Choice of Evil

She was quiet on the drive back. At least for a few minutes. When I lit another smoke, she pointedly hit the switch for her window. I did the same for mine.

“I’m cold,” she said, something different in her voice. . . too ghosty for me to grab.

“You want the heater on? It’s got to be seventy degrees out.”

“No. I’m just not. . . dressed right,” she said, hugging herself. She wasn’t wrong about that—the lemon silk T-shirt she was wearing showed her off real good, but it was about the same as going topless when it came to weather protection. And you didn’t need X-ray eyes to see she wasn’t wearing anything under it.

“I’ve got a blanket in the trunk,” I told her.

“Why can’t I just wear your jacket?”

“Because it’s full of stuff that’s none of your business.”

“Like. . . what? A gun?”

“There’s that thing about language again,” I told her. “What does ‘none of your business’ mean to you?”

“Fine,” she sniffed.

I snapped my cigarette out the window. “Thank you,” she said, sending her own closed. I did the same.

“Better now?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

She went quiet again. I shoved in a cassette, turned one of the dials to crank the bass heavier toward the rear of the car—Pansy likes the bass lines best.

“Who’s that?” she asked after a couple of minutes.

“Judy Henske.”

“Oh, wow. She’s. . . great. I never even heard of her. Is she, like, old or something?”

“How old does she sound?”

“Like she’s about thirty-five. . . and like she’s lived a couple of centuries.”

“Good call,” I told her, letting Judy’s fire-and-velvet voice roll over us both. That particular tape was all estrogen—KoKo Taylor, Katie Webster, Etta James, Marcia Ball, Irma Thomas, Little Esther, Janis, La Vern Baker, Big Mama.

“I never heard any of that,” she said toward the end. “Ever.”

“Then you’ve been cheated, girl.”

“Are any of them. . . alive. I mean. . .”

“Marcia Ball was in town last week. Judy’s on the coast. KoKo’s still working. Sure.”

“Would you take me? I mean, take me to hear some of that. . . what is it, anyway?”

“It’s what you call it. To me, it’s the blues.”

“But it doesn’t make you blue. I mean, the songs are. . . sad. Some of them. But that one, the engineer one, that was. . .”

“Raucous?” I asked her. Magic Judy’s “Oh, You Engineer” puts it right in your face—you want her to ride your train, you better have one hell of a motor.

“Yeah. She sounds so tough.”

“She’s a mean woman, no question.”

“Not like. . . nasty, right?”

“No. One who can take care of herself.”

“And you like that? In a woman?”

“That’s all I do like,” I said, telling her the truth for once.

“What you said to me before. . . when I told you to kiss my ass.”

“Yeah?”

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

I didn’t say anything, thinking of where my line had come from: a stripper I knew a long time ago, standing in front of a mirror, looking back over her shoulder to make sure the black seams on her nylons were straight. . . “My butt is my best feature. The only time a man ever really fell in love with me was when I was walking away from him.”

Silence filled the car. I didn’t switch tapes—we were only a few blocks from the joint where I was going to drop her off.

“You don’t know what to do with an apology, do you?” she finally asked.

“Sure.”

“No, you don’t. I apologized for what I said. Now it’s your turn.”

“I got nothing to apologize for,” I told her, pulling to the curb.

She opened the door, turned to face me, said, “You know you lied,” and slammed the door behind her.

Things were quiet for a few days. I invested a lot of time trying to put a sweet little sting together, but it wouldn’t mesh. So I passed. That’s the way I do business—safely or not at all. Impatience imprisons.

The city stayed edgy. Then the director of one of the above-ground pedophile organizations turned the key to start his pretty new car and drove straight to hell. The radio report said the car exploded right in the freak’s driveway.

First Amendment absolutists wrote frenzied letters to newspaper editors, bemoaning a country where a person could be executed for expressing unpopular opinions. They didn’t sign their names. Talk shows were loaded with pious pigs droning about the wages of sin. The cops said they had some suspects, but no prime ones.

For all that, the smart money was that the hit was personal, not political. The major pedophile organizations love to publish their little “Enemies Lists,” especially on the Net. But if they knew how long that list really was, they’d spend the money on bulletproof vests instead.

Still, the group the dead man had headed decided they needed it to be political, milk it for the mileage. So they announced a candlelight vigil would be held outside Gracie Mansion—the Mayor’s house.

They were standing there, mourning their loss for the TV cameras, when somebody who knew how to use a grenade launcher took seven of them out with one blast.

The snuff film was a big hit on the networks. But nobody put it together—in fact, most of them were a hundred and eighty degrees off—until the next letter arrived.

There are many ways to oppress gays. Fag-bashing is the most obvious, but not the most devastating. Physical attacks on homosexuals are not only tolerated by the general community, but covertly encouraged. These are known facts. What is not known is that much of the animosity against gays is fueled by the utterly false belief that a pedophile is a homosexual run amok. Journalism has been complicitous in this fraud. The very newspaper in which this is being printed is a prime example. Remember the headline: “Teacher Arrested in Homosexual Child Abuse”? That story involved a kindergarten teacher and a five-year-old boy. Ask yourselves—and this is addressed to the journalism community as well—if the victim had been a little girl, would the headlines have screamed “Heterosexual Child Abuse!”? You know the answer. Much of this is ignorance, but some of it is by design. Pedophiles have carefully self-styled as “gay,” seeking to extend the continuum of tolerance for homosexual relations between consenting adults to the rape of children. How many pedophiles have camouflaged themselves as “gay activists” in order to use the old “First they came for the Jews” canard to terrify gays into some “common cause” nonsense? Gays hate child molesters as much as straights do. Some of us, more so. Some of us victims much more so. After careful consideration, I have concluded that pedophiles who insist on being labeled “homosexual” are equally guilty of fag-bashing. Now they will pay the same price. Watch your language!

It was signed with the “Homo Erectus” tag. Nobody questioned its authenticity—the body count had wiped out any doubts.

The city reeked of fear.

I missed not paying taxes. Juan Rodriguez died in the attack on my office. Sooner or later, IRS would go looking for him. That wasn’t a problem, but the No Visible Means of Support was. Or it would be, if I got popped again. And I felt that coming—IRS wasn’t in a hurry, but the cops were. They would have paraded one of the outpatients who confessed in front of the cameras by now, doing the whole Perp Walk thing, but they knew what would happen next—the killer would show the world that it was phony. And who knows? Maybe he’d decide that promoting a bogus confession was a kind of gay-bashing too. Nobody wanted to walk into that minefield. But arresting me was no big risk. They wouldn’t have to tell the papers I was suspected of the actual murders, just recite any lame routine about “conspiracy” or “aiding and abetting” and it would take the heat off them for a while. With my record, I’d qualify perfectly for remand without bail—history of violence, no roots in the community, significant risk of flight to avoid. . .

The best way to lock in a bogus ID is to have it keep up its tax payments while you’re someplace where you couldn’t. I figured I was going down soon as the cops found me, and I wanted the new name in place first. That way, I could start the withholding and Social Security and all the other government crap rolling first, and let it build while I was Inside. Davidson would spring me sooner or later—it’s happened before—and I could get something out of it.

But I couldn’t hunt from Inside, so I couldn’t stay there too long. My plan was to have Davidson walk me in again, soon as Wolfe came through with the ID. Pansy can get her own food. I have this six-foot-high metal box with a lip at the bottom that she can shove with her snout to make the dry dog food drop. And a hundred-gallon water bottle inverted in place so she can drink, too. It’d be good for a couple of months, minimum, and there’s plenty of space for her to roam around. It’s not perfect, and I felt bad the last time it happened, but there’s nobody to leave her with. I mean, she wouldn’t go after Max, but she wouldn’t go with him either.

We talked it over once, me and him. If I ever went away for a long stretch again, I told Max to tranq her out and then move her over to Elroy’s. He’s a crazed counterfeiter who lives in a shack out in the country with a pit bull who gets along with Pansy. I know she’d stay there peacefully—she did it before. Elroy had wanted Pansy and his dog to get together, create a brand-new breed. But they were pals, not lovers, and he finally accepted it.

There was nothing else I had to worry about. Everyone in my family could take care of themselves. And each other. I didn’t have bills to pay or a landlord to worry about. My family had too much sense to come on visiting day. Crystal Beth would have come no matter what they told her, I thought. I cut that off quick, before it started to hurt.

I was ready, just waiting on the ID.

Then I got a call, and everything changed again.

“Yes, say that,” Mama told me, adamant.

“She said she was my girlfriend?”

“Yes. Say that. I ask her who this is, right? She say, Tell him his girlfriend called.”

“You recognize the voice?”

“No. Maybe. . . not sure. Hard to tell with Europeans. All sound alike.”

“She didn’t leave a number? A message?”

“Just call, okay? Ask for you, okay? I say you not here, call back, okay? Who you? She say, ‘His girlfriend,’ then hang up. No more.”

I didn’t waste time trying to figure it out. “You seen Max around, Mama?”

“Sure. Here before. With baby.”

“He coming back?”

“Always come back,” Mama said. Something was wrong—the whole song was a beat off.

“What is it, Mama?” I asked her, looking her full in the face—something you do with her only when you’re dead serious.

“What you do with these. . . people?”

“What people, Mama?”

“Crazy people. What you do with them?”

“Mama, I’m not following this, all right? I’m working.”

That should have ended it. Working was sacred to Mama. And she knew what kind of work I did. Same as hers, only I played it different. But we were both thieves in our hearts. All of us in my family were. We might have had different reasons, but nobody ever asked. Sometimes we told—I knew about Max, and I knew about Michelle—and sometimes we didn’t—the Prof never explained, he just taught. Nobody ever asked Mama. And if she told Max, he kept it to himself. I’ve known Mama forever. And the only time she was ever upset with me was when I wasn’t working. But her face was stone and her eyes were harder.

“It’s just a job,” I tried again.

“You go after that girl, right?”

“Girl? What girl? You think the killer’s a woman?”

“Not killer. The girl. The one you bring in here. The one you marry.”

“Marry? Mama, what the hell are you talking about? I never—”

“Crystal Beth,” Mama said. No description, an actual name. Very strange for her. “You live with her, yes? Love her, right?”

“Mama, I—”

“You go where she is, Burke? You go to be with her?”

“Me? Mama, no! You think this is some kind of kamikaze run, I—”

“Huh!” is all she spat back at me. I realized I’d screwed up halfway through the word. Mama hates anything Japanese, even their expressions.

“Mama,” I said, dropping my voice, going into my center for patience, calling on the credit I’d built up, “you know I don’t lie to you.”

“Uhn,” is all I got back from her mouth. But she nodded, unable to deny what I said.

“This isn’t about suicide. I know there’s nothing. . . there. Crystal Beth’s down in the Zero, right? She’s gone. I can’t find her. And people don’t come back from the dead.”

“Some people not die.”

“What does that mean? She’s dead, Mama. No question about it. Dead and gone.”

“So you look for. . . who? People who kill her? Or man killing. . . them?”

“What?”

“Your woman killed. Accident, right? I mean, not her they killing. Just hate those. . . people.”

“Homosexuals?”

“Yes,” Mama said, looking as close to embarrassed as I’d ever seen her. “Hate. . . them. Not her. Not. . . personal, right?”

