Blue Belle b-3 Page 2

  "That's outrageous," the lawyer said, his face a halfstep out of sync with his words. "You expect me to just . . ."

  "I'm tired of this. I'm tired of you. If Mr. C. really sent you out here to do business, you've got at least twenty large in that pretty briefcase of yours. And if you're a fucking little errand boy, go back and tell your boss that he sent the wrong messenger."

  He sat there, staring. I lit another cigarette. "When this smoke is finished, so am I," I told him, waiting.

  The lawyer tried to smile. "I'm no errand boy," he said, holding his head stiff. He opened another compartment in the briefcase. The money was neatly stacked, a paper baid around the fifty-dollar bills. He counted off twenty little 'tacks, tossing them contemptuously on the broad seat between us, making sure I could see there was plenty left in the briefcase.

  Telling me they would have paid more. That he had the last laugh.

  "Can I drop you someplace?" he smirked.

  I threw an empty pack of cigarettes back over my shoulder, out the window. "Thanks anyway," I told the lawyer, shoving the cash into different pockets of my coat, "I'll call a cab."

  A battered gypsy cab rolled up next to the limo. The rusty old hulk was so filthy you couldn't even see through the windows. The lawyer's mouth dropped open. I nodded to him, backed out of the limo and into the gypsy. The driver dropped the hammer, and we moved out in a cloud of black smoke.

  3

  I spotted the insider when he was still a half-block away.

  Watching him for days tuned me in - l could pick him up in a crowd just by the way he moved. Heading for the switchman, like always. I zoomed the binoculars in on the switchman's hands. He was still working on his charts, face bent over in concentration. When the insider got close, I focused in on the three bowls, flicking past the one that held the pens to the second one - the one with the cigarettes. I locked into the last bowl in the triangle - the one with the coins. There was nothing else in my vision. I breathed gently through my nose, my elbows pressed into my chest.

  Silver dropped into the switchman's bowl. Some coins. And a flat-folded piece of aluminum foil. I reached one hand up to the window shade and pulled it straight down. I dropped to the floor and raised the shade an inch at the bottom, so I could peek out without the binoculars.

  A kid in a striped T-shirt shot around the corner on a skateboard. He lost control and spun out; the skateboard took off by itself and crashed into a parked car. The kid was ready for the crash: gloves on his hands, thick pads covering his elbows and knees. His head was hidden under a white plastic mask - the kind hockey goalies wear. He shook himself off, dazed.

  Then he charged right at the switchman, snatched the coin bowl in both hands, and flew up the block, the bowl tight against his chest. The switchman started to come off his blanket when one of the winos stumbled into him from behind. The wino's long floppy raincoat blocked most of my view, but I could see the switchman whip an elbow into his chest, knocking him backward. The wino grabbed at the switchman to break his fall; they fell to the ground together. The switchman wrenched himself loose, stopping for a second to kick the helpless wino in the chest.

  When he turned around, the kid was gone. I saw the gypsy cab pull away, heading for the river.

  The switchman did a full circle, knowing he was too late. The wino crawled away, his hands wrapped around his ribs. The switchman pulled the corners of his blanket together, held it in two hands, and spun it around a couple of times to form a sack. Re threw the sack over his shoulder and ducked into the subway.

  It took me less than a minute to throw everything I had with me into the battered suitcase and head out the door.

  I went out the side door on Chambers, and walked back through the park. The street was the way it was before the crash. Even the kid's skateboard was gone.

  4

  My Plymouth was parked on West Street, near one of the construction sites. The guy who built it years ago was trying to create the ultimate New York taxicab, but he died before he got it done. I threw my suitcase in the trunk and started the engine. The two-and-a-half-ton dull gray machine started right up, the way it always does. I hit the switch and my window slid down. Lit a cigarette and pulled away, heading for the pier.

  I was there tirst. I backed in until the bumper tapped the base of the pier, shoved a Judy Henske tape into the slot, listened to "If That Isn't Love" for the thousandth time. Waiting again. If Linda Ronstadt is a torch singer, Henske's a flame thrower.

