Andrew Vachss - Sacrifice

The Prof schooled me too. In prison and out. We're in the lobby of a fancy hotel. I'm dressed in a nice suit. The Prof is applying the final touches to my high-gloss shoes.

"Watch close, youngblood." Nodding at an average man. All in gray. Dull, anonymous. The uniformed bellman reached for the gray man's suitcase. The gray man snatched it away, keeping it in his left hand while he signed the register with his right.

A few minutes later the bellman came over to us, whispered something to the Prof. Cash flashed an exchange. A few blocks away, the little man ran it down.

"Man don't want to pay, what's it say?"

"That he's cheap."

"The bellhop walked him to the room. Opened the door for him, okay? Didn't carry the bag. And the man still throws him a dime, right on time. Take another look, read the book."

"I don't get it."

"The man ain't cheap, he's into somethin' deep. That bag's full of swag, son."

I read books too. Especially when I was inside. A plant's growth is controlled by the size of its pot. A goldfish won't grow to full size in an aquarium. But we lock children in cages and call it reform school.

I know some things. You don't turn off your headlights when dawn breaks, everyone will know you've been out driving that night.

56

I slept until past noon. Pansy trailed after me as I got dressed, begging with her eyes.

"You want to go see your boyfriend?" I asked her. "Barko?"

She made a little noise. I thought we'd established a new level of human-dog communication until she started drooling while I was eating breakfast. I scooped a couple of pints of honey-vanilla ice cream into her bowl. Watched her slop it all over the walls and floor in a frenzy. Then she curled up and went to sleep.

57

I found Storm in her office at the hospital. She saw me coming, said something into the telephone, hung up.

"We have ten days," I told her. "And then?"

"Then he comes in."

"You think that's enough time?"

"I don't know— it's not up to me. I did what you asked."

"Not all of it." Lily, walking through the back door, her face sweaty, hair mussed, like she'd been exercising.

I lit a smoke. Lily was so worked up she forgot to frown at me. "Keeping him hidden won't do any good, Burke. Nothing will change in ten days."

"What do you want, Lily. Spell it out."

"He could go someplace else. Far away. Disappear."

"Until he does it again."

"No! Until he gets better."

"You know what that would take…?"

"I don't care. I could take him. He couldn't do anything to me…he's too little."

"He'd try, Lily. When he got the signal, he'd try."

"We could use the time," Storm put in. Her parents must have picked her name because she was always so calm. "Luke will need a defense when he comes in, Lily. He needs to see a psychiatrist, maybe a couple of them."

"He wouldn't go to jail," I added.

We left it like that. Nothing settled.

58

I felt it as soon as I hit the street— an inversion in the atmosphere. Heavy air, ozone-clogged. Muggy, with a bone-chill core. Like in prison, just before the race wars came. You felt it in the corridors, on the tiers. In the blocks, on the yard. Skin color the flag, any target an opportunity. The Man would feel it too, but the joint wouldn't get locked down until they had a high enough body count.

I walked in the opposite direction from where I'd left the Plymouth, heading for the subway. Maybe it was just the neighborhood. Something going down, nothing to do with me.

Early afternoon, subway traffic was light. I scanned the car, pretending to read the posters. All the services of the city: AIDS counseling, abortions. Cures for acne, hemorrhoids, and hernias. Food stamps, Lotto, 970 numbers, party lines. Another promised you could Ruin a Pickpocket's Day if you followed its advice: avoid crowds.

When I came up for air at Fifty-ninth Street, it felt the same. Not the neighborhood, then.

I turned into a little gourmet supermarket, wandered the aisles, watching. A woman in a cashmere sweater-dress with a gold chain for a belt searched out a can of politically correct tuna. A guy in a dark blue suit over a striped shirt, port-wine tie with matching suspenders made the same two turns I did. I stepped to one side and he rolled past, his eyes linked to the gold chain.

Back outside. Streets thick with stragglers from lunchtime, shoppers. Crowds have a rhythm. You move through them the way you match your breathing to the sleeper next to you. Find the pattern and merge. I entered the stream, blending.

Lexington Avenue. I flowed with the clot, ignoring the traffic lights. A man on the sidewalk, younger than me, squatting on a piece of cardboard, a huge glass bottle like they use in water coolers next to him, some coins and a bill visible at the bottom. Sign propped up next to the bottle, something about Homeless. Humans passed him by. I did too. Took a couple of quick steps past. Whirled, like I'd changed my mind, reaching into my pocket for some change.

A dark-skinned black man in a black suit backed into a doorway just as my eyes came up. A fat white man was coming out and they bumped. The black man saw me watching and took off, running in the opposite direction. I ran to the street, saw a cab parked at the curb. Jumped onto the trunk, falconing from the high ground. Saw the black suit disappear into the front seat of a black sedan. Lexington Avenue is one-way, they had to go right past me. I stayed where I was. Every car that passed me by stared at the man standing on the cab. Except the sedan, a Chevy Caprice, one of those two-ton jobs with the rear fenders extending halfway down the tires. When it rolled by my post, the driver was staring straight ahead. And the passenger seat was empty.

59

A cab pulled to the curb, its hood popped open just a crack, latched in place to cool the engine. I jumped in, told the driver to head downtown. The driver didn't speak much English— I had the same problem with the No Smoking sign. Rolling downtown along Broadway, I started sorting it out.

Just before we hit Herald Square a bike messenger sliced in from one of the side streets as the cab in front of us was changing lanes. They T-boned and the messenger went down. Traffic stopped…for the red light. The bike was a twisted piece of metal tubing— the messenger had blood running down his calf, just below the bicycle pants. The cabdriver got out, started inspecting his hack for damage. The messenger unwrapped a heavy length of chain from the bike, started limping toward the cab. The driver jumped back inside, took off just as the chain smashed through his back window.

People watched as the bashed-in cab jumped the light, squeaking across the intersection to the blare of horns. The messenger stood in the street, swinging his chain. I heard sirens behind us.

The light turned green and we took off.

I caught a subway at Eighteenth Street, picked up my car, checked it over. Nobody had been playing with it. I drove carefully to Mama's, watching for heavy Chevys.

60

Ten days. I cut it shorter with Lily, leaving myself a margin. There's always an edge— sometimes it's not sharp.

I went through Mama's kitchen, took my booth in the back. She was at her register. I caught her eye, held my fist to my ear, telling her I had to make some calls.

First to SAFE. They called Immaculata to the phone.

"It's me. Is Max around?"

"Yes."

"Ask him to take a look around. Outside."

"For what?"

"Watchers."

"I understand."

Another quarter in the slot. Like Atlantic City, except nobody called me sir.

Jacques came on the line.

"You know my voice?"

"Not so many white men call here, mahn."