“Right.”

“This other one, big killer. He kill them too, he find them, right?”

“Sure. Looks like he’d happily waste any fag-basher on the planet.”

“But you look for him, right? You find him, then he stop. No more killing, right?”

“Ah. I don’t know, Mama. That’s not my deal. The people who want me to find him, they want to help him. Help him get out of here, get safe. They sure as hell don’t want me turning him over to the cops.”

“Sure sure. But he still stop then, right?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“So the ones who kill your woman. . .?”

“Mama, I don’t know who they are. I don’t have any way to find them. And thanks to this ‘Homo Erectus’ guy, every fag-basher in the city has gone to ground. People are even afraid to talk about it, much less do it.”

“All wrong,” Mama said.

“What?”

“All. . . timing, yes? All wrong, also. Your woman die. Not the only one, right?”

“Right. They just sprayed. . .”

“Yes. And then killer comes walking.”

“Right. That must have blown his fuse. Last-straw kind of thing, I don’t know.”

“I know,” Mama said.

“You know. . . what?”

“How many die?”

“I don’t know. A few dozen, at least. He’s been—”

“Not him. With your woman?”

“Just one other. The rest were wounded, but. . . Jesus. Mama, you saying it was a hit? And they just made it look like a fag-bashing?”

“Not. . . how you say, credit, right?”

“Right,” I said, thinking it through. Sure. What terrorist kills without bragging about it? And nobody had. So when this Homo Erectus started making his move, everybody thought they knew why, but, maybe. . .?

“So you think. . . maybe it was just a murder? And Crystal Beth died for camouflage? They knew who they wanted, but just covered it up? Like setting fire to a whole building full of people to kill one of them—the cops think it’s an arson, but it’s really a homicide. Sure, could be. But the only man I ever knew who worked like that was. . . ”

Mama looked at me. Into me. I got it then. That was his style. Almost his trademark. You paid him for a body, you got a body. If he had to make a whole bunch of bodies to cover his tracks, so what? I remember the first time the Prof had pulled my coat to the truth. Years after we’d all been released. “No man knows Wesley’s plan, brother. Nobody knows where he’s going. But everyone knows where he’s been.”

“Wesley’s dead,” I said to Mama.

She just shrugged.

The pay phone rang about an hour later. I picked it up, said, “What?”

“Didn’t the Chinese lady tell you I called?” Nadine’s voice, edged with irritation.

“She said someone who said they were my girlfriend called. Somehow, I didn’t think to make the connection.”

“I told you before,” she said softly. “You have to start telling the truth. I always do.”

“My platonic girlfriend, then, right? I guess they didn’t get the joke here.”

“What joke? Your nose is so open I can see your brains.”

“That’s what happens when you use those fake-color contact lenses, bitch. They really cloud your vision.”

“Keep playing, honey. It doesn’t change anything. I’ve got what you want.”

“Not a chance.”

“In fact,” she purred into the phone, “I’m holding it right now.”

“There’s guys who’d pay you three ninety-five a minute for that kind of crap—why you wasting it on me?”

“Oh, I’m not wasting anything. And I’m not playing with myself either. I was playing with this. . . . Listen!”

What I heard on the phone was the sound a sheaf of paper makes when you riffle it against your thumb.

“Where and when?” I asked her.

I almost didn’t recognize her when she first showed, striding along the sidewalk in front of the joint like a yuppie businesswoman going to an important meeting, a fitted dark suit with a white blouse over plain dark pumps and sheer stockings. Her hair was in a tight bun. And the requisite attaché case was in her hand, a tasteful shade of blue.

I swung the Plymouth into place. She opened the door like it was a cab she had hailed, only she got in the front seat.

“Where’s your partner?” was the first thing out of her mouth.

“She’s working,” I told her.

“I thought you took her everywhere.”

“Not everywhere,” is all I said. Pansy had been sick all day. Some kind of flu, my best guess. Upset stomach, lethargic. I kept her warm, gave her some homeopathic stuff I got from a vet. She was running a little fever, but her appetite wasn’t that much off, so I wasn’t worried. But she needed her rest.

“I don’t know what kind of old heap this is,” Nadine said, “but at least it’s got plenty of legroom.” She demonstrated by crossing her legs. Her perfume smelled coppery—the way blood tastes in your mouth.

“You wouldn’t understand,” I said.

“Wouldn’t understand. . . what?”

“This ‘old heap,’ ” I replied.

“Oh Christ, you’re sensitive about that too? You love your dog, you love your car. You should be driving a pickup truck with a gun rack behind the cab.”

“If I was, in this city, you think people’d remember seeing it?”

“Well. . . sure.”

“You think anyone’s gonna remember seeing this?”

“I. . . Oh. I get it.”

“No, you don’t. But the kind of broad you are, you always think you do.”

We were just pulling onto the highway when she said: “What does that—?” But she lost her breath as I mashed the throttle and the reworked Mopar 440 fired a giant torque-burst down the driveline to the fat rear tires. The Plymouth rocketed past traffic like it was a multi-colored picket fence. I slid across three lanes and drifted it around the exit ramp, scrubbing off speed with a downshift, and merged smoothly into the Riverside Drive traffic. The Plymouth went back to purring, its stump-puller motor barely past idle. Quiet inside enough for me to hear her whisper “Jesus Christ!” when she got her breath back.

“This thing is purpose-built,” I told her. “For work, understand? Not for show.”

“I get the point.”

“Good. Let’s stop playing, all right?”

“I haven’t been playing. I was just—”

“Playing, gaming, teasing. . . I don’t care what you call it. You got this whole ‘I-never-lie’ routine you want to run, go for it. What you’re really good at is making judgments, little girl. Bad judgments.”

“Little girl? Take a look, mister,” she said, sucking in a deep breath so none of her subtlety would be lost on me.

“I’m not talking about your age. Just your experience. I’ve seen it all my life. You know stuff, but it doesn’t translate, understand?”

“No. No, I don’t.”

“When you’re a tourist, the natives all look slick to you.”

“Huh?”

“You know all about the. . . stuff you do. The roles you play, the language you use, the. . . props, whatever. You don’t know a damn thing about the only thing that’s happening where you and me are concerned.”

“And that is. . .?”

“Hunting.”

“I’m not trying to tell you your business. I was just—”

“—running your mouth,” I finished for her. “That’s the part you need to keep in neutral, all right? I don’t do word games. This isn’t about getting me to admit I want to fuck you, understand?”

“I—”

“That’s all you’ve been doing since I first laid eyes on you. What do you want that’s so important? You don’t need me to tell you you’re a fine-looking woman.”

“Maybe I want to fuck you,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“Maybe you do. But I’m not interested in being one of your trophies.”

“Oh, I get it. A real Alan Alda you are. You only want commitment, huh? Won’t settle for anything less than true love.”

“I had true love,” I told her softly. “It died. And the killers are from the same tribe this ‘Homo Erectus’ guy is hunting.”

“How could—?”

“She was bi,” I said. “And she was one of the people who got done in that drive-by in Central Park.”

“You mean you have your own—?”

“I had my own,” I cut her off. “I never minded sex with a woman who wanted sex. . . just for that. Truth is, that’s mostly what I did. . . do. But people with agendas scare me.”

“Agendas?”

“Yeah. I’m a good man to have sex with if you’re married. I’m not going to fall in love with you, I promise. So when you decide to break it off, I won’t beef. I won’t stalk you, and I won’t blackmail you either. I’m nice and safe, see what I’m saying?”

“I see—”

“Shut up and listen, okay? Give it a chance, you might like it. I’m a good man for some things. Like I said. But if you’re married, I’m not going to kill your husband for you just ’cause I want some more of your pussy either. You get it now?”

“Yes. All right. But I don’t—”

“You don’t. . . what? You been preaching about what a liar I am all along, haven’t you? But you say you’re in love with a serial killer you never met, and I’m supposed to buy that, make you partners with me on this deal?”

“I didn’t say I was in love with him. I told you—”

“No, I told you. I don’t know why you’re all dressed up tonight, but whatever’s in that case you’re carrying better be a present from your girlfriend on the force. You know, the one you bragged about? So here’s one you must have heard when you were just sprouting those things you’re so proud of now: Put out or get out.”

“I don’t put out in cars,” she said, giving her lips a quick little lick. “But if you want to take me home and try your luck. . .”

“I don’t have a home,” I told her.

“You mean you’re married.”

“I guess your friend on the force really knows nothing, huh?”

“Fine. You don’t have a home. I do. Want to see it?”

“I want to see what’s in that briefcase.”

“Then take me home,” she said.

She lived right at the edge of Turtle Bay. And even if she’d scored a rent-controlled deal, it was still a pricey neighborhood. I aimed the Plymouth at the Triborough, planning to loop back on the FDR on the off-chance anyone else was interested in where I was going. That’s why I’d really pulled that highway stunt—if the cops had been tagging me, it would have smoked them out. The rearview mirror had been empty of anything suspicious. That didn’t cover everything—the federales are pretty good at box-tags. But I still didn’t think they were involved in this. And NYPD wouldn’t spare the numbers, not with the whole city screaming for an arrest.

I slapped a new cassette into the player. The car was wrapped in the blues. KoKo’s version of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Evil,” backed up by Jimmy Cotton on harp. You know how artists “cover” a record? Michael Bolton imitating Percy Sledge, Pat Boone white-breading Little Richard. . . ultra-lite fluff. Plenty buy it, though. Probably the same people who watch Hard Copy and think the emphasis is on the first word.

But KoKo didn’t cover the Wolf, she twitched her hips and bumped him right off the stage. Then the tape moved on to Albert Collins and Johnny Copeland teaming on “Something to Remember You By,” and I thought of Crystal Beth. . . and what she’d left me with. I was still thinking about that as the tape started to travel through hardcore Chicago, with Son Seals at the wheel, his Bad Blood Blues searing the truth out of that branding iron some fools call a slide guitar. Nadine sat silently through it. Didn’t say one word until I took the Thirty-fourth Street exit from the Drive. “Who was that?” she finally asked.

“Another mix,” I said, thinking she was talking about the stuff at the very end of the tape. “Mostly harp men: Butterfield, Musselwhite, Wilson—”

“Oh, I know him. Kim Wilson, right? From the Fabulous Thunderbirds. But I never heard him play anything like. . .”

“No,” I told her, flat-voiced. “That was Blind Owl Wilson. From Canned Heat. It’s a different planet.”

“Judy Henske’s planet?”

“Yeah.”

“Surprised I remembered?”

“No,” I told her truthfully. “It’s not hard to see you’re a real smart girl.”

“And that’s good, right?”

“No. It just. . . is. A good mind’s like any piece of technology. Neutral. Like a gun or a knife. It’s not what you have, it’s what you use it for.”

“That’s another way of saying you don’t trust me?”

“How many more ways would you like?”

“There’s a spot,” she said, pointing with a transparent-lacquered fingernail at a Mercedes pulling away from the curb. I parallel-parked, thinking of what Wolfe’s Audi would have done to the pristine BMW behind me, and we got out. Once I saw her building, I could see rent control wasn’t an issue—it was a major-league high-rise, built within the past few years.

Nadine smiled at the doorman’s “Good evening,” but didn’t say anything back. We got on the elevator.

