Down Here

As I exited the apartment building, I had to step back to avoid a pair of skinheads strutting down the sidewalk. As they passed, I saw they had bar-code tattoos on the back of their necks. Couldn’t tell if they were identical.

I drove over to the building in Williamsburg where Hannah had been found hanging. The rehab was long since completed, and I calculated my chances of getting inside about as good as a counterman at Taco Bell buying a condo off his tip money.

Walking away, I felt a tremor in my wake. Just a slight pattern-shift in my visuals, maybe. Afterimages that didn’t match up with my expectations.

That was enough to send me Queens-bound on the subway instead of driving back to Manhattan. I changed trains three times, careful not to box myself, working my way back to Canal Street. When I got to the network of back alleys that leads to Mama’s, I found a place to wait.

And that’s what I did, for over an hour.

Nothing.

Spiders have it easy. When they need a web, they make their own threads. I had to work with the ones they gave me.

Something about those bar-code tattoos . . .

I knew a stripper who had a tiny bar code tattooed on one cheek of her bottom. “It’s a trick,” she said, smiling at the double meaning. “Supposed to mean my ass is merchandise, see? But if anyone gets close enough to read it, they’re mine.”

I opened one of my notebooks, found what I had drawn from my memory after I’d left Silver.

V71.01

What had he told Silver? “A message, written in the code of Nietzsche.”

I’d seen the “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” tattoos in prison. Sometimes with swastikas where the quote marks would go. Not exactly a secret code.

So?

In the room I use for sleeping, I took a polished piece of steel with a hole drilled at the top out of one of the standing lockers. In the middle of the steel, I used a Sharpie to draw a red dot. Then I hung it on a nail on the wall. When I settled into position, the red dot was exactly at eye level.

I focused on the red dot until I went into it.

When I came back, the room was dark. A sliver of moonlight glinted on the steel. I couldn’t see the dot.

^“He’s guilty,” I said.

“That view ain’t new, son.”

“I’m not talking about the evidence, Prof.”

“Then how you know, bro?”

“He said it.”

“Confessed?”

“No, sis,” I said to Michelle. “I’ve never spoken to him. But in prison, Silver saw this on his forearm. . . .” I drew it on a paper napkin, showed it to everyone.

Max shook his head.

Mama shrugged the same message.

“What is it, then, mahn?” Clarence asked, for all of them.

I took out the two pages I had Xeroxed. “This is from the DSM-IV. The manual the shrinks use to put labels on people. Listen.”

They all turned toward me.

“V71.01 is a code number. All the disorders have one. Like schizophrenics or pyromaniacs or whatever. That ‘V’ prefix is kind of a catchall. They say it’s for ‘other conditions that may be a focus of clinical attention.’ I remembered it, finally, because it goes in front of malingering.”

“What is that, mahn?”

“Bottom line, it’s when you fake being sick to get out of something, Clarence.”

“Like when you plead insanity?”

“Like when you fake insanity.”

“How do you know all this stuff, mahn?”

“Schoolboy was the shrink’s clerk, Inside,” the Prof said, proudly. “One of the cushiest jobs in the entire joint. Once Burke got that deal working, we made bank in the tank, son. Bank in the tank.”

“From meds?” Michelle asked.

“No, honey,” the Prof told her. “From reports. That’s where you tap the vein. You know what it’s worth to a man going before the Parole Board to have a few little changes made to his jacket? Or a guy trying to get into a work-release program? Or—?”

“I get it,” Michelle said, grinning.

“Let me read it to you,” I said, clearing my throat. “‘V71.01. Adult Antisocial Behavior. This category can be used when the focus of clinical attention is adult antisocial behavior that is not due to a mental disorder, for example, Conduct Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, or an Impulse-Control Disorder. Examples include the behavior of some professional thieves, racketeers, or dealers in illegal substances.’”

“What does that—?”

“Means us,” the Prof cut Michelle’s question off. “Our kind of people.”

“That filthy little maggot isn’t—”

“No,” I said. “He’s not us. He’s not even like us. That code isn’t some diagnosis a psychiatrist put on him—that’s what he’s saying about himself. What he’s telling the world. He didn’t do the . . . things he did because he was nuts; he did them because he wanted to.

“That Nietzsche thing he told Silver? He did those rapes, hurt those women, took those trophies because he could. In his mind, he’s not some sicko; he’s a superman. And the tattoo is his little private joke.”

I handed the photocopied sheets of paper to Max.

“Where he find that book?” Mama asked, pointing at the pages I was holding.

“What I think is, he had a lot of therapy, probably when he was very young,” I said. “I’m guessing here; the sister didn’t say anything about it. But a freak like him doesn’t spring into full bloom overnight.

“First, he experiments. I’ll bet he hurt a lot of small animals, set some fires. . . . And when he finds out what certain things do for him, how they make his blood get hot with power . . . he escalates. Until he gets caught.

“His family had money. Not enough money to quash a major felony, but enough to get him sent for ‘treatment’ instead of the juvie joints when he was a kid.”

“So tattoo is big insult?” Mama said.

“Yeah, exactly,” I agreed. “A joke nobody’s supposed to get but him. I don’t know when he got the idea for it, but it’s his way of sneering at the whole idea of him being a sick man. He’s the opposite. In his mind, he’s a god.”

Max picked up a pair of chopsticks, held them together in his two fists. He twisted his hands, and the chopsticks splintered like matchsticks.

^“You do have a backup plan?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you wanted to interview him. But if you can’t . . .”

“I already told you. I was working on the book way before this whole business with him came to light. His case wasn’t even part of the proposal.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“But what, Laura? What difference does it make now?”

“I guess I’m just . . . insecure.”

“About what?”

“About . . . us. In my world, people are always plotting. You have no idea of all the crimes people in business commit every day. Like it was nothing. Or there’s a set of