I found a pay phone on Queens Boulevard. They put her through.


"This is Wolfe."


"It's me. Could you spare a few minutes to talk to me about something?"


"You don't want to come here?"


"No."


"Remember where we last had lunch?"


"Sure."


"One-fifteen, more or less, okay?"


"Okay. Remember what I brought you— last time we ate there?"


"Sure."


"Can you bring it with you?"


"Why?"


"I'll explain."


"I'll see."


97

They were in the same place, Wolfe and Lola. I sat down, ordered another chef's salad. It wasn't much— the restaurant's produce buyer had gotten to the market after the Koreans that day.


"You bring it?" I asked her.


"Tell me why you want it."


"Okay with you, I talk like this…?" Eyes on Lola.


"Yes. In fact, it's the only way."


"You looked in the bag, right?"


She nodded, not saying anything.


"And you took it apart real careful, one pin at a time, analyzed what you found inside?"


Nodded again.


"No baby?"


"Chicken parts," Lola said. Caught a warning look from Wolfe.


"I need it back. You probably tagged it, so you'll have to put something else in its place in the evidence locker."


Wolfe pushed her salad aside, lit a smoke. Raised her eyebrows to ask why.


"The people who it belongs to…they want it back. You opened it, you know what it is. These aren't people I can play with. It was evidence of the homicide, I wouldn't say anything."


Wolfe pulled on her smoke, thinking. Lola scanned the room over my shoulder.


"You get the divers yet?" I asked her.


"Couple, three days," she said.


"What I asked for…?"


"Your turn to pay the check," she said.


98

Lola opened the trunk of her Reatta. I transferred the package to the Plymouth.


"Is she married?" I asked, nodding my head toward Wolfe, sitting in the front seat.


Lola held her finger to her lips in a "ssssh" gesture.


99

Back in my office, I took a look. Carefully unwrapped the layers of plastic, bracing myself for the smell. It didn't come.


The juju bag looked like it hadn't been touched. Somehow smaller than when I'd first seen it, not as menacing lying on my desk.


Pansy poked her nose over the desktop, trying to see what I was doing. I told her to go to her place. She ignored me. Snarled— a higher pitch than I'd heard before.


I still didn't want to touch it.


100

There's places even zombies won't go. I walked to the station at Chambers Street, slipped into the underground. Dropped a token into the slot. The Exit door was propped open— most of the citizens just walked through without paying. Social protest, like the yuppies who throw Israeli shekels into the Exact Change baskets on the highway. Sure.


It didn't look like rain, but I carried a little red umbrella— the kind you can compress to baton size. A real piece of junk— so cheap that one of the ribs had worked itself loose— one pull and it would come right out in my hand. The tip was real sharp.


At West Fourth, I changed to the F train. Got a seat next to an old man who looked like he snorted interferon— pinch-faced, thinning hair nicely parted at the back to reveal dime-sized dandruff flakes. He opened a copy of the Times, spreading it across my face. His hands were liver-spotted, nails long and yellowing, curving at the tips. He smelled like his life.


The train picked up speed, rocking on the rusty tracks, overloaded with human cargo, paradise for the rubbers and the gropers. And the boys who carried box cutters to slice wallets free of clothing. If the air conditioning was on, it never had a chance.


The old man slammed a sharp elbow into my chest, shoving for more room, making high-pitched grunting noises, rattling his newspaper, flakes flying off his skull like greasy snow.


A good-sized Puerto Rican woman got on at Thirty-fourth, a plastic shopping bag from a drugstore chain in one hand, using it as a purse. She was wearing a white uniform of some kind, white flats with thick soles, white stockings. Coming from work. She worked her way over to a pole in the subway car, leaned against it gratefully.


I saw my chance.


Caught her eye, rose to my feet, my back to the rest of the humans, bowing slightly, gesturing with my hand like an usher showing a customer to her seat. There was maybe eighteen inches of seat showing— she dropped into it just as the vicious old man slid over to close the gap. She pancaked him like he was Play-Doh— the Times went flying, a thin shriek came out of his mouth. After that, they fought in silence.


My money was on the right horse. The old man finally extricated himself, stumbled off to another part of the subway car, reeking hate.


The Surrogate Ninja Body Slam— it doesn't always work, but when it does, it's a thing of beauty.


101

I got off the train at Rockefeller Center, stepped out and walked back along Sixth to Forty-second. It wouldn't be dark for hours, but clots of teenagers were already on patrol. "Driving the Deuce," they call it, cruising Times Square, eyes lusting into the windows full of things: electronic gear, overdose jewelry, flashy clothes, battery-powered body parts. Down here, the only culture is Cargo Cult.


I had more pieces to put together before I brought Wolfe to meet Luke. The library had signs all around— the Campaign to Combat Illiteracy.


They should have asked me to be a consultant. I learned to read, really read, in prison. The Prof told me you could steal more money with a briefcase than with a pistol. I know that's true— but I never seem to get it right.


When I came back outside, it was just getting dark. I called Bonita at the place she works— told her I'd come by later, take her home.


102

Almost four in the morning when I stepped out of Bonita's building. Lighter, not happier. She'd made sweet little come-noises in her bed, following the script.


I lit a cigarette to scan the street, feeling the night shift. I'm not usually a target, but predators work the same way lonely losers do in singles bars— the closer it gets to quitting time, the more desperate they are to make a connection.


Almost to my car when a van prowled up on my right. I stepped behind the fender of a parked car, reaching inside my jacket when I saw what the van was tracking…a woman in a red dress slit up one side, walking unsteadily, like she was drunk. A street snatch is high-risk— maybe the van held a pack of gambling beasts, out to gang-rape Lady Luck. Or maybe I spent too much time on the dark side, manipulated by memories.


"Linda! Wait for me!" I yelled, loud enough to make her turn around.


The van took off.


103

Still wasn't tired when I got back to the office. I gave Pansy a couple of pints of chocolate chip ice cream I'd picked up at an all-night deli, smoked a cigarette, read through Michelle's letters again.


I flicked the channels on the black&white set, ignoring Pansy's annoyance when I couldn't find any pro wrestling. Finally settled for Mayberry, R.F.D. Fell asleep wishing Andy Griffith had been the Sheriff last time I'd stuck up a liquor store.


104

In the morning, I thought it through again. Stepping back, watching the edges. I had the bag. Wolfe had agreed to the meeting. It didn't feel dangerous to me. I could square it all up, get out, go back to taking off Carlos.


Time to roll, right? Get on with it.


Something holding me back.


Maybe I wasn't scared enough, yet.


105

At Mama's, waiting for Teresa. After my soup, Luke brought out a deck of cards, asked me if I wanted to play.


"What do you know how to play, kid?"


"Gin. Max taught me."


We played a few hands. Played a few more before I realized the little bastard was no amateur.


"How many cards left outside your hand?" I asked him.


"Twenty-six," he said, guilelessly.


"Where are they?"


"You have ten, there's one up, so there's fifteen in the deck."


"What are the cards, Luke?"


"If I tell you, then you'll know what's in my hand, kind of."


"Yeah. Like you kind of know what's in mine, right?"


"Right!" He smiled brightly.


"So you always beat Max?"


"No. Sometimes, it doesn't matter what you know. Some of it's just luck."


"Un-huh. You like it better when it's not luck?"


"Yes. Mama's going to teach me another game. Blackjack."


Mama loomed over my shoulder, putting her finger to her lips, smiling indulgently at her prize pupil. "Luke, remember what Mama tell you…blackjack a secret, yes?"


"I don't like secrets," the boy said, his voice dropping a register, eyes flickering.


"It's okay, Luke," I said, shooting a warning look at Mama. "There's no secrets here. Nobody's going to give you secrets. Mama was only playing."


"Playing?"


"Yeah. Like joking. Understand?"


His eyes flickered again. "Can I have some duck, Mama?"


Mama only serves duck about once a week— says it's a real pain to prepare properly.


"Sure, baby. Maybe some prawns too?"


"Yes!"


"Good baby," Mama said, reaching over to muss his hair.


106

While Teresa was downstairs with Luke, Max came in. Sat across from me, watching.


The phone rang in the back. Mama came to the table. "For you," she said. "Sunny man."


"It's me," I said, picking up the receiver.


"It is me too, mahn. With some news for you. I spoke to those people. Tomorrow night, you know Corona?"


"Yes."


"On Astoria Boulevard, city side of Ninety-fourth, a few blocks down, you will see an old drive-in. Hamburger joint, abandoned now. Drive there, midnight. They will meet you, take you to her."


"Okay."


"You have her property, mahn?"


"Yes."


"Sure. You understand."


"Can I bring a friend?"


"You are, mahn. Clarence will meet you there too."


"Clarence is afraid of those people."


"Everyone is, mahn."


107

I explained it all to Max. Slowly. Usually, he gets things as sharp as anyone who hears, but he was playing it dumb. Like he does when he doesn't like what I'm saying. He kept trying to deal himself in. I kept shaking my head.


Mama came back, sat down with us, a paper bag in her hands.


"Bonds all gone," she said.


"That was damn fast— you score ten points?"


"Not all. Three hundred for us."


"Elroy gets a hundred, Mama. But it's still a giant hit."


Mama bowed. Put the money on the table, shuffled it like a casino dealer, spun it into piles. Three stacks, a hundred grand in each. Brushed one to the side, Elroy's money. I counted off five grand, handed it to Max. He gets ten points for deliveries. That's what he does, deliveries. Guaranteed. I made the signs for Elroy. Max's thin lips curled— he clapped his first two fingers hard against his thumb, like jaws snapping. I knew what he meant: yak yak yak. He pointed at me, made the sign of driving a car. He'd have to borrow mine to make the delivery. I nodded okay. Then he made the sign of dialing a phone— also my responsibility to tell the maniac Max was on his way. Okay again.


I fanned out the five grand I'd set aside for Max, looking hard at Mama. She knew the rules— she was just as responsible for the money getting back to Elroy as I was. Besides, she probably clouted the bonds for three-fifty or even four hundred and we both knew it.


Finally, she nodded. "Oh yes, pay fair share, okay?" Handed over five grand of her own.


I took twenty for myself, pushed the rest over to Mama. "For the bank, okay?"


"Okay."


She leafed through her money, still keeping the stacks separate. Counted off a bunch of bills, handed them to Max, making the sign of rocking a baby. "For Flower, yes?" she said, looking at Max, talking to me.


Max bowed his thanks.


Mama smiled. "Fair share, yes?" And counted off some of my money, handed it to Max.


He gravely bowed to me as well.


Mama counted off still more money, looking at me. "For Luke, yes? To pay the woman downstairs."


"Lily's taking care of that, Mama."


Her eyes went agate. "Our house, our family, we pay."


Max dropped his eyes from the challenge, handed over his entire stack of money. Mama took some, handed the rest back. Looted my pile again.


Finally, she smiled. Got up and left.


108

Max wasn't going to lose two in a row, renewing his demands to come along to my meeting. I made the sign for Lily. For Storm, Immaculata, Wolfe. It took a long time. I pounded my fists together, conflict. Pulled them apart. Separation. Then I pointed at Max. Tapped my heart. Locked two hands together. We wouldn't be separated, he and I, okay? His time would come.


Finally, he nodded.


I went into the back to call Elroy.


"It's me," I said by way of greeting.


"Hey, Burke! Is Pansy in heat? I mean, Barko ain't been himself, man. Don't want to pull his load, nothing. He needs his woman, buddy. Give my boy a break."


"Look, fool. I called you about something else. Everything's all set, okay? You'll get what's coming to you real late tonight…maybe two in the morning, okay?"


"Yeah, yeah…You gonna bring Pansy?"


"I'm not coming. I'm sending my brother…and don't say his name on the phone."


"Oh, the Chinaman who don't talk? You sending him? I heard he does deliveries…"


Fucking moron.


"Just calm down, all right? He'll be driving my car. And keep those damn dogs out of his way.


"Sure, sure. But when you gonna…?"


I hung up on him.


109

Eleven-thirty. I made a slow circuit of the empty drive-in at the wheel of the Plymouth. Nothing. Max and I lit cigarettes, smoking in silence. He'd reopened the argument on the way out to Queens, and we'd reached a compromise.


I was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, black tie. Unarmed— not even a knife. Max was dressed in his thin-soled black shoes, baggy white pants, a white T-shirt. A better target if that's what they wanted. He's never weaponless.


The immaculate green Rover pulled in a few minutes later. Clarence killed his lights, got out of the car, lounged against a fender, his body not quite making contact with the metal.


I popped the trunk. Max and I got out, walked around to the back. I took the package in my arms. We walked over to Clarence.


"Clarence, this is my brother, Max the Silent."


Max bowed.


Clarence extended his hand, slim and delicate. Max took it in his bone-crusher of a paw, shook.


"Let's put this in your trunk," I said to Clarence.


His eyes were distressed, but he said nothing. Unlocked the trunk, didn't look as we put the bag inside.


"I heard of you," Clarence said to Max.


Max bowed again.


"He really doesn't talk?" Clarence asked me.


"Not with his mouth," I told him.


A black Chevy Caprice rolled into the lot, followed closely by its twin. A tall, slim black man got out of the passenger seat of the lead car, walked toward us. He was dressed exactly as I was except his tie was string-thin. And he had a tiny red ribbon in his lapel.


"Mr. Burke?" he asked.


"That's me."


"You will come with us, please?"


"Yes."


"And your friends, they will come too?"


"Only one friend," I said, nodding at Clarence. "My brother will be leaving."


"Certainly."


Max closed the gap between him and the messenger, gliding without a sound. He stared at the man's face, eyes slitted, memorizing. He bowed slightly. Moved over to the cars, walking around them front to back, taking it in.


"Would you ask your people to get out of their cars?" I asked politely.


"Certainly," he said again. Walked over to the driver's window of one car, then another. They lined up in the darkness, all dressed alike. Max stared deep into the face of each one, bowed his thanks. Squeezed my shoulder, climbed into the Plymouth, and took off.


"Will you come with us now?" the man asked.


"Yes, I'm ready."


"Very well," he said, gesturing toward the lead car.


"Hold up, mahn," Clarence said, his voice barely under control. "I'm not leaving my ride out here for some thief to steal. I'll just drive right behind you, okay?"


The messenger smiled. "Yes, you and your friend can follow me. You have nothing to fear."


"Do you want your…?" I asked.


"No. You must present the offering to Queen Thana yourself, sir."


I shrugged. Went with Clarence to his car.


110

Clarence followed the Caprice's taillights to Ninety-fourth Street, made a left toward the airport.


"The other one's right behind us," he said.


"Makes sense."


"I don't like this, mahn."


"It's okay. They could have wasted us right in the parking lot, they wanted to. They're not going to do anything."


"You sure, mahn?"


"Yeah."


"So why was the monster-man there? The Silent One. I heard scary things about him."


"In case I turn out to be wrong.


"So what's he gonna do then, mahn— be too late for us.


"It's never too late to get even."


111

The Caprice swept east on Ditmars, turned right on Northern Boulevard, back toward the city.


"You have your pistol?" I asked Clarence.


"Always," he said, whipping it loose.


"Leave it in the car, Clarence. And anything else you got."


"You crazier than they are, mahn. I'm not going in no voodoo house without…"


"Yeah, you are. They're going to search you anyway, what's the point? It's too late now— we trust them or we don't."


"I don't, mahn."


"Then stay in the car."


"Look…"


"You look, Clarence. This is my play, my way."


He glared through the windshield. Finally, he slipped the pistol under the front seat. Pulled out a couple of spare clips, his straight razor, the leather-covered sap.


"That's all I got, mahn."


We turned left into a short block. A drug supermarket: dealers sitting in parked cars, working the traffic crawl. Cars with Connecticut plates, Jersey plates. Flames licked from a 55-gallon oil drum, winos warming their hands. A man staggered out of the doorway of an abandoned building— why pay rent when you re running a crack house? If citizens lived on that block, they were indoors.


Daylight wouldn't be any better.


A three-story wood frame house stood squarely between two others. A centerpiece, white with black trim. The surrounding houses were standing open to the night, in the process of being rebuilt. The Caprice pulled into a driveway, drove around to the back. We followed, the trail car behind us.


We stepped out. I looked around as Clarence opened the trunk. High wood fence, the planks nailed solidly together. Chicken coop in one corner, a small black-and-white goat tethered. A two-car garage, doors closed.


I took the package in my arms again. Car doors slammed. The others got out. The messenger came over to us.


"Will you follow me, please?"


112

The back door opened into what had probably been a kitchen once. We followed the messenger through an entranceway into a long rectangular room. Neatly dressed men and women crowded the place. Sober clothing, spots of color on the women— a small red feather in a hat, a white scarf. The front door had a steel gate behind it.


"This way," the man said.


Down the stairs, to a basement. Under the ground, under the surface. In the blackness, I wished for Sheba. Sharp, clean smell, like cloves cooking, everything whitewashed.


At the bottom of the stairs, against the far wall, a woman. Sitting in a huge chair of dark, oiled wood, the back fanning into a seashell shape behind her. She was wrapped in red silk, loose around her shoulders, falling into a natural V at her breasts. Long dark hair, coffee-with-cream skin, dark red lips.


The messenger stepped ahead, motioning us to stay where we were. Bowed to the woman, said something in a rapid-fire language I didn't know. Sounded like some kind of French.


"Speak their tongue," the woman said, her voice darkly rich, gold-laced loam.


"We have done as you commanded," the man said in reply.


"Come forward," the woman said.


I approached, Clarence just behind me on my right. I bowed, folding my upper body protectively over the package.


"They have no weapons," the woman said.


Sounds in the darkness: a pistol taken off full cock, a sword being sheathed.


"What is your name?" she asked.


"Burke."


"You have brought us our offering?"


"Yes," I said. "That and an apology."


"Your friend, he is the one who hurt one of our people? In Central Park?"


"No."


"Yes, he is the one. You would lie for a friend?"


"I would die for one," I said quietly, cursing myself, clutching the juju bag.


"Your friend is young. He did not know what he was doing?"


"He only thought I was to be attacked."


"Yes. Give what you have brought to us."


The messenger stepped forward. I handed him the bag. He placed it reverently on a dark slab of polished wood. At a nod from the Queen, he unwrapped it carefully, gently removing the plastic. Held the bag up for her to see.


"It is as it was," she said. "You will return it to the sacred place."


He bowed.


"Come closer," the woman said.


Clarence and I started toward her. "Just you," she said. "Let your friend stay— I have not asked his name."


She was younger than I first thought— hard to tell exactly. Even in the flame from the candles, I could see she was exquisite. One eye darker than the other, a black dot high on one cheekbone. Seated before me, knees together under the red silk, one hand on each arm of the dark wood chair, she looked into my eyes as if she were looking down. A long distance.


"Why did you take our offering?"


