Текст книги "Born Bad: Collected Stories"

Автор книги: Andrew Vachss

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BORN

BAD

Acclaim for

Andrew Vachss

"Vachss [is] in the first rank of contemporary American crime writers."

—Kansas City Star

 

"Next to Vachss, Chandler, Cain and Hammett look like choirboys."

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

 

"[Vachss] does to pimps, pederasts, snuff film makers and porn industry purveyors what you know he'd like to do in real life, but seldom can. In other words, he decimates them."

—Detroit News

 

"Vachss is a contemporary master."

–Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

"Move over, Hammett and Chandler, you've got company…. An absolute original… Andrew Vachss has become a cult favorite, and for good reason."

—Cosmopolitan

 

"Vachss' writing is like a dark rollercoaster ride of fear, love and hate."

—Times Picayune

 

"Andrew Vachss, a lawyer who specializes in the problems of child abuse, writes a hypnotically violent prose made up of equal parts of broken concrete block and razor wire."

—Chicago Sun-Times

 

"The best detective fiction being written…add a stinging social commentary…a Célinesque journey into darkness, and we have an Andrew Vachss, one of our most important writers."

– Martha Grimes

Andrew Vachss

Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social caseworker, a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for youthful offenders. Now a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youths exclusively. He is the author of numerous novels, including the Burke series, two collections of short stories, and a wide variety of other material including song lyrics, poetry, graphic novels, and a "children's book for adults." His books have been translated into twenty different languages and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, The New York Times, and numerous other forums. He lives and works in New York City and the Pacific Northwest.

The dedicated Web site for Vachss and his work is www. vachss.com

BOOKS BY

ANDREW VACHSS

Flood

Strega

Blue Belle

Hard Candy

Blossom

Sacrifice

Shella

Down in the Zero

Born Bad

Footsteps of the Hawk

False Allegations

Safe House

Choice of Evil

Everybody Pays

Dead and Gone

Pain Management

 

BORN

BAD

stories

Andrew Vachss

Vintage Crime / Black Lizard

Vintage Books • A Division of Random House, Inc. • New York

Copyright © 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 by Andrew Vachss

All rights reserved under International and Pan–American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Some of the stories in this collection were originally published in The Armchair Detective; Borderlands; Cemetery Dance; Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; Hard Looks; Hardboiled Detective; A Matter of Crime; New Mystery; Underground; Cold Blood (Ziesing); Crossroads Press (chapbook); Dark at Heart (Dark Harvest); Invitation to Murder (Dark Harvest); Narrow Houses (Little, Brown, UK); New Crimes (Robinson Publishing, UK); The New Mystery (Dutton); Ten Tales (Cahill Press) , and in trade paperback by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1994

Library of Congress Cataloging–in–Publication Data

Vachss, Andrew H.

[Short stories. Selections]

Born bad: stories / by Andrew Vachss.–1st ed.

p. em.–(Vintage crime/black lizard)

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Random House Web address: http://www.randomhouse.com/

eISBN: 0–375–71909–1

This book is also available in a print version:

ISBN 0–679–75336–2

Tortured far apart

Children of the Secret are

Alone until love

CONTENTS

Introduction

A Flash of White

Alibi

Anytime I Want

Born Bad

Cain

Cough

Crime Partner

From the Cross Series:

Bandit

Cripple

Mad Dog

Statute of Limitations

Crossfire

Value Received

Head Case

Kidnap

Date Rape

Dead Game

Dialogue

Drive-by

Dumping Ground

Exit

Family resemblance

Hostage

It's a Hard World

Joyride

Lynch Law

Man to Man

Plan B

Replay

Replay: A Play in Three Acts

Bridge

Placebo

Rules of the Road

Step on a Crack

Stone Magic

The Promise

The Unwritten Law

Treatment

The Underground Series

Bum's Rush

Tunnel of Love

Bad Babies

Into the Light

Warlord

Warrior

White Alligator

Witch Hunt

Working Roots

Introduction

Writing short stories is like fighting in a real small ring: whatever your style, you have to get busy quick. It's easier to make mistakes, and it costs more if you do.

