Some women have beautiful eyes. Their girlfriends tell them it's their best feature. So they wear a ton of eyeliner, mascara…like that.


Bonita bent over a lot.


She works in a joint that serves food and wine, little stage in the back, performances every night. Stand-up comics, singers, short dramatic pieces.


Bonita's an actress. Between jobs just now.


I found a table against the side wall. Smoking section. I wonder if they have them in prison now.


"Hello, stranger."


"Hi, Bonita." She was all in black: a tube skirt over a body stocking, spike heels.


"I called you a couple of times. Didn't that Chinese woman give you the message?"


"Here I am."


"Why didn't you call?"


"I did. Got your answering machine."


"So why didn't you leave a message?"


"What's the point? You already have my number."


"But then I'd know you called, honey."


The girl couldn't act but she could read an audience. Just as I was asking myself why I came, she switched away to get me some ice water, shaking it hard enough to blow out the candles on the tables.


"I'm on my break soon," she said when she came back. "We can watch the show together."


"What show?" I asked her, barely controlling my enthusiasm.


"Oh, it's so good. It's like a play, or something. Just wait. That's why it's so full tonight."


I crunched a flaky croissant between my teeth, sipped the ice water. She left the little glass bottle on the table. I wondered if trendoid B-girls drank tap water when they hustled salad-bar customers for drinks.


Bonita came back. Sat down just as the lights dimmed. I could see a couple of men setting up the stage. The lights came up. Tall, big-shouldered man was facing the audience, a Doberman lying at his feet. Looked like one of those Pacific Northwest lumberjacks, long brown hair, ropy muscle all along his forearms. He had a power drill in his hands.


"I know how things work," he told the audience, mouth a thin line. "When they get broke, I fix them."


The big man had a straight-ahead stare. Empty and flat, not challenging, not backing off either. Talking like it was coming from inside his head.


He lived in the basement, he told the audience. Janitor. Lived in a lot of places, some of them not so nice. And he did some things in those places, not nice things. Now he just wants to live in his basement, fix whatever's broke. The crowd was quiet, listening to his story.


The dog didn't bark, he told us. Some freak had carved him up when he was a puppy, cut into his throat. "But he still works," the man said. His voice had life in it, but subdued, an undertone of Wesley's dead-robot sound.


There was a kid who lived in his building. Slow in the head, but a sweet boy. He was scared of monsters coming for him in the night, so the man made him a machine. Just a bunch of flashing lights on a box with a toggle switch. The kid liked the machine. Slept good for the first time.


The kid went to a special school. His teacher, Dr. English, told the mother that the machine was a placebo. A fake, but one the kid believed in.


One night, the kid started screaming and he didn't stop. An ambulance took him away. The man visited him in the hospital. The kid told him the machine wasn't any good anymore.


The man said he was sorry— he'd build him a better one.


The man said he knew how things worked. Did some checking. Seems this Dr. English used to work at another school up North. The school had been closed behind some sex abuse scandal. Some teachers indicted, Dr. English resigned. The man called the kid's school. Dr. English was out. Broke his arm in a ski accident. Funny, the lady on the phone said, Dr. English only came to their school from his old job because he hated the cold weather.


The boy lived on the second floor. There was a fire escape leading to the ground.


We watched, listened as the man put it all together. Watched as he painstakingly drilled holes through the center of two hard rubber balls, strung a loop of piano wire between them. Tested it by snapping it in his hands.


The man was getting dressed. Dark jacket, pair of gloves, a black watch cap on his head. When he pulled it down, it turned into a ski mask. "Tonight, when it gets dark, I'm going to show this Dr. English a machine that works."


The stage went dark. Somebody gasped in the audience. Then the applause started. Built to a peak. Stayed there.


The man came back out. The announcer took the mike, called his name. David Joe Wirth, A pretty girl at a front table stood up, waved a fist at him, her dark ponytail bouncing. He smiled. They left the front together.


I watched the crowd. Wondered how many of them shared the Secret.


47

Later, in Bonita's studio apartment on the fringe of the Village.


"My roommate will be back soon," she whispered, sliding the tube skirt down over her hips.


Later, at her kitchen table. "Did you get it?" she asked me.


"Get what?"


"The play. The one we saw tonight. I didn't, the first time he did it. See, the teacher at the school, he was molesting that little boy. And the boy's mother, she trusted him. That's why the machine didn't work…the one the janitor made for him…the monsters weren't all in his head like they thought."


"Yeah, I got it."


"Isn't it disgusting…what some people do?"


"Yeah."


"I wonder where she is, Tawny. I thought she'd be home by now."


"It's okay, I gotta take off myself."


"She's going away next weekend. You could spend the night…"


"If I don't have to work, I'll call you."


"You better," sitting in my lap now, squirming.


"Bonita, I feel pretty stupid about this, but…"


"What?"


"Well, I wanted to buy you a present…just to show you how much I care and all. A charm for your bracelet…I saw one I really liked…a little gold heart…"


"Un-huh…"


"Yeah, but by the time I got to the store, tonight, it was closed. So, I was wondering…I don't mean to be crude or anything…you know the crazy hours I work…Could I give you the money, let you pick it up for yourself?…I mean…"


"Oh, you're so sweet, honey. I don't mind at all."


I handed her five fifty-dollar bills, folded in half. She put them on the table without looking.


"You have to go right now?" she purred, squirming some more. Maybe she wasn't such a lousy actress.


48

I cut myself shaving the next morning. Took a plump leaf from the aloe plant on the windowsill, punctured it with my thumbnail, smeared it on, watching Pansy sneer at my clumsiness. Thinking of Blossom and her goddamned health advice.


Ate slowly. A rosette of michetta roll, hard crust, hollow inside. Only place you can get them in New York is this Milanese bakery in Brooklyn, on the Bushwick border. Real Italians. I'd been going there for years— never heard them say Mamma Mia once. I smeared cream cheese on each piece as I snapped it off. Drank my ice water, swallowed the beta carotene and vitamin C.


Blossom again.


If I ever went over her back fence one night, I wouldn't need cash. Or lies.


I snapped out of it, looked over to the couch. "Want to go for a ride, girl?"


Pansy's tail thumped happily.


Saturday morning, bright and clear. We took the Willis Avenue Bridge to the Hutch, headed north. All the way to the wilds of Dutchess County, almost a two-hour drive.


Teenage girl hitching by the side of the road. I thought of a maggot who picked up a girl like that in California. Raped her, chopped her hands off so there wouldn't be fingerprints, and dumped her in a culvert. The little girl lived, somehow. The maggot's already been paroled— it's not like he robbed a bank or anything. I read he got arrested again in Florida. For shoplifting. The paper said he stole a hat, but he'd paid for another item he had in a bag. A box of diapers.


I knew I was close when I saw the clapboard shacks standing just off the dirt road. A trio of chopped-down Hogs sat outside one shack, ape-hanger handlebars sprouting like stalks from the chromed engines. One of those prefab metal sheds sat behind the shack. They'd be cranking up the heat inside, making meth, choking on the ether fumes. The bikers figured out the dope business a long time ago— the real problem is getting the stuff across the border, so they cook their own right here.


The last house made the others look like Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. Set well back from the road on a winding, narrow approach, it sagged from depression. Tar paper covered most of the windows, missing shingles pockmarked the roof, the whole sorry mess rotting from termites who had long since fled to better pickings. If it burned to the ground, the coroner would call it suicide.


I pulled the Plymouth into the side yard, gunning the engine, sliding on the dirt, letting him know I was there. Turned off the ignition and waited— I wasn't going to jump out too fast.


He came around the side of the house, a tall, rawboned, slope-shouldered man with a doofus mustache. Hair cropped short, wearing tiny round sunglasses. A rifle in one hand, a dog on a chain in the other— a white pit bull with a ring of black fur around one eye and one black ear. The animal didn't look a bit like Spuds McKenzie.


Elroy. He lived back in the woods. Off the land, he said. He'd jack deer by spotlight at night when they came to the salt lick he'd set up. Blow ducks off the water with his shotgun. Anything that had fur, feathers, or scales. He wasn't a hunter, he was an armed consumer.


Even the bikers cut him considerable slack— people said he ate road-kill sandwiches.


I hit the window switch, let him have a good long look.


"Burke!" he boomed out.


"Yeah, it's me. Put the gun down, okay?"


"Sure."


"And tie that animal up."


"Barko wouldn't hurt anyone," he said, sounding insulted.


"I got Pansy in the car," I told him, by way of explanation. I climbed out. The pit bull watched me with only mild interest, but his ears were cocked. He had Pansy's scent, growled a challenge.


We walked around behind the house. Elroy had his own prefab shed too. Maybe they came with the original houses.


"You have the paper?" I asked him.


"What's your hurry?"


"That paper isn't going to move itself, Elroy."


"Come on," he said.


We walked past the shed toward the woods. Two more pit bulls were anchored to metal stakes set in cement. One had an old tire in his alligator jaws, waving it around in triumph as the other watched.


"Aren't they beauties?" Elroy asked.


"They are, for sure. You training them?"


"Yeah! Want to see?"


"Okay."


"Barko's really my best one. Just wait here, I'll get him."


He came back leading the dog. The other two yapped in anticipation, pawing the ground. A low-slung four-wheeled cart stood on a level patch of ground, piled high with solid-concrete blocks. Elroy took an elaborate leather harness from a hook on a nearby tree. It was lined with some spongelike material. As soon as he took up the harness, Barko began running in little circles, overcome with excitement.


"Come on, boy! Time to work!"


Barko trotted over on his stubby legs and Elroy fitted him up. He attached two short leads from the harness directly to a U-bolt on the front of the cart. Barko stood rigid at attention, waiting.


"Okay, baby…pull!" Elroy yelled.


The pit bull surged forward, straining against the harness, fighting for traction. When all four legs locked in, he began to inch forward, dragging the cart behind him, foaming a bit at the mouth, Elroy screaming, "Full Pull, Barko! Full Pull!" Soon the little tank was slogging forward, like a man wading through setting cement. Barko never faltered, chugging ahead until Elroy ran to intercept him, kicking a wooden wedge under the cart's wheels. He unsnapped the harness, held the dog high over his head in both hands.


"The winner… Barrrko!" I swear the dog grinned.


"That's what you're training the dogs for?"


"Sure. You don't think I'm gonna let my dogs fight, do you? This is the latest thing. They get ninety seconds to pull the weight fifteen feet— that's a full pull. Barko's going in the middleweight class this fall."


"Pit bull tractor pulls?"


"Yeah, man! You know how much Barko just lugged across the finish line? One half ton, man. A thousand pounds. And that was on grass— the regulation pulls're on a piece of flat carpet. Better traction, smoother roll."


"Unreal."


"He's still working. The record's a little over one full ton, man. Twenty-one hundred pounds."


"What pulled that, a Clydesdale?"


"A pit bull, Burke. A forty-eight-pound bitch, in fact. That's the middleweight class, not the open. Some of those damn Rottweilers, they could pull a house."


"Jesus."


"Yeah, they're amazing, huh?"


Elroy dropped Barko to the ground. I saluted him. He trotted back to the front.


"Pansy's in the car," I reminded him.


"Barko's no dog fighter."


"He's a pit bull."


"It's all in how you raise them, man."


Some of Elroy's receptor sites were burned out, but he knew the truth.


"Let's look at the paper," I said.


49

It was spread out on a long clean table in the shed. Bearer bonds, beautifully engraved. Face value, ten grand each. Elroy had been a counterfeiter, but his last stretch in the pen had cured him of playing with funny money. Now he just worked in small lots: bonds, deeds, certificates. Takes some real skill, and you need specialists to move it, but the risk is lower.


"How many you got?" I asked him, turning the paper over in my hands, admiring the craftsmanship.


"Three point five million, you add it up."


"You know how the quick flip works, Elroy…you're looking at maybe a hundred grand your end, tops."


"That's okay. This'll be my last score. I got plans, anyway, do something else to make a living."


I put the bonds into my attaché case, walked out to the car. Barko was lying in the sun, basking in the glow of his recent triumph. Pansy's massive head was framed in the front window of the Plymouth.


"Could I look at her?" he asked.


"Tie your guy up first…just in case."


I opened the door and Pansy strolled out. I gave her the hand signal for friends, and she stood patiently while Elroy pawed all over her, even pulled back her lips to check her teeth.


"She's gorgeous, man. True Italian stock, I can tell. The Italians breed them much lower to the ground. It's good you didn't dock her tail."


I lit a cigarette, watching my dog.


"Her hips are like steel," Elroy muttered. "You work her on tree jumping?"


"No, she pretty much exercises herself."


"Burke, I got a great idea."


"What?" Shuddering inside. Elroy had this great idea in the joint once…pressurize a bunch of chemicals inside the home-brew the Prof was cooking up, turn the jungle-juice into high octane. The vat exploded, blew a big slab of concrete out of the wall in the kitchen. The Man thought it was an escape attempt and locked the whole place down for two weeks. The Prof hasn't spoken to Elroy since.


"You know what a Bandog is?"


"Not exactly."


"The newspapers, you know how they have those headlines: baby chewed to death by pit bull, Rottweiler mauls toddler…like that?"


"Yeah."


"Well, these fucking idiots, they don't understand. It's all in the way you raise them. It's not the dog, it's the owners." The maniac paused for breath, ready to make his pitch. "Anyway, you want to own a pit bull in New York now, you got to have special insurance, register it and all. Same for Rottweilers in England. See, what they really want to do is ban the dogs, get it?"


"No."


"You can only ban a dog if it's a particular breed, right? Like a Doberman or a collie."


"So?"


"So some breeders got the idea of combining breeds, you see what I mean? Like, if you cross a Doberman with a collie, you ain't got a Doberman, and you ain't got a collie."


I lit a smoke, wondering if he'd ever get to the point. If there was a point.


"So they started with pit bulls, 'cause they was the real targets. There's a lot of so-called Bandogs out there, crossing pits with Rhodesians, with bulldogs, Rotties, all kinds of crazy stuff. But the real thing, the true Bandog, you got to cross a male pit bull with a female Neo. That's the only way to go."


