Born Bad Read online

  BORN

  BAD

  Acclaim for

  Andrew Vachss

  "Vachss [is] in the first rank of contemporary American crime writers."

  —Kansas City Star

  "Next to Vachss, Chandler, Cain and Hammett look like choirboys."

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  "[Vachss] does to pimps, pederasts, snuff film makers and porn industry purveyors what you know he'd like to do in real life, but seldom can. In other words, he decimates them."

  —Detroit News

  "Vachss is a contemporary master."

  —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  "Move over, Hammett and Chandler, you've got company…. An absolute original… Andrew Vachss has become a cult favorite, and for good reason."

  —Cosmopolitan

  "Vachss' writing is like a dark rollercoaster ride of fear, love and hate."

  —Times Picayune

  "Andrew Vachss, a lawyer who specializes in the problems of child abuse, writes a hypnotically violent prose made up of equal parts of broken concrete block and razor wire."

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  "The best detective fiction being written…add a stinging social commentary…a Célinesque journey into darkness, and we have an Andrew Vachss, one of our most important writers."

  — Martha Grimes

  Andrew Vachss

  Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social caseworker, a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for youthful offenders. Now a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youths exclusively. He is the author of numerous novels, including the Burke series, two collections of short stories, and a wide variety of other material including song lyrics, poetry, graphic novels, and a "children's book for adults." His books have been translated into twenty different languages and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, The New York Times, and numerous other forums. He lives and works in New York City and the Pacific Northwest.

  The dedicated Web site for Vachss and his work is www. vachss.com

  BOOKS BY

  ANDREW VACHSS

  Flood

  Strega

  Blue Belle

  Hard Candy

  Blossom

  Sacrifice

  Shella

  Down in the Zero

  Born Bad

  Footsteps of the Hawk

  False Allegations

  Safe House

  Choice of Evil

  Everybody Pays

  Dead and Gone

  Pain Management

  BORN

  BAD

  stories

  Andrew Vachss

  Vintage Crime / Black Lizard

  Vintage Books • A Division of Random House, Inc. • New York

  Copyright © 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 by Andrew Vachss

  All rights reserved under International and Pan–American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Some of the stories in this collection were originally published in The Armchair Detective; Borderlands; Cemetery Dance; Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; Hard Looks; Hardboiled Detective; A Matter of Crime; New Mystery; Underground; Cold Blood (Ziesing); Crossroads Press (chapbook); Dark at Heart (Dark Harvest); Invitation to Murder (Dark Harvest); Narrow Houses (Little, Brown, UK); New Crimes (Robinson Publishing, UK); The New Mystery (Dutton); Ten Tales (Cahill Press) , and in trade paperback by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1994

  Library of Congress Cataloging–in–Publication Data

  Vachss, Andrew H.

  [Short stories. Selections]

  Born bad: stories / by Andrew Vachss.–1st ed.

  p. em.–(Vintage crime/black lizard)

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Random House Web address: http://www.randomhouse.com/

  eISBN: 0–375–71909–1

  This book is also available in a print version:

  ISBN 0–679–75336–2

  Tortured far apart

  Children of the Secret are

  Alone until love

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  A Flash of White

  Alibi

  Anytime I Want

  Born Bad

  Cain

  Cough

  Crime Partner

  From the Cross Series:

  Bandit

  Cripple

  Mad Dog

  Statute of Limitations

  Crossfire

  Value Received

  Head Case

  Kidnap

  Date Rape

  Dead Game

  Dialogue

  Drive-by

  Dumping Ground

  Exit

  Family resemblance

  Hostage

  It's a Hard World

  Joyride

  Lynch Law

  Man to Man

  Plan B

  Replay

  Replay: A Play in Three Acts

  Bridge

  Placebo

  Rules of the Road

  Step on a Crack

  Stone Magic

  The Promise

  The Unwritten Law

  Treatment

  The Underground Series

  Bum's Rush

  Tunnel of Love

  Bad Babies

  Into the Light

  Warlord

  Warrior

  White Alligator

  Witch Hunt

  Working Roots

  Introduction

  Writing short stories is like fighting in a real small ring: whatever your style, you have to get busy quick. It's easier to make mistakes, and it costs more if you do.

