Hard Candy - Andrew Vachss [43]
Her smile mocked my lie. She kissed me again. Goodbye.
Candy was a different breed. That didn't mean her little daughter wasn't a liar too.
74
I FELL ASLEEP in my office later. On the couch, the little TV set flickering at the edge of my consciousness, Pansy snoring on the floor next to me. When I woke up it was dark again. A piece of light sat like a candle flame in the corner of the room, reflected from someplace past the window. I didn't move, watching it, letting it take me. Splitting off from this mess, disassociating. It works sometimes—you let go, it comes to you. But only if it's out there.
No use asking questions if you don't care what the answer is.
The cops wouldn't just walk away, but they'd find something else to do.
I blew smoke at the ceiling, wondering if I would.
75
THE NEXT morning, I grabbed a tip sheet from the newsstand and went back to the office. None of the horses spoke to me. I didn't dream about having one of my own one day—the way I used to all the time.
I spent a lot of time thinking about who I could steal from next.
76
I DRIFTED BACK to Mama's. White dragons in the window. She told the waiter something. He brought me a plate of fried rice, beef in oyster sauce. No soup.
"Everything okay now?" she asked, leaning forward, watching.
"Sure."
"You wait for something?"
"You mean…here?"
"No. For something, okay?"
"I don't think so."
"I think so."
I didn't answer her. After a while, she went back to the cash register at the front.
I was walking out when the pay phone rang. Mama walked past me. I waited.
"Man say tell you watch the papers tomorrow. Sutton Place."
"Anything else?"
"No."
"He say his name?"
"Man who called before. One time. Dead–man sound when he talk."
77
I WAS AT the restaurant before it opened the next day. Mama brought me the four–star edition of the Daily News. They put it out on the street by six in Chinatown. I didn't have to search through it. The headline screamed "Bizarre Murder on Sutton Place." A socialite with a WASP name was found murdered by her Wall Street husband when he came home from work around nine o'clock last night. Her name didn't mean anything to me. The newspaper account was short on facts—long on adjectives: grisly, ritualistic, satanic. Hinting at things that only come out on evil nights.
It was too early to call any of the free–lance reporters I know, but I had another solid contact in the press: a West Indian who worked the streets for one of the tabloids. Worked them hard. He'd lost his Island accent somewhere between Newark and journalism school but he was a hard–core risk–taker. He might be on the job.
I found a pay phone on the West Side. I got the reporter's answering machine. "If you know who you're calling, you know what you want to say. Do it when you hear the beep and I'll get back to you."
I heard the beep. "Leave me a message," I said into the recorder.
78
I GOT OFF the street before the citizens took over the city. Let Pansy out to her roof. Gave her some of the food I'd brought back from Mama's. Felt her pleasure as she lit into it, her sadness when it was gone. In another couple of minutes, she forgot about both feelings, back to herself. Lucky dog.
Maybe I'd go away for a while. Cruise out to Indiana, visit my old cellmate Virgil. His daughter was almost ten and I'd never seen her.
I could always see Virgil's daughter.
79
"ANYTHING?" I asked Mama when I called her from the street late that afternoon.
"Come in, okay?"
Max was in the kitchen when I walked in through the back door. He followed me out to my table. Mama sat down next to him, facing me.
"Man call. Black man, sunny voice. Call him at home, seven o'clock tonight."
"That's it?"
Mama's smooth face never changed expression. "Dead man called. Said call him. Hangs up."
I waited.
"Man say his name is Julio. You know him. You call him at his club, okay?"
Julio. Fuck!
"Girl call too. Same girl. Say to call her too. Very important."
"Okay."
"Not okay. Take Max with you."
"To make phone calls?"