Safe House Read online

  I gave her a good thirty-minute start, just in case she was hanging around outside, planning on the same thing I was. When I finally walked through the exit, the sky was clear and the air was sharp. But the ground was wet, like there’d been a light rainfall during the past couple of hours.

  Clarence’s Rover was missing. So was the Prof. I cranked the Plymouth over and pulled out of the pitch-black parking lot, heading for Mama’s. On the drive over, I used the vibrating pager to call Max back in.

  The Chinatown alleys are never really deserted, but they get quiet in the late-late hours. I docked the Plymouth under the white rectangle with Max’s chop painted inside and slapped my hand against the slab-faced steel door at the back of the restaurant; one of Mama’s so-called waiters let me in. After he scanned my face close. And put the pistol back inside his white coat.

  It was almost three in the morning, but Mama was at the register in the front like she was expecting customers any minute. A tureen of hot-and-sour soup was at my elbow even before she made her way to my booth in the back. I surprised her by standing up and reaching for the tureen to serve her a bowl, but she waved me back down, an impatient look on her face. Then she ladled out a small bowl for me, the way she’d done it for years. To Mama, progress is a crack in the wall of civilization.

  I sipped the soup, making the required sounds of deep appreciation. Mama nodded acceptance, played with her soup while I finished the first small bowl, and then filled it up again. Once, I’d asked her why I had to have at least three bowls at every sitting. “Bowl small,” is all she said, and I haven’t questioned her since.

  “Max around?” I finally asked her.

  “Basement,” she said. “You find girl?”

  So Max had brought her up to date. No surprise. Even the Chinaboy gangsters, with their merciless eyes and ready guns, who dot the viper-twisted back streets around the restaurant like clots in the community’s bloodstream, step aside when Max walks . . . but he obeys Mama like a dutiful son.

  Nobody knows why. Nobody ever asks.

  “I think so, Mama,” I said. “I can’t be sure.”

  “Girl Chinese?”

  “No. But she’d look Chinese if you didn’t know, maybe.”

  Mama grunted, letting it pass. Years ago, she would have called a woman like Crystal Beth a bar girl, her shorthand for half-breed. But Immaculata had cured that. Immaculata was Max’s woman, part Vietnamese, part American soldier–whatever. And when their baby, Flower, was born, Mama proclaimed the newborn both her grandchild and pure hundred-generation Mandarin Chinese in the same breath.

  Nobody argued with her.

  I was halfway through a dish of braised beef tips on a bed of fluffy brown rice with scallions and shiitake mushrooms when Max came upstairs. He sat quietly with Mama until I was finished, then I hand-signaled what had happened with the woman between sips of ice water as the silent warrior watched.

  His turn: He took me through Porkpie’s night—mimed putting quarters in pay-phone slots, cupped one hand over the side of his mouth to show whispered conversations. Grubbing, hustling—no scores. Porkpie had never gone anywhere near Rollo’s. Finally, Max put his hands together against one cheek, tilted his head and closed his eyes. Porkpie was back inside his crib, presumably asleep, dreaming of nickel-and-dime hustles.

  “Mama,” I asked her, “you know anything about palm reading?” I put a finger to my own palm, tracing the lines so Max would understand what I was saying.

  “Gypsy? That just—”

  “No. For real. You ever hear of—?”

  “Sure. Chinese invent first. Very good.”

  Naturally. Far as Mama was concerned, Galileo was Chinese. Noah too. Only he took some of the wrong animals on that ark.

  “You really think some people can foretell the future?”

  “Not future. Past. Which palm look at?”

  “Uh, my right hand.”

  “Yes! Work hand, right? Hand show what you do. What you do, what you are, see?”

  “No.”

  “Some men farmers, some make shoes, right? Work with hands, leave marks. Like tracks.”

  “It only works on men?” I asked her, smiling to show her I was joking.

  Big mistake. “Women do all work. Work in factory, come home, clean house, take care of baby, plant garden. Man do only one thing. Woman hand tell nothing.”

  “Where do you look, then, Mama?”