“Go ahead,” she said, nodding toward the row of push-buttons. “I’m sure you know which floor’s mine.”

“Nope.”

She snorted. Tapped the 44 button.

When the elevator stopped, she stepped out ahead of me. I followed her down the heavy-carpeted hall. The plain pumps had enough heel to keep her mass in motion, so I couldn’t tell if it was inertia or she was putting on another show.

When she got to 44J, she inserted the key she must have palmed when I was watching the mass in motion, and then we were inside.

“Careful,” she said, showing me what she meant by moving slowly down a couple of steps into a sunken living room. She hit a wall switch and a soft rosy light suffused the entire room. It was long and narrow, with the far wall almost floor-to-ceiling glass, flanked on each side by a black acoustical tower. On the right, an audiophile extravaganza spread across a single shelf that flowed out of the wall so smoothly it must have been a custom job. Along the left, the major focal point was one of those giant-screen TV units with a trio of leather recliners and matching ottomans—one black, one white, and one red—arranged with their backs to the right-hand wall.

“I’m not out at work,” she said, as if that explained the decor. “Have a seat.”

The window glass looked fixed in place—they don’t have balconies that high up—so I took the chair closest to it, the white one, spun it so it was facing the door.

Nadine walked over to where I was sitting, pulled the ottoman away, and perched on it, crossing her legs again. “Open it yourself,” she said, indicating the briefcase on the floor. “It’s not locked.”

I popped the small brass latches at each end. Inside, nothing but paper. Photocopies. Crime-scene reports. Even down to the photographs. Maybe a couple of hundred pages in all. I started to leaf through them, asking, “Is this—?”

“Just one case,” she interrupted. “My. . . friend says she didn’t know what the. . . I mean, she did know what you meant—the ‘polygraph-key’ thing—but she didn’t know which ones they would use. She said ninety percent of this stuff never made the papers, so they had a lot to choose from. And it isn’t her case, so. . .”

“Ssshh,” I said, reading.

Even in the soft-rose lighting, it was easy enough to figure out which of the cases it was. The best one for polygraph keys—one of the first ones—the guy who’d gotten the ice pick in the spine. A blown-up car wouldn’t give away much. Oh sure, if the lab guys were good enough, they might find the triggering device. . . or a clue to it, anyway. Maybe even tell you the type of explosive. But there’s nothing like a face-to-face homicide to produce a crime scene you can vacuum all to hell.

And they had. I finally found exactly what I was looking for. The ice pick the newspapers had reported hadn’t been one at all. The weapon had been a ninja spike of some kind, a triangular piece of tempered steel with notches for finger grips at the thick end. On the top, where it was the thickest, there was an engraved icon, inset in red. I knew the color only because someone had written the word “red” with an arrow pointing toward it on the photocopy. I guess either the Department didn’t have color copiers or, more likely, Nadine’s playmate didn’t have access to one.

“Have you got a—?”

I looked up and realized I was talking to an empty space. Nadine had gone somewhere. I glanced at my watch. I’d been in that chair for almost two hours. I guess I’d gone somewhere too.

The apartment was sealed-off quiet, no street noises penetrating the thick glass, the rich gray carpet muffling anything else. Where was she? There had to be at least a bedroom and a kitchen. Bathroom too. But I didn’t want to start cruising around. And everything past the circle of rosy light I had been reading by was a pool of blackness.

“Nadine?” I called out, medium-voiced, pitched to carry past the living room, no more.

No answer.

It didn’t stink like a trap does. And the decor wasn’t a clue either. You walk into a room where everything’s covered in plastic, floor to ceiling, you better start shooting before they go to work with the baseball bats. But this. . .?

Nadine was a girl who loved her games. I could walk out and take the papers with me. Or get up and look through the other rooms.

I didn’t like the choices, so I pulled the cellular out of my pocket and dialed her number. I heard it ring, somewhere back through the walls. If there was a phone in the living room, I couldn’t see it. Or hear it.

She had it by the second ring, her voice awake and sharp even though it was almost two in the morning. But some people wake up just like that, so I couldn’t tell.

“Hello?”

“You mind taking a little walk?” I asked.

“Oh! It’s. . . sure. Just give me a minute.”

I wanted a smoke, but I didn’t even think about going through with it. There wasn’t an ashtray in sight. And one of those air-filtering canisters sat in a far corner whispering its work.

Then she seemed to just materialize out of the side of the wall. Nude.

“I was asleep,” she said, as calmly as if we were talking inside an office. “You were so. . . absorbed, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” I told her. “And I didn’t want to. . . invade your privacy.”

My eyes never left hers. Still cobalt, hers were. So either she was lying about being asleep or they weren’t contacts like I’d first thought.

“That was very considerate,” she said, calmly. “Are you all finished?”

“Not quite yet. Have you got a magnifying glass of some kind? And a better light I could use for a minute?”

“Sure,” she said, spinning on her heel and disappearing again.

She came back with a large rectangular magnifier, the kind that comes with the Oxford English Dictionary inside that little tray at the top of the two volumes. And a clip-on gooseneck halogen light. “How’s this?” she asked, bending forward like a stewardess. In a porno movie.

“Perfect, I think. Let me try it.”

I attached the light, turned it on. Then I placed the magnifier over the photocopy of the icon. Blown up, it turned out to be a meticulously drawn little dinosaur with T. rex jaws and monstrous talons, but much shorter in every department—almost like a miniature.

“I got it,” I told her.

“You mean. . . you mean you know who he is?”

“No. But I know something I can use to find him. Maybe. If he wants to be found.”

“Wants to be—?”

“It’s. . . complicated,” I told her.

“And you can’t tell me?” she asked, perching herself back on the ottoman the same way she had hours ago.

“Not now.”

“But I did what you wanted, right?”

“Yeah, you did,” I admitted. “In spades.”

“So you believe me now?” she questioned, rubbing her eyes like a sleepy child, but showing me she was all grown up at the same time.

“I believe you have a friend on the force,” I told her. “One that’ll do what you want.”

“She did a lot, didn’t she?”

“Sure did. This had to take some time. And it’d mean her job if she got caught.”

“I know. Do you think they’d. . . suspect her?”

“How would I know? I don’t know who’s got access to—”

“I don’t mean suspect her of making the copies. I mean suspect her of being in with. . . him.”

“Not a chance,” I assured her. “The sleaze tabs broke the mold when they published autopsy pictures of that little girl who was raped and murdered in her own home. Remember, the baby beauty queen?”

“In Colorado? Oh God, yes! I couldn’t believe when they. . . and they still haven’t caught the people who. . .”

“Yeah. Anyway, these pictures, they’d be worth a fortune to one of the rags. That’s what they’d think she was up to.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding more relieved than I would have expected.

“Anyway, she sure as hell can’t put these back, right? I mean, they aren’t originals. And there aren’t supposed to be any copies. So I’d better keep them.”

“You?”

“You want them around here?” I asked her. “It’d be insane to burn them—there might be a real clue in here somewhere, even though there’s stuff missing.”

“Really? When I saw how much it was, I thought she got everything.”

“Is that what you asked her for?”

“No. I just. . . what you said. The ‘polygraph-key’ thing.”

“Well, you can tell her she came through, no question.”

“Me too.”

“You too, what?”

“I came through too, didn’t I?”

“Yes. I already said that. You made. . . you proved your point.”

“So I can. . . help you with this?”

“Yeah.”

“When do we start?”

“We already did,” I told her. “I’ll get back to you, let you know when the next move is.”

“That’s it?”

“What did you expect? You want to put some clothes on and go running after him right now?”

“Oh. I didn’t think you noticed.”

“Noticed?”

“My. . . clothes,” she said, trailing the back of her hand across her breasts.

“Hard to miss,” I said.

“Look good to you?”

“I’m not that old.” I laughed.

“I didn’t mean you were. . . old. You’re older than me, sure. But I can see you’re not too old to. . .”

“No, you can’t see anything,” I told her. And it was the truth. Her eyes were on my crotch, but it was about as active as the Vanilla Ice fan club.

“How come?”

“What?”

“How come I can’t see anything? You can see everything. And I know you like girls.”

“You scare me, Nadine,” I told her, letting her see the truth if she wanted it. “And nothing turns me off more than fear.”

“It doesn’t everybody,” she said in a throaty whisper. “Some people get very excited by fear. Do you know what it’s like to be wearing a mask? A leather mask with only a zipper for your mouth and two little holes to breathe through? To be chained. And waiting. Not knowing what you’re going to get?”

“You know what?” I told her, my voice quiet, but harder than any silly leather games she liked to play. “I do know. Not about your little masks and whips. But I know exactly what it’s like to be chained. And to not know what’s coming next. But knowing it’s going to hurt. Hurt real bad. And not being able to do a thing about it.”

“You mean for real?” she asked, leaning forward, listening now, not on display.

“Oh yes,” I promised.

“When you were in. . . prison?”

“Prison? Prison was a fucking joke by the time I got there. For me, it was like going to college after prep school. No. Not in prison. When I was a kid. A little kid.”

“You mean your parents—”

“I didn’t have parents. I had the State. That was my mother and my father and my jailer. I served time in POW camps before I was old enough to go to school. You like to play around in your little ‘dungeons,’ wear your costumes. . . . You try it sometime without mercy-words, try it when you can’t pick your partners, you stupid little game-playing bitch—see how much fun it is.”

She gasped, swallowed some words. Sat back on the ottoman and looked at me like I was whatever had crashed at Roswell that the government wasn’t talking about.

I took out a cigarette and lit it, hating myself for losing control. I bit deep into the filter, feeling the pain lance through my jaw, ready to grind the butt out on her pretty carpet when I was done.

She didn’t move, a piece of white stone in the rosy light.

I blew a jet of smoke into her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You are fucking sorry,” I told her. Then I stood up. She started to do it at the same time and we bumped. She fell to the carpet. I didn’t look back.

“Can you get word to. . . your friend?” I asked Lorraine over the phone.

“Same place?”

“Yeah. Whenever’s convenient for. . . your friend.”

“I’ll reach out. When I link up, should I. . .?”

“Just leave word. Whenever the meet’s made for at your end is okay—I’ll be here.”

“All right,” she said.

“Crazy, yes?” Mama challenged the minute I sat back down in my booth.

“Yeah, Mama. Crazy. You’re right.”

“So?”

“So I’m going to see it through,” I told her. “And I’m going to get Max to help me,” challenging her now.

“Good,” she said, surprising me. “Balance. Good.”

Sure. I got it. At least Max wasn’t crazy. Thanks.

I went back to my hot-and-sour soup. Mama disappeared. I don’t know how she reaches out for Max. There’s a lot of ways to get messages to deaf people, but Mama was a techno-phobe. She’d use an abacus to work percentages on six-figure scores without missing a beat, but she didn’t trust anything electronic, doling out words on the phone like they were her life savings.

I went out the back door.

Pansy was glad to see me. Always was, no matter what. If she thought I was crazy, she kept it to herself. I dumped the entire quart of beef in oyster sauce I’d taken from Mama’s into her steel bowl, waiting the thirty seconds it took her to make it disappear, then let her out onto the roof to do some dumping of her own.

