Choice of Evil

I might have gone back to see her again if she hadn’t offered me major money to kill her husband.

I thought about getting locked up for something petty, but that bullshit only works in movies. Nobody who’d ever been Inside for a minute would go back just to prove his whereabouts. Besides, the killer was off the job. Or quiet, anyway. And I couldn’t alibi myself twenty-four-seven if I was sleeping alone.

I was still thinking it over when he went back to work.

This one was harder to connect. Fact is, the cops probably wouldn’t have put it together on their own. It was at a college residence, uptown. The usual stuff:

ALL FAGS MUST DIE!

spray-painted on a dorm door. The same door someone had been slipping nasty little notes under. Somebody threw a rock through the kid’s window too. All reported to the campus cops, but not to NYPD. They had some suspects, but not enough proof to go to the Student Court or whatever other impotent nonsense they used there. The gay kids had a demonstration in the Quad. Got some local coverage. But nothing happened—no ID on the perps.

But the hunter must have figured it out. The target was alone in his room. On the third floor. It was a hot night—I guess he left the window open while he slept. Maybe he felt the first burning slice of the razor, maybe not. In the morning, they found him in strips.

Turned out the kid who died was one of the suspects. But that wasn’t enough for a connect until the hunter launched another communique at the papers.

Night will not protect you. The darkness holds no safety. Your shield is now my sword. Another of you has joined his cowardly comrades. Do not deceive yourselves. The design is not deterrence—it is extinction. Either we will be allowed to live in peace or you will not be allowed to live. The next one will be close to home. Welcome to a new food chain, prey.

There was one big difference to this note. Apparently he didn’t care for the “Avenger” title the media came up with. So this time it was signed: “Homo Erectus.”

The tabs went crazy. “Profilers” filled the talk show stages. Gay groups got center stage. . . and used it to go on and on: They understood how this killer felt, blah-blah, but they were very careful to denounce violence, playing their role. All the editorials read the same: Fag-bashing is bad, so is killing. Two wrongs don’t make a right. The kind of trenchant, cutting-edge stuff that makes them so relevant. The “re-enactment” shows ran fake violence-video of the murders, but they didn’t have an image of the killer, so the “Most Wanted” stuff went unanswered. Rewards increased.

The father of the kid who got razor-ripped called a press conference, saying his son was the innocent victim of a maniac. That can of spray paint the cops found in his room—the one with his fingerprints all over it—so what if it was the exact same brand that had been used on the gay kid’s dorm door? Was that proof? Even Jeffrey Dahmer got a trial, for God’s sake! What kind of country was this, anyway?

And, of course, he sued the school.

I kept adding to my new refuge. Never anything bigger than I could lug in the Plymouth. The Mole looked like one of those TV aliens with his huge goggles as he arc-welded away. Max wasn’t any good with techno-stuff, but he understood mechanics and leverage as perfectly as he did his own kinetics, and the loading-bay door he designed pulled up into the roof, silent as cancer, when I touched the dashboard switch the Mole installed. Now I could turn the corner, cut my lights, and, if I timed it right, slip inside the building as if I’d just vanished. Much easier than in my old. . . place. I didn’t have to carry the spotlight anymore either. A pair of them blasted on automatically as soon as the Plymouth’s front end broke the motion-detector beams. If you weren’t ready for it, you’d go instantly blind. Nice for uninvited visitors.

I spent some of the money I’d stashed, fixing the place up. Gave a little chunk of it to Michelle for clothes, and she went through it like a dope fiend the night before detox.

And I kept the lines out too, but I didn’t hook anything. When you’re in the freak-scamming business, you meet a lot of humans who hate gays, but you also meet a lot who hide behind them. . . like those “man-boy love” groups who masquerade as homosexual and try and march in the gay-pride parades—as if fucking a boy is the same as making love with a grown man.

I was at the table, ready to play, but all I drew was blanks.

If I got a hint, I was ready to do some ugly things. If I thought anyone in particular knew the answer, they were going to tell me. But I didn’t have. . . anything.

I knew better than to go back to working my scams until I got the new ID. And I didn’t really need the alibi anymore. Morales had nailed it—mail bombs weren’t my style, and whoever took out that last one was either a ninja or in a lot better shape than I was. The federales knew I had the horses in my stable—the Mole could fit enough bang-stuff into a suitcase to take down a big building. And Max could climb walls like I could climb stairs. But they weren’t showing any interest, and I didn’t expect any. Whoever—or whatever—this Homo Erectus was, it was all local.

Still, I made the rounds. Shot a lot more pool than I had in years. Took Max with me down to Freehold to watch some real trotters—the Meadowlands is closer, but only the half-mile tracks really show you any action—and even hung out in some after-hours joints.

After a while, I didn’t know what I was waiting for, so I told myself it was the ID.

I was in the restaurant, playing another round of our life-sentence card game with Max. It was gin for a long time, but we’d switched to casino ever since Max had a once-in-forever winning streak and refused to play anymore for fear of insulting the gods.

For once, Mama wasn’t lambasting him with her incompetent advice—he’d brought his daughter Flower with him and the little girl was watching, patient and quiet. Like her mother, except the child was actually interested in the game, missing nothing. Max was convinced she’d bring him luck. But casino’s not like gin, and there was no wave of fortune for him to catch. Oh, he could win a hand once in a while, but he’d never get close to breaking even. The trick was making my deliberate blunders slick enough so he wouldn’t snap that I was tanking the game. I don’t do that often, but, with Flower sitting there watching me with those grave and glistening eyes. . . no choice. He got back a couple of thousand off his deficit before Immaculata came in there to collect the little girl.

“Are you ready for the museum, child?” she asked, her face blazing with love.

“Could we wait a bit, Mother?” Flower asked politely. “I am helping Daddy.”

“And how are you doing that?” Immaculata asked.

Max signed “good luck” to her. She bowed, and took a seat next to me. Mama brought her some tea, serving it personally, a sign of deep respect. Their elaborate thank-you ritual took long enough for us to play another couple of hands.

“Are you. . . all right now? In your new place?” Immaculata asked me.

“Yeah, it’s fine, Mac,” I told her. “Better, even. It was time to go anyway.”

“Ah,” she said, as if she understood. That I was lying.

Needless to say, with Immaculata added to Max’s arsenal, I started losing every damn hand. Max would have sat there for hours—when he hit a winning streak, he went absolutely immobile, convinced that any alteration would change his luck. But Immaculata wasn’t having any. “It is time to go now, Flower,” she said.

“Yes, Mother,” the child said. She stood up and kissed Max on the cheek. Max signed that he loved her, that he would always protect her, that she was the most precious thing in his life. The child’s face reddened slightly, just a trace of embarrassment showing.

Watching them took me away.

When I was little, I was in custody. They called it an orphanage, but we all knew what it was. All except those chumps who thought they were going to get adopted one day by the privileged people who came around and looked us over like it was a petting zoo. They didn’t want any of us—they just wanted babies—but we got displayed anyway. I hated them all. By that time, hate came easy.

Once they took us to watch some Little League game. Out in the suburbs, all us State kids on a bus. Same kind of bus they used to take me to prison years later, only this one didn’t have that steel mesh over the windows. Anyway, it wasn’t like we were going to play or anything; we just got to watch.

This one kid, he was a fat clumsy little goof. Every time they hit the ball to him, he flubbed it. And when he got up to bat, his swing was spastic. But his father was running around the stands cheering like the kid was the