Hard Candy - Andrew Vachss [66]
"But you could do it."
"Yes." He hesitated. "The car, it's a killing machine. For Nazis."
"Mole, you know about Wesley. You know he's back and…"
"I know."
"Well? Can I…?"
The Mole's lumpy body stiffened as he looked up into my eyes. "Wesley's not a Nazi, Burke."
"Mole…"
"What he does, it's not for freakish fun. Not like them."
"You're saying he's like…us?"
"More like us than them," he said as he walked away, the kid trailing behind.
I left the Plymouth in the junkyard. Switched it for a dark blue Buick sedan with clean plates.
By the time I stashed the car in my garage it was four in the morning.
I let Pansy out to her roof one more time. Then I went back to sleep.
111
I WAS IN the restaurant early the next morning. Mama brought me a copy of the Daily News. The headline said "Sniper Killing on Staten Island." A middleweight mobster had been shot late last night in the living room of his home in Todt Hill. Watching television with his wife. All she heard was glass breaking. A neat hole in his head, right at the hairline. Police said the sniper must have worked his way onto the grounds, lain prone, and fired at a slight upward angle. There were a half dozen pieces about who the guy was, speculation about what it all meant.
Morehouse was on the money with his column. All the Strike Force charts and graphs don't mean a thing when there's a wild card in the deck. He ended it nicely: "Once the feeding frenzy starts, it doesn't matter where you rank in the food chain."
112
THE REPORTER finally called. Mama took the message. I rang him back.
"You got it?"
"Sure."
"Meet me…"
"Oh, man. Why can't you be civilized once? You know my address, come to my house."
"Not tonight."
"Okay, man. Talk to me. Be quick now, I got work to do."
"Tomorrow morning. Eleven o'clock. You know where the guys work on their cars under the FDR? Like around Thirty–third?"
"Sure."
"I'll be there."
He made a disgusted noise. Hung up.
113
NIGHTTIME. Strega's time. Could there be a good witch? Compared with Candy, Strega was as pure as driven snow. The kind they drive across the border in ten–kilo shrink–wrapped packages. Ice–pure.
I drove into Queens. Dialed her number from a pay phone.
"I'm waiting for you," was how she answered.
The empty spot in her garage was like the impression your body leaves when you get out of bed. The Buick fit.
She stepped into the garage as I closed the car door. Wearing a steel–gray seamless sheath that stopped at mid–thigh. Matching spikes. A single strand of black pearls. Her hair was wild, face scrubbed clean. Not quite ready to go out on the town. She took my hand, pulling me up the stairs. "Let's tell secrets," she whispered.
The living room was dark, pierced by thin beams from the track lighting mounted on the ceiling. The smoke from my cigarette spiraled up into the light.
She took my coat, slipped it off my shoulders, tossed it on the couch. Sat next to me.
"You don't carry a gun anymore?"
"Julio fixed that. I'm out on bail. I can't afford a fall."
"It doesn't matter. You don't need a gun here—it's safe."
"No man's safe around you."
She smiled a witch's smile—rheostated. "You're mine. I never hurt what's mine. Remember Scotty? Remember why I needed you? I never let anyone hurt what's mine. You wouldn't let anyone hurt me either. I know you."
Yeah, everybody knows me. "We had a deal," I said. "I kept my piece, you kept yours. This is another. Another deal."
"I know. I found him. The compound in Sands Point. It's out on the Island. It's a fortress, soldiers all over the place. Dogs. Electronic stuff. He stays in the basement. Julio said even if you dropped a bomb on the place, the don would be okay."
"Great."
"He can't even talk on the phone. He's too scared. He told Julio this man…Wesley?…is the devil. The real, real devil. He's going mad in his stone basement. He won't watch television—he thinks this man can see him through the screen. Julio, he thinks it's funny—the don would pay a million dollars for Wesley's head, but he doesn't even know what he looks like."