When she came back down, she stood next to me, both of us looking into the night. I wondered what she saw.

I didn’t like what I did.

When I got to Davidson’s office, he had the cash waiting. I asked him if he’d heard anything from the cops. It took him about ten minutes to say “No.”

I got on the drums and sent word out to the Prof. I couldn’t get him to pack a cellular except when we were working a job, but I had years of experience finding him even when he was homeless-by-choice, so I wasn’t worried—he’d connect up sooner or later.

No point calling Wolfe. When she had the stuff, she’d get it to me.

So I drove back over to Mama’s to wait for word from Lorraine.

When I came through the back door and saw Mama wasn’t at her register, I knew Max was around someplace, probably in the basement. One of the waiters brought me a covered tureen of hot-and-sour soup, not saying a word. I know most of them by face, and that’s enough to get me through the door even if Mama isn’t there to vouch for me, but they treat me like I’m invisible anyway. I was getting the soup because they knew Mama believed I had to have some every time I entered the joint, but I could fucking well serve myself. . . . At least that’s how I translated the Cantonese he mumbled as he put the stuff in front of me.

Fine. I was on my third bowl—the house minimum—when Mama and Max came upstairs. I bowed a greeting to each of them. Mama sat down beside me as Max took the opposite bench.

I signed as much as I knew of what was going on to Max. I spoke the words too—I know Max can read lips, I just never know how much he’s getting.

Max looked pointedly at Mama. She snapped her fingers and barked something. Could have been Mandarin, Lao, Vietnamese, Tagalog—she speaks a ton of Asian languages I can’t even distinguish, and pretty good French and Spanish as well. A pair of her so-called waiters popped out of the back to clear the table. Then they wiped it down scrupulously, not the way they usually do. One of them brought out a black linen tablecloth and snapped it out over the surface. Then they vanished.

From inside his coat, Max took a small metal bowl with a faint yellowish tinge. He placed it carefully on the table between us. Next, he took a thick wooden stick shaped something like a pestle and struck the edge of the bowl as if it was a gong. Then he whisked the stick around the perimeter. A sound like I’d never heard vibrated in the air. It. . . stayed there, drawing me into it. The only way I can describe it, it was like I got when I looked into the red dot I had painted on my mirror. Outside myself. Away. Dissociating the way I’d learned to when I was a kid. When I couldn’t run from the pain. Where I go is the place where I think. About things I couldn’t if I was. . . here.

I pointed at the bowl, made a “What is this?” gesture.

Max held up both his hands, one spread out full, the other with just two fingers showing. Seven. Then he took out a quarter and tapped it, making the sign for “seven” again.

Then he made a hand-washing gesture. The sign for mixing, melding, blending. . .

“It’s made up of seven different metals?” I asked aloud.

“Yes,” Mama said. “Called ‘singing bowl.’ Very sacred. From. . .” She hesitated, catching a warning look from Max. “Tibet,” she finished.

I understood that part. Mama’s Chinese. Mandarin Chinese. She can trace her ancestors back to way before Christ, or so she says. In fact, she can trace any goddamned thing to her ancestors, from gunpowder to telescopes. It’s not political with her. She fled to Taiwan a long time ago, and she thinks the Chinese government—Mao Chinese, she calls them—are the scum of the planet.

Everyone takes Max for Chinese, but he’s not. He’s a Mongol, from Tibet. Something happened to him there when he was a kid. He wasn’t born deaf. He showed me once how they made him deaf, and it makes me sick to even see it in my mind. I don’t know if Max can’t speak, or he just refuses to—I never asked. He goes along with the game that he’s Chinese because Mama took him for her son. Mama wants to claim that it was the Chinese who invented haiku, that’s okay with Max. She wants to say Max’s daughter Flower is pure Mandarin, hell, royal Mandarin, no problem. But he was damn well going to claim this “singing bowl” for his own country. . . and Mama got it.

He handed me the bowl, showed me how to strike it, guided my hand in smooth whisks around the rim until I could make it sing too. Then he bowed and handed it to me. A gift.

I held it in my hand, still feeling it vibrate faintly. I could feel its age and its power. And I knew why my brother had given it to me.

I put it aside and we started to play casino. Max was into me for another ten grand by the time the Prof breezed in the front, Clarence in tow.

“What’s up, Schoolboy?” the Prof greeted me. “I know you been looking and cooking—the wire’s been on fire.”

I brought him up to date, even down to what Mama had been saying. . . or not saying.

“Can’t be.” The little man dismissed it with a wave of his hand.

I just shrugged.

“Why you doing this anyway, son?” the Prof asked.

“Fifty large. Paid up front. No refunds.”

“Cool. But why try? The sting’s the thing.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’s all. . . connected, right?”

“How could this be connected, mahn?” Clarence, speaking for the first time.

“Whoever killed Crystal Beth, they were killing queers, far as they knew, right?”

“That’s what it say in the papers,” the young man replied, tone telling what he thought of that source.

“The next thing happens,” I said, ignoring his tone, “is that this ‘Homo Erectus’ guy starts killing them . . . fag-bashers, right?”

“That deal is real,” the Prof put in. “Man is taking heads, and dead is dead.”

“Okay, so the cops, maybe they thought I was involved. Some of them, anyway. But they know better now. . . even though I still think I could get rousted if they need headlines bad enough. But, if he could kill all of them, he’d get the ones who killed Crystal Beth in the bargain, right?”

“Bro, you too dense to make sense. He was gonna do all that, your move is: Get out the way, let him play.”

“Sure. But the people who hired me to find him, they don’t want to turn him in, they want to help him get away.”

“Maybe the boss plans a cross,” the Prof said.

“You mean. . . play for the reward? Nah. He’s already out a hundred G’s—Davidson got half.”

“Not for money. Who knows, bro? Everybody got game, but it ain’t all the same.”

Nadine flashed in my mind. I just nodded.

“I’m gonna meet someone,” I told them all. “Meet her right here. I think I got a way now.” Then I showed them the picture of the little dinosaur thing.

“What’s that?” Clarence asked.

“I don’t know. Not exactly, anyway. But I know who will.”

“Want to go for a ride, honey?” I spoke into the cellular.

“You mean. . . work?” Michelle asked, clearly less than excited about the prospect.

“I’m gonna visit an old pal. Thought you might like to tag along.”

“Someone I know?”

“No question about that, girl. I guess what everyone wonders is, how well you—”

“That’s enough of your smart mouth, mister. I’ll be ready in forty-five minutes.”

“Forty-five minutes? I’m just down the block. Come on. I’ll meet you out front in—”

“Forty-five minutes, you gorilla. Not one second sooner. I am not going anywhere dressed like this. Go amuse yourself or something.”

Then she hung up on me.

Aargh. I slammed in a forty-five-minute cassette, lay back, slitted my eyes against the midday glare, and let the music take me to someplace else. The Brooklyn Blues. East Coast doo-wop. The Aquatones’ classic “You” set the scene. . . and the river was flowing deep into “Darling Lorraine” by the Knockouts when I came to. Checked my watch. . . perfect.

I cranked up the Plymouth and motored over to Michelle’s. She was standing on the sidewalk in a burnt-orange parachute-silk coat, tapping the toe of one black spike heel impatiently.

“It’s hot out here,” she bitched as she climbed into the front seat.

“You keep me waiting forty-five minutes; I’m ten seconds late and you’re already running your—”

“As much as you know about women, I’m surprised you’re not still a virgin,” she snapped, cutting me off.

I surrendered without firing another useless shot, heading uptown toward the only place I could ever be sure Michelle would always want to go.

But I was thinking about what she said, even as we crossed the bridge.

“Michelle, could I ask you a question?”

“Who better?” she wanted to know, still not mollified over the enormous wait I’d put her through.

“About what you said. About women?” I stalled, thinking Michelle was the only person on the planet I ever asked about women. As if the vicious trick nature had played on her—she’d been born a transsexual, into a nest of maggots—had made her an authority. And how I’d never say that.

“I am waiting,” she said, tapping her long, burnt-orange-tipped nails on the dashboard to show me how patient she wasn’t going to be with me for a while.

“What is it with bisexuals?”

“That means. . . what?”

“I met this girl. . . .”

“Go figure,” she sneered.

“Michelle, come on. You’re this mad at me for being a few seconds late?”

“How do I look?” she asked, opening her coat to display an ivory blouse over black pencil pants.

“Fabulous,” I assured her. “But you always do, for chrissakes.”

“And you don’t think it might be nice to. . . reassure a girl once in a while?”

“I never thought—”

“Because you are, in your heart, a pig,” she reassured me.

“All right, already. I’m a pig. A late pig too, okay? I was going up to see the Mole, figured you’d like to ride along, and now I get all this?”

“Sweetie,” she said softly, one hand on my right forearm, “I am trying to teach you something, all right? Little Sister’s not mad at you. But ever since that. . . ever since Crystal Beth died, you haven’t really been yourself. A new woman is exactly what you need. And, knowing you, what it’s going to bring you is more pain. Maybe if you knew how to act around a normal girl, you wouldn’t always be—”

“How do you know I’m—?”

“Baby, how long have I known you? A million years? This bisexual you asked me about, that wouldn’t be Crystal Beth, now would it?”

“No.”

“Huh!” she half-grunted in surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

“All right, Burke. What do you want to know?”

“I guess. . . what I asked you.”

“This is a bisexual woman, then? The one you met?”

“Yeah. At least I think so.”

“And Crystal Beth was—?”

“You know what, Michelle? I never knew what she was. I mean, she said she was. And I knew she had. . . I knew her and Vyra—”

“Vyra!” Michelle spat the name out. “The one with the shoes, right?”

“Yes. But she’s gone now. Remember?”

“No, I do not remember. I had no dealings with that one. Don’t you remember?”

I didn’t know how to reel her in. Michelle was all tangents when she wasn’t working. But I tried another route anyway.

“Forget Vyra, okay? And Crystal Beth, all I know is that she said she was bi, okay? That’s why she went to that rally, even though she said the others didn’t really want her there.”

“The others?”

“Gay people. She said bisexuals were, like, caught between the two worlds.”

“I don’t think so,” Michelle said. “It’s not that. They’re caught between stereotypes, that’s all.”

“What?”

“Look, if a woman, a straight woman, if she has lots of lovers, she’s a slut, right?”

“I didn’t—”

“Oh, never mind what you think,” she dismissed me. “I’m talking about. . . them,” she said, indicating the rest of the world with a sweep of her hand. “But straights, they think all gays are promiscuous, right? All they know about are the glory holes and the quick meets in the park—the anonymous stuff. You tell them a couple of gay men are together, really with each other, and they, like, can’t quite get it, see? Now, a bisexual man, what everyone assumes is he’s really gay, all right? Maybe he can close his eyes and make it with a woman, but how many times you ever hear of a gay male telling his lover it’s all over, he’s found out he’s straight and he wants to be with a woman?”

“I never—”

“Me either. But the reverse, that’s all the time, yes? Man’s been married twenty years, getting some on the side in the gay bars, but profiling straight. He tells his wife the truth, she’s busted up, sure. But the rest of the world, it just nods its head and says, ‘Sure,’ like it was going to happen sooner or later.”

“Yeah, but. . .”

