Blue Belle Read online

  "He's a moron. Male dogs, they smell a bitch in heat, you know what they want to do?"

  "Sure."

  "No, you don't. What they want to do is fight every other male dog around. In the wild, they run in packs. The way the pack stays alive, they only let the strongest bulls mate with the bitches. So the litters are strong too. The way they see who the strongest dog is they fight it out."

  She put her head against my shoulder. "Maybe they're right."

  "They're right for dogs. Not for people. I grew up like that. It took me a lot of years and a lot of scars before I snapped that a good woman won't make you fight over her."

  "I worked with girls like that. Fire–starters. Blood makes them come."

  She swayed against me, pulling me to a stop along the pier. "Is that why you have a girl dog? So she won't want to fight other dogs and all?"

  "Males are just no good. Any kind of male. A man'll fuck a chain–link fence."

  She patted my pockets, took out a cigarette. I cupped a wooden match against the wind for her. She sat on the bench. Pansy jumped up next to her. I sat on the other side.

  Belle looked at the. water. "The man who said a bitch would turn tail—that's what he wanted me to do. I never had much of my own. Things you buy…they're not really yours. But I own what I do. He found out too."

  "What happened?"

  "I cut him. Cut him good."

  We walked back to the Plymouth. "You want to wait at the office for me?"

  "Me and Pansy," she said.

  96

  BACK AT the office, Belle looked at the street maps rolled up in a corner. "Can I tack these on the wall?"

  "Sure. I was going to do it anyway. Why?"

  "I want to learn the city."

  "Okay. I'll be back in a couple of hours, maybe more."

  I moved to the door.

  "Honey?"

  "What?"

  "Come here for a minute. Sit with me."

  I sat on the couch. She put her head in my lap, looked up at me.

  "Can I ask you something?"

  "Sure."

  "What I told you, about my mother and my father and all? Is that the worst thing you ever heard?"

  I thought about kiddie porn. About selling little boys in Times Square. Rapists. Child molesters. Snuff films. The tape looped inside my head. I hit the stop button. "It's not close," I told her. "Everybody's pain is the worst thing in the world for them. Your mother really loved you. Died for you—you always have that."

  "You think I'm… sick."

  "No. I think you're hurt. And, one day, we'll fix that."

  "I love you."

  I bent to kiss her. "I've got to go," I said.

  She pressed her head down against me. "Tell me something worse. Tell me something worse than what he did."

  "It'd be worse for someone else, baby. Like I told you. Everybody has their own. Good and bad."

  She came to her knees next to me. "Tell me the worst thing. The worst thing you know."

  I looked in her face, talking quietly. I'd had enough of this crazy game. "People steal babies, Belle. Little tiny babies—they steal them from their parents. And they never bring them back."

  "What do they do with them?"

  "They sell most of them. Some of the pretty white kids, they sell them to nice rich folks who want a baby of their own. Black–market adoption."

  "What about the others?"

  "You know what a chop shop is?"

  "Where they steal cars, break them down for parts?"

  "Yeah. They have them for babies too. They sell the white babies. The other ones, they're not worth too much for adoption, so they cut them up for parts."

  "Burke!"

  "Rich baby needs a heart transplant, a new kidney, you think they care where the organs come from?"

  "I don't believe you!"

  "The world I live in, it's a lot deeper underground than any subway. It's a world where you can buy a baby's heart."

  I held her against me. "Don't ask questions so much, little girl. I only got ugly answers."

  She pulled back from me, dry–eyed. "You saw this? You saw this yourself?"

  "Yeah. Guy's kid was in the hospital. Dying. Needed a transplant. It was in the papers, on TV. Looking for a donor. Baby only had a few days to live. He got a call. They promised him a baby's heart. Fresh. All packed and ready for transport to the hospital. Twenty–five thousand, they wanted. He made some calls—a lot of calls. A cop I know sent him to me. I went down the tunnel."

  "What happened? Did they have the heart?"

  "Just like they promised."

  "You took it? The baby was saved?"

  "Yeah."

  She nodded. "Damn their souls to hell."

