Andrew Vachss: Sacrifice

"Maybe. I don't know. That's the truth— I don't know."

"That is your sacrifice. To tell me the truth. A truth you have told no other, yes?"

"Nobody knows."

"You have it on you, hunter. You will never be free. Not until you cross over. Do not fear, treasure your sadness. This earth will not hold happiness for you, but your spirit will return. Clean and fresh."

"Without hate?"

"It is your spirit to hate, hunter. Your true path is to hate righteously. Guard the health of your spirit— do not endanger your soul."

"I'm going to…"

"I know. Any man can break the circle, but no man can prevent it from closing again. That man, the one who came to us with the baby's body. For the sacrifice. There is one who loved the baby. She still lives."

"The mother…"

"She is not the one. She was never the one. The mother is with child now. She will not survive the new infant— she will die in childbirth. And she who loved the baby who died will have a new child to love."

"How…?"

She put her hands behind her head, arched her back like a cat, stretched. Her smile was the secret of sex. "In the Islands, in the jungles just outside the cities, people whisper. No man lives without food. Even the spirits must eat. They must mate too. I know. It is that to be Queen. Listen now: some say baby snake eggs hatch in the stomachs of those who have offended. The babies hatch, their poison kills. Then you must cut open the body to let the spirit-snake free. The inside of a bamboo stalk is many tiny little hairs, like baby snakes. In your food, the hairs cause great sickness. Some die. The spirits are surgeons, not butchers. The mother will die, the baby will live. We will make our sacrifice— I will give myself— they will come into me. It will happen."

"Give yourself?"

"The myths are true, hunter. As I told you. I can raise the dead. As you were dead, once. Tell me this is true."

I saw Candy in my mind. Bound and gagged. And deadly. Later, on her stairwell, skirt hiked to her waist, losing my impotence inside her, paying the price.

Raise the dead— for the first time, I knew what it meant.

"It's true," I said. "Do I…?"

"You too, hunter. You will not find what you seek with your own sacrifice, but it is your spirit's destiny to seek. Remember what I have told you."

I stood up. Bowed. She stood too, moved close to me. She was much shorter than I'd thought. Hands reached up around my neck, pulled my face down. Her tongue was fire in my mouth. "When you come back, it will be yours," she whispered, raising the dead.

178

The gypsy cab rolled past their house, me driving, Mole in the passenger seat, Max in the back.

"You see any way in?" I asked.

The Mole ignored me, scribbling something on a notepad strapped to his thigh.

Back in the junkyard, he looked up from a drafting table. "My friends told me you visited that…person. Off Fifth Avenue."

"I didn't hurt him."

"You should have told me."

"Your friends, they ask you if you knew about it?"

"Yes."

"Nice to be able to tell your friends the truth, isn't it?" The Mole took off his Coke-bottle glasses, rubbed them on his greasy jumpsuit, said nothing.

179

Later that night, Max slipped out of the gypsy cab, all in black. We were half a block away from the target, on a side street facing the back of their house.

Nothing to do but wait.

We sat in silence, Mole checking the windshield, me the back window. No smoking, a .38 held against my leg, pointed at the floor. It wasn't Max I was worried about— in this neighborhood, they strip cars with the passengers still in them.

Max moved like a squid in ink— didn't see him until he was almost on top of us.

Back in the bunker, Max made the sign of opening a door, held up two fingers. Two doors, front and back. Held up one finger, pushed forward, made a sign like turning a doorknob, put a fist to one eye, like looking through a telescope. Held up two fingers, pulled back, flattened his palm like it was gliding over a smooth surface.

The Mole sketched quickly, showed Max the house: front view, a door between two barred windows, peephole about face level, doorknob to the left. Max nodded yes. Then the back view: the door just a slab of flat metal, no peephole, no doorknob, arrows showing it opened out. Another nod of agreement. The Mole sketched a fire escape along the back of the building, running from window to window. Max shook his head, made the flat-palm gesture again. The Mole used his eraser, showed us a pure slab, windows bricked over.

"Only way in is the front," I said. "Have you got…?"

"We'll look again," the Mole said.

180

I found the Prof on Wall Street the next day, working his shoeshine rag like a virtuoso. Clarence was his customer, sporting alligator loafers to go with his pearl-gray suit. I waited my turn.

"How about riding shotgun tonight, Prof?"

"Go slow, bro'. Put another quarter in, give me one more spin."

"We got to check out a building. In the Bronx. Me, Max, and the Mole. Can't leave the car alone in that neighborhood. Just a watcher's job— scare anyone away, they come by."

"If it's a score, there's room for more."

"It's no score. Just something I'm gonna do."

"Me too."

"Listen, Prof, there'll be nothing to split up, where we're going, okay?"

"It don't scan, man. But I'll do what you say, back your play. Pick us up on the pier."

"Us?"

"This boy don't take a turn, he ain't never gonna learn," nodding his head at Clarence.

181

Clarence drove the Plymouth along the back street, its muffled exhaust motorboating against the sides of the diseased and deserted cars lining the block. He pulled to a stop, the back seat emptied. He took off as we started across the empty lot to the abandoned building.

Max went first. I brought up the rear, the Mole between us. Broken glass crunched under my feet as I turned to check behind us. I could see the Mole's bulk in his jumpsuit, stumbling along, his leather satchel in one hand.

So much garbage piled up in the gully behind the building that we could step right into the first-floor windows. The smell told me we weren't the first ones to figure it out. Rats scurried. I threw my pencil flash forward, sweeping. Newspapers piled in one corner, a shopping cart without wheels, metal frame to a TV set, plastic coat hangers, rags that had been clothes once. Another corner was the bathroom. Crack vials scattered among broken chunks of concrete from the building itself. Wine bottles. Fire scars on the walls, blackened pillars. Open-grave smell.

The metal staircase was still standing, pieces of the railing missing. Max took a length of black cord from somewhere, looped it around one of the stairs about halfway up, pulled as hard as he could. It held.

We started up the stairs, testing each one. The second-floor landing was solid. I played the flash over the walls— gang graffiti, faded under dust and ash. The next floor was better. Stronger staircase, less damage.

"Basement fire," the Mole whispered. After the building had been abandoned, some wino fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. They probably just let it burn itself out— worth more money to the landlord empty anyway.

When we stepped out onto the roof, we could see in every direction: headlights on the highway, the quiet bulk of the Plymouth waiting. Looking straight down to the target, eyes pulled to a bright light like moths. A skylight, glowing yellow-orange, set into the center of their roof.

The Mole reached in his satchel, took out a pair of night glasses, and started his scan. Max walked the roof corner to corner, leaning far out over the edge, palms out as though the air could balance him.