Andrew Vachss - Safe House

“But if the detonator man doesn’t hear anything, he’s going to wait a little bit and—”

“And blow it up. I know. That’s where your heroes come in. Some people say you’re a bounty hunter. A free-lancer working for cash. Maybe that’s true. I don’t know. But you had enough juice to make the cops and the media play along with the Lothar thing. So I figure you’re something else.”

“Such as?”

“Such as a . . . I don’t know a name for it. But every government needs people who can work outside the law. And I figure, that’s you.”

He didn’t say anything. The muscle jumped in his face a couple of times, then went as quiet as he was.

“There’s only one thing that’ll absorb that much explosive without killing everyone around,” I told him. “Water. You need to clear a path. Right to the river. The Hudson’s the closest. It’s only a few blocks. You need to take out the drivers. No gunshots. No noise. And you need six people to drive the rigs right to the river. Right into the river, it comes to that.”

“Six people to drive trucks loaded with explosive? Knowing that any second they could just vaporize?”

“That’s about it.”

“And what about the man in the van?”

“He’s the only one who we don’t know where he’ll be, right? He’ll be close, but that’s all we can count on. The way I figure it, he’ll probably wait until the first one of them comes back. That’s the only way he’ll know they’re all set up. Or maybe he’ll just have some time limit of his own.”

“It would have to be volunteers. . . .”

“Sure it would. You got that kind of people?”

“Yes,” he said, no inflection in his thin voice. Not saying anything about the hard part. Anyone who’s served in the military knows the U.S. government will let you die. They watch soldiers die all the time . . . for some general’s ego or some country’s oil. But there was only one way to stop all the Nazi drivers without making noise. And if that went wrong, it wouldn’t just be expendable soldiers who lost it all. Whoever gave those orders . . .

“I need something else,” I told him.

“More than . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

When I told him, he didn’t say anything.

“It’s time to lay them all out,” I said. “Face up. You got a handkerchief on you?”

He took a clean white one out of the side pocket of his suit jacket, not saying a word.

“Stand up,” I said. “Put your right foot on the chair over there.”

He did it. I took out the key to the ankle cuff and twisted it. The white patch was underneath, undisturbed. “Take the handkerchief,” I told him. “Peel that off. Carefully. Wrap it up tight. Don’t touch it.”

He did that too. At a gesture from me, he sat down again.

“When you get back to wherever you’re going, get that to a lab.”

“What will they find?”

“You know what a Nicoderm patch is?” I asked him.

“Yes, a time-release dose of—”

“That one is too. Only it’s not nicotine it was dispensing. You left that one on for thirty days, you’d be a dead man.”

He didn’t say anything, but the pupils of his eyes deepened.

“We’re all in now,” I said. “No more bargaining. No more threats. We’re a unit now. A hunter-killer team. I don’t know your game, but you know mine—I need Herk out of there. Alive.”

“But we can’t—”

I leaned forward and told him how he could.

And wished I had a god to pray to that I was right.

Fantasy haunts prison. At night, inside the cells, if you could see the pictures playing on the screens inside men’s heads, you’d see everything on this planet. Other planets too.

Some convict fantasies are sweet. Some are freakish. Some are beyond lunacy. But some are so common they’ve become classics. And if my old cellmates could see me . . .

Lying on my back on a king-sized bed in a luxo hotel suite, a beautiful naked woman on either side of me.

But they were holding hands across my chest, giving each other comfort in the presence of a man who had none for either of them.

Late Saturday afternoon.

Hard darkness outside. Soft darkness in the room.

When I tuned out the words, their girl-talk was soothing. My eyes were closed. I tried to drift into their mingled scent. Lose myself.

Time stood there, laughing at its joke.

Like when I was Inside.

Was my brother already gone? I was back in the foster home, waiting for my mother to come and take me away from the terror. Knowing inside me she never would and . . .

The phone rang.

Vyra sprang from the bed like a tigress, grabbing the receiver before the first ring was done.

“Hello?”

A split-second pause, then: “Oh, honey, am I glad to hear from you! When are you—?”

This time she listened a little longer before she said: “I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to—”

He must have told her to shut up, because she went quiet for a long minute. Then she took a deep breath and said softly: “Hercules, will you do something for me? Some little thing, just ’cause I miss you so much?”

He must have said okay, because she came right back with: “My scarf? You know, my pretty pink scarf? The one you said smelled like me? Would you wear it?”

The next words out of her mouth were: “No, I mean, wear it anywhere, darling. Just so I know it’s with you, okay? Then I’ll feel like I’m with you too.”

I don’t know what he said to that. Vyra replied, “Me too. I . . .” and put down the phone. “He hung up,” she said to me and Crystal Beth, her voice cracking around the edges.

“This will be hard for me, mahn,” Clarence said. “It would be better if I did the—”

“Well, you can’t, baby,” Michelle said, honey and steel intertwining in her perfect voice to form an implacable ribbon.

“It is not right,” the islander said, trying to push his will past hers. “It is my job to . . .”

“What?” I asked him, trying for edgeless calm. We were too close to the flashpoint now to play around.

“I am the man,” Clarence said. “And Michelle is—”

“What?” she asked this time, the honey gone from her voice.

“My sister,” he said quietly. “My little sister. Who I love so much.”

Michelle stood up. Walked around the side of the booth and kissed Clarence on his ebony cheek. “Little sister’s gonna be just fine, baby,” she said calmly. “You just show me how to do it, and I’ll make you proud.”

“If I knew the frequency, I could jam it,” the Mole told me, standing next to Terry in his underground bunker.

“But we don’t have—”

“This is a scanner,” the Mole said, holding up a box with a few rows of square LEDs. “I think I know the type of transmitter they must be using. If the range is narrow enough, maybe . . . but he has to have it armed. If he waits to arm it until the last second, there is no chance.”

“We can’t risk it,” I said.

“But Michelle . . .” the Mole said softly, fear driving the science from his voice.

“What is Mom gonna—?” Terry asked, picking up the Mole’s fear like it was forest-fire smoke.

“It’ll be fine,” I told the kid.

He ignored me, looking to the Mole.

“She will,” he promised.

“I have to be there,” the boy said. Only it wasn’t a boy speaking anymore.

I looked at the Mole. We both nodded.

Max was as angry as I’d ever seen him. No matter how many times I explained it, he chopped the air in a violent gesture of rejection.

“You know how it’s got to go,” the Prof said, agreeing with me. “We only get the one toss. We need a natural. And you can’t roll snake eyes with three dice.”