False Allegations Read online

  "No," she said. "I had good information. But I didn't listen. He always warns me about that. Not listening."

  "You're still not listening. I asked you: What was that all about, jumping me?"

  "A message. That you better not play him wrong. If you do, I'll kill you."

  "You don't have to worry about that, you crazy bitch—I'm done with this."

  "You can't," she hissed. "He'll…"

  "What?"

  "He doesn't know anything about this. I mean it. He's not even here. He didn't know you were coming today. This was all mine. I read your file and I was…afraid for him. This is important. Really important. You'll never know how much. It means everything to him."

  "You got a funny way of—"

  "And he means everything to me," she cut in. Everything, you understand? I did it wrong, okay. You want to kick my ass now, that's okay too. Go ahead—I won't say anything."

  "I don't care what you say," I told her, meaning it.

  "You have to do it," she said, looking down at the floor, her voice soft. "Please."

  "I don't have to do anything."

  "I'll make it up to you. I promise. I'll make it worth your while. Just tell me what you want…"

  I stepped carefully around her, kept going all the way to the front door. She called something softly at my back. I closed the door behind me, leaving her there.

  I could feel my face swelling under the skin, but I didn't think the cheekbone was broken. Putting my fingers to the pain, I couldn't feel my pulse in the damaged flesh. Not too bad, then.

  The subway glass reflected back my image, just starting to go swollen and discolored, the eye already closed. Nobody but me was interested—straphangers see worse every day.

  I spent the rest of the ride reading the posters. My favorite was from a law firm:

  BABY BORN BRAIN–DAMAGED?

  YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO A LARGE CASH AWARD!

  FREE CONSULTATION—NO FEE

  UNLESS WE GET MONEY FOR YOU!

  Back at the office, I cracked open one of those Insta–Cold packs they sell in drugstores, squeezed it in the middle until the liquid formed inside, and held the artificial ice against my cheek while I reached out for Mama on the cellular.

  "That woman call. Call twice. She say, you call her, okay? Very, very important. Call right now."

  That was quick. "Anything else?" I asked her.

  "Girl call too. Bondi. Say to call her too. Very important also, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "You need Max?"

  "I'm all right, Mama."

  "I get him here. You call later, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "Okay?"

  "Okay," I told her.

  "That's a beauty, isn't it?" Bondi whispered, looking at my face under the gentle reflected light from one of the baby spots. I was lying on her couch, shoes off, a pillow under my neck, darkness just coming outside through the closed blinds of her showplace window.

  "It's okay," I told her. "Not too bad."

  "Ah, a tough boy you are, huh? You let them X–ray it?"

  "I didn't go to the hospital. It was a punch, that's all. An amateur punch."

  "What happened to the other guy?"

  I watched her face to see if she knew something, but her grin was innocent—impish, just playing. "It's all done," I said. "Finished. Don't worry about it."

  "She called here. Heather…that big fat woman I told you about."

  "So?"

  She leaned over me, eyes narrowing in concentration, working hard to make sense out of whatever she was going to say. "She said there was money for me. A…bonus, like. What I needed, I mean, what I needed to do, I had to get you to meet with her."

  "Meet with her where?"

  "Anywhere, luv, that's what she said. Said it just like that, too. But it had to be soon."

  "Soon?"

  "Tomorrow," she said softly.

  "And how much is your…bonus?"

  "Five thousand, she said. In cash. And Burke…"

  "What?"

  "She said she'd give it to you. For me, I mean. She'll give it to you when you meet with her."

  "So she knows—"

  "Oh I don't know what that damn witch knows!" Bondi snapped at me. "I'm not a player, am I? Never a player. Me, I'm always the goddamned game."

  "Why you biting at me, girl? This isn't mine, and you know it."

  "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I know it's not you. It's not even just…men, now. Not with…her in it. I wish I'd never started with that miserable bastard."

  "The guy—"

  "Yes! The man across the street," she said, voice hardening. "That's right. Him."