"I was looking for a missing baby. I came across your offering, but I didn't know what it was. I thought it might be evidence. Something that would help me find the baby."


"What did you think it was?"


"Witchcraft."


"You do not fear witches?"


"Yes, I fear them."


"You have known them, then?"


"One of them." Strega. Flame-haired and fire-hearted. At peace now. And so gone from me.


Her chin tilted, studying me. "Yes, you have. But not one of us."


"No."


"The juju is an offering. When one of us dies, his spirit will be doomed unless we make a loa so it can return to earth. That is what you took."


"I am sorry. Had I known…"


"Yes. Are you afraid now?"


"Yes, I am afraid now."


"What kind of man admits he is afraid standing before a woman?"


"A man who has seen things."


"Tell me about the baby, the missing baby."


"A grandmother was told her grandchild had disappeared. The baby was too young to run away. Her daughter had been with a man. A bad man, the baby's father. She believed something had happened to her grandson. Her people asked me to look for the child."


"What have you found?"


"The baby is dead."


"How do you know this?"


"The mother told me. The father killed him. Beat him to death. I was looking for the body."


"So she who loved the baby could help his spirit rise?"


"Yes. Not the mother."


"I know. You are a hunter. The young one too. It is the father you seek now?"


"The authorities are looking for him."


"Yes. Have you found the body?"


"Not yet. The father, his name is Emerson, he lived at the Welfare hotel by the airport. When he left, the night of the death, he had the baby's body with him. When he came back, he did not. I think the baby's in the water, right by the airport."


"He killed the child the same night you took our offering?"


"No. A week or so before."


"So when you saw the offering, you thought…"


"Yes. I thought the baby was in there. Parts of the baby."


The woman closed her eyes, brought hands to her temples. It was so quiet in the basement I could hear the candles flicker.


I could feel Clarence behind me, waves pulsing in the room.


Her eyes opened.


"Describe the man," she said.


I reached in my pocket, handed her the razor-cropped picture we'd taken from the hotel room.


She took one quick look. I heard a snake's hiss— didn't look around to see where it came from.


"Please go upstairs. Outside. Smoke some of your cigarettes. I must talk with my people. Then we will talk again."


I bowed.


113

I kicked a wooden match into life in the night air, dragged deep on my cigarette.


"Why'd you tell her you was scared, mahn?" Clarence asked.


"It was the truth. Still is."


"You really think she knew we had no weapons?"


"Yeah."


"How would she know that, mahn?"


I shrugged. "Maybe that's what she wants to tell us."


We waited, listening to the crime sounds from the street.


114

The messenger came into the yard. "Will you come back with us?" he asked me.


I nodded. We started for the basement. The messenger held up his hand. "Just you, please."


I looked at Clarence. "Wait in the car," I told him.


He scanned my face carefully, nodded.


They took me right before her this time.


"You have returned our offering to us. In exchange, I will answer your questions."


"I have no questions."


"All men have questions," she said, her voice so low and dark I had to strain for the words. "Do you think I am some foolish fortune-teller, some thief with a crystal ball? I am the third daughter of a third sister. That is the mystical number, three. People of confused religion say Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That is idolatry. Before religion, there was Earth, Wind, and Fire. Always three. Primitive man did not understand that sex makes babies— if it were not for sex, there would be no man. Sex is the drive force, and it is controlled by women. There are three ways into the female body, but only one will make children. A man would have no preference. That is why a woman s sex is a triangle. Three again. The true root of all communication with the spirits. Only a queen may know all the truth. A man may know only what he is told. People first mated like animals, never face to face. This changed only when women grew tired of bending over. When there is famine, women are not fertile. Their bodies know the spirits— their bodies are the link to the earth. Do you understand this?"


"Yes."


"Do you believe it?" Something else in her voice, testing.


"Yes." Thinking of Blossom, lying on her bed, listening to her chuckle. "No wonder men are so stupid— their brains are all in such a small place."


"You are Wednesday's child, born to sadness. Yes?"


"Yes."


"Many children are born without a father— only the most damned are born without a mother. You know this?"


"Yes."


"Why did you look for this baby?"


"It was a job."


"No."


"I can't explain it, then."


"I know. Listen to me, child of sorrow: the baby is in the water, as you believed. I know this. The man you seek, he worshiped with us. Pretended to worship. The night of the child's death, he came to us. The baby's body in his arms. He said the child had choked to death in his crib. He asked us for a sacrifice. To save the baby's spirit. He thought what you thought…what you are afraid to say…that our offerings contain the bodies…that the baby would be cut up, placed inside the bag. When we told him how we would make the sacrifice, he walked away from us. We thought it was grief then. Now we know the truth— he feared the baby's spirit would walk."


"I understand."


"Do you? Do you understand that you are a baby's spirit? Spirit walking? Go now. You will search for the evil— I see that in you. When the time comes, return to me. I will show you the path."


115

No cars followed us from the house. Rain misted around the Rover, overmatching the puny wipers.


"Where shall I take you, mahn?"


"Anywhere over the bridge."


"You don't want me to see where you live, then?"


"Better you don't know, right? You were planning to drop in one day, have a visit?"


"Maybe I do that, mahn. Bring you some Island beer, sit around, talk some…would that be so bad, now?"


"That's not what I'm saying, Clarence."


"Yes, I know," he said. But his eyes were hurt.


116

I let Pansy out to her roof, ignoring her attitude because I came home without a treat.


I never have to ask myself why something scares me. So much does. A child doesn't fear death— doesn't understand what it is. A child fears pain. Immediate pain. The terror is to remember.


The freaks count on it.


117

I walked all the way to Chinatown the next morning. Stopped at a bakery for a bag of small hard poppy-seed rolls. Chewed them slowly, one at a time. To settle my stomach. Stopped again at a greengrocer, got a handful of fresh parsley and cold bottle of pineapple juice. Sipped it slowly, crossing the still-wet streets, watching.


By the time I got near Mama's, I was munching the parsley, cleaning out my mouth.


The Plymouth was parked in the alley, the rear end too close to the wall. Max could catch flies in the air without hurting them, but he couldn't drive worth a damn.


I knocked on the back door, thinking about Luke in the basement. How basements used to frighten him.


About last night.


One of Mama's crew let me in, nodded his head toward the dining area.


Max was in my booth, the Prof across from him. The little man was rapping away, waving his hands like it was sign language.


I sat down next to Max. One of the waiters brought me a glass of water, went away.


"How'd it go, bro'?" the Prof greeted me.


"Okay. It was okay. I gave them their property. We're all square." I didn't bother to ask him how he knew about the meeting.


I looked over at Max. Spread my hands in a "what?" gesture. He nodded. Rapid-fire universal gestures, the kind you can use anywhere in the world: thumb rubbed against first two fingers, finger pointing straight ahead, same finger making small circles next to his temple. Then he made the sign for "okay." He gave the money to the crazy man, no problems.


The Prof wasn't satisfied yet. "Come on, homeboy. What was the scene with the Queen? What'd she say— how'd it play?"


I ran it all down to him, gesturing for Max. After all these years, I could do it pretty fast. If Max doesn't get something, he lets me know.


"You know what I was thinking, Prof? How I wasn't scared…you understand? I'm in a basement in Corona, some kind of voodoo temple. They decide to do something to me, I'm gone. Nobody'd even hear a shot on that block. Nobody'd care. But I'm calm. From the beginning. Like nothing's gonna happen to me."


"Her game's not pain, bro'."


"Yeah. You believe…? I mean…you understand what she told me?"


"All preachers the same, Burke. They say what makes the people pay."


"You think it's a hustle?"


"You think there's one answer, babe? The Catholics are right about what they sell, then all the Jews are goin' to hell. The Muslims be the only ones who know the way, it's the Buddhists who're gonna pay. Live righteous, the Man knows, whoever he is, get it? Ain't no pie in the sky when you die. Here and now, on the ground…what's true is what you do."


"You think it's all different names for the same thing?"


"Afterwards? Here's the truth…you won't know until you go."


I saw Wesley. In a fiery pit, the stare from his dead eyes chilling the air, the Devil backing into a corner, afraid.


118

I drove to the South Bronx by myself. Muddy Waters for a soundtrack. A live performance from the fifties, taped in Chicago. The Master, still fresh from the Delta then, getting it down right. Shouting about catching the first train smoking. Nobody in the audience thought he was planning to buy a ticket.


The last cut on the tape. "Bad Luck Child."


Terry let me inside, his small face animated with news.


"I got a letter from Mom. She's learning modern dance. She said she'd show me when she comes back."


"Yeah? She tell you to mind the Mole?"


"Sort of. She said to watch out for him. To go with him, when he goes outside but…


"But not when he goes with me, right?"


"Yes. But…"


"It's okay, Terry. I'm not taking the Mole anywhere. I just need to ask him some stuff."


119

The Mole was peering intently into a glass beaker the size of a mason jar, surgical gloves on his hands. I looked over his shoulder. A jet-black spider in a triangular web, a fat bulbous teardrop, glistening. The Mole slowly rotated the jar. On the spider's underside, a bright red hourglass. Black widow.


He took a pair of metal tweezers from his shirt pocket, plucked a piece of white spongy material from his workbench. The white stuff was maybe half the size of the nail on my little finger, a monofilament line strung through it. He took the screen off the top of the beaker, grabbed the line, held the white lump delicately poised over the rim, dangled it gently, slowly letting it descend.


I could feel Terry's kid-breath on my cheek as he pressed forward to get a look. The web trembled as the white lump caught. The spider's legs pawed, reading the vibrations.


Time passed. The spider worked its way toward the lump, confident. The Mole delicately feathered the line— the white lump struggled in the web. Suddenly, the spider shot forward, burying its fangs into the lump, forelegs grasping to immobilize its victim.


After a while, the spider released its grip. It began to exude webbing from its vent, starting to wrap the victim so it could later feast in peace. The Mole pulled up the line. The spider clung fast, refusing to surrender its prize. When the lump neared the top, Terry handed the Mole a can of compressed air with a long needle-nozzle. The Mole hit the button and the spider was blown free, falling harmlessly back to the floor of the beaker.


The Mole dropped the white lump into a petri dish, holding the line taut while Terry clipped it close with a pair of scissors. The Mole capped the petri dish, put it inside a small refrigerator, the last addition to a small, neat row already on the shelf.


"What do you want with black widow venom, Mole?" I asked him.


"Don't know yet."


"Yeah, okay. Can I ask you something?"


"What?"


"You know tinted glass…like they use in limos, so people can't see in?"


The Mole fiddled with some dials on what looked like a transformer they use for electric trains, ignoring my stupid questions. Waiting.


"Well, could you make it so it was reversed? So anyone could see in, but nobody inside could see out? Just the back, not the windshield?"


"Yes," he said. Meaning: sure, stupid.


"Could you do it, like…now?"


"Your car?"


"No. I need a car with…"


"Cold plates," the kid piped up. Michelle would have slapped him.


"Yeah. Just for maybe twenty-four hours. Less."


"With a barrier?"


"Yeah. Like, maybe, a gypsy cab or…"


"We have one, Mole. The old Dodge. Back in the…"


The Mole gave him a look. Terry stared right back. Finally, the Mole nodded. The kid ran upstairs.


120

I watched the Mole carefully measure the windows on the old Dodge, watched him cut the dark film with an X-acto knife, press it into place with a rubber block. Terry used a socket wrench to put on the new plates, changed the oil and filter, checked the battery, fan belt. Ran some kind of gauge on the ignition. "The tires are okay, Burke. But don't go too fast with it."


"It's not for a bank job, kid."


"Oh, I know." Wise little bastard.


When they were done, I walked around the car. From the outside, it looked like a gypsy cab, better condition than most, in fact. I climbed in the back seat. Sat down, closed the door.


Blackout. The Mole had even treated the Plexiglas barrier between the front and back seats with the same material. A blindfold with wheels.


"Perfect, Mole!" I told him.


He nodded, unsurprised. "Prisoner?" he asked.


"No. A volunteer. But they can't know where they're going."


He nodded again. Shambled off. I wasn't even finished with my cigarette when he came back with one of those gooseneck Tensor lamps. When he was done screwing it onto the shelf behind the back seat, you could light up the interior even with the windows closed. Terry removed the door handles and window cranks from the back seat, covering the holes with metal discs.


The Mole got a hose and a battery-powered vacuum. We cleaned it inside and out.


"Thanks, Mole."


He nodded again.


Terry jumped up and down, excited now. "Mole, can I…? You said when Burke came again…"


The Mole shrugged. Nodded again. The kid took off. The Mole held up his hand in a "wait!" gesture to me.


Terry came running back, a fat dirt-colored puppy in his arms.


"Burke! Look, isn't she beautiful!" Setting the puppy on the ground.


I knelt down, rolled the pup over, rubbed her belly. "She sure is, Terry. Where'd you get her?"


"She's Simba's…Simba's and Elsa's. She was born right here— the pick of the litter," he said proudly.


"Which one is Elsa?"


"The one who looks like a bull mastiff. When she went into heat, Simba wouldn't let any of the others near her…Mole explained it to me.


"Oh yeah?"


"Yes. Do you like her?"


"Sure. She looks like a real tiger. What's her name?"


"She doesn't have one yet. She's for Luke, okay? Okay, Burke? Please? Mole said I could ask you."


"Terry…"


"Burke, he needs a puppy, he does. She won't be any trouble…she's real smart and all."


I lit a smoke, buying time. The Mole looked away like he was busy with something. No help.


"Terry, Luke's…sick now. He won't always be sick, but…he could hurt the puppy, kid. He wouldn't know what he was doing, but…"


Terry's eyes were his mother's then, Michelle's legacy blazing at me, never backing up. "He wouldn't! I know him too, Burke. I talked to him. He wouldn't."


"Look, maybe…"


"He needs a puppy now, Burke. To make him feel safe. I…promised him."


"You got a blanket for her?" I surrendered.


121

The gypsy cab pulled a little to the left when I tapped the brakes, but otherwise it stumbled along well enough. I looped over the Triboro, caught the FDR south. It was down to two lanes…some construction project…and the yutz in the Lincoln in front of me decided to take his half out of the middle, blocking and guarding so I couldn't get past.


The puppy yawned, half sleeping in her blanket on the front seat. I admired the slick way Terry had hijacked me into delivering her— the Mole was teaching him science, but Michelle had given him art.


Horns blared behind me. I extended my arms in a "what can I do?" gesture and let them blast away.


No cassette player in this heap. I found the all-news station, listened to the body count that passes for electronic journalism in this town. Ninety-one degrees, humidity eighty-eight percent. Some ballplayer was demanding a few more million bucks a year to do whatever he did. Gas prices going up— politicians demand a complete investigation. Body of a baby found in Bowery Bay, just off La Guardia Airport. City-Wide Special Victims Task Force Chief Wolfe says indictments will be sought against those responsible once autopsy is completed.


I lit a smoke, thinking about spirits.


122

Just past eleven. The guy who opened the back door to Mama's nodded at me, ignoring the bundle in my arms. He glanced over my shoulder, pointed at the gypsy cab, said something I couldn't understand, pointed to me. I nodded. He made a "wait here" gesture, came out with a small pot and a brush. Painted some Chinese characters on the trunk of the cab— looked like whitewash, nice calligraphy. He bowed— okay now. You park in Max the Silent's spot and they don't know your car, the neighborhood recycling program goes right into action.


I showed Mama the puppy. She patted its body, clucking at the plumpness. Opened its mouth, raised its tail.


"Good puppy, Burke. Strong."


"Yeah. It's for Luke. A gift."


"Okay. Puppy hungry?"


"Probably. Let's let the kid feed her, okay?"


"In basement. With the woman."


"We'll wait."


123

No lunchtime customers yet— one of Mama's thugs in place at the door, across from the register. Mama was scratching behind the puppy's ears with one hand, the other waving in front of the dog's nose. The pup's eyes were locked on Mama's waving hand.


"Train dog this way," she said. "Rub hand in liver, dog follow everywhere."


Something to that. Something Blossom told me about pheromones, the copper-estrogen smell still sharp in my nostrils whenever I thought of her.


"Hi, Burke!" Luke bounded into the front room, Teresa trailing in his wake.


"Hello, Luke. How's it going?"


But the kid wasn't looking at me anymore, his face rapt with the wonder of the puppy.


"What a puppy! He's yours, Burke?"


"No. The puppy is yours. A gift from your friend Terry. And it's a girl, not a boy."


"Can I…?"


Mama handed him the pup. Luke sat on the floor, cuddling the dog, pushing his face into the animal's snout, giggling when the pup licked his face.


"She likes me. What's her name?"


"She's your pup, kid. So you name her, okay?"


"Okay," the child said, his face all concentration, patting his dog. "Prince," he said. "Prince. Prince the Puppy. My good old puppy."


He was rocking back and forth on the floor, holding the puppy, face wet with tears. "Don't take Prince!" he screamed, rolling over, trying to shield the pup with his body. Teresa started toward him. The front door opened, three men in business suits. Mama barked something at the waiter standing across from the register. He leaped up, his body between the customers and us, chesting them out the door into the street, door closing behind him. Two more of her men ran from the kitchen, the first one pulling an automatic from under his white coat. Teresa had the boy in her arms. The kid was sweat-drenched, mouth open, no sound, veins popping on his neck.


Luke went rigid. Teresa crooned, stroking him like he had the puppy. The boy's eyes closed. A shudder shook him. The puppy stood next to him on its stubby legs, guarding.


Luke's eyes opened. His fine hair was matted to his scalp, blood in one palm from his nails.


"It's okay, Luke," Teresa said to him. "A bad dream, that's all. You're safe. The puppy's safe."


"My puppy…"


"Ssssh, child. It's all over now."


"They killed his puppy." Toby's little wiseguy voice coming out of Luke's body. "They hung it upside down. They cut it open. The man with the hood, he cut out the heart and he ate it. He said he'd cut out Luke's heart too. If he ever told. Luke swore he never would. Luke's a little fucking pussy."


I dropped to my knees, my hand on the back of Luke's head, the way you support a baby who can't hold his head up yet. "Tell what, Toby?"


"Baby baby baby," the child babbled. A murderer's mantra. I watched his eyes. The shift came. "Baby," the voice hissed. "Bad baby. Killed my puppy. Baby wouldn't play like they wanted. I am…"


He launched himself off the floor, scrambling for one of the table settings. Where they had knives. I took him down, smothering his rage with my body, smelling his blood.


He went rigid again. Then I felt him soften beneath me, let him loose. He shook himself, sweat droplets flying. Teresa was talking to him. One of Mama's waiters swept the restaurant with the barrel of his pistol, looking for the evil with a blind eye.


124

Luke sat on Mama's lap, sipping from a glass of ice water. One of the waiters put a Closed for Repairs sign in the window— no customers today. The puppy plodded around on the tabletop, investigating all the smells.