If you're looking for a Chandler clone, save your money. If you think "noir" is French for "dark meaninglessness," move on. If your idea of a good time is vigilante slasher-splatter porn, pass.

Those interested in labels will find justification for everything from hardboiled to horror. Some of the pieces concern a mercenary named Cross, soon, if my plans work out, to invade the paperback market. Some are stage plays, others are works-in-progress. Some have been previously published in a wide variety of forums. Others are original to this collection. Most are first-person narratives, some from ground zero and some—the "Underground" series—from below that.

I'll spare you self-congratulatory adjectives. Writing isn't my work, it's an organic extension of that work. I may not be a good writer, but I write for a good reason. And if that reason isn't apparent by the time you've finished this collection, I didn't get the job done.

A Flash of White

The bitch in 24-G is a whore. A real slut. She parades around in front of her bedroom window in her underwear, trying on different outfits. Sometimes she looks right out the window. She knows I'm here.

The highrise has a lot of windows. They all have different coverings: curtains, drapes, Levelor blinds. The bitch in 24-G has curtains, but she never draws them.

I have a diagram of the building that I made myself. I go in the and out all the time. I make deliveries for a florist. They got me that job when they let me out.

I really don't need a job. I have the money my mother left me. But the bitch from the Probation Department, she said I have to have employment.

The bitch in 19-E just came home. She's a pig. When she gets home, she throws off all her clothes, right on the floor. When she comes back into the front room, she has a towel wrapped around her. She doesn't even pick up her clothes until she has a drink. I'm sure it's liquor, because she takes so long to put it together.

I wouldn't drink liquor.

•     •     •

There's a blonde in 16-F that I really hate. She's the biggest bitch of them all. She walks like there's a poker stuck up her ass. I'd like to stick a poker up her ass. A red-hot poker.

A thought like that, I'm supposed to snap the rubber band. The one I have to wear around my wrist. I have to remind myself that those are bad thoughts.

They taught me that inside. Before they let me go.

I never would have gone inside at all except for that bitch. I got caught lots of times. My mother always got me a lawyer. Nothing ever happened. They sent me to counseling twice. The important thing was, I never hurt anybody. I just looked at them, mostly. When I went inside one of their houses, they were never home. I only took panties. That's where bitches keep their secrets, in their panties. If you hold them, you know their secrets. They belong to you.

The last time they caught me was when the bitch got me sent away. The District Attorney. Not the real District Attorney, not the head man. A woman. While I was locked up, she got a search warrant for my room. My lawyer said she was able to get it in the middle of the night because I had my ninja outfit on when they caught me. And the piano-wire garrote.

They almost gave my mother a heart attack, charging in there like that. They found my stuff. My stalker's journal, my magazines, even the straight razor. The bitch D.A. told the judge I was dangerous. A ticking bomb, she said. They wouldn't let me out on bail.

That's when the bitch tricked me. She had me brought to this room to talk to me. My lawyer was there. He said I didn't have to answer any questions. The bitch said she knew there was a reason why I went prowling. That's what she called it, prowling. It sounded good when she said it. Strong. Not like I was a freak or anything.

She had a theory, she said. About why I did it. If she was right, maybe I wasn't a criminal after all. Maybe I was a sick person. Maybe I needed help.

I started to say something, but my lawyer stopped me. We were just there to listen, he said. Just listen.

The bitch started talking about my mother. I saw what she was doing, so I explained the truth to her. It was all just normal discipline. Children need discipline. She never really hurt me. I love my mother.

My lawyer was shaking his head. Not to stop me, like he was sad or something.

The judge sentenced me to this place. For treatment, he said. I didn't know what it was going to be like.

But I bet the bitch knew.

