Andrew Vachss: Safe House

“What?”

“You know anything about explosives?”

“Not much. But I know people who—”

“They could not significantly damage a building of that size without getting much closer than the street,” Pryce said in a tone of finality. “Unless . . .”

“What?”

“Unless the explosions were linked, somehow. Unless there was one single detonator for all of it. Maybe if they hit it from all sides . . .”

“He said they were gonna—”

“I know. And he said it wasn’t dynamite either. No homemade stuff. But they don’t have the technology to go nuclear. We would have picked that up on the wire way before this.”

“You ever look closely at one of those giant garbage trucks?” I asked him. “You got two, three of them— and a goddamned semi—packed to the rafters with plastique . . .”

“Burke,” he said, leaning forward, putting his webbed hand on my forearm, gripping tightly, “does Herk know who’s going to be holding the detonator?”

“He didn’t say. It’s not gonna be him, that’s for sure.”

He was quiet for a few minutes. I didn’t say anything. You could almost watch him think. Finally, he leaned back against the seat cushions of the Taurus and closed his eyes. “I don’t think Lothar is going to be the last of them to die for the race,” he said.

We sat in silence as I left his mind and tried to go into theirs. Be a race-hating beast. It only came up one way.

Herk was going to die.

After all this, Herk was going to die.

“The leader, the one with the detonator, he’s going to blow them all up,” I said. “That’s the way you see it too, right?”

“What else could it be?” Pryce asked me. He reached in the side pocket of his jacket, pulled out a street map of lower Manhattan. With a yellow highlighter, he drew a box around Federal Plaza. “Let’s say they park the rigs here. And here. And here. All right? Maybe half a dozen drops in all. One man to each vehicle. Each one of them has park-and-run orders. The detonator man is waiting, probably in a van of some kind—maybe the same one they use for transport from that bar—not far away. They each park their individual vehicles, get out and just walk away. When they’re all assembled back at the van, it takes off. Then the detonator man hits the switch.”

“Only he’s not gonna wait,” I said.

“No. Waiting increases the risk. On all counts. And if any of them is captured, he could bring down the whole deal. Leaderless cells only work but so far. Whoever was captured, he’d know something. And the plan is to create anarchy—taking credit for the bombing would work against that. One Nazi in custody blows that whole deal.”

“Then it’s time to take them down?”

“How can we do that? Hercules doesn’t know the address where they’re holed up. Just that bar you told me about. I doubt we could stake it out—it sounds like the whole place belongs to them. Probably some of the surrounding property too. And if they’re really close, I don’t think he’s coming out again anyway.”

“But if we don’t—”

“We couldn’t risk planting a transmitter on Hercules,” he said, intercepting my thoughts. “If they found it, they’d just cut and run.”

After they killed Hercules, I thought.

“But if we could find the place without using a transmitter—”

“Without the explosives, we don’t have a case anyway,” he cut in. “Lothar’s gone,” he reminded me. “So we don’t have any conspiracy testimony either. Hercules wouldn’t be much good to us even if he decided to go on the stand—yes, I know,” he said, holding up his hand in a don’t-interrupt gesture—“the agreement says he doesn’t have to. But even if he did, we have to be able to take them with the goods. And alive, if we can.”

I wondered if he was really that stupid. Or thought I was.

“Oh,” Vyra said when she answered the door to the suite, disappointment clear in her face.

“Has he called?” I asked, no preliminaries.

“No. Have you—?”

“Nothing. Listen, Vyra. If you give a damn about Herk, listen as good as you ever did. I need to talk to him. It’s worth his life, understand? If he calls, if he shows up, you got to let me know right then. No playing around, no grabbing a few minutes for fun . . . right then. That fucking second, you understand me?”

“Is he—?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t know anything. He may not be able to come out again. We’re getting close. This is Thursday. It could be as close as this weekend. But if he does get a call to you . . .” The next thought hit me so hard I had to sit down, think it through. Then I said: “Vyra, did you give him anything when you saw him?”

“Give him anything?” she demanded, an undertone of hysteria slipping in. “I gave him my—”

“Listen to me, you stupid bitch,” I said quietly, grabbing her by the hands and pulling her down next to me. “This isn’t about pussy. It’s about a man’s life. My brother’s life. Now, answer my question. Did you give him anything? A watch? A ring? A shirt? Anything.”

“Why do you—Oh, don’t!” she squealed, holding her hands in front of her face. “He wouldn’t take any . . . I . . . oh my God, I did give him something. A scarf. My pink chiffon scarf. He wanted it. He said it smelled like me. He took it with him when we last . . .”

“Yes!”

“Burke, what’s wrong with you. Why does it—?”

“Vyra, baby, I’m sorry if I scared you. I wasn’t trying to. Just to make you see how important this is, all right? Now listen to me. Are you listening?”

“Yes. I swear.”

“If Herk calls, if he’s on his way to see you here, you call me immediately, got that?”

“Yes.”

“But if he calls and says he can’t get away for a while, or anything like that . . . if he’s not coming for a while, you tell him this, okay? Tell him: Wear your scarf. Tell him you miss him, and he should wear your scarf. For you. So you can be with him. You understand?”

“I . . . do.”

“Vyra, forget everything, okay. Everything. There’s no yesterday now. You have to get this right. I’m counting on you.” Then I bent and kissed her on the cheek.

“I promise,” she said.

How many Nazi bars could there be within thirty minutes of the other side of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge? Astoria, maybe? It was a mixed neighborhood with a lot of small local joints. Long Island City had everything from warehouses to topless bars and artists’ lofts. Maybe they were even over near the waterfront, past the Citibank Tower. But . . . if I asked around, if word got back to them . . . that could do it for Herk too.

So all I had was Vyra’s promise. Vyra, the liar I’d always known her to be.

Herk had to get out, or get to a phone one more time.

And he had to be right about Vyra.

Crystal Beth put her head down and took another experimental lick. I was dead.

“Did I do something?” she asked, tilting her head to look up my body toward my face as I lay on my back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Seeing the cellular phone in my mind, willing the goddamned thing to ring.

“No,” I told her, wondering for the hundredth time if the batteries were still good, if I shouldn’t have gotten a backup clone to the same number from the Mole, if I shouldn’t have told Herk the last time to . . .

“Did I not do something?” Crystal Beth wanted to know, still not moving.

“It’s not you,” I said. “It’s me.”

“You’re worried about—?”