Andrew Vachss: Safe House

I fired up the Plymouth, used the periscope to check the empty street and carefully inched my way out. By the time the pay phone at Mama’s rang for me, I’d been sitting in my booth for ten minutes.

“Gardens,” Mama answered, using a heavy Mandarin accent. She’s got a lot of them. Mama cocked her head, signaling to me she was listening, then said, “Oh sure. Right here. Just come back. I get him, okay?” into the phone, and handed it to me.

“Yeah?”

“Burke? Is that you?”

“Sure.”

“It’s Crystal Beth. From—”

“I remember,” I said, neutral-voiced.

“Can we meet someplace?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t talk much on the phone,” she said, a teasing undertone to her husky voice.

“Neither should you,” I told her.

“Why? I’m not . . . Oh, never mind. Do you know a good place?”

I thought it over fast. She didn’t want to show me her cards. I could understand that. I balanced the safety of meeting her at Mama’s with letting her see where I worked. But too many people around me had died over the years, and some of my secrets along with them. The local cops knew about Mama’s; so did the feds. A low-tier nothing like Porkpie wouldn’t know, but even he could find out if he put some money out on the street. “Yeah, I know a place,” I said. “How about if I buy you dinner? Tonight?”

“I’d like that.”

“It’s a deal,” I said. And gave her Mama’s address.

“You sure you killed him?” I asked Herk. I didn’t bother to watch his eyes—the big dope couldn’t lie any better than he could steal.

“I got under the ribs, Burke. The light went out. Soon as I stuck him. You could see it.”

We were sitting in the front seat of my Plymouth, just inside the fence of a junkyard in South Ozone Park. I know the owner. We could sit there for hours without a problem. Except for the cold. I was trying to put it together. The way I figured it, it wasn’t ever meant to be a warning, it was a setup hit. Somebody knew how the mark was going to react when he was braced, especially by a guy Herk’s size. Somebody knew the mark would go for his gun.

Herk hadn’t known that. Maybe the woman hadn’t either. Maybe Porkpie . . .

“And then you ran for the car?” I asked.

“Right. Porkpie had the engine running and we just—”

“And there was nobody else around, Herk? You’re sure?”

“Oh man, yes! I checked the alley on foot first, before the punk even came out. Burke, when am I gonna raise on outa here? All you can do is watch that little TV in my room all day. Like being in the hole. No guys to hang out with, no weight room, no nothing.”

“You want some stuff to read?”

“Yeah! Can you get me some comics?”

“What kind? Like Batman and stuff?”

“No, man. Batman’s a slug. That stuff ain’t no fun. Get me something like this,” he said, pulling a rolled-up comic book out of his coat.”

“Hardboiled?” I asked, looking at a comic cover as intricate as an ancient tapestry.

“Yeah! This guy rules! I love his stuff.”

“Which guy?”

“The artist, man. Look!”

I saw the name in tiny letters. Geof Darrow. “This is him?”

“Look at the pictures, Burke. He’s got the magic, bro.”

I lit a smoke and thumbed through the book. Thinking Herk was right. I never saw drawings like that. They vibrated like liquid poetry—the deeper you looked, the more there was to see.

“You’re right, brother,” I told him. “Okay, anything else?”

“Yeah. Anything by Alan Grant, okay?”

“Alan Grant, he’s an artist too?”

“No, man,” Herk said scornfully. “Don’t you know nothing? He’s a writer. A great writer. Check out Lobo. And Anderson: Psi-Judge —that’s like a British one, but they got it at any decent store.”

“I will,” I promised him. “Just stay put, all right? We’re working on it.”

“I wish I was working,” the big man said.

“There’ll be work soon enough,” I told him.

“Not that work,” he said, dismissing my whole life. “ Real work. A job, like.”

“A citizen job?”

“Yeah. That’s right,” the big man said, rolling his shoulders like he was expecting a fight. “A square job. With a paycheck.”

“You wanna work on the docks? Kick back to the foreman every shape-up? Drive a cab and eat shit all day from the fares? What?”

“I heard all that,” Herk said. “I been hearing it all my life, okay? What’re you asking me? Do I wanna kiss ass? There’s gotta be another way.”

“I guess. But if you don’t know what you wanna do . . .”

“I fucking do know,” he said quietly. “You remember Dante? From Inside?”

“The old Italian guy? The one who—?”

“Yeah, the guy who had that big garden? Remember? He had all them plants—tomatoes and cucumbers and radishes and carrots and everything? He showed me how to do some . . . stuff. I really liked that, Burke. It was . . . I dunno. . . . I can’t explain it.”

“That’s what you want to be, a gardener?”

“That’s right,” he said, chin out-thrust, an undertone of aggressiveness in his voice. “Dante said there’s lotsa jobs like that. Gardening. Landscaping. That’s real work. Not being no coolie or wetback, working for yourself. Inside, even, if you want. In greenhouses and stuff. There’s money in it too, he said. If you know how to do it good. If you really care about it.”

“So why can’t you—?”

“Sure,” he said, just this side of a snarl. “Where am I gonna find somebody to give me a chance? With my record and all? I know I ain’t no genius. But old Dante wasn’t no genius either. And he could make stuff grow like nobody else, right?”

“Right.”

“Another chance,” Herk said softly, all the aggression gone from his voice. “I guess that’s what I really want. Another chance.”

“That was Number One on the Jailhouse Hit Parade,” I told him. “Everybody sung it.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said sorrowfully. “The punk was gone, Burke. Soon as I stuck him. I gotta do something soon. I’m telling you, this place’s worse than the fucking joint.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said quietly, reminding him.

Herk nodded, done arguing.

“Ineed to look at an autopsy report,” I told the man on the phone.

“You need a copy?” the man said, the Ibo accent thick in his voice. “They are very strict about this ever since—”

“Not a copy. Just a look.”

“I do not forget my debts. And a debt of my sister is a debt of mine, I know this. But this is a fine job I have now. And it is—”

“Okay,” I told him, getting to what I wanted in the first place. “I’ll settle for this. You pull it and read it to me. Over the phone, all right? Nothing more.”

“I can do that,” he promised. “Give me the name.”

Four hours later, I rang him back. Soon as he heard my voice, he started talking, the influence of the British colonialists clear in his precise voice.

“Single puncture wound, left ventricle. That’s all?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

“That’s the cause of death?”

“Yes.”

“No other intrusions?”

“No. Nothing. All the other organs were normal. Lungs clear. Toxicology was negative too.”

“Tell Comfort we’re square,” I said, and hung up.

She was right on time, crossing the threshold at eight on the dot. She stopped by Mama’s register at the front. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Finally, she disengaged herself and walked back to my booth.