"What do you get?"


"They look like giant pits, man. Run maybe ninety, a hundred and ten pounds. All bone and muscle. And dead game."


"Damn."


"Yeah! Now the way I figure it, we mate my Barko and your Pansy, and we got the foundation stock for the best Bandogs in the world. Maybe get the first dogs to pull a ton and a half. What d'you think?"


"I never bred her, Elroy. Tried a couple of times, but she wasn't having any."


"Can't we at least try?"


"I'm not tying her up. She wants to do it, and you'll take all the puppies when they're weaned…


"I'll think about it, okay?"


"Yeah! Sure, I mean…only if they like each other, okay?"


"All right."


"Great! Let's see, okay?"


"Elroy, you psychotic, Pansy's not in heat."


"Just to see if they get along…come on, Burke."


"She's dangerous, Elroy. Big and dangerous."


"Barko's a charmer, man. Like his daddy. All the ladies love him."


He untied the pit. Barko ambled over, respecting Pansy's space. They sniffed each other. Pansy growled, but her heart wasn't in it, just testing. Barko stood his ground. They circled each other, sniffing again. Finally, Pansy lay down. Barko licked her face, lay down beside her.


"What did I tell you, man!"


"She gets in heat, I'll bring her back."


"Shake on it, partner," the demento insisted. He hadn't asked for any such reassurances about his bogus bonds.


I opened the door. Pansy jumped into the back seat. I climbed in, started her up. Leaned out the window.


"Elroy, this other scheme of yours…? What are you going to pull?"


"All I been through, man, I'm gonna write a book."


50

The trick with moving phony paper, it has to look legitimate and smell crooked. Suckers think stuff's been stolen, they know it's for real. Stop at any traffic light in the right part of town— somebody'll come up to your car with a camcorder or a VCR, still in the brand-new carton, all shrink-wrapped in clear plastic. The professionals, they know how much deadweight to put inside to get an exact match. When the sucker gets it home, he learns the truth. Bearer bonds, it's a little trickier. Same idea, bigger suckers.


I docked the Plymouth behind Mama's, right under the neat row of Chinese characters warning the locals the territory belonged to Max the Silent. Nobody ever parked there for long.


Snapped Pansy's lead on and approached the back door. The thugs let me in, giving Pansy a lot of room, watching her in wonder and admiration. She was too well trained to make a try for any of the food, but she slobbered her usual three quarts in anticipation.


Mama came back from her post, smiling when she saw Pansy. She won a setup bet with her cooks once, wagering on who could tell what country the dog came from. After she'd asked me first.


"Puppy hungry, Burke?"


"Sure is, Mama. She may have met her future husband today…gave her an appetite."


I brought her down to the basement as Mama was firing instructions at the cooks. One of them came downstairs lugging a steel vat by the handles, steam fogging the air around him.


I no sooner had "Speak!" out of my mouth than Pansy plunged her snout deep into the vat, making noises they'd censor out of the horror movies.


Upstairs, I sipped my hot and sour soup while Mama fingered through the portfolio of bonds, a pair of white gloves on her hands.


"This real company, Burke?"


"Sure thing, Mama. Trades on the AMEX. The bonds are issued on its international division."


"This division…?"


"Yeah, it issues bonds, some of them in bearer form." Real bearer bonds are as good as cash. Untraceable. No registration. You hold them, you own them. Like diamonds, only they don't have to be appraised.


"Some people, maybe they pay…ten percent, yes?"


"Sure."


"This take time, right? Send overseas, far away. Many people wash their hands in the same bowl, the water get cloudy."


"I understand. The manufacturer, he needs a third."


"One hundred thousand."


"A little more, I think, one-third."


"One hundred thousand. Everyone must be paid."


"Okay."


"For you?"


"Whatever you say, Mama."


She smiled her approval of my manners, ladled more soup into my bowl.


A shadow fell across the table. Max. He shouldered in next to me, bowing to Mama at the same time. She opened her mouth to yell something at the waiters, but one of them was there with a bowl for Max before she got a word out. She said something to the waiter anyway. "Smartass" sounds the same in Cantonese.


It was like old times, for a while. Yonkers had added a new feature to the evening program— some of the races were carded for an extra distance past the traditional mile…from a sixteenth to a quarter. I explained my foolproof, surefire, can't-miss handicapping system— the longer the race, the better the chance for the fillies against the colts. Class tells in the long run, and the female side of any species is built for endurance. They listened the way they always do: Max fascinated, Mama bored to narcolepsy. Mama isn't a gambler— her idea of a sporting event is a fixed fight.


Max had the racing form in his pocket and we went over it together. Mama politely excused herself, nodding toward the front door. In Mama's business, customers didn't use the front door. But every once in a while some ignorant yuppie would ignore the filthy tables, the food-splattered walls, the flyspecked menus, and the rest of the unappetizing ambiance and actually order food. It was Mama's job to make sure they never came back— people like that interfered with business. A health inspector once visited the kitchen, tried to shake Mama down. A small gratuity was expected. Otherwise, he said, they'd have to close the place down for a while until it was brought up to snuff. Maybe even publish a notice in the paper that the Board of Health had found violations. Mama gave him a blank look. When the Health Code Violation notice was printed in the paper, she pasted it in the window. The health inspector never came back.


I scanned the form the way I always do, looking for the intangibles, that combination telling me a horse was ready to break out, overcome its past. Everything important but the breeding, that's overrated. I'd like to own a trotter someday. They don't cost that much, and I've scored heavy enough to pull it off more than once. But you can't own a horse if you've got a felony record, so that lets me out. I could open a day-care center, though.


Finally, I settled on a six-year-old mare. She was shipping in from the Meadowlands, a mile track with a long stretch. She always ran from off the pace, so conventional wisdom says she'd come up short transferring to Yonkers, a half-mile oval with a real short way home. But I figured the extra eighth of a mile in the fifth race would give her all the space she'd need. Morning line was 6— 1. I put a pair of fifties on the counter, pointed to Max. He matched it. I got up to call Maurice. Max can do a lot of things, but he can't telephone a bookie.


Max didn't let me pass, blocking the booth, his hands working, asking me to explain things again.


I went through it again— the Patience card is always in my deck. Caught his eyes, made the sign for "okay?" His face was expressionless, body posture relaxed. I shoved lightly against him. Good luck. Finally, he held up an open palm like a traffic cop: Stop.


I hunched my shoulders, opened my hands: Why?


He pointed at my watch— almost four in the afternoon, shook his head. Not time yet? I looked over to Mama at her register, couldn't catch her eye.


The hell with it. I lit a smoke. Max took out a deck of cards, shifted out of the booth, and sat down across from me. Dealt out a hand of gin. First card up from the pack was the ace of spades. No knock, results doubled. I made a gesture like writing something on paper. Max pulled the last score sheet from his pocket, pushed it over to me. He was into me for more money than I could steal in a lifetime. We'd been playing for years and years— the fool was going to hang in until he got even or pass the weight on to his daughter when he retired.


I got lost in the game. Like I was back inside, where killing time was an achievement. Max reached for a card. Mama came up behind him, tapped him hard on the shoulder. He turned to look at her. She shook her head side to side, emphatically. Max ignored her advice the way he used to ignore the Prof when we all jailed together. Tossed me the four of hearts. Gin.


I totaled up the score. The Mongolian was down another two grand and it was only…damn! Six-thirty.


The front door swung open. Immaculata— Lily and Storm close behind. They walked to the booth. Mac kissed Max, bowed her thanks. Max slid out of the booth, his job done.


51

Immaculata slid in next to me, Lily and Storm took the facing bench.


"What is this?" I asked Lily. "A surprise party?"


"We couldn't wait to get you on the phone. Mac called Mama, told Max to have you wait. We had to talk to you. Now."


"Okay. What?"


The dark-haired woman leaned forward, all the juice gone from her voice. "There's been another murder. Luke was in a foster home, in Gramercy Park. They left him alone for just a few minutes. He was watching television with another baby, three years old. When the foster mother came back inside, the baby was dead. Face all blue. She thought the baby had choked, called the paramedics."


"The call came in to our hospital," Storm interrupted. "We ran over there, to make sure…?"


"Where's Luke?"


Lily ignored my question. "The paramedics said the child hadn't choked on anything…marks on his throat, like he'd been strangled. Luke said he was watching the TV, didn't see anything. He was just watching the cartoons."


"You think the same people…?"


"Only a ghost could've gotten into that room, Burke. They're on the ninth floor."


"There's fire escapes. Balconies. There's always a way in. I know a guy went up twelve stories with a ladder he made out of dental floss. Who knew he was there?"


"I don't know. It doesn't matter. Wolfe wants Luke."


"What d'you mean, she wants him? The kid can't be ten years old."


"Nine," Lily said. "If his birth certificate is the truth."


"Where is he now?"


Lily's eyes hard on mine. "Safe," she said.


"He's with us," Mac said. "At the temple." She meant the top floor of one of Mama's warehouses. Where she lived with Max.


"And you think Wolfe's crazy?"


"Not crazy," Storm put in. "Just wrong.


I turned to face Immaculata. "So you left him alone with Flower?"


Her eyes dropped. Wouldn't meet mine.


"You don't think Wolfe's wrong," I said to Lily, voice gentle and flat. If anyone was nuts, it was this crew.


"Luke needs to be in a hospital," Lily said, not giving an inch.


"We don't have joints for criminally insane babies."


"I know."


"What do you all want?"


Storm tapped her fingers on the counter, looking at her sisters, waiting. They'd talked this over before they came. "We want you to negotiate. With Wolfe."


"Negotiate what?"


"For some time. We need time. If Wolfe takes him now, she's going to charge him."


"He's too young to be charged with a crime."


"No, he's not, Burke. Wolfe says anyone over seven can be charged."


"Yeah, as a juvenile delinquent, or something. But they can't…"


I stopped talking as the ugly fear banged on the door of my consciousness. I was younger than Luke when they locked me up for the first time. That's what they did to ungrateful orphans who ran away from beatings. And pitch-black closets. And basements that smelled of human rot.


"You talked to him…?"


"He doesn't know anything," Lily said. "He'd pass a lie detector."


"You know what he is," I said, daring her to deny it.


"Yes, we know. But we don't know why. He wasn't born like this."


"So you want to make a deal. For treatment or something."


"That's a job for a lawyer. We can get him a lawyer. We have to know why. That's for you."


"I'm not a psychiatrist."


"We know what you are."


I started thinking like what I was. "Did the foster parents see you take the kid out of there?"


"I was there first," Storm said. "I called Lily. She came over with some more people. We talked to the foster parents while the others took Luke out. They didn't see a thing. Don't know where he is."


"Wolfe…?"


"Doesn't believe it for a second," Lily said. "She said she's got the kid on the books as missing. APB running for him. Said if he doesn't turn up by tomorrow, she'll get a search warrant. For SAFE. For Storm's house. For wherever."


"It's like that, huh?"


"Just like that."


I lit a cigarette, buying time. The woman warriors watched me, waiting. "Remember that time Wolfe had this case…girl about twenty-five…she'd been molested when she was eleven, long time ago? So she charged the guy, even though the statute of limitations was long gone? Remember, Lily? You testified that the girl had been in a psychiatric coma…couldn't even remember what had happened to her until she'd been in therapy for something else."


Lily nodded, waiting for the punch line.


"It went all the way up to the appellate courts, but they let the indictment stand. Said this freak, it was no different than if he hit her in the head with a tire iron and she just woke up years later. The girl couldn't remember because of something he did, so he wasn't off the hook."


"I remember. We all do. It changed the law."


"Yeah. Well, Wolfe likes that kind of stuff. Making people pay."


We sealed the bargain without another word.


52

I pulled the Plymouth into the warehouse. It looked deserted, like always. Max closed the garage doors behind us. Metal stairs to the next floor, narrow landing. Max's temple to the right, living quarters to the left.


"I don't think you really understand…." Luke's voice.


He was sitting in a straight chair, facing the door. Talking to a young Chinese. Flower crawled around on the floor, gurgling happily.


The young Chinese stood up as we entered, bowing to Max. He was wearing a baggy bright-white T-shirt that came to mid-thigh over black parachute pants, billowing wide at the knees and tied at the ankles around white leather high-tops. His glossy black hair was sleeked straight back, glistening under the gel.


Max pointed two fingers straight down, moved them apart, drawing a circle as they met again.


The young man nodded. Bowed to Immaculata and left, ignoring me.


I didn't know his name but I knew his game. The loose T-shirt covered a pistol, the soft shoes wouldn't make a sound. And he'd have people all around the building.


"Hello, Burke," the boy said.


"Hello, Luke."


"Am I going to live here?"


"For a while, okay?"


"Okay."


53

The basement is full of tunnels. We stepped through, under the building next door, the one occupied by a team of Chinese architects. I hooked the alligator clips to the telephone junction box, connected the field phone. Listened for a minute: it was after hours, but Orientals aren't clock-watchers.


All clear. I dialed Wolfe's private line. No answer. Then I tried her home number. The one Lily had given me. It was picked up on the third ring.


"Hello." Man's voice, neutral.


"Could I speak to Ms. Wolfe, please?"


"Who is this?" The voice shifting down a gear, harder.


"A friend."


"You got a name, friend?"


"Ms. Wolfe will recognize my voice. I'm working on something for her."


"Hold on."


Muffled noise in the background. A dog yapped.


"This is Wolfe."


"It's me," I said, soft-voiced, going on quickly before she could say my name. 'I apologize for calling you at home— it's kind of an emergency. Is this phone okay?"


"My housekeeper is especially good at sweeping. What do you want?"


"To talk to you. Face to face. About what you're looking for."


Sound of Wolfe muffling the phone, murmurs of talk.


"Tell me where you are— I'll come to you."


"That wouldn't work. I'll meet you. Wherever you say."


"When?"


"Now. As long as it takes me to get there— I'm in Westchester, just north of the city."


"You know where I live?"


"No."


More muffled conversation at her end.


"I'll give you an address. There's no number on the door. Just tap on it. Lightly. And don't go around to the side of the house…the dog's there."


