“I couldn’t make any sense out of it,” I lied. “Just enough to know you’d be interested.”
“It was all pre-Nine/Eleven stuff,” he said. “There were a hell of a lot more people involved than anyone ever imagined. We’ve been making arrests like there was no tomorrow. True-believers and freelancers, they’re all going down.”
“It’s hard to think of—”
“What, Americans working for them? You know the kind of money they’re throwing around? The little princes learned from what happened to the Shah. They eat peacock tongues off gold plates while the rest of their country dies of malnutrition. All the secret police in the world won’t keep them safe from their own people. They know they can’t stay on their thrones unless they provide a shunt for all the pressure building up, a bleed-valve for all the anger and hate.”
Pryce shifted posture, as if his spine hurt, but his pale eyes stayed chemical-cold. “You think those people wiring up their own children and sending them into crowded markets in Israel are revolutionaries? Wake up. They’re fucking flesh-peddlers, selling their kids for the bounty. It’s the most lucrative form of child labor ever invented. You know what the bounty is up to now? Fifty grand. Fifty thousand dollars, for people who don’t know what an indoor toilet is. For people whose other kids are going to grow up to be cannon fodder, anyway. The car-bombers, the one-way pilots, the . . . For all of them, who’s putting up the money? Not the terrorists themselves, my friend. The little princes who finance them.”
I didn’t say anything. What could I?
“It’s been more than two years since the World Trade Center,” Pryce said, softly. “I guess the scumbags thought they were safe in their little sleeper-cells. They knew, if we’d had that book, we would have rounded them up a long time ago. So, therefore, we didn’t have it, see?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “And the case against Wolfe—”
“It’s gone,” he assured me. “And it’s never coming back. One of the bodies in that truck they found out in Queens? It was Wychek.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he said, no expression on his new face. “That book, it was what he was holding over . . . the agency. That’s why they gave him—”
“I don’t care.”
“But if you got the book from . . . ?”
“I didn’t get the book from him,” I said. “And that’s the truth.”
“Why did you just hand it over?” Pryce asked me, his eyes everyplace but on mine. “You had to have some idea of what it could be worth. You’re a merc yourself. How come you didn’t try to make some kind of a deal? When you reached out for me, I thought that was what you were angling for.”
“It’s not true, what they say,” I told him. “You know, that everyone’s got a price. I know people like that. I was raised with them. I’ll never be a citizen. But I’ll never be them, either.”
“ Mayday!” Hauser, on the phone.
I met him an hour later, in the park across the street from the Appellate Division courthouse.
“I was in Atlanta, on assignment,” he said. “Just got back. Turns out, a while back, a woman came to my house in Westchester. It was about four in the afternoon, right after school. My wife was at her Wednesday tennis lesson. One of the kids answered the door. Long story short, when she left, she knew damn well that you’re not me.”
“She saw a photo of you?”
“More than that,” he said, ruefully. “I’ve got great kids. They’re proud of their father. So, when a woman shows up and says Daddy’s getting an award . . .”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know exactly when, but it was a while back, only I just now found out about it,” Hauser said, impatiently. “Kids, they forget things. . . .”
Images of Laura Reinhardt flooded my mind. They turned slowly, like a roulette wheel near the end of its spin. I watched as she built her “business model” as meticulously as she had her bottle tree.
With her own hands. Unrestrained.
“Some kids do,” I told Hauser.
Then I hung up. On all of it.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social services caseworker, a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for youthful offenders. Now a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youths exclusively. He is the author of numerous novels, including the Burke series; two collections of short stories; and a wide variety of other material, including song lyrics, poetry, graphic novels, and a “children’s book for adults.” His books have been translated into twenty languages, and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Playboy, Esquire, the New York Times, and numerous other forums. A native New Yorker, he now divides his time between the city of his birth and the Pacific Northwest.
The dedicated Web site for Andrew Vachss and his work is www.vachss.com.
ALSO BY ANDREW VACHSS
Flood
Strega
Blue Belle
Hard Candy
Sacrifice
Shella
Down in the Zero
Born Bad
Footsteps of the Hawk
False Allegations
Safe House
Choice of Evil
Everybody Pays
Dead and Gone
Pain Management
Only Child
The Getaway Man
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2004 by Andrew Vachss
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