Afterburn

604 Carroll Street, Brooklyn September 11, 1999

Dawn, the rush of traffic-and nobody had killed him in the night. He lurched up, looked in the rearview mirror. Brush your hair. He was going to be civilized, even if he'd slept in the truck. Coffee and sandwich under the front seat. He opened the door and pissed with one hand and ate the sandwich with the other. Nobody could see him. Across the parking lot, guys in business suits stood whacking golf balls into a wall of netting, Jersey rising over the river. The all-night sports complex was the safest place he'd found, yet he'd bought a baseball bat anyway and slid it under the seat. But when you're sleeping, the bat is of no use. The guy could stick a gun in the vent window, pop-pop, and you'd never know. You were dreaming and you never woke up-the sound of the shot muffled inside the truck. He couldn't keep parking there, he was too vulnerable. He needed a twenty-four-hour garage. You could hide forever in a garage.

Now he stood outside the truck in the dead farmer's boots, his back stiff, stretching. He knelt down to the pavement and did fifty decent push-ups. Then twenty-three lousy ones. Getting too old for this shit. He was losing his advantage. Christina had not been in the courthouse downtown when the prison guard said she would be, and then, the next day, the court officer said she'd been released earlier in the morning. Rick had almost strangled the guy. Maybe it was just bureaucratic inefficiency. Maybe Peck had made sure Rick went up to the prison so that they could start to follow him from there. Or maybe they wanted someone else to follow him, one of Tony Verducci's soldiers, some punk twenty-year-old with a flash-roll in his pocket-like Rick had once been. But after the court officer said Christina had been released, there was nothing for Rick to do. Be functional, he warned himself. Don't do something stupid. Don't start going to bars. Don't listen to your dick. Don't go to bars, don't talk to women. You miss women so much that you can't be trusted. You're so good at doing the stupid things, do the smart thing. Sit and think first. She hasn't gone far, he told himself. She's out there. She loves New York City, could never live anywhere else. There are ways of finding her. She'll want to feel the streets around her, the people and buildings and noise. She'll want to dive right back into it. He knew she didn't have any money-how could she? You can never have enough money in the city. And if Tony Verducci had ordered somebody to follow her, then she was already in trouble. So what are you going to do, Rick? Who are you, are you any good? His time out in the cottage next to the ocean had been wasted if he could not make use of it. You have an obligation to become a better person. You have an obligation to use the baseball bat if it comes to that. He was going to find her and save her from Tony Verducci, and maybe she would want to see him again, maybe not. If yes, good. They would see if they still had the old music. Of course, he believed they did. If she didn't want to see him, well, okay. At least he'd have given it a shot, would be clean this time around. You can find her, he thought. You can figure stuff out as you go along. You can find her before they do. They have their ways and you have yours. You know her, for one thing, you know what she likes. She'll call her mother. She doesn't want to, but she will.

His problem was that he was getting low on cash. Down to a hundred bucks. He sat heavily in the truck and took his last tomato from the dashboard. Perfect, not one spot, and he ate it, getting juice in his beard, while he thought about Aunt Eva. If she had not changed her locks, then his chances were good. In and out in a few minutes; no one will know. Civilized, functional, a man with a plan. He started the truck and pulled south on the West Side Highway, then from there around the bottom of Manhattan and over toward Brooklyn, where Aunt Eva had lived on Carroll Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues since his boyhood. But he didn't know anyone there anymore, he didn't want to be seen. The street used to be all Italian families, with a social club on the corner-old guys in permanent-press pants and hair grease, sitting around. Tired, but not too tired to drive new Cadillacs. They knew what was going on. Some remembered Tony Verducci as a young man. Some even knew Paul. Yet most of the old families had died off, or married out, with other people moving into the neighborhood of grand old brownstones, full of money now, full of Manhattan people who worked in law firms and investment banks and computer companies, and they'd trickled down the hill onto Aunt Eva's block, where the buildings were not brownstones but squat three-story brick row homes half the size. She'd never move, though, never sell out. Maybe she hadn't changed her locks, either. Maybe his money was still there.

He turned off Flatbush and headed south on Fourth Avenue. A fat woman in a short yellow dress and yellow boots stood on the corner looking into the cars while slipping two fingers in and out of her mouth. One of the forgettables. He pushed the truck past the bodegas, the closed hubcap shops. The only things moving on the street this early were the taxis and the cops and the newspaper delivery vans. He'd turned down one of those teamster jobs. The guy who had taken the job instead of Rick now owned a sixty-foot, five-chair Chris-Craft that he took out into the Gulf Stream three days at a time. Somebody else's life. He decided to circle Aunt Eva's block, just to see how things stood. At the corner of Carroll and Fifth, the Korean deli had a light on in the back, some poor Mexican fuck sitting on a bench cutting carrots. He could smell the bakery down the street. Nobody would recognize the truck, nobody would recognize him. The last time he'd been around, he'd sported a shaved head, twenty-two-inch arms, and a Fu Manchu mustache. Veins full of growth hormone. Now he looked like a regular guy-some heavy regular Brooklyn guy driving past. But if somebody recognized him, it could get back to Tony Verducci. Everything got back to him. Rick parked in the lumberyard driveway on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Carroll Street. It was too early for the business to be open. The truck would be okay for ten minutes, which was all he needed. He lifted out the gallon tub of chimney cement he'd bought the day before. Nobody would think anything; it looked like a can of paint. Ten minutes; don't fuck with my truck. The question was whether Aunt Eva's block was still respected, whether the neighborhood kids had gotten the message. All you needed was a few young guys in flashy suits and good haircuts standing around now and then, that was it. Or that used to be it. What did Rick know anymore? Not much: how to grow corn, how to tie a boat to a dock, how to talk to dead fish. He could tell from the stores around the corner that there was more Puerto Rican and black action nearby, but here, walking up the rise of the street, he saw no graffiti, no heavy window bars, no broken glass in the gutter, and a preponderance of heavy, American-made cars, none of them with detailing or goofy shit hanging from the mirror, no bead-lights around the license plate. And trash bags already out for the garbage pickup, each tied neatly. Some of the old families still lived on the block.

Which was not good. It was the little widows peeking sleeplessly out their windows who would call the cops or blab it to Aunt Eva and maybe someone else. They all talked to one another, standing out there with a bag of rolls from the baker. He hurried along the street with his head down, carrying the chimney cement. At Aunt Eva's door, he slipped his old key into the lock-it went right in-and entered silently. She slept in the back bedroom upstairs, he knew. The table next to the door was piled with mail. It would be interesting to examine, but he didn't want to waste time. In and out, Rick-o, in and quickly out.

