Strega - Andrew H. Vachss [73]
There were safer places to walk around than the Mole's junkyard—like Lebanon in the busy season.
The Mole jumped out of the Lincoln, shifting his head for me to follow. I slid over and got out his side. The Mole blundered through the dog pack like a farmer walking through a herd of cows, me right on his tail.
The dogs nosed my legs experimentally, wondering how I'd taste. One of the pack growled a threat, but the Mole ignored it like he does everything else they do. The Mole's underground bunker was on the other side of the junkyard—we weren't going there.
A red Ford station wagon was sitting in a patch of sunlight ahead of us, its entire front end smashed all the way into the front seat—a head–on hit. The back seat had been removed, propped up against the rear bumper. A cut–down oil drum was on one side, a thick book with a plain blue cover on top. The Mole's reading room.
A dog was asleep on the Mole's couch—a massive version of the others in the pack, his neck a corded mass of muscle. He watched us approach, not moving a muscle. Only his tail flicking back and forth showed he was alive.
"Simba–witz!" I called to him. "How's by you?" The huge beast's head came up, watching me. His ears shot forward, but his tail kept the same rhythmic flicking—back and forth, like a leopard in a tree. A bone–chilling snarl came from his throat, but it wasn't meant for us. The pack stopped dead.
The Mole walked over to his couch, sat down, half on top of Simbawitz. The beast slipped out behind him, sniffed me once, and sat down on the ground. I sat down next to the Mole, reaching for a cigarette, glad it was over.
The Mole reached in his jumpsuit, came out with a slab of fatty meat, and tossed it to the dog. Simba–witz tossed it in the air, caught it, and burst into a run, holding his prize aloft. The pack swung in behind him, yipping like puppies. We sat quietly until they disappeared. They wouldn't go far.
"Mole," I told the pasty–faced genius, "I need your help on something."
I paused, giving him a chance to ask what I needed his help for—it was a waste of time.
"I got a job," I said. "This little boy—he was in a day–care center or something, and someone took a picture of him. With a Polaroid. I need to get the picture back."
"Who has it?" the Mole asked.
"I don't know."
The Mole shrugged. He was good at fixing things, or making them work. And especially at blowing them up. But he didn't know how to find things.
"It's a sex picture, Mole."
"What?" he asked. It didn't make sense to him.
"Mole, these people forced the kid to do a sex thing with a grown man, okay? And they took a picture of it. To sell."
The Mole's little eyes did something behind the Coke–bottle lenses he wore. Or maybe it was the sunlight.
"Who does this kind of thing? Nazis?"
To the Mole, every evil thing on the planet was the work of the Nazis. If Bobby did get me a meeting with the Real Brotherhood, I'd have to go without the Mole.
"Kind of," I said, "kind of the same thing. People who go on power trips, right? In the kid's mind, as long as they have the picture, they have his soul."
"If you find the people.
"I know, Mole. That's not the problem now. I need to find the picture."
He shrugged again—what did I want from him?
"I have to find the picture. It's like a scientific problem, right?" I asked, reaching for a way into his megawatt brain, probing for the switch to turn on the light.
"Scientific problem?"
"You once told me that to solve a problem in science you take all the known facts, then you work out some possible outcomes, right? And you keep testing until you prove…whatever you said."
"Prove the hypothesis?" the Mole asked.