False Allegations Read online

  Time passed. "You aren't any different," I said. "Even Pansy didn't notice anything."

  "That mutant mutt of yours wouldn't notice Godzilla so long as the lizard left her Alpo alone," Michelle mock–snarled. "She's not exactly Rin Tin Tin."

  I flicked my eyes open, shifted them to the left where Pansy reclined on the couch. Pansy's a Neapolitan mastiff. Long past the svelte hundred and thirty pounds she'd been when she was young, she tips the scales nearer to one sixty now. Sure, nobody'd confuse her with a genius—but Pansy would die for me as casually as she'd scarf down a quart of honey–vanilla ice cream, her personal favorite. And whatever she bites, God forgets.

  "Don't mind her," I told Pansy. "Michelle gets cranky when she hasn't been shopping for a few days…you know how she is."

  "I'll tell you what I won't be shopping for any more, baby," she said. "I'm done with all that."

  "It really…worked?"

  "Oh don't be so squeamish!" Michelle snapped. "Yes, it 'worked,' okay? Funny, all my young life, I thought it would be Denmark for me. And it turns out to be Colorado instead."

  Michelle was a transsexual—a woman trapped in a man's body, she always called it. She wasn't the freak in her family—her scumbag bio–father filled that slot. So she ran. Ran down. First to the streets, then lower, always dropping deeper, fire–walking until she plateaued on pain. Once she got there, she did whatever it took to stay. It was dangerous as a subway tunnel full of psychopaths down there. And Michelle was scared all the time. But she was too high–instinct to touch any of the temporary tranqs—she saw what happened to the kids who go numb to escape the pain. So she spent every night surviving and every day crying.

  I'd known her forever. She was my sister and I loved her, but I'd been hearing about the sex–change operation so long I'd stopped listening. Michelle would take it just so far…then some excuse would come up. She had to detox from the black market estrogen she'd been using. Or the doctors had to remove the cheesy implants from her chest first. Or the electrolysis destroyed the outer epidermis of her face so they couldn't risk surgery. Always something.

  But this last time, she got it done. I went down into the Zero chasing ghosts—Michelle went over the wall. When we both got back, I was me, and she was herself. For me, it was a return. For Michelle, it was the first time.

  The real difference was: Michelle liked what she was.

  "I'm walking it backwards," I told her, getting down to business. "But I can't see who's calling the shots."

  "I got it from Harry," Michelle said. "He's never burned us."

  "Harry the painter?"

  "No, Harry the CPA. You know, one of my old customers from…before."

  "Yeah. He profiles, right?"

  "Yes, he will front a bit, baby—lots of men do that, yes? So he wants to tell the girls he knows a guy who knows a guy who…like that. So what? Harry's a sweetheart, Burke. He goes out, buys a monster stereo, pays retail, okay? Then he gives it to a girl, she says 'thanks.' So Harry asks me—I mean, when it comes to l'amour, what poor fool would not ask the Queen of Hearts?—why does he get treated so mean? Well, honey, I told him the truth. You give a spoiled little bitch an expensive present, she'll just trail that mink on the floor, you understand? But you give her something nice, and you tell her you got it dirt cheap, baby…'cause you know guys, guys in the know, know what I mean?"

  "Yeah," I told her, telling the truth. She had the voice of the wiseguy wannabe down perfect. Michelle has a four–octave range—anything you want, from sandpaper to velvet. She has the purest heart of anyone I know, but she was born to steal. That proved she was my sister better than any DNA test could.

  "Oh, believe it, sugar," she told me. "You give a girl a diamond, she'll be nice, but she'll have to fake it. You give her the same rock, tell her it was part of a jewelry heist, she gets her panties wet before she can get her dress off. Harry, he met this 'Bondi' in a strip bar. There's Harry, flashing his pinky ring, playing Moe Green, you know? So she tells him, she needs something done. And Harry tells her, sure, he can handle that. Let him talk to a few of the boys…

  "Now, as we both know, I'm the only 'boys' he knows," Michelle smirked. "But that's okay—we played his tips before. And we did okay, didn't we?"

  "Sure, but—"

  "So you went to see her," Michelle interrupted, "and it came up zircons. But you can't be the target, honey. I mean, no way this Bondi bitch knows about you. Especially about you and me—how many people know that?"

