Andrew Vachss - False Allegations

I didn't look back.

The Prof was standing next to Clarence's Rover as I approached, a lawyer's black leather attaché case in his hand. "She rolled in alone, home," he said. "In a big beast. All white, smoked glass—a high–glide ride."

"You get a look inside?"

"Just a glimpse, when the door opened. I tried to sneak a peek, but I couldn't see nobody else. She was behind the wheel."

"Think Kite doesn't know?"

"No way to tell, Schoolboy. She parked a long way down. Bitch had to gimp it for a good quarter mile."

"Yeah. That the stuff from Wolfe?"

"That's the true clue, babe. Pickup went smooth. Clarence copped it from that blonde with the doughnut–snatching pit bull. She was right on time."

"Thanks," I said, taking the attaché case from him. "How's this scan to you?" I asked, running down what happened in Kite's apartment, what Heather just told me too.

The little man listened close, head cocked so I didn't have to speak up, a habit that marked him as clear as a jailhouse tattoo. "She knows how it's done, son. Stripped to freeze your eye, dropped the sucker punch before you could catch the lie. Can't be the first time she played that tune."

"Yeah. Felt like she was going for it too. I hadn't stopped her, she was gonna hurt me."

"You think pain's her game?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"No. And I'm not gonna find out either. That's a freaky, dangerous broad. I think she was telling the truth. She wants this. Wants it bad . I think she's used to bulling her way through things. She's real…I don't know… physical . Maybe she works the bad–cop thing with Kite. When he does questioning…"

"If rough–off's the tool, she's a fool," the Prof said. "You got to check out the canvas before you paint."

"I know," I said, remembering. It was one of the first things he taught me.

"You gonna play it?" he asked me, not pushing either way.

"Man went to a lot of trouble," I said, thinking it through out loud. "Time and money both. It's me he wants. For this job, anyway. I don't know what he'd do if I pulled out, but there's no reason to risk it. We're gonna get paid, right? And some of that money's gonna buy us the same gun he's pointing at my head—information."

"Yeah," the little man agreed. "I wouldn't want that Wolfe woman getting me in her sights either."

I reached in the feed–bag purse, counted out five thousand and pocketed it for Bondi. Then I handed the purse over to the Prof. "There's twenty in here. Five apiece for you, me, Clarence, and Max. Hush money, bitch thinks it is. I'm gonna stay hushed for a while. Near as I can tell, Kite wants me to talk to someone, see if they're telling the truth. I'm gonna do that. Then…"

"You backed, Jack," the little man said.

Idrove away slowly in the Plymouth, enclosed in the steel but looking out through the glass. Thinking about how safe the Prof always made me feel.

I'd come into prison a rookie thug, pulling armed robberies cowboy–style, ready to risk a life sentence for a payroll. The prison economy produces entrepreneurs the same way the Outside does. Pressure extrudes. There was this guy who was always just one beat off from the crime music the rest of us lived by. The Prof called him Einstein and, after a while, we did too. Einstein was always coming up with great ideas. One was books–on–video for the deaf: On the screen would be a person signing the whole book, like closed caption. Another move was Mother Nature's cigarettes: organically grown tobacco, no pesticides, rolled in recycled paper. He was going to sell them in health–food stores. The flash of his ideas always blinded him to the one little problem with them.

Einstein was out in the World once and finally hit on a winner—selling special limited editions of books by authors who never made the best–seller list but had real followings among collectors. He did it right: leather–bound, ribbon markers, marbled endpapers…everything. First time he tried it, he ran off a printing of five hundred, and he sold every single one. Then, of course, the genius figured he was on a roll, so he went back for a second printing. Couldn't figure out why that one flopped.

See, Einstein was a citizen in his heart. Only reason he kept coming back to prison, he was always using a gun to turn banks into his personal ATM, grabbing R&D money for his next project.

Einstein read a lot. I mean, a lot. He was always looking for the Answer. Anyway, one day he comes out on the yard, sure he'd finally found It. He just finished some book on the Civil War—it was all about how rich men avoided the draft by paying poor men to fight in their place. So Einstein figured this time he had the perfect scheme: why not let rich men who got convicted of crimes pay other guys to do their time?

He ran it down all excited, the way he always did. The first guy to respond was a stone fool named Vinnie. "I wouldn't do that for a million bucks," he sneered, superior.

But the Prof wasn't going to let anyone riff on Einstein. "Yeah, right. You too slick for that trick, huh? Naw, you wanna keep sticking up your goddamn bodegas for chump change! How much you pull from your last score, Dillinger? Few hundred bucks? And what you doing on this bit, another nickel–and–dime? My man Einstein may be loco, but he ain't stupid!"

By the time the Prof was done with my education, I knew a dozen slicker, safer ways to get money. All crooked.

I knew this was one of them—but I didn't know how to do it yet.

Isent the money to Bondi in a plain little box, tightly duct–taped inside the brown paper wrapping. It's a big–time felony to ship cash into Australia, so I put the package together as carefully as a letter bomb—if the cops opened it at the other end, it wouldn't bounce back to me. I did all the lettering with a pantograph—no handwriting, no hands. For a return address, I used a sex–dance joint in Times Square. Maybe they'd figure some old customer was sending her a present.

I used the Main Post Office on Eighth, the busiest one in the world. As I walked out, I stripped the surgeon's gloves from my hands, tossed them in a Dumpster, and disappeared into the subway.

Back in the office, I went through the package I'd paid Wolfe for. Kite was born in 1951. Weighed six pounds three ounces. No prior live births listed to his mother. Pediatric records showed regular visits. Nothing remarkable except a bout with whooping cough and surgery to correct an undescended testicle.

Parents both dead, car accident. Drunk driver took them out when Kite was eleven years old. Raised by mother's sister and her second husband, a lawyer in Spokane, Washington. Tonsillectomy, age thirteen. Pretty late in the game for that—must have been painful. Straight–A student in high school. Chess club, debate team, drama society. SAT score of 1540. Full scholarship to college.

In 1970, his aunt's husband was arrested for a series of highway rapes near the Idaho border. The rapist was a cripple–hunter, cruising the side roads in bad weather, looking for cars that had broken down…cars with women drivers, alone and stranded. He wore a stocking mask, never left prints. They caught him with an undercover operation, used a woman decoy cop standing next to a car with the hood up. Found the stocking mask, heavy pair of leather gloves, and a lead pipe wrapped in black friction tape. When they let him out on bail, he called a press conference. He said all the evidence had been planted—they had the wrong man and they knew it.

But two of the victims ID'ed him. The mask didn't help—he hadn't been circumcised until he was an adult, and the penile hood had a distinctive flap of darkened flesh where the surgeon had left a piece.