"Luke, listen to Mama," the dragon lady said, soft-voiced. "Nobody hurt puppy. Nobody, understand? You take puppy with you. Everyplace you go, people watch you. Safe, okay?"


"Sure, Mama," the kid said, watching the puppy lick up a mixture of tuna flakes and rice from a saucer.


I stepped away from the table, spoke to Teresa in a corner.


"Dissociation. Trauma-memories. He was reliving, reexperiencing."


"Did he have a puppy…before?"


"I don't know. Now's not the time to ask him. He comes back more quickly now…we're getting closer."


"Is it safe to leave the puppy with him?"


"You saw for yourself. It's babies he thinks are the enemy…a part of him, but he doesn't see that yet."


"Remember what we talked about…? I want to bring that woman tomorrow. To talk to you. Not here, but a place close by. One of Mama's people will take you there, okay?"


She nodded.


I went to the pay phone in the back.


"This is SAFE. How can I help you?"


"You buy my clothes yet?" I asked Noelle.


"Oh, Burke! Not clothes, just a jacket. You didn't give me enough money for…"


"Never mind. Is your mother around?"


"No. She went somewhere with Storm."


"Okay. You know Wolfe's number?"


"Sure. She's so stylish. She's going to take me to the…"


"Noelle, listen to me. Give her a call. Tell her to go to a good phone and call me. Understand?"


"Sure. Want me to do it now?"


"Yes."


"Okay. When you come over I …"


"Now, Noelle."


Well, fine!"


She hung up.


125

"Where's Luke?" I asked Mama after Teresa left.


"Nap," she said, nodding her head toward the kitchen.


The phone rang. I walked back to answer it. Caught a glimpse of Luke, curled up on a dark green futon just outside the kitchen door, the puppy asleep against his chest. Baby's breath soft between them.


"Hello," I answered the ring.


"What's up?" Lily's voice.


"I'm trying to arrange a meet. Let her see what's really going down."


"What if…?"


"There's no 'what if' here anymore. It's what we have to do, now. It's time."


"When is it? I'm coming too."


"No, you're not. Let me do this, get it done."


"I…"


"I'll call you."


126

Luke was up from his nap, playing with the puppy on the floor, Mama watching over the rim of her newspaper.


"I love her," the kid said, looking at me.


"Seems like she loves you too."


"Yes. She does. I can tell. Burke, will you help me with something?"


"Sure."


"I need a name for her. A good name, just for her."


"I don't know, Luke…I mean…a name, that's a special thing."


"Yes, I know. And it has to be a real name, Burke, you understand?"


"Sure. But…"


"Remember our names? Luke and Burke?"


"Yes. Lurk."


"That's right. Together we're more than just the two of us. Friends. That's what I want…" His forehead furrowed, thinking so hard his body trembled. I lit a smoke, wary of his eyes, but he was okay, still Luke.


"Do you know his father's name?"


"Sure," I said. Thinking how I'd never know mine. "His dad's name is Simba."


"I know Simba— I met him. What's his mother's?"


"Elsa."


"Simba and Elsa…Elsa and Simba…I know, Burke! Her name is Simsa! Do you like it?"


"Yeah. It's perfect."


"Simsa," the boy called. The puppy wagged its tail happily.


127

Wolfe called just past three.


"Can we do it tomorrow?" I asked her.


"What time?"


"I'll pick you up around ten…?"


"Okay. At the diner."


"I'll have a black Dodge. Gypsy cab. I'll be at the curb at ten."


"See you."


"Yeah. By the way, congratulations. Autopsy done yet?"


"See you tomorrow," she said. And hung up.


128

I drove over to Max's around eight the next morning. Went upstairs. He was arguing with Immaculata about something— I couldn't tell what.


"You ready?" I asked Immaculata.


"Everybody's ready. You can drop us off at SAFE, okay?"


"Sure."


Max and his woman got in the front seat with the baby, me and Luke and the puppy took the back.


"Wow, Burke! It's dark in here— I can't see outside."


"It's okay, Luke," I told him, switching on the Tensor light. "We're safe here. With Max up front and Simsa back here, nobody would dare bother us."


"Don't forget Immaculata," he corrected me gravely. "She's tough too."


"Yeah, you're right. You know you're going to see Teresa over at Max's house today?"


"It's Immaculata's house too."


"Okay, okay, kid. I got it. What are you…studying to be a feminist?"


"What's a feminist?"


"Ask Lily, okay?"


"Okay. Are you mad at me?"


"Hell no. I'm not mad at anyone. Just embarrassed that a kid's smarter than me sometimes."


"Oh, you're very smart. Lily said so."


"Lily said I was smart?"


"Tricky, is what she said."


"Oh."


"It's okay, Burke. You're my friend. Like my big brother."


"More than you know, kid."


Couldn't hear anything from the front seat. I wouldn't anyway— Max and Immaculata can battle to a fever pitch without making a sound.


"How was Simsa's first night?"


"Oh, it was good. Mac told me I could wrap an alarm clock in a towel and the puppy would feel like it was his mother's heartbeat…but she slept with me instead. My heart beat for her."


129

The cab slid to a stop. Luke scrambled out, holding his pup, eager to show everyone. Mac put a hand on the boy's shoulder, made some gesture at Max, stamped her foot. Max pointed at me, shrugged his wide shoulders. Mac stepped in close to me.


"He says you don't want Lily to be at the meeting with Wolfe."


"That's right. You guys are battling each other— I got no time for it. You asked me to persuade Wolfe to jump back— I'm trying to do that— what'd you want to get in the way for?"


"Oh, go away," she snapped. "Go someplace with your pal. Come on, Luke," turning away from me.


On the way to Queens, I tried to explain things to Max. He kept his eyes on the road, pretended he couldn't pick up my gestures.


130

We were waiting at the curb by the diner a good twenty minutes in front. I picked Wolfe up in the side mirror, stepped out and opened the back door like a chauffeur, climbed in after her. Max took off smoothly, heading for the highway. If she had people following us, they'd have an easy time until we hit Chinatown.


Wolfe threw a quick glance at the blackout windows. Her mouth twitched. "Very clever," she said.


"Better than a blindfold, huh?"


"Sure."


"Want a drink? This thing isn't air-conditioned," I said, offering her an unopened bottle of cold spring water I'd bought from the deli across from the diner.


"Thank you." She unscrewed the bottle cap, took a long pull.


"I appreciate you doing this."


She took another sip. "The baby's been positively identified."


"How'd you do that? He was in the water a long time."


"The coroner said it was Battered Child Syndrome— just about every bone was fractured, some of the old ones had healed. Derrick had been X-rayed before— the last time there was a child abuse complaint. The pictures were a perfect match."


"You know for sure what killed him?"


"He was beaten to death. Hard to tell exactly what finally did it— lungs punctured, blood in the spinal column…maybe all of that and more. Doesn't matter now, it's a homicide, not an accident."


"Who's gonna be indicted for it?"


She looked at me like I'd have to step up in class to be stupid. "Both of them— the mother's already made statements. Lots of statements. Sometimes she says the kid fell down the stairs, sometimes he choked on his bottle. Doesn't matter…the coroner said the baby was killed over a long period of time. She had to know."


"She did know."


"Yes. She'll come up with some kind of defense— they've always got new ones. She's going down for this, just like he is, once we pick him up. He won't go far. He's a Welfare vulture, living off dead-souled women. We'll find him."


"Find him? I thought he was locked up on another charge."


She looked at me squarely, faint traces of disbelief in her face. "He made bail— they never set high bail for beating up a woman."


I offered her a smoke. She shook her head, rummaged in her purse, came out with one of her own. I lit it for her.


"This won't take long today," I promised.


The cab rolled along. Felt like we were still on the highway.


"How did you know…about the water?" she finally asked me.


"I figured it out," I told her. Meaning: the mother hadn't told me.


She dragged on her smoke, pale eyes focused on something not inside the cab. "You started this…investigation, it was a job, yes?"


"Yeah."


"To find the baby?"


"Yeah."


"So the job's over…?"


"Un-huh."


"And you're not looking for Emerson?"


"I didn't even know he was out. How come all the questions?"


"You know now. The way most people would look at this, we'd need her testimony to convict him, understand?"


I nodded.


"We don't. What we need, we need his testimony to convict her. The only way they both get dropped for this is for them to point the finger at each other. Try them separately."


"Okay."


"Yes, okay. That means, we want to find this Emerson. If he turns up in the water himself…if he just disappears, it might get her off the hook."


"Why tell me?"


"You have different…reputations, Mr. Burke. Depending on who's talking."


"My record speaks for itself."


"Very funny. We've got records too. Like the visitors' logs from the jail."


"So?"


"So you visited a man named Kenneth Silver three times over the past couple of months."


"He's an old friend."


"He's an assassin. For a white supremacist gang. The way the prisons are today, he may be more dangerous inside than out."


"You don't understand the way things are in there. It's not politics, it's survival. I've known him since I was a kid. We went different ways, he got caught in a cross, but I'm not gonna turn my back on him when he's down."


"Is that loyalty…or peer pressure?"


"You put a lot of guys in there, but you don't know how it works. Inside the walls, what you call peer pressure, it's as sharp as a knife sometimes…You understand what I'm saying?"


"Better than you think. Like I said, about Emerson…"


"You think I'm some kind of vigilante?"


"No. I think you're some kind of mercenary. And I think you do what you're paid to do."


"Nobody hired me to do Emerson. I'm not looking for him."


She ground out her cigarette. "I'm sure you're not, you say so. But if you happen to run across him in your travels, give us a call, okay?"


"Okay."


131

The cab's rhythm changed. In the city now. Harsh, hypertense traffic sounds. We'd have picked up our outriders by now. If Max spotted a car too interested in us, he'd flash his high beams— maneuver so he was first off at a light. The driver of the car trailing us would never see it coming, wouldn't even have time to wonder why a pack of Chinese teenagers dressed in bright silk baseball jackets would be trying to clean his windshield. Never hear the ice picks puncture his tires.


Wolfe never glanced at her watch. Didn't make comments like she would if she was trying to give a tape recorder some clues. She'd know— no matter where we held the meeting, she wouldn't find Luke there again.


The cab was down to a crawl now, swivel-hipping its way past the potholes. One final turn, and it came to a stop. I heard Max shut off the engine.


I took a black silk scarf out of my pocket, held it out to Wolfe.


"Okay to put this on now? Just for a minute, until we get into the room?"


She took it from me, adjusted the thick band over her eyes, tied it over her long hair. Held out her hand to me. I helped her from the back seat.


We were in the first-floor garage to Max's warehouse.


132

Max shut the garage doors, walked past us, started up the stairs.


"There's no railing," I said to Wolfe. She put her hand lightly on Max's back, mine went to her waist. Even in the high heels, she handled the climb like it was level ground.


At the landing, we walked past Max's dojo to a room at the end. Luke was talking to Teresa, being himself, explaining something, a deck of cards in his hand.


I nodded to Teresa, took off the blindfold as Max floated down the hall like smoke. He'd wait at the top of the stairs. Nobody'd bother us.


"Hello, Luke," Wolfe said.


He nodded at her gravely. "You want to talk to me again?"


"No. Just to listen, all right? You're safe here— with your friends. I haven't come to take you."


"Okay."


Wolfe sat down on a straight chair, smoothed her skirt, crossed her legs.


"You can smoke here," Luke said.


She flashed a smile, reached in her purse. I looked over her shoulder. No gun, no tape recorder. Caught Teresa's eye, nodded.


I cracked a wooden match, lit Wolfe's cigarette.


"How have you been doing, Luke?" she asked.


"Okay."


"Don't be afraid. Your friend is here."


"Who?"


"Him," she said, nodding her head in my direction.


"Who's he?" the kid said, face cleaned of deception, innocent. Mama was teaching him more than cards.


Wolfe's smile was brighter this time. "His name is Burke."


"Hello," the boy said, extending his hand for me to shake.


I sat down in a chair next to Wolfe, moved her ashtray so we could both use it.


"Are you ready to work now, Luke?" Teresa asked.


"Yes," he said, sitting in a child-size armchair, looking straight at her.


Teresa didn't use a girasol, didn't use anything at all. The library articles told me about this— how the multiples get used to reaching a trance state in therapy— the splits are born from autohypnosis anyway. "Relax," is all Teresa said, and the boy's eyes started rapid-fire blinking. Then closed.


"Can I talk to Toby?" Teresa asked.


"What is it now?" Toby's voice, pitched like Luke's but with a sharp, sarcastic undertone.


"How are the others doing?" Teresa.


"How should we be doing? I mean, nobody's hurting the baby, but Luke, you know him, he's still scared. But he's better. We don't get out so much anymore."


"What did they do to the baby?"


"They don't do nothing to the baby. What's wrong with you? It's Luke they do it to."


"The baby, she doesn't feel things?"


"The baby runs away. I told you all this. The baby runs away. Susie."


"Do you like babies?"


"I don't care about them."


"Does Luke like babies?"


"Yeah. Luke's a sucker. He likes everyone. He even liked them. When they'd scare him, the baby would come out. To take the pain."


"Did you ever come out when they scared him?"


"Do I look crazy to you, lady? I did…once…to talk to them…and…they hurt me."


"How did they hurt you, Toby?"


"It wasn't me…when they started, Luke came back. When they hurt him, the baby came. The runaway."


"What did they do to Luke?"


"They scared him. They tied him up. All with hoods. Black hoods. They put things in him. Burned. He screamed. They told him to be good, be a good baby. He screamed and screamed until the baby came out. Then he was good."


"What did Luke do when he was good?"


"Suck."


"Suck what?"


"Suck… them."


"Men?"


"Not just men. Women too. And another boy, once. Then they put things in him. He was bleeding."


"Did he fight them?"


"No. He was scared. Luke had a puppy, Prince. They killed the puppy. Cut his heart out. One of them ate the heart. It was just a little thing, so small."


"The puppy?"


"The heart. You listening to me or what?"


"I'm listening to you, Toby. How many people were there?"


"Lots of them. All in hoods— they never took off the hoods. They had candles. Candles and smoke. And stuff on the wall too. They always said Satan. Like in church. And a table. A big table. That's what they put Luke on, the table. It had stuff on it, carved. I saw the knife."


"Did they cut Luke with the knife?"


"No. They put something in him. With wires. When Luke screamed, they'd make it burn so bad inside him. They did it. Every time. They said he had to be a good baby. Good baby. When the baby came to run away, then the baby saw the cameras. Then we could all go."


"Go?"


"Like…pass out, you know? Go away. It hurt when we came back…tried to go away, far away. We didn't want to come back."


"When did the other one come?"


"What other one, sister? There's only Luke and the baby Susie. And me."


"Toby, you're smart, yes? You see things Luke doesn't?"


"Yeah, Luke ain't that smart. He thinks he is…but he don't know some things."


"Do you know who killed the puppy, Toby?"


"Yeah. Those hoods, they didn't fool me. Voices. I know their voices."


"Whose voices?"


"Dad. And Mom too, she was there. Dad killed the puppy. Mommy, she was the one who said to be a good baby. Good baby. They had a baby, you know. A little baby. A boy baby. Like us. They wanted a girl baby— I heard them say. It would be good if they had a girl too. Better product. A little girl. Baby Susie. Luke thought, if he was a girl, they'd be nice to him. But I know them. Luke's stupid."


"Why is he stupid?"


"'Cause he don't remember the way I do. He thinks it all started when he was older…if he was a baby, they wouldn't hurt him. Luke was jealous."


"What did he want?"


"He wanted them to love him," the voice sneered.


"Tell me about the baby?"


"We made the baby. Me and Luke. What they did to Luke…it's what they do to make babies, so we made a baby. Luke wanted her so they'd love him. Not hurt him. But I knew…I wanted the baby to run away. Take the pain. So we made the baby. But the baby…the other baby, they knew that was the real baby."


"Toby…"


"Baby." The voice had no age. I held my hands rigid, had to let the monster come out, let Wolfe see it.


"Who…?" Teresa asked.


"Baby!" The voice was a snarl. Luke's eyes were slitted, muscles jumping in his little face. "I want the heart," he said. "Baby baby baby," a crooning child's voice. "I am Satan's child. Me! I am the one…" He launched himself at Teresa, the right fist frenzy-stabbing, low grunts from somewhere in him. I took him down, wrapping my arms around his spasming body, saying his name over and over.


It felt like forever. Then he went rigid against me. I rolled over on my back, the boy against my chest. Let go my hold.


Luke sat on my chest, giggled. "What are you doing, Burke?" he asked. "You're always playing."


133

The air reeked with Luke's scent. Bloody fear. He didn't seem to know, his back to the women in the room.


"We've got company,' I told him.


He looked over his shoulder, not getting off me. "Hi, Teresa!" he said. He looked at Wolfe. "Hello."


"Where've you been, Luke?" Teresa asked him. "Playing with Bur…my friend," the boy answered. "I was showing him some card tricks." Eyes on my face now, begging me to be his co-conspirator, not to rat him out.


"Yeah," I said. "The kid's a real gambler."


"It's not gambling, playing with you." Luke laughed, getting to his feet, extending his little hand to me to pull me off the floor.


"I got to talk to these ladies, Luke, okay? How about if you go next door, play with Simsa?"


"Can I show her to Teresa first?"


"Okay, go get her. But just for a minute, all right?"


"Yes!" He took off like a shot


134

He came running back in, the puppy in his arms. "Look!" he said, thrusting the dog almost in Teresa's face. She patted the dog dutifully.


"Can I hold her?" Wolfe asked him.


Luke turned slowly, cradling his pup, watchful. "You be careful," he said, walking to her.


Wolfe took the pup on her lap, patting the dog's large head, stroking its ears. She lifted the pup right into her face. The puppy licked her. She licked it back. "Oh, ugh!" Luke laughed. "You licked her!"


"Well, she licked me first. Probably smells my dog on me. Do you smell Bruiser, Simsa? You smell my big boy?"


The puppy yapped like she was answering.


"You're a real beauty, aren't you? A lovely dog. Look at those paws…you're gonna be a big girl, yes? A big, tough girl," nuzzling the pup.


"You have a dog?" Luke asked, stepping close.


"Yes, I have a Rottweiler. You know what that is?"


"No."


"Want to see a picture?" she asked, playing the kid like a fighting fish— setting the hook before she jerked the line.


"Sure!"


She handed Simsa back to Luke, took a bunch of photos out of her purse. Handed them to the boy. He put Simsa on the floor, stood next to Wolfe, leafed through the pictures.


"Is that him?"


"Yes. That's Bruiser. When he was a pup."


I looked over her shoulder. Wolfe holding a fat black puppy, one hand under its rump, the other around its chest. The little beast's paws draped over her arm, tiny tip of his tongue showing. Wolfe was wearing an old flannel shirt, her hair loose and free. Looked like a college girl.


Another photo: Wolfe all dressed up, wearing a black leather coat and heels. Bruiser at her side, his head at the top of her thigh.