  A couple of guys walked by, hand in hand, talking just to each other. An overmuscled beach boy posed against a burned-out abandoned car. A black man was adding a few touches to an oil painting of the riverfront. A man with a teenager's body cruised the scene on roller skates, wearing mirror sunglasses to hide the truth. The whores don't work this pier. Some zoning regulation the City Council would never understand reserved it for gays.

  Nobody came near the Plymouth. I was into my third smoke, and Henske was breaking chops with both hands on "Good Old Wagon" by the time the gypsy cab pulled in at an angle next to me, its nose aimed at the Plymouth's trunk. The kid jumped out first, the goalie's mask gone, his baby face glowing with pride.

  "Hey, Burke!"

  "Keep it down," I told him, climbing out of the car.

  "Did you see it? It went perfect!" He was bouncing up and down like he just hit a home run in Little League. Snatching money off the street was as close as Terry would ever get.

  The Mole slowly emerged from the darkness of the gypsy cab. He was wearing a greasy pair of coveralls, a heavy tool belt around his waist, with another strap running over his shoulder. Something glinted off his Coke-bottle lenses - I couldn't tell if it was the sun. He walked into the shadow where our two cars touched and squatted on the ground, fumbling in his leather satchel. Terry hunkered down beside him, his hand on the Mole's shoulder, trying to peer inside the satchel. The Mole's pasty-white hands with their stubby fingers looked too awkward to open the clasp, but he had a touch like a brain surgeon. He pulled out the foil disk and dropped it in my palm, looking up at me with a question.

  "Let's see," I told him, unwrapping it carefully.

  In a neat, almost prim hanchriting were the words "Maltrom, Ltd." Nothing else. I didn't need anything else.

  "Nice work, Mole," I told him.

  The Mole grunted.

  "You drop Max off?"

  He grunted again. Max the Silent didn't get his name because he moved so quietly. A Mongolian free-lance warrior who never spoke, Max made his living as a courier, moving things around the city for a price. His collateral was his life. He was as reliable as cancer, and not nearly as safe to play with. The wino who stumbled into the switchman had been Max. He'd taken the kicks to the ribs, even though he could have snapped the switchman like a matchstick. A professional.

  The Mole was still hunkered down in the shadows. The kid was next to him. Waiting quietly now, like he'd been taught.

  "I got about an hour," I told the Mole.

  His face moved - the Mole's idea of a smile. "You don't want to call your broker first?"

  I don't have a broker. I don't get mail and I don't have a phone. Maybe it's true that you can't beat them - you don't have to join them either.

  "I have to see Michelle," the kid piped up.

  I caught the Mole's eye, nodded okay.

  "Give her my share," he said.

  5

  I wheeled the Plymouth across the highway and started to work my way through the back streets of SoHo. Carefully, like I do everything.

  Lily runs a special joint that works with abused kids. They do individual and group therapy, and they teach self-defense. Maybe it's all the same thing.

  Max's woman works there. Immaculata. It wasn't so long ago that she tried to stop three punks from attacking what she thought was an old man on the subway. The old man was Max. He went through the punks like a chain saw through Kleenex, left them broken and bleeding on the subway floor, and held out his hand to the woman who
stood up for him. Their baby was born a few months ago - two warriors' blood in her veins.

  Terry watched me without turning his head, working on what we'd been teaching him. But he was doing it for practice - he wasn't scared anymore. The first time I took him away in a car, he was a rental from a pimp. We were working a deep con, looking for a picture of another kid. We picked up Michelle on the street so she could watch Terry while we got ready to deal with his pimp.

  I lit a cigarette, thinking back to that night. "Want one?" I asked him.

  "Michelle doesn't want me to smoke."

  "I won't tell her."

  The kid knew better than to use the dashboard lighter in the Plymouth. I snapped a wooden match into life, held it across to him. He took a deep drag. We had a deal.

  I watched him scan the passing streets with his eyes, not moving his head.

