Dead and Gone - Andrew Vachss [78]
“He wasn’t about race,” Byron said. “He was about power.”
“So?”
“So what appeals to lowlife, beady-eyed, chinless, inbred, failure-flunky trash is the idea that they’re genetically superior to the rest of us.”
“And the cream will rise to the top?”
“Sure. Once they scrape off that crust of mud.”
“This isn’t about politics,” Brick reminded us. “It’s about what a pair like Ruhr and Timmons are doing in the picture.”
“You’re going to ask around your—”
“Sure,” he told me. “But our agency’s not supposed to be working Stateside, remember? Our intel on home-grown Nazis isn’t as good as … Well, you understand what I’m saying.”
“I do,” I told him. “Thanks.”
“What’re you going to do now?” Byron asked me.
“I got places I can look, too,” I said. “But I have to go home to start.”
“How safe would that be?” Brick asked. Telling me that Byron hadn’t kept anything back from him.
“I’m dead,” I answered. Then I told them both about Morales’ message.
“That I can check,” Brick told me. “If you’re not listed as dead on the law-enforcement computers by the time I get back, I’ll get word to Byron, and …”
“I’ll reach out for you, brother,” Byron finished.
Our last night in the Governor, the window opened again. Gem was sweet and smooth about it, sliding off my limpness as if she’d finished herself, anyway.
“It happens to most people when they’re … under great stress,” she said, gently. “With you, it is the opposite, yes?”
“I … think so.”
“It’s not dissociation, is it? I mean, you know where you are and—”
“Yes. It’s just the way you described it. I can see everything I’m doing, but I can also see myself seeing it. Like I’m watching. Then a little box opens. And the more it gets filled, the bigger it gets. Until that’s all I can see.”
“That’s not like … not like the way I heard about it. From others.”
“What’s so different?”
“The trigger. As I said, some events cause so much fear that you—that people, I mean—cannot tolerate them. So they go somewhere else within themselves.”
“Sure. That’s dis—”
“Not … always. Some people can control it. So no matter what is happening to them, they are … outside it, do you understand?”
“Yeah. I do. But when I get afraid, it’s not like that.”
“Afraid? When have you been afraid?”
“My whole life.”
“I don’t mean as … a child. Recently?”
“All the time. Some times more than others, that’s all.”
“When the skinheads—?”
“Yes.”
“Even in the poolroom?”
“Even then.”
“And there was no window?”
“No. When I’m … in danger, or when I feel I might be, that’s all there is. The danger. I focus on it so tight nothing else could ever have a chance to get in.”
“But with me …?”
“It’s the … opposite of danger, I guess.”
“Those are the best words anyone has ever spoken to me,” Gem said. She kissed my neck, snuggled in against me.
She was deep into dreamless sleep in a few minutes. But I could feel her tears against my skin.
“Do you really have any leads?” Gem asked me the next morning, managing to talk with her mouth crammed full of food and sound ladylike at the same time.
“Not a lead, a person. Someone who just might be able to get me the answers. Make the connections, anyway.”
“Are you going to see this person now?”
“No. It’s not that easy. I don’t know where he is. He moves around a lot. I have to send out feelers, wait for the lines to form.”
“That is why you are going back to your home?”
“I’m not going back to New York,” I told her, watching her ocean eyes for any flicker of surprise.
“Oh?” is all she said.
“I’m not sure it’s as safe as I made it out to be, even if Morales got it done and NYPD has me down as dead. And I couldn’t look for this person I need any more efficiently from there. It all has to be done over the phone.”
“Then why did you tell—?”
“Brick? I don’t know him. It’s Byron I know. And Byron I trust.”
“But Brick did a lot to