Another: Bruiser bursting through the open gate at her house in full cry, ears flapping, mouth a snarl.


"He got real big, didn't he?"


"Yes, he did, Luke. He's my true friend. Bruiser will always protect me…like Simsa will you."


"He was a puppy?" Luke setting a hook of his own.


"All dogs are puppies, once. He was a wonderful pup. Just like Simsa."


"I love Simsa. Do you love your Bruiser?"


"Yes. I love my true friends. And I would do anything for them."


"Anything?" The kid tugged at the line.


"Yes. Anything."


"Is he your friend?" Pointing at me.


"We are…professional friends, do you understand?"


"No."


"Well, it means we are on the same side. So we're friends. We don't do things together, the way some friends do. But we're close…in a way."


"If he's your friend, what's his name?"


"Burke." Wolfe smiled. "He's the one who brought me here. To see you."


"You don't like me," the boy accused, remembering.


"That's not true, Luke. I didn't like you so much when I first met you. But that was my mistake. I see that now. Now I really like you."


"Is that true?"


"Look in my eyes, Luke. Come here. Look in my eyes. See for yourself."


The boy studied her. "You like my puppy. Burke is your friend. And…you do like me."


"Yes."


"Am I going to be your friend?"


"Yes, we're going to be friends."


"Then you could love me…like you love your friends?"


"Yes, sort of like that."


"Okay," Luke said, wandering over to me, done with his testing.


Wolfe reached for a cigarette. "Burke has matches," Luke volunteered, watching me under his long lashes. I handed the little box to Luke. He went back over to Wolfe, lit one for her.


She leaned forward, cupping her hands around his.


"Thank you, Luke."


"You're welcome. I have lots of friends. They love me. Like you said. Burke is my friend." A sly grin flashed across his poker face. "Do you love Burke?"


Wolfe dragged on her smoke. "Uh…sure!"


"Are you going to get married?"


"I don't think so, Luke. People who love each other don't always get married. You understand?"


"Sure." Moving close to her, looking at the photos in her hand. "What's this one?" he asked.


I looked to see what he was holding. Picture of a racehorse, a winner's circle photo of a trotter, still hooked to its sulky, a groom holding the bridle, the driver in blue-and-white silks holding the reins, smiling. Small print at the bottom: Jasper County Fair, Illinois. July 4, 1990, Second Race, 3 y.o. ECS Trot, First Filly Elimination winner: The Flame. Owner: The Syndicate, Inc. Time: 2:07:01, single heat.


"Is that your horse?" the boy asked.


"She sure is. Isn't she beautiful?"


"Yes! Could I go see her someday?"


"Yes. But now, go take Simsa in the other room. So I can talk with your friends, okay?"


"Okay," he said, gathering up his puppy.


He started out of the room. Hesitated, watching me. Gave Wolfe a quick kiss on the cheek and walked out. Hiding behind cute.


135

"Did you understand what you saw?" Teresa asked Wolfe.


"I think so," she said, voice flat, not playing a role for the kid anymore.


"He's much better now."


"Better?"


"Oh yes. Did you see the way he asked Burke to help him? When he lost time? He knows he does it now. Knows we know too. I can't talk to the baby, Susie. And Luke, when he's on the spot, he's just himself. He's not ready to talk about what he knows."


"On the spot?"


"When one of the personalities takes center stage, so to speak. The others stand off in the darkness. Watching. Luke uses Toby to tell us…tell us what happened to him. We get closer every day."


"And what happened was…Luke was tortured? Sodomized? And they filmed it?"


"Yes. He's got an incredible IQ. When the pain got too much, he split off. It's all a nest of twisted snakes in his mind. It was his parents who did this to him. His mother and his father. They kept telling him to be good. Good! To hold still for the torture so they could film it. Luke became the baby, Susie. He knew…that rational part of him knew…they wanted a baby girl. He didn't understand that they wanted a girl to make more torture films."


"There's a market for both," I said. "Boys and girls, so long as it's kids."


Wolfe nodded, her pale eyes on Teresa.


"Toby's the street-wise one. All he knew was that the baby didn't feel the pain. He could go away. Be safe. But children have so much love, it's incredible. Their love doesn't die of natural causes— you have to kill it. No matter what parents do to them, they try to find an excuse for it. So Luke, he blamed the baby. His baby brother. In Luke's mind, the torture didn't start until his baby brother came. It all merged, overwhelmed him. The Satanic rituals, cutting out the puppy's heart. He needed strength. Power. And he had so much rage. The nightmares intruded. He wasn't safe even when he slept. And so the other personality came. The Satan-monster."


"He killed those babies?"


"The other one did. Satan's Child, he calls it sometimes. Sometimes, he just says Satan. All that blood, the chanting, the pain…it was a tidal wave in his mind."


"His…parents. They're devil-worshipers? The puppy was a sacrifice?"


My turn. "They're not devil worshipers," I said to Wolfe. "They're terrorists. All child molesters are, you know that. Fear's always stronger than force— it stays with you even when you're alone. Even when you try to sleep, night terrors come. It's happening all over now. They frighten the child into silence, make the kid believe they have magical powers. Life and death. That's why they killed the puppy. It wasn't some bullshit sacrifice to Satan, it was them proving to the kid that they held all the cards. Telling him they could do anything they want. Anytime they want. Those maggots're no more Satanists than you are. There's real ones— I mean, people who fucking worship the devil, okay? Some true believers, some charlatans. Just like Christians. Or Jews, or Muslims, or whatever. Sodomizing kids, making kiddie-porn films, it's got nothing to do with religion. Any religion. A priest molests an altar boy, you call it Catholic child abuse?"


"Okay. I get it."


"No, you don't get it. Not the whole thing. This Satanic child abuse thing, it's just a criminal conspiracy. Set up so they can't lose. The kid buys into the insanity, he grows up to become one of them. Recruits others. Puts on the hood himself, works the cameras, chops up the bodies if they make any. And if you guys find out, if the kid tells you the truth, he fucking sounds nuts, right? You want to take a victim before a jury, have him tell about some devil-worshiping cult? That's for Geraldo, not the real world." I bit the inside of my cheek, tasting acid. "It's all a hustle— like kids committing suicide because they heard subliminal messages on heavy-metal music. Some lawyer's idea, right? Next thing you know, some fuck's gonna shoot up a bank, say he read the Bible backward, got a new message."


"It's true," Teresa put in. "Almost like they know what they're doing. You can deliberately introduce dissociation. Splitting. All it takes is inescapable pressure. Stylized sadism. One shock to the psyche after another. Even in a concentration camp, the prisoner knows he's not alone. There's a reason for him to be there…even if it's an evil reason. But a child like Luke— he was all by himself until he split off."


Wolfe lit another smoke, using a lighter from her purse. "We've had cases like this before. Not the multiple-personality thing. Not even with cameras. But kids being sexually abused by a group. Devil-signs, black hoods. We don't even mention it to the jury…just try it like what it is. Rape. The defense wants to bring it up, that's their problem. They can't even cross-examine the victim on it without telling the jury they knew about it. And where would they know except from their slimy clients?"


"Luke didn't kill those babies," I told her. "Those people, his parents and the others, they did it. Sure as if they'd held the knife."


"They'd never go down for homicide on the facts we have," she said. "But it doesn't matter. We've got no death penalty in this state. And they're looking at forever-to-life for what we can prove." She turned to Teresa. "Is he going to be able to testify?"


"We're working on bringing his personalities back together. Fusing them so there's no splits. The core, Luke, is very strong. Maybe someday. But…if he's pressured too much, too early…he could go back over."


Wolfe's eyes glowed in the white room, shining like Strega's had when she told me her truth. "There'll be something else, somewhere. The films…could Luke maybe tell you where it happened? Not on the stand…just tell you?"


"Yes, I think so. He's a brilliant child. All the memory is there. Just…fragmented."


Wolfe ground out her cigarette. "Okay." Turning to me. "Let's go."


"We have to wait here a little bit, okay? Until the driver comes back."


She settled back into her chair. Teresa said goodbye, said she was going to talk to Luke. She'd tell Max it was time to take off.


I lit a smoke of my own. "That racehorse, it said on the photo it was owned by something called the Syndicate. Is that just the corporate name you use?"


"The Flame isn't just mine. We all bought her together."


"Who?"


"My…sisters. We're like a family, all together. We thought it would be fun."


"Your sisters?"


"She means us, Lily said, stepping into the room, Immaculata right behind her."


136

It was like someone hit the Mute button on the TV. They all looked at each other, frozen in place, too much playing over their faces for me to read it.


Lily muttered something in Italian, grabbed Wolfe in a fierce hug, tears flying as Wolfe squeezed her back, Immaculata shouldering in between them, their so differently beautiful faces pushed against one another, makeup melting as they merged.


I stood away from them, an outsider, feeling the void inside me like a brick in my chest. Turned my face to the window. A filthy city wall returned my blank stare, undeceived.


137

It took them a while, the warrior women rebonding, speaking in tribal-talk. I wasn't in the room for them.


Finally, Teresa came back in. Pulled Lily aside, said something to her.


Lily caught my eye, held a clenched fist at her waist. Thanks. Immaculata bowed. Teresa stepped out with them.


"Ready to take me back?" Wolfe asked.


I wrapped the blindfold around her eyes, guided her carefully down the stairs, into the back of the cab.


Max had it rolling as soon as I slammed the door.


138

My watch said it was three-thirty. Wolfe sat to my left, her back against door, turning so she was almost facing me. She lit a cigarette. "Are you going to look for them?"


"Who?"


She waved her hand at me, trailing smoke, elegantly impatient.


"Luke's parents."


"No."


"No?"


"That's what I said. It's not my job."


"You mean nobody's paying you?"


"Yeah, that's what I mean."


"Who paid you for Bonnie Browne?"


"I wasn't paid for her— I was paid to find a photograph." Paid by Strega, forever ago.


"And her husband?" The freak in the clown suit. The cops found him at the bottom of the stairs, his neck broken.


"The way I heard it, it was an accident."


"You don't trust me."


"With what?"


"I just don't want us to get in each other's way with this."


"There is no 'this,' okay? You want something, spell it out."


She ground out her smoke, opened her purse, took out a mirror, balanced it on her knees as she ran a comb through her hair. Put on fresh lipstick. A bit of it smeared as the cab hit a bump. She dabbed at it with a piece of tissue. Crossed her legs, looked back over at me.


"Vigilante. That's real popular now. People lose confidence in law enforcement, they start using self-help. But you…It's like your profession. What you get paid for."


"That's not me," I told her. Thinking: Who's a citizen in all this? Lily, Storm, Immaculata…even Wolfe, they were all over the line. I lived on the other side, they crossed over when they needed to…what was the difference?


"I think it is," she said. "You're known to half a dozen law enforcement agencies, and they all say the same thing. There's not enough to charge you with anything, but there's homicides going back to the last time you were in prison. And they all have one thing in common."


"Dead people do."


"It was always about children, that's the thread."


"It doesn't tie to me, whatever it is. If I went around snuffing baby-rapers, I'd be on overtime— the city's full of them."


"What're you saying?"


"You really want to know? A vigilante, he straps down, goes hunting. It's not personal. Me, you leave me alone, that's the end of it. I'm not a hunter. The newspapers, they got this vigilante thing all screwed up. A woman gets grabbed in an alley, pulls out a knife and stabs the guy trying to rape her, the press says she's a vigilante. She's not. Just someone defending herself."


"And that's what you do?"


"I don't do anything. I have my own people. That's what I have. All I have."


She leaned forward, pale eyes not merging with the darkness in the back of the cab— a light of their own. "I'm trying to tell you something, you want to listen," she said. "Lily doesn't have what you want— the CWA reports, the pedigree on the parents, last known address, associates, DMV, IRS. All that. She doesn't have it. I do."


"So?"


"Usually, we'd share. My crew and Lily's. But…the way things started out with Luke, we didn't…"


"She shared with you now."


"I know. But Lily's no investigator. I mean… she investigates inside children's heads, you understand? My people, we work outside. Like you."


"Your people worked like me, I'd never get hired."


"You're saying you're better at it than we are?"


"I'm saying…you can't use your kind of stuff with freaks. Especially when they run in packs. You can't use undercovers— they have an acid test. Like a day-care center where they're doing the kids. You suspect it, right? So you get somebody hired. Know what they do? They leave your guy alone in a back room with a kid. Wait to see what happens. Your guy doesn't start groping the kid, they know he's not one of them. Simple, right? You can have undercovers shoot up, snort some coke, help out in a heist, even turn a trick, that's what it takes. But you haven't got anybody who'd fuck a kid just for a credential."


Thinking about what the Queen called me. When I hunted, it wasn't for evidence.


"Proof isn't what we need here," she said. "There's enough proof. They get brought in, I can get them indicted."


I lit a cigarette, catching it for the first time. "You've been looking for them all along, haven't you?"


She nodded.


"And come up empty?"


Another nod.


"So you want me to take a shot?"


Her generous mouth wrinkled at one corner. "Was that a pun?"


She was quiet for a while. I felt the grid beneath the tires on the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. Max was going straight up Queens Boulevard to the courthouse.


"You think people really worship the devil?" Wolfe asked. "Sure. It's the perfect religion— you fuck up, you go to heaven." Her rich laugh filled the cab.


139

The rolling blindfold slowed to a stop. Max rapped twice on the barrier to let us know we'd arrived. Wolfe gathered her purse. The back door opened on my side. Her hand touched my forearm.


"Don't take this the wrong way, okay? All this…the way you are…did you ever see a psychiatrist?"


"Yeah. One of them owed a guy I know some money once. Her smile came. "Don't take this the wrong way either," she whispered. Kissed me softly on the cheek.


She didn't look back.


140

Max drove us to the junkyard. The Mole wasn't around. Terry gave me back my Plymouth. I told him Luke loved the puppy, told him her new name.


Max didn't communicate all the way back. Inside himself. I dropped him off at the warehouse. He stood there in the shadows, holding me with his eyes. Finally, he gestured like he was shuffling a pack of cards. Dealt them out around an imaginary table. Pointed at himself, face set an concrete lines.


I nodded.


He bowed, sealing the pact.


141

Still early, but I went back to the office. I could make a call, see if the Central Park lady wanted to have dinner. Or take a drive, pick up Bonita, bend her over the convertible couch in her living room, try and get lost in it. Come and go.


Thought about getting lost in it. What I'd lose if I did.


I kicked back, lit a cigarette. Watched the smoke drift toward the ceiling. Why had Wolfe mentioned Silver to me? The Prof had sent me to him, a long time ago. When we were all inside.


"Listen and learn, schoolboy," he said. "Silver knows the play, the old way, see? He's a quality thief— good gunfighter too, way I heard it."


"A hit-man?"


"No, fool. I said gunfighter, not gunman."


"What's the difference?"


"A gunfighter, the other guy has one too."


We were talking quietly on the yard, Silver telling me a secret in his hard-sad voice. "I don't mess with the sissies in here. They're like bitches on the street, get you into a knife fight in a minute. My wife's picture's in my house— I jack off to it every night, looking at her. These other guys, they do it to girls in the skin magazines. Those ain't real people— they don't know those girls. Me, I'm making love to my wife. To Helene. Those other guys, they're just playing with themselves."


Like I was with Bonita.


Silver did his time, counting the days. Never made trouble for anyone. Someone went in his cell, stole his wife's picture. Anyone could have done it, prison's like that. If it hadn't turned out to be a black guy, Silver might have turned out different himself.


The Prof tried to ease it down. Told Silver it was just a picture— his wife would send him another one. Told the thief, Horace his name was, a rapist, told Horace he was risking a shank in the back for nothing. Even volunteered to handle the transfer himself


Horace had a better way, he thought. Got himself an African name, joined some crew.


I filled out the pass for Horace to report to the psychiatrist. Silver was waiting for him in the corridor. He was only going to cut him, but Horace had a blade too.


Silver got cut. Horace got dead.


Blood on the institutional green concrete walls, drying to an abstract painting only a convict could interpret.


When Horace's crew came after Silver, he went the only place he could.


A white supremacist, Wolfe called him. An assassin. He was doing better than me. Even locked up, he had his love.


142

Things went back to the way they'd been. A few days later, Lily gave me a thick envelope. From Wolfe. Whatever she had was in there. Wasn't much, and her people would already have worked it to death.


I was in a Manhattan courtroom. One of the motion parts. They were supposed to bring Silver over from the jail, some kind of bullshit bail application. A farce— they wouldn't cut him loose.


A halfass defense attorney was in front of the bench, babbling something about the Constitution. Roland was his name, a certified dummy. He'd been an ADA once, a stone incompetent Plenty of guilty men walking the streets because of his fuckups. Now he was working the defense side, sending innocent folks to jail. Balancing the scales of justice. In the dog-eat-dog world of the criminal court, Roland was a fire hydrant.


I caught Blumberg's eye, got to my feet, walked over to him.


"You're looking good, boychick. How's business?"


"The same."


"Silver said he wanted to talk to you— you couldn't visit him in the house?"


"This is the way he wanted it. I'll just stand next to you at the table. Won't take a minute, okay?"


"My bail application is complex, my boy. Don't distract the judge's attention."


"You couldn't wake that weasel up with a flame thrower."


Blumberg ignored me. The wily old bastard hasn't tried a case in a hundred years, just does arraignments and applications. He knew why Silver hired him.


They brought him up from the pens in cuffs, but the guards stepped back, let him stand next to Blumberg at the counsel table. I stood on the other side of him, wearing my suit, briefcase in my hand, role-playing.


Blumberg mumbled something, just clearing his throat before he let loose. One thing he was good for— he could talk nonstop for days. As soon as he got into full stride, Silver bowed his head, talked to me out of the side of his mouth.


"You do something for me?"


"What?"


"Helene. She needs some cash. She wants to move Upstate, be close to me on this bit."


"You gonna be hit long?"


"They're going to bitch me, Burke. I'm looking at the book— a quarter-to-forever."


Twenty-five-to-life. Silver was ten years older than me— he'd never come out.


"What does she need?"


"Twenty, thirty G's, like that. She's gonna buy a house, get a job. Live like a citizen."


"Can't…?"


"The Brotherhood would get her the money, but I don't want her in this, understand? It's a life sentence once you join. She never joined, just me. I got the money, Burke. From when I was stealing. I'm not sure exactly how much is there but…I'll tell you where it is, you pick it up, get it to her."


"Who…?"


"It's in a house. Basement of a house. In Gerritsen Beach. You know where it is?"


"Yeah."


"In the basement, farthest left-hand corner from the front of the house. Patched in with cement, wrapped in plastic, maybe a foot down."


"Can't she…?"


"She can't do nothing. The house, I owned it once. Helene, she sold it. To get bail money for me one time. Years ago. Just forged my signature, sold it. I couldn't tell her— didn't have time. You understand? Some citizen owns it now— you gotta go in the basement."