"Okay."


"You're coming alone?"


"Yes."


"I'll be waiting," she said. And gave me the directions.


54

The Plymouth's exhaust bubbled softly as I made the turn into Forest Hills Gardens, the ritziest section of Queens, not far from the courthouse. I entered the neighborhood from Queens Boulevard after I exited the Grand Central. As if I'd come over the Whitestone Bridge from Westchester, in case she had people watching.


Beautiful homes, set way back from the narrow, winding streets. Brick, stone, exotic wood…they looked like little castles. I wondered how Wolfe could crack this kind of real estate on her DA's salary— maybe she had a rich husband.


The house was the whole corner lot of the street, surrounded by a man's-height stone wall, electronic sensors set at irregular intervals along the top. The gate to the driveway was standing open. Three-car garage at the end, just around a curve. Its door was closed, the driveway clogged with cars, mostly econoboxes except for Rocco's Firebird and a red Buick Reatta two-seater. Wolfe's Audi was nowhere in sight.


I closed the Plymouth's door just as spotlights snapped to attention all around the house. A patch of darkness to the side. Behind a flat-black grid, a dog's eyes blazed.


I tapped on the front door, like I'd been told, watching my reflection in the one-way bronze-glass panel. Lola opened the door, wearing an electric-blue shantung silk dress, party makeup still on her face.


"Come on," she said, walking away so I'd follow, "she's out back." Hardwood floors, polished. Almost no furnishings. The living room had a vaguely Japanese tone to it, but I didn't get a chance to stop and look, feeling the presence of someone behind me.


The backyard was huge. A giant cherry tree stood in one corner, its branches blocking the sky. A hammock in the open space, brick barbecue, a padded weight lifter's bench. Bird feeders were suspended from the tree limbs that ran parallel to the ground.


I walked onto the fieldstone patio. Wolfe was seated at a butcher-block table, an overflowing ashtray at her elbow. The woman who'd been behind me walked around to my side, guiding me to the table without touching me.


"This is Deidra," Wolfe said. A big woman, more curvy than hefty, with short-cropped dark hair and a winsome face. Black Irish, Italian, Jewish— couldn't tell, it was all there. "She works with us too. You've met the others." Waving her hand around, eyes not leaving my face.


I sat down. A thick shadow moved in against Wolfe's hip. "Sit, Bruiser," she said, sweetness in her voice.


"Beautiful place you have here," I said, lighting a smoke, waiting for the others to step back, give us room to talk privately.


"I like it," she said, even-voiced. "Nice days, I can walk to work."


"You like birds?" I asked, looking around.


"They're really Bruiser's birds. He was raised with them. In the backyard, when he was just a tiny puppy, he used to lie in the sun. And the birds would come. They got used to him. I even have a picture somewhere of a sparrow perched on Bruiser's head. When a cat comes into the yard, his birds scream for him. And out he comes."


"That must be a pain in the neck."


"No, he gets in and out by himself. Dog door."


"If it's big enough for him, it's big enough for a person."


"No, it really isn't. We tried. Even Lola couldn't get through it."


The tall woman flashed a smile in the darkness.


"So this is a cat-free zone?"


"It sure is. One day I came out after this awful racket and there was this Siamese lying in the yard. In two pieces. The owner was my neighbor, claims he's a real animal lover. He came over screaming and yelling, said the cat was just following its natural instincts, hunting birds."


"What'd you tell him?"


"Bruiser was just following his natural instincts too. Protecting his territory. And my Bruiser doesn't invade other people's property like his cat."


"What'd he do?"


"Sued me in Small Claims Court." Wolfe chuckled. "The judge told him his cat was a trespasser and Bruiser had used self-help."


"Friend of yours?"


"No judge is a friend of mine," a chill lacing her speech, making sure I got it.


"Mine either."


"I know. We have a mated pair of cardinals living here. Blue jays, robins, doves. Even a stupid woodpecker who tries the cherry tree every now and then."


"Nice and peaceful."


"Yes."


She was going to wait. And I didn't know what she was waiting for. "I wanted to talk to you," I said.


"Talk."


"Alone."


"Not a chance, Mr. Burke. I'm not ungrateful for occasional help you've provided to City-Wide, but I'm not playing myself out of position."


"Neither am I. What if…just for the sake of argument…I wanted to discuss something with you…something that maybe I wouldn't want to admit I said if it ever went near a courthouse? I could say it to you, and then it's your word against mine. But if I said it to everyone, then I'm up against it."


"You don't trust me?" Hint of a smile.


"Sure, I trust you. It's how much that I'm wrestling with."


Wolfe lit another cigarette, patting her dog. At home, at peace. The redhead, Amanda, walked over, her hands full of papers like she was still in the office. Rocco and Floyd were doing something around the barbecue, arguing, it sounded like.


"Take your time," Wolfe said.


Fuck it. "I'm here to negotiate," I told her.


"Negotiate what?"


"Let's say…hypothetically…that you were looking for a missing kid. Maybe you thought you knew where the kid was, okay? Maybe you thought he was with friends. Your friends."


Wolfe's face was upturned, fingers absently stroking her cheek. A fire blazed to one side: Rocco finally got the barbecue going. The flames caught the white wings in Wolfe's dark hair. She didn't say anything, waiting.


"Your true friends," I told her. "Sometimes, even the closest of friends, even brothers and sisters, they can disagree. Before, you told me to take my time. That's easy to say, hard to do. Time. Hard to do. The State took my time from me. More than once. You know about that. It did me some good. Not the kind of good they meant. It scared me, but not so bad that I'd kiss ass to stay out. I had time— the time they made for me. I learned some things. Things about myself. Things about the way things work. You understand what I'm telling you?"


"No."


"Yes, you do. Some things need time. This…thing…between you and your sisters, it needs time."


"How much time?" Quick, no playing around, right to the center of it. Just Wolfe now— her people nearby but distanced.


"Couple of weeks."


"No way."


"The kid is safe."


"It's not him I care about. He's a killer. I should've dropped him the first time."


"He's nine years old."


"Everyone is, once."


"Everybody that gets to be ten. He's not a kid…that's what you're thinking. And you're right. Half right, anyway. He's not a kid, he's not a man either. Something else."


Wesley. "You're still a man," I told him, listening as he described a murder-mutilation. A message to his enemies. "I'm a bomb," the monster said.


And that's the way he went out.


"How do you know?" Wolfe asked, leaning toward me.


"I know. I paid the tuition, passed the course."


She flashed a quick grin at me, throaty, husky-soft voice. "Dónde está el dinero?"


The way I answered her question years ago. When she challenged me to say something in Spanish.


"There's no money in this. It would take me too long to tell you why. Even if you think I'm on a scam, you know your sisters aren't."


"Truth, justice, and the American way?"


"Truth, justice, and revenge."


"You said enough to get locked up already, pal." Rocco. Leaning forward, intruding.


Wolfe gave him a look. Patted her dog some more.


"You ever notice Bruiser's eyes?" I asked her. "They look straight ahead. The birds he guards, they look out each side. You know why?"


"Bruiser's a predator. The birds are prey."


"Not his prey, though."


She dragged deep on her cigarette. "Two weeks," she said. "Then he gets brought in."


I nodded.


"That's your word?" she asked.


I bowed confirmation.


55

I crossed over the Kosciuszko Bridge, heading south for Brooklyn. Slag yards underneath to my right, yawning black, spot-fires spurting. Suicides, they never jump off this bridge— water tells a better lie about what's waiting. Past them, way off in the distance, Manhattan neon told its own lies.


Two weeks.


Luke and Burke. Lurk.


I'd told Wolfe I knew. Didn't tell her how I'd learned.


1971. Lowell, Massachusetts, a struggling mill town. Sitting in a mostly empty downtown parking lot in the front seat of a dull brown Ford, stolen a couple of hours earlier. License plates looked good— they were two halves of two different plates, welded together with the seam at the back. Beer cans on the dashboard, radio turned down low. Two guys taking a break from their construction job. Me and Whitey, waiting. Watching.


Every Friday, a young woman walked past that parking lot. It was a joy to watch her. Pretty-proud, long brown hair bouncing on her shoulders, matching the swing in her hips. Not a traffic-stopper, but a juicy fine thing just the same.


We'd been watching her every Friday for a month. Watching her carry a leather bag over one shoulder. Her outfit changed each time, but the leather bag stayed the same.


She'd walk back the same way. Past us. With the leather bag heavier then. Her boss made the payroll in cash every Friday afternoon. The brunette made the bank run. Flouncing along, walking the way girls walk, one hand swinging with her rhythm, the other patting the bag at her hip. Taking her time, enjoying the sunshine and the stares.


We'd checked the traffic patterns, the escape routes. Had a garage all rented about a half mile away. One quick swoop and we'd make our own withdrawal. Hole up, listening to the sirens. Nighttime, we'd go down the back stairs, separate at the bus station.


Saturday, Whitey would be in Boston. I'd be in Chicago.


The brunette had on an egg-yolk-yellow dress that stopped at mid-thigh.


"Beautiful, huh?" Whitey whispered. He didn't mean the girl.


The radio said something about Attica. I turned it up. Riot at the prison, guards taken hostage, the whole joint out of control. State troopers had the place surrounded.


Whitey had done time before I was born. He cupped a cigarette, hiding the flame out of habit. Spoke softly out of the side of his mouth.


"They gonna kill all those niggers."


"How d'you know it's blacks?" I asked him.


"When the Man comes down on them, they'll all be niggers," Whitey said. "Dead niggers."


Blood-bought wisdom from an old man I'd never see again. We took the omen, aborted the snatch.


You stay in the sun long enough, you get a tan. I know why Ted Bundy went pro se, represented himself at his murder trial in Florida. You go pro se, you get whatever a lawyer would get. Like discovery motions. The prosecution wanted to introduce the crime-scene photos, show the jury the savage slasher's wake. Bundy got his copies too. So he could go back to his quiet, private cell and jerk off to his own personal splatter films. He told the TV cameras that pornography made him kill all those women, lying as smoothly as the lawyer he never got to be. Dancing until they stopped the music.


The Prof schooled me too. In prison and out. We're in the lobby of a fancy hotel. I'm dressed in a nice suit. The Prof is applying the final touches to my high-gloss shoes.


"Watch close, youngblood." Nodding at an average man. All in gray. Dull, anonymous. The uniformed bellman reached for the gray man's suitcase. The gray man snatched it away, keeping it in his left hand while he signed the register with his right.


A few minutes later the bellman came over to us, whispered something to the Prof. Cash flashed an exchange. A few blocks away, the little man ran it down.


"Man don't want to pay, what's it say?"


"That he's cheap."


"The bellhop walked him to the room. Opened the door for him, okay? Didn't carry the bag. And the man still throws him a dime, right on time. Take another look, read the book."


"I don't get it."


"The man ain't cheap, he's into somethin' deep. That bag's full of swag, son."


I read books too. Especially when I was inside. A plant's growth is controlled by the size of its pot. A goldfish won't grow to full size in an aquarium. But we lock children in cages and call it reform school.


I know some things. You don't turn off your headlights when dawn breaks, everyone will know you've been out driving that night.


56

I slept until past noon. Pansy trailed after me as I got dressed, begging with her eyes.


"You want to go see your boyfriend?" I asked her. "Barko?"


She made a little noise. I thought we'd established a new level of human-dog communication until she started drooling while I was eating breakfast. I scooped a couple of pints of honey-vanilla ice cream into her bowl. Watched her slop it all over the walls and floor in a frenzy. Then she curled up and went to sleep.


57

I found Storm in her office at the hospital. She saw me coming, said something into the telephone, hung up.


"We have ten days," I told her. "And then?"


"Then he comes in."


"You think that's enough time?"


"I don't know— it's not up to me. I did what you asked."


"Not all of it." Lily, walking through the back door, her face sweaty, hair mussed, like she'd been exercising.


I lit a smoke. Lily was so worked up she forgot to frown at me. "Keeping him hidden won't do any good, Burke. Nothing will change in ten days."


"What do you want, Lily. Spell it out."


"He could go someplace else. Far away. Disappear."


"Until he does it again."


"No! Until he gets better."


"You know what that would take…?"


"I don't care. I could take him. He couldn't do anything to me…he's too little."


"He'd try, Lily. When he got the signal, he'd try."


"We could use the time," Storm put in. Her parents must have picked her name because she was always so calm. "Luke will need a defense when he comes in, Lily. He needs to see a psychiatrist, maybe a couple of them."


"He wouldn't go to jail," I added.


We left it like that. Nothing settled.


58

I felt it as soon as I hit the street— an inversion in the atmosphere. Heavy air, ozone-clogged. Muggy, with a bone-chill core. Like in prison, just before the race wars came. You felt it in the corridors, on the tiers. In the blocks, on the yard. Skin color the flag, any target an opportunity. The Man would feel it too, but the joint wouldn't get locked down until they had a high enough body count.


I walked in the opposite direction from where I'd left the Plymouth, heading for the subway. Maybe it was just the neighborhood. Something going down, nothing to do with me.


Early afternoon, subway traffic was light. I scanned the car, pretending to read the posters. All the services of the city: AIDS counseling, abortions. Cures for acne, hemorrhoids, and hernias. Food stamps, Lotto, 970 numbers, party lines. Another promised you could Ruin a Pickpocket's Day if you followed its advice: avoid crowds.


When I came up for air at Fifty-ninth Street, it felt the same. Not the neighborhood, then.


I turned into a little gourmet supermarket, wandered the aisles, watching. A woman in a cashmere sweater-dress with a gold chain for a belt searched out a can of politically correct tuna. A guy in a dark blue suit over a striped shirt, port-wine tie with matching suspenders made the same two turns I did. I stepped to one side and he rolled past, his eyes linked to the gold chain.


Back outside. Streets thick with stragglers from lunchtime, shoppers. Crowds have a rhythm. You move through them the way you match your breathing to the sleeper next to you. Find the pattern and merge. I entered the stream, blending.