  "She lied, Michelle. There's a game in this somewhere, and—"

  "I know," she put in. "The way I see it, maybe she does hate this guy—the guy in the building across from her. I mean, I'd hate him if he was doing that to me. Or maybe she's gonna Pearl Harbor you both. Who knows? It's a pass, period."

  "Right."

  "You're not even curious?" she asked, dropping her voice a notch.

  "About what?"

  "Who's got you on their list?"

  "That list is too fucking long," I told her, closing my eyes again.

  I wasn't lying to Michelle. Chasing down clues is fine for books, but that doesn't work in real life. Down here, they solve the mysteries with autopsies.

  I don't have a problem with curiosity. I learned everything about why people did things when I was just a little kid—they do things because they want to do them, because they like doing them. Some of those things hurt, a deep hurt you keep with you way after the scars fade. And the more I got hurt, the less curious I got.

  I kept that hurt down, deep as I could bury it. But like the toxic waste it was, it bubbled to the surface once in a while.

  People died then.

  I could think of a dozen reasons why Bondi could have wanted me to go into that man's apartment, and every one gave me another reason not to do it. I could sell the job to a pro heister, but I never worked as a finger. There's too many ways to get cheated on your piece of the pie, too many ways your name comes up if the thief goes down.

  "Don't take the call if you can't take the fall," the Prof always says. Prof stands for Professor and it stands for Prophet—you had to listen close each time to tell which role he was playing. That was a long time ago, standing on the prison yard, me listening, using the time instead of trying to kill it. Like the Prof said.

  Could be I wasn't the target at all—accidents happen. Homicide happens too. Last time a woman thought I was the right man for the job, I almost got myself dead. Belinda. Belinda the cop. So patient, so careful, she almost got it done. Got herself done instead. That happens too—you grab the wrong end of the knife, you get cut.

  I'm real careful about things like that. I walk the cautious convict's string–straight walk, trying to be a blot in the darkness. I learned it in the juvenile joints, always keep my back against something solid. It wasn't until I got to prison that I learned people could be solid too. Then I spent a lot of years learning which ones.

  I always take my half out of the middle. Looking up from ground zero, the tops of the city buildings lean so close together they almost seem to touch—a nice canopy to lurk under if you stay down. But if you stick your head up, the canopy can turn into a crossfire real quick.

  For the next few days, I worked at keeping my head down—minding my own business even if someone else was too. Frankie was going in a ten–rounder down at Atlantic City, but I couldn't make myself interested. We still had a piece of his action, but we didn't expect to see any coin for years, even if Ristone's plans worked out and he could finesse the kid into a title fight. Besides, it was another setup, Frankie fighting some tomato can off the canvasback circuit, padding his record, waiting his turn. Before we sold his contract, the Prof had been bringing Frankie along the right way: each fight a little harder than the last one, learning as he moved up, getting ring–wise. The Prof knew Frankie couldn't keep winning just by being tougher than the next guy—the prisons are full of tough guys.

  But now Frankie was off that track, running parallel to a bunch of othe
r young guys, all with their eyes on the same prize. They wouldn't get together until much further down the line. Frankie would make it happen then…if Ristone didn't decide there was more cash to be made from tossing him in the tank.

  We knew what the deal was when we took it, and nobody was bitching. But Frankie wasn't proud of it anymore. The money was coming, but the jolt was gone. We promised him we'd be ringside when he got his shot—until then, we only saw him when he dropped by Mama's. Even though we didn't hold his contract anymore, he was still with us. He'd earned his way in the same way we all did. In the same places too.

  So I was working at letting it go, but nobody was around to do it with. I headed over to Mama's. The white dragon tapestry was in the window—all clear. I docked my old Plymouth in the alley behind the restaurant, just underneath the pristine square of white paint that held Max's chop in black calligraphy—newly painted, the lines not as precise as usual. Flower's hand. Max's baby, a little girl now, growing up. But it said the same: Stay Away. And even the empty–eyed Chinatown gunslingers didn't cross that border.

  The flat–faced steel door opened before I could rap. I didn't recognize the thickset young Chinese who let me in, but he knew me. One of Mama's new boys. I could see from the way he held the meat cleaver in his left hand that he was a real expert. And no cook.

