Dead and Gone - Andrew Vachss [53]
“Why were the arrangements so complicated?”
“I thought about that, too. And maybe they weren’t. Not all that much. I don’t live aboveground. I don’t have a home. Or an office. Or a hangout,” I said, dismissing Mama’s from that category—she wasn’t exactly open to the public, and I couldn’t think of a worse place to try and take me out. “If they wanted to hit me, they couldn’t just go out and look for me; they’d have to bring me to them.”
“Do you believe this gangster person was involved?”
“I don’t think so. For two reasons: One, I’d had to meet with him to get the money to deliver. So, if he was going to hit me, why not just do it right then? Two, there was a kidnapping. There was a missing kid. The Russians did run.…”
“How long?”
“I don’t … Oh, you mean, how long have they been running?”
“Yes.”
“About a year, as near as we can tell.”
“And the attempt on your life was … when?”
“Sure. I know. They were in the wind before it all went down. There’s pieces missing. Big pieces.”
“Would it not be better to ask this gangster person more questions?”
“He’s no longer available,” I told her. “I see.”
She went quiet then. So did I. Finally, she looked up at me from under her eyelashes, said, “Do you feel comfortable with me … like this?”
“You mean … talking about this stuff?”
“I mean with me on my knees,” she said softly.
I closed my eyes, reaching for the answer.
“Yes,” I finally told her.
“Because …?”
“It’s … I don’t know …”
“Safer?”
“Yes.”
“I understand,” she said, barely above a whisper.
We ate in the restaurant attached to the hotel. A nice place—clean and pretty quiet, considering the bar was right in the center of everything. Gem ate … carefully, I guess would be the word for it. Slowly, chewing every bite a great number of times. But steadily, too, never varying her pace. She finished a whole roasted chicken, right down to cleaning the bones with her small, very white teeth. And a large tossed salad. Four helpings of rolls. Three large glasses of apple juice. A plate of fried onion rings. A side of roasted potatoes.
I did most of the talking, and there wasn’t much of that. A thin rain slanted down against the plate glass of the window next to our table. All around us, activity. Between us, peaceful quiet.
The waiter came and went, raising his eyebrows a couple of times, silently comparing the diminishing pile of food in front of Gem with her slim frame. He opened his mouth to ask her where she put it, but I caught his eye and he closed right down.
Gem ordered a slab of double-fudge cake for dessert. I had the same, mine with twin scoops of vanilla ice cream on top. “Oh!” she said, when she saw my addition. Then she helped herself to one of the scoops.
When she was completely finished, Gem wet her napkin in a glass of water, then patted her mouth and lips. “You didn’t say anything,” she said.
“About what?”
“About me being such a pig.”
“A pig? You eat as neatly as a … I don’t know.”
“Neatly, yes. But a lot.”
“I understand.”
“You … understand? I do not understand.”
“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“It is I who should apologize. I invite your comment, then I make you feel bad for it. Please tell me … what you meant.”
She returned my gaze. Serene, not confronting. But not backing away.
“There was a time when food was very precious to you,” I said.
“Yes. Do you know when that was?”
“Twenty, twenty-five years ago?”
“Yes. But you … guess, do you not? I mean, you do not know this for a fact; it is a surmise?”
“That’s right. The beast got loose in Cambodia in 1975, I think.”
“I was five years old,” she said, her voice soft and dreamy, but her eyes stayed on mine, unblinking. “My father was a lawyer. You know what happened to anyone with an education? To anyone with any knowledge of the world outside the fields?”
“Pol Pot.”
“He was only one of them. A symbol. A horrible butcher, yes. But he did not kill