"What if it's not there?"


"Then I played my last card. There's nobody else I can ask— didn't want to take a chance the feds have the jail miked."


"Tell me the address," I said.


He told me, gripping my arm so hard it hurt, looking down, trusting.


143

Gerritsen Beach is in Brooklyn, just past Sheepshead Bay. Sunday, we drove the Boulevard, Marine Park running swampy to our left, reed grass high, people walking their dogs, Bensonhurst Boys cruising in Mustangs and Camaros, checking out the teenage girls on the promenade, watching other circuit riders for cues. Eyes would meet at a stoplight. Just one word…"What?!"…and they'd be at it. In the trunks of their shiny cars, baseball bats. For a harder game than the one you play on grass.


We looked for the opening. Turned right, into a tight grid of narrow streets. Some converted cottages, some two-story newer construction, flat-faced. Followed Silver's directions. Dead-ended at a canal, went back one block, located the house. Guy working in the yard, building something. Couple of kids playing catch, wearing Little League uniforms. Houses jammed together, yards deep front to back but no space between them. Neighbors all over the place, windows open, men washing cars, women talking.


I looked over at the Prof.


"It's no go, bro'," the little man said.


I shook my head, giving in to the truth.


144

Helene lives in Ridgewood, Queens. Top-floor apartment, walk-up. She let me in when I said the name Silver gave me.


The living room was all cheap furniture, poison-neat, Silver's picture on the mantelpiece. I wondered if there was another one in the bedroom.


She was in her mid-forties, maybe. Hard to tell— no makeup around her wary eyes.


I gave her a paper bag. Inside was $31,450. Most of what I had left from the score with Elroy's phony paper.


I get up against it bad enough, I can always go in that basement.


145

Done, then. Loose ends all around, but they weren't mine.


Off cycle, somehow. Pansy wasn't in heat. Michelle wasn't ready to come home. Luke would need more work. Wolfe would find the freaks who built the bomb.


It would all happen without me.


I should have been glad to be out of it.


146

The next morning, I took Pansy, went back to the park. This time, I had an old army blanket with me, big sketch pad, charcoal pastels. I set myself up in a good spot, halfway up a rise, strong outcropping of rock to my right. Facing west, the sun behind me.


I propped up the sketch pad, swirled the charcoal over the paper a few times, my eyes sweeping the terrain. Pansy lay on her stomach, face between her paws, wrinkling her nose— the park didn't smell like her roof. Yet. I unzipped the gym bag I'd brought with me. Still-warm loaf of French bread inside, a bottle of water, slab of dark chocolate wrapped in white paper, pack of smokes. And a couple dozen of those little round cheese pieces they wrap in red string.


The white limo came into my field of vision, making the circuit. I could track it pretty well from where I was— no hurry.


I opened one of the cheese pieces, put it right in front of Pansy's snout. She ate it with her eyes, not moving. When there was a river of drool rolling down the slope in front of her, I said "Speak!" in a soft voice. She delicately snarfed it up, ripping a divot out of the grass.


"Good girl," I said, patting her. She snounted up against me, the sun sparkling baby rainbows over her dark fur.


A woman jogged by beneath us, hair flying loose behind her. Couldn't tell if it was Belinda— bad angle. Lots of bicycles, more runners. Mostly cabs on the road. Carlos wouldn't be back my way for a while.


I worked on my drawing, occasionally unwrapping another cheese for Pansy, looking around.


A woman's figure left the path, working her way up the rise toward me. Belinda.


"Hello, stranger," she called our, pulling Walkman earphones off her head. She put them around her neck, covered them with the towel from her waist. Bounced up and sat down. Dressed the same way she was last time, fine sheen of sweat on her face, blue eyes lively.


"What's up?" she asked, indicating my sketch pad.


"Interpretive art. A hobby of mine."


"Could I see?" Pushing close to me, perfume under the sweat. "What's it supposed to be?"


"Just…patterns. Light, shadow…like that."


"It's…I don't know what to say."


"That's okay. Neither do I."


Pansy watched her, not moving.


"Your dog…I never got her name.


"Betsy." It just came out that way— I went with it.


"That's a funny name for such a big dog."


"Oh, I think it suits her. Doesn't it, girl?" Making a gesture with my hand. Pansy put her head on my lap, still watching the woman.


"You remember me, Betsy?" she asked, reaching out to pat. I gave Pansy the signal— she took the pats. I felt her neck muscles under my hand. Steel cable.


I lit a cigarette. "You never did call me," she said, a teasing undertone in her voice, less than a challenge, more than an accident.


"Dinner, you said. I've been working nights."


"Oh." She arched her eyebrows, brushed some sweat from her pug nose— a gesture like you'd see in the ring.


"Nice day for a picnic, it looks like, you had some food." Clarence's voice, materializing from somewhere behind us.


"Yeah, it is," I told him. "Sit down, join us."


He folded himself onto the edge of the blanket, indifferent to the risk to his lime-green pants. "This is Belinda," I said to Clarence. "Belinda, meet John."


He extended his slim dark hand into her thick white one. They shook, smiling. I rummaged around in the gym bag, came out with the bread, broke off a piece, offered it to Belinda. She took it, bit off a nice-sized hunk with her small white teeth. Clarence took one too. I opened the water bottle. We each took a drink. Unwrapped some cheese. Clarence declined. Belinda took one. Pansy glared at her harder than ever. I unwrapped another half dozen pieces, pulled Pansy's head close to mine, whispered the word in her ear. She mashed the cheese like a compactor, licked her teeth to get the remnants.


We finished off the bread. I broke out the chocolate. This time Clarence went for it, Belinda passed.


Peaceful there, delicate as an underwater bubble, the four of us in that park.


"What is that thing, mahn?" Clarence asked, looking at my pad.


"It's art."


"It is, yes?" His black silk shirt rustled as he took it from my hands, examined it from different angles.


"Do you work with James?" Belinda asked Clarence.


"No, we are members of the same club."


"What club?"


"A health club, miss."


"Oh! I'm a member too. Which one do you go to?"


"You never would've heard of it, miss. Way out in Queens, by the train station."


She got to her feet, patted herself like she was checking something. Her calves flexed under the exercise pants, heavy, shapely things. I got up too.


"I'll call you," I said. "Soon."


"Do it," she said, low-voiced. Stood on her toes, gave me a quick kiss near my mouth. Made her way down the hill, turned onto the track, jogged off.


"You were right, Clarence," I said. "She is a pretty woman."


"She's a cop, mahn."


147

Winter sun on my back, throwing shadows. Burning cold.


"You sure?"


"I been out here a long time, mahn. Not just today. She jogs around the park, got that Walkman in her ear. Only thing, she don't just listen, she talks too. Two white men, just past the Fifty-ninth Street entrance, two more, just off Central Park West on Eighty-sixth. Dressed like she is. Ankle holsters, walkie-talkies too. The black guy with the ice-cream wagon…the one by the big pond? Same thing. She talks to them all. That's all, mahn. She don't talk to nobody else."


"Damn."


"Yeah. Thought you knew, mahn, the way you change my name and everything. And she don't know yours, you think, yes?"


"Just playing it safe— I didn't know."


"It's the truth, mahn. Sure thing. Somebody snatch that lady, he gonna get himself hurt."


"You think that's what she's doing…trolling for rapists?"


"Wrong hours, mahn. Wrong time. She stays off the bad trails too. It's you she's working, boss."


"Why?"


"Way I see it, the man in the white limo, he's made him a trade."


"White limo?"


"This is Clarence, mahn. Your friend. Your true friend. Give it up. Don't look back. You follow that big bouncing butt right into the penitentiary."


I lit a smoke, thinking about it. About not looking back. About how that comes natural to some people.


148

Clarence sat quietly next to me. Pansy swept the area with her eyes. Smarter than me, going in.


I packed my stuff in the gym bag, snapped on Pansy's lead, told her to stay while I folded the army blanket.


"Thanks, Clarence," I said, holding out my hand, goodbye.


"That's not why I came, mahn. Got a message from the Queen. One of her people called Jacques. Said to come see her. She has your answer. Come anytime, after dark."


"Anything else?"


"Word for word, mahn."


We walked through the park, heading west. A collie galloped by, off leash, a kid chasing it. Pansy ignored the other dog— she generally does.


"You know about this obeah thing, Clarence?"


"I know some, mahn. What my mother told me, from her mother, she said."


"Tell me."


"It comes from the old ways. From slavery, way I heard it. It's all about sacrifice, mahn. When you die, you wait. To cross over. The sacrifice, that lets you come back. In spirit. There are many spirits…they call them loas…a joker, a warrior, a lover."


"The bag…the one we found that night. That was a sacrifice?"


"Yes, mahn. The Queen, she is the Mamaloi, the priestess. There's two kinds obeah. The white and the red. The red, their god is the snake."


"What's the difference?"


"In white obeah, in that juju bag would be a chicken, maybe a goat…an animal."


"In the red…?"


"The goat without horns, mahn," Clarence said, his hands clasped together. A quick shudder passed through his thin frame.


149

Belinda was a cop. In books, people are fascinated with mysteries. Can't let them slide. Books have plots— life has plotters. Maybe Belinda was the front end of a decoy operation, maybe Carlos had already rolled over for the Man and she was with the backup team. Or maybe it was me they were looking at— maybe she heard about me, wanted to freelance a bit. Get a gold shield to pin on that fine chest.


I wondered if she'd ever had a dog named Blackie. If she'd really liked Pansy.


Clarence picked the lock on the privacy of my mind. "You gonna do it, mahn? Go there, see the Queen?"


I nodded.


150

Two more dead days. Then I went out to answer the call. Just before midnight, I crossed the Triboro, took the far right lane to Queens, exited at Ninety-fourth Street, just before La Guardia. Rolled south to Northern Boulevard, turned left to the voodoo house. The gate was open. I pulled the Plymouth inside, all the way around to the back. Two men in the yard, dressed in their black and white. I got out slowly so I wouldn't spook them. They looked through me, said nothing.


I walked to the back door. A bright red arrow was freshly painted on the side of the house, pointing to a set of stone steps. Down.


Another way to the basement. I followed the steps to the bottom. By then, I knew better than to knock. No doorknob. I pushed, it opened, and I was inside.


The underground room seemed bigger than the last time. She was where she was before, a faint shape in the gloomy shadows. I walked to her. Candles popped into life all around the room, thick and stubby as fists, fat-flamed. Red and white, lacing the dark in an alternating pattern like the pin heads on the juju bag. Cloth-sounds on either side of me as I moved. Deep dampness from the stone walls. The floor felt like packed earth beneath the soles of my boots.


"Do you believe now?" she asked, soft-voiced as I approached.


I sat before her. "The baby was in the water," I replied.


"Yes. And now you hunt again."


"Not for…"


"I know. Not for him. For the false gods. For what those like you call the devil."


"Yes."


"You do not ask how I know. Have you learned, then?"


"Yes."


"Where is your son tonight?"


"I have no son."


"Yes, hunter, you have a son. The young one who was with you when you last came. He is dark like us, but his heart is like yours. A son looks to his father for guidance. For the Way. Your way is to hunt. And he follows."


"No, it's just a job. He works for others."


"And to those others, you are a hired man, yes?"


"Yes."


"And so then is he. Like you. It is from you he learns, not from them. And he protects you, like a son."


"He's a professional— it's his job."


"No. His master gave him the message. From me. To you. And so you are here now. But the boy, he has been here since yesterday afternoon. Just across the street, in one of the rooms they rent."


"How…?"


"He paid the lady extra so he could have a room with a window on the street. The bathroom is down the hall. In his room, in his suitcase, he has a rifle. One that comes in two pieces. It is our house, there. The lady is not one of us, but she knows what to do. It is your son."


"He won't do anything. I'll…"


"It is all right. He is safe. Ask me your questions now— we have work to do before the sun."


"The people I'm looking for…" I started, reaching in my pocket for the mug shots Wolfe had given me.


She held up her hand. "We do not know them. Not by their faces. But by their practice, they are known. They are not sorcerers, they have no magic. Poison is their weapon. Their poison, it makes the wolf who walks."


"No. They…"


"What Europeans call a werewolf, child of sadness. Before there was legend, before there was myth, there was truth. Their poison, it makes a beast. When the beast feeds, when it is satisfied, it is a man again. You have seen this."


Luke. Baby baby baby. Stabbing. Toby. A different child. The runaway. Running in his mind. Splitting off.


I nodded. So deeply it felt like a bow.


"The poison-masters leave a spoor. It is their track. The dead sheep tells us its killer by the marks on its body— a man kills differently than a wolf. The hunter knows."


"I know who. Not where."


"Take this," she said. Handing me a leather thong, long glossy feathers attached to it. Black and white. "Wrap the strap around your wrist, hold it like this." Her forearm straight out, fingers pointing to me.


Ki.


The feathers hung limp. The tips of our fingers touched.


"They know each other, the vampire and the werewolf. But know this too, hunter. They are not brothers."


Electricity in my fingers, in my wrist. The feathers fluttered in the candlelight but the flames held steady. I couldn't feel the breeze.


Her hand moved, covered mine. Untied the thong from my wrist. Leather and feathers disappeared somewhere behind her throne.


She closed her eyes, tilted her chin up. I could see the long muscles in her throat. Her eyes opened, held mine.


"Come here," she said.


I stood up. She made a gesture. I bent toward her. Her face was close enough to kiss. Her arms went around my neck. Something there, soft.


I stepped back. A tiny muslin bag bounced against my chest, thin silken strap around my neck.


"Wear it against your body until your hunt is done. Wear it inside their cave— it will protect you."


I bowed.


"Take your son. And go now."


151

I parked the Plymouth right in front of the building across the street. Got out, sat on the hood, lit a cigarette. The window shade in the front room flickered. The kid had a lot to learn. I waved my arm in a "come on down" gesture. Waited.


Clarence came out the front door, suitcase in one hand, his pistol an the other.


"It's okay," I told him, opening the trunk for the suitcase, lifting the panel next to the fuel cell so it would disappear even if some cop wanted to play Probable Cause on the way back.


He climbed in the front seat. "How'd you know, mahn?"


"Never mind. Where's your car?"


"My car?" he said, looking across at me like I was on lithium. "I wouldn't bring my ride to this place, mahn. Where would I park it? I took the bus."


152

I rode the BQE toward Brooklyn. The Plymouth's independent rear suspension absorbed the potholes in the middle lane, just a touch under the speed limit.


"You should've told me you were working backup, Clarence."


"I figure, I tell you, you have an attitude, mahn. Give it away."


"It's not professional, surprise your partner, okay? I didn't know it was you in that window, might've been the first thing I took out, I made it to the street. Specially if I saw that curtain move. What'd you figure…you were gonna lay down some cover for me, spray their house with the rifle?"


"Something like that." Paying attention, sullen.


"You had the high ground, that was good. Probably got a couple of extra clips for the piece too."


He nodded.


"That's not the way, kid. You'd never get out of there alive. That's cowboy shit. Kamikaze. You send a partner into a meeting, you want to get out, not get even, understand?"


"How would you do it, mahn?"


I reached in my jacket pocket, feeling the Queen's amulet against my chest. Handed him a palm-sized black plastic box, tiny toggle switch on the top.


"What's this, mahn?"


"Throw the switch, Clarence."


He flicked his finger. A tiny red LED light came on. He looked over at me.


"My car is parked in their backyard, okay? There's trouble, I take out this little box. Show it to them. Flick the switch. The light comes on, just like it did with you. I tell them my partner's close by…maybe circling in another car. The red light, that's his signal. I don't drive the car out of there in ten minutes, my partner's gonna push a switch of his own. In the trunk of my car, there's enough plastique to make the whole block disappear. And even if they got somebody crazy enough to try and drive the car away, they couldn't start it, even with the keys. They open the trunk, the whole thing goes up. Understand?"


"What if they search you, find the box right away?"


"I tell them the same thing, only it's gonna happen if I don't: throw the switch, see?"


"It's a cold bluff, mahn."


"I had a partner on this, it wouldn't be."


He didn't say another word until I turned off Atlantic, heading for Jacques's joint.


"You gonna show me stuff like that, mahn?"


I looked over at him, at his fine-boned face, thinking about what the Queen told me.


"Yeah," I said.


153

I know how to be alone. How to get there by myself. Where I was raised, privacy was more precious than diamonds. In the orphanage, nothing was your own, even your clothes— gifts they could take away. They made sure you knew it. Most of us only learned to hate each other, fighting over the scraps they left us.


You get into enough of those fights, reform school is the next stop. In the reform schools, they didn't have cells. Just a big room with a toilet in one corner. Cots all over the floor. Whichever kid had to sleep right next to the toilet, he spent his life being pissed on.


I remember the kid who slept there. When he got out, he vowed he'd never sleep next to a toilet again. He went out with a gun in his hand, got something of his own. In prison, they had cells, not dorms. The lucky ones, the ones with juice, they got a one-man cell. This kid, he did a lot of things, went high-profile, made his rep. When he went down again, he was grown. They gave him a one-man cell. With a single bunk. Right next to the toilet.


When I got out, I made my own vows. I found a basement. Mine. An older guy wanted it for his crew. I was so scared, I shot him.


That cost me a stretch in the joint. That's where I ran into the kid who'd slept next to the toilet, heard his story. The State's good at that— arranging reform school reunions.


In prison, you've got nothing but your body and your honor. Plenty who'll try and take those too. I knew a guy, had tattoos all over him. The only real estate that was his. They couldn't take that from him, he said. Made it easy to identify the body when they found it.


I didn't need time to think about what the Queen said. Even as she spoke, I knew what she meant. Who she meant. She called him a vampire— I always think of him as the Mentor. A heavy-networked pedophile, safe like rich makes you safe. I'd gone to him years ago, looking for a picture of a kid. For Strega, the Witch. I got to him through the Mole. The freak had done something…was still doing something…for the Israelis. I couldn't hurt him, the Mole told me. Came with me to make sure.


The Mentor told me his philosophy— silky voice wrapping around the lying words. Sodomizing children is love. Taking pictures of it happening was preserving that special love…icons to a perfect moment in time.


I was the vigilante Wolfe thought I was, he'd be dead.


The last time we talked, I'd learned something. Never put it together before last night. All freaks are dangerous, but they're not all the same.


No point calling the Mole. He'd give me the same warning. Insist on going with me again. Maybe even tell me to stay away.


The Israelis wouldn't be watching his house, but breaking in would be tough. And for this guy, the cops would use the siren.


154

I shaved carefully the next morning. Put on one of the suits Michelle had made me buy, dark gray. A pale blue shirt, dark silk tie with blue flecks in it. Laced up my shoes, gave them a final buff with an old T-shirt.


"Where're we going, mahn?" Clarence asked as he got into the front seat.


