“Yeah?” the Prof snorted. “You think someone in there sent him a kite, made him see the light?”
Nobody said anything. Whatever they were thinking, I don’t know. Me, I was wondering if Wychek had ever asked his sister for bail money.
Suddenly, Max tapped a knuckle against the tabletop, drawing all our eyes. The Mongol looked up at the ceiling, dropped his gaze to eye level, let his eyes wander around aimlessly. He glanced at the floor. Picked some imaginary object up, gave it a quick, examining look, shrugged, and put it in his pocket.
Max got to his feet. Walked over to one of those promotional calendars, mostly a large poster, with a little pad of months you can tear off one at a time on the bottom. The one on Mama’s wall featured a Chinese woman, elegantly dressed, having a cocktail. The writing on the poster was all in Chinese, and the calendar pad was for 1961.
Max turned the pages of the calendar, indicating the passage of time. Then he snapped his fingers, made an “I’ve got it!” face, and reached into his pocket. He brought out the imaginary object in one hand, and used the fingers of the other to turn it, as if examining it from all sides.
He nodded a “Yes!,” then went over to Mama’s cash register and patted it, like it was a good dog.
I stood up, bowed deeply. “You nailed it, brother,” I said, making a gesture to match the words. “He got it before he went down, but he didn’t figure out it was worth anything until later.”
“Adds up,” the Prof said.
“Very logical,” the Mole agreed.
“And I think I know where he got it now,” I said. “So I’m going to Iowa.”
I walked out to the back alley with Clarence and Terry, the Mole stumbling in our wake. I pulled Clarence aside, asked him a quick question, got the answer I expected.
Back inside, I sat down in my booth. I felt . . . depleted. Like I’d fought ten rounds, to a decision that wasn’t going to go my way.
Mama came over and sat across from me. “All for police girl?” Mama said, accusingly.
“There’s money in this,” I said, stubbornly.
I closed my eyes, felt Michelle slide in next to me, ready to defend her big brother. Mama had known about Wolfe for years. “Police girl” said it all. Our family is outlaws; we don’t believe in mixed marriages.
“If Burke says there’s money, there’s money,” Michelle said, loyally.
“Maybe. But not for money,” Mama replied.
“So?” Michelle challenged her.
“So no . . . focus,” Mama said, pointing at Max to emphasize what she meant. For all his skills, the ki radiating from Max the Silent was all about focus. Without it, he’d just be another tough guy.
“I’m feeling my way,” I admitted. “But Wychek’s got something. Even Max says so.”
“Something for police, maybe.”
“Wolfe’s not on their side anymore,” Michelle said. “She went into her own business a long time ago.”
“Still police girl here,” Mama said, patting her chest. Case fucking closed.
It was just past seven that same night when I test-slipped the Mole’s clone card into the slot for Laura’s garage, my other hand on the genuine one Laura had given me, just in case.
The gate went up.
I walked up the back stairs, carrying the stainless-steel cylinder by its handle.
I rapped lightly on the door to her apartment. The door opened immediately. I hadn’t heard the sound of a deadbolt retracting, and the chain wasn’t in place.
“Hi!” she said, giving me a quick kiss as I crossed the threshold.
She was wearing another kimono—white, with gold and black dragon embroidery.
“I didn’t know where we were going, so I didn’t want to get dressed until . . .” she said, blushing a little.
“You’re perfect,” I said, holding up the gleaming cylinder.
“ Oh my God, this is the best Chinese food I ever had in my life,” she said, about forty-five minutes later.
I had opened the complex series of interlocking pots, each with its own dish inside. A few quick blasts with the microwave, and we had a five-course dinner that money, literally, couldn’t buy.
“I told you it would be a surprise,” I said.
“Where did you get it? I’m going to order from them for the rest of my life.”
“Oh, it’s not from a restaurant,” I said. “I know this old Chinese woman who makes special meals to order. She used to serve them in her house—”
“Oh, I heard about those kind of setups. You don’t get a menu or anything, and you have to book, like, months in advance, right?”
“Exactly. Only she’s not up to having people in her home anymore. She’s like a hundred years old,” I said, involuntarily tensing my neck muscles against a psychic slap from Mama. “I called her, gave her a few hours’ notice—that was what took so long—and she said she’d do it.”
“Wow. She really put herself out. It must have cost a—”
“Money wouldn’t make her do anything, not at her age. I told her it was very special, very important to me.”
“I . . . I wish I knew how to do things like that.”
“I guess I don’t, either. I never did it before. I was just thinking . . . about you, about going out to eat, how things . . . happened. Then I remembered this old lady, and . . .”
“Did you use to eat there a lot?”
“A lot? I ate there once. About, let me see, six, seven years ago? I was doing a profile on a big Chinese businessman. A puff piece, really, but I can’t support myself doing nothing but investigative stuff. He was the one who took me there.”
“Did you mention it in your article?”
“I wasn’t going to. It isn’t that kind of place, you could see that. But it wouldn’t have mattered. The piece got spiked, and I had to settle for the kill fee.”