He glanced up the stairs next to the front door-darkness, no sound. He slid his feet along one side of the hallway, where the floorboards were not so loose from people walking on them for a hundred years. Somebody had fixed the basement door at the end of the hallway. He carried the chimney cement down the basement stairs, turning on only one light, enough to see the boxes of rotting letters and photographs, broken patio furniture, piles of Uncle Mike's clothing, mouse-eaten, moldy, and unworn in twenty years, a tangle of rusted bicycles and wagons, some of which Rick had ridden as a kid. The furnace, so old it had been installed back when Aunt Eva was still getting regular action from Uncle Mike, sat at one end of the narrow, rectangular space, its asbestos-wrapped air ducts octopused out to the ceiling above. Rick noticed a new box of air filters for the furnace. Somebody was changing the filters for Aunt Eva. He slipped behind the furnace, next to the party-wall foundation that she shared with the house next door, the Marinaros', and then put his hands around the sheet-metal exhaust tubing that coiled from the furnace into the chimney. The vent was sealed with chimney cement where it went into the brick orifice, to protect against carbon monoxide backdrafting into the basement. He cracked the old seal as he yanked the vent tube from its space. Before him appeared the black circular hole that opened the chimney. Everything looked okay. He reached into the sooty space, ran his hand along the wall. All he had done before was pull a brick out of its mortar, chisel away another crumbly brick behind it, stick in a thick envelope wrapped in waterproof duct tape, and replace the first brick, hammering it with the heel of his hand until it was flush with the others in the chimney. Then he'd jammed in a few pieces of wood to replace the mortar. The next time the furnace fired, he'd figured then, it would belch black soot over his stash, obscuring any changes in the chimney's interior surface. And anyway, the brick was tight in there, not loose at all. Even if Aunt Eva had hired a chimney sweep, highly unlikely given her age and condition, he would have had no reason to poke around. Now Rick found that same brick and pulled hard, sliding it out. Was the envelope back there? Yes. Blackened by the soot forced into all the crevices. He slit it open with his pocketknife, just to be sure. Three inches of one-hundred-dollar bills came to forty-eight thousand six hundred dollars. The old kind of hundreds, with the small portrait of Benjamin Franklin, but still good. This was the last cash from the all-time best Jersey mall job, money that Christina had helped him make. They had dropped three new Cat bulldozers at a sprawling construction site over the river. Keys in the ignition, hauled on three different canopied trailers from a housing development being built in suburban Atlanta. Nighttime drop-off, trailers immediately driven to Buffalo and parked at a scrap yard for a month. Rick had maneuvered the bulldozers off the rigs himself, taken the briefcase handed to him. Big money. Maybe he could spend some of what was left on Christina, buy her a dress or shoes, whatever. Jewelry, underwear. Cigarette lighter. Women loved little Italian cigarette lighters.

He wanted to take all of the cash, but that meant he had no backup position if things didn't go well, if the money got stolen or he blew it. On the other hand, he had been sitting in the woods for four years, and a little fun wouldn't kill him. You had to have a little fun or you didn't understand life. He split the stack of bills in two, shoved one half in his pocket and the other back into the envelope, which he replaced in the chimney. The brick might be a little loose, but who would know? He wrenched the exhaust tube back in place and opened the tub of chimney cement. The stuff looked like oatmeal, and he troweled it around the tubing, sealing the wall again. This would take extra time, but it was the right thing to do. I did bad things, but I never killed anybody. He had to protect against the furnace's backdraft; didn't want to asphyxiate Aunt Eva, death seeping through the house. The cement would be dry in a day, undetectable. Like him. The whole point was to be undetectable.

He finished the job, picked up the bucket, and on the stairs up from the basement heard a baby making cranky noises one floor above. "Oh, chickie-bee, I'm coming," called a woman sleepily. He stopped on the stairs. Aunt Eva was seventy-something years old. A baby meant young people, a young guy living in the house. Some guy who might notice new furnace cement when he changed the air filters and become curious about what was in the chimney. The baby cried again. Get the rest of the money. Rick turned back down the stairs, moving loudly, slipped around to the back of the furnace, and pulled on the exhaust vent. Nothing-he'd done too good a job cementing it in place. He savagely clubbed it with his arm. He had to hit it twice to dislodge it. Naturally the sound went through the house like a drum. The vent sagged to the floor. He reached in, grabbed the brick, threw it behind him, pulled out the envelope, and slipped it into his other pocket.

Now he could hear footsteps. He hurried back to the stairs and climbed them three at a time, but stopped at the open door to the first-floor hallway.

"Yo, whoever's down there, I got a shotgun!"

The guy was probably hunched at the top of the stairs leading from the second floor to the front door-not twelve steps from where Rick stood in the basement doorway. If the guy came down the stairs from the second floor, he might get a clean shot into the back of Rick's head as he opened the front door.

Now footsteps descended the stairs.

"Where's Aunt Eva?" Rick yelled. "She's my aunt!"

"Who's that?" came the man's voice. "Come out of there."

"That Sal?" Rick yelled. "Don't fucking shoot me, Sal!"

The baby was crying upstairs. "Come out of there!"

"Sal?"

"Sal lives in New Jersey. Who the fuck are you?"

"I'm a member of the family."

"The fuck you are. You come out here."

He was still holding the tub of chimney cement. He flung it down the hallway to see what would happen. The shotgun exploded, tearing away the plaster, splintering the door frame, making the woman scream and the baby cry louder.

The guy is jumpy, Rick thought. "What the fuck you doing?" he called, smelling the smoke from the gun.

"Who is that? You come out here, you motherfucker." Then he yelled up the stairs. "Beth, call the cops!"

"It's Rick!"

"Rick? Who's Rick?"

"Rick Bocca, Aunt Eva's nephew. Tell Beth it's her cousin Rick Bocca."

"Beth," called the voice, "guy says his name is Rick Bocca!"

He could hear her make some kind of answer. Then he heard footsteps.

"Rick?" came Beth's voice. "Is that you?"

"Beth, it's me-tell your husband not to fucking shoot me!"

"He's not going to shoot you."

"Come out of there, you fucker!" came the man's voice again.

"I'll-" she began.

"No, no, don't go get him, let him come out!"

"You're not going to shoot?"

"Come out of there!"

He put his hand out, waved. Nothing happened.

"Come on, goddammit!"

He stepped into the hallway. A small, hairless man in a T-shirt and stained underwear held a double-barreled shotgun. Beth stood behind him, in a short nightgown.