"To school," I told him, heading back to Manhattan.


It took a while, three full circuits of the cesspool. The Prof was on his cart, tiny body looking legless under the blanket, talking to a pair of hookers a block from the exit off the Lincoln Tunnel. Two young black girls, one with a blonde wig, both wearing short shorts, halter tops, high heels. One squatted next to him, listening. The other tapped her foot nervously, looking left and right. I pulled over, motioned Clarence to come with me, started back up the block.


The Prof was gesticulating wildly, his arms flapping in the oversized sleeves of his coat. Last year's Cadillac squealed to a stop, a baby-blue coupe, gold custom wheels, gold trim. A player oozed out the driver's side, a heavy-bodied man in a short red jacket with gold trim, white pants tucked into red boots. We closed the gap on his blind side.


"Get your black ass back on the stroll, bitch! You costing me money."


The blonde-wigged one looked at him cautiously. "We was just…"


He slapped her so hard the wig went flying. She went to her knees in the street, snatched it up, took off. Her sister went with her, moving fast.


"Hold up, brother!" the Prof said. "The Lord will punish the wicked. Do not harm these children."


"Yeah," I said from behind him. "Don't."


The pimp whirled on us. "This ain't your business, man."


"That's right," I said, reasonable-voiced, "it's not. But I don't want you thinking maybe you don't like my brother talking to your women, maybe you figure you'll catch him again someday, alone."


"Tell the little nigger stay away from my string, then."


"I can't tell him that— can't tell him nothing. It's not what I do. I'll tell you instead, okay?"


"You looking to cut in, motherfucker?" Trying for ice in his voice, eyeing Clarence. Clarence in his tangerine silk shirt, fingertip white linen jacket. "You fronting off for pretty boy here?"


"You think I want your dirty women, mahn?" Clarence asked sweetly, the pistol materializing in his hand, leveled at the pimp's beltline.


"No trouble, man," the pimp said, ice melting. Backing away toward his car.


"Put away the tool, fool," the Prof snapped at Clarence. "There heat on the street." He unwrapped the blanket, climbing off his cart. We put the cart in the trunk. The Prof jumped lightly into the back seat.


155

"Carlos is history," I told the Prof, talking just over my right shoulder. He was draped across the back of the front seat, between me and Clarence.


"Some dreams turn to screams, bro'. Ain't no big thing."


"Yeah."


"There was a cop…" Clarence started to say.


The Prof waved away the explanation. In our world, "why" won't draw flies.


I made the introductions. "Prof, this is Clarence. Clarence, my brother the Prof."


"Prof?"


"Some call me the Prophet for what I preach— some call me Professor for what I teach."


"What do you teach, then?"


"Time and crime, son. Time and crime. You from Jacques?"


"Yes, mahn. He is my boss."


"You working with Burke?"


"Learning, more like."


"And what you think this schoolboy could teach you? He's still learning himself."


"From you?"


"You ever been to prison, boy? Ever been behind the walls? I met this fool, he was a crazy rookie. Gunfighter, he wanted to be, posing for bank cameras until they dropped him for the count. I taught him to play with fire, walk the wire, you understand? I'm a thief, boy. A sweet thief. Make a buy, tell a lie. No guns, son. I don't fall, been through it all."


I nodded. "The stone truth," I assured Clarence.


"You work free-lance?" the Prof asked. "Or you on apprentice? Jacques gonna teach you to run the guns?"


"I'm on the payroll, mahn. But to run the business…Jacques has plenty ahead of me."


"Cold beats bold, son. You don't wait, you visit the State, understand?"


"Yes, I know this."


"That pimp, back there by the tunnel, the one running those scaly-leg girls…you'd shoot him?"


"No, mahn. I was just showing him some firepower. Playing backup."


"Play ain't the way, boy. Your eyes fire when he call your name, then the man knows your game. You want to scare a motherfucker, hot ain't worth a lot— ice is nice."


"He said…"


"Hey, say ain't play. Jump, and you're a chump. Man slaps you in the face, what you do?"


"I kill any man who slaps me. I'm not a woman, a man be slapping me."


"Schoolboy, what's the first two things I taught you, a man slaps you."


I lit a smoke, buying some seconds. The Prof had done the voice-over, but it was Wesley who walked it through. Years ago, on the prison yard. An iron-freak named Dayton had slapped the ice man in the face, right in front of everybody. Wesley just slumped to the ground, didn't say a word. Dayton strutted off, floating on the whispers. The cons said Wesley was a dead man— a man who won't fight when he's slapped is pussy. Free meat. They kept saying it until the guards found Dayton dead in the weight room.


I looked over at Clarence. "Smile," I said. "And wait. You're gonna come, come quiet."


The kid wouldn't let it go. He turned to the Prof. "That religion stuff I heard you run down…you're a preacher, where's your church?"


"You think the Lord's got nothing better to do than be sitting up there taking attendance? I got the call when I was small. Where I walk is where I talk."


"I was just…" Clarence's voice trailed off. I wondered if he got it, if he understood the legless man on the cart was a giant.


"You got a silencer for that pistol?" the Prof asked him.


"Yes, mahn. I mean, not with me, but…"


"Get one for your mouth," the little man snapped, lighting himself a smoke.


156

Limestone town house just off Fifth Avenue. I pulled to the curb. "I'm going inside," I told them. "Clarence, when you drive, watch the gas, this thing'll pull stumps. The guy I'm going to see, he's about forty-five. Rail-thin, dark hair, going bald on top. Face makes kind of a triangle, wide across the top. Thin lips, long fingers. Name's on the door, brass plate right over the bell. Come back in about an hour. I'm not here, just park anywhere on the block, wait, okay?"


"Sure, mahn," Clarence said, sliding over behind the wheel.


The Plymouth drove off. The Prof would tell the kid what to do if I didn't come out.


157

The teak door sat smugly behind a wrought-iron gate set flush in the frame. I pushed the pearl button. No sound from inside. Waited.


The door swung open. The vampire was wearing a quilted burgundy robe of heavy brocade, a black length of braid knotted at his waist. Hard to make out his features in the shadows, but I recognized the shape of his face, the hair dark at the sides. Saw the skull beneath the taut skin.


"You," he said, a whisper-hiss of surprise.


"Can I talk with you?"


"We've already talked."


"I need your help."


"Surely you know better than that."


"If you'll hear me out…it's something you'll want: to do. And I have something to trade."


"You're alone?"


"Yes."


He touched one finger to the tip of his nose, deciding. Then a twisting gesture with his other hand. I heard a heavy deadbolt slide back, tugged gently on the wrought iron, and the gate came toward me. I stepped inside.


"After you," he said, gesturing toward the staircase.


The room hadn't changed. Old-money heavy, thick and dark. Only an amber computer screen marred the antique atmosphere. The screen had several rows of numbers across the top— it blinked into darkness as I glanced at it, defying my stare.


"Notice anything new?" he asked, pointing to the chair I'd used last time.


I sat down— swept the room, playing the game. In one corner, a rectangular fish tank, much longer than it was high. I got up to look closer, feeling him behind me. The fish were all some shade of red or orange, all with wide white stripes outlined in black.


"This is different," I said. "What are they?"


"Clowns. The family name is Pomacentridae. They come in many varieties. The dark orange ones are Perculas," pointing at a fat little fish near the top. "And we have Tomatoes, Maroons, even some Flame Clowns— my favorites."


The Flames had red heads with a white band just behind the eyes— the bodies were jet black. They stayed toward the bottom of the tank.


"Saltwater fish?" I asked him.


"Oh yes. Quite delicate, actually."


"They're beautiful. Are they rare?"


"More unusual than they are rare. Clowns get along wonderfully with other fish. That is, they never interact— they stay with their own kind, even in a tank."


"They don't fight for territory?"


"No, they don't fight at all. Occasionally, a small spat among themselves, but never with other fish."


I watched the aquarium. Each tribe of Clowns stayed in its own section, not swimming so much as hovering. I saw his reflection in the glass fade as he went over to a leather armchair and sat down. I took the chair he'd first indicated, faced him.


He regarded me with mild interest, well within himself, safe where he was.


"You said you had something…"


"Yeah. The last time we talked…when you told me your…philosophy. About kids…"


"I remember," he said stiffly. "Nothing has changed."


"I know. I listened. You told me you loved little boys then. I came because I need to see how deep that goes.


"Which means…?"


"What you do, what others like you do, it's love, right?"


He nodded, wary.


"You don't force kids. Don't hurt them…anything like that."


"As I told you. What is wrong with our behavior…all that is wrong with our behavior, is that it is against the law. We are hounded, persecuted. Some of us have been imprisoned, ruined by the witch-hunters. But we have always been here and we always will be. You didn't come here to engage in philosophical discourse…"


"No. Just to get things straight."


He got to his feet, turned his back on me. Tapped some keys rapidly on the computer, too fast for me to follow. He hit a final key with a concert pianist's flourish. The machine beeped. He got up, went back to his easy chair.


"You've been logged in. Physical description, time of arrival, your code name, everything. It's all been transmitted— the modem is open."


"I didn't come here to do anything to you."


"I'm sure."


"Listen to me," I said, leaning forward, keeping my voice low. "Can we not be stupid? I didn't come here to do anything to you. But don't confuse yourself— the Israelis aren't your pals. I don't know what you did for them, what you do for them…and I don't care. But all they are is a barrier. A threat. Like you think I am. Somebody drops you, they aren't going to get even. Understand what I'm saying?"


"Yes, quite well. You are saying if I don't give you information you want, you'll kill me."


"That's cute. You got enough for your tape recorder now? I'm not threatening you. Not with anything. I'm just trying to tell you something…and you should listen. Listen good…maybe you don't want this on tape."


He steepled his long fingers, regarding me over the top of the spire. I counted to twenty in my head before he moved a muscle. He got to his feet, languid movements, tapped into the computer again. Sat down, waiting.


"This is the truth, okay?" I told him. "You don't have friends in high places. Not true friends. What you are is an asset…something of value. Everybody protects what they value. You know that good as anyone. You have this valuable painting, okay? Somebody steals it, you try and buy it back. But if there's a fire, all you can do is collect on the insurance. The Israelis can't protect you unless it's the federales who pop you. They got no reach with the locals. What I have for you, it's another barrier. Something you can't get from your friends."


He raised his eyebrows, didn't say a word.


I reached in my pocket, handed him an orange piece of pasteboard, about the size of a business card. He turned it over, held it up.


Get Out of Jail Free.


"Is this your idea of a joke?"


"It's not a joke. You got a lawyer, right? Probably got a few of them. Have your lawyer go over to City-Wide, speak to Wolfe…you know who she is?"


"Yes."


"See if I'm telling the truth, then."


"I'd get…?"


"Immunity. Kiddie porn's the only way you're going down, right? The only risk you take. And you're not getting stung by Customs— you don't deal with people you don't know. Only way it's gonna happen, somebody drops a dime, City-Wide does the search."


"There is nothing here."


"You're looking at the big picture, pal. And that's a mistake. What you should be looking at is the frame, see?"


He took a breath. Small, cold eyes on mine. "You couldn't deliver," he said quietly. "We know about Wolfe. People have…talked to her before. She's not…amenable…to…whatever you propose."


"Have your lawyer talk to her again. Do it first, before you do anything for me, okay? I'll tell you what I want, tell you right now, in this room. Just listen— I guarantee you it won't be against you or your people. Give me a couple of days, have your lawyer go see her, all right? Nothing's changed, you don't have to do a thing. You decide, okay?"


He steepled his fingers again. I counted in my head. "Tell me what you want," he said.


158

I lit a smoke, centering. I'd only get one shot.


"We both know how it works, you and me. Child molesters…"


His thin lips parted— I held up my hand in a "stop!" gesture, going on before he could speak. "I'm not talking about your people now. There's people who molest children, right? I'm talking about rape. Sodomy. Hard, stick-it sex. It happens. Don't go weak on me now. I know what you do— I know what you told me. I could play it back for you, word for word. The kids you're involved with, it's love, right? There's always a consent— you wouldn't do a thing without it. I remember what you said…you're a mentor, a teacher. Not a rapist. I'm separating you now— listen good. Those people who say child sexual abuse is a myth— we know better, you and me. I'm not saying you do it— I'm saying it gets done. People do it, right?"


"Savages do it."


"Yes. Fathers rape their daughters, it's not a fantasy. Humans kill kids, make films of it, it's not a myth."


"And you think we're all the same, you think…"


"No," I said, eyes open and clear, calling on a childhood of treachery for the effortless lying that they made second nature to me before I was ten. "What you do, people could argue about it, but I know you love children. Maybe I don't agree with it, but I'm not a cop. It's not my job. It's the baby-rapers who make your life hell, isn't that true? You love children. You'd be as angry about torturing them as anybody else would. Even if the laws changed, even if they eliminated the age thing, made it so a kid could consent to sex, then they'd be like adults, right? And rape is rape."


"Society calls it rape when…"


"I'm not talking about statutory rape, pal. Listen close— stand up to it now. I'm talking about black-glove, hand-over-the-mouth, knifepoint rape. Blood, not Vaseline. Pain. Screaming, life-scarring pain. A little boy ripped open, maybe one of your little boys…you like that picture?"


"Stop it! Stop it, you…"


I dragged deep on my cigarette, staying inside. "That's what I want to do. That's what you've got to do. Help me.


"I…"


"You know. You know it happens. They did it to my client. A little boy. They split him open like a ripe melon— he's a basket case. And they videotaped it. A group. An organized group. Satanists, they call themselves, but we know what that's about, don't we, friend?"


"I don't deal with…" Sweat streaking his high forehead, tendons cabling his hands, veins like wires in his throat.


"I know you don't. You wouldn't do anything like that. Or your people. I know." I spooled velvet over him, a cop telling a rapist he understands…those cunts, displaying themselves, wiggling like a bitch in heat, fucking asking for it, right? Men like us, we understand each other. "But freaks like that, they have to be stopped. They bring heat, and heat brings light, you know what I'm saying? You know what I do. I've never made trouble for you, right? Help me."


"How could I…?"


"The computer. They raped that little boy to make a commercial product. Not like your icons— not to remember a boy as he was— pictures to sell. The kid was a product, and they need a market. They'll be on the board somewhere. You could find them. Your friends could find them. That's all I want."


"And…"


"And they'll never know. And if you should happen to slip, Wolfe will make sure you don't fall."


He searched the pockets of his robe. Found a black silk handkerchief, patted his face dry, deciding. I waited, watching the dice tumble across the green felt in my mind.


Finally he looked up. "Tell me what you know."


159

Clarence slid over as I got behind the wheel. "Where can I drop you?" I asked him.


"It's okay, 'home," the Prof said. "He'll come with me, ride the IRT."


I looked over at Clarence. He nodded.


I dropped them on the East Side. Found a pay phone, called Wolfe.


160

In the front seat of Wolfe's Audi, parked on Kew Garden Hills Road, just past the cemetery. The Rottweiler was lying down on the back seat, bored with the conversation.


"Where's the switch for the recliner?" I asked her. "I need to move this seat back."


"It's over here. I'll release it…move back real slowly."


"How come it's over there?"


"If there's somebody sitting where you sit, and they get stupid, I can pull this lever and the passenger seat falls straight back, into full recline." She reached into the back, patted her dog. "And there's Bruiser," she said, quiet smile on her face.


I thought about being strapped in with a seat belt, lying face up like a man in a dental chair with a Rottweiler ready to pull teeth. Nice.


"I may have a way," I said, lighting a cigarette, "to find Luke's parents. I met a guy, years ago. A networked pedophile. Does the whole trip: he's a 'mentor' to little boys, guides them along the path of sexual awareness, keeps these photographic icons as a monument to the joy they shared. You know what I'm talking about— a child molester with intellectual cover. Pedophilia— the cutting edge of sexuality— the last taboo— you've heard it all. He's a child advocate, he says. Children are being restricted by the archaic laws, what good is the right to say 'no' without the freedom to say 'yes.' All that."


"Like you said, I've heard it before."


"Yeah. Well, anyway, he's doing something for a foreign government. I don't know any more about it. Bottom line: the feds wouldn't drop him even if he fell for one of their stings. I offered him immunity if the locals ever glom on to him. Told him you'd back it up. That you'd tell that to his lawyer when you get a call."


"You told him what?"


"You heard what I said. It's a payoff Not for nothing. He turns up Luke's parents, he walks next time you pop him. If you ever do."


"You know what you're asking me to do?"


"Yeah. Lie."


Wolfe looked straight out through the windshield, tapping her long claws on the wheel. French manicure: clear nails, white tips. I watched her blouse move with her breathing.


"I can do that," she said.


161

I wasn't going to rely on the freak. Even if I'd played him perfectly, even if he went for the outside fake, I couldn't be sure he wouldn't come up empty. Luke's parents could be anywhere. As close as Manhattan, as far away as Holland.


The Queen's image hovered at the edge of my mind. Roots. Obeah. Obey. Spirit calling. I let myself be the hunter, following the spoor.


I put out the word. Independent collector looking for videotape. No commercial products wanted. Boys only. Hard stuff The real thing. Top prices paid. Salted the Personals columns with the right code words. Tapped into the computer bulletin boards I knew about. Checked the DMV. Two cars registered to the targets: an Infiniti Q45 and a Mercedes 380 SL. The address was a house in the Hamptons. Turned out to be a rental— they were paid up through Labor Day, but they hadn't been around for weeks. The rental agent was a cautious woman— she had a photocopy of their check against the chance it wouldn't clear. It had, though. Drawn on a corporation with a midtown Manhattan address.


That turned out to be a room full of mail slots. An accommodation address, set up for forwarding. I unlocked the code with a fifty-dollar bill. A PO box in Chelsea. That would've stopped most people, but the Prof's semi-citizen brother Melvin works in the Post Office. They'd bought the box in their birth-certificate names, and the home address was listed. The one where they found Luke covered in his baby brother's blood.


Dead end.


I started over. The neighbors in the building had already been questioned by the cops. One lady didn't mind going through it again, asked if she was going to be on TV. Far as she knew, the poor kid's parents moved away to a safer neighborhood. One where a maniac couldn't sneak in your house at night and chop up your baby. She and her husband would move too, but the real estate market was so soft now.


The corporate checking account was on a commercial bank. I walked in, made out a deposit slip to the account number, put it together with a check for five grand made out to the corporation. The teller took it, stamped it in, went to his machine, came back and told me the account had been closed. I told him I was worried about that— here I had this debt to pay, didn't know what to do with the check. He didn't go for the bait, told me he didn't have a clue. Don't worry about it, he told me, it wasn't my problem.


162

They wouldn't give themselves away. Humans like that have two levels of immunity— the kind you can buy and the kind that comes from the pure sociopath's lack of guilt. True evil is invisible until it feeds. They'd laugh behind their masks at a therapist, breeze through any polygraph.


