The title of Andrew Vachss’ new novel, THE WEIGHT, is multi-purpose. A criminal sometimes has to take the weight for a crime in prison, where he might lift weights while he is waiting for freedom.
Sugar Caine is a professional thief who comes back from a job to be arrested by half of the NYPD force. He is then picked out of a line-up as the guy who raped a well-to-do woman. He didn’t do it, but his alibi is, well, he was too busy pulling a heist at the time. It’s an obvious frame-up, but he can’t get out from under it. He either has to give up his partners in the robbery, or he has to do time for a sex crime, for which he will be listed on the registry. Snitches get stitches, everyone knows this, and Sugar refuses to sell out his partners. He keeps his mouth shut and takes the weight.
He goes inside and kills five years worth of time lifting weights. He’s not a weightlifter or bodybuilder, as he explains to another character in the book. “A weightlifter, he’s trying for the most he can lift. He don’t care how he looks . . . . But bodybuilders, all they care about is how they look. Weightlifters, they talk about leverage, position, driving the bar. Bodybuilders, it’s all about definition. The look. How you’re cut. Vascularity.” Sugar’s a big motherfucker, and he shoulders the weight for his partners without trouble, and they make sure he lives in relative comfort while he’s behind bars.
When his time is up, he goes to collect his cut of the heist, and the planner, a paranoid-but-aware man by the name of Solly, has a job for him. A former partner, Albie, has recently died, and Solly wants a particular book from his wife. He wants Sugar to go to Florida to get it, and while he’s down there, to kill Jessop, a less-than-trustworthy partner on the heist that got Sugar in trouble in the first place.
Since Solly has always played right by him, Sugar agrees to this and sets off on a journey he would never have expected, fraught with murder, dishonesty, and betrayal, and it all begins when he meets the lovely, strong, and self-sufficient Rena.
Vachss possesses an ability as a writer that very few others of his genre has: he tells it like it is. He has spent a lot of time with people like Sugar and his compatriots and enemies. Among his credentials is his time as a director of “a maximum-security prison for ‘aggressive-violent youth.’” Now, he’s a lawyer who does pro bono work for abused children. He’s on the front line for this kind of thing. He knows what he’s talking about.
And now, so do you, if you can see the cold, hard truth without flinching. He has called his books Trojan horses, and there couldn’t be a better description. It’s hard, heavy material, and it will hold you down. It commands your attention. Let it and learn.
THE WEIGHT
By Andrew Vachss
Publisher: Pantheon
263 pages
$25.95
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