"Ricky?" she cried, still scared. "Is that you?"

"It's me."

"You look so different. Beard and everything."

"It's me, Beth."

"Why you down there?"

"I just needed to get something, Beth, something I left."

"Why didn't you call?" she cried, upset all over again. "I mean, this is crazy, you woke everybody up and scared us and-"

"I thought Aunt Eva was still here."

"She's in a nursing home, three months."

"Oh." He still hadn't taken a step.

"This is Ronnie."

"Hi, Ronnie. You mind putting down the gun?"

But Ronnie was a small man threatening a big one. A rare thrill, and one not to be concluded too quickly. "What did you need to get?" he said.

"Just something I left, Ronnie. Personal."

"What?"

It was ten steps to the door, and if he got near enough, maybe Ronnie wouldn't take a second shot with his wife so close.

"Look," he began, taking one step, his hands up, "Aunt Eva said I could leave something down there, and she let me have a copy of the key. Here." He held up the key.

"We heard you was way out on Long Island, fishing."

"I was, Beth, but I needed something so I came back." He looked into her eyes. "I was out there, and I-"

"I fucking want to know what you were getting!" said Ronnie, waving the barrel at him.

"Hey, Ronnie, wait a minute, I know you don't like this, but you got to see it my way. I didn't want to disturb Aunt Eva."

"What do you have down there?"

It was greed he saw in Ronnie's face now, and this gave him his answer. "You're never going to believe this-"

"Try me."

"Ronnie, for God's sake, put down the gun," said Beth.

Ronnie pointed the gun at Rick. "No. I want to hear this. He came back for something, Beth, he came back and wanted something."

"Okay, Ronnie. You're probably familiar with the furnace, the exhaust vent, right?" He could feel the line coming but didn't know what it was yet. "I used to help Aunt Eva around the house, and one day, couple of years ago, I hid a big toolbox up the chimney, leaving enough room so that the smoke can still go up no problem."

You could pack hundreds of thousands of dollars in a toolbox.

"Where's the box?" Ronnie demanded.

"Well, I didn't get it out yet, see, it's still-"

"What's in it?"

Rick waited, listening to the baby's angry fit upstairs. He needed the line. "Hey, Ronnie, that's my money down there," he cried. "All of it. Aunt Eva-"

"Come here. Step back," Ronnie said to Beth.

"What?" she cried. "What are you going to do? Don't hurt him!"

"Get up the fucking stairs, bitch!"

"Ronnie, wait a minute-"

"You can fucking just walk out of here, right now," Ronnie ordered Rick. Holding the gun with one hand, he opened the front door with the other. "Go. Get out."

"Wait, I can't do that," Rick said. "I need all of that cash, man, I'm in trouble-"

"It's his money," Beth said.

"Shut up!" Ronnie screamed. "Get up the stairs." He motioned to Rick with the gun. "Get out. Get the fuck out of this house now."

Rick looked back toward the basement stairs.

"I mean it! Get the fuck out now!"

"You got to let me have some of it, at least," he said.

"I don't have to let you have shit!"

"Just let me have sixty or seventy thousand. You can have the rest."

"No!"

"It's my money!"

"It's in my house."

"The house actually belongs to me," Beth cried.

"Shut up, I said, shut up!"

"Let him have forty thousand," came Beth's voice. "It's his money, Ronnie."

Ronnie didn't answer. Instead he advanced toward Rick, leveling the shotgun at his head in the narrow hallway.

"Get down. Get down on your stomach."

Rick knelt down.

"I said stomach."

He got on his stomach, face touching bits of plaster and paint. It would take Ronnie a good ten minutes to tear apart the chimney with a sledgehammer and crowbar, looking for money that wasn't there. By then Rick would be on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in his truck, the money a fat pad in the glove compartment.

"Crawl. Crawl to the door."

He wormed along Aunt Eva's old patio-turf runner that Uncle Mike had trimmed with a box cutter thirty years ago, until he got to the door, knowing that Ronnie couldn't see the cash in the front of his pants. He looked up at Beth, who was still cowering in the stairwell. She looked like hell, even taking into account that it was six-thirty in the morning.

"Beth-"

She shook her head, eyes fearful. "I can't do anything, Ricky."

Ronnie came over and put the gun into Rick's face. "You come back, I'm going to do this."

Ronnie lifted the gun and blasted the hallway again. The sound of the gun hit Rick in the head, and for a moment he felt deaf and sick, but then he realized Ronnie had emptied the second barrel. He jumped up and grabbed Ronnie by the throat. He drove him backward against the stairwell, knocking his head on the wall, with Beth screaming, and he took his other hand and slipped a thumb under Ronnie's lip and pulled upward.

"What?"

Ronnie couldn't talk.

"What was that, Ronnie? Say it again, what?"

Ronnie made some kind of noise when Rick pulled again.

"You're tearing his face!" cried Beth.

He looked at her.

"Please, Rick."

He let go. Ronnie collapsed to the floor holding his mouth.

An hour later he found a parking garage that was just right-in Chinatown, tucked into the south side of the Manhattan Bridge. Unless you were looking for it, you'd never find it, which was the idea. He could sleep in the truck or move around the cheap hotels nearby, and if he had to get out of the city fast, then all he had to do was pull out of the parking garage and keep turning right until he was on the bridge. He eased the truck in next to a phone-booth-sized bunker made out of construction block. The attendant, a black man with a Knicks baseball cap, sat in an old bucket seat, eating sweet pork and watching television. The man turned, eyes dull, face diseased by car exhaust. "How long?"

"A week, maybe. Could be longer."

"Put you down two weeks."

Something was wrong with the man's breathing, and it was hard to hear him. Rick cut the engine. "You want to stick it in back, I don't care."

The man nodded contemplatively. "You want it in the back? Most people want it out front so we don't have to move ten cars."

"I don't care if you bury it back there."

The attendant leaned forward and turned the television off, and, as if the box had been sucking the life out of him, now his gray face brightened strangely. "You trying to hide this truck, my brother?"

"It's my truck."

A smile of brown teeth, pork wedged against the gums. "Question still pertains."

"Yes, the answer is yes."

"Repossession? We get that a lot."

"Nope. Wife's attorney."

The attendant frowned. "Them fuckers gone want every dollar-yes sir, I see you got yourself a situation. You want me, I can stick it down in the basement. Way in the back."

"As a favor?"

The man rubbed his chin theatrically. "See, I always thought a situation require a consideration."

"I need access."

