Damnation Street

25.

In the morning Sissy stepped out of her building and found Bishop waiting for her. Later she would tell me what happened between them, and that would become part of the story. But for now I was standing at the window of her apartment, watching. I saw Bishop there, three stories below. He was sitting astride his motorcycle at the curb, idling in the no-parking zone just outside the door. He was wearing his aviator shades and his ironic smile. He had the collar of his leather jacket turned up. His helmet was hanging on the handlebars. His sandy hair moved in the biting wind that funneled up the narrow street behind him.

When I saw him, when I saw Sissy approach him, I felt a stab of what I thought was disapproval. It was easy to disapprove of Bishop after all he'd done. It was easy to tell yourself you were a better man than he was. But in my case, I don't really think it was disapproval at all. I think I was jealous of him. The words Emma had spoken to me hung from my heart like an anchor. I want a man I can look up to and admire. Don't come back until you are one. It was the harshest thing anyone had said to me in my young life, harsher still coming from her, whom I loved. I was jealous of Bishop because I couldn't imagine any woman ever saying anything like that to him. He treated women like toys. He treated almost everyone like garbage. He was violent and reckless, and he didn't give much of a damn about anything. But I could not imagine a woman saying to him what Emma had said, and whatever he had that made that true, I wanted to have it as well.

I told myself I disapproved of him, but that was a lie. I wanted to be more like him.

Anyway, that was me, upstairs, watching from the window. Down on Jackson Street, Bishop caught Sissy's eye. He lifted his chin to her. He waited while she walked toward him. She was wearing a long blue overcoat, a woolen cap with blue stripes. Like all her outfits, it was schoolgirl stuff. She wore leather gloves and kept her hands clasped in front of her. She got a frown on her lips when she saw Bishop, like a prim eight-year-old girl watching some boys get muddy.

The look of her made Bishop snort. It made something cold and humorous go through the heart of him.

At his shoulder, the morning traffic on the hill rumbled end to end. The noise of the motors was loud. Sissy had to raise her whispery voice to be heard above it.

"Hello, Jim," she said. It was a cold, cold tone coming from her.

"I need to find Weiss," he told her.

"He's gone. I don't know where he is. He left me in charge. Can I help you in some way?"

Bishop ignored the cool voice, the scolding eyes. He couldn't have cared less what Sissy thought of him. If he wanted her to make noise, he'd fuck her. "No," he said curtly. "I need Weiss. I can't reach his cell phone. I sent him an email; I left a message on the machine at his apartment, but he hasn't called back."

"That's right. He's out of touch."

"That's it? He's just gone? He just left? There's no way to reach him?"

"He must've had some private business."

Pissed off, Bishop looked away. Private business. Bullshit. Weiss had gone to find the whore. He didn't want anyone to know where he was because he'd gone to draw the specialist into a showdown and save the whore and prove he was still some kind of hero instead of an over-the-hill Jew ex-cop picking up scraps as a private detective.

"Christ," Bishop said under his breath, the word lost in the motor noise from the Jackson Street traffic. He should just let the old man go, he thought, let him get himself killed. Fucking Weiss.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" said Sissy coldly.

Bishop gave her a look. Her whole priggy schoolgirl routine was beginning to give him a pain. "If he was gonna leave someone a clue where he went, it'd be you, you or Ketchum."

"It wasn't me," she said.

Bishop nodded. "Well, if you think of anything, let me know. And if he gets in touch, tell him to call me."

"Well, he might not want to talk to you," Sissy said primly.

Bishop ran his gaze over her, from her wool cap to the gloved hands clasped in front of her, back up to her disapproving blue eyes. He didn't say anything, but he was thinking it. That was enough. The look made her blush.

"I don't give a fuck whether he wants to talk to me or not," he said. "Tell him to call me. If he goes after this guy alone, he's gonna get himself killed."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just tell him, Sissy."

He made the sputtering Harley roar. He looked up at me. It was too quick. There was no time for me to pull back. He laughed. He gave me an ironic wave. Then he nodded at Sissy, curled the bike away from her into the traffic, and headed off down the hill.