Best guess is they wouldn't leave the country. Other places may treat pedophiles nicer on the surface, but nobody's got our brand of freak-protection written so deeply into the laws.


I reached out for Wesley. The tracker's spirit came like it always does…riding the tip of my consciousness. I could never call up his face, but I'd always know his voice.


"Where?" I asked him.


"You know. Better than me."


He left me with that. I played the tapes in my head. What I know. They always use multiple locations, move the kids around. They'd have a cave close by. And they'd need things humans need. Electricity, heat, water. Phones too.


The DA could subpoena the Con Ed records, search Ma Bell. Wolfe had probably done it already, but I wasn't going to suggest it to her. I used a cutout, an ex-cop who's got a whole string of people inside the record room. Nothing on paper…a few quick taps at the computer keys and I'd know if they were listed.


"You want all the utilities?" he asked.


"All of them," I said. "Try the gas company too. And not just the city, okay? Give me Westchester, North Jersey, southern Connecticut."


"You're talking a big tab, man."


"I'm good for it," I told him, handing him a thousand in fifties. "The rest when you get back to me."


It only took him three days. To come up empty.


163

They wouldn't be too far underground, not these freaks. Humans who prey on children lead lives of monumental duplicity. The neighbors are always shocked when a bust goes down— not those people. They'd be community leaders, political conservatives, but with a soft spot for civil liberties. Tight lives, tightly controlled— they'd only let go inside their evil circle.


I called my pal Morelli, a crime reporter who came up hard. Asked him to leave me alone with his NEXIS terminal for a while. He said what he always says.


"Anything for me?"


I just shook my head.


164

He came back a few hours later. All I had to show for my work was an ashtray full of butts and a legal pad full of notes. Humans indicted for ritualistic abuse who had jumped bail, kiddie-sex rings exposed…some of the perpetrators not apprehended. Possibilities— they always find others like them.


"Any luck?" Morelli asked.


"Goose egg," I told him. "Thanks anyway."


165

I didn't say anything to Morelli about a newsclip I'd found. Sixteen-year-old girl. A babysitter in a nice lower Westchester neighborhood, she'd been arrested for sexual abuse of two little boys. The crime had taken place last year— the babysitter's name was being withheld because of her age. Full confession.


I parked my Plymouth in the municipal indoor lot across from the Yonkers Family Court. Seven-thirty in the morning— the place was empty. I walked through the lot, down the stairs in front of City Hall. The stone steps were littered with humans who couldn't find a place to sleep on the park benches, clutching their plastic garbage bags full of return-deposit aluminum cans and plastic bottles, waiting for the recycling joint to open.


I found a pay phone, dropped in a quarter. A very proper-sounding woman's voice answered. "Family Court."


"You alone?" I asked the voice.


"Yes," she said, and hung up.


The Family Court is in a regular office building on South Broadway. Nobody's allowed on the floor until it opens. I rang for the elevator, heard the gears mesh as the car started downstairs, and stepped through a metal door into the stairwell. When I got to the right floor, I gently pushed against the Fire Exit door. It was open.


I made my way down the corridor, dressed in my lawyer's suit, carrying an attaché case. Anyone stopped me, I'd say I was looking to file some papers.


Nobody did. She was waiting in the file room, a patrician woman with a proud, erect carriage, wearing a long-sleeved dress with lace at the cuffs and the throat. The boss clerk, she always got there early and left late— a disgrace to civil servants everywhere. I bowed slightly. She held out her hand. I opened the attaché case, gave her a Xerox of the newsclip. She read it carefully, nodding slightly. Then she walked over to a bin labeled "Pending" and searched through the folders. Pulled one out, showed it to me. I didn't touch it.


She walked over to the photocopier, ran off a half dozen pages. Smoothly and efficiently, the way she does everything. I put the pages in my case. Bowed again.


She turned her back on me, returned to her work. I don't know what she thinks of me, this lady. Nothing much ever shows on her face. But she knows what I do.


166

The papers I took with me had everything I needed. The kid's name was Marianne Morgan. Lived with her mother and father, attended a private school in Larchmont.


The next day, I called a guy I know. He's a caseworker in the local child protection unit, been there for years. He's also a major-league cockhound— some guys only like blondes, he only likes them married. Five-thirty in the morning, he answered the phone on the first ring. Probably just getting back home. I told him what I wanted. We made a meet for that night— he said he was coming into the city anyway.


167

I got there first— a bar on First Avenue in the Sixties. Ordered a mineral water, shot of Absolut on the side, looked around. Mostly an after-work crowd: men and women in matching pinstripes, talking about deals.


He was only a few minutes late. Slid in next to me, grabbed the vodka off the bar, tossed it down.


"I got the Intake notes," he said by way of greeting.


"With you?"


"In here." Tapping his temple.


"How'd you get a JD Intake? I didn't think that stuff went across agency lines."


"It doesn't. It should…they're the same kids…but it doesn't. Turf bullshit…you know."


"Yeah. So?"


"So she was a CPS referral first. Told her guidance counselor at school she was having sex with her father."


"How long ago?"


"In late '88, just before the Christmas break. She didn't want to go home from school."


"What happened?"


"She told the investigator the whole thing. Her father was a mirror freak. She hated the mirrors. Then, when we sent her to a validator, she recanted. Pulled back on the whole thing, said she made it up because she didn't want to get in trouble for her grades."


"It got dropped?"


"Yeah. Then she called the Hot Line herself about six months later. Told them the same story."


"And dropped it again later?"


"Right."


"You think it was true?"


"Hell, yes. We get recantations all the time, especially from teenage girls. She just couldn't pull it together. The way I figure it, she got herself busted so it'd be out of her hands."


"So she's in custody?"


"No. Her parents hired a lawyer for her. See, she was fifteen when it happened…with the kids she was babysitting…so she gets tried as a juvenile even though she's over the age now. The Family Court judge cut her loose. Gave the parents of the kids some Order of Protection. She has to report to a Probation Officer once a week pending trial, that's all."


A woman walked past, a young woman with too much butt for the jeans she was wearing— she was squeezed in there so tight the little back pockets wouldn't stay parallel to the center seam.


"Keep your mind on business," I told him. "Hard to talk with your mouth hanging open like that."


He snapped out of it, refocused his glazed eyes. I ordered another drink.


"You got the name of her Probation Officer?" I asked him.


"Wouldn't do you any good, Burke. She skipped out a couple of weeks ago. She's listed as a runaway now.


I was thinking of another question to ask him when he got up, shook hands goodbye, and went sniffing after the woman in the jeans.


168

Lying with my head against some pillows piled up at the end of Bonita's bed, smoking a cigarette, eyes half closed. Bonita on her knees, facing away from me, looking back over her shoulder, admiring the dimples over her heart-shaped butt. Her body still gleamed from oil and sweat.


A long time ago, I had a girlfriend. A poet, she was. "I can always see the end of everything," she told me. Explaining why she cried when we had sex.


Things don't end for me, they loop. Same stage, new players. A homing pigeon released from a poisonous coop, hung up in the sky. Waiting for them to open the door again. Watchful for hawks.


I thought about Blossom. So truly beautiful a woman it was a pleasure just to watch her dress in the morning. How even her sweat was blonde. A flash of pink in the night before a sex-sniper went down. Hard innocence.


Fresh and new. But only for me. No plastic slipcovers on her soul.


I thought about promises.


Down here, innocent doesn't mean naive. It means Not Guilty.


Bonita was telling me something about moving to another place. A place of her own. Where we'd have more privacy. But money was tight. If she could just swing the first couple of months' rent and security…licking at her lips, like the idea made her hot.


Knocking at her door, I'd wondered why I'd come. Soon as I had, I wondered again.


I closed my eyes. Not sleepy. Tired.


169

Heat boiled asphalt and tempers, the summer sun fried dreams. Gunfire rattled the windows of high-rise slums from Brooklyn to the Bronx. A teenager shot a boy his own age in Harlem. "It was about a diss," he told the cops.


Another teenager was stabbed to death on the subway. On his way home from his part-time job. His neck chain and bracelet were taken. "I begged him not to wear his gold on the train," his father told the TV reporter.


On Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, I came out of a storefront off another cold trail, hit the sidewalk. A white Cadillac at the curb, its flanks scored with gouges from a vandal's key. An old woman walked by, saw me looking, made a sad sound with her lips. "You cain't keep nothin' nice in this city no more," she said, moving on.


170

I chased dead trails. Followed a rumor about a safe house for pedophile priests. Where they take them for therapy until the heat's off And put them right back in another parish, never saying a word to the congregation.


If there's a devil, he's laughing at this new way to recycle garbage. And if there's a God, somebody should sue him for malpractice.


171

I took a puddle-jumper plane up to Marcy, the state joint for the criminally insane. Sat in the visiting room listening to a psychopath who'd dissected a kid with an electric knife tell me he knew how to find any devil-worshiper in the country. Just get him out, he'd lead me right to the people I was chasing. I told him I couldn't do that…but maybe I could pull some strings, get some time cut off his sentence. He smirked at me— he wasn't that crazy.


172

Showed the mug shots around, asked everyone. Drew blanks at every turn. I rattled every cage I could think of, but all I got back was the snarl of beasts.


173

It was eight days before he called. Mama answered, told him I wasn't around. He wouldn't leave a message, just said to make sure I was there, same time tomorrow. Said to have her tell me it was my friend calling.


He called the next day. Heard my voice, said an address into the phone, hung up.


174

That should have wrapped it.


I waited for Max to show up, got in the car, went over to Lily's. I was going to give her the address, let her deal with Wolfe, stand back.


But when I got to SAFE, Lily took me into a back room without me saying a word.


"I got it," I started to tell her.


"It doesn't matter. Not now."


"Why?"


"There's parts I don't know. Wolfe said to meet her. She wants to tell you herself."


175

I called Wolfe. Followed instructions. Almost daylight when I pulled into her driveway. She opened the door, already dressed for work, makeup in place.


"You want coffee?"


"No, thanks."


"I'll just finish mine, then, okay?"


"Sure."


She sat at a round wood table, sipping from a white china mug. The ashtray next to her had a couple of lipsticked butts in it already, scraps of phone messages at her elbow. The Rottweiler curled at her feet, face on the floor between his paws, looking like a fatalist.


"I got their address," I told her.


"I know. I knew you would. It's no go."


"What does that mean?"


"It means I got sold out," she said. "There's no way to prosecute them for what they did to Luke— we try and put him on the stand before he's fused, he's going to split wide open. And if we wait, his story won't fly. What jury is going to go for devil-worship? That's why they use all that…all the trappings."


"We don't have any of the tapes. They know what they're doing— the camera angles won't have his face. Or theirs. Not theirs, for damn sure. Buyers only care what the victim looks like."


"You knew this going in. What about the…?"


"Prosecuting for homicide? Yes, that was the trump card. I could get a grand jury to go for it, I'm sure. It makes logical sense. We could get in all the psychiatric testimony that way too. Then we'd have a club over their heads…split them up, get one to roll over, talk to us, make a statement. At least we'd have a chance."


"So? What's wrong with…?"


"What's wrong is that the office won't let me go after the indictment. I heard more crap these past few days about defendants' rights than I hear from Legal Aid in a year."


"You think somebody's bent?"


"No, I think they're cowards. An indictment like we'd want, it's not a sure thing. It'd go up and down on appeal for years. They're scared…they're scared of all those 'false allegations' freaks…you know, the ones who talk about the 'myth' of ritual abuse." She lit another smoke, blew out a puff angrily, sipped at her coffee. "You want to know what's funny? They may be right, those people. I'm not sure Satanists are doing anything to children…you know how they say the devil can quote the Scriptures? Well, anyone can quote the devil. This stuff is the flip side…child molesters can put on the costumes, and all of a sudden, it's 'Satanic.' It's like a scam inside a scam…we find the kids, they tell us what happened, and we get lost in prosecuting the devil. The office doesn't want any part of it— they won't authorize the presentation. And even if I snuck in the indictment, they'd move to dismiss it themselves. They've done it to me before."


I lit a smoke of my own, buying time. "Did that guy ever send his lawyer around?"


Her smile showed up, low wattage. "Oh yes. His lawyer is a partner in one of our most respected Wall Street firms. Doesn't know a lot about criminal law, though. We made our deal."


"You gonna keep it?"


"Sure. He gets flat immunity for anything we drop him for. Limited to nonviolent offenses, of course. That's the way he presented his client— we just went along. And he throws in truthful testimony about any others involved."


"That'd get him dead."


"Yes." She made a clicking sound with her tongue. The Rottweiler sat up. Wolfe held the coffee mug steady as he lowered his snout and slurped. "It's decaf," she said, like I was accusing her of dog abuse.


"We'll take them in. Throw a bunch of charges at them, see if one'll crack even without the homicide hammer. It depends how many of them there are, how well organized, who's representing them. You know how it works."


"Yeah. Discovery motions'll get them Luke's statements. He ends up hospitalized too. And they walk away."


"Maybe next time," she said, looking right into my face. "What's the address?"


I ground out my cigarette, getting up to leave. "I didn't bring it with me," I said.


She didn't say another word. I let myself out.


176

I spent that day drifting. The building where they were holed up was freestanding, but it hadn't been designed that way— rubble from the wrecker's ball still on either side. In the South Bronx, just over the Willis Avenue Bridge. Pioneer-yuppie territory. When real estate prices went out of control in Manhattan, every square inch of land turned gold. Yuppies charged out of the center like maggots exposed to light:


Long Island City, Flatbush, Harlem, anywhere you could find dwelling space. If you could get in first, you could get in cheap. Staking out the frontier. You held the land against the natives, you could turn it over for cash, big time. The people who'd been living there first, they got the '8os equivalent of smallpox-treated blankets. Then God died on October 19 and the real estate market crashed. Some of the pioneers were cut off from the supply lines. Too late for the natives to make a comeback, though— they got tickets in the Projects lottery, sleeping on the streets while they waited their turn.


The next-nearest building was maybe twenty-five feet to the right. Six stories, abandoned. No windows in its eyeless corpse. Chain link fence all around the occupied property, glimpse of cars parked around the side. Satellite dish on the roof, all the ground-floor windows barred. A meter-reading scam wouldn't get me inside.


It was just an address— still couldn't be sure it was them. The vampire may have gotten it wrong. Or gotten me right.


177

I was still drifting when it got dark. I let it happen. Found myself on the BQE to Queens. Thought I was heading to Wolfe's when I felt the amulet around my neck. A hot spot— the kind you get from fever.


Pulled up outside the house. Turned off the engine, giving them plenty of time to notice me. Started it up again, pulled into the driveway, around to the back.


The messenger didn't seem surprised to see me.


She was downstairs, two young women with her. They stepped aside as I approached, bowed to her, and moved away. It was so dark, I couldn't tell if they were still in the room with us.


"You are troubled," she said.


"Yes."


"Ask your questions."


"I found the people I was looking for. But they're beyond the law."


"As you are."


A soft light glowed to my left— looked like flame floating in water.


"I'm not beyond the law," I told her. "They could bring me down like swatting a fly."


"Do you seek justice?"


"No."


"What, then?"


"Revenge."


"Yes, truth does not change with names. You are afraid?"


"Not of them. Not now."


"But once, yes?"


"Yes. When I was a kid."


"These are not the same people who hurt you."


"Yes, they are. You said it yourself. Only their names have changed."


"So it is not for the child you seek them?"


"Maybe. I don't know. That's the truth— I don't know."


"That is your sacrifice. To tell me the truth. A truth you have told no other, yes?"


"Nobody knows."


"You have it on you, hunter. You will never be free. Not until you cross over. Do not fear, treasure your sadness. This earth will not hold happiness for you, but your spirit will return. Clean and fresh."


"Without hate?"


"It is your spirit to hate, hunter. Your true path is to hate righteously. Guard the health of your spirit— do not endanger your soul."


"I'm going to…"


"I know. Any man can break the circle, but no man can prevent it from closing again. That man, the one who came to us with the baby's body. For the sacrifice. There is one who loved the baby. She still lives."


"The mother…"


"She is not the one. She was never the one. The mother is with child now. She will not survive the new infant— she will die in childbirth. And she who loved the baby who died will have a new child to love."


"How…?"


She put her hands behind her head, arched her back like a cat, stretched. Her smile was the secret of sex. "In the Islands, in the jungles just outside the cities, people whisper. No man lives without food. Even the spirits must eat. They must mate too. I know. It is that to be Queen. Listen now: some say baby snake eggs hatch in the stomachs of those who have offended. The babies hatch, their poison kills. Then you must cut open the body to let the spirit-snake free. The inside of a bamboo stalk is many tiny little hairs, like baby snakes. In your food, the hairs cause great sickness. Some die. The spirits are surgeons, not butchers. The mother will die, the baby will live. We will make our sacrifice— I will give myself— they will come into me. It will happen."


"Give yourself?"


"The myths are true, hunter. As I told you. I can raise the dead. As you were dead, once. Tell me this is true."


I saw Candy in my mind. Bound and gagged. And deadly. Later, on her stairwell, skirt hiked to her waist, losing my impotence inside her, paying the price.


Raise the dead— for the first time, I knew what it meant.


"It's true," I said. "Do I…?"


"You too, hunter. You will not find what you seek with your own sacrifice, but it is your spirit's destiny to seek. Remember what I have told you."


I stood up. Bowed. She stood too, moved close to me. She was much shorter than I'd thought. Hands reached up around my neck, pulled my face down. Her tongue was fire in my mouth. "When you come back, it will be yours," she whispered, raising the dead.


178

The gypsy cab rolled past their house, me driving, Mole in the passenger seat, Max in the back.


"You see any way in?" I asked.


The Mole ignored me, scribbling something on a notepad strapped to his thigh.


Back in the junkyard, he looked up from a drafting table. "My friends told me you visited that…person. Off Fifth Avenue."


"I didn't hurt him."


"You should have told me."


"Your friends, they ask you if you knew about it?"


"Yes."


"Nice to be able to tell your friends the truth, isn't it?" The Mole took off his Coke-bottle glasses, rubbed them on his greasy jumpsuit, said nothing.


179

Later that night, Max slipped out of the gypsy cab, all in black. We were half a block away from the target, on a side street facing the back of their house.


Nothing to do but wait.


We sat in silence, Mole checking the windshield, me the back window. No smoking, a .38 held against my leg, pointed at the floor. It wasn't Max I was worried about— in this neighborhood, they strip cars with the passengers still in them.


Max moved like a squid in ink— didn't see him until he was almost on top of us.


Back in the bunker, Max made the sign of opening a door, held up two fingers. Two doors, front and back. Held up one finger, pushed forward, made a sign like turning a doorknob, put a fist to one eye, like looking through a telescope. Held up two fingers, pulled back, flattened his palm like it was gliding over a smooth surface.


