Andrew Vachss - Sacrifice

I looked over at Clarence. He nodded.

I dropped them on the East Side. Found a pay phone, called Wolfe.

160

In the front seat of Wolfe's Audi, parked on Kew Garden Hills Road, just past the cemetery. The Rottweiler was lying down on the back seat, bored with the conversation.

"Where's the switch for the recliner?" I asked her. "I need to move this seat back."

"It's over here. I'll release it…move back real slowly."

"How come it's over there?"

"If there's somebody sitting where you sit, and they get stupid, I can pull this lever and the passenger seat falls straight back, into full recline." She reached into the back, patted her dog. "And there's Bruiser," she said, quiet smile on her face.

I thought about being strapped in with a seat belt, lying face up like a man in a dental chair with a Rottweiler ready to pull teeth. Nice.

"I may have a way," I said, lighting a cigarette, "to find Luke's parents. I met a guy, years ago. A networked pedophile. Does the whole trip: he's a 'mentor' to little boys, guides them along the path of sexual awareness, keeps these photographic icons as a monument to the joy they shared. You know what I'm talking about— a child molester with intellectual cover. Pedophilia— the cutting edge of sexuality— the last taboo— you've heard it all. He's a child advocate, he says. Children are being restricted by the archaic laws, what good is the right to say 'no' without the freedom to say 'yes.' All that."

"Like you said, I've heard it before."

"Yeah. Well, anyway, he's doing something for a foreign government. I don't know any more about it. Bottom line: the feds wouldn't drop him even if he fell for one of their stings. I offered him immunity if the locals ever glom on to him. Told him you'd back it up. That you'd tell that to his lawyer when you get a call."

"You told him what?"

"You heard what I said. It's a payoff Not for nothing. He turns up Luke's parents, he walks next time you pop him. If you ever do."

"You know what you're asking me to do?"

"Yeah. Lie."

Wolfe looked straight out through the windshield, tapping her long claws on the wheel. French manicure: clear nails, white tips. I watched her blouse move with her breathing.

"I can do that," she said.

161

I wasn't going to rely on the freak. Even if I'd played him perfectly, even if he went for the outside fake, I couldn't be sure he wouldn't come up empty. Luke's parents could be anywhere. As close as Manhattan, as far away as Holland.

The Queen's image hovered at the edge of my mind. Roots. Obeah. Obey. Spirit calling. I let myself be the hunter, following the spoor.

I put out the word. Independent collector looking for videotape. No commercial products wanted. Boys only. Hard stuff The real thing. Top prices paid. Salted the Personals columns with the right code words. Tapped into the computer bulletin boards I knew about. Checked the DMV. Two cars registered to the targets: an Infiniti Q45 and a Mercedes 380 SL. The address was a house in the Hamptons. Turned out to be a rental— they were paid up through Labor Day, but they hadn't been around for weeks. The rental agent was a cautious woman— she had a photocopy of their check against the chance it wouldn't clear. It had, though. Drawn on a corporation with a midtown Manhattan address.

That turned out to be a room full of mail slots. An accommodation address, set up for forwarding. I unlocked the code with a fifty-dollar bill. A PO box in Chelsea. That would've stopped most people, but the Prof's semi-citizen brother Melvin works in the Post Office. They'd bought the box in their birth-certificate names, and the home address was listed. The one where they found Luke covered in his baby brother's blood.

Dead end.

I started over. The neighbors in the building had already been questioned by the cops. One lady didn't mind going through it again, asked if she was going to be on TV. Far as she knew, the poor kid's parents moved away to a safer neighborhood. One where a maniac couldn't sneak in your house at night and chop up your baby. She and her husband would move too, but the real estate market was so soft now.

The corporate checking account was on a commercial bank. I walked in, made out a deposit slip to the account number, put it together with a check for five grand made out to the corporation. The teller took it, stamped it in, went to his machine, came back and told me the account had been closed. I told him I was worried about that— here I had this debt to pay, didn't know what to do with the check. He didn't go for the bait, told me he didn't have a clue. Don't worry about it, he told me, it wasn't my problem.

162

They wouldn't give themselves away. Humans like that have two levels of immunity— the kind you can buy and the kind that comes from the pure sociopath's lack of guilt. True evil is invisible until it feeds. They'd laugh behind their masks at a therapist, breeze through any polygraph.

Best guess is they wouldn't leave the country. Other places may treat pedophiles nicer on the surface, but nobody's got our brand of freak-protection written so deeply into the laws.

I reached out for Wesley. The tracker's spirit came like it always does…riding the tip of my consciousness. I could never call up his face, but I'd always know his voice.

"Where?" I asked him.

"You know. Better than me."

He left me with that. I played the tapes in my head. What I know. They always use multiple locations, move the kids around. They'd have a cave close by. And they'd need things humans need. Electricity, heat, water. Phones too.

The DA could subpoena the Con Ed records, search Ma Bell. Wolfe had probably done it already, but I wasn't going to suggest it to her. I used a cutout, an ex-cop who's got a whole string of people inside the record room. Nothing on paper…a few quick taps at the computer keys and I'd know if they were listed.

"You want all the utilities?" he asked.

"All of them," I said. "Try the gas company too. And not just the city, okay? Give me Westchester, North Jersey, southern Connecticut."

"You're talking a big tab, man."

"I'm good for it," I told him, handing him a thousand in fifties. "The rest when you get back to me."

It only took him three days. To come up empty.

163

They wouldn't be too far underground, not these freaks. Humans who prey on children lead lives of monumental duplicity. The neighbors are always shocked when a bust goes down— not those people. They'd be community leaders, political conservatives, but with a soft spot for civil liberties. Tight lives, tightly controlled— they'd only let go inside their evil circle.

I called my pal Morelli, a crime reporter who came up hard. Asked him to leave me alone with his NEXIS terminal for a while. He said what he always says.

"Anything for me?"

I just shook my head.

164

He came back a few hours later. All I had to show for my work was an ashtray full of butts and a legal pad full of notes. Humans indicted for ritualistic abuse who had jumped bail, kiddie-sex rings exposed…some of the perpetrators not apprehended. Possibilities— they always find others like them.

"Any luck?" Morelli asked.

"Goose egg," I told him. "Thanks anyway."

165

I didn't say anything to Morelli about a newsclip I'd found. Sixteen-year-old girl. A babysitter in a nice lower Westchester neighborhood, she'd been arrested for sexual abuse of two little boys. The crime had taken place last year— the babysitter's name was being withheld because of her age. Full confession.

I parked my Plymouth in the municipal indoor lot across from the Yonkers Family Court. Seven-thirty in the morning— the place was empty. I walked through the lot, down the stairs in front of City Hall. The stone steps were littered with humans who couldn't find a place to sleep on the park benches, clutching their plastic garbage bags full of return-deposit aluminum cans and plastic bottles, waiting for the recycling joint to open.