Strega

89

TRAFFICE WAS light on the way to the courthouse. I turned off Queens Boulevard and nosed past the D.A.'s parking lot, saw Wolfe's Audi near the door. The lot was half empty, but I didn't want to leave the Plymouth there. They have municipal parking a half-block away. It looked like a graveyard for the few cars still remaining. Dark and deserted-a mugger's paradise. I hit the switch to disable the ignition, not worrying about even the lowest-grade thief breaking in for the radio. I don't use a car alarm-they're a waste of time unless you're close by.

It was eight-forty-five when I pushed open the glass doors to the D.A.'s office. The guy at the desk looked up from his crossword puzzle. His eyes never reached my face.

"The jail's next door," he said.

"I know," I told him. "I have an appointment with A.D.A. Wolfe."

Still not looking at me, he picked up a black phone on the desk, punched in a couple of numbers.

"There's a lawyer here-says he's got an appointment with Wolfe." He listened for a second, looked up again. "Name?" he asked. "Burke."

He spoke my name into the phone, then put it down. "Turn right past the divider, last door at the end of the corridor." "Thanks," I said to the top of his head.

I found the place easy enough. Wolfe was sitting behind a big desk. The top was swept clean-a white orchid floated in a brandy snifter in one corner. Two monster piles of paper were on a shelf behind her. I guess she knew most cons can read upside down.

She was wearing a white wool jacket over a burnt-orange dress, a string of pearls around her neck. Her nails were a few shades darker than her lipstick-both red. Wolfe had a soft, pale face-one look and you could see it wasn't from fear, it was her natural color. The silver wings gleamed in her lustrous hair. When I came in the room she stood up, reached across the desk to shake hands.

"Thank you for seeing me," I said.

"I can't promise you much privacy," she replied. "There's a lot of people still working in the other offices."

I couldn't tell if it was a warning-it didn't matter.

"I've been working on something for a while," I said. "And I ran across some stuff I thought you'd be interested in."

She lit a cigarette with a cheap plastic lighter, pushing an ashtray with some hotel's name on it in my general direction. She was good at waiting.

"Anyway," I said, "I got to the point where I need some more information-another piece of the puzzle…"

"And you believe I have this piece?"

"I'm sure you do," I said.

A tall black woman stalked into the office, ignoring me as if I was a lump of furniture. Her mouth was a grim line.

"It was an acquittal," she told Wolfe.

Wolfe's face didn't change. "It figured to be," she said. "Did you stand up?"

"Stand up?" the black woman asked.

I knew what she meant even if the black woman didn't. Baby-rapers have a way of smirking when the jury refuses to believe their victims-as if the jury said it was okay, what they did. A good prosecutor looks them in the eye, memorizing their faces.

"What did you do when the foreman read the verdict?" Wolfe asked the question another way.

"I went over to the defendant-I told him I'd see him again," the black woman said.

"You stood up," Wolfe told her. "Round one, remember?"

"I remember," the black woman said. "He'll be back. And I'll be ready for him."

Wolfe smiled-I could feel the heat coming off the black woman standing behind me. She knew what the smile meant.

"Want to take tomorrow off?" Wolfe asked.

"I'll take a day off when Jefferson goes down," the black woman snapped.

"We all will," Wolfe said. It was a dismissal.

I lit another cigarette. Wolfe hadn't hung around just for a meeting with me. Time to get to it.

"I'm playing it straight down the line on this. Did Lily talk to you?"

"Lily did. McGowan called me too."

"And?"

"And I still don't know what you want, Mr. Burke."

"I want…" I started to say. A guy about five and a half feet tall and four feet wide walked in, stepping between me and Wolfe. His hair was cropped close to his scalp-he had a round face but cop's eyes. He was wearing a black knit shirt over some gray slacks. The shirt didn't have an alligator on the front, but it did feature a shoulder holster. The.38 was only a small dot on his broad chest. He looked like a retired wrestler or a bouncer in a waterfront bar.

"How's it going?" he asked Wolfe, never taking his eyes from me.

" Jefferson was acquitted," she said.

" Jefferson is a miserable fucking piece of slime," the big guy said, chewing on each word like it was raw meat.

Wolfe smiled at him. "This isn't Jefferson 's lawyer," she said.

The big guy shrugged. It was like watching an earthquake. "You want the mutt?" he asked.

"Sure, bring him over," Wolfe told him.

The big guy walked out, light on his feet. Maybe he'd been a boxer instead of a wrestler.

Wolfe lit another smoke for herself and held up her hand, telling me to wait.

The big guy was back in a minute, holding Wolfe's Rottweiler on a short leather leash.

"Hi, Bruise!" Wolfe said. The beast walked right past me, put his paws on the desk, and tried to lick her face. She slapped him away good-naturedly. "Bruiser, go to place!" she said.

The big guy unsnapped the leash. The Rottweiler walked to a corner of the room and flopped down on the carpet. He watched me like a junkie watching a mailbox on welfare-check day.

