“You can do it?” I asked her. Not really a question.
“You have the cash, sure.”
“You need it all up front?”
“It’s not like, say, a shipment of guns,” Wolfe said, her smile thinner now that she knew I was going back to my old ways, making it clear she knew what some of those were. “You know, ID; it’s not something you can just turn around and sell to somebody else if the buyer defaults.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“And a lot of it has to be fronted at my end. Besides, you never know if your client’s going to be around. . . .”
“Yeah.” Nothing much else to say. Wolfe was telling me that, no matter what I called myself, she’d always know who I was. Truth is, she’d always known. Only now she’d know the names I’d be using, too.
“Want to set up a—?”
“No need. I got it right here,” I told her, nodding at the trunk of the Plymouth. “You okay carrying that much? I don’t see any of your crew around. . . .”
Bruiser growled at me again. I got the picture.
Her price was actually a few grand short of what I’d guessed. I popped the trunk, opened the false bottom next to the NASCAR fuel cell, and handed her enough cash to buy a new car. A nice new car. She opened her sling purse and I dropped it in. She never glanced at it. Even trust is a different thing down here. I’d never stiff Wolfe a penny on the fee, never slip her funny money or a Chicago bankroll. And she knew that. But. . . who’d stiff anyone holding the key to your whole new ID anyway?
“Could take a while,” she said.
I shrugged. It was out of my hands.
“I’ll get word to you,” Wolfe promised.
The Audi belched oily black smoke as she fired it up. She waved a quick goodbye and pulled out. The Rottweiler’s head swiveled to watch me until they were out of sight.
The new place felt safe, but it wasn’t. . . the same. Anyway, I didn’t spend much time there, so Pansy started riding with me a lot.
She was with me for that first meeting on West Street. And she wasn’t the only one in the joint wearing a collar and leash.
It had taken them a long time to get in touch. Mail was stacking up in PO boxes of mine all over the city, but they were never going to be emptied. I hadn’t left the keys or the addresses in my old place, but a lifetime of playing it to the far side of safe kept me away.
So a few wannabe mercenaries wouldn’t get stung, a few kiddie-porn collectors wouldn’t get a ticket to the slammer instead of more trophies, some assorted chumps wouldn’t get taken. No loss.
All the names I used for stings were gone. But anyone who wanted Burke bad enough could find a phone number if they asked in the right places. The number for a Chinese laundry in Brooklyn, set on permanent bounce to the pay phone at Mama’s.
The ones who wanted the meet, they didn’t know me. The only ticket they had was a name. A dead man’s name. It was me they wanted, but they didn’t know where to look. So it took a while before the word came in. I returned the guy’s call, told him I’d meet him, and he told me where. I figured it was a job. And a job was one of a lot of things I didn’t have, then.
“You can’t bring. . . that in here,” the bouncer said, crossing his arms over his chest.
Pansy took my hand signal and stood rock-steady. She watched the bouncer with disdain, her ears slightly perked in case I told her to sit. If I did, she’d nail the muscleman before he could scream—high-thigh chomps are her specialty. And then all he’d do is scream until he passed out from pain or blood loss—Pansy’s a one-bite beast.
“I’m supposed to meet someone here,” I said mildly. “He’ll okay it.”
“Who would that be?” the bouncer asked, arms still crossed, flexing hard, unable to keep his gaze away from Pansy’s ice-water eyes, and wishing he could.
“Lincoln’s all he told me.”
“You mind waiting outside?”
“Me? No. I don’t mind where I wait, pal. I just mind how long I wait, understand?”
I made another hand signal. Pansy wheeled and followed me outside. I lit a cigarette and leaned against the outside of the one-story black-walled building. The traffic was all gay, mostly leather, a few tourists in business clothes. Some looked at me; none spoke. I wasn’t sporting a handkerchief in a back pocket, wasn’t pierced, not even a lousy earring, and I was dressed in what people went to work in when they got paid by the hour. Pansy lay down at my feet. She doesn’t like concrete much at her age, but the sidewalk was still warm from the day’s heat and it probably felt good against her arthritis.