  I was in Biafra during the war. It got bad near the end. Staying alive was all there was. No food, landlocked, soldiers pinching all four corners, planes spitting death - low enough in the sky to hit with a rifle. If you had a rifle. Too many ways to die. Some screamed, some ran. Nohody won. I saw kids lying like litter all through the jungle, their faces already dead, waiting. I had a 9mm pistol with three bullets left in the clip, half a pack of cigarettes, a pocketful of diamonds, and almost a hundred grand in Swiss francs. I left a sack of Biafran pounds back in the jungle. About a million face value, if Biafra won the war. It wasn't going to; and carrying a sack of money from a defeated country while you're running for your life is what they mean by "dead weight." I didn't even bury it - I wasn't coming back. Another big score gone to dirt. The gunfire stopped, and the jungle got dead quiet. Waiting. A young woman ran past me on my right, wearing only a pair of tattered men's shorts way too big for her, every breath a moan. I heard a grunting sound and hit the ground, the pistol up in front of me. A wounded soldier? If he had a rifle, maybe I could trade up. It was a little boy, about three years old, a tiny head on a stick body, his belly swollen, naked. Alone. Past being scared. The woman never broke stride; she scooped the baby up on the run, shoving him up toward her slender neck, holding him with one hand. If she made it, the baby would have a new mother.

  That's what Michelle did with Terry.

  6

  I parked a couple of blocks away. Terry and I walked over to Lily's, not talking. The black guy at the front desk was reading a thick book through horn-rimmed glasses.

  "Hey, Terry!"

  "Hey. Sidney!" the kid greeted him. "Sidney's going to law school," he told me.

  Somehow I didn't think Sidney would end up making deals with guys like me in the back of limos. "Is this your father?" he asked Terry. "The one who teaches you all that electronic stuff?"

  That cracked the kid up. "Burke?" It was the Mole's thought, but the laugh was Michelle's. It's not just chromosomes that make blood.

  Sidney waved us past. We walked down a long corridor to the back offices. The right-hand wall was all glass. On the other side, groups of kids were running, jumping, screaming their lungs out. Everything from disciplined martial-arts classes in one corner to some crazy game with kids taking turns trying to dive over a mound of pillows. Business as usual.

  Immaculata burst out of one of the back offices, her long glossy hair flying behind her, a clipboard in one hand.

  "Lily!" she yelled out.

  "We're all back here," echoed a voice.

  Immaculata saw us and spun in a graceful arc, her long nails flowing together as she pyramided her hands at the waist. She bowed gently to us.

  "Burke. Terry."

  "Mac." I bowed back.

  Terry tried to bow too, but he was too excited to get it right. "Is Max here?"

  "Max is working, honey."

  "But is he coming? Maybe later?"

  Immaculata's smile ignited the highlights in her eyes. "Who knows?"

  "Max is the strongest man in the world!" the kid said, not inviting a dispute.

  Immaculata bowed again. "Is strength so important? Do you remember what you have been taught?"

  "Yes. Strength of character. Strength of spirit."

  "Very good," the beautiful woman proclaimed, bending at the waist to give Terry a kiss. "And so . . . is Michelle strong?"

  "She's so brave."

  "And the Mole?"

  "Michelle says he's the smartest man on the earth. That's what she says."

  "And Burke?"

  The kid looked doubtful, waiting. "Burke is not strong like Max?" The kid shook his head.

  "Or brave like Michelle? Smart like the Mole?"

  "No . . ." Terry said, reaching for it.

  "So how does he survive?"

  The kid knew all about survival. "He has strength too, right?"

  "Right!" said Immaculata, giving him another kiss.

  The kid was in heaven. Maybe he'd never see the inside of a prep school unless he went along on a burglary, but how many kids get to work a major-league scam, hang out with a lunatic, and get kissed by a lovely lady all on the same day?

  "Come on," said Immaculata, reaching out her hand. I followed them down the hall to Lily's office.