I had to talk. All the time. Every day. Talk about what was inside my head, what I was feeling. They showed me pictures. Lots of pictures. Different kinds. Movies too. Videotapes. They would ask me, does this make me excited' Was I aroused?

After a few months, they put this cuff on me. Right around my…thing. They could tell when I got aroused. From the pictures. They had stories too. On tape. You sit in a chair and close your eyes and put on the earphones and the stories come.

I had to wear the cuff while I heard the stories.

They did something else to me too. Shock. They had this tape of a woman being tied up. And whipped. I watched it. They made me watch it. And when the cuff filled up, I got a shock.

After a while, I didn't get shocked anymore. I didn't get hard when I saw women get hurt.

They made me masturbate. Alone in my room. Over and over again. First I had to masturbate every time I thought about a woman getting hurt. I was the one who got hurt. My…thing was all red and raw. I had to have medicine for it. But they made me keep doing it.

After a while, I didn't have those thoughts anymore.

Then they made me masturbate to sex images. Sex with women. Romantic sex, they called it. They had movies of that too. Kissing, holding. Slow moving.

I had to see therapists too. They made me talk about my mother. About the closet. About being tied up; About the time she caught me playing with my…thing. And what she made me do. With her panties.

I have to wear a rubber band on my wrist. If I ever get a thought about hurting women, I snap it. It reminds me of the place, and the shocks.

My mother was killed while I was inside. She was mugged. Somebody followed her up in the elevator and pushed in the door right behind her. She got hit over the head with something hard and she died. Whoever killed her took money from her pocketbook and other stuff from the apartment.

I went to the funeral. The therapists said I shouldn't feel guilty because I hadn't been home. It wasn't my fault. I asked if the killer had sex with her after he hit her.

I live in the apartment now.

The woman in 16-F just came in. I could just barely see her in the living room. She walked into the bedroom. She never raises the blinds in any room except the living room. Even there, she only keeps them open a little bit. I can never see much. In the bedroom, the window is open. Just a slit. I saw a flash of white. Maybe her panties, just coming off. I cranked up the zoom on the telescope, aiming right at the slit. Nothing. I waited. Another flash of white. I couldn't tell what it was.

The lousy bitch. A tease is worse than anything.

I was only home about an hour when the buzzer rang. I knew who it was. My lousy bitch of a probation officer.

I have to let her in. My lawyer explained it to me. It's part of my probation. Like the treatment center was. If I don't do what they say, they can violate me. That's what my lawyer said: they can violate me.

If they do that, the judge could send me to prison. A real prison. For a long time.

I let her in. She sat down on the couch across from me. She crossed her legs. I could hear the nylon. I didn't look—I know how the bitch watches me.

She asked me about the job. I told her I like flowers. They always smell good. I like bringing them to people.

She asked me about counseling. I told her I still go. Twice a week. And once to the group, too.

She asked me about if it bothered me to have a woman probation officer. I told her no—I like women now.

When I said that, she said she wanted to see my bedroom. I was scared. But she walked in there by herself. When she saw the telescope, she got angry. I was afraid she was going to do something to me for a minute. I told her it was for astronomy. She said she didn't care what it was for, it better not be there the next time she came back.

The bitch. I wonder what's inside her. I'd like to take a look inside her. With the telescope.

After she left, I was very stressed. I was shaking. I tried to be calm. She hadn't found my other stuff. I do a lot of research. I have books. Lock-picking. Black Dragon Death Grip Techniques. Secrets of the Ninja.

There's a woman I write to. I never met her, but she sent me pictures. I send her a money order with every letter and she sends me a letter back. She is my slave. She does whatever I tell her to do. She is a bitch too, but a tame bitch. She knows better than to disobey me. I got her name from one of the guys in group therapy. He said it's an outlet, a release thing. So we don't get worked up and maybe hurt somebody for real.