"I'll be around," the big guy said. I got the message-as if the Rottweiler wasn't enough.

"I'm listening," Wolfe said.

"I'm looking for a picture. Of a kid. A picture of a kid having sex with a man. I talked to a lot of people, went a lot of places. I think I know where the picture is. I think you know the people who have the picture. All I want is for you to give me a name and address."

"You said you had something for me?" she asked. One look at Wolfe and you knew she wasn't talking about money-even in Queens County.

I tossed the little leather address book I took from the pimp on her desk. She didn't make a move to touch it.

"It's from a guy who sells little boys. In Times Square. First names. Initials. Phone numbers. And some kind of code."

"How did you come by this?"

"I was taking up a collection-he donated it."

Wolfe took a drag of her cigarette, put it in the overflowing ashtray, picked up the book. She turned the pages slowly, nodding to herself.

"Did he get hurt making this donation?"

"Not badly," I told her. "If you want to ask him yourself, his name's Rodney. He works out of that fast-food chicken joint on Forty-sixth off Eighth."

Wolfe nodded. "And you want to trade this book for the information?"

I took a gamble. "It's yours," I told her. "No matter what you decide."

"You have a copy?"

"No," I lied.

Wolfe tapped her nails on the desk. It wasn't a nervous gesture-something she did when she was thinking. A phone rang someplace down the hall. It rang twice, then stopped.

A tiny little woman burst into the office, her face flushed, waving a bunch of papers in her hand. "We got the printout!" she yelled, the words sticking in her throat when she saw Wolfe had a visitor. The Rottweiler snarled at the intrusion. The woman had her hair all piled on top of her head; a giant diamond sparkled on her finger. She put her hands on her hips. "Bruiser, please!" she said.

The big dog subsided. Wolfe laughed. "I'll look at it later, okay?"

"Okay!" the other woman shouted, running out of the office as if she was going to a fire sale.

"Are all your people so worked up?" I asked her.

"We don't have draftees in this unit," she said, her eyes watching me closely.

"Not even the dog?"

"Not even him." She fingered her string of pearls. "What do you need?"

"I know the woman I'm looking for is named Bonnie. I know she lives on Cheshire Drive in Little Neck. Maybe with a fat guy.

"That's it?"

"That's it. She's running a kiddie-porn ring-I figure you have your eye on her."

Wolfe said nothing, waiting for me.

"And if you don't," I told her, "then I just gave you some more information, right?"

Wolfe took a breath. "What is it you really want, Mr. Burke? You obviously already know how to find this person.

I lit a cigarette for myself-it was time to tell her.

"I have to go in there-I have to get that picture. If I can buy it, I will."

"And if you can't…?"

I shrugged.

Wolfe reached behind her and pulled a bunch of papers onto her desk. Some of the sheets were long and yellow-I knew what they were.

"Mr. Burke, Lily did call me, as I said. But I did a little checking on my own before I agreed to this meeting."

"So?"

"So you are not exactly unknown to law enforcement, are you?" She ran her finger down one of the yellow sheets, reading aloud, lifting her eyes to my face every once in a while. "Armed robbery, assault one, armed robbery and assault. Attempted murder, two counts. Possession of illegal weaponsShould I go on?"

"If you want to," I told her. "I was a lot younger then."

Wolfe smiled. "You're rehabilitated?"

"I'm a coward," I told her.

"We have twenty-seven arrests, two felony convictions, three placements in juvenile facilities, one youthful-offender adjudication."

"Sounds about right to me," I told her.

"How did you beat the attempted-murder case? It says you were acquitted at trial."

"It was a gunfight," I told her. "The cops arrested the winner. The other guys testified it was somebody else who shot them."

"I see."

"Anything on that sheet tell you I don't keep my word?" I asked her.

Wolfe smiled again. "Rap sheets don't tell you much, Mr. Burke. Take this one-it doesn't even give your first name."

"Sure it does," I told her.

"Mr. Burke, this shows a different first name for every single time you were arrested. Maxwell Burke, John Burke, Samuel Burke, Leonard Burke, Juan Burke…" She stopped, smiling again. "Juan?"

"Dónde está el dinero?" I said.

This time she laughed. It was a sweet chuckle, the kind only a grown woman can do. It made my heart hurt for Flood.

"Do you have a true first name, Mr. Burke?"

"No."

Wolfe's smile was ironic. "What does it say on your birth certificate?"

"Baby Boy Burke," I told her, my voice flat.

"Oh," Wolfe said. She'd seen enough birth certificates to know I'd never have to worry about buying a present on Mother's Day. I shrugged again, showing her it didn't mean anything to me. Now.

Wolfe took another piece of paper off her desk-this one wasn't yellow.

"The FBI has a sheet on you too," she said.

"I never took a federal fall."

"I see that. But you are listed as a suspect in several deals involving military weapons. And a CIA cross-reference shows you were out of the country for almost a year.

"I like to travel," I told her.

"You don't have a passport," she said.