  "I don't do souls," I told her. "Just bodies."

  97

  THE HANDBALL court was in the shadows of Metropolitan Hospital, just off 96th Street near the East River. Once the tip of Spanish Harlem, it was now liberated territory—the yuppie land–grab machine wouldn't be satisfied until gentrification ate the South Bronx. I liked it better the old way, when the human beings lived in the tenements and investment bankers lived in the suburbs. Now we got plenty of rehab apartments for tomorrow's leaders. And more people living in the streets than they have in Calcutta.

  I parked under the East Side Drive overpass and walked over to the court. Ten minutes to one. I watched people playing: handball, paddleball, basketball. No stickball. People working too. Working the cars. Selling flowers, newspapers, clean windshields. Ninety–sixth Street was the DMZ when I was coming up. North was theirs, South was ours. Now it all belongs to someone else—they just let us play there while they're at work downtown.

  "These chumps can't play no basketball." A voice behind me. Pablo. The lack of a single Puerto Rican in the NBA makes him crazy.

  He was wearing his white doctor's coat over a black turtleneck, his round face looking the same way it did when he walked out of Harvard fifteen years ago.

  "Gracias, compadre," I said, thanking him for coming.

  He shook hands the way he always does, using both of his.

  "Something bad?" he asked me, standing close.

  "I have to meet a man. Tonight. He hurt one of my brothers. He said it was a message. I don't know what's on his mind. I want to walk away—tell him I got no beef with him. But he might not go for it."

  "You have Max."

  "Can't use him for this, Pablo. It may be Max he wants. He's a karateka. Been going around the city, challenging sensei in their own dojos. Max, I think his name may be in the street over this. You know Lupe? The guy who sets up the cockfights?"

  Pablo spat on the ground. "I know him. Mamao. A punk. Tough talk—no cojones."

  "He set up a match. Between this guy I have to meet and a Jap. Duel to the death."

  "I heard about that. In Times Square?"

  "Yeah. That's what I mean. Seems like everybody's heard about it. Max fights this guy, he's got no win. Probably have cops in the audience."

  Pablo looked at me. "Max wouldn't walk away from a challenge."

  "So he doesn't get to hear one."

  "I see. You want your back covered when you meet this guy…"

  "Mortay."

  "Muerte?"

  "Yeah. I don't know how he spells it, but it means the same thing."

  "He's not a problem for us?"

  "Not for you. Not now. I'm working on something, and I just bumped him accidentally. How he's tied in—if he's tied in—I don't know for sure."

  "You chasing a missing kid?"

  "Dead kids. The Ghost Van."

  Pablo's round face went hard. His eyes were dark, flat buttons behind his round glasses. "Baby–killers. That van comes into our barrio, we'll make it a ghost."

  "It just works off the river, near Times Square. I got a lot of threads, but no cloth."

  "This Mortay… he knows?"

  "I don't know. I'm not gonna ask him. He lets me walk, I'm gonna promise him I won't come his way
again. He wants me off the van, I'm off the van."

  "That's what you'll tell him."

  "Yeah," I said, lighting a smoke.

  "What time is your meet?"

  "Midnight tonight. The playground behind the Chelsea Projects."

  "How many people do you need?"

  "Just one," I told him. "El Cañonero."

  Pablo's lips moved. Just a tic. Nothing else showed in his face. "He only does our work."

  "I don't want him to take anybody out. Just be around, break a couple of caps if he has to. He can do it from a distance. I figure maybe the roof…"

  "He only does our work. He is not for hire. My people are soldiers, not gangsters."

  "They do what you say."

  "They follow me because they follow the truth. My personal friendship is with you, hermano. I can commit only myself."

  I put my hand on his shoulder. "I understand what you say. I respect what you say. But there are two reasons why he should do this."

  "Yes?"

  "He does only your work. More than once, I have also done your work, this is true?"

  "True."

  "El Cañonero does this work tonight for UGL, it is UGL I owe. Comprende?"