"What you mean by access, my brother?"

"I want to be able to get to it. Not move it, just get to it."

He shook his head. "We don't do that. I'll stick the truck in the basement for you, but I can't have you coming and going ten times a day, chicks back there, parties, barbecue, whatnot."

"It wouldn't be ten times a day. Just once."

The attendant picked up his food. "I suppose we was discussing the consideration."

"Hundred bucks a week, you keep the truck way in the back, let me go in and out."

The man stirred his fork around in the carton. "Now, hundred dollars a week is just fine for me, buddy, but I's the day man. Six to six. There's also the night man. Big dog like you coming in here at night's going freak him out. He going think you going kill his ass. If you explain your deal with me, he ain't going believe you, and if I explain it, he's going want his cut."

"I'll go one-fifty, seventy-five for each of you. But I get to sleep in the truck."

"You can go ahead and take a shit in there, far's I's concerned. Just keep the windows rolled up."

"What about the air down there?"

"It's bad."

"You better show me."

They walked into the car elevator and descended to the basement. The dark space stretched about half the size of a football field, and the status of the cars went up appreciably: Mercedes, three Lexuses with dealer stickers on them, Cadillacs like Tony Verducci drove, a cherry-red Hummer, a vintage T-bird.

"You've got some nice cars down here."

"Yo, this ain't parking down here, this is security."

They walked to the far corner.

"Here."

"Air's pretty bad down here."

"It's for cars, not people."

He wondered how well he would sleep. "How do I get up and down? Take the elevator every time?"

"Nah, there's a stairway in the front, comes up right next to the booth. My name's Horace, in case you ask."

Rick handed the man his spare key, then peeled off some bills. "Hope you have fun with that, Horace. I had to go through some trouble to get it."

The attendant pocketed the money. "Nah, you? You kidding!" He threw back his head and burst into rotten-toothed laughter. "Yeah, I expect you did go through some kind of trouble, I expect you did. You think I don't know who you is? I seen everybody, man, I seen them all! Everybody comes down here sooner or later, every kind of people, the good people and the bad people, the rich people and the poor, yeah." His breath was coming in wheezes. "Telling me about some kind of trouble? I know that, man, I know just who you is, my brother, you is trouble coming and trouble going!" His laughing became a raspy cough. "Can't get no air down here!" he croaked. "Can't breathe, my brother." He hurried toward the elevator, his hack echoing through the cavernous space.

The next thing Rick needed was a quiet pay phone, not on the street. He walked west on Canal through Chinatown, then north toward the art galleries, enjoying the morning sun, glad to be free of the truck. The city had a lot of money in it now. The galleries and shops and restaurants were busy, full of Europeans and girls in tight dresses who thought they were doing something new. He noticed that people were getting out of his way on the sidewalk, including the black guys. He'd forgotten about that. At the corner, a cop on foot patrol watched Rick pass by and lifted his brow as they made eye contact. Take it somewhere else, pal, take it out of my beat. I've got to change my look, Rick thought, I'm not fitting in here. I look like a Hell's Angel or pro wrestler or somebody. He found a restaurant with a pay phone in the back, got a coffee cup full of quarters, and called information in Sarasota, Florida, for Christina's mother, a woman he'd met exactly twice, the last time the day that Christina was arrested.

"Mrs. Welles?"

"Who's that?"

"Rick Bocca, Mrs. Welles."

"You looking for Tina?"

"Yes."

"She's not here, Rick. She's in prison."

So, he thought, the mother doesn't know. "Well, I was wondering how she's been doing. She won't answer my letters, you see."

"Last time we spoke was the winter. I've been traveling quite a bit. Just got back last night, and I'm leaving again soon."

"How's Mr. Welles?"

"He's lying down-"

"Tired?"

"— and he's smiling."

"Smiling?"

"He's lying down in the cemetery about eight miles from here, and he's smiling because he doesn't have me hollering at him."

"I'm sorry," Rick said. "He was a pistol, I always thought."

"Yes, he was, sugar, that's why I kept forgiving him."

"He go out easy, Mrs. Welles?"

She inhaled. "No, afraid he didn't. He missed Tina so much, you know, he used to have me come bring all her old high-school report cards and then he'd read them in his hospital bed. He missed her terribly, see. She got his mind, you know. My brain was no good, but Mr. Welles was quite something. I ever tell you why I married him?"

He was listening to a lonely middle-aged woman. The decent thing was to humor her. "He was so good-looking?"

He heard her take a drag on a cigarette. "No, it wasn't that. It was the Mustang."

"I heard this once."

"Mr. Welles bet a fellow that he could take apart a Mustang convertible and put it back together in two days. Not the seat cushions and not the inside of the radio, but all the engine pieces and the brakes and the body and the door and everything."

"They got a lot of bedsheets, is the way Christina told me. And it had to be able to drive."

"Yes, they taped a couple of old pink sheets down on the floor of the garage so they wouldn't lose any parts. He was allowed to have one friend put parts in little piles."

"He won the bet."

"He won more than that-he got me, too. I thought, Now, there's a man who can do things. We dragged that car around with us for the next thirty years."

"I'm sorry he's not around."

"I am, too, but I'm not letting it slow me down."

"So you don't know how Christina is doing."

"Haven't heard from her. Wish I did."

"Okay, then."

"I always liked you, sugar, just wished everything had turned out for Tina better. She got mixed up with the wrong people. That's all I ever knew about it."

"She never told you what happened?"

"No. Just said she made a mistake. But I knew she got mixed up with the wrong people. That's always the story."

He said goodbye. Christina's father had died while she was in prison and she'd never said goodbye to him. Carry that, you fucker, you have to carry that one, too, it belongs to you. He looked at his coffee cup of change, then pulled out Detective Peck's card. One ring, and he heard the man's voice.

"It's Rick Bocca."

"Yeah?"

"I'm having trouble finding her. She was already gone from the prison."

"They let her out downtown."

"You didn't tell me."

"I had bad information."

You had bad intentions, Rick thought.

"You looking the right places?" said Peck.

"The old places, you know."

The question was what the level of the game was.

"You try her mother?" asked the detective.

The question could be a coincidence. But they could be monitoring her phone, too. Grabbing the numbers called in and out. "Yeah. Nothing."

"Maybe she was lying."

"Maybe." Why would Peck think this? "But I doubt it."

"Why?"

"It didn't sound like that." He waited a moment. Peck had to keep him involved. "So she's out there and I have no idea-"

"Her mother's been getting some other calls," interrupted the detective.

"Where from?"