“Bisexual women, it’s like there’s no such thing. Not to. . . them. So when a woman says she’s bi, the only thing they figure is she’s fucking everyone on the planet, right?”

“I don’t—”

“Oh, who cares? That’s what they think. Any married couple wants to jazz up their sex life, first thing they do is advertise for a bi girl, am I right? But what’s this got to do with anything, anyway?”

“This girl? The one I met?”

“Yessss. . .?”

“Well, she’s bi. Or she was once. I don’t know. She says she’s a lesbian now. Heavy-duty top too, the way she fronts it.”

“But she’s coming on to you?”

“Yeah. At least. . . I think so.”

“Because you’re dense? Or because. . .?”

“Because she’s. . . ambiguous. She doesn’t say anything about herself. Just about me. How I supposedly want her so bad, and I’m not admitting it.”

“Roles are. . . weird. Like it’s. . . I don’t know. . . safer, maybe, if you have a role. If you know what you’re supposed to do, you can’t make a mistake. But if she’s a top, maybe she’s just plugged into your testosterone, honey.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means every man wants to spank a dom. The ones who don’t want to take it themselves, that is. That’s what the scene-players believe—that everybody would be doing what they do if they had the guts. And if you play that way, sometimes you stay that way. You can get. . . stuck. And you never think there’s a middle. So if she does men too. . .”

“I don’t know. She only said—”

“Doesn’t matter. If she’s a top, she knows other tops. And some of them do men. Big money in it. Even over the phone. Little Sister knows that part by heart, honey.”

“So I—?”

“So you. . . what? You like her?”

“No. She’s not real. . . likable, I don’t think. But. . .”

“You want to fuck her?”

“Not even that. Michelle, look, she wants to work with me. On this. . . thing I’m doing. What I’m going to see the Mole about. Says she’s in love with this ‘Homo Erectus’ guy.”

“The one who’s killing all those—”

“Yeah.”

“In love with. . . what he’s doing, maybe. Or the. . . power thing. But she’s pushing you too?”

“It. . . feels like all she wants me to do is bite, so she can pull the apple away and laugh.”

“There’s those,” Michelle conceded. “But it wouldn’t have anything to do with her being bi.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, honey. That’s just a label. Even gays don’t really want people like her in the club. I mean, they say they want everyone, right?”

“No. Crystal Beth said they didn’t—”

“What they say, baby. Even when I was. . . Back then. Before I had the operation. There was room for people like me too. ‘Transgenders.’ Isn’t that special? Like they want us all, but they only mean the roles. And if you don’t fit one of those, they all think you got a piece missing.”

“So there’s no—”

“Baby, the only thing for sure is, this girl, whatever she wants, it’s not as simple as how she likes to play.”

Hunts Point never changes. It continues its celebration of quick violence and slow decay no matter how many times some star-gazer tries to turn the Urban Renewal trick. The development money always vanishes, swag cut up by elected thieves. And the blight stays—a permanent resident, building its strength, awaiting the next impotent assault.

Michelle went quiet as soon as we turned off the boulevard and moved deep into the prairie. She’s seen the same route a thousand times, but it never fails to make her sad. All hope has been vampired out of this place, cut down past the bone, into the desolate marrow.

But she perked up as soon as I nosed the Plymouth into the V made up of rusting cyclone-fence gates wrapped in concertina wire. The dog pack moved in even before I shut off the engine. They were more curious than dangerous—so confident they could take down any intruder that they didn’t need to put on a show. Besides, none of them would make a move until Simba showed. That beast had a lot of miles on his odometer, but he still was the pack leader, and none of the young studs had so much as tried him yet, far as I knew.

The chopped-down Jeep the Mole uses for a shuttle rolled up on the other side of the gate, its unmuffled growl blending with that of the pack. Terry was at the wheel. He took one look through the Plymouth’s windshield and jumped off his seat so fast he almost stomped on a couple of the dogs.

“Mom!” he called out, running toward us.

Simba was there by then, but he didn’t challenge, just stepped back and watched mother and son embrace. I couldn’t tell anything from his wolfish grin, but he looked safer than he usually does. I stepped out while I waited for Terry to open the gate so I could stash the car inside.

“Go ahead, Burke,” the kid called over to me. “Take the Jeep. Mom and I’ll walk over, okay?”

The kid wanted to spend some time with her alone, I guessed. I took off quick. Let Terry deal with Michelle trying to walk a quarter-mile of junkyard in four-inch heels.

Simba trotted alongside the Jeep, easily keeping pace—anything over ten miles an hour was a life-risking move on that terrain, and the trail was marked so faintly I had to steer mostly with my eyes anyway. When I got to the clearing near the Mole’s bunker, I saw the cut-down oil drum he uses as a lounge chair was empty, so I sat down on it myself and lit a smoke.

“Mole?” I asked Simba.

The beast knew the word. But he gave me another close look, not moving. I got it then. He wasn’t a sight hound, couldn’t be sure it was me. Only thing to do was let him hear my voice some more.

“Simba,” I called out softly. “Mighty Simba-witz, Lion of Zion. You remember me, boy? I sure remember you. Such a valiant warrior you are. Come on, Simba. Go get the Mole for me, okay?”

The big dog nodded his head, accepting me, aural memory kicking in. Then he took off, a rust-colored shadow in a city the same color. I wasn’t even done with my smoke by the time the Mole appeared. Like he always does, without a word.

“Mole!” I greeted him.

And he returned the greeting the same way he answers the phone—silently, waiting to hear whatever you have to say.

“Can you take a look at something for me?” I asked him.

Again, he was silent. But he moved close enough for me to show him what I’d brought: a blow-up of the little icon from the top of the handle of the killer’s ninja spike. “You know what this is?” I asked him.

“Terry. . .” he started to say, just as the kid himself walked up, Michelle on his arm.

“Look, it’s Mom!” the kid practically shouted. The Mole’s only reaction was to blink rapidly behind those Coke-bottle lenses of his, standing rooted to his spot. Michelle closed the ground between them, wavering a bit on the spike heels, but making progress. The Mole didn’t move, just watched her, his mouth open in the same amazement he always shows every time he sees her.

Michelle planted a chaste kiss on the Mole’s cheek and he turned a dozen shades of red. “Well?” Michelle demanded, doing a spin in front of him to show off her outfit.

“You look. . . beautiful, Michelle,” he finally said.

“Yes, I do. And you can tell me all about it later,” she said, her head nodding toward the opening to the Mole’s underground bunker. That about finished the poor bastard, and I knew I had to move fast if I was going to get mine before he got his, so I said, “Mole, what about this?” and practically shoved the photocopy under his nose.

“Terry knows about that,” the Mole said.

Which, of course, got Michelle interested. “What is that? Some kind of dinosaur?”

“It’s a velociraptor,” Terry said confidently, looking over her shoulder.

“A what?” I asked him.

“Wait, I’ve got a whole book about them,” the kid said, taking off like a shot.

“He’s a genius,” Michelle gushed. “Just like his father.”

The Mole looked everywhere but at Michelle, back to total silence.

“Terry’s interested in stuff like that, Mole?” I asked. “Dinosaurs and all.”

“He is interested in everything,” the Mole replied, unable to keep the love-pride from clogging his voice. “His CD-ROM library is. . . extensive. And I. . . help too.”

Sure. Terry was probably the only kid in America home-schooled in a junkyard, but his tutor was light-years ahead of anything walking around a university. Terry wouldn’t be there much longer. College was coming. And when they weren’t fighting about where he’d go—Michelle wanted him close—they were caught up in that proud sadness when your child turns a major corner. And moves another step away.

But now the Mole and Michelle weren’t moving, they were waiting. Another couple of minutes and the kid came bounding out the opening to the bunker, his arms full of books. “It’s better on the computer,” he said, “but I thought. . .”

He didn’t have to finish—Michelle and the Mole were already on their way downstairs, and spectators weren’t what they were going to need for a while. The kid slapped together a desk from wooden milk crates and assorted planks, then he laid out his stuff for me.

“Mongolia’s got the best fossil beds,” Terry told me. Not a trace of officiousness in his voice, just the facts. Like his old man. “In the Gobi Desert. Near the Flaming Cliffs. That’s where they found the first one. About seventy years ago.”

“The first. . .?”

“Velociraptor,” the kid said. “It means ‘swift plunderer.’ It was maybe about the size of a turkey, but it really packed a wallop.”

“I thought raptors could fly,” I said.

“They can now,” the kid said patiently. “There’s a system—it’s called cladistics—to identify extinct animals and group them according to the characteristics they share. Scientists usually only have skeletons to look at, so they concentrate on stuff like a certain bone in the wrist, a hole in the hip joint. . . even the number of toes on a foot.”

“And this. . . velociraptor was like a bird that way?”

“Sure. They both have three primary toes on their hind feet. And necks that curve into an S shape. And, see here,” he said, pointing, “velociraptor has long arms, and a wrist bone like a bird’s wing. There’s other common characteristics too: like how nerves travel from the brain, the air spaces in the skull, and the construction of the hips and thighs. It may even have built nests like birds and tended its eggs and all.”

“But not fly?”

“Not in that. . . stage. We don’t know if it disappeared, or just evolved into something else. Like the eohippus into the horse, see?”

“Sure,” I said. The kid was already talking like his father—what I really needed was a translator.

“Look at the skeleton,” he said, pointing again. “From the sizes of the various bones, and the light, delicate structure of the limbs, you can see it was probably a fast, nimble runner. It wasn’t huge or anything, but it was well armed. See this?” he asked, pointing to a large, hook-shaped piece coming out of the toe joint. “They call it a ‘killing claw,’ so it was probably used to hunt other animals, not to dig in the ground or anything. Velociraptors had more than eighty teeth, some of them over an inch long, and each with a sharp, jagged edge. Awesome, huh?”

“Were they. . . I don’t know. . . smart?”

“Probably,” the kid assured me. “The brain was large and complex. That means that they were probably intelligent, with good hearing and eyesight, and even a good sense of smell.”

“So they were like predatory birds—hawks and all—but they worked the ground, right?” I asked him. Thinking how human vultures never have to fly to feed.

“We really don’t know,” the kid said solemnly. “Only one truly great specimen was ever discovered—a fossil. And it shows a velociraptor and a protoceratops locked in deadly combat.”

“But nobody knows who started that one?”

“Or who finished it either. Like a movie where you have to leave before it’s over. But, from all I read, it seems like velociraptor was a great hunter. And a great fighter too. The evidence. . . I mean, what they found. . . it had characteristics of both birds and crocodiles—that’s those rows of teeth and all. And those are both still around—birds and crocodiles, I mean. So I don’t think it died out, the way the bigger ones did—it was too well adapted to its environment. It probably just. . . evolved into something else.”

Was that his message? I thought to myself. That he hadn’t died, just evolved? That he was a perfect predator for the times, and he’d move along once his work was done?

“Which do you think?” I asked the kid.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you said it had characteristics of both birds and crocodiles, right? So it had to go in one of those directions if it was going to survive.”

“Birds,” the kid said, unhesitatingly.

“Why? Crocs are ancient. I mean, they go all the way back to. . .”

“They both build nests, right? Birds and crocodiles. But only birds take care of their babies when they’re born. When the baby crocs are born, they’re on their own.”