Lexington Avenue. I flowed with the clot, ignoring the traffic lights. A man on the sidewalk, younger than me, squatting on a piece of cardboard, a huge glass bottle like they use in water coolers next to him, some coins and a bill visible at the bottom. Sign propped up next to the bottle, something about Homeless. Humans passed him by. I did too. Took a couple of quick steps past. Whirled, like I'd changed my mind, reaching into my pocket for some change.


A dark-skinned black man in a black suit backed into a doorway just as my eyes came up. A fat white man was coming out and they bumped. The black man saw me watching and took off, running in the opposite direction. I ran to the street, saw a cab parked at the curb. Jumped onto the trunk, falconing from the high ground. Saw the black suit disappear into the front seat of a black sedan. Lexington Avenue is one-way, they had to go right past me. I stayed where I was. Every car that passed me by stared at the man standing on the cab. Except the sedan, a Chevy Caprice, one of those two-ton jobs with the rear fenders extending halfway down the tires. When it rolled by my post, the driver was staring straight ahead. And the passenger seat was empty.


59

A cab pulled to the curb, its hood popped open just a crack, latched in place to cool the engine. I jumped in, told the driver to head downtown. The driver didn't speak much English— I had the same problem with the No Smoking sign. Rolling downtown along Broadway, I started sorting it out.


Just before we hit Herald Square a bike messenger sliced in from one of the side streets as the cab in front of us was changing lanes. They T-boned and the messenger went down. Traffic stopped…for the red light. The bike was a twisted piece of metal tubing— the messenger had blood running down his calf, just below the bicycle pants. The cabdriver got out, started inspecting his hack for damage. The messenger unwrapped a heavy length of chain from the bike, started limping toward the cab. The driver jumped back inside, took off just as the chain smashed through his back window.


People watched as the bashed-in cab jumped the light, squeaking across the intersection to the blare of horns. The messenger stood in the street, swinging his chain. I heard sirens behind us.


The light turned green and we took off.


I caught a subway at Eighteenth Street, picked up my car, checked it over. Nobody had been playing with it. I drove carefully to Mama's, watching for heavy Chevys.


60

Ten days. I cut it shorter with Lily, leaving myself a margin. There's always an edge— sometimes it's not sharp.


I went through Mama's kitchen, took my booth in the back. She was at her register. I caught her eye, held my fist to my ear, telling her I had to make some calls.


First to SAFE. They called Immaculata to the phone.


"It's me. Is Max around?"


"Yes."


"Ask him to take a look around. Outside."


"For what?"


"Watchers."


"I understand."


Another quarter in the slot. Like Atlantic City, except nobody called me sir.


Jacques came on the line.


"You know my voice?"


"Not so many white men call here, mahn."


"You have people watching me?"


"No, mahn. For sure. You have been a friend."


"That past tense?"


A cloud passed over the sun in his voice. "We were watching you, mahn, you would not know to ask."


"Any chance of Clarence free-lancing?"


"No chance. No chance at all. You have enemies, my friend?"


"I don't know yet. Maybe I'm just spooked."


"That is a racist slur, mahn?"


"Lighten up…I mean, look, a crew's been following me, I think. I'll know for sure later— there's not that many places they could watch."


"Our people?"


"I didn't talk to them, just saw them."


"We just look alike, mahn."


"Who does your material, Jacques? Listen up: I got a crew on me, maybe it has something to do with you, understand?"


"Let us know, mahn. Everybody knows, West Indians, we pay our debts."


One more call. I couldn't make it from the restaurant. I told one of the cooks I'd be right back. He said something in Chinese.


61

Found a pay phone near the OTB on the Bowery. Dialed Albany, listened to the operator tell me the toll for the first three minutes, forked over the coins. Good thing the State gives commissioners private lines— I'd use up the money I had on deposit just getting past the secretary.


He grabbed it on the first ring.


"What's wrong now?" Resigned good humor, a faint bluegrass flavor to his speech.


"Trouble on 7-Up, Doc. Microwave Marvin's not coming out of his house— the fool thinks he's got hostages in there with him."


"Who is this?"


"Your old typist, Doc. Please don't say my name on the phone."


"Good to hear from you, hoss. You must be on the bricks, talking like this."


"Yeah. For now, anyway. I need you to see someone, Doc. Give me an opinion."


"I don't make house calls anymore."


"This'd be outside. I need you to do your trick with the girasol."


"I've been hearing stuff about you, over the years. Never could be sure, jailhouse gossip and all that. What do you want me to look at?"


"A baby killer."


"Forget it. That's what I heard about you. You want information, go to the library."


"Not a freak who kills babies, Doc. A baby killer, you understand?"


"You mean…a killer baby?"


"Yeah. That's exactly what I mean."


"I'll be in the city in a couple of weeks. Some stupidass budget meeting. Give me a call at…"


"There's no time, Doc. None at all."


"Look…"


"Sophie would want you to do this, Doc."


"You calling in the marker?"


"If that's the only way."


"I'll be on the early train tomorrow, son."


62

I let myself back into Mama's joint. It was like I'd never left. It's always like that. I came home from jail one time— walked in, sat down in my booth. Mama came and sat down across from me, serving her soup. Maybe that's why she doesn't age— in her spot, she controls time.


I called around. Left word for the Prof, dropping seeds on the ground. He'd turn up. Michelle used to do that kind of thing for me, fronting between our world and theirs. She'd be back. I knew my sister— missing, not lost.


Then I called the Mole. To make a reservation.


When Mama made no move to come over, I got up, went to the register. Luke was sitting next to her on a padded stool. You couldn't see him until you got close.


"Hello, Burke," he said, his frail, strangler's fingers grasping an abacus.


"Hello, Luke. Mama's teaching you how to work that thing?"


"Yes. It's fun."


"Very smart boy, Burke," Mama said. "Teach him how to use beads, never could teach you."


"I was never good with math."


"Math is money," Mama said. Like God is Love.


"I've got to talk with you."


"Okay. You want soup?"


"Sure."


She patted Luke's fair hair, voice softening. "You go in kitchen, baby. Tell cooks bring some soup to Mama."


"I don't speak Chinese," the little boy said. Being serious, not a wiseass.


"Speak like Max, okay?"


A smile brightened his face. "Sure!"


He trotted off. We took our seats.


"Baby not right," Mama said, tapping her temple with one manicured nail.


"Why do you say?"


"This morning, Mac bring him by to stay with me. Very good boy, sit quiet, read a book, okay? But later, talk funny. Baby talk, babble-babble. His name Susie, he says. I say, that a girl's name. He say, I'm a little girl…pretty little girl. He sound like a little girl, Burke. Ask me to play with him. I just hold him. Then he says, why you holding me, Mama? Luke, boy's voice. I ask him, what about little girl? He look at me like I crazy. Just been sitting, reading his book, he say to me."


"Yeah."


"Not surprise?"


"No."


"Baby need a doctor."


"I know, Mama. I found him one. Tomorrow, okay?"


She bowed agreement.


Luke marched in with a tureen of soup as the register phone rang. Mama got up to answer it.


"Here's the soup, Burke."


"Thank you." I helped myself. The kid sat across from me, self-possessed.


"Luke, tomorrow I'm going to visit an old friend of mine. A couple of old friends, actually. You want to come along?"


"I guess…"


"We can do something you'd like to do first, okay? What would you like to do?"


His little face concentrated. Then he rubbed his head, like it hurt. "I'd like to go to the zoo," he said. "I always wanted to go."


63

We found a bench in Grand Central, a half hour before the Albany train was due. Doc had been the prison shrink back when I was Upstate on my second bit. The better class of cons, hijackers, thieves, the professionals, we all liked him. You couldn't gorilla him out of medication and he wouldn't write you a phony rehab statement for the Parole Board like the wet-brain we had in one of the federal pens, but he was stand-up all the way. I remember once, a young white dude, he climbed onto the tier railing, started screaming he was going to take the dive, check out of the hotel for good. Some of the cons, they shouted at him, go ahead and jump, motherfucker, don't be talking about it, do it. Cheered him on. Some of us just watched. The guards too. Doc shoved his way through the crowd on the ground floor, talking softly, urgently up to the guy, telling him it could be fixed, whatever was wrong. But the youngster took off, and he couldn't fly. The sound when he hit the floor…first the whump! of his body, then the crack of his skull. One-two. A piece of his brain jumped around on the concrete, still full of electricity, looking for answers.


Doc ran T-groups for the rapists. I was typing reports in his office once, scamming with both fingers, hunting and pecking a go-home for a guy who'd paid me the usual twenty crates of smokes. Doc came in, face all red. He's a medium-sized man, husky, big chest, thick wrists. Hair cropped short, wears glasses.


"You give the skinners some new insights today, Doc?"


"The group is done, Burke."


"How come?"


"Because I plain hate the slimy motherfuckers, boss. They ain't sick, they're mean. They didn't teach me that part in medical school."


I liked him from then on. Once saw him go right into a cell with a con who'd ripped the toilet loose from the wall, he was that far out of his mind. And Doc talked him quiet. Saw him stop the screws from whaling on some poor bastard who'd just stopped— wouldn't move, gone catatonic. Now Doc runs the whole show for the State, manages all the joints for the criminally insane.


Sophie did her time in the psycho ward. She didn't start out there, but they told her what a ticket cost and she bought one. Bit off one of her own nipples and spit it out the cell bars. Doc ran a bunch of brain scans on her, figured her for some kind of seizure disorder. Started her on the medication, and Sophie was coming back to the world. But she terrorized the joint— when she went off, she didn't feel pain. But she sure handed it out. Doc found out she'd had a daughter. Kid would be about fourteen, wherever she was. Asked me to find her. Bring her to the joint, let her mother see her.


Took me almost a month, but I found the kid. On her knees in an alley, waiting for the next trick, not even bothering to get up while her pimp negotiated price with me. I paid the pimp what he was due, brought the kid to Lily. After a while, I took her up to see Sophie, like Doc wanted.


At first, Sophie didn't seem to know her. Then her eyes snapped open. She lunged at me, screaming. Doc had the hypo ready.


"It was worth a try," he said, later.


The little girl's okay now. Maybe she'll see her mother again. On Visiting Day.


Some of the little girls don't make it. Louisa looked up at me from her hospital bed. Sixteen, she was. Huge eyes in what was left of her face. The lost child had turned one too many car tricks. Bad skin and weak bones, held together with scabs and scores. Dying now, and she knew it.


"Anything I can do?" I asked her. "Anything you want?"


She turned her skeleton's face to me, no-soul eyes on the medical chart clipped to her bed. Where her death sentence was spelled out. AIDS. "I'd like my father to fuck me. Just one more time."


She died before she could say his name.


64

The train came in, only about ten minutes late. I took Luke's hand. If he bolted in that place, I'd never catch him. I wished Michelle was with us.


Doc had a dark blue Lands' End canvas bag slung over one shoulder, nothing else. He wasn't planning to stay. We shook hands.


"Doc, this is my friend Luke. Luke, this is Doc."


The boy stuck out his hand, clasped his left hand over Doc's right as they shook. The way I'd done.


The Bronx Zoo is nice and quiet during the weekday. Luke loved it all: the bears, the monorail that ran through a replica of an Asian forest, the jungle cats. I filled Doc in while the kid happily took a camel ride.


"Luke's video-phobic, went rigid when he saw a camera. Don't know much about his parents— a black-market adoption. He killed his baby brother, stabbed him to death. His eyes roll up sometimes. He loses time. In a foster home, he strangled a baby. Doesn't know anything about it. Or the stabbing, either. Genius IQ. Yesterday, he was a baby girl for a while. Doesn't remember that either. The DA knows, wants him to come in. We've only got a little time."


"Who's the DA? Maybe I can talk to him."


"Wolfe. From City-Wide."


"Forget it. Her crew accounts for half the rapist population in my joints."


"I know. I'm not looking for a play from her."


"What do you need me for? You know what's wrong with the kid as well as I do."


"I told you, Doc. The girasol."


Luke climbed off the camel, beaming. We took him to the reptile house. "Think he'll like the chameleons?" Doc asked.


"He doesn't know," I said.


"Don't be so sure," Doc said, watching the boy.


65

The Plymouth poked its way through Hunts Point, heading for the Mole's junkyard.


"Remember Elroy?" I asked Doc.


"Sure. Who could forget him? A rich fantasy life don't make you crazy, but Elroy flirted with it pretty good."


"He's writing a book."


"Why not, hoss? Probably make him rich."


Luke sat between us on the front seat, his hands on the padded dashboard. "You like dogs?" I asked him.


"Some dogs," he said, wary.


"These are wonderful dogs," I promised him. "You'll see."


I stopped the Plymouth at the gate. Waited while Terry came to open it. Pulled inside. The pack swirled around the car. Simba leaped lightly onto the hood, peering in at us through the windshield.


"Is he a wolf?" Luke asked.


"I don't know what he is. But he's the best at it."


Terry came around to the window. He'd been pulled loose from a kiddie pimp in Times Square by Michelle. A war-zone adoption, and Terry was her child. Hers and the Mole's.


"The Mole says to take you back in the shuttle," he said, pointing to an old Jeep, cut down so it had a flatbed rear. We climbed out. Followed Terry through the pack, climbed aboard.


He drove expertly, negotiating the minefield like it was a post-apocalypse gymkhana. Luke's eyes widened— this was wilder than the safari ride at the zoo. We pulled up in a clearing next to the Mole's bunker. The resident lunatic was nowhere in sight. I looked a question at Terry. "Mole won't be around unless you need him, okay?" he answered. "You can work downstairs."


66

Luke's eyes swept the area. The dog pack had reassembled, sitting patiently. Abandoned cars, interwoven with huge pieces of machinery, had rusted into a permanent necklace, blocking any view of the outside. Behind the necklace, a chain link fence topped with razor wire. Dots of firelight on the surrounding flatlands, sounds of diesels chugging past, a siren cut through, faded. The tip of the world. Junkyard or graveyard. The boy took it all in, observing and calm. Interested, not curious.


I started toward the bunker. "Come on, Luke. Let's go downstairs, so we can talk."


The boy stiffened. His little face went rigid, skull showing under the soft skin.


"Basement?" he said, like he didn't have enough air. "Basement?"


