Andrew Vachss: Safe House

“I’m gone too,” I said.

“You’re really going?” I asked Vyra, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice.

“Yes.” A lilt in her usually waspish voice. “We are.” She was standing next to Hercules, who was vainly trying to cram another pair of shoes into a monster pile of suitcases.

“I’ve got . . . people still in Oregon,” Crystal Beth said. “That’ll be their first stop. Or, if they like it there, they can—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Vyra interrupted her. “We’re going to be together. From now on.”

Hercules stood up. He was bare-chested, sweating with the strain of “helping” Vyra pack. On his chest, the black swastika was now a murky Rorschach blot only a warrior could read. Or could be entitled to carry. His eyes were wet.

“I never fucking doubted you for a minute, man. I knew you was too slick for those lameass motherfuc—”

“It’s done now, Herk,” I told him.

“We never gonna be done, brother,” the big man said.

Crystal Beth and Vyra kept hugging and crying.

I stepped away from it.

“Are you going to stay?” Crystal Beth asked me late that night. “Tonight? Sure.”

“With me? And not just tonight?” she asked.

The time for lies was done. “I don’t know,” I told her.

An excerpt from

CHOICE OF EVIL

byANDREW VACHSS

soon to be available in hardcover from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Inosed the Plymouth carefully around the corner, checking the street the way I always do when I’m heading home. The garage I use is cut into the closed-off base of an old twine factory which had been converted into upscale lofts years ago. Above the designer-massaged floor-through apartments is what the yuppie occupants think is crawl space. That’s where I live.

A pal had tapped into their electricity lines and installed a stainless steel sink-and-toilet combo. A fiberglass stall shower, a two-burner hot plate, a duct to the heating pipes below . . . and it turned into my home.

I’ve lived there for years, thanks to a deal I made with the landlord. His son got himself into a jackpot—an easy enough feat for a punk who thought ratting out his rich dope-dealing friends was a fun hobby—and ended up in the Witness Protection Program. I stumbled across him while I was looking for someone else, and I traded my silence for a special brand of rent control. Didn’t cost the landlord a penny, but it bought his punk kid an anonymous life. And safe harbor for me.

Some of my life is in that building. And when I saw the pack of blue-and-white NYPD squad cars surrounding the back entrance, I knew that part of it was over.

I just sat there and took it. The way I always do—fear and rage dancing inside me, nothing showing on my face. I’ve had a lot of practice, from the hospital where my whore of a mother dropped me—dropped me out of her, I mean—to the orphanage to the foster homes to the juvenile joints to prison to that war in Africa to prison again and . . . all of it.

It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing did. Somebody had dimed me out. And the cops would find enough felony evidence up there to put me back Inside forever once they connected it up.

I watched the cops carry Pansy out on a litter, straining under the huge beast’s weight. Pansy’s my dog. My partner, not my pet. A Neapolitan mastiff, direct descendent of the original war dogs who crossed the Alps with Hannibal. I had dreamed of having my own dog every night in prison. They’d taken my beloved little terrier Pepper from me when I was a kid, that lying swine of a juvenile court judge promising me there’d be another puppy in the foster home they were sentencing me to. I remember the court officer laughing then, but I didn’t get the joke until they dropped me off. There was no pup there, and I had to do the time alone, without anyone who loved me.

I never saw Pepper again, but I did see that court officer. It was more than twenty years later, and he didn’t recognize me. When I was done, nobody would recognize him either. That’s the way I was then. I’m not the same now. But I’ve only changed my ways, not my heart.

I’d raised Pansy from a pup. Weaned her myself. She would die for me. And it looked like she had. Standing up all the way. She’d never let another human being into my place when I wasn’t there.

I said goodbye the way we do down here—promising her vengeance. I was using the little monocular I always carry to get a close up when the screen shifted focus: I saw Pansy stir on the litter. She was still alive. The cops must have waited for the EMS unit—they carry tranquilizer guns. So I didn’t need the badge numbers of the cops anymore—I needed my dog back. I U-turned the Plymouth slow and smooth and aimed it toward a place where I could make plans.

“Honey, I called around for hours. We know where she is,” Michelle said, her lustrous eyes shining, reflecting the pain in me. She’s my sister—my pain is hers.

“Where?”

“The new shelter. The one in Hunter’s Point, just across the river? In Long Island City.”

“Yeah, I heard about it. It’s private, right? Part of the fucking Mayor’s giveaway plan.”

“Baby, relax, okay? Crystal Beth ran over there the second I called her. It could get a little stupid . . . Pansy’s got no license, no papers . . . but Crystal knows how to act. Just sit tight, and—”

“When did she leave?”

“Honey, stop. You’re scaring me. She’s been gone almost . . . three hours now. You don’t expect her to haul that monster on the back of her motorcycle, do you?”

“I don’t care how she—”

Michelle put her hand on my forearm, willing me to centered calmness, reminding me of all the years I’d invested in learning the path to that place.

“Can you get Max for me?” I asked Mama. She’d been hovering nearby since the minute I’d come in.

“Sure. Get Max. Come soon, okay?”

I just nodded.

“Burke, you don’t need Max for this,” Michelle told me. “Jesus! It’s not like they’re gonna care, right? So she doesn’t have a license. So Crystal Beth has to pay a fine . . . or whatever. It won’t take long. . . . ”

Istayed inside myself, waiting. Felt Crystal Beth’s small hand on my shoulder before I heard her approach. Smelled her orchid-and-dark tobacco scent. Didn’t move. She came around the table and sat down across from me.

“Burke—”

“What happened?” I cut into whatever she was going to say, already knowing it was bad.

“The . . . license thing wasn’t a problem. Just like Michelle said. They were willing to let me take her. But they wouldn’t bring her out —they said I had to go back and get her myself.”

“And . . . ?”

“And she was in a cage. A big steel cage. Like a tiger or something. There was a sign on it, in red; it said: DANGEROUS! DO NOT APPROACH! The . . . attendant, he told me she wouldn’t take food. Even when they shoved it into the cage, she wouldn’t eat. He warned me not to come near her, but I did anyway, and she . . .”

“What?”

“She tried to kill me. She lunged at the bars, snarling and snapping her teeth, and . . .”

“They don’t know the word,” I said, half to myself. I had poison-proofed Pansy when she was still small. Unless you said the right word, she wouldn’t touch food, no matter how hungry she was. I had a friend who ran a little auto parts joint. He had a Shepherd, a real nice one. He used the dog to guard the place at night, so nobody could help themselves. Some degenerate tossed a strychnine-laced steak over the fence. When the dog helped himself, he died. In pain.