Strega

To Ira J. Hechler, the master–builder content to allow others to engrave their names on the cornerstones of his achievements, I acknowledge my gratitude and proclaim my respect.

I
T STARTED with a kid.

The redhead walked slowly up the bridle path, one foot deliberately in front of the other, looking straight ahead. She was dressed in a heavy sweatsuit and carrying some kind of gym bag in her hand. Her flaming hair was tied behind her with a wide yellow ribbon, just as it was supposed to be.

Forest Park runs all through Queens County, just a dozen miles outside the city. It's a long narrow piece of greenery, stretching from Forest Hills, where Geraldine Ferraro sells Pepsi, all the way to Richmond Hill, where some people sell coke. At six in the morning, the park was nearly deserted, but it would fill up soon enough. Yuppies working up an appetite for breakfast yogurt, jogging through the forest, dreaming of things you can buy from catalogues.

I was deep into the thick brush along the path, safely hidden behind a window screen. It had taken a couple of hours to weave the small branches through the mesh, but it was worth it—I was invisible. It was like being back in Biafra during the war, except that only branches were over my head—no planes.

The redhead stopped on the path, just across from me, about twenty feet away. Moving as if all her joints were stiff in the early–spring cold, she pulled the sweatshirt over her head, untied the pants, and let them fall to the ground. Now she was dressed in just a tight tank top and a skimpy pair of silky white shorts. "No panties, no bra," the freak had told her on the phone. "I want to see everything you got bounce around, you got it?" She was supposed to do three laps around the bridle path, and then it would be over.

I had never spoken to the woman. I got the story from an old man I did time with years ago. Julio called me at Mama Wong's restaurant and left a message to meet at a gas station he owns over in Brooklyn. "Tell him to bring the dog," he told Mama.

Julio loves my dog. Her name is Pansy and she's a Neapolitan mastiff—about 140 pounds of vicious muscle and dumb as a brick. If her entire brain was high–quality cocaine, it wouldn't retail for enough cash to buy a decent meal. But she knows how to do her work, which is more than you can say for a lot of fools who went to Harvard.

Back when I did my last long stretch, the prison yard was divided into little courts—every clique had one, the Italians, the blacks, the Latins. But it didn't just break down to race—bank robbers hung out together, con men had their own spot, the iron–freaks didn't mix with the basketball junkies…like that. If you stepped on a stranger's court, you did it the same way you'd come into his cell without an invite—with a shank in your hand. People who don't have much get ugly about giving up the little they have left.

Julio's court was the biggest one on the yard. He had tomato plants growing there, and even some decent chairs and a table someone made for him in the wood shop. He used to make book at the same stand every day—cons are all gamblers, otherwise they'd work for a living. Every morning he'd be out there on his court, sitting on a box near his tomato plants, surrounded by muscle. He was an old man even then, and he carried a lot of respect. One day I was talking to him about dogs, and he started in about Neapolitans.

"When I was a young boy, in my country, they had a fucking statue of that dog right in the middle of the village," he told me. "Neapolitan mastiffs, Burke—the same dogs what came over the Alps with Hannibal. I get out of this place, the first thing I do is get one of those dogs."

He was a better salesman than he was a buyer—Julio never got a Neapolitan, but I did. I bought Pansy when she was a puppy and now she's a full–grown monster. Every time Julio sees her, tears come into his eyes. I guess the idea of a cold–blooded killer who can never inform on the contractor makes him sentimental.

I drove my Plymouth into the gas station, got the eye from the attendant, and pulled into the garage. The old man came out of the darkness and Pansy growled—it sounded like a diesel truck downshifting. As soon as she recognized Julio's voice her ears went back just a fraction of an inch, but she was still ready to bite.

"Pansy! Mother of God, Burke–she's the size of a fucking house! What a beauty!"

Pansy purred under the praise, knowing there were better things coming. Sure enough, the old man reached in a coat pocket and came out with a slab of milk–white cheese and held it out to her.

"So, baby—you like what Uncle Julio has for you, huh?"

Before Julio could get close enough, I snapped "Speak!" at Pansy. She let the old man pat her massive head as the cheese quickly disappeared. Julio thought "Speak!" meant she should make noises—actually, it was the word I taught her that meant it was okay to take food. To Julio, it looked like a dog doing a trick. The key to survival in this world is to have people think you're doing tricks for them. Nobody was going to poison my dog.

Pansy growled again, this time in anticipation. "Pansy, jump!" I barked at her, and she lay down in the back seat without another sound.