  “Look in eyes,” she said, looking deep into mine.

  “The eyes tell lies,” the Prof said, right behind my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him come in. “What you do, that’s what’s true,” he finished, echoing Mama’s wisdom of a few minutes ago.

  I moved over to make room for him and Clarence. “How’d you make out?” I asked him.

  “We lost her, bro. Bitch vanished like cash in a whorehouse.”

  I raised an eyebrow, not saying anything. There had to be more—losing the Prof in city streets would be harder than confusing a London cabdriver.

  “She comes out the joint,” Clarence explained. “Pulls this parka-thing over her head so she is all in black. Then she walks around the back, right past where we are waiting. We do not see her after that, but there is no other way out of the parking lot, so we are patient. All of a sudden, mahn, we hear this roar, and she comes flying past us. On a motorcycle, mahn. A black one. Small. Japanese, I think, but she was moving too quick. By the time I get the Rover into gear, she is gone. I hear the bike, and I follow the sound. Catch a glimpse of her going around a corner. No taillight, couldn’t see a license. And that was it. We box it around, trying to pick her up at an intersection, but it is no good. That woman is a fine rider, mahn. Hard to make time on those slick streets.”

  Nothing to do now but wait for a call.

  It came the next day. The cell phone I was using that week chirped on the table I use as a desk, startling Pansy into some semblance of activity. The massive Neapolitan raised her huge head and glared in the direction of the noise. She’s gotten more conservative as she ages—anything new is viewed with baleful suspicion. Anything old she’s already intimidated.

  “What?” I said into the mouthpiece. The Mole had some sort of portable encryption chip he planted in all the cell phones we used, switching it every time we recloned to new numbers. Anyone listening who didn’t have the right chip would only pick up gibberish, but old habits hadn’t died, and I always used the damn things as if everything was being recorded.

  “Girl call. I tell her you outside, be back in half an hour, okay?”

  “Good. I’m rolling.”

  “Hey!”

  “What?” Mama had my same habits, wouldn’t use my name on a cell phone. Fact is, I was surprised she wanted to stay on the line for anything at all.

  “Girl not Chinese.”

  “Uh . . . right.”

  I walked down the back stairs to the garage I’d built into a narrow slot on the first floor of the old factory building I lived in. The landlord had converted it to lofts years ago, but the trust-fund twits who lived there never knew about the extra unit on the top floor. They think it’s crawl space. And even if they got curious about anything more than the bulk price of Hawaiian hemp, the triple-braced steel door would be more than enough to discourage them.

  And past that, there was Pansy.

  The landlord’s not my pal. We have a business relationship. I don’t pay rent. And I don’t talk either, so his firstborn is safe in the Witness Protection Program. The kid was a rat’s rat, informing for the fun of it. When I ran across the new identity the federales had rewarded him with, I’d found the key to my apartment. It’s still good after all these years. The Mole has me wired into the electricity downstairs, so I don’t show up on any Con Ed meter. I cook on a hot plate, and I heat the place with a couple of pipes tapped into an old cast-iron radiator. It’s not real well insulated, and the windows don’t seal so good, but I have a pair of electric space heaters that take the chill off when it gets too icy-ugly outs
ide.

  It’s only two rooms, but a pre-Shah Persian rug that covers one wall makes it seem like there’s another room behind it. That was for when I used the place as an office. I haven’t done that for years. The Mole rigged me a stand-up shower and a sink with a mirror over it. Stainless steel, just like the State gave me on my last bit. I have an extension phone on the ones they use in the loft below me, but I only use it for emergencies. Fact is, I haven’t used it at all since we found a way to code-grab cellular numbers off the airwaves. We change the cloned number every week or so, but one thing stays the same—when I make a call, someone else gets the bill.

  I fired up the Plymouth, used the periscope to check the empty street and carefully inched my way out. By the time the pay phone at Mama’s rang for me, I’d been sitting in my booth for ten minutes.