  I closed my eyes, drifting with her rhythm. "How're you supposed to tell her?"

  "She's going to call. At eight tonight. I told her I'd reach out for you. But I couldn't be sure if you'd—"

  "It's all right, Bondi. Tell her I'll do it, okay?" Then I told her about a certain park bench.

  It was eight on the nose when the phone rang. Bondi left the couch, punched one of the lines on the phone console.

  "Yes?"

  …

  "Yeah, I did that."

  …

  "Tomorrow, then. Seven in the morning."

  …

  "Yes, in the morning—that's what he said."

  …

  "I don't know, do I? He just said seven in the morning, that's all."

  Then she told the voice I couldn't hear where to come.

  "Maybe cats have the right idea," Bondi said, her face so close to mine it was out of focus. In her bedroom, the queen–sized bed walled in with suitcases, all packed and ready.

  "About what?"

  "About licking their wounds," she purred, coming close, her pouty breasts brushing my chest, tongue flicking across my cheek where Heather had hooked me.

  "Bad idea," I said, wincing from the little stab of pain.

  "No," she whispered. "Just a bad place." She licked my stomach. Gentle, tip–of–the–tongue licks. "See?" she said softly.

  "I'm leaving tomorrow, honey," she said later. "I hate this place. I hate this life. I'm going home."

  "The man across the street—"

  "—doesn't matter to me anymore. It was a bad idea. Maybe just someone else using me the way they always do, I don't know. But if you want to mail the money to me—her money, what she's going to give you tomorrow—I'll leave you my address at home. If you…"

  "I want it anyway," I told her, the words coming so smoothly out of my mouth that I didn't stop to think if they were true. But they bought me a smile, her small white teeth flashing in the darkness.

  The phone rang, a sharp intrusion. My eyes blinked open. The digital clock on the nightstand said 12:44.

  "It's him," she said, wide awake, not moving.

  "So fucking what?" I asked her. "Guess he's gonna miss his little show for once."

  The phone rang again. Three times more. Then it stopped.

  "Ah, it's my fat bum he wants tonight," Bondi said, an ugly edge on her voice. "I never liked that one."

  "What difference—?"

  "I know how I can do it," she said, suddenly sitting up in the bed. "I know what would square it. How I can get him. Right now."

  "Bondi…"

  "Will you help me, honey?"

  "I'm not going over—"

  "No," she said softly, her lips to my ear. "I know a better way. Please…"

  When the mini–blinds opened a few minutes later, whoever was watching saw Bondi's last performance. She put everything she had into it, doing it all.

  Only this time, she had a co–star.

  "You pick up the stuff?" I said into the cellular. It was about four–thirty in the morning. The city was still dark through the windshield of the Plymouth as I worked the West Side Highway downtown.

  "Made the call, got it all," the Prof came back. "Heavy package too. When you need it?"

  "Couple of hours, if that's okay. I need something else too: a tria
ngle. At the park bench. Can you do it?"

  "I can do two, that's always true. But has the third heard?"

  "I can do that part, I think."

  "What time does it rhyme, bro?"

  "I made it for seven. Got to shade it at least a half hour."

  "How many for breakfast?"

  "One. Better be one. Any more than that, it's a red zone, got it?"

  "Dead and buried, Schoolboy. What's the rules? Got to keep hands showing, what?"

  "It's not like that. Just watch, okay?"

  "Yeah. One person you said. Looks like….what?"

  "A woman. Big woman. And she'll be limping."

  I got hold of Mama, wondering for the thousandth time if she ever slept. And where. She said she'd get Max to the spot in plenty of time. The Mongolian would eyeball Clarence and the Prof first, then he'd fit himself into the triangle.

  Pansy was glad to see me. And overjoyed at the cold filet mignon Bondi insisted I take from her refrigerator. "I'm not one to let good food go to waste, honey. And when he comes over here, he's not gonna find anything except the bare walls, I promise you. And I plan to leave him a little something there too," she said grimly, an uncapped red lipstick in her right hand.

