Dead and Gone - Andrew Vachss [26]
“Call back here in twenty-four hours,” he said. And hung up.
I pushed the “off” button on the cell phone. Then I used a hammer and a blowtorch to turn it into a puddle of untraceable plastic.
“A soldier is nothing but an armed bureaucrat,” he said the next night. “And Dmitri proves it. Everything, he wrote down. Everything. An idiot.”
“Government is government,” I agreed.
He grunted in self-satisfaction. Then he slowly gave me a name, address, and phone number as if he was reading the info off an index card.
“Chicago?”
“Everything that is here, I just tell you.”
“All right. I believe you.”
“The rest of the money …?”
“Is yours as soon as I check out the information.”
“You said that you—”
“I said I believed you. Dmitri, that remains to be seen.”
“What are you saying?”
“I offered you two choices. If the information is true, then you have earned the money.”
“If it is not? If Dmitri …?”
“Then that’s it,” I lied. “You keep what you have, and we’ll be square.”
I hung up on whatever he was in the middle of saying.
“Chi-Town?” the Prof asked me, puzzled.
“That part is legit,” I told him. “Dmitri said the snatch took place in Chicago. What happened was, it made the Chicago papers, but they lived in Winnetka—it’s like a suburb. A rich suburb. Anyway, that’s where they lived then. And I figured they’d moved here after it happened. But maybe not …”
“Never change phone,” Mama said.
I looked across the table at her. The first time I’d been in the restaurant since before … since before it happened. Mama hadn’t reacted to my new face, just snapped her fingers for the tureen of hot-and-sour soup as if nothing had changed.
“Right,” is all I said, acknowledging the truth. Your child gets kidnapped, the one thing you never change is your phone number. Just in case. Even after years and years. But phone calls could be forwarded. Maybe they carried a cellular everywhere they went, never used it for anything else, waiting—an amulet against the unthinkable.
“That chance can’t dance,” the Prof snapped. “Remember what that Dmitri motherfucker said, Schoolboy—they said it had to be you. You got the street-brand here, no question. Too much of it, you ask me. But Chicago? Son, your star don’t shine that far.”
“So they were living here, then? And the Chicago address is a dud?”
“Maybe Cossacks all lie,” Mama said darkly, the memory of some obscure Sino-Soviet conflict igniting behind the emotionless mask of her face.
“Let’s just go with what we know,” the Prof said. “Click it off.”
“All right,” I told them. “It was a hit. I was the target. There were at least four of them. It was a good plan. I’d done that kind of work before—middlemanned a handover—so it made sense they’d pick me. And they knew I’d go for it, the kind of money they were paying. They picked a spot that should have been perfect. Even the kid—that was a sweet touch. I was expecting a kid. Gave them an extra split-second to get off first, before I snapped wise. They might have figured I’d have backup, but they didn’t think anyone could get close enough without tipping them off. They didn’t figure on the Kevlar, though. Or on …”
My throat stopped up. I couldn’t say any more.
“She went out the way I want to, son,” the Prof said, reading me like I was forty-point type.
“Yeah.” I ignored the pain-flash, got back to my summary. “They were cool under fire. At least their leader was. Took the extra time to make sure I was gone, picked up their dead, didn’t leave a trace.”
“They thought they left you, mahn,” Clarence said.
“Wouldn’t have mattered,” I told him. “That wasn’t unprofessional of them; it was smart. With my track record, being found dead in Hunts Point—what would it tell the cops? Nothing. Nothing to connect to them, and a ton of possible suspects out there, too.”
“That’s where we got to look,” the Prof said.
“I don’t get it.”
“Listen up, then. We got to be the detectives now. Whoever tried to ice you, it cost someone