When I let myself into the warehouse Michelle was sitting by the phone box with her legs crossed, reading her book next to an ashtray stuffed with about two packs’ worth of butts. Her eyes flashed a question and my face gave her the answer.
“Thank God you’re back, anyway,” she said. “This place was beginning to smell and I didn’t want to leave the phones.” She picked up the ashtray and headed for the bathroom in the back. I heard the toilet flush, then a rush of air as she opened the ventilation shaft for a minute to clear out the room.
When she came back, patting her face with one of those premoistened towelettes every working girl carries, she asked me, “So?”
“He was there—and now he’s not. Gone. I have to start over.”
“Too bad, baby.”
“Yeah. Well, it wasn’t a total loss. I found another kid for McGowan.”
“McGowan’s a doll. If I was a runaway I’d turn myself in to him in a flash.”
“You were never a runaway?” I asked, surprised.
“Honey, my biological parents packed my bags and bought me the bus ticket.”
There was nothing to say to that—I knew what Michelle meant by biological parents. Once I had a teenage girl come to my office and offer to pay me some money to find her “real” parents. She said she was adopted. It made me sick—these folks adopted her, paid the bills, took the weight, carried the load for her all her life, and now she wanted to find her “real” parents—the ones who dumped her into a social services agency that sold her to the highest bidder. Real parents. A dog can have puppies—that doesn’t make it a mother. I took her twenty-five hundred and told her to come back in a month, when I gave her the birth certificate of a woman who had died from an overdose of heroin two years after the girl had been born. The phony birth certificate said “Unknown” next to the space for “Father”. I told her that her father had been a trick, a john. Someone who paid her mother ten bucks so he could get off for a few minutes. She started to cry and I told her to go talk it over with her mother. She wailed, “My mother’s dead!” and I told her that her mother was home, waiting for her. The woman who had died had just been a horse who dropped a foal, that’s all. She left hating me, I guess.
Mama still hadn’t called, which meant Max wasn’t at the restaurant. I told Michelle I’d drop her wherever she wanted, and we packed up the stuff together.
When I pulled the Plymouth up in front of her hotel Michelle leaned over and kissed me quickly on the cheek. “Get a haircut, honey. That shaggy look went out ages ago.”
“You always told me my hair was too short.”
“Styles change, Burke. Although God knows, you never do.”
“Neither do you,” I told her.
“But I’m going to, honey . . . I’m going to,” she said, and bounced out of the car toward the steps.
Michelle had a place to live, and so did I. But we had the same home. I drove past mine to the place where I live.
16
YOU CAN WALK out of prison and promise yourself you’ll never be back, but it’s not such an easy promise to keep. You always take some of the joint with you when you go. The last time I got out, I told myself it would be great to get up when I wanted to—not when the damn horns went off in the morning. But it’s still hard for me to sleep late. Besides, Pansy isn’t the kind of cellmate who’s willing to sleep in and forget about hitting the chow line.
While she was out on the roof I looked out the back door toward the river. It was quiet up there, but I knew things were happening on the street. I’d never be able to live high enough up to not know that.
I went back into the living space next to the office and put together the stuff I’d need. All the firepower went back into the compartment in the floor of the closet except the .38, which would go back into the car. I put the clip-on car antenna into the breast pocket of an old tweed sportcoat, put it on over a plain gray sweater. Some tired corduroy pants, a battered felt hat, and a pair of desert boots completed the professor’s outfit. The hat didn’t really fit in with all the other stuff, but I don’t like to play stereotypes too rigidly.
I put the microcassette recorder inside the special pocket in the lining of my leather overcoat and connected the long flexible wire the Mole had made for me to the remote microphone sewn into the inside of the sleeve. Then I connected the remote-start wire to the switch in my overcoat pocket, the same one that would hold my cigarettes. I used a handy police siren from down by the river to test the recorder for treble, patted Pansy’s head until she purred to test for bass—it was as sensitive as the Mole had promised. I had ninety minutes of uninterrupted recording time—voice-activated, although it was so sensitive that it would run all the time once I touched the switch. I’d have to pay attention when I started it working.