  “Gardens,” Mama answered, using a heavy Mandarin accent. She’s got a lot of them. Mama cocked her head, signaling to me she was listening, then said, “Oh sure. Right here. Just come back. I get him, okay?” into the phone, and handed it to me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Burke? Is that you?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s Crystal Beth. From—”

  “I remember,” I said, neutral-voiced.

  “Can we meet someplace?”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t talk much on the phone,” she said, a teasing undertone to her husky voice.

  “Neither should you,” I told her.

  “Why? I’m not . . . Oh, never mind. Do you know a good place?”

  I thought it over fast. She didn’t want to show me her cards. I could understand that. I balanced the safety of meeting her at Mama’s with letting her see where I worked. But too many people around me had died over the years, and some of my secrets along with them. The local cops knew about Mama’s; so did the feds. A low-tier nothing like Porkpie wouldn’t know, but even he could find out if he put some money out on the street. “Yeah, I know a place,” I said. “How about if I buy you dinner? Tonight?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said. And gave her Mama’s address.

  “You sure you killed him?” I asked Herk. I didn’t bother to watch his eyes—the big dope couldn’t lie any better than he could steal.

  “I got under the ribs, Burke. The light went out. Soon as I stuck him. You could see it.”

  We were sitting in the front seat of my Plymouth, just inside the fence of a junkyard in South Ozone Park. I know the owner. We could sit there for hours without a problem. Except for the cold. I was trying to put it together. The way I figured it, it wasn’t ever meant to be a warning, it was a setup hit. Somebody knew how the mark was going to react when he was braced, especially by a guy Herk’s size. Somebody knew the mark would go for his gun.

  Herk hadn’t known that. Maybe the woman hadn’t either. Maybe Porkpie . . .

  “And then you ran for the car?” I asked.

  “Right. Porkpie had the engine running and we just—”

  “And there was nobody else around, Herk? You’re sure?”

  “Oh man, yes! I checked the alley on foot first, before the punk even came out. Burke, when am I gonna raise on outa here? All you can do is watch that little TV in my room all day. Like being in the hole. No guys to hang out with, no weight room, no nothing.”

  “You want some stuff to read?”

  “Yeah! Can you get me some comics?”

  “What kind? Like Batman and stuff?”

  “No, man. Batman’s a slug. That stuff ain’t no fun. Get me something like this,” he said, pulling a rolled-up comic book out of his coat.”

  “Hardboiled?” I asked, looking at a comic cover as intricate as an ancient tapestry.

  “Yeah! This guy rules! I love his stuff.”

  “Which guy?”

  “The artist, man. Look!”

  I saw the name in tiny letters. Geof Darrow. “This is him?”

  “Look at the pictures, Burke. He’s got the magic, bro.”

  I lit a smoke and thumbed through the book. Thinking Herk was right. I never saw drawings like that. They vibrated like liquid poetry—the deeper you looked, the more there was to see.

  “You’re right, brother,” I told him. “Okay, anything else?”

  “Yeah. Anything by Alan Grant, okay?”

  “Alan Grant, he’s an artist too?”

  “No, man,” Herk said scornfully. “Don’t you know nothing? He’s a writer. A great writer. Check out Lobo. And Anderson: Psi-Judge—that’s like a British one, but they got it at any decent store.”

  “I will,” I promised him. “Just stay put, all right? We’re working on it.”

  “I wish I was working,” the big man said.

  “There’ll be work soon enough,” I told him.

  “Not that work,” he said, dismissing my whole life. “Real work. A job, like.”

  “A citizen job?”

  “Yeah. That’s right,” the big man said, rolling his shoulders like he was expecting a fight. “A square job. With a paycheck.”

  “You wanna work on the docks? Kick back to the foreman every shape-up? Drive a cab and eat shit all day from the fares? What?”

  “I heard all that,” Herk said. “I been hearing it all my life, okay? What’re you asking me? Do I wanna kiss ass? There’s gotta be another way.”

  “I guess. But if you don’t know what you wanna do . . .”

  “I fucking do know,” he said quietly. “You remember Dante? From Inside?”

  “The old Italian guy? The one who—?”