  It didn't take us long to say goodbye. Sharing secrets doesn't always make you close.

  I took a quick shower, changed my clothes, checked with Mama to make sure Max got the message. Almost six by then. Time to start my walk.

  Battery Park is a pocket of green at the very southern tip of Manhattan, on the far side of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. The bench we always use faces out toward the Hudson River. There's a couple of ways to get to it, but no cover for the approach. And watching is real easy down here. At seven in the morning, you still got joggers and bikers and lurkers and drunks and wrongly discharged mental patients and drug dealers and the occasional tourist killing time until they open the ferry to the Statue of Liberty—no way to tell who's who no matter how suspicious you might be.

  I was in place by six forty–five. Had the bench to myself, so I didn't have to pull any of the various disgusting moves in my considerable repertoire to clear the space. I thought Clarence and the Prof would be working their shoeshine routine, but I couldn't spot either of them. Even if someone else could, they wouldn't see hardware. Clarence isn't just fast; he's magic. One second you see his hand, the next, it's full of nine–millimeter heat—like the pistol just materialized.

  Max was easier. He was standing right by the water's edge, performing a slow–motion kata, a lengthy one that looked like t'ai chi if you didn't know much about it. Passersby watched him with mild curiosity—the routine wasn't interesting enough to make them stop and didn't look threatening enough to make them hurry past.

  On the back of one of the other benches, graffiti–splattered in bright yellow: SCHIZOPHRENICS ARE NEVER ALONE!

  She came up the path a couple of minutes before seven, gimping along slow but steady, a black walking stick in her left hand and a white leather purse that looked like a horse's feedbag slung over the opposite shoulder. She was wearing a hot–pink sweatsuit, her body back in harness underneath. Her breasts jutted like heavy weapons, not a trace of jiggle anywhere. She halted a few feet from me, tentative, making sure she caught my eye. I nodded, not greeting her, just acknowledging her presence. She came over to the bench, raised her pencil–line black eyebrows. I took a deliberate glance at a spot next to me, still not talking.

  She turned her back to me and sat down butt–first, the way you get into a low–riding sports car. Then she unslung the purse, put it gently on the wood bench between us.

  "That's yours," she said.

  "For what?"

  "For nothing. I mean, not for doing anything. It's an apology, that's all. Go ahead, take a look."

  "I don't have X–ray eyes," I said. "And I don't open strange packages myself."

  She nodded as if that made sense. Reached down and pulled the zipper on the bag, using two hands to hold it wide open, like she was spreading the jaws of a giant clam. I looked inside. Banded cash. A lot of it.

  "Twenty–five thousand dollars," she said, looking at her hands in her lap. A big diamond glittered on her left hand. An engagement ring? "Hundred–dollar bills," she said. "Used bills, no consecutive serial numbers."

  "That's a big apology."

  "I fucked up big time. Twenty of it's for you, five for the whore."

  "The whore?"

  "You know who I mean. Bondi, whatever her name is."

  "And she's a whore?"

  Her orange eyes caught the early morning light. "I did a stupid thing, but I'm not stupid," she said. "The research wasn't wrong, I was."

  "So…?"

  "So I know what she does. For money."

  "I do things for money too."

  "Would you let somebody fuck you for money?"

  "Meaning you wouldn't?"

  "No. I wouldn't. I would never do that. It's wrong."

  "So you don't just punch people out, you're a goddamned judge too?"

  "If you like."

  "No, I don't like. I don't like you. A woman takes money for sex, she's no good according to you, right? But you, you want to do some bodywork on me, bang me around, scare me into doing something you want…that's okay?"

  "I said I was wrong."

  "No, bitch. You said you guessed wrong, that's all. It worked for you before, didn't it?"

  "What?"

  "Slapping people around."

  "You chipped a bone in my ankle," she said, a little–girl undertone to her voice. "It hurt, what you did."