I got Pansy all set up, activated the security systems, and went downstairs. The desert boots don’t have steel toes like my other shoes, but they’re rubber-soled and I don’t make a sound.
I let myself into the garage, put the .38 back where it belonged, and got out some old chamois cloth. The Plymouth had to be thoroughly cleaned before I put on its disguise. A couple of concealed hinge pins the kid had installed were all I needed to remove the entire front outside section. Next I took the precut sheets of heavy vinyl with gum backing and proceeded to turn the Plymouth from a faded blue to a brilliant two-tone red and white. I smoothed the vinyl on very carefully, like the guy I bought it from showed me, then went over the whole thing with a soft rubber block to get rid of all the little bubbles. It wouldn’t pass a serious inspection, but I wasn’t planning on anyone getting a close look.
Then I put on new license plates. They’re perfectly legal dealer plates from a junkyard in Corona. I own a ten percent interest in the junkyard, which I paid for in cash. In return, the old man who runs the thing carries me on the books at minimal salary so I have something to show the IRS, and lets me carry a set of dealer plates with me in case I see something worth salvaging. I cash the checks every month and get the cash right back to the old man. No problem. I suppose if some citizen got a reading on the plates the cops could trace them back to the junkyard, but they’d collect their pensions before I ever showed up there. And finding Juan Rodriguez (I told the old man that my parents were Spanish Jews, not that he gave a damn) in the abandoned building on Fox Street in the South Bronx would be a hell of a feat too.
I still had some time before I had to meet Flood, so I guided the Plymouth, resplendent in its new clothes, over to the warehouse to check on the mail. It looked empty as usual, but I rolled the car inside, turned off the engine, and waited. Max materialized at my window. I never heard him coming—they don’t call him Max the Silent just because he doesn’t speak. He twitched a muscle in his right cheek, parted his thin lips about a millimeter—that’s his idea of a friendly smile—and motioned for me to follow him into the back room. He gestured to the old wooden desk to indicate that there was some mail. I scooped it out and pulled a cigarette out of my pocket, offering Max one.
You ever watch an Oriental smoke a cigarette? They really know how to get something out of it. Max touched the butt to his lips with his palm facing in, drew a deep breath and reversed his grip so that he was holding it with his thumb on the bottom and his first two fingers on top. Then he gradually pulled the cigarette away as he inhaled, a gesture that meant I should tell him what was going on. I pointed to my eyes, then spread my hands wide to show I was looking for somebody but didn’t know where he was. Max touched his own face, held his hand in front of his eyes to show me a mirror, then gestured as if he were describing someone’s physical characteristics. I pretended I was taking a picture, then beckoned as if I were inviting someone to enter. Max understood that I was expecting to get a photograph of the target soon. Then he held his hands out in front, turned them slowly back and forth, and looked up expectantly. I pointed to my eyes again and made a no-no gesture with my palms down—I only wanted to find the guy, not hurt him. Max shrug
ged, then made a glad-to-see-you-pal gesture with his hands and face to ask me if the guy would be happy when I did find him. I made a sad face, indicating he would not. Max looked at his hands again. I shrugged my shoulders to show that maybe he was right, or would be right when this all came down.
Grabbing an elbow with each hand as if I were rocking a baby, I crossed my arms—did Mama Wong have anything for me? Max picked up an imaginary telephone, spoke into it, touched his finger to his forehead like he was making a mental note to remember something. So I had gotten a call at Mama’s, someone very insistent. Okay.
I buttoned up the coat to show Max I was leaving, and he glided out into the front area to make sure nobody was around. Max is a bonafide member of the warrior class—he doesn’t need combat to prove what he is. A lot of clowns who spend half their time slobbering about “respect” should see how the rest of the world treats Max.