  I walked through the kitchen and took my booth in the back. Mama started toward me from her post by the cash register at the front at the same time a guy in a waiter's jacket moved out of the kitchen carrying a tureen of hot–and–sour soup. They arrived together. Mama ladled me a small bowl, prepared one for herself and sat down across from me.

  "So?"

  "I'm just hanging out, Mama. Nothing going on."

  "Not working?"

  Not stealing, she meant. "No," I told her. "I thought maybe Max'd be around and I'd give him a chance to get some of his money back."

  "Max working," she said, a faint trace of disapproval in her soft voice. "No time to play cards."

  Max is a courier. Gems, microchips, a tightly rolled rice–paper message…anything you don't want to put in the mail. Small packages only—Max had to have his hands free. And his feet. If he took your money, your stuff was as good as delivered. His life was the bond, and he posted it every time he carried a package. Everybody down here knows his word is sacred, even though he can't speak.

  And that's not why they call him Max the Silent.

  "He'll be back soon?" I asked.

  I got an eloquent shrug in response. That and another helping of soup.

  "Any calls?" I asked her.

  "No calls. Very quiet. You not going to work?"

  "Not for a while," I shook my head. I was kind of between professions. When I was younger, I was a cowboy, never thinking beyond cash registers and guns. I shot a man when I was just a kid. Because he scared me. I never lost that last part, but I got smarter as I got older. Probably because I didn't get dead first.

  And because I met the Prof in prison and got schooled. I'll never forget the first time I saw him, watching from a distance as he faced a black man half his age and twice his size. I don't remember what the dispute was about, but I know the big guy was holding a shank and calling the Prof's name. The Prof stood his ground, capturing the other man's eyes, cutting right to it:

  "Kill me? Kill me? You can't kill me, boy—I've been dead forever. Get wise to the lies—I'm a ghoul, fool. A spellbound hell–hound. I was here before you. I am a Black Man. I was here first. First on this earth. You can put me in the ground, but I'll always be around.

  "You so dumb you be a slave to the grave, boy. The Man turn the key, you still won't be free.

  "Here's a true clue, boy. Some news you can use. Me, I'm the Man. I'm the only one can shorten your sentence. How much you doing, boy? How much time you got? Oh, got it all, huh? Got took by the book. Doing life. Want me to shorten that? Come on with it, then!"

  And as the Prof held the crowd at bay with the hellfire of his preaching, I saw a pair of the homicidal children he was constantly fathering behind the Walls move in from the wings, eyes on the big man, hands concealed under loose jackets. By the time the big man figured it out, he was where he said he was going to send the Prof.

  Nobody saw anything.

  When the investigation was done, they blamed it on the serial killer who haunts every max joint in America: Person or Persons Unknown.

  I never took my eyes off the perimeter again. When I hit the bricks after that stretch, I shifted into hijacking. Stole a load of heroin from the mob and tried to sell it back to them. Got dimed instead, and ended up in a subway tunnel holding the cops at bay with a pulled–pin grenade in my hand, waiting for Max and the Prof and the Mole to make it out the other end.

  Back to prison. I knew how to jail by then. I had a name. I had people on the outside. And I never called another man's name. Not out loud.

  Prison wasn't so bad that time. Bad enough that I wasn't going back, though. I put away the guns then. No burglaries either. Dope's too risky. I came from the same place as the hookers did, so I didn't want to be a pimp. Never minded doing some work on one, though, and I had a little business built up doing that until I shot one of them and he lived. I wasn't trying to wound him, and I guess he knew it, so he ran straight to the Law. A mobbed–up guy got me a pass on that one, and I paid him back by looking into something for him.

  Turned out I was good at it: nosing around, working the edges of the angles, finding things out, keeping my mouth shut.

  Then I discovered the freaks. Not "discovered," I guess—they were the ones who raised me. Them and the fucking State. I hate them both. All of us do. Children of the Secret, that's who we are. If we ever voted as a bloc, we'd elect the whole stinking Congress.

  And if you ever put our hate together, this earth would shudder and spasm until it shattered like a spun–glass teardrop under a sledgehammer.