The Mole sketched quickly, showed Max the house: front view, a door between two barred windows, peephole about face level, doorknob to the left. Max nodded yes. Then the back view: the door just a slab of flat metal, no peephole, no doorknob, arrows showing it opened out. Another nod of agreement. The Mole sketched a fire escape along the back of the building, running from window to window. Max shook his head, made the flat-palm gesture again. The Mole used his eraser, showed us a pure slab, windows bricked over.


"Only way in is the front," I said. "Have you got…?"


"We'll look again," the Mole said.


180

I found the Prof on Wall Street the next day, working his shoeshine rag like a virtuoso. Clarence was his customer, sporting alligator loafers to go with his pearl-gray suit. I waited my turn.


"How about riding shotgun tonight, Prof?"


"Go slow, bro'. Put another quarter in, give me one more spin."


"We got to check out a building. In the Bronx. Me, Max, and the Mole. Can't leave the car alone in that neighborhood. Just a watcher's job— scare anyone away, they come by."


"If it's a score, there's room for more."


"It's no score. Just something I'm gonna do."


"Me too."


"Listen, Prof, there'll be nothing to split up, where we're going, okay?"


"It don't scan, man. But I'll do what you say, back your play. Pick us up on the pier."


"Us?"


"This boy don't take a turn, he ain't never gonna learn," nodding his head at Clarence.


181

Clarence drove the Plymouth along the back street, its muffled exhaust motorboating against the sides of the diseased and deserted cars lining the block. He pulled to a stop, the back seat emptied. He took off as we started across the empty lot to the abandoned building.


Max went first. I brought up the rear, the Mole between us. Broken glass crunched under my feet as I turned to check behind us. I could see the Mole's bulk in his jumpsuit, stumbling along, his leather satchel in one hand.


So much garbage piled up in the gully behind the building that we could step right into the first-floor windows. The smell told me we weren't the first ones to figure it out. Rats scurried. I threw my pencil flash forward, sweeping. Newspapers piled in one corner, a shopping cart without wheels, metal frame to a TV set, plastic coat hangers, rags that had been clothes once. Another corner was the bathroom. Crack vials scattered among broken chunks of concrete from the building itself. Wine bottles. Fire scars on the walls, blackened pillars. Open-grave smell.


The metal staircase was still standing, pieces of the railing missing. Max took a length of black cord from somewhere, looped it around one of the stairs about halfway up, pulled as hard as he could. It held.


We started up the stairs, testing each one. The second-floor landing was solid. I played the flash over the walls— gang graffiti, faded under dust and ash. The next floor was better. Stronger staircase, less damage.


"Basement fire," the Mole whispered. After the building had been abandoned, some wino fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. They probably just let it burn itself out— worth more money to the landlord empty anyway.


When we stepped out onto the roof, we could see in every direction: headlights on the highway, the quiet bulk of the Plymouth waiting. Looking straight down to the target, eyes pulled to a bright light like moths. A skylight, glowing yellow-orange, set into the center of their roof.


The Mole reached in his satchel, took out a pair of night glasses, and started his scan. Max walked the roof corner to corner, leaning far out over the edge, palms out as though the air could balance him.


The Mole handed me the glasses. I narrowed in on the cars parked along the side of the building, behind the chain link fence. Five of them, parked parallel to the building. One a Mercedes coupe for sure, but no hope of getting a license number from that angle.


182

"Their roof edges make a trapezoid," the Mole told us. "No way to get a grip. The top is smooth— even a grappling hook would come loose. And if you hit the skylight, broke the glass, it might be wired. Some kind of sensors all around the building, about chest high. Maybe infrared, motion detectors…can't tell."


"Which leaves what?" I asked him.


"Tunnel through to the basement, punch through the front door, or land on the roof."


"It's the door, then. They have to be getting electricity in there, right?"


The Mole nodded.


"And you could take it down?"


He nodded again.


"Okay, next thing is to make sure it's them. I got their mug shots, from when they were arrested. Had some blowups made. They have to come out sometime…it's a tough neighborhood to hang out in, but maybe we could…"


"I can watch for them, mahn," Clarence said. "Just get me an old car to drive."


Max tapped me on the shoulder, pointed at Mole, touched his mouth, patted his fingers against his thumb in a talking gesture, made the sign for "what?"


I translated, standing over a silent jackhammer, digging with an invisible shovel, moved my hand in a reverse parabola to show coming up from underneath. Shook my head "no." Then I locked my thumbs, fluttered my hands like flapping wings, showed a takeoff and a landing. Shook my head again— we'd need a helicopter. Then I mimed pushing down the T-bar on a dynamite detonator, threw my hands apart in the sign for an explosion. Made the sign for "okay."


Max looked only at the Mole. Got to his feet, pointed. They walked away together.


183

"He is still missing, mahn."


"He can't stay missing for long, Jacques. He doesn't have but one way to earn a living. And Wolfe's people are on his case."


"Yes. And if they find him, what happens? He will go to jail for killing the baby?"


"Maybe. Who knows? He'll say it was an accident…or maybe that the mother did it. There's no sure things."


"A sure thing if we find him first, mahn."


"Yeah, I know. That's not why I came. I need some stuff"


"What, then, mahn? You have only to ask."


"Two shotguns. A semi-auto and a double-barrel. Both twelve gauge. And a Glock with a long clip. Straps for the scatterguns, shoulder holster for the Glock, butt down. Okay?"


"A Glock? That is not like you, mahn. You are my only customer who will never use an automatic— always complaining that they could jam no matter what I tell you, huh?"


I just shrugged, thinking about what I'd learned in Indiana.


"You need that much firepower, maybe you could use a couple of men, yes?"


"No, I'm okay. It's just in case, you know?"


"I know. Clarence is still working with you? Looking for that man, Emerson?"


"Yeah."


"He is a good boy. Maybe his temper is too quick, but he is young yet."


"He is that. How soon could you have the stuff?"


"Just a day or so, mahn. I will have them all tested, in perfect order. When you're done, you may leave them wherever you work, ice-cold clean, all right? Anything you want done to them first?"


"Cut down the barrels on the scatterguns."


"Of course, mahn. Modified choke, yes? Twelve-gauge, three-inch shells, double-O?"


"Perfect."


"Tomorrow night, then."


184

I was teaching Luke how to play casino when one of the pay phones rang at Mama's. She came to the table, pointed at me.


"It is her, mahn. The woman in the photo. A dead ringer."


"Get out of there. Now."


The phone went dead in my ear.


185

"How many cards left?" I asked Luke, pointing at the pile between us.


"Twelve."


"How many cards have you already collected?"


"Nineteen."


"How many spades?"


"Five."


"How many cards loose?"


"Four in my hand, four in yours, two on the table. Ten."


"How many cards have I collected?"


"Eleven."


"Okay, now what do you do when…?" Max sat down next to Luke, made a "come on" gesture to me, impatient.


"We'll finish this later," I said to Luke.


The kid bounced in his seat, eyes pleading. "Can't I come too?"


I looked at Max. He grabbed Luke's belt, hauled him out of the seat like a briefcase. The kid's laughter trailed through the restaurant as Max carried him to the back.


186

We got in the Plymouth. Max made the sign for the Mole. Late afternoon. We slogged our way north on the FDR, Luke sitting between us, eyes bright with the prospect of seeing his pal.


Terry let us in the gate. He and Luke ran off together, Simba circling them, yapping like a pup. Max pulled me ahead.


The Mole was a good distance from his bunker, hunched over a U-shaped metal bracket maybe twelve feet wide. It was anchored to what looked like metal rods, running at forty-five degree angles from halfway up the bracket arms to the ground.


"What's this, Mole?"


He ignored me, looping a thick ribbon of rubber over one end of the bracket, then the other. It looked like a giant slingshot. From the bottom of the U-bracket, he unfolded a pair of metal tubes, about three feet apart. Placed them against the back of the rubber band. Then he pulled on a lever. Ratcheting noise with each pull. The rubber stretched. Stretched some more. He nodded at Max. The Mongolian picked up two sacks of dry cement mix lashed back to back, placed them in the notch formed by the rubber. The Mole pulled the switch and the cement sacks blasted off like the Space Shuttle, flying in a high arc, smashing against the top of a wrecked car maybe two hundred feet away.


"You're fucking insane," I told the Mole. He bowed. Max grinned.


"It's impossible," I said. "Max'll get killed."


"It's not impossible," the Mole said. "It's just a ratio. Thrust to weight, height to distance. It's got way too much power now. All we need is an arc, Max can float down."


"Float? You're a maniac. And he's a bigger one.


Max was pulling black silk out of a duffel bag when Luke and Terry walked over to us.


"What's Max doing?" the kid asked.


"Making a fool of himself."


"Max wouldn't do that…Can I see?"


The warrior climbed into his costume. He was encased in silk: a hood fit tightly over his head, Velcro closures at his wrists and ankles. Standard night-stalker stuff— I'd seen it before. Then he spread his arms in a crucifixion gesture and he sprouted wings— ribbed silk billowed from his wrists to his ankles.


"It's wonderful!" Luke clapped his little hands, delighted at the game.


"Jesus!" Terry said.


I didn't say anything.


187

The Mole carried his launch device in one hand. "Aluminum," he said when I looked a question at him.


"Why don't you just shoot him out of a cannon?"


"He's not going that far. The drop is about forty-five feet roof to roof. The launch building is much higher than the target."


Ask a lunatic a question…


We walked over to where junked cars were piled into a mountain about twenty feet high. The Mole slowly made his way to the top, set up his launcher. He climbed down, paced off a distance, took a can of spray paint from his jumpsuit, made a white X on the hard ground.


"About four clicks," he said. Climbed back to the top. It took a while.


Max went up the mountain like it was a ramp. Leaned back into the notch, nodded once. The Mole pulled on the lever.


"Max is gonna fly!" Luke said.


I held my breath.


A sproong! sound and Max was airborne. He shot straight up, jack-knifed his body like a diver, popped open his wings with a loud snap. His body went up like he'd caught a gust, righted itself, and floated to the ground like a butterfly landing on a flower. Right on the damn X.


Max wasn't breathing hard. The Mole cut open his knee stumbling down from the mountain of cars.


188

"For the last fucking time, Prof, there's no money in this."


"Even you not fool enough to Rambo a house for nothing, schoolboy. I'll pay the fare, take my share."


I didn't try and talk him out of it— he knew the truth.


We all had our reasons.


I knew I wouldn't find any answers in that house. I was so lonely. Missing my old pal, Fear. I'd see him soon enough.


189

Two in the morning, the lights were still on in the front windows. Two downstairs, one on the second floor. The third story was dark.


I checked my watch. In a couple of minutes, calls would start flying into 911: Hispanic, black, white, Oriental voices. Gunfight at 138th and the Concourse, fire at a social club, man with a machete running down Walton Avenue, woman holding a baby on the top floor of the Projects, threatening to jump, bodega robbery, cop down on Hoe Avenue.


Clarence was behind the wheel of the pale blue slab-sided van, the name of some phony butcher shop painted on the sides in maroon script.


Cops see it moving through the South Bronx, they'd figure it was on its way to the meat market in Hunts Point.


"You ready?" I asked Clarence, adjusting the shoulder strap for the shotgun over my chest. I had the semi-auto, the Prof always worked with a side-by-side.


"Yes, mahn."


"We go first, okay? Nothing starts until we do. Don't be blasting away just to be doing it— they don't make a move on me, you take off for the spot soon as the front door goes. Listen, Clarence, listen good. Everybody's coming out the back, okay? The Mole'll get to the van first. He'll be okay. He can't see worth shit, but he can drive good enough, he has to. And he knows where to go. I come out first, I'm waiting for Max. He comes first, he'll wait for me. Don't waste your time trying to move him— he won't go. Anybody gets hit, we got the medical kit in the back. Let the Mole do the doctoring, you drive, it comes to that. Anybody comes out after me and Max, blow them away."


"I got it, mahn. I won't let you down."


"I know. Your mother raised a hell of a man."


His tight smile flashed in the dark. I watched the target house. Held my hands in front of me, palms down, fingers spread. Delicate fingers, they looked to me now. X-ray eyes, seeing the bones. Cold bones, icicles— they'd shatter like glass if I hit something.


I tapped the side of the plastic bottle of talc, rubbed it all over my hands. Slipped on the surgeon's gloves, warming my hands.


Then I pulled the Velcro band tight around my right wrist, checked for flex. I'd have to fire the scattergun with one hand.


I felt my heart pound, breathed until it settled down into a smooth idle. Inside, they weren't the ones. But they'd do.


On the top of the abandoned building, a tiny red light blinked. Time.


I held out my hand. Clarence took it, squeezed.


I stepped onto the street. Hands full. Started my walk.


The headlights on the van flashed into life. Blinked off. Flashed again. The signal to the Mole. In the target house, the lights in the windows went dark, electricity dead. The bolt cutters took the gate in one chomp. I walked up to the door, shotgun in my right hand. No sounds from inside— they probably figured it for a blown fuse. Flattened myself against the wall next to the door, molded the plastique all around the seams. Pulled the string and ran to the side of the house, rolling into a ball, soles of my boots pointed at the door. It blew off with a muffled thump, mini-mushroom of plaster dust billowing out.


I was up and running back to the entrance, crouching as I slid through the doorway, a human trip-wire, on the kill. Movement to my right— I squeezed off a blast from the scattergun. Voices screaming above me. Downstairs was empty except for a couple of couches, big television set. And a body dressed in jeans and a splattered white T-shirt, blood from waist to face.


Center staircase. I started up, crab-style, stomach flat against the left wall, leading with my right hand. A shape peered around the corner ahead of me. I fired, scrambled up behind the blast as a body tumbled down the stairs toward me, swung the shotgun around the corner, cranked off three more rounds, sweeping. I dropped the shotgun, whipped the automatic free of the shoulder rig.


"This is the police!" I yelled, concussion still ringing in my ears. "Come out with your hands up!"


Two of them staggered into the hall. Man in white boxer shorts, woman in a red nightgown, hands up, trying to say something.


I moved down the corridor. "Where's the rest?" I asked, leveling the pistol between them.


"Downstairs," the man said.


"How many?"


"Seven. We're the Nine. I


"Turn around, grab the wall. You move, you're dead."


They braced themselves like they'd done it before. I pulled a flare from my jacket, cracked it open. It glowed cold green fire at the end of the hall near the staircase. Enough light to see Max as he flowed down the stairs, a shadow of power. Something crackled like cellophane in my chest, suppressed fear released— he'd made it to the roof. I pointed ahead, stood guard as he went into the other rooms.


Three rooms and a bath on the floor, doors standing open. The man and woman had come from the one on the end. Max stepped back into the corridor, made an "all clear" signal to me. Pointed a finger upstairs, grabbed the finger with his other hand, bent it in half. One of them had been upstairs.


Time running down. "Where's the rest?" I asked them, reasonable and calm.


"We told you," the woman said. "Downstairs."


It hit me then— where it had all started for Luke. I stepped close to them, pulled the trigger again and again, squeezing them off the count. Charged down the stairs, flying now, feeling Max behind me.


The basement door was locked— felt like steel. I stepped aside. Max's leg shot out like a pile driver, rapid-fire hammering all around the knob. A final kick took it off the hinges. Gunfire answered, bullets whined up at us. I dropped to my belly, unhooked the baseball-sized grenade from my belt, pulled the pin with my teeth, tossed it in. A white flash just ahead of the bang. I crawled inside, flying blind.


Lights on— they must have had a generator. A bullet chipped the wall near my face. I emptied the Glock, sweeping in a Z-pattern, hosing them down, slithered back outside, snapped in a new clip.


All-dead silence now. I crept down the stairs. The far wall was cracked open from the grenade— I could see clear out to the night. Pair of heavy videocams on tripods, cross-firing at a black-skirted platform standing in front of an inverted cross. Foot-high numbers sprayed in red on the wall above: 666. The platform stood untouched by the explosion, waiting for the show to start. I walked over, looked down. The surface was gleaming hardwood, an upside-down pentagram carved deep into its face, like a butcher's drain. The pentagram stared back at me, a leering goat's head.


Two bodies down there. One wearing a black hood, peaked at the top, some weird symbols on it in white, a .45 in its hand. The other was a woman, black hair, heavy white makeup, black lipstick. They were both stitched with bullets from the Glock. I spun around to go when I saw it…in the corner. I made myself look. A little boy. Handcuffed behind his back, tape across his mouth, naked. Bullet holes along his spine. I turned him over with my hand, gently too late. The exit wound had taken off his face.


My mind blanked off the child's body, rejecting the image, a pure white screen with black numbers, counting: Nine, the woman upstairs said. We are the Nine. I'd taken out two with the scattergun before I dropped her and her pal. Max left one coming down from the roof. Two in the basement. The little boy wouldn't count— he wasn't one of them. Two more, somewhere. I held up two fingers to Max. He took the point to the back door. It was standing open, swinging softly in the night air. I snapped my last flare, tossed it outside, rolled out in its wake, Max right behind. We started toward the van, keeping low. I saw a woman's body lying face up in the weeds. We were about fifty feet away when the shots came. I caught one in the shoulder— a hard punch from an ice pick. White wires ripped through my arm, my eyes starbursted with pain as I went down. Max dove on top, covering me with his body. Double blast from the Prof's shotgun, snapping string of killer hornets from Clarence's automatic.


"The motherfucker's down, bro'! Run for it, we got your back!"


On my feet now, Max's arm around me bracing, trying to run. Heard the van's engine roar into life, felt myself lifted inside.


It all went black then.


190

I rested up in the junkyard. Hadn't lost much blood with the pressure bandage they'd slapped on. Got lost in the painkillers for a few days.


I was okay about it, the dead time. Talked to Terry, watched some TV. Max fed Pansy every day, finally went back and brought her over to me. She was in heat. It took me fifteen minutes of one-handed sign language to convince him I wanted him to take the dog to Elroy's for a while.


Clarence came by, sat next to my cot in the bunker.


"I saw him take off The Silent One. Like a skate, a devilfish flying. Right after you blew the front door. Seemed like he was up there so long, floating."


"You stand there gawking at him?"


"Oh, that is what the Prof said, mahn, I finally get around to the back door with him. I didn't even see the first one come out. It was the Prof who took her— a young girl. She was almost on me with that long knife, screaming like a mad witch, when I hear the shotgun speak. Cut her right down. I would not have thought the little man could do like that."


"Yeah. He's a fucking wonder."


"He's a man. Like I never knew. Quiet, after that. Then we hear shots from inside. And the explosion. I ask him, how long we gonna wait? He says, until you come out. I ask him, what if you don't come out? You know what he says to me, mahn? He says, then the cops find us when they come. And we die right there. Die like men. I wish my mother knew a man like that."


"Me too."


The bullet never touched bone. The bandage was a few inches from the Queen's amulet, still around my neck. I was healing, waiting my time. Staying inside, icing up.

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