"Oh shit," Doc said, moving back to give the boy room.


Terry stepped forward. "It's not a basement, pal. Who said that? We don't have basements here. It's safe here, Luke. Burke's going to. the cave. A real cave, like in the jungle. It's where we go when there's trouble. They can never find you there."


"Cave?"


"Sure. It's fun. We have all kinds of neat stuff there. Want me to show you?"


"I…don't know."


"Well, you don't have to go. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Not here. This is my house, see? And you're my friend."


"Friend?"


"Sure, my friend. Like I said. I protect my friends, and they protect me. We protect each other. If bad people come around here, we know how to fix them. Fix them real good, I promise."


"Fix them?"


"Sure," Terry said, kneeling next to the boy, not touching him. "Simba!" he called.


The tawny monster bounded into the clearing, ears tipped forward, bushy tail curling up over his back. Terry made a circle gesture with his hand, and the beast whirled in his tracks, facing me and Doc, standing between Terry and Luke.


"Who's in charge here?" he asked Luke. "Me or Burke?"


"Burke is the man," Luke said, more life in his voice now, reasonable.


"And I'm the kid, right?"


Luke nodded.


"Simba, watch!" Terry snapped.


A low warning growl from the beast. He backed up until his tail was brushing Terry, magnificent head swiveling on a narrow arc. Me to Doc, Doc to me.


I took a tentative step forward. Simba lunged at me, blood-ugly snarl from deep inside him. I stepped back. The other dogs made pack-noises behind me— I didn't turn around.


"Simba's my dog. Mine and the Mole's. He loves us. Nobody hurts us here. Nobody."


"Would he hurt Burke?"


"He'd kill him," Terry said, matter-of-fact, patting the dog on his shoulder. "Or anybody else."


Luke's little hand reached out, touched the dog. Simba watched us.


I knew better than to say anything.


67

"Come on, Simba," Terry said. He walked to the bunker, Luke right next to him. All three of them disappeared inside.


I walked over to where they'd been standing. Sat on one of the cut-down oil drums the Mole uses for outdoor furniture. Doc took a seat next to me. I lit a smoke.


"Got another one of those?"


"I thought you quit."


"This is one of those times, hoss."


I handed over my pack, cracked a wooden match for him.


"We almost blew it, partner."


"I know."


"Damn! How'd that kid…Terry…how'd he know what to say?"


"It's what his mother said to him— when she brought him here. His real mother, not the bitch who birthed him. He was a sex rental when he was younger. They can smell it on each other."


"Yeah. They're brothers…"


I dragged deep on my cigarette, watching the dog pack. "You got any doubts?" I asked him.


"No. Neither do you. So what am I doing here?"


"Diagnosis."


"Bullshit. You do diagnosis as well as I do. Probably better. Never met anyone who could spot a freak like you— you got a built-in detector. And I can't treat him in one session."


"There's a piece missing, between diagnosis and treatment. We know what he is— we don't know why."


"You don't mean why, hoss…you mean who."


"Yeah. That's your piece."


"And then…"


"That's mine."


68

Simba came out of the bunker first, Luke right behind him. Then Terry.


"Burke, it's great down there!" Luke greeted me.


"Yeah? What'd you see?"


"A laser. A real laser! It cuts right through steel. And an earthquake machine…wow!"


I didn't ask him whether he was talking about the Mole's seismograph or the panel of buttons that would launch big pieces of the junkyard like NASA.


"You ready to go to work now, kid? In the cave?"


"Sure! Can Simba come too?"


I caught Terry's eye. He stepped in next to Luke. "Simba can't come, pal. He's got to go on patrol. Make sure everything's safe. But I'll come with you," his eyes daring me to refuse.


"Okay," Luke said.


Simba trotted off. I led the way downstairs. I sat down on a stool next to the Mole's workbench. Doc pulled up the ottoman to the old leather chair, made himself comfortable. Luke took the armchair, Terry standing next to him, his hand on the smaller boy's shoulder.


Underground. Diffused, natural-sunlight quartz lighting. The industrial ionizer gave the air a fresh, just-after-the-rain smell. Faint hum of machinery. A panel of LEDs blinked a message only Terry and the Mole could understand. Luke gripped the arms of the chair.


Doc started talking, low, soft tones. Just about anything, engaging, drawing Luke along. The kid grew less and less guarded…flashing, showing his brilliance, giggling happily when he solved math problems in his head. "You know what this is?" Doc asked, taking a vitreous stone out of his pocket. It was attached to a thin platinum chain.


"A gem?"


"It's a girasol, Luke. A fire opal. Look closely, see the fire, see all the colors?"


The girasol moved in a gentle arc, back and forth. A liquid light show, soft, infinity-depthed. Fire in a teardrop.


The boy's eyes tracked the gem, like he knew what was coming. I breathed through my nose, shallow, measured breaths. Luke slumped in his chair, eyelids fluttering. Doc talked him to it, no pressure, telling the boy how sleepy he was getting.


"Sleepy…" Luke agreed, baby-voiced.


"Can I talk to the others?" Doc asked. "Can you let them come out for a minute?"


Luke's eyes rolled straight up into his head, only the whites showing. He blinked rapidly. "Baby, baby, baby." A toddler's voice, maybe two years old. Happy-babble. "Baby, baby, baby."


"What's the baby's name?" Doc.


"Baby. Baby Doll. Doll Baby. Sweet Baby." The boy's features softened, bloblike, drool in one corner of his mouth.


"Hello, Doll Baby. My name is Doc. Want to be friends?"


"Baby, baby, baby…"


"Yes, you're a good baby. A handsome little boy…"


"She's a girl, stupid." My eyes flicked up to Terry, but he hadn't spoken— standing there, mouth wide open, the color leached from his face.


"What's your name?" Doc asked Luke.


"Toby. Don't you recognize me? What's wrong with you?" Smartass kid's voice, maybe eleven, twelve years old.


"Hello, Toby."


"Yeah, hello. What do you want?"


"I want to talk to you…to talk to the others."


"One at a time, pal. That's the way it works. It's my time now."


"Do you come out often?"


"Whenever he's getting tricked. Luke's school-smart, but he don't know people. Not like me."


"And the baby?"


"That's Susie— she's a runaway. When they hurt us, she comes. Runaway. You can't hurt the baby— she doesn't feel things."


"Does that make you mad? When they hurt you?"


"I don't feel it. But when they do things, we remember. We remember. And…"


I was ready for it this time, saw the eye movement. The boy's face hardened, bone structure prominent, stretching the skin. "Blood," the skull said. It wasn't a human voice.


Doc didn't miss a beat. "Blood?" he asked.


"Baby blood. Clean new blood. Mine. I need it."


"Who are you?"


"Satan's Child. I am Satan's Child."


"What do you do?"


"I kill," the voice coming from Luke said.


"Who do you kill?"


"I kill babies. Little stupid babies."


"Why do you kill babies?"


"For their hearts. To eat their hearts."


"Why do…?"


Luke launched himself at Doc, humming a baby tune, his eyes screaming. One little hand in a fist, the other pushing against Doc's chest, steadying the target. Stabbing motions, the blows so powerful Doc grunted in pain. I grabbed Luke from behind, pulling— his muscles coiled like steel snakes. I twisted his left hand behind his back. It took all my strength to bend it up toward his neck, right to the breaking point. He kept humming his baby tune, stabbing. Doc fell to the floor, Luke still on top. Terry yelled something. Luke went rigid in my hands, a piece of iron. I put him back in the easy chair. He lay like a board, spine not touching the chair back.


We watched. Luke was drenched in sweat, red and white splattering his face from inside. He went limp. More time passed. Luke squirmed, shrugged his shoulders. Rubbed his eyes like he just woke up.


"Hello, Luke," Doc said.


"Hi. It's a great cave, isn't it? Terry was showing me just before you came down."


"Yes, it's a great cave. How do you feel?"


"I feel good. Can we go to the zoo again someday?"


Doc didn't answer him, watching.


"Can we, Burke?"


"Sure," I told him. Hands in my pocket so he wouldn't see them shake.


69

Outside, in the air. Luke had gone off with Terry Happy kid, fascinated with the secrets the older boy was going to show him. I handed Doc my pack of smokes without him asking.


"You ever see it before?" I asked him.


"Multiple Personality Disorder? Sure. I did a stint in a mental hospital while I was interning. You see it in women much more than men. Never saw a kid before, but it's supposed to always start in childhood…we're just not around to pick it up."


"You're sure?"


"The personalities have names. Different voices. The last one…you felt his strength?"


"Yeah. I could barely hold him."


"The big thing…he's amnesic. He loses time. You ask him what happened down there, he won't know. Push him hard enough, and he'll make it up…fill in the gaps."


"Lily says he does that. Fakes it."


"He's not faking, Burke. What he does, it's called confabulation. He can't account for the lost time, doesn't know what happened. But he knows something did. He's not ready to let anybody see his secret."


"Does he know we know?"


"No…I don't think so. Maybe some small part of him, some observer-personality. Sometimes, one of the personalities can listen in on what the others are doing. I don't know how distinct the splits are…there may be more of them inside."


A dog howled in the distance.


"He killed those babies," I said.


"Luke didn't…it was the other one. They're as separate and distinct as you and me."


"Tell it to the judge."


"I know."


"How'd he…?"


"Get like that? Take a highly intelligent, sensitive child, subject him to intense, inescapable trauma …and he learns to dissociate. Escape inside his head. Splitting, it starts as. Some kids, it gets real. Child abuse, especially sexual abuse, that's the key predisposing factor."


"It's not genetic?"


"Not a chance. Two multiples could mate, and you wouldn't get another one from the union. Unless…"


I looked across at him, waiting. "Unless they did the same things to him."


"You think…?"


"I don't know what I think. This much you can take to the bank: you don't get a multiple personality without some severe, chronic trauma. Intense deprivation, torture…you know the game, how they play it. It'll take a while to sort it out. Lots of sessions. He's a good hypnotic subject…but he's got to feel safe before we can do anything."


"Is there a program?"


"The way you treat multiples is with individual psychotherapy. Outpatient, generally. They save the closed facilities for the dangerous ones. When one of the personalities is homicidal. Or an arsonist, a rapist, whatever."


"You know a place?" I asked him.


"None that would take a kid."


70

I knew places that would take Luke. The same places that took me when I was a kid. They got different names for them, but they're all the same.


When I got my growth, I found other places. Places where Luke had already paid the price of admission. Places where they'd never look for him.


71

"You can never leave him alone," I told Immaculata. "Never, you understand?"


Luke was in the armchair across from us, the baby Flower balanced carefully on one small knee, a picture book opened flat on the other. Talking quietly to the baby, his spindly arm around her back, pointing at the pictures. He felt our eyes.


"I'm teaching her to read," he said. Luke's voice.


"That's very sweet, Luke," Immaculata said. "Could you read when you were so little?"


"Oh yes."


"And who taught you?"


"They did. They taught me…" Rapid eye blinks, bead of sweat on the bridge of his nose.


"You love the baby, Luke?" I asked, moving close to him like I wanted to talk, hands ready. "She's a beautiful baby, isn't she, Luke?" Saying his name, anchoring the peg in the slot.


"Everyone loves Flower," he said, himself.


"It's time for her nap," Immaculata said.


"I'll put her to bed."


Max stepped into the room. Bowed to Luke, then to me, then to Mac. He reached down, took the baby from Luke, his scarred hands armor plate around the delicate skin. Flower gurgled happily, safe.


"Go with Max, see if he needs help," Immaculata told Luke. "Make sure he's careful."


"I'll watch him," Luke said.


I lit a smoke. "You have it worked out?" I asked her.


"Yes. Teresa, the psychiatrist…do you know her?"


I shook my head no.


"Well, she says Luke has to have a routine, something he can trust. So she's going to see him every day, six days a week, one day off. Some days we'll take him to her office, some days she'll come to him. Mornings, I'll drop him off at Mama's— if somebody comes in there, there's a dozen places he can hide."


"After dark?"


"Luke will sleep here. With us. Flower's crib is in our room, between the window and the bed."


"He may try anyway…Max understands?"


Her sculptured face turned up to mine. "Better than I do," she said.


72

I went back to earning my living. Pulled the Plymouth into a spot on Central Park West, got out, sniffed the air. A large, frizzy-haired woman in an orange muumuu was trying to wedge her old Toyota into a spot between a white Honda Prelude and a beige Mercedes sedan using the park-by-Braille technique. She left them both worse for wear, stepped out, patted her hands together in satisfaction. I snapped the lead on Pansy. The woman noted the lack of a pooper-scooper in my hand, made a face like she smelled something bad. I stepped into the park.


Ten-thirty in the morning, most of the citizens already at work. A man and a woman came up the path, wearing matching shorts and jogging jerseys. Even had the same numbers on the back. Cute. Pansy sat next to me as I lit a cigarette. The woman grimaced disapproval as they pranced by.


A white stretch limo purred past, the back windows blacked out. "Very subtle, Carlos," I thought to myself, dragging on the cigarette, watching like I'd been taught. By now, I knew what was in the limo. One of the Prof's pack worked in the detailing shop where Carlos' driver brought the car in every week for sweetening. Cellular phone, color TV with VCR, fax machine, hand-rubbed teak bar with cut-crystal decanters, cashmere throw rugs on the blue leather seats, a pullout mirror so el jefe's girlfriends could check their makeup before they hit the clubs. A hidden compartment in a hollowed-out door panel. Not for drugs: Carlos didn't touch the extra-strength dreamdust he peddled. No tiny rocks of crack for this boy— he dealt in weight. You want to cut it yourself, step on it, bake it, fry it, that's up to you.


It always worked the same way. The limo would glide to a stop— a man on a bike would pedal up alongside, a nylon gym bag slung over his left shoulder. The window would whisper down as the biker held the bag open. Something would drop in and off he'd go.


By now, we knew where the transfer-man went. Steaming along the bicycle path like he was leading the Tour de Chump, he'd leave the park and merge with the street traffic. A car would pull up alongside him. Sometimes a sedan, sometimes a wagon. Once it was a panel truck. A hand would reach out from the passenger side, pluck the bag from his shoulder.