  He nodded. Rubbed the back of his neck like it was stiff. A young Hispanic woman in a blue jogging outfit stopped her slow circuit of the courts and trotted over. He took her aside, speaking in rapid–fire Spanish. She took off, running hard now, heading for the street.

  We watched the basketball game. It wasn't in the same league as the semipro action at the court on Sixth Avenue in the Village, but it was intense. I asked him about his kids. Pablo's got a lot of kids—the oldest one's in college, his baby girl's still in diapers. He's never been married. Takes care of all his children. He never seems to make anybody mad with all his tomcat stuff, not even the women who have his babies. Most of them know each other.

  I met Pablo in prison. He wasn't doing time—he was doing his residency in psychiatry. His supervisor was a wet–brain who did five–minute interviews with the cons before they saw the Parole Board. And handed out heavyweight tranquilizers any time they shoved the Rx pad under his nose. I was the wet–brain's clerk—a scam artist's dream job. Five crates of cigarettes and you got the prescription of your choice, twenty crates bought you a "fully rehabilitated" write–up for the Board. It only took Pablo a month to read my act, but he never said a word. I was on to him faster than that. He wasn't studying mental illness among convicts—he was recruiting.

  The woman in the jogging suit ran back to us, pulled Pablo aside. Pablo turned to me. "You parked close by?"

  "Under the overpass," I said, pointing.

  "Sit on the hood. Smoke one of your cigarettes. See you in ten minutes."

  He walked off with the woman.

  98

  THREE SMOKES later, a black Lincoln sedan pulled up. Dark windows, M.D. plates. The front door popped open and I stepped inside. The woman was driving. I glanced in the back seat. Pablo. And El Cañonero.

  "Vete," Pablo said. The Lincoln moved off.

  Pablo's voice came from the back seat. "Turn around, compadre. My hermano needs to memorize your face."

  I turned full–face to the back. El Cañonero was a short, stocky Hispanic, not as dark as Pablo. He had straight, coal–black hair. Pablo once told me Puerto Ricans were a mixture of all the world's races. Looking at the two men in the back seat, I could see the African in Pablo, the Incan in El Cañonero. The shooter's face was featureless except for heavy cheekbones. But I'd seen his eyes before. On a tall, lanky man from West Virginia. Sniper's eyes—measuring distances.

  The Lincoln worked its way downtown. We pulled to a stop across from the playground.

  Kids were running everywhere. Little kids screaming, chasing each other, bigger kids in a stickball game. Teenagers against the fence, smoking dope, listening to a giant portable stereo. Pablo jerked his thumb. We got out, leaned against the car.

  The gate to the park would be closed at midnight. Wire mesh—it wouldn't keep anybody out.

  El Cañonero's eyes swept the scene. He said something in Spanish to Pablo, who just nodded.

  I saw the man against the wire mesh. A medium–sized white man with a baseball cap on his head. Watching the kids play. He was wearing a yellow sweater, the sleeves pushed up almost to his elbows.

  I focused in on him, lighting a smoke. He had a heavy rubber band around one wrist. He pulled at it again and again with his other hand, snapping it against the inside of his wrist. I nudged Pablo, pointing at the man with a tilt of my head.

  "Aversive therapy," I sneered.

  His face went hard. "They should've tied the rubber band around his throat."

  El Cañonero grunted a question. Pablo explained it to him. I couldn't follow the words, but I knew what he was saying. They have programs where they try "conditioning" on child molesters. The idea is to show them a lot of pictures of kids—then blast them with an electric jolt when the freaks get aroused. Nobody believes it works. When they discharge one of the freaks, they tell him to wear a rubber band around his wrist. When he feels himself getting excited over a kid, he's supposed to snap the band—reactivate his conditioning.

  The shooter's eyes bored in on the man in the yellow sweater. "Maricón!" he snarled. Pablo launched into another speech. A child molester isn't a homosexual; most gays hate them too. El Cañonero listened, flat–faced. I heard my name. The shooter nodded. Then he held out his hand. I shook it. Pablo must have told him what I did.

  Pablo leaned over to me. "We're going around the back, take a look. You stay here with Elena."

