The Weight

ALSO BY ANDREW VACHSS

THE BURKE SERIES

Flood
Strega
Blue Belle
Hard Candy
Blossom
Sacrifice
Down in the Zero
Footsteps of the Hawk
False Allegations
Safe House
Choice of Evil
Dead and Gone
Pain Management
Only Child
Down Here
Mask Market
Terminal
Another Life

OTHER NOVELS

Shella
The Getaway Man
Two Trains Running
Haiku

SHORT-STORY COLLECTIONS

Born Bad
Everybody Pays

Mom:

I know you couldn’t wait any longer to be with Dad, but don’t fret—I’ll be with you both soon enough.

I’ve got a few things to take care of first.

Yeah, I know … I
always
did.

And
you
know … I always will.

Whatever it was the cops had snatched me up for, they had to believe I was good for it. But not all
that
good. Otherwise, why go tag-team on me?

One of the cops on the second shift was an older guy. He looked the way some people say all cops used to: tall, big hands, straw-colored hair. Back then, they’d say, cops would catch a kid doing something wrong, they’d kick him in the ass, send him home, and go back to walking their beat. They never paid for a meal, but nobody thought that was graft. Some might even take money from bookies or whorehouses. But
never
from a dope dealer.

Maybe cops were really like that once. I don’t know; I wasn’t around then. I only know how they are now.

I’ll say this for the older cop: He dressed like a guy who lived on his paycheck. And he wasn’t there to dance. He walked in with his partner, sat down, and threw his Sunday punch: “This one just doesn’t look like your line of work, Sugar.”

That told me he was sharp enough to do more than just check me for priors. Not by calling me “Sugar.” The first pair, they’d called me that, too. Sliding it out of their mouths like they knew something dirty about me. This cop, he just said it like it was my name.

The first two cops, I think all they did was scan my record for a “Registered Sex Offender” ticket. When they didn’t see one, they were out of gas; it’s the only card they know how to play.

The older cop shook his head, like he was confused about what they’d arrested me for.

“I got to say, I don’t like you for this one at all.”

“Then what am I here for?” I asked him.

He made his eyes go sad, showing he was disappointed in me. It was a good trick. A guy who’s been around as long as him, he probably knew a lot of them.

We’d already been sitting in the interrogation room for a couple of hours when he did that. Maybe it was part of his act, I don’t know. But it was as clear as if somebody wrote the rules on the wall for us all to see: As long as I didn’t say the magic words, we were going to play it like men. No disrespect, not in either direction.

Those magic words could only come out of my mouth. Door Number One: “I want a lawyer.” Door Number Two: “Yeah, you got me.”

I tell them I want a lawyer, they’d give me a look like I’d just screwed myself, cuff me back up, and have one of the bluecoats walk me into a holding cell.

But if I started talking, they’d hold off until they squeezed as much juice out of the lemon as they could. Say I told them I wanted a deal. They’d tell me that I could get damn near whatever I wanted … depending on what I had to trade.

The way they were working me, walking so soft, that was just to stop me from asking for a lawyer. Good cops—I don’t mean like they were good
guys
, just good at their job—they think the same way we do. They know if you get all impatient you can mess everything up.

So they stayed decent and respectful, like I said. Not kissing my ass or anything; making it just three men, talking. The way they’d figure it, so long as they could
keep
me talking, talking about
anything
, there was always the chance I’d take Door Number Two. Or stumble through it.

They had to know it was a-thousand-to-one against them getting me to confess. And I knew it was even worse odds against me convincing them they’d grabbed the wrong guy.

A weak hand, sure. Who hits a gutshot straight-flush draw? But I wasn’t drawing dead, not yet.

We each had our reasons for staying with it. They had all the time in the world. And that’s how much time I was looking at.

So I had to stay to see the last card drop. Because, no matter what those sex-crimes clowns had told me, I knew this couldn’t really be about a rape.

The rape they kept asking me about, it must have been a bad one. For the cops, the worst one would be if it happened to some kind of famous person. I hadn’t seen a paper for days, but I knew they’d been sitting on my place, waiting for me to come back. At least six of them, round the clock. That’s a lot of cops.

I didn’t know how long they’d been waiting, but they couldn’t have started until after I left, and that was only a few days ago.

Sending the sex-crimes cops in first, that didn’t mean anything—it could just be a hype to get me to take my eye off the ball. Misdirection, like three-card monte. They pull you in for something big, get you so scared of
that
charge that you drop your guard and give up something about whatever they’re really after you for.