As I pulled out of the garage, Max gestured that I should let him know if things got difficult. Implicit in his gesture was the belief that almost anything was too difficult for me to do alone.
17
THE DRIVE OVER to Mama’s was uneventful. The Plymouth was running smooth as a turbine. I checked the tape recorder hidden inside the dash to be sure it was working, then switched over to some cassette music. Charley Musselwhite’s version of “Stranger in a Strange Land” came back at me through the four speakers. He was a perfectionist once, but he’d left his best efforts in Chicago a dozen years ago—I don’t play any of his latest stuff. Too bad you can’t keep people’s best performances on tape cassettes like you can music. It wouldn’t matter in my case, though—I haven’t had my best shot yet, I hope.
I parked next to the dumpster in Mama Wong’s alley. It’s perfectly legal to park there, but nobody does. There’s some kind of Chinese writing on the wall, courtesy of Max the Silent. I don’t know what it means, but nobody parks there. I knocked twice on the steel door to the back of the restaurant, heard the peephole slide back, and one of Mama’s alleged cooks let me in. Mama was sitting at her tiny black-lacquered desk, sipping a cup of tea and writing in her ledger book. I guess a lot of people would like to take a look at that book—I guess a lot of people would like to be rich, happy, successful, famous, secure, and healthy too. They’ve got about the same chance. Mama greeted me with her usual blend of Far Eastern subtlety and politeness.
“Burke, why you wearing that silly hat?”
“It’s a disguise, Mama. I’m working on a case.”
“Not so good disguise, Burke. You still look like European.” (Mama likes to pretend all Occidentals look alike to her.)
“Max said you got a phone call for me?”
“Burke, you only one that can talk to Max except for me. Max like you. Max say that you are a man of honor. How come he say that?”
“Who knows why Max says anything?” (Meaning: That is between Max and me—he may work for you but he and I are a separate thing. Mama knows this but never stops trying. She thinks all secrets are dangerous except her own.)
“Burke, you get phone call from same man. James, he say. I tell you before, this man not good, okay?”
“What did he say this time?”
“He say I better tell you to call him. That this mean good money for you and you be mad at me if I don’t tell you.”
“Did he scare you, Mama?”
“Oh yes, very frightened. Many people killed over the telephone, right?” (Meaning: The phone number I give people rings in Mama’s restaurant, but the actual instrument is located in the back of the warehouse, with the bell disconnected. It’s hooked up to a diverter, which bounces the signal to the junkyard’s pay phone in Corona, where another diverter picks it up and rolls it back to the pay phone in the kitchen. Bribing a phone company employee will eventually get you the address of the warehouse, but that’s as close as you’d get. And going there with threats for Mama Wong would be fatal.)
“He leave a number, Mama?”
“Same number as last time. He say you can call him between six and seven tonight.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“No, nothing else. You want something to eat, some hot-and-sour soup?”
“You got it prepared already?”
“Always ready, always on stove cooking. Cook adds things during the day, but same soup, okay?”
I nodded yes and sat down at one of the front tables. The place wouldn’t open for another couple of hours, and the curtains were drawn across the windows. One of the cooks came out with a big bowl of soup and some hard noodles, the Daily News and tonight’s Harness Lines, which is the working-class version of the Daily Racing Form. It was a perfect breakfast, sitting there with the hot soup and the papers. Quiet, peaceful, safe. I couldn’t concentrate on the racing form, so I let my mind drift off and slowly finished the soup. If this James was up to something in Africa, it had to be diamonds, ivory, or soldiers. A connection with Wilson? No, Wilson couldn’t know I was looking for him. Besides, James had been calling Mama’s even before this business with Flood started. It wouldn’t come together.
I cleaned off the table and took out a pack of cigarettes, arranging ten of them in a star formation with the filters pointing toward the open center, then stared deep into the center until the cigarettes disappeared and walked around in the empty space in my mind for a while. Nothing came. Tendrils of thought licked at my brain but nothing ignited—I would have to wait for it to surface when it was ready. I’d already taken too many chances with the Flood thing.