  7

  Lily was seated at the screen of her so-called computer, playing some electronic game with the keyboard, a baby on her lap, balanced between her elbows. She was wearmg a painter's smock over pink jeans; her hair was tied back. Her scrubbed face looked like a teenager's, animated with attention as she bounced the baby on her lap in time with a man running through a maze on the screen Michelle sat on the desk, her flashy legs crossed, smoking a cigarette in a red lacquer holder. Her outfit was all black-and-white triangles. Even her nail polish was black. On a straight lady, it would have looked

  Whorish. On Michelle, it was fashion.

  "Mom!" Terry yelled, charging over to her.

  "Michelle pulled him close, hugging him, looking over his shoulder. "You spend a few minutes with Burke and you leave your manners in the street?"

  Terry gave her a kiss, smiling, knowing she wasn't mad at him. "I greeted Immaculata," he said.

  ''And . . ."

  The kid turned to Lily. "Hello, Lily."

  "Hi, Terry!"

  "Hello, baby," he said to the infant on her lap. "Baby has a name," Immaculata reminded him gently. "Hello, Flower," the kid said, taking her tiny hand and kissing it.

  Immaculata clapped. "See! He learns his good manners from Burke."

  Michelle laughed. "He'd be the first."

  "Can I hold Flower?" Terry asked Mac.

  "As I showed you," she warned him. Every female eye in the room was riveted on the kid, but he tucked the baby into the crook of his arm, sat down next to Michelle, and started cooing to Flower like he'd been doing it all his life. Like nobody ever did to him.

  I gave Miclielle the high sign. She tousled Terry's hair and slid off the desk. We left them in the office and walked down the hall, looking for an empty room.

  8

  We ducked into a cubicle a few doors down. I didn't have much time.

  The Mole and I just did some work. He said for you to hold his share."

  I handed her the cash. She snapped open her purse, divided the money into two piles, stowed it away.

  "A little closer to Denmark, baby - to the real me," she said, blowing a soft kiss at the cash. Michelle had been talking about the operation ever since I'd known her. She'd been through the full-body electrolysis, the hormone injections, even the silicone implants in her breasts. But she had balked at the psychological counseling American hospitals required before they'd do a full sex-change operation.

  'You'll take Terry back to the Mole?"

  I nodded, checking my watch. "You go get him," I told her.

  I dialed a number while I was waiting for her. The lawyer with the limo answered on the first ring.

  'It's done," I told him. He started to babble. I cut him off. "You know Vesey Street, where it runs past the World Trade Center? Take it all the way west, right to the river. I'll meet you there in
forty-five minutes." I hung up on him.

  Michelle came down the hall, holding Terry's hand, calling goodbye to Lily and Immaculata over her shoulder.

  9

  Terry sat between us on the front seat. I lit a cigarette. "Want one?" I asked him.

  "Michelle doesn't want me to smoke," the kid said, his angelic face giving nothing away. Michelle gave him a kiss. The Mole was teaching him science; I was teaching him art.

  "I got to meet a guy, Terry," I told him. "You'll have to ride the trunk, okay?"

  "Sure!"

  "And when I'm finished, I'll take you back to the Mole."

  "I can't go right back," he said.

  I looked over at Michelle. "Why not?" I asked him, watching her eyes.

  "Mole says he has work to do. Someplace else. He says for you not to bring me back until after six."

  "How about if I bring you back to Lily's? I'll roll by in a few hours."

  "Why can't I hang out with you?"

  Michelle patted him. "Burke has work to do, baby." The kid was hurt. "I do work too. I help Mole. Lots of times."

  "I know you do, baby," she said. I shot the kid a warning glance. If Michelle wanted to think the kid helped out by holding the Mole's soldering iron, that was fine with me.

  We rolled into the Wall Street canyon, following Michelle's directions. She had customers down there too. I pulled over to the curb.

  She gave Terry another kiss and flowed from the car. We watched her make her way into the building. Watched men turn to look at her, thinking they had never seen a woman with so much stile. I used to wonder what men would think if they knew the truth, but I don’t anymore. The man waiting for her knew the truth.