Hard Candy - Andrew Vachss [39]
"You want something special, honey? A little half 'n' half?"
No need.
"Let me look at you, baby. Milk it down for you one time, okay? Can't be gettin' burned; I got me a big habit to support." Reaching over to me, her thumb hard against the underside of my cock. "You all ready to go, huh, baby? I like a man all ready to go. You ain't no kid all charged up on beer, huh?"
Yes and No.
She fell back on the bed, still holding me in one hand, tied us together, rocked back to the base of her spine, grabbed her knees. "Come here, baby. It's riding time."
It didn't take long.
This. Fucking. Nothing.
"I DIDN'T just get out of prison," I told her.
"Just the money?"
"Just the money."
"I know you, Burke. I know you forever." It sounded like a threat.
"We've been through that."
"You're not here just for the money."
"I'm not here at all, you don't tell me what you want."
She took a breath. Her breasts blossomed. "Train," she said.
"What's that mean?"
"Not what you think."
"I don't have time for this." I started to get off the couch. She threw herself across my lap. I reached under the wig to the back of her neck, squeezed. Hard. Pulled her face up to mine. Her eyes were measuring, calculating. "You like that? You want to hurt me?"
My hand came off her neck by itself.
She locked my eyes. Saw the truth. "No, that's not you," she whispered. "Hard man, soft center. I know you. Remember the kitten? I was with you when you found it. In the basement, remember?"
SIMON. He was in the gang with us. A freak. Liked to hurt things. Especially small things. Liked to set fires too. Nobody said anything. Simon was a good man in a rumble, quick with a razor. We weren't running a therapeutic community. The kitten was hanging from a noose made out of a coat hanger, ripped from chin to balls, its guts trailing out all the way to the floor. Making sounds no living thing should make. Candy was with me. We were hurrying down there for the darkness and the sex when we heard the tiny shrieks.
I remembered. I unhooked the kitten. Laid it on the concrete floor. Found a brick. Pounded its head into flat jelly. I didn't know how to stop its pain, so I made it all stop.
I found Simon out on the flatlands that night. Burning something on a spit over a little fire. I didn't want to know what it was. I left him there. When I threw the tire iron into the street it was so slick with pulp that it skidded for half a block.
"I PAID that off."
"Yeah. You kept your name. But I remember. You cried for an hour over that kitten. Cried like a baby. You were shaking so hard I didn't think you'd ever get up. You were going to do the same thing to Simon. Remember how you swore that? And how you told the others it was your kitten Simon tortured? Liar! You never had a kitten—you don't even like them."
She sounded like the judge who told me I was a menace to society.
"That never happened," I said, lighting a cigarette. "Your mind is all fucked up."
"I kept your secret. I could have told…"
"Who'd listen to a little cunt like you?"
"Anybody who wanted it—and they all did."
"'Cause they paid?"
"That's the way you tell."
"That's the way you tell. That's all you know."
"I know you," she said, the dress sliding off her shoulders.
I got up to leave. She stood before me, stepping into my chest. I remembered the basement. How she watched while I cried. How she never touched me—waiting to see who'd win. It wasn't hard keeping my hands from her body. Just from her throat.
I turned sharply away from her, my shoulder cracked against her jaw.
"You never knew how to hold a woman," she said.
"I know how to hold what matters."
"A gun?" she sneered.
"A grudge," I told her, stepping out of the whorehouse.
71
COLD FIRE inside me. Ugly acid, all the way to my eyes, burning off the haze. I felt them cut through the darkness as I neared my car. Everything in sharp–edged black&white. I wanted to talk to whoever took Belle from me and offered this sociopathic slut in return. Just for a hair–trigger minute.
A lump of shadow