"They came from the Jim-Jack Bar, down at Broadway and Bleecker."

Same part of town where he was now. "How do you know?"

"We just know. We have advantages."

Such as the knowledge that Rick was calling from a restaurant on Thompson Street. The police used all kinds of computers now, could match phone numbers with locations instantly. He hung up. So they were watching for her. All he had wanted was to talk to her again. You make a mistake, you want maybe to redeem yourself. He'd thought that she was in Tony Verducci's game, but now he saw that he was in Peck's game. Paul always said that if you play the game, the game plays you. He needed to call Mrs. Welles back. But if he called from where he was, they'd know he'd called her after talking to Peck. Maybe Paul could figure this out for him; he'd call him, too. He walked north, then east on Bleecker until he came to the Jim-Jack. A greasy-spoon place on Broadway with big windows, cheap food, Mexican busboys. The Mexicans were everywhere in the city; it was getting to be like Los Angeles. The pay phone hung on the wall next to the bar. If Christina had called her mother from here, then his call might be mistaken for one of hers, assuming the police were not actually bugging the line. That was pretty smart. But it had only been ten minutes since he'd talked to Peck-too soon, they'd figure it out.

He noticed a barbershop on the other side of Bleecker and stepped inside. Look civilized, you have to start dealing with people. The hair-wash girl beckoned him toward her chair.

"Been a long time, I guess," she said.

"Yeah." He sat down.

"Lean back." He did, feeling the hot water, and her hands. Her hip pressed his shoulder. He couldn't remember the last time a woman had washed his hair.

"Hey, guy," the girl said, smiling down at him, her face upside down.

He glanced up. She had green eyes, and a sweet tattoo on her neck.

"You a sea monster?"

He didn't understand. "No. Why?"

She bent close to his ear. "You got seaweed in your hair, mister, so I thought you was a big sea monster."

He closed his eyes. You had to avoid this kind of conversation. That's not why he was here. Being out of the city had changed him. In the old days he'd be getting the girl's number.

He stood up and got in the barber chair.

"What'll it be?"

"Short."

"Above the ears?" The barber clipped his white towel around Rick's neck.

"Yes."

"Trim the beard?"

"Trim everything."

"If I cut the hair short, I have to take the beard way back, make it short, too."

"Do anything, make everything short. Civilized."

"Yeah, civilize him," the hair-wash girl called.

The barber clipped his hair, shaved his neck to the shoulders, trimmed the beard to half an inch, even shaved his ears. Hair fell all over the floor around his barber chair. In the mirror, Rick could see his face again, wrinkles around his eyes from squinting on the boat.

From there he went to a one-hour eyeglasses place. The clerk put Rick's broken glasses into some kind of machine that told you the prescription. "You can't see worth a damn with these things, you know that?"

He chose some cheap Clark Kent glasses, not the designer kind. Maybe Christina would like them. He sat waiting, reading a magazine. The glasses came and he put them on.

"That probably makes a big difference."

It did. He could see everything-pigeons on the building cornices, shoes in the window across the street. But it was time to call Mrs. Welles back. He slipped into the Jim-Jack and pulled out his coffee cup of quarters, ready to make a mother worry.

"Mrs. Welles, it's Rick Bocca again."

"What is it? Tina?"

"What I didn't tell you is that she's out of prison now. They let her out, Mrs. Welles. I don't know where she is. But the police up here might be interested in your phone. They're probably not tapping it, because that takes a court order. Probably they're using what's called a dial number recorder, which records all the phone numbers of people who call you, and then the police check who the number belongs to."

"Oh."

"You know anybody in New York City, Mrs. Welles?"

"I don't think so. Nobody who calls."

"Right. I think Christina's been trying to call you, Mrs. Welles."

"I had some hang-ups on my answering machine."

"If Christina calls, you have to tell her this. They can figure out where she is very quickly if they have the number. Like in a minute, okay? I'm sorry to worry you, but you've got to tell her this."

"I'm always worried, sugar, that's how I stay thin." She pushed out the ropy cough of a smoker. "You see Tina, tell her I'm leaving on a trip today, will be back in a few weeks."

"No problem," he said before hanging up.

Now he had to think like Christina. The two of them had rented a place over on Thompson Street, then in the East Village. Without much money, she'd need to be in a part of the city she understood. She'd spend a few days finding things for herself, her apartment or room. Drift around, window-shopping. She'd walk down to Chinatown to buy things. This was a woman he'd lived with for three years; he knew how she walked and dressed and how she liked to have sex and what books she considered important and what music she preferred and what places in the city made her feel good. She'd pick up The Village Voice. She'd buy fruit and juice and bread and vegetables and cigarettes. She'd paint her toenails and hang her feet out the window to let them dry. She'd think about getting her hair cut short. She'd buy a broom. She'd read the sports page. She'd go to bars by herself and look for trouble. He knew her. It had taken some time, too. She was one of those women who showed you nothing on the street, gave away nada. You saw her go by, maybe you didn't even notice. You threw her a line, she didn't even bother making sure you knew you were being ignored. She just moved in her own bubble of thought; she was here but elsewhere entirely. That didn't sound sexy unless you knew her, and once you knew her sexually, then you had a problem. He'd had a problem a long time and thought that he could get rid of it by not thinking about her, not thinking about the sex. It didn't help anything to remember it. She could wear him out easily, back when he was in shape. He'd routinely fucked her for ninety minutes straight, like running ten miles, the sweat pouring off his face and chest, rivering down his arms, soaking the bed. He'd been thirty-one, thirty-two, and known that in the future he'd never again have such stamina. Take it now, while you still have it. And she could take it, she could take anything he did, any position, any degree of force. If you remembered that, it kept getting more mysterious. Most particularly he did not wish to remember the night they drank half a bottle of Averna, a thick brownish Italian liqueur with a lot of mysterious herbs in it, and ended up in the SoHo Grand Hotel, Rick just flipping a credit card onto the counter, telling the clerk to give them any room he had, a single, a suite, he didn't care, and the hell with the cost. Once inside the room they turned on some salsa station and fucked, off and on, every which way, for a few hours, with Rick not coming, just stringing himself along in happy torture, the skin of his cock getting raw, pulling out of her before the pleasure became too intense, then pushing back in. She told him she wanted him to come and he refused. It's sort of a war, then, isn't it? she whispered. They kept going. Then, while he was working on her from behind, her butt up, her arms spread across the bed, she'd stopped moaning and gone limp. Passed out? Her hips sagged and so he held them up with both hands. The idea that he had fucked her into unconsciousness was so exciting that he just blasted himself away into her. And when he was done, and pulled out, and looked at Christina limp on the bed, he saw the smile flash into her face. You sneaky girl, you faker. I fooled you, she'd said with mischievous pride, and then she flipped over and took him against her tongue and absolutely chewed him into having a slow and excruciatingly sore orgasm, and at that point he was cold-cocked. A dead man. He'd already gone at her with his mouth five or six times as well. But she was still writhing around on top of him, and so he'd slipped two, then three, fingers into her and vibrated his hand, first in and out and then in circles and progressively harder for ten minutes, waiting for her to tell him it was too much, listening to her breath riding up and down, over and beyond, not stopping even as she sunk her teeth into his ear, keeping his other hand pressed on her ass, one finger inside back there, too, not stopping for the screaming, not stopping for anything until his right arm went dead. Enough-he'd thought that would be enough. It was enough for him. But she'd pulled his left hand down between her legs and he used that one, too, like a piston. She must have come another four or five times, screaming hoarsely, not at all into the pillow, wetness everywhere, and that was when the hotel security man and two bellhops threw open the door, thinking a girl was being murdered. In the dark, they pulled Rick off her and beat the shit out of him, kicked him in the head. The men finally threw on the lights, chests heaving, and asked Christina if she was all right. She hopped up naked from the covers, her body slim and young, nipples pert, and performed a sweet little pirouette on the hotel carpeting, arms outstretched. "Not a scratch, guys," she said, "as you can see."

