Présentation de l'éditeur
When his girlfriend, Crystal Beth, is gunned down at a gay rights rally in Central Park, Burke, the underground man-for-hire and expert hunter of predators, vows vengeance. But someone beats him to the task: a shadowy killer who calls himself Homo Erectus and who seems determined to wipe gay bashers from the face of the earth. As the killer's body count rises, most citizens are horrified, but a few see him as a hero, and they hire Burke to track him down...and help him escape.
In Choice of Evil, Burke is forced to confront his most harrowing mystery: the mind of an obsessive serial killer. And soon the emotionally void method behind the killer's madness becomes terrifyingly familiar, reminding Burke of his childhood partner, Wesley, the ice-man assassin who never missed, even when the target was himself. Has Wesley come back from the dead? The whisper-stream says so. And the truth may just challenge Burke's very sense of reality. Expertly plotted, addictive, enthralling, Choice of Evil is Andrew Vachss' most haunting tale to date.
Extrait
From Chapter One
It was almost three in the morning when she'd called, so I was outside her apartment house in fifteen minutes. I didn't like the doorman eyeballing me more than once, but I didn't see a way around it either. If he thought it was unusual for someone to be calling at that hour, he didn't show it . . . just rang up and got the okay for me to enter the elevator.
She must have been right at the peephole--the door opened even as I raised my knuckles to rap. The rose lighting was back on. Otherwise, the place was shrouded. "Go sit down," she told me, standing aside.
I gave up trying to solve the mystery of her three chairs and just took the middle one, letting her play any way she wanted.
She looked ghostly, floating across the room toward me. Barefoot, in a gauzy white robe that wrapped her body--a frame, not a cover. She took the nearest open chair, reached over, and pulled mine around so we were facing each other.
"I believe you," she said.
"Which means . . . ?"
"I believe you wouldn't . . . do what you said. I believe you . . . Oh, never mind. Look, here it is, okay? She . . . asked around. Like you said. I don't know about this 'theory' of yours, but you're right about one thing--they have the men who did that drive-by."
"Have them?"
"Found them, I should have said. They're dead. And one of the people killed in the crowd--you were right about that too. The police think it was murder. I mean, deliberate murder. The rest was only for . . . what do you call it? Camouflage? I don't know. But the cops say it was business. Professional business. They think they know who gave the order. That's what you want, right?"
"That's what I want."
"Well, I have it," she said.
"But you want to play with it first? Or you want me to place a fucking bid? What?"
"Why are you so . . . hostile?" she asked softly. "I've been nice to you. It was fun . . . flirting, right? I know you liked it."
"We've already been there," I told her.
"You really hate them, don't you?" she said, leaning so close I could feel her breath.
"Who?"
"Child molesters."
"Who doesn't?" I said, sloughing it off, staying clear of whatever was lightning-bolting around the rose-lit room.
"You should spend more time where I do," she said, an ugly undertone to her soft voice. "And you said to ask. You said it was okay. You told me to do it."
"What are you talking about?"
"My . . . friend. The cops. All that. It was easy, she said. They all . . . a lot of them anyway . . . they know you. Or about you, at least. I even know about those murders--the ones in the South Bronx."
"Jesus Christ, that's the kind of sorry two-bit rumor your pal came up with? That story's a fucking fossil."
"I know what you think," she said, sliding the gauzy robe off her shoulders. "You think I'm trying to get you to . . . admit something, right?"
"That's why you keep taking your clothes off? So I'll see you're