Every time I get a letter from her, I want to hurt some bitch even worse.

•     •     •

I looked out the window. The redhead in 18-H was home. She doesn't go out much. She has a man who comes to visit her. I always know when the man is coming. She gets dressed in sexy clothes. When he comes there, she treats him like a king. Brings him drinks, lights his cigar, sits on his lap. He's an old, fat man. Bitches always go for money.

She was just lying on her couch, watching TV. I saw her hand go between her legs. She knows I'm watching.

I looked into 16-F. A long time. I couldn't tell if the blonde was home. Then I saw it, the flash of white.

They are going to come for me soon. Coming to violate me, the bitches. All of them.

I have my list. I have my list of bitches. Everything about them. Some are from my delivery route. Only the ones where I actually got in the house. But I like the ones in the building across from me the best. I'm in their houses all the time, with my telescope.

I may only get one of them before they come for me. I'll get one. I'll have her. And then I'll always have her. In my mind. No matter where they put me, I can always have her. Again and again.

So I have to make a choice.

24-G is a whore. She deserves whatever happens to her.

19-E is a pig, a dirty slob of a bitch.

18-H lets a fat old man do anything he wants to her.

16-F, she's the worst bitch of all. The way she walks. The way she keeps me from seeing her. Just that flash of white.

That's what decided me. I need to know what that white flash is.

I'm in the corridor now, right outside 16-F. It's late in the afternoon—she won't be home for another hour or so.

This is so easy.

The lock picks really work. I can hear the last tumbler fall. I'm going in now. The bitch isn't home, so there won't be a chain on the door.

I'm going to step inside and wait for her. Teach her a lesson.

The door opens. It's dark in here. But I'll find her secret. From the back room…a flash of white…

Teeth.

Alibi

 

I walked slowly down the corridor, my footsteps soundless against the deep burgundy carpet. The door was an ornate slab of burnished teak gleaming blackly from within its bronze frame. The immaculate surface was broken only by a small mirror set high and centered in the slab, as carefully as a jewel.

I gently touched the tiny pearl button on the door frame, watching my reflection in the mirror, knowing I was being watched from inside.

The mirror wasn't the only observer—I knew there was a video camera concealed somewhere too. I stood quietly, letting my soul radiate patience.

It didn't matter how long they made me wait. It didn't matter how closely they observed me. Nothing would make me impatient now—it had taken me a little more than four years to find that door.

Four years and almost thirty thousand dollars—the time and the money parceled out slowly, much of both wasted.

But now…I was close. I kept my mouth expressionless, willing the same emptiness into my eyes. Waiting.

The door opened. The man standing in the doorway was thick-bodied, competent looking. He made no attempt to conceal the shoulder holster under his suit jacket.

"Can I help you?" he said.

"I hope so," I told him. "I'd like to speak to Mr. Mason."

"Is he expecting you?" the man asked.

"Yes. I made an appointment. My name is—"

"If you'll just step over here and wait a bit," the man said, ushering me through the door, indicating where I was to stand, "I'll see if Mr. Mason is available."

I stood there waiting. Still waiting. Waiting still. Stop that! I commanded myself. I took a deep breath in through my nose, expanding my stomach. Then I let it out through my mouth as I snapped my abdominal muscles taut, exhaling the tension from my body. Calm. Calm and centered. Calm and…

The man returned. "If you'll just come with me…"

I followed him. He walked with a prizefighter's roll to his shoulders, confident in his upperbody strength. I rounded my shoulders, narrowed my silhouette. Radiating calm. Serenity. And safety to all.

The man stepped aside, moving his hand to wave me into the office. The room was huge, big enough for a half-dozen normal offices. The man behind the kidney-shaped glass desk was husky, his body covered with muscle slowly losing the battle to fat. He had a shaved head and a prominent scar on his right cheek.

"Right on time, Mr. Knight," he greeted me, motioning toward a padded leather chair set in front of the desk.