I wasn’t halfway done with the smoke when the bouncer came outside. “You mind going around the back way?” he asked. Polite now, not like before.
“Nah.”
“Okay. You just walk toward the corner. You’ll see an alley. You turn left and—”
“Ah, that sounds complicated,” I told him. “Maybe you’d better show me the way, huh?”
“I can’t leave my—”
“Sure. I understand. Tell this Lincoln guy that I came by to see him, okay?”
I gave an imperceptible tug on Pansy’s leash. She lumbered to her feet. “Wait a minute,” the bouncer said.
I stopped.
His face looked like he was making up his mind. “I’ll show you,” he finally said.
“Lead on,” I told him.
He started walking in the direction he’d told me to go. Suddenly he stopped, turned, looked at me: “You gonna walk behind me all the way?”
“Sure,” I said; meaning, “What else?”
He nodded, as if confirming a deeply held suspicion, but he started up again. When he turned into the alley, I unsnapped Pansy’s lead and she trotted ahead of him. He practically slammed himself into the alley wall to get out of the way as her dark-gray shadow flitted past. He whirled around and said: “Wha—?”
And then he saw the pistol I was holding. “Just a simple precaution, pal,” I reassured him. “You’re taking me someplace nice, I’m gonna thank you for it. Otherwise, you’re not gonna need to look up ‘crossfire’ in the dictionary, understand?”
He put his hands up.
“Put ’em down,” I told him. “Relax. Just do whatever you were gonna do.”
He walked down the length of the alley, fast now, Pansy trotting alongside him like she was heeling. I could barely make out her shape, but I knew the hair was up on the back of her neck, ears flattened, tail whipped between her legs to protect her genitals. Ready to deal out a more certain death than anything I was holding. Guns jam. Shooters miss. Pansy never did either one.
The bouncer rapped a couple of times on a bright-yellow door. It opened immediately. There was light coming from inside. I could see maybe half a dozen people. Except for the guy answering the door, they were all sitting down.
“All right?” the bouncer asked me over his shoulder.
“Sure, pal. Thanks for your help.”
I stepped inside, Pansy’s bulk against my leg. I could feel her vibrating, still ready.
“My name is Lincoln,” the man said as he closed the door behind us. “I’m the one who called.”
He was medium height, early thirties; his body looked trim in a pastel T-shirt and white pleated pants, but his face was older. Prominent cheekbones, thin lips, a full set of capped teeth, brownish hair frosted a lighter shade at the forelock. He wore a diamond stud in his right ear, and his grip was strong, self-assured.
He walked over to a sofa where some other people were sitting, nodded his head at an armchair off to one side. “Okay with you?”
I sat down without saying anything, Pansy dropping down on my left. Farther in that same direction, a pair of women at a café table. One, a busty brunette in a pink tank top, showing off her muscular arms among other things; the other, a slender blonde with long, lank hair falling on either side of her head, bangs covering her eyes, wearing some kind of middy blouse.
“We didn’t expect you’d bring. . . company,”
the guy who called himself Lincoln said.
“You worried she’s gonna talk?” I asked.
The brunette laughed. Nobody else made a sound.
“No. I was just. . . Forget it. Vincent didn’t say anything about you having a. . . partner.” Making sure I heard the name, keeping the connection alive. Vincent was an old friend. A gay man, emphasis on the second word. Heavy emphasis.
A lot of gay guys I’d met over the years said they started with being molested. I was ignorant enough to think that was the root until I met Vincent. His family was the real thing—loving and warm and supportive. He explained to me how being gay was hardwired, present at birth. Genetic. “It’s not a ‘choice,’ ” he said, explaining it to me. “It’s not a ‘preference’ either. It’s what we are. It’s what I am.”
Vincent was in what he called the “literary world.” I never understood what he did. Or maybe I never paid attention. What I remember most was how he hated. . . them. Baby-rapers. I was hunting one when we crossed paths, that’s when I found out. But he didn’t hate them because he was one of us. The Children of the Secret, we’re a big tribe, but we’re not united. We don’t fight under the same flag. Vincent wasn’t a draftee in that war; he was a volunteer. He hated them for what they did to children. . . not what was done to him. That was the kind of man he was.
