Crystal Beth was already seated when I got to the bookstore. I spotted her as I went through the turnstile. The uniformed guy standing there nodded respectfully, crossing me off his potential-booster list. Maybe I should wear cashmere more often.
Places I go most of the time, maybe I should just paint a fucking bull’s-eye on my back too.
“You look . . . amazing,” she said as I slipped the coat off my shoulders to sit down.
“You too,” I replied.
It was true. She was wearing a pale-blue jersey turtleneck top over an ankle-length black skirt, just the tips of oxblood boots peeking out beneath. Her hair was in pigtails, blue ribbons the same color as her top tied to each end. Dark-red lipstick. The tattoo glistened on the side of her face.
“Thank you . . . for doing this,” she said quietly.
“We have a deal.”
“I know. But still . . .”
A waitress came over. Crystal Beth ordered some complicated espresso junk; I had hot chocolate. With whipped cream.
“You like sweets?” she asked me.
“Some sweets.”
“Burke . . .”
“What?”
“I’m scared.”
“Of this guy Pryce?”
“Yes. Not just him. The whole thing.”
There was nothing to say to that. It could mean anything. And it wasn’t the time for exploring—I needed her mind to be right for the meet. I sipped the hot chocolate, idly watching the customers come and go. Nobody seemed in a hurry. Lots of posing going on at the tables. See and Be Seen. Whoever came up with the idea of a coffee shop inside a bookstore was an entrepreneurial genius—you can’t go wrong opening a singles bar in a city where so many people do their time in solitary.
Whoever picked their playlist was righteous too. I couldn’t spot the speakers, but the whole joint was filled with music. No elevator stuff either: Son Seals wailing “Going Back Home,” Miss Koko’s “That’s Why I’m Crying,” Bazza’s hard-core “Ghost,” Buddy Guy’s “One-Room Country Shack” . . . even Fats Domino’s version of “One Night With You”—the one that puts Elvis on the trailer every time I hear it. I’ve heard that music everywhere from juke joints to late-night FM, but never expected it to wash over a place like this. If my head was different, I would have taken it for an omen. Being me, I just let myself get lost in the blues for a bit, going away to be with myself. When they switched to some softer stuff, I came back to where I was . . . and what I was there for.
“How’d you get here?” I finally asked her.
“I walked. It isn’t that far, really. I’m used to walking. And the weather has been—”
“I’ve got a car waiting,” I told her. “You ready?”
“I . . . guess so.”
“No, you’re not,” I said, leaning forward, dropping my voice. “You’re not ready at all. Whoever this Pryce is, he’s a bad guy, understand?”
“Yes,” she replied, almond eyes calm.
“Me too. Not you. Understand that?”
“I . . . think so.”
“You hired me to do something, right?”
“Yes.”
“Because I can get it done. And you can’t, right?”
“Yes,” she said, annoyed now, and showing it.
“So you’re gonna do it the way I say, right?”
“All right.”
“Let me tell you something about players,” I said. “They think everybody else is playing. A pro would, anyway. My name wasn’t in this. You brought it in. I gave you the okay to do that, I’m not complaining. But if this doesn’t work out, if I walk away, this guy Pryce, he’s not gonna buy that. For him, I’m still in it, no matter what, understand?”
“That you’re at risk?”
“Yeah. That I’m at risk. So what I get to do is minimize that risk. And that means you do what I tell you.”
She swallowed that a lot harder than she had the espresso, but she seemed to keep it down. She went quiet then. I went back to watching “The Dating Game.”
“What does it mean?” she asked sullenly. “Do what you say?”
“I don’t know this guy. I don’t know if he’s alone, if he’s got a crew, if he’s working free-lance, if he’s with the government . . . nothing. But he has my name. And if he’s connected, he’ll have stuff to go with that, I don’t know how much. He’s gonna know, for me to be in it, it’s either money or blood. Depending on how it goes down, maybe it’s better if he thinks it’s personal instead.”