I sat down, slumping to visually reduce my size even more. I waited. Patient. Calm and patient. Quiet. No threat to anyone. So close, now…

"I understand you've already spoken to Roger Blue," the man who I guessed was Mr. Mason said.

I didn't answer, waiting.

"Is that right?" he asked, not even a trace of impatience in his silky voice.

"Yes," I told him. "That's right."

"Then you know what our services cost?"

"Fifty thousand dollars," I said. "In cash. No bill bigger than a hundred. No new bills, no consecutive serial numbers."

"Very good." The husky man smiled. "May I assume you have it with you?"

"Yes," I said, moving my right hand slowly so he could see the leather briefcase. "It's all here."

"Raymond will take care of that for you," Mr. Mason said, pointing with a stubby finger. A diamond glittered on his hand.

The man who had let me in took the briefcase out of my hand, then he walked out the door, closing it behind him.

I was alone with the husky man. "This will only take a few minutes," he said. "Can I offer you a drink?"

"No thank you," I told him.

It was almost eight minutes before the man he called Raymond came back. Raymond's hands were empty. He made some gesture I didn't understand. The husky man turned to me. "Are you ready?" he asked.

I nodded yes. The husky man got up from behind the big desk and walked up to me. I stood up too. "What's the name?" he asked me.

"Knight," I told him. "It's my real name."

"Okay," he said. "What do your friends call you? You know, the guys you hang out with?"

"Knight," I told him.

"Knight it is," he said. "Come on."

I followed him out of the office. Down the hall, he opened another door. Inside was a staircase. A staircase down. He went first. I was behind him. I could feel Raymond behind me.

At the bottom, there was a big paneled room. In one corner there was an octagonal table covered with green felt. The border of the table had little round cutouts, one on either side of each chair—I could see what they were for, a place to rest an ashtray and a drink. Five men were seated at the table, playing cards. There were a lot of chips in the middle of the table.

"Have a seat," the husky man said.

I took one of the empty chairs. A girl came over, said "What will you have, sire' She was a tall girl. She looked even taller in the fishnet stockings and black high heels. She wasn't wearing anything else.

"A glass of water," I told her.

Nobody laughed, the way they do sometimes when I say that. The girl went off and came back with a heavy-bottomed crystal tumbler full of water and ice.

"Meet your poker buddies," the husky man said to me. He went around the table, pointing at each of the five men in turn.

"Indian Pete," the husky man said.

A medium-size man with a dark reddish complexion nodded at me.

"Sammy Belt," the husky man said.

A slender man with a wispy mustache nodded at me.

The husky man did the same for all of them. Then he said, "Boys, this is Knight, okay' He's a semi-regular, plays stud and draw, plays for cash, no markers. He settles up each time. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses. Heavy cash player, but not much swing, you all got it?"

The five men nodded again.

"Questions?" the husky man said.

"You smoke?" a black man with a fine-boned face asked. His voice was Caribbean.

"No," I answered.

"Drink anything but water?" a pudgy blond man asked me.

"No." I told him.

"You mind turning around…slow?" the man who said he was Sammy Belt asked.

I did that, one full turn. When I faced him again, he nodded an okay.

A tall slender man came over to the table. A couple of the players nodded at him, but he didn't say anything. The tall man opened a mahogany box and took out a new deck of cards. He slit the wrapper with his thumbnail and dumped the cards out onto the green felt. Then he shuffled the cards, his hands moving in a blur, faster and cleaner than any machine. When he was done, he looked up expectantly.

"We need you to play a few hands," the husky man said. "Take you maybe an hour, an hour and a half, all right? Just so we can get a look at your style."

The tall slender man looked at the pudgy blond guy to his left, raising his eyebrows in a question.

"Draw," the pudgy blond man said.

The tall man tapped the table in front of him. Each player tossed a blue chip into the middle. "The chips are twenty, fifty, and a hundred," the husky man said. "You'll probably need about five grand worth."