"I didn't come here to ask you for a date," I said. "I'm not applying for a job either. I admire what you do-I respect your work. I thought I could help you-that you could help me too."

"And if we can't work this out?"

"I'm going into that house," I told her, looking her full in her lovely face like the crazy bastard this case had turned me into.

Wolfe picked up the phone, punched a number. "Nothing's wrong," she said. "Come in here." She hung up. "I want to be sure you're not wearing a wire, okay? Then we'll talk."

"Whatever you say," I told her.

The bouncer came back in, the.38 almost lost in his meaty hand.

"I told you nothing was wrong," Wolfe said.

"That was a few seconds ago," he snapped. The Rottweiler growled at him. "Good boy," he said.

"Would you please take this gentleman with you and see if he has anything on him he shouldn't have," Wolfe told him.

The big guy put his hand on my shoulder-it felt like an anvil.

"There's no problem," Wolfe said to him, a warning note in her voice.

We went past a couple of offices-the tall black woman was reading something and making notes, the little lady with the piled-up hair was talking a mile a minute on the phone, a handsome black man was studying a hand-drawn chart on the wall. I heard a teletype machine clatter-bad news for somebody.

"Doesn't anybody go home around here?" I asked the big guy.

"Yeah, pal-some people go home. Some people should stay home."

I didn't try any more conversation-starters. He took me into a bare office and did the whole search number, working at it like a prison guard you forgot to bribe. He took me back to Wolfe.

"Nothing," he said, disappointed. He left us alone.

The Rottweiler was sitting next to Wolfe, watching the door as she patted his head. She pointed to his corner again and he went back, as reluctant as the big guy was.

"Mr. Burke, this is the situation. The woman you intend to visit is Bonnie Browne, with an 'e.' She sometimes uses the name Young as well-it's her maiden name. The man she lives with is her husband. George Browne. He has two arrests for child molesting-one dismissal, one plea to an endangering count. Served ninety days in California. She's never been arrested."

I put my hand in my pocket, reaching for a smoke.

"Don't write any of this down," Wolfe said.

"I'm not," I told her, lighting the smoke.

"We believe this woman to be the principal in a great number of corporations-holding companies, really. But she doesn't operate the way most of the kiddie-porn merchants do. You understand what I mean?"

"Yeah," I told her. "You want the pictures-videotapes, whatever-you send a money order to a drop-box in Brussels. When the money clears, you get a shipment in the mail from Denmark, or England, or any other place they're established. Then the money orders get mailed to an offshore bank-maybe the Cayman Islands -and the bank makes a loan to some phony corporation set up in the States."

Wolfe looked at me thoughtfully. "You've been at this quite a while."

"I do a lot of work-you get bits and pieces here and there-you put it together."

"Okay. But this woman doesn't work like that. Her product is special. She guarantees all her stuff is so-called collector's items. No reproduction-every picture is one of a kind."

"What's to stop some freak from copying the pictures?"

"She puts some kind of mark on every picture she takes-like this." Wolfe showed me a tiny drawing of a standing man, his hand on the shoulder of a little boy. It looked like it was hand-drawn with one of those needlepoint pens architects use. Only it was in a soft blue color. "The mark won't survive a copy-she uses something called chroma-blue ink. She puts every mark on herself-by hand."

"What's the point?"

"There's two points, Mr. Burke. The first is that she gets a minimum of five thousand dollars a picture, so she can achieve huge profits without a lot of volume."

I took a drag on my cigarette, waiting.

"The other point is more significant. She produces pictures to order."

"You mean some freak calls her and says he wants to see a certain thing go down?"

"Yes. If you want a blond boy wearing a snowsuit, you got it."

"You going to drop her?" I asked.

"We are going to drop her-but not soon. We're just beginning to trace pictures back to her. We don't have a prayer of getting a search warrant now."

"And if you ask for one, it might get back to her?"

Wolfe raised her eyebrows. "You are a cynical man, Mr. Burke."

"Those black robes the judges wear," I told her, "they don't change you inside."

Wolfe didn't say anything for a minute, fingering her pearls. "Do you know anything about search warrants?" she finally asked.

Now I knew why she wanted to make sure I wasn't wired. "I know if a citizen breaks in a house and finds dope or whatever, the evidence won't be suppressed unless the citizen is an agent of law enforcement."

"Um…" Wolfe said, encouraging me. I hadn't told her what she wanted. Yet.

"I also know that if the police are called to a location…say because there's a burglary in progress and they find something bad, they can take it."

"And use it in court."

"And use it in court," I agreed.

Wolfe's face was flat and hard. "This woman wouldn't report a burglary," she said.

I lit a last cigarette. "You have her house under surveillance?"

"We might-starting tomorrow."

"Round the clock?"

"Yes."

I took a drag of my smoke.

"Any citizen has an obligation to rescue people when there's a fire," I said.

Wolfe held her hand across the desk. I brought it quickly to my lips before she could do anything and walked out of her office.