Strega

by Andrew Vachss

  "This picture…he's doing something in it?"

  "I think he must have been doing something…but he won't tell us. The therapist is working on it. I think if he got that picture, and we tore it up right in front of him…then maybe he'd be okay again."

  "Just one picture?"

  "That's what he said—he saw the flash."

  "Lady, that picture's either in some freak's private collection or it's out on the street. For sale, you understand? It's just about impossible to come up with the stuff you want. And even if I found one print, the people who do the marketing make thousands of copies. It's a better business than cocaine: as long as you have the negative, you can make as many copies as you want."

  "All we want is one picture…he's too young to know about making copies. I want to be there when we tear it up in front of him."

  "It's a real long shot, you understand?"

  "Yes. But it has to be done."

  I looked directly at her—the little gangster princess wasn't going to take no for an answer. She wasn't used to it. "Why come to me?" I asked.

  She had the answer ready. "Because you're friends with the Nazis."

  24

  I LOOKED straight ahead through the windshield, trying to get a grip on what she just said. If she knew about the Nazis, then she knew about some of the scores I'd pulled over the past few years—home–grown Nazis are a con man's delight. Knowing an old hotel address was nothing, it wasn't the trump card she thought it was. But the Nazi thing—she could hurt me. A cold wind blew through my chest. She held better cards than I thought.

  Nothing moved in my face. I lit a cigarette, throwing the question at her out of the side of my mouth. "What're you talking about, lady?"

  "Julio said you were friends with them. In prison. He saw it himself."

  The weight came off my chest. Those Nazis were a different breed.

  "Julio's got a lot of medical problems, doesn't he?" I asked.

  "What medical problems? He's in perfect health, specially for an old man.

  "No, he's not," I told her, my voice quiet and calm now. "His eyesight hasn't been good for a long time. He's losing his memory. And his mouth is out of control."

  She understood what I was saying. I wouldn't have to do anything to the old man myself—if some of his bloody brothers got the word that Julio was writing his memoirs, he was gone.

  "He only told me," said the redhead, her voice tight with tension, trying to convince me. "He wouldn't tell anyone else."

  "Sure."

  "I mean it. I made him tell me. I was desperate, okay?"

  It wasn't okay. I took a close look at her. I might have to describe her someday and I didn't think she'd pose for a picture. The red hair framed a small, heart–shaped face. Her eyes were big and set far apart, the color of factory smoke. Her makeup looked like it was done by an expert: dark–red lipstick outlined in black, eye shadow that went from blue to black as it flowed from her eyebrows to the lashes, blended blusher on her cheeks, breaking right at the cheekbones for emphasis. Her teeth were tiny pearls—they looked too small for a grown woman, and too perfect to be real. Her nose was small and sharply bridged, slightly turned up at the tip. Piece by piece, she wasn't beautiful, but the combination worked. It was hard to think of that red slash of a mouth kissing anyone. Her hands were small, but the fingers were long, capped with long, manicured nails in the same shade as her lipstick. The redhead's eyes followed mine as they traveled over her—she was used to this.

  "And you're still desperate, right?"

  "Right," she said, as if that settled everything.

  It didn't settle anything for me. I turned the ignition key, listened to the motor catch, and moved the lever into Drive. The Plymouth rolled off the pier, headed back to the courts.

  "Where are we going?" the redhead wanted to know.

  "We're not going anywhere. You're going back to your car."

  "What about this job?"

  "I said I'd listen to you. I listened to you. We're square—that's all there is.

  She sat in silence for a couple of minutes. I could feel her eyes on my face. She cleared her throat a couple of times, but nothing came out. As we pulled onto Centre Street near the courthouse parking lot, she reached across the seat and put her hand on my forearm. I turned to look at her. Her big eyes were even bigger, as if tears were only a second away. It was a good trick.

  "All this for a lousy picture?" I asked her.

  "Yes."

  "It doesn't add up for me."