He didn't want to remember.

"What I'm looking for is just a splash. There's all this liquid moving around and I want to get splashed. In the face, once. It's not too much to ask. You think these assholes "-the man swept his hand around toward the rest of the bar, the late-night crowd in good clothes, then turned back to Rick-"don't think the same thing? I get that splash, that big splash, I pack it up and pack it out, baby. I take me a little road trip, do some fishing in Alaska, check out the Mexican chicks in Mexico."

"What if you don't get it?" Rick asked.

"Oh, I will."

"How do you know?"

"Some things you just know, man. I got a lot of little prospects going. That's what I call them, my prospects. One gets in there, crosses the line first, then I get splashed. When that happens, I shut down, move out. No more risk."

Rick nodded but let the conversation die. He'd told himself not to go into a bar, and he'd refined that into not going into one of the five or six bars owned by Tony Verducci, and then he'd refined that into not saying anything to anybody about Tony Verducci. If he did that, he'd be okay. The day had been long; he'd walked in circles around the East Village, up and down St. Mark's, around Tompkins Square Park, and up to Tenth Street and then west, looking into every bar and restaurant, the Korean groceries, one after the other, the coffee shops, the secondhand clothing shops, just in and once around, to see if she might be there. He'd covered perhaps a hundred businesses, until about 4:00 p.m., when he came to a health club on Lafayette and stopped in, and once he was there and saw the free weights and the machines and the mirrors, the old sickness hit him, hit him quite beautifully, and he dropped a couple of hundred dollars for a three-month membership right there and bought a T-shirt and a pair of trunks and a towel and a lock right out of the display case and went down to the lockers and changed. The place was full of gay men who were buff, some of them with rings in their nipples and stomachs and dicks. He examined the facilities and found the boxing ring, where white women were kickboxing with black instructors wearing pads. Both getting into it, working the symbolism. Race relations, there it was. Upstairs in the weight room, you had a few guys very pumped up, one or two black guys who looked like they'd done some time. They didn't recognize him; they had no idea he'd made the final round of the New York State Bodybuilding Championship three straight years, won once. He'd told himself to go easy. He'd lost a lot of strength, of course, but didn't mind that. He was back to his basic ability. It would feel good to be sore the next day and the next and the next, and within a week he'd see the first changes in his biceps and shoulders. The chest and stomach would take longer; they always did. He wouldn't get bulky, he told himself, just a little form, a little size. Something to do while he searched for Christina, make himself look better for when he found her. He'd buy some protein drink and start to mix that in with his meals. With the haircut and new glasses, he was back in action. Rick Bocca, here and now. Botta bing, botta boom.

Now, at the bar, an hour slipped by, as did dozens of great-looking people with their hair and eyes and lipstick and cigarettes and leather jackets and good shoes, and he'd fallen into conversation with the bartender, drinking three, then four, then five doses, and then, suddenly, he realized he might have mentioned he used to work for Tony Verducci. He had promised himself he wouldn't talk to anyone, because once you started to talk, about this or that, whatever flew into your head also flew out of your mouth, and then, if you kept drinking, some more stuff came gushing out, and you thought you were a genius or insightful or tragic, and then you really started to babble, but he had been lonely as hell, started talking to the poker-faced guy named Matthew behind the bar instead of keeping his mouth shut. And maybe he really had said something about Tony Verducci, maybe he-yes, he just happened to say the name Tony Verducci, as in, We were running some jobs for this guy who probably worked for Tony Verducci, and when he said this, Matthew the bartender just nodded casually, but his eyes went cold and he set up another glass and said it was on the house, which made perhaps six Mount Gay rums, beautiful bottle, map of Barbados on the label, "World's Finest Rum-Since 1703," looked like piss, actually, bit of a celebration due not only because Ronnie didn't blow off his nuts with the shotgun but also because in the gym he'd pressed two-forty on the free weights, which he never expected, must be the fucking boat, all that work with the nets, and he knew-he knew he knew-he must get out of that place as soon as he could. Now. He should leave now. You say Tony Verducci and they look at you funny. Leave now and they won't kill you. Ha-ha. The bartender got a look in his eyes and then gave him a free drink and disappeared. Probably to make a call. Ha-ha. Rick had even leaned over the bar to see that there was already a phone under the bar, but the bartender wasn't going to use it, no sir. We got some fucker in here, says he knows Tony Verducci. Ha-ha. Go now. Get back to the truck. You blew it.

"You mind if I sit here?"

Kill me now, she is beautiful, henna hair, tits like water balloons.

"I don't mind. 'Sokay."

He moved his stool over and tried not to look at her. You look at them, they have power over you. Besides, he wasn't interested, not really, not when you really asked him.

"Excuse me, can I bum a cig?"

He found it in his pocket. Handed it to her. Now he looked. She was older than she dressed. You can always tell by the neck. But she was still very-

"Thanks."

"Yeah."

She smiled at him.

"You want a drink?"

She nodded her head. "Why not?"

Now the bartender was back. "Yes?"

Rick gave a suave little wave. "Whatever she wants."

"What's he having?"

