Hard Candy - Andrew Vachss [11]
16
I TOOK a shower. Shaved. Opened the refrigerator and gave Pansy a quart of vanilla fudge ice cream. She snarfed it down while I made myself some rye toast. I fed it into my stomach slowly, sipping ginger ale. Scratching Pansy behind her ears the way she liked. Talking softly to her—praising her for protecting our home while I was gone. Working on calm.
Changed into a dark suit, a pale blue shirt, and a black tie.
Davidson's office is in midtown, a rifle shot from Times Square. The receptionist was a light–skinned black woman with a severe face. When her smile flashed, her face turned beautiful, then went back to business. She goes to law school nights, waiting for her time to come. I gave her the name Davidson and I agreed on. She buzzed back, got the word, told me to go ahead.
The meeting didn't take long. "What they got is a bad bust," he told me. "An unsolved homicide wouldn't make them that crazy, so it's something else running. You know what it is?"
"Maybe."
"Any chance…?"
I knew what he meant. "No," I told him.
"If they need us back in court, I'll get a call."
"Okay. We're square for now?"
"Yeah."
I shook hands and walked out. Davidson would do his piece, but he was a lawyer. For him, survival was a Not Guilty verdict. The jury of my peers was still out.
17
IT STAYED that way for a while. Hard looks. Role–playing. I felt Wesley's chill but it never got close to the bone. I drifted back to the anchor. Calmed down. Davidson said the murder charge would stay open, but they'd never press it. I worked the perimeter, nibbling. Some good scams were cooking all over town, but I didn't see my way in.
Another college kid killed his parents. Said "Dungeons and Dragons" made him do it. A creature killed a woman because she tried to leave him after twenty years. He told the cops she was his. His daughter. A beast slaughtered his girlfriend, raped and killed her teenage daughter, stabbed his seven–year–old son in the heart, and set fire to the apartment. The little boy lived. Identified him at the trial. The jury acquitted him. He went to court and demanded custody of the boy. The Transit Authority set up bulletproof token booths so they couldn't be robbed. Anyone who's done time knows what to do about that—you fill a plastic bottle with gasoline, squirt it through the slot, toss in a match, and wait for the clerk to open the door for you. One of them couldn't get the door open. A youth worker confessed to sodomizing more than three dozen boys over a ten–year period. The judge wanted to sentence him to a speaking tour. Gunfire crackled like heat lightning on streets where the franchise to distribute rock cocaine was disputed by teenage robot–mutant millionaires.
18
IMMACULATA sat across from me in the last booth. Max's woman. Mama was at her front desk with the baby, bouncing the plump little girl on her lap, telling her how things worked.
"It's okay now," Immaculata said, voice thick with something I didn't recognize.
"Sure."
"Max understands. He was just…hurt. That you left him out."
"I had to."
"I know."
"Yeah, you know."
"Burke, why be like this? You made a judgment… it was your call to make. It's over."
"But you think the judgment was wrong."
"It was just an ego thing, yes? It's hard to believe this man would have killed our baby just to make Max fight him."
I looked up. Her eyes were veiled under the long lashes but it didn't help. She couldn't make it stick.
"I have to stand with Max," she said.
I bowed, empty. Her eyes were pleading with me. "You still have your baby," I said.
She put her hand over mine. "You still have your brother."
The pay phone rang in the back. Mama walked past, the baby balanced on one hip.
She came back in a minute. Handed the baby to Immaculata, slid in next to her.
"Call for you. Woman say old friend."
A honeycomb of tiny bubbles in my chest. Flood. How could