Andrew Vachss - Blossom

Called Sherwood from the car. "Want to meet me someplace?"

"Okay. You know your way around?"

"I can find you."

"The Police Community Relations Outpost. It's on Twenty-fifth, just off Broadway. In about an hour."

"I was hoping for a little more privacy."

His laugh was a bass rumble.

91

I TURNED THE Lincoln onto Broadway, motored past the Y&W Drive-In Theatre. Glanced at the marquee: first-run flicks, no slasher-porn. Still in Merrillville. I crossed the line into Garyat Fifty-third. The stores got closer together, muscling each other for sidewalk room. Package joints, tire stores, BBQ, brick-fronted bars, shoeshine, barbershops. An abandoned gas station. Pizza parlors, law offices, auto body shops. A dozen different dumps with "Lounge" after some name. XXX video stores. Signs: Go-Go Dancers Wanted. Burlesque. Pool-room. Ladies Welcome. Exotic Dancers. Hand-painted, red letters: LIVE GIRLS.

I thought of the Ghost Van.

I crossed into Glen Park, where even the billboards turned Afro. Fast food, ribs and chicken. Sex shops, private booths, a quarter a play. Storefront churches. Check cashing. Pawnshops. Bible Book Center. Tattoo parlor. A closed-front store advertising Swingers' Supplies and Marital Aids.

They probably got the last word right.

At Twenty-sixth a sign: Welcome to Gary. Sherwood's home ground.

I hung a left on Twenty-fifth. The Police Community Relations sign hung limply from a bombed-out ruin, rusted metal gates padlocked across its face. A black unmarked Ford parked in front, conspicuous as a pigeon among peacocks in that neighborhood. The front seat nearly filled with one body.

I pulled in behind him, killed the ignition. He maneuvered his bulk out of the car, light on his feet. Came around to the passenger side. I hit the switch and he climbed in.

"Let's take your ride. Leave this thing on the street around here, it won't be around when you get back."

"Where to?"

"Straight ahead. Past the high school. Over by the Delaney Projects. You know where they are, right?"

I didn't say anything. But Hightower's mother must have.

Sherwood pointed to the curb with a cigar-sized finger and I pulled over.

"You wanted to talk?'

I lit a smoke. "Remember that postal stuff we talked about? There's a few possibilities in there, but I can't be sure. They're for real, I don't want to just roll up on them at their houses, right?"

He didn't even nod, watching close.

"You must have crews around here. I've been checking, asking around." Remembering something Virgil had told me. "That little town, Lake Station, wasn't it once called East Gary?"

"Yep. Sure was."

"And the people there, they wanted a different name. Not be associated with Garyin people's minds."

"That don't make them Nazis."

"Didn't say it did. But you got a Klan in Indiana, at least south of here you do. And what they do is recruit, right? I don't mean hold rallies and stuff. They ask around, see who's interested. They may not call themselves by any special name, but there's no shortage of hate groups around here."

"Black and white."

"Sure. I'm not a sociologist. The guy I'm looking for, he's white."

"Random killings. Sniper fire. What's white about that?"

"Nothing by itself. But this isn't about race. That's not the key. The Zebra killings in Frisco, that was race war."

"You know about that?"

I dragged on my smoke, letting him have my eyes. "Death Angels. With little dark wings drawn on their photographs. Take Five. Carry devil's heads to Mecca. Extra points for kids. The cops never got all of them. The BLA, that was color too. But the color they were hunting was blue. That white guy in Buffalo. He shot random, but only blacks. The shrinks are working on a new word for it: Afrophobia."

His smile was bitter ice. "Yeah, they always know what to call a lynching."

"My man won't be a Nazi. He's alone. Inside himself. But he may have tried. Flirted with the edges. Likes the costumes. So what I need, I need to know where I could maybe find some of these freaks."

"You gonna sign up?"

"I don't do undercover work. Takes too long. It's not them I'm after."

"So how d'you talk to them?"

"I'll offer to sell them some guns."

"Those boys are suspicious. Paranoid. They'll think you're the Man."

"Not if they run my prints. These guys always have friends on the force."

"Could be…I heard rumors on my own job."

"Officer Revis maybe?"

His eyes glinted. "You do get around, don't you? Where d'you hear that?"

"Same place you heard I'd been to the Projects before."

Sherwood fired a smoke of his own. Looked as thin as a chiba joystick in his thick fingers. "There's a truckers' motel out on the Interstate, right across from the power plant. You know it?"

"I can find it."

"Yeah. Like you said before. Anyway, there's a bar just down the road. Freestanding, big parking lot. Sign out front says they have fashion shows there."

"Fashion shows?"

"You'll see. Look for a white Chevy Blazer, little Confederate flag on the antenna. White Power bumper sticker." He pulled out a notebook, wrote something, tore out the page, handed it to me. "License number. David Matson is the owner. In his forties, about six one, about half bald, always wears some kind of cap, even indoors. He's the head of the local chapter."

"Of…"

"Of whatever they call themselves this week. But it don't matter, Matson'll be the boss."

"Thanks."

I dropped him back at his cruiser. He turned to me, getting out of the car. "You said this wasn't about race. What is it about?"

"Sex."

"People get those mixed up around here, my friend."

After he left, I called Blossom from the car. "You want some company?"

"I want yours."

92

LUNCH WAS a salad, all red and green.

"You'd rather have meat, wouldn't you?"

"I guess."

"This is better for you."

"I'm sure"— wondering when it was coming.

"You take vitamins?"

"Ginseng."

"That's not a vitamin, it's an herb. You're going to smoke, you should take nine, ten thousand milligrams of Vitamin C a day. And fifty thousand IU of beta-carotene."

"IU?" I asked, pretending like I was listening.

"International Units."

"Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Okay, boss."

Her laugh was throaty. "You never had a boss in your life."

"I've had cottage leaders, counselors, directors, superintendents, wardens…you name it."

"No employers?"

"No."

"Didn't think so."

"You think you know me, girl? You talked to Sherwood, maybe got a look at my rap sheet. Watched me around the diner. Drove around in my car…"

"Held you in my hands."

"That too. Think you know me?"

"Yes."

"Why am I here? Right now."

"You want to see if I'm still having an estrogen-fit."

I locked her eyes, voice serious, just the edge of a chill. The same voice that's backed up punks all through the underground. "I'm here because I got work to do… we got work to do. The cops think they got a pattern to the killings, but there might be more. Random shootings. Not deaths. Shootings. Maybe this freak dipped it, got it wet before he plunged in. We could get it out of the newspapers, but it might take weeks of work, go back a couple of years. So what we need is a reporter. Every paper's got at least one real one. Some hungry guy, wants to know what's going on. That's why he's in the journalism racket, to know things. We find one, get his nose open. Make him a deal. Tell him why we're looking, get him to go through the clips. Attempted murders, shootings. Drive-bys would be the best. Or sniper-shooting into some woman s window. See? Give us a few more pieces.

"I…"

"I'm not finished, Blossom. This pattern thing, it could lead to nothing. I don't know where the flower is, but I know the root. Like a preacher knows the devil. But where I have to look, it'll take a scam. And a doctor, now she'd be just perfect for it." I lit a smoke, pushing my salad plate away. "Now you understand what I came here for?"