“Personal?”
“That I’m your man.”
“Oh.”
“You can do that, right? Maybe you can sit on my lap when we talk.”
Her face burned. One corner of her wide mouth twitched. “You think—?”
“Me, I don’t think anything. Just guesses. You talked it over with your pal Vyra. She told you sex wouldn’t make it happen—I only work for money. But you thought maybe you’d prove her wrong. . . .”
“So I’m a whore?” she said quietly, tendrils of rage webbing her voice.
“I wouldn’t know that,” I said calmly. “Only you know.”
“Didn’t you ever make a split-second decision? Just to . . . trust someone?”
“I’m going to tell you the truth,” I told her. “You know those silent whistles, the ones only dogs can hear? People got them too. Certain people. You hear it, you know it.”
“You heard that from me? That you could trust me?”
“Mine doesn’t work like that,” I told her. “It works the opposite. Like a burglar alarm. I know when someone’s trying to break in.”
“And you think I was?”
“Yeah. The only thing I don’t know is what you wanted—to look around, or to take something.”
The back seat of Clarence’s beloved Rover is small, just a pair of black leather buckets separated by a center armrest. He pulled smoothly away from the downtown curb, heading for First Avenue.
Crystal Beth reached over and took my hand. I looked at her.
“Just practicing,” she said.
I pulled my hand away, grasped her wrist, moved it around. Showed her the difference between connection and control. She didn’t resist. “Practice that,” I told her.
Clarence let us off four blocks from the meet—three streets and one avenue. The afternoon sun was a sociopath’s smile, brilliant without warmth. I put Crystal Beth’s right hand on my left forearm, stuffed my left hand into my pocket and started to walk.
“I’ve never—”
“Don’t talk,” I told her. “Don’t say anything. If he asks you anything, just look over at me, understand?”
“Yes, master.”
I stopped walking suddenly. She lurched a step ahead, stopped and turned to face me. “This isn’t about politics,” I told her, letting her hear the tension in my voice. “You hired a guide. Like you’re on a jungle safari, okay? I know the trails. You don’t, and you could get lost. I know the animals. You don’t, and you could get hurt. You don’t want to listen to me, you don’t want to do what I say, you can have your deposit back, lady. Just go on in there and tell the man I changed my mind.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, stepping close to me, putting her hand back on my forearm.
I searched her face for more sarcasm. Couldn’t find any. And I couldn’t read her almond eyes.
“That’s him,” she whispered as soon as we walked in the door. He was seated at a café-style table, alone. The table was alone too, standing isolated between two rows of booths against the windows, an island in empty space. I’d been in the joint before. And the Prof had visited yesterday too. No way that table was part of the usual decor—midtown space is way too expensive to set up a restaurant like that. Either he was connected deep or he paid heavy.
Not good news.
Four chairs at the little round table. He was occupying one, a colorless human in a G-man suit. A khaki raincoat with a dark brown zip-in liner was draped over one of the chairs.
We walked over. I took Crystal Beth’s coat off her shoulders, tossed it on top of his. Held out a chair for her. I took my own coat off, carefully draped it over Crystal Beth’s and sat down.
His face was bony and angular, but the flesh around his eyes was pouchy, dark half-moons under each one. His mouth was so thin you had to look twice to see it. Indoor skin. Or a night worker’s.
“You have something for me?” he said to Crystal Beth, somewhere between a question and a command.
“That’s why I’m here,” I told him.
He shifted his head a few micrometers. The pupils of his eyes were a muddy brown, running at the edges like imperfect yolks. “Mr. Burke,” he said.
“And you are . . . ?”
“Mr. Pryce.”
Nobody’s hands moved.
“She,” I said, nodding my head in Crystal Beth’s direction without dropping my eyes, “says you have a problem with something she wants to do.”
“Something she can’t do,” Pryce said, nothing in his voice.
“Because . . . ?”