"Mount Gay."

"I'll have that. I like that, actually."

"Great," said Rick. "Everything's great."

"I don't usually come here," she said. "Just tonight, sort of by accident."

She was lying; she had been sent by the bartender to get some more stuff out of him, but he'd just play along.

"My first time here, actually," he told her.

"Really? You from the city?"

"More or less."

"What's 'more or less'?"

"Sometimes more, sometimes less."

"Oh." She looked puzzled.

"Nah, I've just been out of the city for a while."

"You a businessman?"

This was a bullshit line, but why not? "Just been working out of the city. Name's Rick."

She stuck out her hand, which was soft. "Connie."

"That's a great name. Full of great stuff, that name."

She liked this. How could she not? He was a charming fucker. She leaned closer."Like what?"

"Oh, Connie, well, it's got all kinds of zip, it's got-it's got lipstick in it and, like a '75 Cadillac convertible, still some fins on there, it's got the Jersey shore in there and some great music, maybe go back to the sixties, some of that great slow stuff, I mean I could go on all night here, Connie, name like that, you can take that name and shiny things keep coming out of it, money and lipstick and guns and stuff."

She laughed. "You're drunk."

"Absolutely."

"You're one of those talking drunks, though."

"Yeah, I talk a lot when I'm drunk. Like feathers coming out my mouth, floating around."

She smiled. "No, I like it."

Go ahead, put the hook in deeper, you fly bitch. "Nah," he said. "Don't listen to me."

"Most guys drink too much, they get mean."

"Not me. Never mean. Don't know how to do it."

"Really?"

"Nope. I'm a pacifist. Feathers everywhere."

"You're a sweet guy, huh?" She turned to the bartender, signaled for another drink.

"Yeah." She knew the bartender; you could see it in his eye. They knew each other and they were setting him up. He'd mentioned Tony Verducci and then in five minutes he's got action on the bar stool.

"So you're from out of town?"

"Yes."

"Where you staying?"

"Hilton midtown."

"You kind of don't look like a guy staying at the Hilton."

"No, I agree."

She blew a bloom of smoke. "You're in disguise?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Deep cover."

"Who you hiding from?"

"Bunch of mob guys I used to know."

"Real mob guys?"

"Oh yeah, real mob guys."

She laughed. "You're full of shit."

"You're right. I am. I told you I was, but you didn't believe me."

"Come on."

"What?"

"Tell me. I'm interested."

"Nah, I'm the most boring guy in the world. You tell me who you are."

She pushed her red fingernails through her hair. "I work in midtown, work for this big lawyer."

"What kind of law?"

"Oh, mostly real estate."

"You know the difference between a co-op and a condo?"

"They're sort of the same."

"Really?"

She looked at him. "Well, practically."

"I always wanted to know."

"Also, we mostly do like other kinds of law."

He nodded. Lies, all lies. "Boss a good guy?"

"Pretty good."

"He screw you on his desk?"

"What?"

"I said does he-"

"I heard you." She looked down and paid too much attention to her cigarette. This was the proof. Any real woman would be long gone after a line like that. She'd look at him and say fuck you and leave. It was okay now. He knew the score. In fact, he could have one more drink, because it was helping him think clearly. Drinking could do that. He had not been drinking for four years, and now he was drinking and was so drunk that he actually saw everything very clearly. The bartender had called his boss and then they had gotten this woman to slide out from the back somewhere, an office or someplace where they count the money, and she was going to try to get him off where they could grab him. "Hey," he said to the bartender, "one more for me, and one more for her, if she so desires."

"So, I think I know why I sat down next to you," she finally said, her voice a purr of smoke.

He had to figure a way out of there soon. "You were hoping I'd ask some rude-ass questions."

"Nope. That wasn't it. I just figured it out. It's your beard."

"My beard?"

"You've got a great beard." She reached out and touched his cheek. "It's so thick, but you keep it trimmed."

"Yeah."

"And you've got Superman glasses."

"Superman with a beard."

She looked around. "This place gets too crowded."

"Trendy. Things get trendy, you make a million dollars."

"You feel like going someplace a little more quiet? Get a night-cap? There's the Temple and the Fez a few blocks up, and a couple places down a little." She stared at him with her mouth open and her eyes half closed, yet looking directly into his. Her tongue rested on her bottom lip and then slid outward and stayed out, as if needing something.

He put three twenties down on the bar.

"Did you have a coat?"

"No." His change came back and he dropped a ten on the counter. A tip before dying.

He had to get out of the place. "I'm just going to use the men's."

Fucking drunk, couldn't walk, feet moving like fish just pulled out of the water, flopping, don't know anything, dying. He kept one hand on the wall. Look smooth, Rick-o, look like you're just taking a piss. There had to be a door, fire door, basement door, something. Fire regulations. He pushed through the men's. Two guys in there, neither of them trouble. Yuppie assholes making half a mil each. He hadn't punched a guy in years, didn't even know how to do it anymore. They wouldn't try anything in the men's, it could go wrong too easily, they didn't know if he had a gun or not, which in fact he did not, being a pacifist-no, what they wanted was to just slide him out easy. No scene. It's a business. Tony Verducci used to get vodka by paying off a liquor distributor employee to tell him when to hijack the delivery trucks. He sold it at half the price of wholesale, and the buyer promised to resell it somewhere Tony wasn't doing business-Boston, maybe. Tony made so much money that he had a picture of himself shaking hands with Donald Trump hanging in his upstairs bathroom. Rick pissed a long piss, swaying on his feet, forehead against the white tiles. He needed to eat something, a burrito maybe, break up the alcohol, drink some water, too, he was too drunk to run and yet he had the feeling he was going to have to run soon, his mouth had done this to him-three days he's back and he's saying the words Tony and Verducci to some-no, no! Too long in the men's room, get out, they would come looking for him, and so he zipped and skipped the hand-washing, maybe a drop or two on his pants leg, so what, civilization still intact, and then pushed out along the hallway, a door? Give me a door, eyeballs going double, fish-feet going floppety-flop, sway-shouldering along the hall, don't drop your cigarette, they should turn down the lights, made you squint, can't see, find the door, but in fact there was no door, not even a back room with some Mexican guy cutting up potatoes, nothing! Mexicans everywhere in the city, doing the real work. And here he was back in the bar. Connie was down at the end smiling at him, great droopy tits under that black silky sweater, big nipples you could twiddle like a locker combination, maybe he would actually get to fuck her, maybe she was willing to do that if it came to it. She looked like she would be one of those wet women, he liked that, slick and slide and stink you up-best thing in the world. He pushed past some Wall Street mojo with a burning log of a cigar in his mouth-the thing looked like some kind of black dick stuck in the guy's teeth, the message being that he was so fucking fat, he could stick a black dick in his mouth, still be a man-that was the secret logic of cigars, of course. And then past a couple of women who looked like horses wearing lipstick and some guys in Euro-sadist haircuts, careful not to sway too much, people lose respect, and the question was, Where would they try to grab him? Right outside?