  If you're looking for a Chandler clone, save your money. If you think "noir" is French for "dark meaninglessness," move on. If your idea of a good time is vigilante slasher-splatter porn, pass.

  Those interested in labels will find justification for everything from hardboiled to horror. Some of the pieces concern a mercenary named Cross, soon, if my plans work out, to invade the paperback market. Some are stage plays, others are works-in-progress. Some have been previously published in a wide variety of forums. Others are original to this collection. Most are first-person narratives, some from ground zero and some—the "Underground" series—from below that.

  I'll spare you self-congratulatory adjectives. Writing isn't my work, it's an organic extension of that work. I may not be a good writer, but I write for a good reason. And if that reason isn't apparent by the time you've finished this collection, I didn't get the job done.

  A Flash of White

  The bitch in 24-G is a whore. A real slut. She parades around in front of her bedroom window in her underwear, trying on different outfits. Sometimes she looks right out the window. She knows I'm here.

  The highrise has a lot of windows. They all have different coverings: curtains, drapes, Levelor blinds. The bitch in 24-G has curtains, but she never draws them.

  I have a diagram of the building that I made myself. I go in the and out all the time. I make deliveries for a florist. They got me that job when they let me out.

  I really don't need a job. I have the money my mother left me. But the bitch from the Probation Department, she said I have to have employment.

  The bitch in 19-E just came home. She's a pig. When she gets home, she throws off all her clothes, right on the floor. When she comes back into
the front room, she has a towel wrapped around her. She doesn't even pick up her clothes until she has a drink. I'm sure it's liquor, because she takes so long to put it together.

  I wouldn't drink liquor.

  • • •

  There's a blonde in 16-F that I really hate. She's the biggest bitch of them all. She walks like there's a poker stuck up her ass. I'd like to stick a poker up her ass. A red-hot poker.

  A thought like that, I'm supposed to snap the rubber band. The one I have to wear around my wrist. I have to remind myself that those are bad thoughts.

  They taught me that inside. Before they let me go.

  I never would have gone inside at all except for that bitch. I got caught lots of times. My mother always got me a lawyer. Nothing ever happened. They sent me to counseling twice. The important thing was, I never hurt anybody. I just looked at them, mostly. When I went inside one of their houses, they were never home. I only took panties. That's where bitches keep their secrets, in their panties. If you hold them, you know their secrets. They belong to you.

  The last time they caught me was when the bitch got me sent away. The District Attorney. Not the real District Attorney, not the head man. A woman. While I was locked up, she got a search warrant for my room. My lawyer said she was able to get it in the middle of the night because I had my ninja outfit on when they caught me. And the piano-wire garrote.

  They almost gave my mother a heart attack, charging in there like that. They found my stuff. My stalker's journal, my magazines, even the straight razor. The bitch D.A. told the judge I was dangerous. A ticking bomb, she said. They wouldn't let me out on bail.

  That's when the bitch tricked me. She had me brought to this room to talk to me. My lawyer was there. He said I didn't have to answer any questions. The bitch said she knew there was a reason why I went prowling. That's what she called it, prowling. It sounded good when she said it. Strong. Not like I was a freak or anything.

  She had a theory, she said. About why I did it. If she was right, maybe I wasn't a criminal after all. Maybe I was a sick person. Maybe I needed help.

  I started to say something, but my lawyer stopped me. We were just there to listen, he said. Just listen.

  The bitch started talking about my mother. I saw what she was doing, so I explained the truth to her. It was all just normal discipline. Children need discipline. She never really hurt me. I love my mother.

  My lawyer was shaking his head. Not to stop me, like he was sad or something.

  The judge sentenced me to this place. For treatment, he said. I didn't know what it was going to be like.

  But I bet the bitch knew.

  I had to talk. All the time. Every day. Talk about what was inside my head, what I was feeling. They showed me pictures. Lots of pictures. Different kinds. Movies too. Videotapes. They would ask me, does this make me excited' Was I aroused?