“What’s a kill fee?”
“Say a magazine commissions a piece for five thousand. Then, after they see it, they decide not to go with it. If there’s a decent contract, they have to pay the writer some percentage of the fee, agreed on in front.”
“Why would they do that? Commission an article and then not use it?”
“There’s a hundred reasons.” I shrugged. “They decide they need the space for something else that month. Or the subject isn’t hot anymore. Or maybe they just don’t like the job you did on it.”
“But if they did that, you could just turn around and sell it to someone else?”
“If you can, sure. It doesn’t happen often. Every magazine is a different market, even when they’re competing with each other. What’s good for one isn’t always good for another.”
“ You don’t have to do that,” I said, later.
“You weren’t planning to return all the cookware without washing it?” she said, incredulous.
“No. I just meant, I could take it home, throw it in the dishwasher myself.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said, dubiously. “I mean, not everything can go in the dishwasher. It’s easy enough to wash them by hand; I’ll be done in a few minutes.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Do you want to go out somewhere. Or just . . . ?”
“How about we go for a drive?”
“To . . . where? Oh. I guess that’s the point, right?”
“Sure is.”
“ Is this still Queens?”
“Yep. That’s Flushing Bay we’re looking at. You can’t see it from here, but La Guardia’s over to the left. The Bronx is on the other side of the water.”
“I was born, what, maybe forty-five minutes from here? And I never even knew it existed.”
“It’s a nice little community,” I said. “You got everything from working stiffs to big-time gangsters, with house prices to match.”
“With those other cars around, it’s like a drive-in movie, almost.”
“People come here for the same reason they go to drive-ins, true enough.”
“Did you know that in Singapore young couples go to drive-ins because the culture frowns on public displays of affection?”
“I didn’t have a clue. You know a lot about Singapore?”
“I’m hardly an expert. But everyone in the money game knows something about Singapore.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“No. You?”
“Yeah, I was there, once.”
“What’s it like?”
“Very clean, very efficient. And very scary.”
“Scary?”
“I can’t explain it, exactly. Felt like everybody was so . . . anxious. Like something could descend on them any minute.”
“Were you there for a story?”
“No. I was on my way to Australia. But something happened with the connecting flight, and I ended up having to lay over.”
“I wonder why people would be so anxious there. It’s supposed to have a very low crime rate.”
“Maybe it was a misimpression,” I said. “I was only there for a short while. I wouldn’t ever write what I told you.”
“Why not?”
“I’m old-school,” I told her, trying to be Hauser in my mind. “I don’t like this ‘personal journalism’ stuff. Never did. What I told you, that was my own feelings, not facts. Private, not public.”
“That’s what this place feels like,” she said, snapping her cigarette out the open window and sliding in close to me.
Twenty minutes later, she moved back toward her side of the front seat. Rolled down her window, lit a cigarette.
“I never did that before,” she said.
“In a car?”
“Not just . . . in a car. Never.”
“Oh. I . . .”
“You don’t know what to say, do you, J.?” she said, a slight edge around the softness of her voice. “If you say you never would have known, it sounds like you’re calling me a liar. And if you say it was obvious I’d never done it before, you’re saying I’m not very . . . good at it, right?”
“None of that’s right, Laura. Not one word of any of it. Some people, they do things perfect the first time they try. Others, they could do it a thousand times and still . . . not do it very well.”
“I only meant—”
“But what’s really not right about what you said was the other part. It would never cross my mind that you were lying.”
“I thought reporters were supposed to be cynics,” she said, expelling smoke in a harsh jet.
“Cynicism is for adolescent poseurs. A person who’s been around the block a few times learns better.”
“What’s better?”
“Better is knowing some people are liars. I don’t mean they just told a lie, I mean they’re liars; that’s what they do. Better is knowing that even essentially truthful people lie sometimes, for different reasons. Better is knowing how to tell the difference.”
“You know when people are lying?”
“Not always,” I said, reaching over and taking her hand. “But I know when they’re not.”
We were both quiet for a while. Then she said, “I never asked you. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I have a sister.”
“Older or younger?”
“She’s my baby sister.”
“Is that why you asked me, before, if John was protective? Because you were?”
“No. I was just trying to get a picture of the whole family dynamic.”
“But you were, weren’t you?”
“Protective? Sure.”
“You think that’s normal, don’t you?”
“I’m a reporter, not a judge.”
“J., I’m just asking you an honest question. Can’t I get an honest answer?”
“Ask me your question,” I said, watching her eyes.
“If someone tried to hurt your sister, what would you do?”
I saw pieces of Michelle’s childhood, playing on the inside of my eyelids like a movie on a screen. The kind of movie freaks sell for a lot of money. Felt the familiar suffusion of hate for all of them—from her bio-parents, who used her like a toy, to the agencies that treated a transgendered child like a circus freak, to the predatory johns who took little pieces of her in exchange for survival money, to . . . Oh, honeygirl, I wish I had been there, I said to myself. Again.
I waited a beat, still on her eyes.
“Kill them,” I said.