  "You hurt yourself," I told her. Thinking of an ancient aikido master standing in a dojo years before, talking to a student who was moaning and holding his broken hand, telling him it was the student's desire to hurt another that caused him so much pain.

  "I cop to it, okay?" she said flatly. "When you do something wrong, all you can do is apologize and take what's coming to you."

  "And what's coming to you is paying me off?"

  "I asked you if you wanted something else."

  "When?"

  "I said you could kick my ass if you wanted to. You still can, if it would make things right. Or…"

  "What?"

  "Or you can…have me. Any way you want."

  "Instead of the money?"

  "Yes."

  "But you're not a whore, huh?"

  Her face flamed. "You can keep the money too, all right?"

  "I don't want you."

  "You would if I was…nice," she said softly. "I know you would—it's in your eyes."

  "You need a translator," I told her.

  "Am I too fat for you? Or maybe you just like whores."

  "Maybe I just don't like liars."

  She took a deep breath, squeezing her hands together in her lap. Max was still into his kata, never breaking the flow. If she'd brought friends with her, they weren't close enough to do much. Not with their hands, anyway. I've seen Max move—he was a hell of a lot closer than he looked. And whatever she planned to do, she couldn't run away.

  "I'll give you one more thing, then," she said. "The truth. How's that?"

  "Say it. Then I'll tell you what it's worth."

  She turned to face me, quickly ran her tongue over her lips. It wasn't a come–on—she was getting ready to talk. "When I was thirteen years old I was already…built like this. I looked like I was twenty at least. And I dressed like it too. I met a man. A famous man. He was a writer. A serious writer. He wrote books about economics. And social theory and politics and stuff like that. We were…friends. He thought I was older, but he never tried anything with me. Just…holding hands and stuff. I told him I was a salesgirl. In a record store. I knew a lot about that—I used to spend all my time in one. We were together a lot. Mostly in this coffeehouse in the Village. An old–style one. Little tables, checkered tablecloths, you could sit there for hours and nobody'd bother you….

  "But sometimes we went to his place. He had an apartment, t
he first floor of a brownstone on Bank Street. It was mostly books. Real quiet and peaceful. He'd give me books to read, and we'd talk about them. I wanted him to love me. And I think he did, maybe…"

  Her voice trailed off. I closed my eyes so I could hear her better. Waited.

  "I had a key to his place. I got there before him one night. I wanted to surprise him. I took my clothes off and took a bath. A bubble bath. In his tub. Then I put on this negligee I bought. I thought it was real sexy, but now I know it was just cheap and tacky. I was going to be a surprise package for him when he got home. So he could unwrap it, you understand?"

  "Sure."

  "But when he walked in the door and saw me, his face got all red, like he was real mad. I asked him what was wrong. And then he asked me how old I was."

  "I lied. Like I did before. But he wasn't going for it. I showed him my fake ID and everything, but it was like he…knew something. I took off the negligee. I stood right in front of him. Naked. But he didn't budge, just stood there with his arms folded. And then I told him the truth. His face went white. He was scared, I could tell."

  She went quiet for a minute, her face bowed. A tear tracked her cheek, cutting a soft river through the heavy makeup. I turned my detector on full, but the signals were still scrambled. I swept the field with my eyes without turning my head but the ground all around me was bland. Max was still in place.

  Maybe a minute passed. If she was waiting for me to say something, she was out of luck. Finally, she looked up. "That's when I…did it. I told him he had to make love to me. He had to. Or I'd tell everyone he did."

  I made some neutral sound, encouraging her to talk, not judging.

  "He just stood there with his arms folded. I got dressed and I left. I called him after that. A lot of times. After a while, he just used his answering machine to screen the calls. It made me so mad…knowing he was right there and he wouldn't even talk to me."

  "What could he have said?" I asked quietly.

  "I don't know," she answered. "Something…But he didn't. Nothing. Nothing at all. So that's when I did it."