Choice of Evil

“Honey, stop. You’re scaring me. She’s been gone almost. . . three hours now. You don’t expect her to haul that monster on the back of her motorcycle, do you?”

“I don’t care how she—”

Michelle put her hand on my forearm, willing me to centered calmness, reminding me of all the years I’d invested in learning the path to that place.

“Can you get Max for me?” I asked Mama. She’d been hovering nearby since the minute I’d come in.

“Sure. Get Max. Come soon, okay?”

I just nodded.

“Burke, you don’t need Max for this,” Michelle told me. “Jesus! It’s not like they’re gonna care, right? So she doesn’t have a license. So Crystal Beth has to pay a fine. . . or whatever. It won’t take long. . . .”

I stayed inside myself, waiting. Felt Crystal Beth’s small hand on my shoulder before I heard her approach. Smelled her orchid-and-dark-tobacco scent. Didn’t move. She came around the table and sat down across from me.

“Burke—”

“What happened?” I cut into whatever she was going to say, already knowing it was bad.

“The. . . license thing wasn’t a problem. Just like Michelle said. They were willing to let me take her. But they wouldn’t bring her out—they said I had to go back and get her myself.”

“And. . .?”

“And she was in a cage. A big steel cage. Like a tiger or something. There was a sign on it, in red; it said: DANGEROUS! DO NOT APPROACH! The. . . attendant, he told me she wouldn’t take food. Even when they shoved it into the cage, she wouldn’t eat. He warned me not to come near her, but I did anyway, and she. . .”

“What?”

“She tried to kill me. She lunged at the bars, snarling and snapping her teeth, and. . .”

“They don’t know the word,” I said, half to myself. I had poison-proofed Pansy when she was still small. Unless you said the right word, she wouldn’t touch food, no matter how hungry she was.

I had a friend who ran a little auto-parts joint. He had a shepherd, a real nice one. He used the dog to guard the place at night, so nobody could help themselves. Some degenerate tossed a strychnine-laced steak over the fence. When the dog helped himself, he died. In pain.

I’d trained Pansy so that would never happen to her. And I should have known she wouldn’t walk out with anyone but me.

They try and get dogs adopted at the shelter. If they can’t, they gas them. Who was going to adopt a sixteen-year-old, hundred-and-fifty-pound monster who could bite the top off a fire hydrant? But Pansy wasn’t going to wait to be gassed—she’d loyal herself to death first.

Not a chance. I owed her at least what I’d always promised myself. That I wouldn’t die caged.

“Michelle, go find the Prof for me,” I told her.

A few hours later, I was with a piece of my family, waiting on the rest.

“I can’t scam her out,” I told the women. “I mean, I could go there myself, and she’d come with me. But if I show up. . . the cops know where they got her from, and they might be expecting that. I’m surprised they didn’t try and follow Crystal Beth. . . .”

“I was on my bike, honey,” Crystal Beth said, her face calm with assurance.

I knew what she was telling me. There wasn’t a cop car made that could keep up with Crystal Beth on that motorcycle of hers, especially with the steady rain that had been falling for days. For the first time, I noticed what she was wearing—a full set of racing leathers.

“But how were you gonna get Pansy on—?”

“We had a car standing by. If I got her out, I was just going to load her in there and—”

“Whose car?”

“I don’t know, Burke. The Mole lent it to us. Some big dark thing. He made me a new license plate for my scooter too. Even if the cops saw it, they won’t make anything out of it.”

“The Mole was gonna drive? Jesus, I—”

“Not the Mole,” Michelle interrupted. “Terry.”

“He’s not—”

“Yes, he is,” she said, a trace of sadness in her voice. “My little boy’s almost a man now. He doesn’t have a license, but he can drive.”

Terry. Had it really been that long since I’d pulled him away from a kiddie pimp in Times Square? Since Michelle took him for her own? Since the Mole had raised him in his junkyard? Since. . .?

Then the door swung open and the Prof walked in, Clarence at his heels.

“What’s the plan, man? I got the word, came soon as I heard.”

“We have to get her out before they—”

“I said the plan, fool. You know I’m down with the hound. So gimme the four-one- one, son. They gonna be laying in the cut, waiting on you to make your move. We gotta be quick, but we also gotta be slick. Otherwise. . .”

“Let me think,” I told the only father I’d ever had—the one I met behind the Walls.

“Everybody got it?” I asked. It was almost nine o’clock at night by then, more than sixteen hours since my life had been torn apart.

Everybody nodded. Nobody spoke. I looked over at the big circular table in the corner, now piled high with what we needed.

“You sure they’re open twenty-four hours?” I asked Michelle.

“That’s what they said, honey. But I don’t know if they’ll actually open the doors, even if you say it’s an emergency. It’s not a medical place. All they do there is keep the dogs and. . .”

“Kill them,” I finished for her. “It doesn’t matter anyway.” I turned to look at Crystal Beth. “You got the floor plan?”

“Right here,” she said, unrolling it on the table in front of me.

“Mole,” I called, summoning him over. Then I started to explain what I needed.

“There have to be women there,” Crystal Beth said, standing to one side of the table, little hands on her big hips, face tightened against any argument.

“Look, this is—”

“You say ‘man’s work’ and I’m going to—”

“No, girl,” I said soothingly. “I wasn’t saying that. It’s just you don’t have any experience with—”

“With what, hijacking?” Michelle interrupted. “That isn’t the way to do it. You and the Prof, sure. I know you even got Max to go along sometimes on that crazy stuff you used to do, but if you think—”

“I am going too, Little Sister,” Clarence said in his dignified island voice, blue-black West Indian face set and resolute. “You are not to blame Burke for this. Yes, I would follow my father, wherever he walked. But I love that great animal too. She is not going to die,” he said softly, his hand caressing the 9mm semi-auto that was as much a part of his wardrobe as the peacock clothing he draped over his lean body every day.

“That’s not the point. I don’t want—”

“Michelle, I am going,” the Mole said. Soft and gentle, like always. But not, like always, deferring to her. “Not Terry. You are right. He is my boy too, not only yours. And he is too young to risk. . . whatever there is.”

“Will you morons fucking listen to me?” Michelle yelled, standing up so suddenly she knocked a couple of glasses to the floor. She walked over and stood next to Crystal Beth.

“This isn’t about what you imbeciles think I’m trying to tell you.” Her creamy complexion flushed red with anger. “It is not a hijacking, even with all those. . . guns and things you have. It’s still a scam, right? And they are not going to buy it unless you have a woman doing the talking, understand?”

“Girl’s telling it true,” the Prof said. “We don’t work it right, they ain’t gonna bite.”

The Mole nodded, slowly and reluctantly.

“Yeah,” I said, surrendering.

It was near 3 a.m. by the time we were ready to ride. Michelle and Crystal Beth were both dressed in military camo-fatigues, complete with combat boots. Max and I went for the generic look. Crystal Beth sat in the front seat