Choice of Evil by Andrew Vachss Page A

but his face was older. Prominent cheekbones, thin lips, a full set of capped teeth, brownish hair frosted a lighter shade at the forelock. He wore a diamond stud in his right ear, and his grip was strong, self-assured.
    He walked over to a sofa where some other people were sitting, nodded his head at an armchair off to one side. “Okay with you?”
    I sat down without saying anything, Pansy dropping down on my left. Farther in that same direction, a pair of women at a café table. One, a busty brunette in a pink tank top, showing off her muscular arms among other things; the other, a slender blonde with long, lank hair falling on either side of her head, bangs covering her eyes, wearing some kind of middy blouse.
    “We didn’t expect you’d bring. . . company,” the guy who called himself Lincoln said.
    “You worried she’s gonna talk?” I asked.
    The brunette laughed. Nobody else made a sound.
    “No. I was just. . . Forget it. Vincent didn’t say anything about you having a. . . partner.” Making sure I heard the name, keeping the connection alive. Vincent was an old friend. A gay man, emphasis on the second word.
Heavy
emphasis.
    A lot of gay guys I’d met over the years said they started with being molested. I was ignorant enough to think that was the root until I met Vincent. His family was the real thing—loving and warm and supportive. He explained to me how being gay was hardwired, present at birth. Genetic. “It’s not a ‘choice,’ ” he said, explaining it to me. “It’s not a ‘preference’ either. It’s what we are. It’s what I am.”
    Vincent was in what he called the “literary world.” I never understood what he did. Or maybe I never paid attention. What I remember most was how he hated. . . them. Baby-rapers. I was hunting one when we crossed paths, that’s when I found out. But he didn’t hate them because he was one of us. The Children of the Secret, we’re a big tribe, but we’re not united. We don’t fight under the same flag. Vincent wasn’t a draftee in that war; he was a volunteer. He hated them for what they did to children. . . not what was done to him. That was the kind of man he was.
    Vincent was a man in a lot of ways, it turned out. He had to do some jail time. Not much, a few months. He wouldn’t talk about something the grand jury wanted to know, and some pontificating pervert of a judge locked him up for contempt of court. The black-robed ass-kisser told Vincent he’d stay there until he talked. Once the appellate court figured out that was a life sentence, they cut Vincent loose.
    I couldn’t help it. I was young then. So I asked him if he had sex in there.
    “No,” is all he said.
    I remembered what it was like Inside. How guys who weren’t close to gay on the bricks got turned in there. “Turned out” is what the cons called it. Turned
over
is what it was. I didn’t know how to ask him about that. . . rape thing, so I just said, “How come?”
    “I didn’t meet anyone I fancied,” he said, his deep-blue eyes telling me that someone in there had mistaken gay for weak. And learned the difference.
    That was a long time ago. Vincent’s gone now. But his name would still key my lock. . . at least enough to make me listen.
    “What
did
Vincent tell you?” I asked the guy who called himself Lincoln.
    “He said you could. . . that you were some kind of private investigator. But. . . off the books.”
    “Meaning I don’t have a license, or I get paid in cash?”
    “Both, I guess. But that’s not what I meant. I mean, what
Vincent
meant. He said you could. . . find someone. Even if they didn’t want to be found.”
    “Okay. That’s what
you
want?”
    “Vincent said you’d never go to the police,” Lincoln said, meaning it as a question.
    “You’re tap-dancing,” I told him. “I don’t know what you asked Vincent. I wasn’t there when you talked to him. . . if you did. And nobody can ask him now, right? My résumé