Once we had it down just right, it would be our hand reaching for the cash.


The Prof was somewhere in the park, his pack scattered around. Hard-souled homeboys, paying their tuition to the master, OJT on the highwire. One slip and it's Attica.


I patted Pansy's sleek head, sitting next to her on the grass, back to myself.


73

"What kind of dog is that?"


She was a chunky, freckle-faced woman, reddish-brown hair bursting in all directions from under the sweatband around her head, wearing a plain gray sweatshirt over blue bicycle pants, slate-colored running shoes. Little pug nose, china-blue eyes.


"A Neapolitan mastiff," I said.


"I never saw one before. Are they rare?"


"She is. The world's finest dog, aren't you, girl?" Pansy grinned happily, probably thinking of a marrow bone, how they cracked in her jaws before she got to the sweet center.


"What're you doing here?"


I looked hard into her innocent eyes, wondering how old she was.


"Exercising my dog— she needs room to run."


"You let that big dog off the leash?"


"Meaning I don't look like I run with her?"


"You're not dressed for it." She chuckled.


"I'm on my way to work."


"What do you do?" Hands on hips, tip of her tongue just poking past her lips.


I looked up at her, face flat. "What do you do?"


"I'm a hit-woman," smile slashing across her broad face. "Trying to kill this cellulite." Smacking the back of one thigh.


"I hope you don't overdo it."


"Why?"


"Women do that. You all have a mass psychosis about weight."


"If we do, it's men who gave it to us."


"Not guilty," I said, trying a smile.


"That's what they all say," she shot back, pulling her sweatshirt over her head, tying it around her waist. Her breasts flared under a white T-shirt as she arched her back.


I lit a cigarette. Her nose didn't wrinkle.


"Could I pat your dog?" she asked.


"Only if she likes you," I told her.


"How would I know?"


"If she likes you, she'll…Wow! Look at that," I said, marveling at how Pansy lay down in response to my hand signal.


"That means she likes me?"


"Sure."


She dropped to her knees on the grass, stroking Pansy expertly, talking to her.


"You have a dog?"


"I had a dog. Blackie. When I was a kid. I still miss him."


Pansy's slab of a tongue lolled from her wide mouth, enjoying the attention.


"Would you like to have dinner with me sometime?" she asked.


"Yes."


"I'm Belinda Roberts."


I held out my hand for her to shake, told her one of my names.


"I'll write down my number. Do you have a piece of paper?"


"I'll remember it," I told her.


She pulled my eyes with hers, seeking the truth. Finally nodded.


"Okay," she said.


Got to her feet, tied the sweatshirt around her neck, jogged off. Very fine.


74

The white limo whispered by again. Empty now.


Done for the day, I got to my feet, unsnapped Pansy's lead, told her to heel. She took the point on my left side, shoulder against my thigh.


I cut through the trees to where I'd parked. A black man in a black suit sitting on a tree stump stood up as I approached, a dull silver automatic in his hand.


"Just stand still, mahn."


I stopped, Pansy next to me.


"I don't have any money," I said, letting fear snake its way into my voice to settle him down.


"This is no robbery, mahn. Just come along with me. Somebody wants to talk with you."


"Who?"


"Don't be stalling now, mahn. Just come along, take a nice ride."


"I'm not going anywhere, pal."


"Yes, you're coming, Mr. Burke. See, we know you. Don't be stupid, now."


"You won't hurt me?"


"No, mahn, we don't hurt you."


"What about my dog?…I can't leave her here."


"Just tie her to a tree, mahn. You be back very soon. Nobody take a big dog like that."


"But…"


"Last chance, mahn."


"Okay, okay," I said, reassuring him, reaching over to snap the leash on my dog, talking to her. Just as I was about to fasten the leash, I said, "Pansy, sit!," watching the gunman almost imperceptibly relax at the words just as Pansy launched herself without a sound, clamping her vise-grip jaws on his arm. I picked his gun off the grass, snapped "Out!" at Pansy, and she backed off. The gunman was down, moaning, left hand gripping his right forearm, blood bubbling between his fingers.


"My arm! She crushed the bone, mahn! It's all water in there."


"Who wants me?" I asked him, bending close, patting his body, looking for another gun— came up empty. "You need a doctor, need one bad," I said. "Tell me and you can go."


Creamy dots on his dark-skinned face, pain in his eyes.


"You want the dog again?" I asked.


His eyes shot around the clearing. It was empty, nobody around. I felt ice in my spine— was Clarence in on this?


"Thana," he muttered.


"What?"


"Queen Esther Thana, mahn. The Mamaloi." His eyes sweeping the area again, looking for something.


"You know my name. Tell her to call me. On the phone, understand?"


He grunted something, sounded like yes. The gunman could walk himself into the Emergency Room. Where the triage nurse would ask him if he had Blue Cross.


I turned away, pocketed his gun, slapped my thigh for Pansy to come along.


Clarence was sitting on a bench near my car. "Better let me hold the gun, mahn," he said.


I palmed it to him.


"There was another one with him," Clarence said. "They have a car waiting for you. One block down," indicating with his eyes. "Better come with me."


He got up and started in the other direction. I walked next to him, Pansy right alongside.


"What happened to the other one?" I asked him.


The cobalt eyes were calm. "He's still there," Clarence said.


75

Clarence opened the back door of his Rover. I gave the signal and Pansy clambered inside. Clarence threw a smooth U-turn on CPW, heading back downtown.


"Where shall I drop you, mahn?"


"How come you were around today, Clarence?"


He shrugged his slim shoulders, face expressionless. "I'm just a soldier, mahn."


"Then take me to the general," I told him.


76

Clarence turned east on Fifty-seventh, working his way to the FDR, then south to the Brooklyn Bridge.


"That's some dog you got, mahn. Never saw something so big move so fast."


"She's the best," I said, reaching back to pat my pal.


"Pretty woman you got there too, mahn."


"Pretty woman?"


"Yes, mahn. In the park. Pretty woman. Nice big butt on her. Never trust a woman with one of those little-boy butts, it's a sure sign."


"Who told you that?"


"Everybody knows, mahn. Big butt, big heart."


I thought of my Blue Belle, gone now. The fire-scar on Flood's rump. Blossom walking away. Maybe it was true.


I rolled down my window, lit a smoke. "You saw the woman in the park?"


"Yes, mahn. Like I said. Good age on her too. Not like some of those flighty young girls. Just right for an old man like you."


"Yeah. You were there a long time, huh?"


"All the time, mahn. Ever since you call Jacques."


"How'd you pick me up?"


"Easy enough, mahn. Your car, the places you go, all like that."


"Where else?"


"The shelter-place. The one for kids. The restaurant. I'm a shadow, mahn. Thin and dark. Nobody sees."


"I appreciate what you did, Clarence."


"You have been our friend, mahn. Jacques said."


"Here's some friendly advice for you, Clarence. Don't go into that restaurant."


"I know, mahn."


"Who told you…Jacques?"


"Everybody knows, mahn."


77

Jacques was at his table in the basement. He didn't blink at Pansy. Pansy didn't blink back.


Clarence handed him the pistol I'd taken from the man in the park. Jacques released the clip, pulling it from the butt, worked the slide.


"Empty, mahn. Nothing in the chamber. Safety was on too."


I nodded. The gunman was what he said he was— not a shooter.


Jacques turned the gun over in his hands, put one polished thumbnail inside the chamber, sighted down the barrel. "Hasn't been cleaned in a year, mahn. A piece of junk. Iron Curtain stuff, not even military." Jacques's fine-boned nose curled into a faint sneer. "Whoever had this, mahn, he was not a professional."


"There was another one," Clarence told him.


Jacques raised his eyebrows, waiting for the rest.


"He had no gun, nothing. And he never saw me coming," Clarence said, a leather-covered sap in his hand, showing Jacques what had happened to the watcher.


"You talked to the man with the gun?"


"He said he just wanted to take me someplace. To see someone named Thana. Queen Thana."


Jacques's eyes didn't change but his cheeks went hollow.


"You know her?" I asked.


"Everybody knows of her, mahn. I have not met her. And I do not want to. Obeah. Very powerful obeah. A voodoo priestess. Her followers are all from the Islands. People say she can make a man do what she wants. That she can kill you with a thought. Reach across the sea, back across time."


"She's in business?"


"Not our business, mahn. Not for money. But she is no love goddess, that one. A warrior priestess. They say her soldiers are the dead come back to life."


"What does she want from me?"


"I do not know, mahn. But if she wants you, she will find you."


"You can reach out to her?"


"No, mahn. Not with the phone. But I know…some things. I can, maybe, get a message through."


"The bag…the juju bag," Clarence whispered.


"What?"


"That was hers, maybe. Swinging from that tree in the moonlight. Evil. She knows."


"Knows what?"


"I went back. Later, I went back. In the daylight. And the bag, it was gone."


I lit a smoke, hands steadying with the answer. She hadn't taken the bag, but her watchers knew who did.


"Tell her I'll come and talk to her," I told Jacques, and walked out of the basement.


78

In prison, I used to lift weights. Just to be doing something— I was never any good at it. Bench presses. Some days they put too much weight on the bar— I couldn't get it up off my chest.


I felt like that now. Put a cardiogram on my life, you'd get a readout: sharp spikes, deep valleys.


I drew a red dot on a piece of mirror. Drew it with some lipstick Belle had left behind. I'd been meaning to throw it out for a long time now, that lipstick. I went into a halfass lotus position, looking into the dot. Until it got bigger and bigger, deeper. I went down inside, clearing my mind.


There's always a pattern. Any crazy thing makes sense to somebody at the other end. I didn't know anything about smuggling until I went to prison. You can get whatever you want inside the walls if you can pay the freight. Guards smuggled in guns, but they never crossed the color line: you wanted a pistol, you asked a guard of your own race. Drugs they'd sell to anyone.


In prison, there's lead pipes just lying around. If you hold them just right, you can still feel them vibrate with the skulls they've crushed.


I pictured a lovely glass ball. As pure as a teardrop, on a polished black marble surface. Pictured it rising from the table, floating gently in the air, hovering. I was holding it up with my will.


I blinked my eyes and came out of it just before the glass ball splattered on the marble.


79

Meetings. Always bullshit meetings. Talk talk talk. And rules. Made by the rulers. In prison, what you want is to get through it. You can't stay by yourself— they won't let you. So you mob up. Get a crew. Someone to watch your back. On the Coast, they call it getting in the car. Going along for the ride. Or the drive-by. If a crew splits up, the other side picks them off one by one, so you stay together. You change sides, nobody trusts you. The first choice is the only one you get.


I wished I could explain it to Wolfe and Lily.


80

I stayed out of the loop for a while. Prairie dog careful— just barely peeking out of my hole in the ground, ready to spook if I saw a strange shadow. Wolfe's time limit pushed me back up to ground level.


Max opened the back door to SAFE, held it while I slipped inside. I don't know how he does that— he can't hear my knock. He pointed toward the back office, made a "be careful" gesture, and went back to the gym.


Lily was standing with her back to me, hands on hips, arguing about something with a calmly seated Storm. I tapped lightly on the doorjamb. Lily whirled, not missing a beat.


"What is it, Burke? We're busy here."


"I needed to talk with you," I said mildly.


"Your telephone's broken?"


"I didn't know who'd be listening."


"Who'd be…" Lily sneered.


"Wolfe," Storm cut in.


"She wouldn't…"


"Sure she would," Storm told her. "What's wrong with you, girl? You know how she is."


"I thought I knew."


"That's what she's saying to herself right about now," I replied, even-toned, "saying it about you. You're doing what you're doing to protect a kid…so's she. Just different kids."


"She doesn't know Luke," Lily said. "All she knows is crimes— that's all she cares about."


"Stop it, Lily," Storm said, lighting her one cigarette of the day. "The doctor says stress is bad for my baby."


Lily fought a giggle. "Sure."


I lit a smoke of my own. "I got an idea," I told her.


Storm silenced Lily with a look. I went on like I hadn't seen it.


"Wolfe doesn't know Luke, that's what you said, right? That's the idea. How about if they meet?"


"Sure. What's a kidnapping on top of everything else?"


"Not a kidnapping, Lily. I'll make a deal with her."


Storm tapped her fingers on the desk, thinking. Lily brushed some of her thick glossy hair away from her face, waiting.


"She won't break her word," I said.


"It's true," Storm added.


"She's clever, though." Lily came back, stubborn-sulky.


"And you're glad enough for that, most of the time," I told her. "What's happening, you're all convinced you're right. You know what Wolfe wants…what she really wants?"


"She wants the killing to stop," Storm said.


"And she wants someone to pay," Lily put in. "That's Wolfe— someone always has to pay."


I sat on a corner of the desk, where I could see both of them. "Once I was involved in this case. Guy killed his mother. Pointed a magnum at her face, blew out the back of her head. The defense attorney put him on a polygraph. Asked him: Did you kill your mother? Answer: No. And the machine said: No Deception Indicated— Truthful. That's when the lawyer called me in. Figured, bad as it looked, it must be that someone else had done it, understand?"


They both nodded. Storm interested, Lily suspicious.


"So I talked to the man, where they had him locked up. I'd seen guys like him before, when I was inside. Anyway, I went back to the lawyer, asked him to try the polygraph again, only this time ask my questions. So they asked him again: Did you kill your mother? No. Then: Did the gun kill your mother? Yes. Were you holding the gun when it killed your mother? Yes."


"What's your point?" Lily wanted to know. "That you have to ask the right questions?"


"What if the guy was telling the truth?" I fired back.


"Huh?"


"What if he was telling the truth? What if it was the gun who killed his mother? Not him, the gun."


"I understand what you're getting at, Burke," Storm said, "but I don't see how it helps us. The gun couldn't do the killing by itself."


"Neither could Luke."


Lily walked right up in my face, her chin tilted at an aggressive angle. "What?" she demanded.


"You know Wolfe, how she is about playing with the law. Remember the time she proved that rapist wasn't having 'flashbacks'? No 'Vietnam Vet syndrome'? Remember when she shredded that 'episodic dyscontrol' defense…when that guy shot his wife and said he had some kind of brain seizure that made him do it?"