  "I want to talk to the freak. Just take a minute."

  "Si:" He gestured for the woman to move close. "Elena, that man over there, he is a molester of children. He is the wolf, stalking the baby chickens. My compadre wants to approach him, get a good look at his face, so el gusano will know he is known to us. Perhaps threaten him with violence, okay?"

  She nodded. Pablo and El Cañonero moved off.

  "Do you speak any English?" I asked the woman.

  "I teach English," she said, nothing on her face.

  "I didn't mean to offend you."

  "You could not offend me. Just say what you want me to do."

  I told her. I held out my hand. She took it, moving smoothly against me as we crossed the street.

  Elena left me and moved off behind the freak. He stayed glued to the fence. I wrapped my hand around the roll of quarters in my pocket, moving my shoulder against the freak, slipping my left hand behind his back.

  "Kids are cute, huh?"

  He jumped like he'd been stabbed. "What?"

  I snatched a handful of his sweater, locking his belt from behind, shoving my face into his, my voice cell–block hard. "When did they let you out, freak?"

  "Hey! I didn't…"

  I pushed him against the fence, my face jammed into his. "Don't come back to this playground, scumbag. We've been watching you. We know you. We know what you do. You do it again, you're dog meat. Got it?"

  The freak twisted his head away from me. I looked where he was looking. At Elena. Standing three feet from us in her blue jogging suit, hands buried in the pockets of the sweatshirt. She took out her left hand, pulled up the waistband. A little black pistol was in her other hand. The freak whipped his head back to me. I pulled him away from the fence, bringing my right hand around in a short hook to his gut. He made a gagging sound, dropped to the ground. I went down on one knee next to him. His face was against the pavement, vomiting.

  "We know your face, freak," I said quietly. "Next time we see you, you're done."

  I stomped my heel hard into the side of his face; it made a squishy sound. Nobody gave us a look. When we climbed back inside the Lincoln, Pablo and El Cañonero were already in the back seat. Elena took the wheel and we moved off.

  The rifleman tapped my shoulder. I turned around. He nodded his head once, a sharp, precise movement.

  The Lincoln dropped me off at
my car. Pablo got out with me. He handed me a strip of cloth, Day–Glo orange.

  "Tie this around your head when you walk into the playground tonight. Bring a couple of bottles of beer. Pull your car into the playground, put the bottles on the hood. You raise your hand, one of the beer bottles blows up. This Mortay, he'll know you're covered."

  "Thanks, Pablito. I owe you."

  "El Cañonero said to tell you he'll be on the roof by eleven."

  "Okay."

  "He said to ask you something….If it gets bad…if this guy won't be warned off… if he comes for you…you want El Cañonero to drop him or just fade?"

  "Drop him."

  "Bueno."

  99

  I HEADED back downtown, stopped at Mama's. She took a long time to come to my booth. When she did, Immaculata was with her. They slid across from me. Mac didn't waste any time.

  "Burke, is there trouble for Max?"

  "I don't know. I'll know soon," I told her, stabbing Mama with my eyes. She stared right back. I shouldn't have mentioned the baby.

  "You'll tell me as soon as you know?"

  "Will you give me a fucking chance to head it off first?"

  She reached across the table, took, my hand. "I will. And I'll keep Max close for a few more days. Don't blame Mama. She told him you were working on something and he keeps pushing her. He thinks it's you who's in trouble. She needed my help."

  "No hard feelings," I told her, remembering Michelle's words. "Where's Max now?"

  "He's home with Flower." She got up to leave. Kissed me. "Be careful," is all she said.

  Mama gave me about thirty pounds of Chinese food to take with me. I bowed to her as I left. Her eyes asked if I understood.

  "It's okay," I said.

  100

  "ANYBODY COME calling?" I asked Belle, stepping past Pansy.

  "Been real quiet," she said, taking the cartons of food from me. Pansy followed her into the back room, ignoring me. The bitch.

  Belle cleared off the desk so we could eat. "What's all that?" I asked her, pointing to yellow legal pads covered with scrawls.