“We’ve been through this,” he said. “If you’re here for muscle, you’re wasting your time.”
“Why would you think that?” I asked him. “I’m not muscle. That’s not what I do. There’s a problem. I thought maybe I could . . . add some perspective.”
“Yes?”
“She has a client who needs to do something about your . . . client?”
“Not my client,” he said, voice still empty.
“But someone you need to protect?”
“Not that either.”
“I’m not following you,” I said.
“Do you know why I picked this place?” he asked.
“It wasn’t for the service,” I said. Telling him I’d noticed that the waiter was giving the little table a wide berth.
“No. It was for the view. I don’t know your relationship to this . . . situation. You talked about a problem. I understand that I’m that problem to . . . her,” he said, nodding at Crystal Beth the same way I’d done. “And I wanted to be sure you weren’t hired to solve that problem.”
“I wasn’t hired,” I told him. “She’s in it, I’m in it.”
“If you say so,” he said indifferently. “But the problem could still get solved the same way.”
“Which is?”
He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. I noticed the fingers were all flesh-webbed—deep, right up to the first set of knuckles. A muscle twitched under his right eye. “Do you want me to talk in front of her?” he asked.
I could feel the heat from Crystal Beth next to me, but she didn’t move. “Sure,” I said, noncommittal.
He mimed opening a notebook, read from its imaginary pages. “Baby Boy Burke,” he said softly. “That’s what the birth certificate reads. Father unknown. Mother was sixteen at the time of your birth. Or so she told the hospital. A working prostitute . . .” He paused, but I didn’t react. Calling my mother a whore was nothing to me. I’d never met her.
“Baby Boy Burke was left in the hospital. Mother walked out. Presumed missing . . .
“Child was institutionally raised. Four foster homes. Removed from the third one following an investigation into . . . does it matter?”
“Not to me,” I said. Meaning: not anymore.
“Chronic runaway. Three placements. Same pattern. Returned to foster care. The last foster home was closed when it burned to the ground. Arson. Perpetrator never apprehended.”
Again he looked up. Again he saw me looking back.
“First conviction for gang-fighting,” he continued. “Age thirteen. Last placement as a youthful offender was for attempted murder with a handgun. Subsequent adult prison sentences for armed robbery, hijacking, and assault with intent. No current parole holds.”
I made the face of a man desperately trying to look mildly interested. Anyone with access to the computers could get everything he’d spit out so far.
“Employed as a mercenary by a rebel faction inside the Federal Republic of Nigeria between 1968 and 1969,” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“It wasn’t a rebel faction,” I told him. “It was a country. Its name was Biafra. And I was a relief worker, not a mercenary.”
“Yes. With the Red Cross, no doubt,” he said, lifting an eyebrow just a fraction.
I didn’t say anything. The man knew his business. That tribalistic insanity in Africa was the first time in history a Red Cross plane had ever been shot right out of the skies. Up to then, the Red Cross symbol had been a guarantee of safe passage, universally respected. That’s all changed now. . . . Ask anyone in Bosnia.
“Evacuated right near the end,” Pryce continued, “whereabouts unknown for several months. Since then, worked variously as a salesman of various products. No known affiliation with organized crime.”
He was wandering off the track now, mixing rumors with truth. Big deal.
“Listed as suspect in several apparently unrelated homicides over a period of a dozen years. Seven arrests, on a variety of charges, during that period. No convictions.”
I watched him roam through his invisible notebook, reading yesterday’s headlines. He wasn’t close.
“Also known as Arnold Haines. And Juan Rodriguez.”
Ah, that was bad. The Arnold Haines ID was a throwaway, good enough for renting cars and buying airline tickets. It was the name I used on the visiting lists at prisons where I still had contacts too. But Juan Rodriguez was me. My driver’s license, Social Security, everything. Juan was an employee of a junkyard in the South Bronx. Only I really owned the place. The manager wrote me a regular paycheck, did all the withholding and everything. I cashed it and kicked back a piece, but it squared me with IRS. It’s not illegal to use another identity, so long as there’s no intent to defraud.