I got up, returned all the cigarettes but one, stuck that one in my mouth unlit, went out to the kitchen with the plates. “See you later, Mama.”
“Burke, when you call this man on the telephone, you meet him at the warehouse, not your office, okay?”
“Mama, I’m not going to call him. I don’t need the work right now. I already have a case.”
“You meet him at the warehouse, okay? With Max, okay?”
“How do you know I’m going to meet him, Mama?”
Mama just smiled, “I know.” She went back to her ledgers.
I made the alley, fired up the car, and headed for the library to meet Flood.
18
I GOT TO Bryant Park around nine-thirty. This little plot of greenery located behind the Public Library is supposed to enhance the citizens’ cultural enjoyment of their surroundings. Maybe it did once—now it’s an open-air market for heroin, cocaine, hashish, pills, knives, handguns—anything you might need to destroy yourself or someone else. There’s a zoning law in effect, though—if you want to have sex with a juvenile runaway from Boston or Minneapolis, or to buy a nine-year-old boy for the night, you have to go a few blocks further west.
Not too much activity when I first got there. The real scores are at lunchtime. But the predators and the prey were already doing their dance: broads walking through with gold chains and swinging handbags, solid citizens hustling to get to whatever hustle they do for a living, amateur thugs who wouldn’t know an easy score from a steady job lurking as subtly as vultures in a graveyard, small packs of kids moving through fast on their way to one of the porno movies in Times Square, some old lunatic feeding the pigeons so bloated from slopped-around junk food that they couldn’t fly, a bag lady looking for a place to rest her body for a few minutes before she nomads on.
I looked around carefully. There were no real hunters on the set (like someone who got burned in a dope deal looking for the salesman). I sat down on a bench, lit up. Like always, I was early. Sometimes if you come late for one of those meetings, you never leave.
I was smoking my cigarette and watching the flow around my bench when I saw the Prof approach. He was making his way carefully through the clots of people, occasionally stopping to exchange a few words but moving steadily in my direction. Not quite a midget, he was maybe four-and-a-half feet tall, even with the giant afro that shot out of his skull like it was electrified. Maybe forty years old, maybe sixty. Nobody knows all that much about the Pr
of. But he knows a lot about people: some say “Prof” is short for “Professor,” some say it stands for “Prophet.” Today he’s wearing a floor-length cashmere overcoat that probably fit the guy who originally brought it from Brooks Brothers and was dumb enough to hang it on a restaurant coathook—it trails behind him like the robes of royalty. The Prof speaks from the streets or the skies, depending on his mood:
“Today it is seven-twenty-seven. That’s the plain truth, and that’s no pun.”
“How’s business, Prof?”
“Do you hear the word, Burke? The number today must be seven-twenty-seven.”
“Why?” I asked, not looking up. The Prof was standing to one side, not blocking my view. No matter how he talked, he knew how to act.
“Not what you think, Burke. Not what you think. Not the airplane seven-twenty-seven, but a doom dream in reverse.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“Do not mock the Word, Burke. Last night I dreamed of cards and death. Not the Tarot cards—gambler’s cards. You know the Dead Man’s Hand?”
“Aces and eights?”
“This is true. Aces and eights. And death means time, and time means hope, and to hope is to reject death, is it not?”
“Time don’t mean hope when you’re doing it, Prof.”
The Prof doesn’t like to be challenged when he’s talking nonsense.
“Who you talking to, chump? A tourist? Hear what I got to say before you go on your way.”
“Okay, Prof. Run it down,” I told him. That was a cheap shot about time anyway: small as he was, the Prof had stood up when we were inside.
“See the face of a clock in your mind, Burke—the reverse of one is seven, and the reverse of eight is two. The Death Number is one-eighty-one—so the Life Number must be seven-twenty-seven. And today is Life.”
“And you know this how?”
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