Down Here

Andrew Vachss

DOWN HERE

Alfred A. Knopf

New York 2004

for . . .

                                    Michael E. Kotler

                                                                        who rules,

                                                                                                            finally.

^“Somebody down here, boss. Asking for you.” Gateman’s voice, prison- whispering to me up the intercom, all the way to the top floor of a decrepit flophouse.

This dump has been scheduled for a foundation-up rehab for years. In the meantime, the housing inspectors turn a money-blinded eye, and any derelict with a five-dollar bill can buy himself twenty-four hours off the streets.

But not on the top floor. That one is permanently closed. Unfit for Human Occupancy.

That’s where I live—unregistered and invisible. The only name anyone ever had for me was last seen attached to a body part in the morgue, before the City did whatever it does with unclaimed remains.

“Somebody” was Gateman’s way of saying that whoever was downstairs had come alone . . . and he’d seen them before. If it had been a stranger, he would have reached under the raw wood plank that holds a register nobody ever signs. A concealed button would set off the flashers behind the dinner-plate-sized red plastic disks I have on the walls in every room of my place. That’s only one of its custom features. Another is a private exit.

Anytime someone comes looking for me, it’s Gateman’s call. Even confined to his wheelchair, he’s got options. Instead of the button, he could reach for the handgun he always keeps right next to his colostomy bag.

“You get a name?” I asked.

“Pepper, right?” I heard him say to the visitor.

“Short girl, pretty, dark hair, kilowatt smile?” I asked.

“All but the last, boss,” Gateman said. “And she’s got company.”

“What’s he—?”

“It’s a dog, boss. Big-ass Rottweiler.”

That’s when I knew the wheels had come off.

Negotiating the narrow flights up to where I live is no job for anyone with an anxiety disorder. You have to make your way past crumbling walls covered with signs screaming DANGER! ASBESTOS REMOVAL IN PROGRESS, dangling exposed wires, and puddles of bio-filth on the unlit stairwells.

It’s a nasty trip, but Pepper made it in record time. She quick-stepped across the threshold, dragged forward by a barrel-chested Rottweiler she was barely restraining on a short, heavy lead.

The beast recognized me at once, treated me to his “Back the fuck up!” growl as he thrust his way into the room.

“Bruiser!” Pepper said, sharply. “Behave!”

The beast gave her a “Yeah, right!” look, but allowed her to walk him over to the futon couch.

She sat down, gave me a searching look.

I didn’t say anything, waiting like I always do. Usually, Pepper dresses like a sunburst, to match a personality that could cheer up an AIDS ward. But this time, it was a plain dark-blue business suit over a white blouse with a red string tie, and her famous smile was buried deeper than Jimmy Hoffa.

“Wolfe’s been arrested,” she said, no preamble.

“What?”

“Last night. They picked her up at her house, in Queens. She’s supposed to be arraigned—”

“Arrested for what?”

“Attempted murder, assault, criminal possession of—”

“Slow down,” I told her, breathing shallow through my nose to drop my heart rate. “Start at the beginning.”

Wolfe had been a career sex-crimes prosecutor, a veteran of

no-holds-barred combat with the bottom-dwellers in the crime chain—rapists, child molesters, wife beaters. And, sometimes, with certain judges—the ones she called “collaborators” to their faces. A few years ago, she had gotten fired for refusing to soft-hand a “sensitive” case.

Wolfe wouldn’t cross the street and represent the same freaks she used to put away. So she’d gone outlaw, and now she runs the best info-trafficking cell in the City.

I had wanted Wolfe for my own since the first time I saw her in battle. I’d had—I thought I’d had—a chance with her once. But I had done some things. . . .

“You and me, it’s not going to be,” she told me then. And I believed her.

All that changed was what I did, not how I felt. My love for Wolfe was a dead star. Lightless, invisible in the night sky. But always, always there.

Pepper’s big dark eyes told me she knew some of that. Enough to count on, anyway.

That’s the way it is down here. If you can’t be counted on, you can’t be counted in.

“Here’s all she could tell me on the phone,” Pepper said. “Some man was shot, more than once. He’s in a coma, and they don’t expect him to live.”

“So what connects Wolfe—?”

“He named her,” Pepper interrupted. “He told the police she was the one who shot him.”

“When was this supposed to have gone down?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything more about it, not even the man’s name. All I know is they’re holding her at the precinct, and they expect to arraign her tonight.”

“She’s got an alibi,” I said, holding Pepper’s eyes.

“She’s got plenty of those,” Pepper snapped back, telling me I was standing at the end of a long line. And those ahead of me would come across a lot better in court than a two-time felony loser who had been declared dead years ago. “That’s not what she needs, right this minute. She needs to—”

“You got a lawyer for her yet?”

“No. I thought you might—”

“Did she tell you to come to me, Pepper?”

As if to answer my stupid question, the Rottweiler made a gear-grinding noise deep in his chest.

“No! All she said was to pick up Bruiser and make sure he was all right until they set bail.”

“And you can make—?”

“I . . . guess so,” Pepper said. “But I don’t know a bondsman, either, except for that crook we used the time Mick was—”

“Never mind,” I told her. “Do you know where the arraignment’s going to be?”

“At 100 Centre. She said the . . . whatever the cops say happened, it happened in Manhattan, so . . .”

“Yeah.” I glanced at my watch. Three thirty-seven. With the usual backlog from the Tombs and the tour bus from Rikers, they probably wouldn’t get to Wolfe until the lobster shift, but I didn’t want to chance it. “Give me a