I knew they hadn’t bagged any of the others. If they had, they’d drop their names, so I’d know they weren’t just blowing smoke. Then they’d have
their
magic words. Door One: one of the other guys had turned canary, put all the weight on me, trying to cut himself a deal. Door Two: here was my chance to help myself before it was too late.

Only the second pair of cops would try a move like that. The first two, the sex-crimes boys, they mostly made speeches. Or asked me stupid questions, like a TV camera was filming them. Big guy like me, all those muscles—what happened? I’d been on steroids so long I couldn’t get it up, and she’d laughed at me? I hadn’t meant to hurt her, just slap her around a little, maybe? Come on, isn’t that how it went down?

I yawned in their faces.

“Got nothing to say
now
, huh?” one of them had said. Like he’d just nailed me to the cross.

I wanted to ask him if that pathetic crap ever worked. What kind of chumps show you their hand first and
then
try to bluff you off a better one?

But I didn’t say anything. I’m a professional, not a punk with a pistol. You’ll never see my picture on a security camera sticking up a bodega. Or jacking some guy in a suit while he’s standing at an ATM.

I’m a thief, and I do clean work. I don’t hurt people for money, I don’t set fires, I don’t do any of those sicko sex things. Stuff like that, it gets spread all over: the papers, radio, TV. Gets everybody paying attention. Specially when there’s big reward money out there.

A man who does my kind of work, the only way he ever gets caught is if he goes in without a plan. Or if someone rolls over on him.

You never talk about your work, period. Too many guys walking around with heavy charges hanging over them. Anyone gets caught holding K-weight powder in this state, it’s the same as a murder beef. A street cop catches a guy holding that heavy, he can make the bust, but all that’d get him is another one of those “commendations” every cop has a couple dozen of. What he really wants is that gold shield, so he’d rather have that guy on the street, working for him. Any outlaw is going to be able to go places no undercover ever could. So all he has to do is listen long enough.

Guys like that, they’re all nothing but rats on leashes. If it wasn’t for informants, the cops would have to get damn lucky to ever make a case against a pro.

They’ll pretty much always get the amateurs—the clowns who leave a trail you could follow even with one of those white canes tapping the way.

The amateurs who stay out the longest are the ones who kill for fun. A random kill doesn’t even
look
like what it really is until the bodies pile up.

There’s also people who get off on being a rat. Nothing in it for them; they
like
doing that kind of stuff.

So it’s just as hard for people on my side of the law to sniff them out as it is for the law to sniff out a guy who does freakish stuff.

There’s even people stupid enough to rat on themselves. A pro can be smart about work and dumb about other things. Say you talk about your work to your girlfriend: all it takes is for her to get mad at you one time to put a whole crew under the jail.

A few years ago, that happened to a guy I’d worked some jobs with. He was real good-looking. Smooth talker, too. Always found some girl to pick up his tabs—I don’t think he ever paid rent in his life. This guy, he’d never talk about our kind of work, but any woman he ever stayed with, she’d have to know he wasn’t any W-2 man. Probably helped them get over the nights he didn’t come home. And explained the flashy way he always dressed, too. Whatever, they were always happy to help out with some cash while he was waiting on this big score he had coming.

Only this last one, she couldn’t leave it that way. She just
had
to satisfy herself he wasn’t spending her money on some other girl.

A lot of them do it now. They call it “playing detective.” You know what I mean: they buy their boyfriend a cell phone and pay the bill themselves. The mark thinks he’s playing her, but the person who pays the bill
gets
the bill. Which means she gets a lot of phone numbers.

So, anyway, the girlfriend, she finds a number she doesn’t recognize, dials it while the guy’s sleeping. Wakes him up and goes
off
on him. She’s taking care of him, and he fucking
cheats
on her!?

He should’ve just promised her he was done with that other girl. Better yet, just walked away and not come back.

But, no, he has to be a
big
man. Throws a fistful of hundreds on the floor, tells her, “Here, bitch. Go pay your little cell-phone bill.”

All their time together, she thought he was her kept boy, so seeing all that money sends her over the edge. A few minutes earlier, she was screaming at him to get out. Now she’s standing in front of the door. She’s got more to say, and he’s going to listen to it or …

He should have let her scream herself dry. But, the kind of fool he is, he’s got to play his role, just like he did flashing the money. Ends up banging her around pretty hard.

He’s not even a few blocks away when she goes 911 on him.
They pick him up right on the street. Once they tell him what he’s being pinched for, he doesn’t say a word.

This guy figures, they arraign him in the morning, he takes whatever they’re offering. What’s he looking at … thirty days and some anger-management class?