  She pulled at my arm so I'd look at her. "I gave my word!" she said, each syllable spaced and heavy.

  Now it made sense. The redhead's ego was on the line. So what? Better her ego than my body. I wheeled next to her BMW and waited for her to get out. But she wasn't ready to give up. She shifted her hips, pulled her long legs up underneath her so she was kneeling on the seat facing me.

  "What can I do to make you change your mind?"

  "I haven't made up my mind, okay? Write your phone number down and I'll call you when I know."

  "How do I know you'll call?"

  "You don't."

  Her face darkened under the makeup. "You call me. I know what you did in the park. One phone call…"

  She let it hang there as she shifted position again and got out. Before I could pull away she was standing in front of the Plymouth, looking through the windshield. Then she came around to my side of the car, leaned in, and whispered to me: "I am very serious about this."

  I locked eyes with her, spoke quietly. "I'm serious too, lady. Threats make me nervous. I'm likely to do something stupid when I'm nervous."

  She didn't bat an eye. "I'm used to getting what I want. I'm spoiled—more than you'll ever know. I pay for what I want. You just tell me the price."

  "Not everything has a price."

  "That's a cliché," she whispered, her face close to mine. She put her head inside the car, kissed me lightly on the cheek, and quickly moved away. I watched her snake–hip her way back to the BMW. She looked back once before she pulled away.

  "So are you, bitch," I thought to myself. As it turned out, I was half right.

  25

  THAT WAS the end of it, I thought. The little princess wouldn't get what she wanted for once in her life and she'd get over it. And I had five hundred bucks. It wouldn't balance the scales, but it would do for today.

  I parked behind Mama's apartment, opened the back door, and stepped inside. The door's never locked, but when you open it some kind of bell goes off in the kitchen. When I stepped through the doorway, the short, squat Chinese Mama calls a cook was smiling at me, a butcher knife in one hand. He was ready to chop something—when he saw it was me, he settled for a slab of beef on the counter. I didn't bother to say hello to him—he never answered.

  The restaurant was about half filled. Mama was in her usual perch by the cash register near the front door. I caught her eye and made a motion like dialing a telephone. She bowed her head—all clear. I stepped back inside the kitchen, went down a corridor to my right, and found the pay phone.

  My call went to another pay phone, the one in Julio's social club.

  "Yeah?" barked the receptionist.

  "Put Julio on, okay?"

  "Who?"

  "Julio, pal. You know the name. Tell him he's got a call."

  "From who?"

  "This is private business, okay? Just tell Julio. He don't want to talk to me, that's his business."

  I heard a thunk at the other end, telling me the receiver was swinging against the wall in the club. Julio came on the line.

  "Who's this?"

  "It's me. You know my voice?"

  "Yes," he said, clipped, but not cold.

  "I need to talk with you."

  "So?"

  "Face to face."

  "About?"

  "About three o'clock tomorrow afternoon. At the Eastern District." Julio didn't answer, just hung up. Anybody listening to the conversation would think Eastern District me
ant the federal courthouse in Brooklyn. What it meant to Julio was the pier at the end of Jay Street, only a few blocks from the courthouse, but in another world. And tomorrow meant in one hour. If I wanted two hours, I would have told him the day after tomorrow. It was a good place to meet, open on all sides—Julio wouldn't be coming by himself.

  I dialed another number, let it ring until it was picked up by my broker.

  "What?" Maurice snapped into the receiver.

  "Burke. Yonkers, tonight, in the seventh. Two yards to win on Flower Jewel."

  "Flower Jewel, two on the nose in the seventh at Yonkers, that right?"

  "Right."

  "Bring the cash by closing time tomorrow."

  "What if I win?"

  "Come on," he sneered, "you've already had your quota for this year."

  "I haven't hit one fucking race yet this year," I told him.

  "I know," said Maurice, and hung up.

  I went back inside the restaurant, took the booth at the rear, the one I always use. I wrote Julio's name on a napkin, folded it around the money for Maurice, and waited. Mama spotted me. She left her post and walked back to the booth. I stood up until she was seated.

