Andrew Vachss - Blossom

"Un-huh. And the phones?"

"The number on the card, I can bounce it to anywhere I want. Say to one of your dead-end lines?"

"I'll have Glenda pick it up during business hours. You want a tape on the machine for evenings and weekends?"

"Yeah."

He spread his palm out before me. Five. I counted out the cash.

"It's done," he said. "Glenda will sweep the tapes every morning when she comes in, okay?"

"Okay. You licensed to practice in Indiana?"

"I'll get a local guy to do the paperwork," he said. Davidson took cases all over the country.

We shook hands. He was dictating the incorporation memo as I walked out the door.

18

BACK AT THE office, I tried to hustle Pansy into a vacation at the Mole's junkyard. She acted like she didn't know what I was talking about, so I let her out to her roof while I fixed her a snack. A half gallon of honey vanilla ice cream with a couple of handfuls of graham crackers mixed in. It was waiting for her when she ambled downstairs. Lasted about as long as a politician's promise. It would end up being worth the same too. The beast prowled a step behind me as I went through the place throwing everything I'd need into an airline-size bag.

It's easy enough to beat the scanners they use in the security corridors at the airport, but I was traveling clean.

A handful of loose change spilled on the floor. Pansy snarfed at it experimentally. I let her play with the coins. I wouldn't even tell a dog to drop a dime.

19

TERRY OPENED the gate for me at the junkyard. It seemed like he was bigger every time I saw him. He wouldn't have a kid's body much longer. His eyes hadn't been a child's even when I found him. When he was for rent on the streets.

The dog pack swirled around Terry, growling and snapping, eyes down. Waiting. Simba bounced into the circle, his ears up, tail rigid as a flagpole behind him. "Simba-witz!" I greeted the beast. He ignored me, eyes pinning Pansy. The Neapolitan watched him from her higher perch, calm as stone if you didn't know her. But I saw the hair on the back of her neck bristle and felt her tail swish rhythmically against my leg. Terry jumped on the hood of the Plymouth and I pressed the gas. Some of the pack yapped after us, but Simba stood rooted, confident that he had faced down the new arrival without bloodshed.

I followed the path Terry pointed out, planted the Plymouth in a spot between two gutted yellow cabs. I gave Pansy the signal and she didn't protest when Terry came close. We walked the rest of the way to the Mole's bunker.

"I'll get him," the kid said, disappearing down the tunnel, leaving me outside with my dog.

"You'll be okay for a couple weeks, girl," I told her. "You've been here before, remember?" She growled an acknowledgment, not bitching about it.

The Mole shambled up to us, seating himself on the cut-down oil drum he uses for a deck chair. Greeted me the same way he answers his phone…by waiting for someone to speak.

"Mole, I got to go away for a while. An old buddy of mine got himself in a jackpot in Indiana. You can keep Pansy for me…let me leave the Plymouth here too?"

"Okay."

"The Prof will be calling you. Once a day, all right? I need to get a message to him, I'll leave it with you."

"Okay."

"You working on anything?" I asked. Just to give him room— I couldn't understand the stuff he does if I had another life sentence to study it.

"The Mole's teaching me about heavy water," the kid piped up.

"I'm sure your mother will be pleased," I said to the kid, giving the Mole an opening.

"Michelle called you?" he asked.

"Mole, you know the deal. She said she was going to Denmark. That's a name, a name for what she wants done. Not a place. She could be in Europe, could be down to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. She'll call when she's coming home. You know that."

"I get letters," the kid said. Proudly.

Michelle, the beautiful transsexual hooker. The slickest hustler I ever knew. The woman who made Terry her son. The strange, lovely woman who danced for years with the Mole. Never touching. But she'd never change partners. When I was coming up, I always wanted a big sister. Big sisters, they taught you to dance, told you how to act around girls, stepped into the street for you when it came to that. Showed up on visiting days when you were locked down. Sold whatever they had to pay for lawyers. Little sisters, they were nothing but grief. You had to jump in anyone's face who messed with them. And their girlfriends, by the time they were old enough for you to play with, your little sister didn't bring them home after school. They'd get married, get beat up by their husbands. More work to do. I told Michelle once she was like a big sister to me, trying to tell her I loved her the only way I could. All she heard was "big." Like she was older than me. She told me I was a pig and a guttersnipe, ground her spike heel into the toe of my shoe and stalked out of Mama's restaurant. Didn't speak to me for weeks. Until I got in trouble and she came running.

She'd been threatening to have the operation for years. "I'm going to lose these spare parts one day, baby. Stop being trapped. Be myself." We never took it seriously until she left. I missed her. Terry was patient. The Mole was breaking up inside. "My biological family" was the only reference Michelle made to her parents. She was the one who told me what "family of choice" meant. The Prof knew. "She don't just know how to say it, bro', she knows how to play it."

A transsexual who could never have a child. And a solitary genius who never would. Terry was their child. Snatched from the night. Blooming in a junkyard.

The Mole drove me over to a gypsy cab joint where I could catch a ride to the airport. He didn't wave goodbye. If it wasn't Nazi-hunting, it wasn't on his list.

20

I FLEW IN TO MIDWAY on a Thursday night, traveling light. Adjusted my watch to Central Time. A city snake shedding its skin, coming into a new season.

The countergirl confirmed my reservation, asked me if I was interested in an upgrade. She made the word sound so orgasmic I went for the optional car phone.

She didn't blink twice at Mitchell Sloane's American Express gold. It wouldn't bounce. I'd had it for years. Charged something every couple of months, paid the bills by check. Sloane was a solid citizen. Had the passport to prove it.

I would rather have paid cash, not left so much paper behind me. But the drug dealers ruined that: paying cash is a red flag to the DEA, and everyone has a phone. I was lousy with cash. New York cash. Enough to live on for years if I went back to my underground ways. After Belle went down, I went crazy. Off the track. I had the bounty money the pimps had paid me to take the Ghost Van off the streets. All the money Belle had been saving for her wedding day. But I went after more. Not for the money— just to be doing something. Cigarettes by the truckload from North Carolina. Cartons of food stamps, sold to bodegas with nothing on their shelves— you can buy TV sets with them in Puerto Rico. Extortion. Rough stuff. Scoring like a madman. Never getting square.

Until a dead man pulled me out of the pit. Wesley.

21

I KNEW WHERE to go. The Lincoln Town Car had a full tank of gas. Clean inside, but not fresh. Like a motel room where they put a sanitation band across the toilet seat.

The road to Indiana smelled like steel and salt. Near the water it smelled like sewage. Near the mills, like rust.

The motel was outside Merrillville, where Virgil had his house. One story, X-shaped. Mid-range: not classy enough for the desk clerk to tell me about their fine restaurant, not raunchy enough to ask me if I wanted anything sent to my room.

I set the door chain, unpacked, clicked on the TV set. I balanced a couple of quarters on the metal doorknob, positioned a glass ashtray