Andrew Vachss - Blossom

"You know the question Virgil wants answered?"

"No. But I know you'll know the answer. Virgil said so."

"Where is he?"

"You'd never find it. I'll have to show you."

"No good. The cops'll be watching. Just tell me. Slow and careful."

It took her a long time. I made her tell me again. "You don't speak to Virgil?"

"No. He figured the phones'd be tapped."

"Okay. I'll go and see him."

"Now?"

"Soon. You go on back. I'll find him."

She grabbed my eyes with hers. "I know you will. And now I know you're Burke for real."

"How d'you know?"

"You didn't write anything down."

5

REBECCA WENT along with two of Mama's thugs. They'd take her to the airport. She didn't look back.

Virgil would be okay wherever he was. He wasn't trained like I was, but I'd schooled him good, all that time we'd spent together in the cell after lights-out. He wouldn't make any rookie mistakes. He called, and I'd come to him. But I had to clear the slate first.

6

EARLY SATURDAY MORNING. I found the Prof at work. He was hunched over the tabloids in a restaurant booth in the DMZ, a block past Times Square, listening to Olivia. She's a heavy-built black lady, works as a cleaning woman, cook, hospital orderly…whatever rich people need. She plays stupid but she doesn't even come close. And she's got camera eyes.

He felt me close in, whispered something to Olivia. She slid out of the booth, eyes down.

"Remember Virgil?" I asked the little man.

"The ridge runner? Sure."

"He got himself a major beef. Out in Indiana. I got to go see about him."

"You doing social work now?"

"He's one of us."

"Yeah, you're singing my song, but you're singing it wrong. My man's a stone citizen, Burke. He picked his home, let him go it alone."

The Prof could never forgive anyone who'd rather work than steal. People like that, they couldn't be trusted.

"I got to do it."

"Yeah. You always got to do it. That white trash holding any cash?"

"It's not like that."

"Never is, seems like. You went to school, but you still play the fool. A rhino ain't a racehorse."

"What's that mean?"

"Means you can't operate outside, bro'. The city, the streets. Even the jailhouse. You know all that, right? But you can't pay your bills in the hills. You got a subway complexion, son. And you smell like concrete. You ain't gonna fool nobody. You can't even buy yourself heat out there, turns out you need it."

"So I'll live by my wits."

"That what they call being half safe?"

"I know what I'm doing."

The little man ignored me. The way he always does when he's on a scent. "What you want to mess with all those beady-eyed, inbred Bible-thumping farmers?"

"Virgil was with us," I told him.

" Was was yesterday. This ain't. The straight track never goes back."

"I'm not asking you to come along."

"That's right. Be crazy by your ownself. You know how to work it. Lay in the cut, work the shadows. Talk loud and you draw a crowd."

"Okay."

The Prof snorted his disgust. "I ain't your parole officer, bro'. Why you reporting in?"

"Backup."

The little man nodded. "You need a loan, pick up the phone."

"The Mole, okay?"

"I'll give him a play. Once a day."

"Thanks, Prof."

He extended one hand to the counter, helped himself to my cigarettes, pocketing the pack as he lit one. Nodded his head and went back to his hustle.

7

I HAD ONE more job to wrap up before I left the city. The call had come in a few weeks ago and I'd been dancing with the freak ever since. He'd called a few times. Always the same thing: told Mama he had some information he wanted to sell. About a missing kid. He wouldn't leave a callback number. Wouldn't say when he'd call again. Wouldn't drop the kid's name.

Mama reads phone voices the way some Gypsies read palms. She'd been screening my blind dates ever since the first call, years and years ago. When I thought I could scam my way through this junkyard of a life. "Twisted man," she'd said. Voices came through the phone wire to Mama's filter all the time. Dope dealers, gunrunners, porno merchants, mercenaries and missionaries, cops and gangsters. They all knew where to find me.

They thought.

If Mama said the man was twisted, he'd bounce every needle on a psychiatrist's scale.

One night, I'd been there when he called. In the basement with Max. Mama called me to the phone. I picked it up.

"Okay. Talk to me."

"This is Burke?"

"Yeah."

"I got something." A young man's voice. "Something I want to sell."

I let him feel the silence. Feel what was in it. Waited.

"A missing kid. I know where he is. What's it worth?"

"To who?"

"That's not my problem. That's yours. You make the connection, get the cash. And we'll trade."

"Trade for what, pal? Is there some kind of reward out for this kid?"

"No. He's been gone a long time."

"So?"

"So I figure…you talk to his people …see if they're willing to pay. I don't…I can't call them myself. I don't even know where they are."

"Give me a name."

"Not a chance."

"The kid's name, pal."

"Oh."

The line went quiet again. I cleared my mind, listened: the freak's bad breathing, wires humming. No background noise. A pay phone, somewhere quiet.

"Jeremiah Brownwell."

"Never heard of him."

"Just check it out. I'll call you back."

8

THERE'S ALL KINDS of registries for missing kids, from federal to local. None of them would tell me what I needed to know to put this together. I called the cops.

The postcards show the Brooklyn Bridge from the top. From the bottom, it wouldn't attract any tourists. There's an opening at ground level along Frankfort Street just past Archway Seven. Big enough for a football game. A long time ago, they rented out the space. You can still see what's left of the faded signs: Leather Hides, Newsprint, Packing and Crating. One Police Plaza to the north, high-rise co-ops to the south.

Four in the afternoon, the moist heat working overtime. The streets would overflow with yuppie traffic in a short while, heading for South Street Seaport bistros to unwind, cool down after a hard day worshiping the greed-god. When it got dark, the urban-punk killing machines would become sociopathic clots in the city's bloodstream, preparing themselves to defend their graffiti-marked territory. Merciless and coarse, their only contribution to society would be as organ-donors.

In this city, race-hatred so thick you could cut it with a knife. Some tried.

I waited on the abandoned loading dock, playing the tapes again in my head. There's supposed to be a kid inside every adult. When women talk about men being little boys inside, they say it with a loving, indulgent chuckle. Or they sneer. I knew the little boy I'd been— I didn't ever want to see him again.

The car was the color of city dust. It bumped its way onto the concrete apron. The front doors opened and the cops rolled out. McGowan and Morales. NYPD Runaway Squad. They strolled over to where I was waiting, McGowan tall and thick, hat pushed back on his head, cigar in one hand, Irish smile on his mobile face. Morales was a flat-faced thuggish pit bull— more testosterone than brains. If he was a shark, he'd be a hammerhead.

I dropped to the ground, leaned against the loading dock as they approached.

"You okay?" McGowan asked in that honey-laced voice that had charmed little street girls and terrorized pimps for twenty years.

I nodded, watching Morales. We'd gone a few rounds a while back, then touched gloves when it was over. He wouldn't turn on me for no reason, but he'd never need a very good one.

"Is it for real?" I asked.

McGowan puffed on his cigar. "Jeremiah Brownwell was reported missing almost five years ago. He was seven then. With his mother at a shopping mall in Westchester. Just vanished. No ransom demand. Not a trace."