My whole life was an intent to defraud. And now a carefully constructed piece of it was shot to hell. I kept my face bland, waiting for the rest.
“Known associates include . . .” He looked up at me, held my eyes. And said Wesley’s name out loud.
“Go fix your makeup,” I told Crystal Beth out of the side of my mouth.
As she started to stand up, Pryce made a “sit-down” gesture with his hand. She ignored him.
He pushed his chair back a few inches, looked around the restaurant. “I don’t like that,” he said. The muscle under his right eye jumped again, harder than before. When he interlocked his fingers, the webbing closed, forming a solid mass of pale flesh.
“You think Wesley’s dead?” I asked him, a threat so subtle only a guy who really knew the score would get it.
“Accounts vary,” he said evenly, not telling me if he’d missed it or if it didn’t faze him.
“She’s not your problem,” I told him, moving my head in Crystal Beth’s direction. “Me neither. I got no little notebook on you. When she comes back, we walk out of here. Out of your life, okay? Find another way.”
“There is no other way,” he said, putting his elbows on the table.
But not his cards.
“This guy, Lothar. The one you don’t want busted. He’s not yours, right?”
“That’s right.”
“And the people he’s with, you’re not with them?”
“No, Mr. Burke. I want them.”
“But when you get them, old Lothar walks away, right?” I said, getting it. Finally.
“That’s the deal,” he said. Flat-out, no more playing.
“He get the kid too?”
Pryce shrugged. He was a player all right. And the rest of us were nothing but chips.
“You’re by yourself,” I said. Not a question.
He didn’t react. Even the muscle under his eye was quiet.
“I’m not,” I told him. “Look in that notebook of yours—see what it says about who’s with me. All you can do is protect your boy Lothar from the law. Not from me. You’re worried about what I’m going to do? Think about it—why would I do it to you?”
; “What are you saying?”
“Me? I’m not saying anything for your little tape recorder. All you got is this tired old ‘rogue-agent’ routine. And a bunch of halfass ‘info’ any cybergeek could vacuum. The only one committing crimes here is you, threatening a helpless woman to drop charges so some fucking Nazi can keep doing what he does. Promising him a baby as a booby prize. But if something happens to old Lothar, the game’s over, right?”
“Nothing is going to happen to Lothar.”
“I didn’t say it was. I’m just . . . theorizing, okay? What you’re doing, it’s a game. You say ‘Or else.’ Now I get to say ‘Or else, what?’ ”
“It’s not you that gets to say that, Mr. Burke.”
“The bitch will do what I tell her,” I promised him.
“She might,” he agreed, lipless mouth reluctantly releasing the words. “But she’s not the only one who gets a vote.”
“Intelligence,” I told him. “It’s a commodity. Like dope or diamonds. A thing people buy and sell, right?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes they trade things too.”
“And you have something to trade?”
“You got to bring some to get some,” I said. “What you brought, it’s nothing. And you know it. Just showmanship. Flash and splash. If you’re telling the truth, there’s only one reason why you’re covering Lothar’s play. Maybe I could do something, get you what you want some other way.”
“Provided . . . ?”
“Provided you leave the baby. With the woman. The baby’s out.”
“He won’t—”
“And provided I get paid.”
“What possible guarantees could you—?”
“None right now. I have to see about some things first. Then we meet. You and me. Alone. Anywhere you say. Then we both ante up. Deal?”
“There isn’t much time.”
“Don’t spread it on so thick,” I told him. “There’s always some slack in the rope in these matrimonial things. We can stall the divorce papers, put the whole thing on hold.”
“That’s not the only—”
“Forty-eight hours. A little more if you want the meet to be after dark.”
His neck stiffened. I glanced behind him. Crystal Beth was approaching, slowly. I waved her over. She took her seat meekly, eyes downcast.
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