"You're a real fan of hers, huh?"


"Oh, chill out, Lily," Storm said. "Burke, all the stuff you talked about, it was Wolfe fighting some sophisticated defense. That's what she does, she attacks…not defends."


"No, that's not what she does. Not all of it. Victims get defended, right?"


"Or avenged." Lily.


"Yeah, or avenged. Sometimes both. But how about this: Luke comes in, okay? The defense is this Multiple Personality Disorder. Insanity, okay? And Wolfe'll know the kid's crazy— no way he's faking— he'll stand up to any test. But you can't end up like Luke unless somebody does something to you. Something real ugly. For a long time."


"You think she'd want to go after Luke's parents? For child abuse?"


"Not for child abuse, Storm. For homicide. Like Luke was the gun, but they pulled the trigger."


Nobody said anything.


I lit another smoke, letting it percolate.


Storm made a noise. "The baby kicked," she said.


I bowed. "She agrees with me."


Lily smiled her Madonna's smile. "You really think she'd go for it?"


"She's your sister," I reminded her. "You tell me."


81

I went by the restaurant the next morning, to check my messages before I called Wolfe. Immaculata was at the register. A fear-jolt hit me— I never saw anybody but Mama there before.


"Where's Mama?" I asked her. "You taking over for her?"


"Downstairs. With Luke."


Something in her voice. I came close, leaned over to her. Her face was set in hard straight lines, white streaks under the golden skin, jaw tight, eyes moist.


"What?"


"He…tried last night. Max had to hold him. Flower…she woke up. He was…like demons in him. When he finally stopped, he just slept. This morning…like it was nothing. I brought him here."


"Do you want…?"


"No! I'm just…"


"I know," I told her. Like trying to sleep in prison. With the cell doors unlocked.


82

I left her there. Called the DA's office. They told me Wolfe was on trial, in Long Island City, Part L-3. Bureau chiefs don't try cases. I put it together. Threw on my lawyer suit and headed out to Queens.


When I walked in the courtroom, Mary Beth was already on the stand. That's the way Wolfe trained them: no prelims, no dancing— come out throwing bombs, try and drop the other guy soon as you hear the bell. Lola was leading the little girl through her testimony, her body language suggesting she was pulling softly, coaxing the child out past her fear. Bringing the monster into the light. Lola's slim body was a gently weaving wand in front of the little girl, pacing back and forth on her high heels, blocking the defendant's view of the witness box.


Sheba sat next to Mary Beth, the little girl's hand on her head. The dog's eyes followed Lola.


"Just one more question, Mary Beth. You told us what he did, what he did to you. It went on a long time— how come you never told anyone?"


"He said…he told me he'd make something bad happen to Mommy. He said he'd made her get sick and die. He showed me…in the paper where a little girl's mother got sick and died. He said he did that to her. Because the little girl told."


"No further questions," Lola said, sitting down as Mary Beth brushed tears off her cheeks.


The defendant's lawyer got to his feet. A fat, jowly man, his hair was plastered to his scalp with sweat, carefully combed up and over his head from one side to advertise his baldness.


"Your Honor, I again renew my objection to the presence of that animal while the witness testifies. The Rulon decision clearly holds that…"


The judge was a regal-looking woman, reddish-blonde hair cut stylishly short, square shoulders, almost a military bearing. I'd seen her before— she started out in Family Court, where they get closer to the truth. Hard to tell her age, but her eyes were old. "Counselor," she said, "the court is familiar with the Rulon case. That involved a witness who testified sitting on the lap of a social worker. Surely it is not your position that the dog is signaling to the witness?"


"No, Your Honor. But…"


"The court has already ruled, sir. You may have a continuing objection, and your exception to my ruling. Ask your questions."


Sheba watched the fat attorney like he was mutton in a three-piece suit.


The questioning wasn't much. The usual: Did she ever watch horror movies? Ever see a porno tape on the VCR in her mother's house? Have bad dreams? Anybody tell her what to say?


Mary Beth answered the questions. Sometimes the judge had to tell her to speak up a little bit, but she was getting through it. Patting Sheba, drawing comfort and strength.


The defense attorney asked, "Do you know it's a sin to tell a lie, Mary Beth?"— stepping aside dramatically so the jury would understand it was his client being lied about.


"I know it's a sin," the child said, calmly. "I'm not lying."


"She can't see me!" the defendant hissed suddenly, whispering for his lawyer's ear but loud enough for everyone to hear. "She can't see without her glasses."


Wolfe was on her feet and charging forward like they just rang the bell for the last round and she needed a KO to pull it out. "Was that an objection?" she snarled.


"Yes, that was an objection!" the defense attorney shouted, scrambling to clean up the mess the molester made. "My client is being denied his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation."


"He doesn't want confrontation, he wants terrorism. The law says he gets to see and hear the witness— it doesn't say anything about her having to stare at the likes of him."


"That's enough," the judge snapped. "Take the jury out."


The court officers hustled the jurors away as everyone sat in silence. One of Wolfe's people took Mary Beth and Sheba out a side door. The judge turned to the lawyers.


"That will be just about enough, counselors. You both know better than to make arguments like that in front of a jury. I don't want to hear a lot of rhetoric now. Mr. Simmons, have you any authority for the proposition that the Sixth Amendment requires a witness to wear corrective lenses?"


"Not specifically, Your Honor. But if she can't even see the witness, how can she identify him?"


"She already did that, counsel. On the prosecution's direct case, remember?"


"Yes, I remember. But she was wearing her glasses then."


"What's your point?"


"My client has rights."


"None that have been abridged by this court. Now…that won't be necessary, Ms. Wolfe…I have already ruled. Bring the jury back in."


"Your Honor, in light of your ruling, I have no choice but to ask for a mistrial."


"On what grounds, counselor?"


"Prejudice, Your Honor. The jury heard what my client said. A statement like that will poison their minds."


"Are you claiming the prosecution caused your client's outburst, Mr. Simmons?"


"Well, yes…I mean, if they hadn't…"


"Denied! Let's go."


Wolfe turned away from the bench to return to her seat. Caught my eye.


The defense attorney stood up again. "Your Honor, may I have a few minutes with my client before the jury comes back in?"


"No, counsel, you may not."


"Your Honor, I ask for this time because I believe it might promote a settlement of this matter."


"There is no settlement," Lola snapped out at him. "It's too damn late for that."


"I don't need your permission to plead to the indictment," the defense attorney shot back.


"Then do it. It's a B felony, and we're asking for the max."


"Your Honor, could we approach?"


The judge nodded. Wolfe and Lola came up on one side, the defense attorney on the other. Couldn't hear what they were saying. Finally, the defense attorney walked back to his table, began talking urgently to his client, waving his arms.


I felt it coming.


The defense attorney stood up one last time. "Your Honor, my client has authorized me to withdraw his plea of Not Guilty and to plead to the indictment as charged. My client is a very ill man. Besides that, he wishes to spare the young lady the trauma of cross-examination. I believe…"


"Counselor, save your presentation for the dispositional phase of these proceedings. If your client wants to change his plea, I will take his allocution."


They kept the jury out of the courtroom while the defendant admitted the whole thing. His lawyer promised extensive psychiatric testimony to explain the whole thing. Lola and Wolfe sat silently.


The judge discharged the jury, thanking them for their attention. I watched their faces— the defense attorney had read them right— if they had gotten their chance, his client was going down.


The defense attorney asked for bail to be continued. Lola pointed out the defendant was now a convicted felon, facing mandatory imprisonment, with great motivation to flee the jurisdiction.


The judge listened, asked the defense if there was any rebuttal. Listened again. Then she revoked the defendant's bail, slammed her gavel for emphasis, and walked off the bench.


The fat defense attorney turned to Wolfe and Lola. "You just put a very sick man in prison. I hope you're pleased with yourselves."


Wolfe and Lola looked at the lawyer, blank expressions on their faces. Then they slapped each other a loud high-five.


83

She stopped in the aisle next to where I was seated, like she'd forgotten something. Never looked down.


"I need to talk to you," I said, just past a whisper.


"You know the Sun Bear bar. On Continental, just off Queens Boulevard?"


"I can find it."


"Seven o'clock," she said, walking away.


84

I got away from the courthouse complex. Found a pay phone and went to work.


"My bread is upon the waters, mahn," Jacques said. "When a message comes back, I will reach out for you."


"Okay, thanks. Is Clarence around?"


"Yes, my friend. He is around you. Guard your health."


"Gardens," Mama answered the phone.


"It's me, Mama."


She waited, not saying anything. Hell, she's the one who taught me. "Is the boy there?"


"Sure, boy here. Good boy, helps Mama."


"Doesn't he have an appointment? You understand…?"


"Sure, understand. With the lady. Lady come here now."


"Every day?"


"Sure, every day."


"Okay, anybody call?"


"Your friend, say to meet him at car wash, tomorrow at seven. She didn't say who called. Didn't need to."


"Thanks, Mama." She hung up.


85

Plenty of time. I found a Korean joint in Jamaica, combination greengrocery and deli. I was eating a bagel and cream cheese, sipping a cold Ginseng-Up, watching the owner's daughter test pineapples for ripeness by pulling up on the stalks. If the stalk comes out, the pineapple's ready to eat. The cash register had two sliced lemon halves on either side on the drawer. The clerk ran his fingers across the lemon's surface as he counted bills. Big sign by the register. NO CHANGE. A stocky guy with one of those small-billed painter's caps turned backward on his head came in, mumbled something about change for the bus. The counter-clerk pointed at the sign, said something in Korean. The guy kept pressing, raising his voice, sounding drunk. I came up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder. He whirled on me, face snarled. "You got a problem?" I shook my head, smiled. "No," I told him, "I got change." I gave it to him. He swaggered out of the joint, sneering. A guy who knows the score— probably bets on pro wrestling. Before the clerk took the money for my bill, he slipped the revolver he'd been holding back under the counter.


86

The main branch of the Queens Public Library wasn't far away. I parked in the lot nearby, went inside. Used the InfoSearch computer to track down articles on Multiple Personality Disorder. There were a lot of them. Found a quiet place to myself. Killed some time.


The Sun Bear had little round marble tables scattered all around, long dark wood bar against one wall, blue smoke mirror behind. Wolfe was sitting alone, wearing a plum-colored sheath, black stockings, and matching heels with ankle straps. Her hair was tied up in a loose knot with a black ribbon around it. Man sitting one table away: sunglasses hooked over some gold chains resting on his chest, gold coin ring on his little finger. He shot back a cuff, checked his watch. More gold.


I walked up on Wolfe's left just as he approached from the right. Focused on his target, he didn't see me.


Wolfe dragged deeply on her cigarette, eyes straight ahead.


The man leaned over her table. "I wish I was that cigarette," he said, flashing a mouthful of caps, white against tan.


Wolfe took the cigarette out of her mouth. Looked at it carefully. "So do I," she said, looking right into his face. Dropped the cigarette to the barroom floor, ground it out with the tip of one shoe.


The man flushed red under his tan just as I pulled out a chair, sat down next to Wolfe.


He muttered something as he walked away.


Wolfe turned to me, smiled. "I think that man just called you a runt."


I ordered a ginger ale from the Japanese waitress. Wolfe took a beer.


"Nice job today," I said.


She shrugged. "The real work is always before the trial. You train to go the distance, sometimes it ends early."


"And sometimes, they add a few rounds at the end."


"What does that mean?"


"Two weeks… remember?"


"Sure."


"Things happen."


"Yes. Like babies getting killed."


"I know. I'm in the middle."


"No, you're not, Mr. Burke. You're nowhere in this at all. What's between Lily and me…well, that's a lot of things. But one thing it isn't— it isn't you, understand?"


"I didn't mean between you and Lily," I said. Mildly, to take the edge off her harsh tone. "I mean between two right things, okay?"


"There aren't two right things. There never are.


"You're sure?"


"Yes."


"Would you be willing to take a look— make sure it's always that way?"


"Take a look at what?"


"At some things I found…" Rushing ahead as her eyebrows went up. "I'd have to take you there."


"Just give me the address."


"I can't do that."


She lit another smoke, ghost of a smile curling around the filter in her mouth. "You want me to wear a blindfold?"


"No. I'd trust you."


Her eyes were a gray-green, set wide apart. "Let's do it with the blindfold," she said.


"I'll let you know. Soon."


87

I was at Lily's a little past nine. The programs were winding down for the evening— the place was jammed with mothers and fathers picking up their kids. That's what they call whoever comes for the kids— parents. Biology doesn't count down here.


Max spotted me. Put a finger to his lips, motioning for me to come with him. He led me to the one-way glass on the side wall of one of the treatment rooms. Inside, Immaculata, in the lotus position, dressed in a loose white cotton outfit. Facing her a couple of feet away, Luke. Her arms gently parted the air, like she was conducting an orchestra in slow motion. The kid followed along, copying every gesture. Max tapped my shoulder, pointed at his stomach. Inhaled deeply through his nose, expanding his stomach. He exhaled sharply, in a steady, powerful stream, his chest growing as the air poured out. Yoga breathing. He pointed back into the treatment room. Luke had a blissful look on his little face as Immaculata pressed both hands against her midsection, exhaling as Max had done. Luke was with her, locked in synch.


Lily was in her office, talking at her daughter Noelle, the dark-eyed limit-tester. Noelle's around fifteen, couple years older than Terry. Lily snapped something at the kid, who responded by cocking her head the exact same way her mother does.


I stepped inside, lighting a smoke. Mother and daughter both made a face. "Hi, Burke!" the kid said.


"Hello, Noelle. How's school?"


"It's summertime," she said, like I was brain-damaged.


"Okay. Listen, I need to talk to Lily for a minute."


"Where did you get that suit?" she asked, ignoring what I'd said.


"Orchard Street."


"What's it made of?" Stepping over to me, fingering the lapel.


"I don't know."


"It doesn't look like anything."


"It's not supposed to, Noelle."