“And you think that’s the key to survival?”

“For the higher life-forms? Sure. It makes sense, right?”

“If it does,” I asked him, “what the fuck are we still doing on this planet?”

The kid—this kid whose bio-parents had sold him like a used car—looked at me for a long moment. Then he said: “We’re not all like. . . that.” And then he glanced toward the bunker where his real parents were being with each other.

I nodded, agreeing. But not believing. The human race is a race. And I’m not sure parents like Michelle and the Mole are winning it.

“Would anyone be likely to recognize this?” I asked the kid, showing him the icon again, working for a smooth transition, moving as far away from the other as I could get.

“Sure, if they knew anything about the subject. Like a paleontologist. But not from the name.”

“Huh?”

“ ‘Velociraptor’ was the name they used in Jurassic Park. You know, the movie? But the ones there were nothing like the real ones. If you said ‘velociraptor’ to the average kid, he’d never think it looked anything like this.”

I lit another smoke. “You did great, Terry,” I told the kid. Thinking maybe I had something to make that polygraph key really sing, now that I had lyrics to go with the music.

Michelle was quiet on the drive back, and I knew better than to break the silence. She could dissect my sex life for hours without batting an eyelash, and she’d turned every kind of trick there was before she took herself off the streets and went to the phones to make a living, but even mentioning her and the Mole together was total taboo.

Terry was always a safe topic with her—she loved that kid way past her own life—and she would have been proud about how he’d helped me out. But she was so inside herself that I didn’t even tap on the door. Just took her absentminded kiss on the cheek before she slipped out in front of her place and then motored over to Mama’s.

Red-dragon tapestry in the front window. Maybe Lorraine had found Xyla already. Or maybe not. I pulled around the back, flat-handed the metal slab of a door, and waited. One of Mama’s crew opened the door, a guy I hadn’t seen before. I could swear his face was Korean, but I knew how Mama was about things like that, so I kept the thought to myself. He said something over his shoulder and one of the guys who knew me answered him. The new man stepped aside to let me pass, his right hand still in the pocket of his apron. Whatever was out front wasn’t that dangerous, anyway.

It was Xyla. Sitting in my booth, facing toward the back, working her way through a plate of dim sum someone had provided. Good sign. Mama served strangers toxic waste—her real customers never came for the food.

“What’s up?” she greeted me. “Lorraine said you were looking for me.”

“Yeah,” I said, sitting down. “Be with you in a minute.”

It was less than that before the tureen of hot-and-sour soup was placed before me. I filled the small bowl myself, drained it quickly. I glanced toward where Mama was working at her register, but I couldn’t risk it—had two more bowls before I waved at the waiter to take the rest away. I didn’t offer any to Xyla, and she seemed to understand. . . just sat there, chewing delicately on her own food, waiting.

“What kind of name is Xyla?” I said, my tone telling her I really was interested, not putting her down. I wanted to start cutting her out of the herd if I could, form my own relationship, just in case Lorraine’s old hostility flared up and she tried to cut me out first.

“My mom gave it to me,” she said, chuckling. “It comes from ‘Xylocaine.’. . . Mom said if it wasn’t for Xylocaine my old man never could’ve lasted long enough to get her pregnant.”

“Damn! That’s cold.”

“It was a joke,” she said, watching me carefully. “The kind you tell your daughter when she’s old enough to ask where her father is. . . and you don’t know the answer.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah,” she said, dismissing it—an old wound, healed. But it still throbbed when the weather was wrong.

I’d made a mistake. My specialty with women. So I switched subjects as smoothly as I could. “I got the word I want you to use,” I told her. It’s ‘velociraptor.’ Can you—?”

“Like in Jurassic Park? Sure. How do you spell that?” she asked me, pulling a little notebook from the pocket of her coat.

I did it, thinking how on the money Terry had been.

“Okay,” she said. “But why would he—?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I told her. “It’s just a word. One he’ll recognize. You got a secure address? For yourself, I mean. One he could go to with an answer if he wanted?”

“I can make one,” she said confidently. “Take about a minute. No problem. What do you want me to do, exactly?”

“Look, I’m no pro at this stuff. You said a couple of things, remember? One, people are looking for him on the Net, right? And two, he could be out there. . .”

“Lurking.”

“Yeah. Lurking. He could see the traffic. . . but without him banging in, nobody would know he was there?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. So I want to send him a message too. Only I don’t want to make it public. And I don’t have his address. You could post like a. . . I don’t know. . . general message for him, only put it into encryption, so he’d need a program to open it and read it?”

“I could do that. But if the message itself said it was encrypted, and I used one of the regular programs—to make it encrypted, see?—anyone could open the message if they had the same program.”

“And he’d know that?”

“Yes,” she said, in one of those elongated “Isn’t it obvious?” tones all young girls can do.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, maybe trying to convince myself. “I’ll be able to figure out who’s who.”

“Okay. So exactly what do you want to say? And is it context-sensitive?”

“What’s that mean?”

“Oh. Well, it just means, does it have to be exactly in a certain form. Like, if you wrote it like a regular sentence, you know, with capital letters and periods and all, and I just sent it in all lower-case, would that matter?”

“No. I don’t care. Here’s all I want to say, all right?”

She nodded, pencil poised.

“You just address it to him, right? To ‘Homo Erectus,’ yes?”

“Sure. And I’ll multi-post it. If he’s lurking on any of the newsgroups or on BBS stuff, he’ll see it.”

“Okay, say this: ‘I am the real thing, same as you. Here’s proof: “velociraptor.”’ Put that in quotes, okay? ‘I am not a cop. I have something you need.’ ”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. If he sends you a message. . .”

“Oh, I’ll get lots of messages,” she assured me. “Problem’ll be telling if any of them are him.”

“I think I can do that. . . if he bites. Just get word to me. I’m counting on you, all right, Xyla?”

“I’m straight-edge,” she said, finger flicking at one of her razor earrings.

I sat there for a long time after Xyla left, thinking it through. Even if the killer got in touch, I wouldn’t be any closer to him, not really. Sure, he had to be in the city—or, at least, he had to have been in the city—to do his work. But he could have already vanished. All we really had was his footprints. And, like the Prof had said about Wesley, that trail only ran backward.

Still, I couldn’t see this guy living some double life. Couldn’t see him as a stockbroker or running a bodega. He wasn’t making his own porno flicks, the way a lot of serial killers do. And he didn’t roam the way most of them do either. He had no definable piece of work he had to finish—the way a mass murderer who comes into the workplace shooting and then eats his own gun does, or a wife-beater under an order of protection who’s going to take himself out as soon as he blows her away.

No, this one was a different breed. And he was. . . close. Had to be. As if he wasn’t so much compelled to do his work as to see its results.

Maybe he was just nuts. Or I was. I couldn’t track him in my mind the way I could other kinds of predators. Those, I knew about. Spent my life with them. They raised me. I did time with them. And I studied them close—because I knew someday I’d be hunting them. That was the prayer I put myself to sleep with every night, from when I was a little child. That I wouldn’t be prey. Inside, where I ended up, there was only one alternative to that.

That’s why he said he was doing it too—revenge. But I couldn’t connect with him. Couldn’t see him. . . feel him. Nothing.

“Burke, you take this one, okay? Say important.”

“Huh?” I felt Mama’s hand on my shoulder. Figured out she must mean the phone. Glanced at my watch. I’d been there. . . Jesus, almost three hours. That kind of thing happened to me every once in a while, but ever since I’d lost my. . . home, I guess. . . it was happening a lot.

I got up, walked to the back, picked up the dangling receiver.

“What?” is all I said.

“It’s me.” Wolfe’s voice. “I have your stuff.”

“Great. When can I—?”

“Now, if you want. Remember where we were the last time you saw Bruiser do his stuff?”

“Sure.”

“An hour?”

“I’ll be there,” I promised.

There’s places along the Hudson River where you can pull over. Sort of big parking lots. Maybe the city planners thought the rich folks on Riverside Drive would promenade over for picnics, who knows? Today, the spots are used for everything from romance to rape. Daytime, they’re pretty full, especially when the weather gets nice. At night, it’s a little different, but there’s enough room to give everybody space to operate, and the assortment of cars parked there didn’t set off any of my alarms.

I backed the Plymouth into an empty space—too near the middle for my taste, but the corners were already occupied. I was twenty minutes ahead of the meet, so I kicked back and watched.

It wasn’t long before that rolling oil refinery Wolfe calls a car rumbled in. I shuddered as she reversed, slowly and deliberately, then backed in so she was close to me. . . but this time she missed by a couple of feet. I opened my door and waited, not surprised to see that malevolent Rottweiler of hers jump right out the passenger-side window and pin me balefully, waiting for the word.

“Bruiser, behave yourself,” Wolfe told him. Not a command I’d ever heard for a dog before, but the brute seemed to understand, visibly relaxing. At least as far as I was concerned—his heavy head swiveled as he swept the surrounding area, maybe remembering the last time Wolfe had met me here. Some clowns in a four-by didn’t see me—just Wolfe standing alone—and thought they’d try their luck. Then they saw Bruiser coming for them—a skell-seeking missile already locked on to his target—just in time and peeled out before he could do his job.

“I got it,” Wolfe said by way of greeting.

I hadn’t expected a hug and a kiss, but this was a bit cold-edged, even for her.

“You also got a problem?” I asked her, getting right to it, ignoring the cheap white plastic briefcase she held in one hand.

“I might have,” she said evenly. “The word’s out that your. . . friend may be back.”

“You believing rumors now?”

“Not any more than usual. But I know a trademark when I see one.”

“Spell it out,” I said quietly, understanding now why she wanted the meet outdoors.

“I’m still. . . in touch,” Wolfe said. Not news to me. The cops Wolfe had worked with for so many years hadn’t broken off contact when she’d gone outlaw. They knew what she trafficked in, and they’d made more than one beautiful bust off info she’d provided. The only way she could walk into a courtroom and own it the way she had for so long as a prosecutor would be as a defense attorney, and she just wouldn’t go the side-switching route like so many ex-DAs. So, even though her license was gathering dust, she was still law enforcement in the eyes of a lot of working cops.

“What is it you want to say?” I asked her, watching her gray eyes.

She took out a cigarette, waited for the wooden match she knew was coming from my end, hauled in a deep drag, leaning back against her Audi’s crumpled hood, and blew a jet of smoke into the darkness.

“You trust me?” she finally asked.

“Yes,” I told her. No hesitation. I could maybe never tell her how I really felt about her, but I could tell her that. And even as that one simple word left my mouth, I knew it was a commitment. . . that I’d have to prove it.

“The drive-by—the one that started this all?”

“Yeah?”

“Two shooters. Plus one driver, okay?”

“Far as I know. Although the driver could have been shooting too. . . so maybe one less man.”

“Seven victims, two fatal.”

“I thought it was less, but. . . okay.”

“One of them, your girlfriend. This Crystal Beth?”

“Yes.”

“Only her ID didn’t say that. It said she was someone else.”

I shrugged. The woman asking me the questions was holding a briefcase full of documents as phony as a talk show host’s tears for the pathetic parade of damaged creatures she used and abused every day.

“You know one of the guns was a Tec-9, right?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“You hear a lot. But not enough, I don’t think. You know what the other piece was?”