  After a few months, they put this cuff on me. Right around my…thing. They could tell when I got aroused. From the pictures. They had stories too. On tape. You sit in a chair and close your eyes and put on the earphones and the stories come.

  I had to wear the cuff while I heard the stories.

  They did something else to me too. Shock. They had this tape of a woman being tied up. And whipped. I watched it. They made me watch it. And when the cuff filled up, I got a shock.

  After a while, I didn't get shocked anymore. I didn't get hard when I saw women get hurt.

  They made me masturbate. Alone in my room. Over and over again. First I had to masturbate every time I thought about a woman getting hurt. I was the one who got hurt. My…thing was all red and raw. I had to have medicine for it. But they made me keep doing it.

  After a while, I didn't have those thoughts anymore.

  Then they made me masturbate to sex images. Sex with women. Romantic sex, they called it. They had movies of that too. Kissing, holding. Slow moving.

  I had to see therapists too. They made me talk about my mother. About the closet. About being tied up; About the time she caught me playing with my…thing. And what she made me do. With her panties.

  I have to wear a rubber band on my wrist. If I ever get a thought about hurting women, I snap it. It reminds me of the place, and the shocks.

  My mother was killed while I was inside. She was mugged. Somebody followed her up in the elevator and pushed in the door right behind her. She got hit over the head with something hard and she died. Whoever killed her took money from her pocketbook and other stuff from the apartment.

  I went to the funeral. The therapists said I shouldn't feel guilty because I hadn't been home. It wasn't my fault. I asked if the killer had sex with her after he hit her.

  I live in the apartment now.

  The woman in 16-F just came in. I could just barely see her in the living room. She walked into the bedroom. She never raises the blinds in any room except the living room. Even there, she only keeps them open a little bit. I can never see much. In the bedroom, the window is open. Just a slit. I saw a flash of white. Maybe her panties, just coming off. I cranked up the zoom on the telescope, aiming right at the slit. Nothing. I waited. Another flash of white. I couldn't tell what it was.

  The lousy bitch. A tease is worse than anything.

  I was only home about an hour when the buzzer rang. I knew who it was. My lousy bitch of a probation officer.

  I have to let her in. My lawyer explained it to me. It's part of my probation. Like the treatment center was. If I don't do what they say, they can violate me. That's what my lawyer said: they can violate me.

  If they do that, the judge could send me to prison. A real prison. For a long time.

  I let her in. She sat down on the couch across from me. She crossed her legs. I could hear the nylon. I didn't look—I know how the bitch watches me.

  She asked me about the job. I told her I like flowers. They always smell good. I like bringing them to people.

  She asked me about counseling. I told her I still go. Twice a week. And once to the group, too.

  She asked me about if it bothered me to have a woman probation officer. I told her no—I like women now.

  When I said that, she said she wanted to see my bedroom. I was scared. But she walked in there by herself. When she saw the telescope, she got angry. I was afraid she was going to do something to me for a minute. I told her it was for astronomy. She said she didn't care what it was for, it better not be there the next time she came back.

  The bitch. I wonder what's inside her. I'd like to take a look inside her. With the telescope.

  After she left, I was very stressed. I was shaking. I tried to be calm. She hadn't found my other stuff. I do a lot of research. I have books. Lock-picking. Black Dragon Death Grip Techniques. Secrets of the Ninja.

  There's a woman I write to. I never met her, but she sent me pictures. I send her a money order with every letter and she sends me a letter back. She is my slave. She does whatever I tell her to do. She is a bitch too, but a tame bitch. She knows better than to disobey me. I got her name from one of the guys in group therapy. He said it's an outlet, a release thing. So we don't get worked up and maybe hurt somebody for real.

  Every time I get a letter from her, I want to hurt some bitch even worse.

  • • •

  I looked out the window. The redhead in 18-H was home. She doesn't go out much. She has a man who comes to visit her. I always know when the man is coming. She gets dressed in sexy clothes. When he comes there, she treats him like a king. Brings him drinks, lights his cigar, sits on his lap. He's an old, fat man. Bitches always go for money.

  She was just lying on her couch, watching TV. I saw her hand go between her legs. She knows I'm watching.