Vincent was a man in a lot of ways, it turned out. He had to do some jail time. Not much, a few months. He wouldn’t talk about something the grand jury wanted to know, and some pontificating pervert of a judge locked him up for contempt of court. The black-robed ass-kisser told Vincent he’d stay there until he talked. Once the appellate court figured out that was a life sentence, they cut Vincent loose.
I couldn’t help it. I was young then. So I asked him if he had sex in there.
“No,” is all he said.
I remembered what it was like Inside. How guys who weren’t close to gay on the bricks got turned in there. “Turned out” is what the cons called it. Turned over is what it was. I didn’t know how to ask him about that. . . rape thing, so I just said, “How come?”
“I didn’t meet anyone I fancied,” he said, his deep-blue eyes telling me that someone in there had mistaken gay for weak. And learned the difference.
That was a long time ago. Vincent’s gone now. But his name would still key my lock. . . at least enough to make me listen.
“What did Vincent tell you?” I asked the guy who called himself Lincoln.
“He said you could. . . that you were some kind of private investigator. But. . . off the books.”
“Meaning I don’t have a license, or I get paid in cash?”
“Both, I guess. But that’s not what I meant. I mean, what Vincent meant. He said you could. . . find someone. Even if they didn’t want to be found.”
“Okay. That’s what you want?”
“Vincent said you’d never go to the police,” Lincoln said, meaning it as a question.
“You’re tap-dancing,” I told him. “I don’t know what you asked Vincent. I wasn’t there when you talked to him. . . if you did. And nobody can ask him now, right? My résumé is in the street—that’s where you have to ask whatever you want to know. You gonna ask a liar if he lies? How would you know anything comes from my mouth is righteous? Either go with what Vincent told you, or get somebody else, friend.”
The guy who called himself Lincoln glanced around the room like he was taking a vote. I couldn’t see anyone respond, but he went on like it had been unanimous.
“We want. . . the man who’s killing all the. . . gay-bashers. The ‘Avenger’ or whatever name the tabloids are calling him this week.”
“You want him. . .?”
“We want to find him,” Lincoln said. “We want to. . .” He glanced around the room again, waited until he was satisfied. “. . . to help him get away.”
The whole place went quiet, like a bomb had just dropped and they were waiting for the smoke to clear to determine the body count. But I’d had a lifetime of knowing how to answer the question he never asked, so I aborted their pregnant pause and said: “Why tell me?”
Then they really went quiet.
Another mistake. I just sat there—a frog on a lily pad, waiting to see if they were flies. I reached down, scratched behind Pansy’s ears, my face just this side of bored.
Waiting.
“Vincent told us—” Lincoln started.
I held up my hand in a “stop” gesture. “Vincent’s not here,” I reminded him.
“Not about. . . you. Vincent was the first one who. . . Look, gay-bashing is. . . lynching, okay? Like that poor kid in Wyoming. I mean, what happened to him, it’s always happened. But it doesn’t get reported much. Not for what it is. And—”
“And you’re all over the map,” I cut in. “Lynching is when they string a guy up for stealing horses without waiting for a trial. When they total a gay guy for being gay, that’s a hate kill. And those’re never about individuals.”
“I—”
“He’s right, Lincoln,” the brunette in the tank top said, her voice harder than her face. “Save the politics, okay? If I listen to one more dumb-fuck discussion about whether we’re ‘queers’ or ‘gays’ or ‘homosexuals,’ I’ll hurl. Just tell him what Vincent told us. . . told some of us, anyway—I wasn’t there.” Reminding him. A smart, tough girl, that one. I couldn’t tell where she was from. There’s no such thing as a “New York” accent. Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx. . . they all carry speech-markers. Her voice didn’t have any of them.
Lincoln made a gesture like he was wiping sweat off his brow, but he wasn’t sweating, so I took it for some kind of prelude-habit. Then he said: “Vincent said it was never going to stop by itself. He said we had to. . . hit back.”