“No,” I said, focusing now.

“It was a Magnum Research Lone Eagle.”

“Oh Jesus. . .”

“Chambered for.22 Hornet.”

“So it had to be a—”

“Hit. That’s right. An assassination.”

I lit a smoke of my own, more to have something to do with my hands than anything else. She was right—what else could it be? Magnum Research is a subsidiary of Israeli Arms. And the piece she was talking about was a Mossad special: single-shot, with a rotary breech like an artillery cannon. You rotate the breech cap to expose the chamber and slide in the cartridge, then you lock it up again. No way to reload it in the time a car would pass by. . . impossible. But a sharpshooter, even using open metal sights, could hit a half-dollar at a hundred feet from a moving car with a piece like that. And nobody could be sure the car even was moving before the spray from the Tec-9 started.

“They found the slug?” I asked her.

“A piece of it, anyway. He was hit right in the base of the skull, dead before he dropped.”

He? “So it wasn’t Crystal Beth who—?”

“No. The way they have it doped, she was hit by cover fire. The target was the guy who got the special delivery.”

“If all they have is a piece of the slug, how could they know it was a—?”

“They have the weapon,” Wolfe said softly. “It was in the car.”

“The. . . what?”

“The car. The drive-by car. It was a Lincoln Town Car. You know, the kind most of the limo services use. . . not a stretch, a regular sedan. Black. Tinted windows. About as noticeable as a taxicab in that part of town. . . real good choice.”

“Where’d they find—?”

“In a long-term parking garage on Roosevelt Island. A couple of days later. The way they figure it, the driver must have caught the Triborough and hooked back through Queens, come into the garage from the other side of the river. That’s probably where they had the switch car waiting.”

“So the murder weapon was in the car. Don’t tell me they left a bullet in it?”

“Oh, they found a slug, all right. In the back of the head of the guy in the passenger seat. The driver got the same dose. . . only from a different piece. A regular.22 short. The techs found that one too.”

“And when they vacuumed. . .?”

“Nothing. Both of the dead men in the front seat had sheets, but no trace of whoever was in the back. And the weapons were all purchased legally. One in Florida, the other two in Georgia. About three years apart. Straw-man buys. Local drunks or crackheads. All you need is proof of residence there. Then a quick run up Handgun Highway. No way to figure out how many times they changed hands since.”

“The dead guys. Their sheets said. . . what?”

“They were both made men,” she said. “Family guys.”

“So somebody wanted the guy in the park and. . .”

“Contracted it out, sure. That’s the way they’re playing it. That’s why not a word of this has leaked. It’s bad enough that this Homo Erectus maniac is slaughtering people. Now it looks like it all started over. . . something else. It wasn’t a fag-bashing after all.”

“Christ.”

“Yes. But that’s not all. What’s got everyone spooked isn’t the hit. It’s the word about the hit man.”

“I don’t get—”

“Yeah, you do,” she said flatly. “Who else does that but Wesley? Who else can shoot like that? Who else kills a bunch of people just to get one? Who else leaves the weapon right there when he’s finished? And maybe the boss wanted those other guys gone anyway. It’s just like Wesley to get paid for three jobs and hit the trifecta.”

“Wesley’s dead,” I said.

“Is he?”

“You going for that handjob too?” I asked her.

“They never found a body.”

“Hey! He was inside a school, all right? Surrounded by half the cops in the world. Locals, mounties, feds. A couple of hundred people died in the blast. Remember? Not just the dynamite he had in his own hand; the truck he had parked right outside—the one with the poison gas. It was like a bomb hit the place.”

“He could have gotten out. . . .”

“Where? They had helicopters in the air. They checked for tunnels under the place and they had them all blocked. They kept a cordon around the site for weeks picking through the corpses. So they didn’t find his. . . whatever would have been left of him anyway. . . . So what?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I know about the note. . . the one you turned over. But I also know you’re holding something back. You have to know something more about it than that note he left.”

“Even if I did,” I said, hedging, “what difference would it make? It might get me out of a beef sometime, if I could add something to what they already know. But alive? Forget it. There’s no way.”

“Listen to me,” Wolfe said, stepping so close her face went out of focus, voice dropping below a whisper. “The feds have a man inside. They turned him a long time ago. It’s a RICO thing. They’re looking for the whole Family. Probably got more than five years invested already. And this guy, he heard the boss set it up. On the phone. A pay phone—there was no tap in place. But. . . Burke, he was talking to Wesley. That’s who he made the deal with. Wesley’s not dead. Or he’s back, if you want to believe that. But one thing’s for sure—he’s making people dead. And that’s what Wesley does. That’s all he does.”

“There’s got to be some other—”

“That’s what they say too,” Wolfe told me. “After all, they ‘solved’ that mass murder up in Riverdale, right? Laid it on Wesley. That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it. But now. . .”

“And you think I—?”

“I don’t know what to think. I know you go back with him. I know he. . . did things with you, I’m not sure what. But I’ll tell you what they know down at One Police Plaza, Burke. When you turned in that suicide note of his, it may have gotten you off the hook for some stuff. They know where you got it. . . just not how. Or when. They don’t want you for any of these fag-basher killings. They don’t believe it was you, not for a minute.”

“They think it’s. . . Wesley? That’s nuts.”

“Because he’s dead?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll go you one better. Because how would he get paid? Where’s the money? Wesley never killed anyone for fun in his life.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you should put your ear a little closer to the ground. If you did, you’d hear something real interesting.”

“Like what?”

“Like a body-count fund.”

“Are you for real? What kind of—?”

“All I know is they call him the Trustee.”

“Like in prison? One of those guys who—?”

“No. Like from an estate. The word is, some crazy rich old queen left a fortune in cash to this ‘Trustee,’ all right? And his only instructions were he wanted fag-bashers murdered. So the Trustee reached out to Wesley and. . .”

“Offered him so much a head? Change your medication.”

“You explain it,” she challenged. “And you may have to. . . in court. Watch your back, Mr. Askew.”

“Huh?”

“Your new ID,” she said, handing over the briefcase. “If your. . . partner is back in town, or back from the dead, or whatever. . . it doesn’t matter. The way they’re thinking, they already know who’s doing all this. And you’re the only connect. Don’t worry. You’re about as bust-proof as a diplomat. For now. They’re letting you dangle. Understand?”

“Yeah. But I—”

“Don’t even tell me,” Wolfe said, voice cold. “If it’s not what it looks like, I’ll have plenty of time to apologize.”

I just stood there while she got back in her car, her face grim. As the Audi pulled away, the Rottweiler looked at me like he was just waiting his turn.

“From where I sit, I like the fit,” the Prof said. “You want that kind of fun, Wesley’s the man to get it done.”

“He’s dead, Prof,” I said. Tired of saying it.

“What do we know, bro? I mean, we wasn’t there. All we saw was a bunch of stuff on TV. Explosions. That green cloud of whatever crap he let loose. Wesley, he was never like. . . people, you know? There’s an old hoodoo. . . ‘Reaching Back,’ they call it. But even if you believe in that stuff, someone has to want you to come back. And they have to bring one to get one too.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Just what it sounds like, son. The legend is there’s supposed to be a Gatekeeper. Could be a man, could be a woman. Could be anyone, anyplace. And nobody knows how to find ’em either. But, if you look hard enough, they’re supposed to appear. Anyway, you want to bring someone back, you got to bring some to get some, understand?”

“No.”

“The way it’s told, you can’t bring no good people back, okay? Just the evil ones. And the way you got to do it, you got to bring them one soul for every soul the evil one took, see?”

“No,” I said. And not because I couldn’t understand what the Prof was saying.

“Burke, mahn, my father is telling you true,” Clarence put in. “There is the same legend in the islands. If a man has killed many times, and you want to bring him back across, you too must kill as many times as he has. So the Gatekeeper will allow the passage. A trade, understand?”

“Yeah, I understand. Bujo bullshit is what I understand. I want that, I’ll go shopping in a botanica. You ever see it happen?” I asked him.

“See this? No, mahn. It is not to see. Not for me. My loss was my. . . mother, mahn. And if I thought I could return her by taking a life, I would have done that. You know I would. But it cannot work that way. My mother was good. In her heart and in her spirit. Where she is, the Gatekeeper has no power.”

“If that was true. . . and it isn’t, for chrissakes. . . but if it was, somebody’d have to kill a whole ton of motherfuckers to bring Wesley back.”

“And this Homo Erectus guy, he ain’t doing that?” the Prof challenged.

“Not enough. Anyway, why would he want Wesley back?”

“Sometimes, if the killer dies too easily, the family. . . the family of the people he killed. . . they want him back,” Clarence said.

“So they can—?”

“Yes, mahn. So they can send him over again. But with much pain.”

“That would make them as bad as. . .”

“Sure,” the Prof cut me off. “That’s why it so crazy. Don’t make no sense. I ain’t arguing with you ‘bout that. Not saying it true. But I know this. Some people believe things. And if they believe things, then they do things.”

“So you think this maniac is trying to raise Wesley from the dead? Because he wants him to die all over again? Only. . . hard this time?”

“It ain’t strong,” the Prof conceded. “But it may not be wrong neither. What we gotta do, we gotta find out more about the guy who died.”

“You mean the guy in the park? With Crystal Beth?”

“Yeah. That’s the one. Not the others, that’s not Wesley. Some of those guys this new guy did, they died slow. Wesley did a lot of hits, sure. But they was like. . . surgery, okay? He wouldn’t torture nobody—he was a killer, not a freak. Except for that one. . . on Sutton Place, remember?”

I did remember. Impossible to forget an image that I never saw but that was still whispered about. This was back when Wesley had the only kind of dispute he ever cared about—he hadn’t gotten paid. So he started killing people. When that wasn’t enough, he decided to spook them, start them running wild. Same way a stalking cheetah shows itself to a herd of antelopes—the stampede reveals the cripples. He got into the Sutton Place apartment of a connected guy’s daughter. When her husband came home from work, he found what was left of his wife. . . arms and legs spread wide on their bed, wired to the posts. With her severed head propped up between her legs, staring at him. They say he’s still in a padded room.

That started the stampede Wesley wanted. He’d left a message—on the bedroom wall, in the woman’s own blood—saying the butchery was the work of some lunatic cult, but that was just to dazzle the cops. The wiseguys knew he was promising a whole lot more.

And he kept it up, right to the end. They never found him. Wesley went out by his own hand. Not because they were closing in—they were too busy hiding to look for him. And not because he was afraid—the ice-man didn’t have any of that in his once-in-an-eon DNA. He left because he was tired. Sick and tired. He didn’t want to be here anymore, it was that simple.

A lot of us felt like that. Some of us all the time. And some of us went out that same way. But only Wesley decided he knew who the “them” was that we—all of us State-raised kids—blamed for what had happened to us.

Wesley was pure hate. The kind that metastasizes, year after year. The kind that never goes away, no matter what treaties are signed, no matter whose hands are shaken, no matter who intervenes. Permanent. As deep as your father’s father’s father’s father’s firstborn.

Only difference is, Wesley’s father was the one he hated. The one we all hated—the State. That viciously uncaring, humiliating, experimenting, lying, exploiting, torturing, unstoppable juggernaut. Wesley’s hate was a match for all that. He was us—distilled, crystallized, hardened beyond comprehension, focused past megalomania.