  "So, Burke. You have soup, okay?"

  "Yes, Mama. But not too much—I've got work to do."

  "Good thing, work. Max work with you?"

  "Uh…not on this, I don't think. But take this money and give it to him, okay? Tell him to give it to Maurice tomorrow if he doesn't hear from me." I handed her the napkin wrapped around two hundreds and a twenty. Max would keep the twenty for himself if he made the delivery. And he'd go see Julio if I didn't come back.

  Mama didn't make a move, but one of the so–called waiters came over, listened to her rapid–fire Cantonese, and vanished. He came back in a couple of minutes with a tureen of hot–and–sour soup. Mama served me first, like she always does.

  "I may have a new case," I told her.

  Mama lifted her eyebrows, the soup spoon poised near her mouth.

  "I haven't decided yet," I said in answer to her unspoken question.

  "Good case?" Mama wanted to know—meaning was I going to get paid.

  "Sure. Good case, bad people."

  "That woman who call you here last week?"

  "Yes."

  "You say you not call her back, right? When I tell you who"

  "She found me, Mama."

  "Oh. At your office?"

  "No. She doesn't know about that place. But she looked all over and got lucky."

  "That girl very angry."

  "Angry? Why? At who?"

  "I not know this. But very angry. You feel in her voice."

  "She didn't seem angry to me."

  "Angry," said Mama. "And dangerous."

  "To me?" I asked her.

  "Oh, yes," she said. She didn't say anything else while I finished my soup. When I got up to leave, Mama asked, "You take Max with you?"

  "Not today."

  "When you do work for this girl?"

  "I don't know if I'm going to work for her yet."

  "Yes, you know," said Mama, a little sadness in her voice. She bowed her head in dismissal and I went out the back to meet Julio.

  26

  I GRABBED the Brooklyn Bridge on the Manhattan side and drove across, staying in the right lane. I took the first off–ramp and kept bearing right until I hit the light under the overpass. To the right was the federal courthouse. It's a good spot to meet someone like Julio—nice and private, but too close to the federales for anyone to start shooting. I turned left onto Jay Street and kept rolling my way through the side streets until I was just past John Street, in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge. I turned the Plymouth parallel to the water on the passenger side, dropped my window, and lit a smoke. The deserted slips hadn't seen a boat in years. I was about fifteen minutes early.

  I only had a couple of drags on the cigarette when the white Caddy pulled up. It pulled up to the Plymouth, stopping only when it was nose to nose. The passenger door opened and Julio got out. I opened my door and started to walk away from the cars, my back to the Caddy. I heard one man's footsteps crunching on the gravel behind me. When I got to the railing, I turned so I could see both cars, looking past Julio to see if he was going to be stupid.

  The old man had both hands in his overcoat pockets, collar turned up, hat pulled down over his eyes. Maybe he was cold.

  "What's so important?" he wanted to know.

  "Your friend's daughter—you told her where to find me?"

  "Yeah."

  "She wants me to do something for her."

  "So you do it. You get paid. What's the problem?"

  "What if I don't want the job?"

  Julio turned away from me, looking out over the water. "Times have changed, Burke. Things aren't like they used to be. It's different inside too, you know?"

  "I know," I told the old man. And I did: When I was a kid, it was always "Do the right thing." You couldn't go wrong if you did the right thing. When the new cons roll up on a new kid inside the walls today, they still tell him to "Do the right thing." But they mean get on his knees or roll over. Even the words don't mean the same things.

  The old man just nodded, watching me.

  "You told her about the Nazis too?" I asked him.

  The old man went on like he hadn't heard me. "Remember how it used to be? If you was a rat in there, guys would shank you right on the yard…just to be doing it. You knew where you stood. Now guys come in bragging how they sold their partners for a better deal."

  "What's that got to do with me, Julio?"

