Blue Belle Read online

  "And you've had him under surveillance every day for a while?"

  He nodded.

  "Drawing a blank?"

  He nodded again.

  "You call in the federales?"

  "That wouldn't be our chosen scenario for this situation. The firm itself has its own interests, as well as the obligation to protect our clients. Perhaps you don't understand some of the complexities of our profession…."

  I gave him the closest thing to a smile I ever give citizens. I'd never heard the laundry business called a profession before.

  "Why don't you just fire him?"

  "We can't do that. He's a very well connected young man. Besides, our clients will demand some actual proof of his guilt before taking any action. They were very insistent on that, for some reason."

  Sure. The "clients" wanted to make damn sure the problem was going to get solved for good. The only time humans like that are interested in the truth is when a mistake will cost them money.

  "What do you want from me?"

  "We want you to find out how this individual gets the information out. And we want proof. Something we can show our clients."

  "And the only time he could possibly pass this along is during business hours?"

  "Yes. Without question. After that…it wouldn't be of value to him or anyone else."

  I lit another cigarette, thinking it through. It sounded like they had the wrong guy. Maybe the "clients" were setting them up. Maybe this lawyer was the one doing the stealing. It wasn't my problem. Money was. Always is.

  "The only time I could watch him would be when he leaves the building, right?"

  "Yes. Inside the building, he's completely covered."

  "A grand a day. Until I find out how he does it or you call me off. Another ten if I get the proof for you."

  "Mr. Burke, with all due respect, that's triple the rate charged by the finest security firms. And you'll only be working a couple of hours each day."

  "In cash. In front. Nothing bigger than fifties. No consecutive serial numbers. No new bills," I told him. "You know how it's done."

  The lawyer looked at me, watching my face for the first time since I'd climbed into the limo. "What makes you worth so much?"

  "Ask Mr. C.," I suggested.

  He dropped his eyes. "We won't need you every day. Just those days when something comes in. We'll call as soon as…"

  "No."

  "I don't understand."

  "I need to work this guy every day, okay? I need to know him. I need to know when he's changed his pattern. You don't need to call me when the information comes in. I watch this guy long enough, I'll know."

  "That could take weeks…."

  I nodded agreement. "Maybe longer. Who knows? I probably won't get him the first time he moves anyway. Depends on when you get something for him to trade."

  "And you may not get him at all?"

  "And I may not get him at all."

  The lawyer pretended to think it over. Maybe he was better at pretending to be honest. "We need to get started on this. This is Friday; could you be on the job Monday?"

  "Sure."

  "All right, Mr. Burke. I am prepared to pay you one thousand dollars in cash right now. For Monday's work. In advance, as you requested. We will meet each evening—you'll give me your report and we will decide if you are to continue."

  I just shook my head. Why they sent this fool to do business with me was a mystery: he was a pin–striped shark, but he couldn't bite people who never went near the water.

  "You have another suggestion?"

  "Yeah, pal. Here's my suggestion. You hand me twenty thousand dollars, like we agreed. Okay? That buys you twenty days, unless I pull it off quicker. I pull it off before ten days, you get a refund. Nothing jumps off in twenty days, we meet and see what you want to do. Got it?"

  "That's outrageous," the lawyer said, his face a half–step 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 band around the fifty–dollar bills. He counted off twenty little stacks, 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—I 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. He 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 first. 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 handwriting 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 freelance 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. Nobody 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 already 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 proc
laimed, 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 wearing 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.