When Wesley went out, he wanted company: the seeds “they” were cultivating for the next generation.

So even if the poor insane bastard on Sutton Place who’d come home to that horrible greeting wanted to bring Wesley back, to give him a greeting of his own. . . and even if the legend was true, and even if he could find this Gatekeeper. . . he couldn’t ever bring enough for the tolls, like the Prof said.

It didn’t leave me anywhere.

Wolfe wouldn’t help me anymore. Maybe she wasn’t sure. . . but I could tell, from the way her gray eyes looked at me just before we parted, that the weight was mine to carry. And I’d have to carry it a long way before we could ever be. . . whatever we were to each other. . . again.

She’d given me all I was going to get. The new ID. And the information.

So I made the phone call.

“Why do you want to come here?” Nadine asked me. “You didn’t seem so. . . fascinated the last time.”

“You said you wanted to be in on it,” I told her. “There’s more to do now.”

“You mean you—?”

“Not on the phone.”

“Can you come tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“What happened?” is how she greeted me, still wearing her business clothes, even though she’d had plenty of time to change.

“I may have found a way to—”

“Find him and—?”

“No! To get a message to him. And to put enough in it so he’ll read it, anyway. Now, what I need is to put something in the next one so he’ll want to see me.”

“And you want me to. . . what?”

“Your friend on the force?”

“Yeah. . .?” she said, warily.

“I need some other stuff. Not about the murders, okay? She doesn’t have to go near any of that. Not anymore. But there’s another case. The one that kicked all this off.”

“The drive-by?”

“Yes. But I don’t want anything about that one either. At least, not anything direct. The cops. . . they know a lot more than they’re letting out. Not because they got a sudden dose of class, or because they want to play it professional. This piece, the one they’re holding back, the media would have them for lunch if they knew about it.”

“And you want her to. . . get it?”

“Not ‘it.’ Not the whole thing. Just a name. And whatever information they have about the name. That’s all.”

“How is that going to—?”

“I’ve got a. . . theory. Probably a long shot, I don’t know. But it’s the only card I have to play. I’ve been looking everywhere,” I lied, “asking everyone. But there isn’t a trace of this guy. He’s about as lone a wolf as it gets. No partners. Whatever stuff he’s using he got a long time ago. Like he’s got a warehouse full of it or something. Like this isn’t anything new.”

Her eyes flickered when I said that. Flickered, not flashed, the blue going from cobalt to cyanotic and back, switching on and off for just a split-second. If she noticed me staring, she didn’t react.

“Anyway, she can do that, right?”

“I. . . don’t know.”

“I thought you said she’d do anything you—”

“Anything she can do,” Nadine snapped back. “I’m not insane. If it’s there, and if she can get it, I’ll get it, sure. But I don’t know. . . . She told me they have, what do they call them, ‘firewalls’ or something, inside the department. ‘Access Only’ places, when they’re working on stuff. Mostly political, I guess, but she doesn’t know. And I sure don’t.”

“It’s nothing like that,” I told her, with a confidence I didn’t feel. “I even know where it probably is. NYPD has the same thing as the feds—some Organized Crime unit, whatever they’re calling it this week, I don’t know, but it would be the same thing. That’s where she has to look.”

“He would never. . .”

“He? I thought you said—”

“Not my. . . friend. Him. He would never have anything to do with organized crime.”

“Not even to kill a few of them?”

“Oh! But why would he. . .?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s true. But before I can ask my questions, I need what I told you.”

She stood up and started to pace, unbuttoning her jade silk blouse, leaving the off-white blazer on over it. The black bra underneath was frillier than I expected, for some reason I didn’t focus on. “Sometimes it’s hard to breathe in all this stuff,” she said. “When it’s hard to breathe, it’s hard to think.”

There was so much truth in what she said that I focused on that, slitting my eyes as she walked back and forth. She stopped at one point, stood on one leg, and pulled off her shoe, then switched legs to do the other, so she was in her stocking feet. By the third circuit, she was down to sheer pantyhose.

“Men hate these, don’t they?” she said suddenly.

“Huh?” I’d been somewhere else. Not far away, but just. . . apart.

“Pantyhose. Men hate them, don’t they?”

“Hate? That’s a pretty strong word for clothing.”

“Okay, fine. Men don’t like them, all right?”

“I’m not following you.”

“You ever see pantyhose in a skin magazine?” she asked me. “It’s all garter belts and fishnet stockings and thongs, right? Pantyhose, it’s too. . . practical. Like shoes. You think men would wear spike heels? They hurt once you have them on for a while. But they make your legs look good, so what the hell, right?”

“What do I—?”

“That’s, of course, if they’re interested in big girls, right?” she snarled, angry beyond anything I could imagine having done to her. I couldn’t figure what had ignited all that, so I just rode it—waiting, knowing there’s always a reason in the eye of the tornado. . . if you’re around long enough to take that look.

“Some of them like little plaid pleated skirts and Mary Jane shoes and white socks. . . and white cotton panties too. A garter belt would spoil all that, wouldn’t it? The. . . image, I mean. That’s what it’s all about for. . . them. Whatever they see. Their eyes. You know even blind men are like that? I have a friend. A dancer. She says they get blind customers in there too.”

“And this is all about. . . what?” I asked her, as neutral as I could, no sarcasm anywhere near my voice.

“It’s all about. . . this!” she snapped at me. “This. . . killer, you call him. Whatever name you call him. He’s a man. But he’s not like the rest of you.”

“Because he’s gay?”

“You think that’s a difference? You think gay men don’t look at us the same way? Oh sure, maybe they don’t want to fuck us. Or maybe they do and just. . . I don’t know. But who do you think runs the damn fashion industry?”

“Frederick’s of Hollywood isn’t exactly Versace,” I said.

“It’s the same thing,” she shot back. “It’s all about what men want.”

“So. . . these women who silicone their chests out to all hell, the ones who rake in a couple of grand a night under the same tables they dance on, they’re all fashion victims?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m not saying it isn’t true, but that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying. . . the way things are. And any of us can feel it. We know. Some of us play along. Some of us just play. But we all know. And I’m telling you something about him. Something important, if you’ll listen. He’s not like you.”

“I already know he’s—”

“Not because he’s gay,” she said.

“Fine. Because he hates fag-bashers. Because he kills a lot of them. Because he’s a fucking superior specimen of humanity, for all I know.”

“He is,” she said, calmly. “And before I do anything more, I need to know more about you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You’re a mercenary, aren’t you? Lincoln says you have a ‘code.’ Some bullshit he picked up from the movies. You’re a ‘professional,’ ” she sneered. “You’d never double-cross a client. Your word is your bond. So, even if you could trade this. . . man to the cops instead of helping him get away, you’d never do that, would you? Even if it would help you get out from under a bunch of trouble of your own, huh?”

“You trust this friend of yours?” I asked her. “Not Lincoln—your playmate?”

“I told you—”

“You told me she’d kiss your ass in Macy’s window. So what? I don’t mean do you believe she’d play whatever game you ordered her to—I mean do you believe her when she says something.”

That stopped her in her tracks, as if she’d never considered it. She crossed her arms under her breasts, lifted them deliberately, looked down at herself like she was thinking about how one would taste. Then she looked over at me.

“Why do you ask?” she said.

“Ask her,” I said. “All you got so far is what anyone could give you, insider or not. Yeah, I got a record. A nice long one. And, yeah, the cops are always on my case—they got a bunch of Unsolveds with my name on them. I’m a thief. Been one since I was a baby. And I’ll be one until I die. Those ‘codes’. . . You’re right: it is all movie bullshit. Any one of those slimy little gangsters’ll rat out any other. Happens all the time. But me, I got no gang. No crew. No fucking ‘Mafia’ or anything like that. I’ve got a family. Not my blood, but more true than any DNA could be. Truly mine. I wouldn’t sell any of them no matter what the price was. My life? Fuck that. I don’t care that much about it myself anymore. So ask your little slave friend that. You know my name. She knows it. There’s cops been around long enough to know it too. I been the same since forever. My name is in the street. It’s fucking engraved there, you know where to look. It’s not all true. None of that stuff ever is. But stick your ear anywhere you want, you come back with anything that says I’d shop one of my own, I’ll kiss your ass, bitch.”

“Look, I wasn’t—”

“Save it,” I chopped her off. “This guy. This. . . killer. There’s people who think I know who he is already. People who think they know who he is. They’re wrong. The guy they suspect—he’s dead. Dead and gone. But if he was alive, I wouldn’t trade him either, not for anything. I came up with him, and he saved my life. More than once. I don’t judge him. . . . I know him. Hell, I wanted to be him once. But I. . . couldn’t.”

“Why couldn’t you—?”

“That’s not your business. And it never will be. I just told you the truth. You’re always telling me what a liar I am, right? You know it all, don’t you? Trouble is, your yardstick don’t work on everyone. You want to sit in, you have to ante up. You don’t have what it takes to back your own hand, get out of the game.”

“But if the police are wrong. . .? If it’s not this man they think you know. . .?”

“Yeah, if they’re wrong, if it’s someone else, what have they got to offer me anyway? A pass on some cases? If they really had me on those cases, I’d be Inside right now. They had me down to the precinct once already. If they had any kind of hammer, they would have showed it to me. Fuck, they would have used it on me.”

“What’s the bottom line?” she asked, standing up suddenly, looming over me, breasts swinging down close to my face.

“You think we’re all alike,” I told her. “Men, anyway. You’re wrong. You think because I like your legs better in spike heels that tells you I’d turn rat? That’s your idea of knowing stuff? You don’t know anything. You sure as hell don’t know anything about me. Want to know some truth? Go ask this friend of yours. Ask her to ask. . . Ah, I’m not giving you any references—you’d just think it was a setup. Let her ask anyone she wants about me. Tell her to ask two questions: Would I rat out my own? And what would I think of a guy who’s going around blowing up baby-rapers? When you’re all done with that, you still want to help, let’s do it. You’re not satisfied, go your own way.” I finished, getting to my feet, forcing her to step away from me.

I stopped near the door, turned to face her. “If you make that decision. . . if you go your own way. . . you better stay the fuck out of mine,” I told her. “Ask your little friend about that, too.”

If she said anything, I couldn’t hear it through the door.

“Is it true?” I asked Morales. “NYPD really believes Wesley’s back in town?”

He rubbed the blue-black stubble on his face, like he was deciding how much to tell me. But I knew the gesture for what it was—a habit, not an indicator. We were standing under the overpass to the LIE, just off Van Dam Street. A good place to meet if you wanted to do a deal and keep the peep for the rollers at the same time. Even better if you wanted anyone watching to think that was what you were doing.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “Some of them do. The older guys. But nobody’s saying it out loud.”

“You?” I asked him bluntly.

“Nah. Motherfucker’s dead. The feds’ve pulled some strange shit. . . . I know that whole thing about 26 Federal Plaza last year stunk, okay?” He gave me a hard cop-look when he said that. Another habit—he knew it wouldn’t get him anything, just wanted to tell me I was a suspect. Again. In another crime. Nothing changes with a cop like Morales.