  Baby–rapers. "Pedophiles" they call themselves now. Like it was a religion. They fuck their own children and call it love. Stalk other people's children too. Fondle them, sodomize them, torture them. For fun. Freaks love their fun. Sometimes they take pictures of it. They hang around the playgrounds and the daycare centers. Get jobs in schools and orphanages. Volunteer as coaches or counselors. They lurk on the Internet. Marry women with children. Trade their Polaroid trophies like they were baseball cards. Fly to Thailand and rent children. They kidnap babies and raise them to be them. They make snuff films to order. Send kiddie porn over modems—you download to your laser printer and there's the sample. They bribe politicians. Lobby for changes in the law. They leave broken bleeding souls everywhere they walk. And when they get caught, they say they're sick and demand treatment.

  I love that last part, treatment. They take some sex–snatcher and raise his self–esteem, teach him how to talk soft and walk careful. So when he gets out, he has the social skills to slide up real close to his victims before he strikes. Like putting a silencer on a rattlesnake's tail.

  But the freaks are always easy. Real easy. I sell them promises. And it's not just their money I collect.

  Oh, I do other stings too. I work as a mercenary recruiter, do S&M and B&D intros, traffic in credit cards, move counterfeit—only bearer bonds and certificates, never cash. And I sell guns.

  And if I get paid, I find things out. Sometimes, I find kids. Mostly, I find what's left of them.

  So I guess I'm an investigator. But I don't have a license. I don't have an address. I don't even have a name. I gave all that up, whatever it was. I live in a loft building, on a small piece of the top floor that doesn't appear on the building charts. The landlord knows I'm there. I know things about him too. I don't pay rent.

  I don't have a phone, just a line connected to the trust–fund hippies who don't know they have an upstairs neighbor. I can make calls—real early in the morning while they're still sleeping off last night's soft dope and stupid music—but nobody can call me there. Anyone who wants me, there's a number to ca
ll. It rings over in Brooklyn, gets bounced a couple of times until it ends up at the last pay phone in the bank of three on the back wall next to Mama's kitchen. She takes messages.

  Mama gets my mail too. Over at one of her joints in Jersey. A driver picks it up every couple of weeks, drops it at the warehouse where Max lives with his woman Immaculata and their little girl. He has his dojo upstairs, but he doesn't teach anymore.

  Unless you're stupid enough to try him in the street. And nobody ever comes back for a second lesson.

  I own a small junk yard in the Bronx, but I'm not on the papers. The guy who's listed as the owner, he pays me a salary, like I work there. Pays Juan Rodriguez, actually. That's me, the name I use. Juan pays taxes, all that stuff. Even has a Social Security number. IRS wants to know how I survive, I got a story for them.

  I live small. I have no real expenses. I can go a long time between scores. And I have. But I never put away enough to retire.

  Mama came from the same place as the Prof. Different parts of the world, maybe, but the same place. That's why she raised her eyebrows when I said I wasn't working. Arguing with her was like waiting for Congress to vote itself a pay cut, so I told her I was going to check out some stuff and took off.

  I found a pay phone in the street. The air had a sharp edge of cold coming on, but the sun was strong and I didn't mind standing out there for a while. I ran through the loops, looking for the Prof. Came up empty. What the hell, I decided to roll down to Boot's, see if he had any new Judy Henske tapes.

  "Boot" is short for bootlegger. That's what he does, mostly from live performances, but he also steals from archives, vacuums off the radio, whatever. I heard he found a way to slip a recorder into the Library of Congress—I don't know if that part's true.

  He runs a shop in the basement of a narrow building in the West Village, a couple of blocks off Houston. Boot deals only in cassette tapes: no 45s, no CDs, no 8–tracks. Whatever you want, he'll find it and put it on tape, but that's the whole deal. You can order a mix from him too, but he won't label it or break it down. Only way to crack the code is bring it back to him and play it on one of his machines. Then he'll tell you whatever you want to know. That's how I found a sweet, controlled harp version of "Trouble in Mind" by Big Walter Horton. And a different, much rougher take on Paul Butterfield's trademark "Born in Chicago." Not a studio edition, you could tell Mike Bloomfield wasn't there that night. Boot doesn't do Top 40, and he thinks rap should be against the law. But he's got the biggest collection of blues and doo–wop on the planet, so he pulls a wide crowd—anytime you visit his joint, you can find Army Surplus side–by–side with Armani.