I waited, but he’d obviously said his piece. Or thought he had, anyway.
“Is this supposed to be some kind of test, pal?” I asked him. “Am I supposed to guess the rest? Or maybe you want some. . . what, credentials? Look, far as I’m concerned, you can all—”
“Vincent said that,” he cut in. “That’s what he said about you. He said you were the most unprejudiced straight man he ever met in his life.”
“So you went through all this to give me some kind of award?”
“What Vincent said,” he continued, like he hadn’t heard me, “was that you just plain didn’t give a fuck. One way or the other.”
“That hasn’t changed,” I told him. “So what? You got something to say, let me hear it. And it better end in cash.”
“To maintain your wardrobe?” some little twerp in a Godfather-movie gangster suit threw in.
I looked over at him, still patting Pansy. “No, pal. To feed my dog. She eats a lot. And she’s not the only bitch in this room, I see. Look, I don’t do dish, okay? Show me some cash or show me the door.”
“That’s enough, Sean,” Lincoln told the twerp in the gangster suit. “Mr. Burke, what Vincent told us was that we needed to. . . practice violence. Deliberate violence, not self-defense. That we needed to patrol our own streets and. . . interdict the enemy.”
“Sounds smart to me,” I told him.
“Maybe it was,” Lincoln said. “But none of us would go for it. It sounded too. . . ugly. We didn’t want to turn the other cheek or”—some fool cackled far in the back, but I couldn’t make out what he said—“anything, but we’re just not. . . like that.”
I guess Vincent hadn’t told them everything about our past dealings. One of his friends had ended up with a steel plate in his head after a night in the Ramble. Vincent convinced the guy to go to the cops. They caught the perps easy enough—the little freaks were trophy-takers, and one of them still had the gold chain he’d pulled off the guy whose skull they’d bashed in. And the DA even prosecuted. But only one of them got time, and he didn’t get much of it. That’s when Vincent first came to me. Later, I was working a job and I needed a place to meet a guy. A place I could haul him out of against his will, if it came to that. Vincent s
et that one up for me. He was glad to do it. He hated baby-rapers worse than fag-bashers, and that was a lot of hate.
“Who’s ‘we’?” The brunette challenged the silence Lincoln’s little speech had produced. “If I had been there, I would have—”
“Sure, Nadine, we know. We heard it all from you, a thousand times,” Lincoln told her without taking his eyes from me. “Anyway, we took a vote. And Vincent lost. That was the end of it.”
“So?” I asked him.
“I mean, it was the end of. . . ‘us,’ I guess. Vincent said he didn’t want anything to do with us. He. . . mocked us. He said, when we traded in our leather drag for lavender bullets he’d be back.”
“So?” I asked again.
“So he. . . died. From a heart attack. But now it’s like he’s. . . back.”
“You think it’s Vincent taking out all these freaks?” I asked him. “You should’ve gone to Ghostbusters, chump.”
The brunette laughed again, more harshly this time. Her body went along for the ride—quite a sight, and she knew it. When she caught my eye, she shrugged her shoulders to write that in italics.
“Look,” Lincoln said, “you’re not making this any easier. But I. . . we didn’t expect you would. We don’t want you to do anything illegal, all right? There’s nothing against the law in looking for somebody. Or solving crimes either.”
“You said a lot more than that,” I reminded him.
“Lincoln always says more than he has to,” the brunette he’d called Nadine said, snorting. She got to her feet, walked over to stand next to him. She was shorter than I’d thought she’d be, legs as heavily developed as her arms. “What we want you to do is find him,” she went on. “That’s all. Just find him, and tell us where we can find him too.”
“Vincent said—” Lincoln started, but Nadine chopped him down quick with: “Nobody fucking cares, okay, Lincoln?” She turned to face me, hip-shot, her eyes asking me if I liked her as much from the waist down. “Vincent told them you had contacts outside the country. That you’d been a mercenary, and that there was a. . . ‘pipeline’ or something you could send somebody down if they wanted to disappear.”
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