Why not?”

“You’re not an engineer, are you?”

“No.”

“Well, neither am I. It isn’t that I don’t trust what you said, but I’d like to have this . . . device examined before I put it on.”

“Take it with you,” I told him.

“See the baby?” Crystal Beth said. “No way.”

“It’s the only way,” I told her. “Lothar won’t be able to snatch the kid—we’ll have him covered. But without that card, he’s not gonna play. And if he doesn’t, then Pryce . . .”

“You believe he’d do it?” Vyra asked me. “Bring everything down?”

“Yeah,” I told her. “I do.”

“I don’t trust him,” Crystal Beth said. “I’d never trust him. He doesn’t have to do this. He’s a pig. A filthy, lousy pig.”

Vyra stood up. Walked near the window, bending her left hand at the wrist so the afternoon sun would fire the big emerald-cut diamond on her hand. She admired it for a minute. Turned to Crystal Beth like I wasn’t in the room. “That’s the only way you get truffles, honey,” she said.

Crystal Beth walked over to where Vyra was standing. Put her hands on Vyra’s neck and pulled her close. Whispered something.

Vyra walked to the door, swinging her narrow hips hard. She slammed it behind her.

Crystal Beth left the window and plopped on the bed, face up. She patted the covers for me to lie down next to her. I did it. She tugged at the back of my head. “What?” I asked her.

“I want to tell you a story,” she said, guiding my head into her lap, twirling her hands in my hair. I closed my eyes. “When I was a little girl,” she said, “I was afraid of heights. Not great heights, like in a city. There wasn’t anything all that tall on the land we had. But we had a shed. For storing machinery. It was probably only ten feet off the ground, but I was afraid to go up there. On the roof, I mean. We were playing, and the ball got stuck up there. It happened all the time. We took turns going up there to get it. But when it was my turn, I wouldn’t go. I was afraid. . . .

“Nobody made me go. But I felt bad. On the farm, everybody had to take turns doing stuff. But climbing that shed, I could never take mine. I never told my parents. I was . . . ashamed, I guess. Anyway, one day, one of the other kids teased me about it. And my mother heard.

“So she made a jump pool. Like a swimming pool, but out of blankets. And mattresses. And some bearskins she had. It was huge. It took hours and hours to make it, everything piled so high and soft. Then she got a ladder. I went first. She was right behind me, arms wrapped around me so I couldn’t fall. Then we just sat up there. Everybody was watching. My mother told me we could sit up there as long as we liked. She told me stories. The kind I loved. About polar bears and sled dogs and seals and whales. And after a while, it was time to jump.

“We stood up and we held hands. My mother said we would be polar bears, jumping into the water from a little cliff. She was the mother bear and I was the cub. We did it, holding hands. Everybody cheered. It was so great. I was never afraid of heights after that.”