“ Do you have something to pick up?” Laura asked me, as I wheeled the Plymouth into the gigantic parking lot for the Pathmark supermarket in Whitestone. At just after two in the morning, the lot was almost empty.
“Nope,” I said, pulling over to the side. I put the lever into park, opened the door, and got out. I walked around to her side of the car, opened her door.
“You’re leaving the engine run—”
“Just come on,” I said, taking her hand and pulling her around the back of the car. “Get in,” I told her.
“You want me to—?”
I was already on my way back around to the passenger side. We both closed our doors at the same time.
“This isn’t like your Audi,” I said, as she wiggled around, trying to find the best driving position. “The gas pedal isn’t hyper-sensitive, but if you step on it hard we’ll launch like a rocket. The brakes are a little stiff when you first touch them; they take a little pressure. But if you floor them, we’re going to stop. I mean, right now, like someone dropped an anchor into the road behind us.”
“You’re making me nervous.”
“Oh, great,” I said. “The first time I ever let anyone drive my baby and you tell me you’re nervous.”
“J.,” she giggled. “Stop it.”
“Your Audi’s a front-driver. This one’s not. If you get on the gas too hard in a corner, the rear end’s going to want to come around.”
“You make it sound like a ticking bomb.”
“It’s nothing of the kind,” I said. “Only reason I’m saying all this is that it’s a great contrast to what you’re used to driving. Take it slow, get used to it, and it’ll practically drive itself. You’ll see.”
“I . . .”
“Come on, Laura. I’ll bet you’ll be perfect at it, the first time.”
She gave me a look I couldn’t read. Then she put her left foot on the brake and pulled the lever down into drive.
I nodded approval. Laura took her foot off the brake, and the Plymouth started to creep forward. She delicately feathered the gas and we picked up speed.
“There’s nobody around,” I told her. “Give it a little gas.”
“This isn’t so bad,” she said. “I could just . . . Oh!” she gasped, as the Plymouth shifted stance and shot forward.
I had expected her to deck the brakes, but she just backed off the gas, got it under control instantly.
“It is fast,” she said.
I made her try the brakes a few times, to get used to the pedal.
“I can feel the power,” she said. “Like a huge dog, on a leash.”
“Let’s give it some running room,” I said, pointing toward the highway.
“ What a wonderful car this is, J. It was so nice of you to let me drive it.”
“My pleasure.”
“I was . . . wondering.”
“What?”
“Well, how come you . . . The outside of the car is so . . .”
“Grungy?”
“At least. But it runs so beautifully. Is it the money?”
“If you mean, did I put my money into the engine and the transmission and the suspension and then kind of run out of cash, the answer is ‘yes.’ But it’s been this way for a long while now, and I think I may actually like it better.”
“Better? Why?”
“It’s kind of . . . special-sweet to have something very fine, something that most people wouldn’t even recognize. They’d have to drive my car to know what it was.”
“And you’re not going to let them?” she said, smiling in the nig
ht.
“Why should I?” I answered. “I’m building her for me. Not for my ego.”
“What does that mean, for you, not your ego?”
“It means she’s perfect for me. Just for me. I don’t care if anyone else thinks I’m driving a rust-bucket; I know I’ve got a jewel.”
“Is that the way you are—?”
“About everything,” I assured her. “Everything in my life. Right down the line.”
O’Hare was in its usual state of high cholesterol, but the three of us had plenty of time to catch our connector to Cedar Rapids. On the way out, Pepper had ended up seated next to an elderly lady; Mick and I were side by side. By the end of the trip, the old woman wanted to take Pepper home with her. Mick and I hadn’t exchanged a single word.
All they had left at the car-rental agency was an Infiniti SUV. Mick kept calling it a stupid cow every time he had to take a curve.
He found the address easily: a smallish wood-frame house on a side street. Pepper turned around in the front seat so she could face me.
“You want us to go in with you, chief?”
“I think it might help if you did,” I said. “But if Mick’s going to pull his—”
“I’m in the fucking room,” he said.
“Mick!” Pepper said, punching him on the arm hard enough to floor most middleweights. “Come on!”
“The paper says she’s from around here,” Mick said. “She came home. If anyone here scares her, it’s not going to be me.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
“ Miss Eberstadt? My name is Michael Range. This is my assistant, Margaret Madison. And her husband, Bill. We apologize for coming by without notice, but I thought it would be better if you got to look us over before we asked you anything. People can give a real false impression over the phone.”
“I . . . What do you—?”
That’s when Mick took over. “We all work for a lawyer, ma’am,” he said. “Mr. H. G. Davidson, from New York City. I don’t mean I’m from there; I guess you can tell,” he went on, a warm, friendly smile on his transformed face. “I’m a paralegal, Mr. Range is an investigator, and Margaret here is an administrative assistant. Anyway, there’s a case back there that concerns you, a little bit, and we were sent out here. Well, I guess the truth is, the boss sent Mr. Range out, and we came along for the ride. I wanted to take Margaret home to see my folks, anyway.”
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