"Hi." She took his hand tightly. "I thought of just the place."

"How do we get there?"

"Oh, we walk. Just two blocks."

Outside, people stood lined up, cabs waiting, guys in nice coats, girls looking sexy in dresses and heels. He glanced inside toward the bar. The bartender, back turned, ear in phone. "I can't, sweetie," he told her slurrily.

"Why?"

"Can't walk. You got me drunk, babe. Got to eat something."

"We'll take a cab."

"That's fine. Somewhere they give you food. Need some air. Taxi air's the best. Hits your face."

She flicked her fingers and a cab nosed up. He opened the door for her like a gentleman, and after she sat down, he dropped heavily to the seat as she gave directions. Then she pulled a tiny phone out of her purse, flipped it open, punched in a bunch of numbers: "Sandy? It's Connie. I know, I know. Yes, baby! I just wanted to know if you would give Warhol his food. Just one can of the beef. What? No, not too late." She laughed. "Maybe yes and maybe no." She glanced at Rick, smiling, laid a hand on his knee. "Well, probably it was his beard. Yes, yes. Hmm? I think first the Temple Bar, if we can get in. The Temple, you remember, they have this great little salmon and caviar thing. Right. Okay, Sandy, thanks." She hung up, popped the phone into her purse. "My poor doggie needs to eat." She looked at him and squeezed his leg. "You'll like this place, it's much quieter. No scene."

"Great," he burbled. "Very nice." And then jolt and speed, one light, two, cabdriver some kind of rag-head terrorist, didn't kill them all in Desert Storm, and he let his hand fall to Connie's thigh and she held it affectionately, and he kept thinking of the juicy stink along his belly and legs, up and down, drip it on me, I'll stick a finger in first, then some tongue, you fly bitch, you'll like my dick, I promise, they all do, if they don't see it first it surprises them, one girl put a ruler next to it, get you with your legs up and then-and then the cab lurched up against the curb and of course he would pay, give the guy a ten. Burning the cash from Aunt Eva's. He needed two tries to get out of the cab. His feet felt loose. The place was just a door, ten or twelve people outside. Too crowded, never get in. The doorman waved them in. The place was dark as a cave. Tables, little candles, very cool atmosphere, people very cool, money flowing every which way. The bar was three deep. A waitress took them toward the back. Try not to knock into people, Clark. How could they have a table? But they did. Just for two. Did Tony Verducci own this place, too? People were looking at them-why? She was good-looking, but so were half the women. He saw a fire door. alarm will sound. The menu was classy. He'd eat one of the salmon things and slip out. Run, run, get away. Try to bang Connie some other day. They ordered. The salmon appetizers, please.

"You're not talking," she said.

"I'm worried, heh."

"About what?"

"I had some messages at the hotel I was going to check."

"Important?"

"Not really. Just want to check them."

"Here." She pulled the little phone out of her purse. "You just push the green button and dial."

"Great." He took it from her.

"And I'll go pee. Be right back."

She got up and walked away. He knew from the way she walked that she was thinking about how her butt looked. They all did. They had you coming and going. You chased them and then they caught you. He studied the phone, all of its buttons. The thing was small enough she could slide it up into herself. Phone sex, ha-ha. Man, was he a sly motherfuck! He punched the little green button, heard a dial tone. Then he pushed redial.

"Yeah?" came a man's voice after two rings.

"Where's this?"

"This is the kitchen phone."

Rick nodded. Of course. The place they'd just left. "I'm trying to reach Connie."

"She's not around, she's gone."

"She told me she could be reached there."

"She's busy, she's working. She's not supposed to give this number out."

He didn't say anything.

"Who is this?"

"Nobody," he slurred. "Just a-"

"I said who is this?"

"This is the police," Rick said. "We're going to kill Tony Verducci."

He hung up. Then he punched the green button again and dialed randomly. That would be the redial number in case she tried it. He looked up. She was coming back now, and as she passed by the light over the bar, he saw her clearly. She was almost young, but there were old things on her.

"Thanks." He handed Connie the phone.

"Got through?"

"Perfect."

The drinks and salmon came. He had maybe three or four minutes. Go ahead and knock it back. It wouldn't take long. Some guys coming in a cab, maybe right now. Maybe she'd used the pay phone next to the ladies' room. He ate the salmon. She was looking around, her hand in her bag for a cigarette. Waiting, she was waiting. That was it. Jump off the train.

He stood up.

"Hey," she said. "Where you headed?"

"I can't ride the train."

"What do you mean?"

Heh. Go to the fire door. Excuse me, excuse me, a young couple was moving out of his way, yes, thank you, very civilized, he was almost falling down. "Yes, yes, I know, excuse me. Sorry. Sorry! Please move, what? Hey, fuck you, too." alarm will sound. That was good. Scare everybody. Connie following him. Two guys, too. He pushed the bar, the door swung open, no alarm sounded, and he was outside, the night air hitting him, and he saw-oh so beautiful-three empty cabs speeding up Lafayette to make the light and the two goombahs and Connie were coming out and he saluted the cab nearest him like an officer and caught the handle as the car jerked to a stop and pulled it and saw to his horror it was still locked and he pounded on the window, click-click, yes, pulled it open, jumped in, but not before one of the guys yanked open the door. "Go, go, go!" he hollered to the cabbie. "They wanna kill me." But the cabbie was uncertain and didn't speed up and the goonish guy was jogging alongside, then running alongside, then trying to get in, saying, "You fucking-" which was when Rick finally got two hands on the door handle and yanked it shut like nobody's business, making the guy's hand crunch, fingers waggling inside the door frame, and Rick opened the door, making the hand fall away, and slammed it shut for good and looked back through the rear window to see the guy rolling in the street grabbing his bad hand, with the other guy catching up and, back farther, Connie standing on the sidewalk, arms wrapped around herself in the night air, finally looking like what she was, some chick working for the money, which on this evening meant trying to help two goombahs to find out who the big bearded guy was, the guy who said he knew Tony Verducci, the guy she'd pegged from the first as traveling on a fool's errand.