  The old man was wasting away. His cashmere overcoat looked three sizes too large. Even his hat was too big for his head. But his alligator's eyes were still the same—a man on chemotherapy can still tell someone else to pull the trigger.

  He looked me full in the face. "I always thought it was you that did the hijacking," he said.

  I moved closer to him, my right hand on the handle of the ice pick I kept in my overcoat pocket. The tip was covered with a piece of cork, but it would come right off if I pulled it out. Julio had spent more time in prison than on the streets—he knew what it meant for me to stand so close. You spend enough time inside, you don't even think about getting shot—there's no guns behind the walls. It takes a different kind of man to stab someone—you have to be close to do it—you have to bring some to get some.

  "You thought wrong," I told him, holding his eyes.

  He looked right at me, as cold as the Parole Board. "It don't matter anymore. People do things…maybe it's the right thing to do when you do it…who knows? It don't matter to me.

  "So why bring it up?" I asked him, my hand still on the ice pick, eyes flicking over to the white Caddy.

  "I want you to understand that some debts get paid, okay? Whatever you did years ago, you always been a standup guy, right? Enough years go by, anybody should be off the hook."

  I knew what he wanted me to say, but not why. "Yeah," I told him, "we all got a life sentence."

  He gave me a chilly smile—he was lying about something and I was swearing to it.

  "You told her about the Nazis?" I asked him again.

  "Yeah," he answered again. His voice was dead.

  "Why?"

  "She's like my blood to me, you understand? I can't refuse her anything." He moved his shoulders in a "What can you do?" gesture.

  "I can," I told him.

  The old man didn't say anything for a while. He lit one of his foul cigars, expertly cupping his hand around the wooden match. He blew a stream of blue–edged smoke out toward the water. I just waited—he was getting ready to tell me something.

  "When I was a young man, the worst thing you could be was an informer. The lowest thing. That's all over now—you can't count on anything," he said.

  "You said that already. When I was a kid, it used to be 'Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.' Now it's 'Don't do the crime if you can't drop a dime.' " The old man made a dry sound in
his throat—it was supposed to be a laugh. "Only now it's a quarter," he said. The laugh never reached his belly, like the smile never reached his eyes.

  "I still want to know what this has to do with me, Julio. It's your family, not mine."

  "Yeah. My family." He took a breath, turned his flat eyes on my face. "Gina is my family," he said, as if that settled it.

  "Whose idea was it to send that clown with my money?"

  "Okay, it was wrong. I know. She wanted him to do it—I didn't see the harm. There was no disrespect. You got your money, right?"

  I just nodded.

  "Did Vinnie get stupid?" he wanted to know.

  "Vinnie is stupid," I told him.

  Julio didn't say anything. Being stupid wouldn't disqualify Vinnie from employment.

  "The girl threatened me," I said. "Like I do her work or else…"

  "She don't know no better, okay? When she wants something, she's like a crazy person. I'll talk to her."

  "Do that. I'd appreciate it."

  "It's done," he said. The old man put his hand in his pocket, came out with a roll of bills wrapped in a rubber band. He handed it to me. I pocketed the money, waiting.

  "For your trouble," he said.

  "My past trouble or my future trouble?"

  "For the past. I apologize. I never thought she'd go all the way on this."

  "You know what it is?"

  The old man took a breath. The smoke came out his nose in two faint wisps. He took too long to think about the answer. "Yeah," he said. "That picture."

  Now it was my turn to just nod. The jackpot question was still on the table.

  "I just walk away? No problems?" I wanted to know.

  "Burke, you want to walk, you walk. But if you did this thing…for the girl …if you did it, I would be grateful. You would have my gratitude, understand?"

  I nodded again. A hundred feet away the two cars stood in silence. They looked like two giant dogs, nosing each other to see who was in control. It was a good question.

  The old man walked over to the Caddy. He never looked back. His door closed; the Caddy backed away from the Plymouth and pulled out with a chirp of tires on the pavement. I was alone.