"You already —" I started to say.

"This is an honest game," the husky man said. "Dead honest. If you don't play…with your own money…we can't really get to know you. And you can't get what you're paying for."

I took five thousand dollars out of my jacket and put it on the table. A girl came over. A redhead, shorter than the first one but dressed the same way. She opened a box. It was lined with white velvet. She put three stacks of chips in front of me: red, white, and blue. Then she put my money in the box and walked away.

I tossed a blue chip into the middle of the table like the others, and the tall man dealt the cards. The men were good players. I'm a good player too. After about an hour, the man called Sammy Belt said. "You don't talk much, do you?"

"No," I said.

"That's the way you are? All the time?"

"Yes," I said.

The man they called Indian Pete laughed.

The husky man came back into the room. He tapped me on the shoulder. "How are you doing?" he asked.

"Good," I said.

"Let's count them up," he said. He spread my chips around on the green felt. "You got sixty-one hundred dollars here," he said. "JoJo will cash you out."

I guess the redhead was JoJo because she came over with the velvet-lined box. She put my chips inside, then she counted out the money for me—sixty-one hundred dollar bills.

"Here's the setup," the husky man said to me. "The house cuts every pot five percent. That's all you pay, ever. Anything you want to eat, anything you want to drink, it's on the house. Got rooms upstairs where you can take a nap, take a shower, take one of the girls if she's willing, okay''

"Okay," I said.

"The house provides the dealer." He pointed at the tall man. "That's Slim," the husky man said. "This is his table. Your table too, all right? This table is only stud and draw—no red dog, no wild cards, nothing fancy. Other tables, they have different rules. The five percent of each pot, that buys you the entire services of the club, understands'

"Yes," I said.

"Anything else'' the husky man asked, glancing around the men seated at the table. Nobody said anything. The husky man put his hands behind his back. "Knight here comes in around ten," he said, watching me. I nodded. "Leaves around four, five in the morning."

I nodded again.

"What night?" the husky man asked me.

"Tomorrow," I told him.

"You got it," the husky man said. "Remember what Roger Blue told you, right? Tomorrow is what you bought for your fifty large. It don't go down like you expected, you want to do this again, it costs the same."

"I know," I told him.

I went out around nine the next night. The doorman saw me leave. He's very alert.

The doorman pushed the call button. A light would go on outside, a signal that a cab was needed. When a taxi pulled up, the doorman opened the back door for me. I thanked him and palmed a dollar bill into his hand.

I told the cab driver where to go. He wrote the destination down on his trip sheet. When he pulled up in front of the club, I thanked him for the ride. I gave him a tip too.

I walked the rest of the way. It was almost midnight before I arrived at his house, a big house in a fancy neighborhood. I went over the back fence. He didn't have a dog. I knew that from watching. I'd been watching a long time.

The back door lock wasn't much. I slipped inside. He lived alone. It was easier for him to be himself that way.

I moved toward the light. He was watching television. On the screen, it showed a little boy. The boy was…It wasn't television he was watching, it was a videotape.

The same kind of videotape I knew he made of my son. The police had never found it, but I knew.

I made a little noise so he'd turn around. He saw me then. He sat back in his chair, startled.

"Wha…?"

"You know who I am?" I asked him.

"No. Look, if you want —"

"It's you I want," I said quietly. "For what you did to my son. My son David. Remember?"

Sweat broke out all along his hairline, but his voice was calm. "Look, I…I know who you are. I couldn't tell at first…in that bad light. I…don't blame you. Any father would be enraged if that sort of thing happened to his kid. But I was the wrong man. Come on, you remember—you were at the trial, for God's sake! It wasn't me. You know that. It wasn't me. It's a terrible thing, what happened to your boy. But it wasn't me. They all testified. That whole night, I was —"

"I know where you were," I told him. "I'm there myself. Right now."