  “Yeah, the guy who had that big garden? Remember? He had all them plants—tomatoes and cucumbers and radishes and carrots and everything? He showed me how to do some . . . stuff. I really liked that, Burke. It was . . . I dunno. . . . I can’t explain it.”

  “That’s what you want to be, a gardener?”

  “That’s right,” he said, chin out-thrust, an undertone of aggressiveness in his voice. “Dante said there’s lotsa jobs like that. Gardening. Landscaping. That’s real work. Not being no coolie or wetback, working for yourself. Inside, even, if you want. In greenhouses and stuff. There’s money in it too, he said. If you know how to do it good. If you really care about it.”

  “So why can’t you—?”

  “Sure,” he said, just this side of a snarl. “Where am I gonna find somebody to give me a chance? With my record and all? I know I ain’t no genius. But old Dante wasn’t no genius either. And he could make stuff grow like nobody else, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Another chance,” Herk said softly, all the aggression gone from his voice. “I guess that’s what I really want. Another chance.”

  “That was Number One on the Jailhouse Hit Parade,” I told him. “Everybody sung it.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said sorrowfully. “The punk was gone, Burke. Soon as I stuck him. I gotta do something soon. I’m telling you, this place’s worse than the fucking joint.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I said quietly, reminding him.

  Herk nodded, done arguing.

  “I need to look at an autopsy report,” I told the man on the phone.

  “You need a copy?” the man said, the Ibo accent thick in his voice. “They are very strict about this ever since—”

  “Not a copy. Just a look.”

  “I do not forget my debts. And a debt of my sister is a debt of mine, I know this. But this is a fine job I have now. And it is—”

  “Okay,” I told him, getting to what I wanted in the first place. “I’ll settle for this. You pull it and read it to me. Over the phone, all right? Nothing more.”

  “I can do that,” he promised. “Give me the name.”

  Four hours later, I rang him back. Soon as he heard my voice, he started talking, the influence of the British colonialists clear in his precise voice.

  “Single puncture wound, left ventricle. That’s all?” I asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s
the cause of death?”

  “Yes.”

  “No other intrusions?”

  “No. Nothing. All the other organs were normal. Lungs clear. Toxicology was negative too.”

  “Tell Comfort we’re square,” I said, and hung up.

  She was right on time, crossing the threshold at eight on the dot. She stopped by Mama’s register at the front. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Finally, she disengaged herself and walked back to my booth.

  This time her dark reddish hair was in two thick braids on either side of her head, tied at their tips with plain strips of rawhide. She was wearing a long red wool coat with a shawl hood. When I stood to help her off with it, I noticed it was all black on the inside. Reversible. No amateur, this one—the motorcycle hadn’t been some hippie’s idea of fun in the snow. Under the coat she had a thick goldenrod-yellow turtleneck sweater over tailored black wool slacks and short, crumple-top leather boots the same color as the sweater.

  “They don’t have a menu here,” I told her. “Just tell them what you want.” Actually, they do have menus. But they’re plastic-coated and fly-specked, as disgusting-looking as the so-called food they serve citizens dumb enough to wander in here. None of those ever come back.

  “Couldn’t you just order for us?”

  “Sure,” I said, looking around for a waiter. The place was empty. I figured one of Mama’s thugs had already slipped around to the front and put the CLOSED sign up on the door. Then he’d arrange the dragon tapestries in the streaked window so that the red one was showing, telling the rest of the crew all they needed to know. The blue dragon meant cops, the red one meant danger. White was all-clear, but this didn’t qualify. The risk was mine. Mama’s too, but she was a volunteer. No point in giving Crystal Beth a free look at the rest of us.

  Mama ambled over, snapping her fingers sharply as she moved. A waiter came out of the back with some ice water—the blue glasses were so clean they looked new.

  “Can you recommend something?” I asked Mama, straight-faced.

  “Recommend? You want food?”

  “Yes. Food.”

  “Okay. Food coming,” she said to me, barking something in waterfront Cantonese over her shoulder at the waiter.