"Oh, ugh!" She was wearing black leather high-top shoes, white anklets with little red hearts on the cuffs, black bicycle pants to her knees, a gauzy white skirt over the pants, cheerleader-length, a black silk tank top covered by a red bolero jacket. Two earrings in one ear, no makeup, her glossy black hair cut in a radical wedge, jaunty white beret on her head. I was her father, I'd start stockpiling weapons.


"Noelle…" Warning note from Lily.


"I'm going, Mother." She looked at me again. Turned to Lily: "Could I buy Burke a decent jacket…something nice, so he'd have a look?"


A smile blossomed on Lily's face. "Sure, you want to waste your money.


Noelle pivoted like a ballerina, held her hand out to me. "Give me some money, I'll get something for you."


Lily chuckled. "How much money?" I asked.


"Oh…three hundred dollars, okay?"


"No."


"You want me to buy junk?"


"Look, I'm perfectly happy with what I got, okay?"


"Oh, pul-eeze, Burke. Your gear is seriously heinous. How about two hundred?"


"For two hundred, do I get something stuupid dope hype fresh?"


"Oh, you're so down there," she giggled. "Okay, two hundred."


"How about one hundred? And how about you leave your mom and me alone?"


She held out her chubby child's hand again. I put a couple of fifties in it. "Thank you so much," she said, no sarcasm, just a trace of breathiness. Practicing, getting it right. Then she gave her mother a kiss and made a dignified exit.


88

"How's it going?" I asked Lily.


"He's coming along. It's not something you can do in a week."


"I know. Not in ten days, either."


Lily put her elbows on the desk, nestling her chin in the V of her fists. "What are you saying?"


"I got an idea. Or the beginning of one, anyway."


"Before you play around with any ideas, you should look at this stuff," indicating a handful of paper covered with typing.


I looked a question at her.


"Treatment reports," she said. "From Teresa."


89

I let Pansy out to her roof, made us each some supper while she took her pre-dump stroll. Then I sat down to read the reports. Had to hold the pages almost at arm's length to make out the words. I'd need reading glasses soon.


Hair fell into my eyes. I combed it back with my fingers. Seemed like they were sliding through easier than they used to these days.


The report was a war-zone dispatch— no overheated adjectives, no proposal writer's lies…cold truth. They were at the stage where they could call up the individual personalities, speak to them like they were different people in the room. I used the stuff I learned from the library like a Rosetta Stone, read it through.


Individualized Reactions to Psychotropics:


The core personality (Luke) was administered a single dose (1 1/4mg) Valium, PO. Within 45 minutes, subject was almost comatose, language was fragmented, dream-state, startle-response almost nonexistent, pinprick produced no reaction.


At session #6, subject hooked to IV, simple glucose solution administered. No reaction. Hypnosis brought "Satan's Child" to surface. Subject was in a rage, restrained by flex-straps. In this state, 10 mg Valium administered IV. No reaction: subject remained agitated, angry. When "Satan's Child" personality departed, "Toby" emerged…and promptly fell asleep. IV immediately discontinued.


Conclusion: The varying personalities are physiologically as well as psychologically distinct. The violent personality accesses significantly greater adrenaline flow, exceeding even limbic rage, producing phenomenal strength disproportionate to age and physical structure.


The report went on. More about "core personality" and "fusion goals." But every word sang the same song.


Inside Luke, different children.


One a monster.


90

I nosed the Plymouth east on Houston Street, covering the distance from the West Village to the Lower East Side in minutes. Turned right on Ludlow, right again on Delancey, back the way I'd come.


The car wash is on the corner of Delancey and the Bowery, the supplies stored on the concrete island at the traffic light. I pulled over just past Chrystie Street, watching the action. Cars pulled up to the light, two black men detached themselves from the island, dipping their squeegees in a big white plastic bucket, swinging them briskly to throw off the excess water. They walked the line of cars, looking for customers. One tried persuasion— you could read his gestures from a block away. The other just went to work, ready to demand money when he finished. Some drivers turned on their windshield wipers, others waved their hands signaling "No!" Some just sat rigid behind the wheel, staring straight ahead.


I watched for a while. Cabdrivers never went for the windshield wash. Not truckers either. The washers were lucky to score one paying job every four, five lights. A bad time to work, early in the morning, dealing with commuters. Nobody was where they wanted to be.


Seven o'clock. I pushed off from the curb, watching for a gap in traffic. Rolled to a stop right at the light. The Prof was perched on an abandoned car seat, smoking a cigarette like he was on the deck of a cruise ship. He flicked the smoke aside, majestically got to his feet, moved to my car as one of the washers ceremoniously slapped a squeegee into his hand.


"Watch how it's done, son," the Prof sang out.


I hit the switch, sliding down the driver's window.


"Good morning, my man. Here's the plan: pay a buck and change your luck. Do something right and you see the light."


I handed him a bill. The Prof did the windshield in a half dozen expert swipes, bowed deeply, tossed the squeegee to one of the washers, and resumed his seat. I took off, straight ahead onto Kenmare, turned left at Crosby, and waited.


Halfway through my second smoke, the Prof slid into the passenger seat.


"Where to?" I asked.


"Head over to Allen, find a place to park."


91

I found a spot just off Hester, pulled in behind a red Acura Legend sedan. A man in his thirties crossed the street, oiled muscles gleaming under a cut-down T-shirt, baggy shorts, baseball cap and sunglasses, zinc ointment covered his nose. Surf's up, somewhere. A battered pale green Cougar pulled to the curb. Two kids got out: teenagers, a boy and a girl, dressed alike in black, sporting matching asymmetrical haircuts. They wobbled down the street together as the Cougar roared off. Home from a night at the clubs? A dark sedan stopped at the light, overflowing with Vietnamese. The guy riding shotgun swiveled his head to look at me-I could feel homicidal eyes behind the sunglasses, measuring. Up close, he'd stink of cordite.


"What's up?" I asked the Prof.


"Queen Thana, schoolboy. Word is, you've been dancing with the devil."


"What word?"


"The drums hum, bro'. Stay close to the ground, you can hear the sound."


"And…?"


"And stay away, don't play, okay?"


"I'm not playing."


The little man's deep brown eyes turned to me. "I can't keep squaring your beefs, chief. You wanted to go play gunfighter games out in Hillbilly Harlem, I tried to make you see some sense, but I didn't press too hard, right?"


I nodded.


"This ain't the same, lame. The Queen is mean, Jack. She got people who want to die, that's no lie."


"I'm not in anything with them— I don't even know who they are."


"Don't be slick with the man who taught you the trick, schoolboy. Got to be, you holding something they want."


I lit a smoke, thinking it through.


"You talked to them," I said.


"We rapped across the gap, exchanged some ideas, like the UN."


"They lean on you?"


"That's not the way they do— I thought you knew. Just asked me to talk to you."


"Come on, Prof."


"You took something of theirs. They say, maybe you didn't know whose it was, okay? They want it back. Said to bring it with you when you come."


"Come where?"


"Man said they'll tell the dealer. Jacques. But you got to have it with you, understand?"


"Yeah." Thinking of Wolfe. How to get it back.


"I'll call, every day. Once in the morning, once at night. You get it, leave word. I'll set up the meet. Better if it comes from us."


"I'll try.


"Try hard, homeboy."


92

It was still early. I rolled by Central Park, telling myself I was scanning Carlos. Practicing my lies. But the woman who said her name was Belinda didn't come by.


93

The white dragon was still on guard in the window. Always a dragon there— white for clear, blue for cops, red for danger. I drove around the back. The guys in the kitchen looked me over like they'd never seen me before.


I found my booth, waited. Mama wasn't at her register. No waiter came by.


A copy of the Daily News was in my booth. Five kids murdered so far this week. Separate incidents. Gunned down— cross-fire killings. The city's loaded with homicidal punks, and not a marksman among them.


If you wrote a book about it, the critics would say it was full of gratuitous violence.


Letter to the editor from some cop, arguing with a citizen who complained the police don't ticket off-duty cars parked near the precinct house. The cop said he put his life on the line every day— he was entitled to park on the house.


That was true, they should give cabdrivers free rent.


I turned to the race results.


94

"You not want soup?" Mama materialized at my elbow.


"I was waiting for you."


"Cook not come out?"


"Nobody came out."


"Cooks nervous— strangers in the basement."


"Luke?"


"Luke not a stranger. Woman…Teresa…come every day."


"I know."


"Alone with the boy. Every day," she said, eyes narrowing. Mama doesn't trust citizens."


"I'll go talk with her."


"Not now. She come up here, finished. Talk then, okay?"


"Okay. Could I have some soup, then?"


Mama smiled with a corner of her mouth, spewed out a torrent of Chinese with the other. One of the waiters came through the back door. Bowed, nodded, went away.


"You bet horse?" Mama asked, pointing at the open newspaper.


"Maybe. If I see something I like."


The waiter came back with the soup. Also some hard noodles and a plate of dim sum floating in clear sauce with tiny flecks of green. Mama watched me eat, taking only token sips herself, tapping her long fingernails on the cheap Formica tabletop. I waited— she wouldn't say anything she didn't want to.


The waiter came back. Said something to Mama. She nodded.


"Woman coming up," she said to me.


I stood up to greet her. Silver-streaked blonde straight hair parted in the middle, hanging down almost to her shoulders. Brown eyes, nose slightly off-center, small nostrils, tiny jaw at the bottom of an oval face. Dressed in a camel's-hair blazer over a silk turtleneck, wide dark blue skirt, sensible bone pumps.


"Hello, I'm Dr…ah, Teresa. You must be Burke— Lily described you."


"But I'm even better-looking than she said, right?"


"No." She laughed gently. "You're not."


I made a sweeping gesture and she sat down across from Mama, who showed no sign of moving. I slid in next to her.


"What can you tell me?"


"In a way, it's good news. Luke is very young to have gone full multiple. We can get to fusion a lot easier if the behavior isn't calcified over time— if the membrane between the personalities doesn't harden. For a child, there's no real investment in any of the alternates. So when the situation changes…Are you following me?"


"The safer he is, the easier it is for him to come together."


"Yes." She smiled. "That's a good way to put it."


"How long?"


"I don't know. There's no schedule for these things. But I don't feel it will be that much longer."


"What did Lily tell you about his…situation?"


"Luke is a patient, I'm a physician." Meaning she knew the whole story.


I lit a smoke as the waiter came to clear away the plates. Noticed Mama didn't offer Teresa anything.


"Lily tell you how I fit in?"


Teresa let her gaze trail across Mama's face. "There are…confidentiality issues. If Mrs. Wong would…"


"Mama is my family," I told her. "I have no secrets from her." Mama smiled— at the truth and at the lie.


Teresa watched my face. I dialed sincerity right up into my eyes. Waited.


She took a breath. "Lily said you were her friend. That you specialized in some sort of currency transfers…she wasn't specific. And she said you could be trusted."


"She tell you I was in the middle of a goddamned war between her and one of her sisters?"


"Yes. Wolfe."


"Yeah, Wolfe. And this Wolfe has a pack, understand? I'm about out of time. What I need is to have you talk to her. Let her see where things are. Back her off a bit."


"I'm on shaky ground with that," she said. "I can't reveal information about a patient."


"She doesn't have to know your name— she'll play square."


"You think if she believes Luke is close to recovery, she'll give him more time."


I dragged deep on the cigarette. Mama's face was bland, like she didn't understand English.


"Wolfe's gonna give somebody some time, Doc. Somebody has to pay. I know that's not your department, but that's the game. I'm no psychologist, but I know Luke wasn't born like he is, right?"


"Yes."


"Somebody did something to him. Something bad. You go far enough, you'll find out, yes?"


"Probably. Not for sure."


"That's what I need you to tell Wolfe. Just like that."


"I don't understand what good that will do."


"Wolfe's a hunter. That's what she does. Sometimes she does it by trading, you understand? Gang rape, four punks involved, okay? The evidence is weak…dark in that alley, hard to make a stand-up ID, like that…but they nail one of them— say with a DNA match. The rest are gonna walk. Rape's a B felony here: twenty-five max on top. So she offers the one freak she has cold maybe four-to-twelve…and he rolls over on the others, nails them down."


"Yes, I know. Plea bargaining."


"No, you don't know…not the way Wolfe plays it. When she deals, it's a bargain for the victim, not the rapist. She'll take any case to trial, go the limit. She makes a deal, it's gotta be a good one."


"So…"


"So whatever Luke did, he was just the messenger. The freaks who turned him out, Wolfe'd take them in exchange, see?"


"Yes. All right, tell her to call…"


"That's not the way it's done. I'll bring her here. You'll talk to her here."


"Why not just…?"


"I think I know Wolfe, how she'll act. But if I'm wrong, if she won't play, then I'll take her away …she won't find this place, she won't know your name."


I ground out my cigarette, waiting for her answer.


She got up to leave. Turned to speak to me. "I am treating a patient. A seriously disturbed patient who also happens to be a child. If someone shows up in my office…wherever that is…and I believe it to be in my client's interests to discuss the matter, I would do that."


"Thanks."


She offered her hand. I shook it. "Goodbye, Mrs. Wong," she said to Mama.


Mama inclined her head a fraction of an inch.


Teresa went out the back, one of Mama's waiters just behind her.


95

I took the Manhattan Bridge to the BQE, heading for Queens. Shoved a cassette into my tape player. Judy Henske. Making a comeback now, playing clubs on the Coast. She wasn't back in the studio yet— the bootleg tape cost me fifty bucks. Fucking thieves. It was like she'd never been away-still had all the chops-wailing, growling, cooing at the crowd, owning the audience. Shining her torch. "Duncan and Brady," her own take on "StagoLee." Perfect. The Plymouth hit one of those lunar craters they call potholes here— I just caught the tail end of some Primo Bitch piece I hadn't heard before.


I've had just about enough of your love


It's time to take it on the road


It started out with a hug. darlin'


But now it's a stranglehold


You say you've been saving for our future


You say you got some Master Plan


Well, you can keep your Social Security, sonny


What I need now is a man


I listened to the end-tape hiss, thinking about the waiter in Mama's joint, the one following Teresa. Sword or shield?


96

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