Hard Candy - Andrew Vachss [35]
I looked at the coin in my hand. Gleaming new. "This says it was minted in 1984," I said.
"It was minted a month ago," the Mole said. "This country always looks the other way for its Nazi friends."
Michelle threw me a warning look. Don't get him started. The Mole was never far from critical mass when it came to his reason for living.
I lit a smoke, patted my brother on the back, willing him to be calm, go back to work.
Soon the Mole pushed back his chair. Pointed at a pile of a half dozen gold coins. "Which one?" he asked.
I took them in my hand. Felt their weight. Held them up to the light. Tried to bend them in half. They were all the same. I tried the magnifying glass. Nothing. Handed them back to the Mole.
He picked out the one he wanted. Handed me a jeweler's loupe. "Look around the edge—where the coin is milled."
It took me a minute, even when I knew what I was looking for. A tiny dark dot standing between the ridges. I gave it back to the Mole.
"Go outside," the Mole said to Terry. He handed me the coin. "Hide it," he said.
"Put it in your purse," I told Michelle.
Terry came back into the bunker holding a transmitter about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
"Find it," the Mole said.
The boy pulled a short antenna from the corner of the transmitter. Hit a switch. Soft electronic beeps, evenly spaced. He moved toward the far wall. The beeps separated, a full second between them. The beeping got more intense as he neared the workbench. The boy was patient, working the room in quadrants. When he got near Michelle, the transmitter went nuts. He worked around her, closing in. When he put it next to her purse, the beeps merged into one long whine. "In there," he said, a smile blasting across his face.
Michelle gave him a kiss. "You're going to take Harvard by storm, handsome."
"Will it work through metal?" I asked the Mole.
"Even through lead," Terry assured me solemnly. I lit a cigarette, satisfied.
"This is the way we're supposed to work," Michelle said. "This is us. I'll see the doctor tomorrow."
67
THE DOCTOR wouldn't blink at a transsexual for a patient. He didn't judge his clients, he just wrote their needs on his Rx pad. He sold what the customer wanted, and he didn't take checks. Quaaludes, steroids, amphetamines, barbiturates. That kind of traffic wouldn't make him rich. But the page from the prescription pad told me what I wanted to know: the doctor was selling Androlan, Malogex…all the injectable forms of testosterone. Even threw in a supply of needles. There's a new program for child molesters. The shrinks still haven't figured it out—the freaks, they don't want to be cured. This new program, it's only for special degenerates. Ones with money. Counseling, therapy…and Depo–Provera. Chemical castration, they call it. Reduces the sex drive down to near–zero. Supposedly makes the freaks safe, even around kids. Methadone for baby–rapers. Some judges love it. The freaks are crazy about the program—it's a Get Out of Jail Free card. The maggots do their research better than the scientists and all their federal grants. They figured out that a regular dose of testosterone cancels the Depo–Provera. Gets them back to what they call normal.
Testosterone's not a narcotic. The feds don't check on how much you dispense. The doctor was doing all right. Medicine changes with the times. When I was a kid, the underground plastic surgeons would give you a new face if you were running from the law. Now some doctors will put a new face on a kid—a kid whose face is on a milk carton. It would do until they outlawed abortions again.
Michelle bought such a big supply that the doctor must have figured she was going into business for herself. The word I got was that he'd wholesale the stuff if the price was right. Michelle paid him in Krugerrands. A dozen gold coins, almost six grand.
The doctor lived up in Westchester County. He had two kids—a boy away at college and a fifteen–year–old girl. We watched the Mercedes