I got out of the car and lit a cigarette—Julio wouldn't call me out to Brooklyn just to give Pansy some cheese.

"Burke, an old friend of mine comes to me last week. He says this freak is doing something to his daughter, making her crazy—scared all the time. And he don't know what to do. He tries to talk to her and she won't tell him what's wrong. And the daughter—she's married to a citizen, you know? Nice guy, treats her good and everything. He earns good, but he's not one of us. We can't bring him in on this."

I just watched the old man. He was so shook he was trembling. Julio had killed two shooters in a gunfight just before he went to prison and he was standup all the way. This had to be bad. I let him talk, saying nothing.

"So I talk to her—Gina. She won't tell me neither, but I just sit and we talk about things like when she was a little girl and I used to let her drink some of my espresso when she came into the club with her father—stuff like that. And then I notice that she won't let this kid of hers out of her sight. The little girl, she wants to go out in the yard and play and Gina says no. And it's a beautiful day out, you understand? They got a fence around the house, she can watch the kid from the kitchen—but she's not letting her out of her sight. So then I ask her, Is it something about the kid?

"And then she starts to cry, right in front of me and the kid too. She shows me this brown envelope that came in the mail for her. It's got all newspaper stories of kids that got killed by drunk drivers, kids that got snatched, missing kids…all that kind of shit."

"So what?" I ask her. What's this got to do with
your
kid? And she tells me that this stuff comes in the mail for weeks, okay? And then this
animale
calls her on the phone. He tells her that
he
did a couple of these kids himself, you understand what I'm saying?—he snatches the kids himself and all. And her kid is going to be next if she don't do what he wants.

"So she figures he wants money, right? She knows that could be taken care of. But he don't want money, Burke. He wants her to take off her clothes for him while she's on the phone, the freak. He tells her to take the clothes off and say what she's doing into the phone."

The old man's eyes were someplace else. His voice was a harsh prison whisper, but reedy and weak. There was nothing for me to say—I don't do social work.

"She tells me she goes along with it, but she don't really take nothing off, okay?—and the freak screams at her that he knows she's not really doing it and hangs up on her. And that's when she hit the fucking panic button—she believes this guy's really watching her. All the time watching her, and getting ready to move on her kid."

"Why come to me?" I asked him.

"You know these people, Burke. Even when we were in the joint, you were always watching the fucking skinners and the baby–rapers and all. Remember? Remember when I asked you why you talk to them—remember what you said?"

I remembered. I told the old man that I was going to get out of that joint someday and I'd be going back to the streets—if you walk around in the jungle, you have to know the animals.

"Yeah," I told the old man, "I remember."

"So what am I gonna fucking do, ask one of them psychiatrists? You know about freaks—you tell me what to do."

"I don't tell people what to do."

"Then tell me what's going on—tell me what's in his head."

"He isn't watching her, Julio," I told him. "He just figured she wasn't going along, that's all. He's a freak, like you said—you don't ever know why they do something."

"But you know
what
they're going to do."

"Yeah," I told him, "I know what they're going to do." And it was the truth.

We smoked together in silence for a bit. I knew Julio, and I knew there was more coming. Finally, he snubbed out his skinny, twisted black cigar on the Plymouth's faded flank and stuck it in his pocket. His old, cold eyes grabbed mine.

"He called her again"

"And…?" I asked him.

"He told her to come to the park, you know, that Forest Park, near her house in Kew Gardens? And he says she has to go jogging in the park Friday morning, okay? And not to wear no underwear, so's he can watch her bounce around. He says if she does that, they'll be even and he'll let her kid off the hook."

"No," I said.

"No fucking
what
?" shouted the old man. "No, she don't go to the park—no, he don't let the kid off the hook…what?"

"The kid's not on the hook, Julio; this freak is. He's a degenerate, okay? And they never stop what they do. Some of them step it up, you understand? They get into more freakish shit. But they don't stop. If she goes into that park, he'll call again. And the next time he'll want more."

"He's gonna rape her?"

"No, this kind doesn't do that. He's a watcher—but he wants to hurt women just the same. He wants to make them dance to his tune. And the ones that dance, he speeds up the music."

The old man slumped against the fender. All of a sudden he looked ancient. But an old alligator can still bite.

"She's good people, Burke. I never had a daughter, but if I did I wish it would be her. She's got a heart like steel. But this kid of hers, Mia, she turns her to water. She ain't scared for herself."

"I know," I told him.

"And she can't tell her husband. He'd wanna file a fucking
lawsuit
on the guy or something."

"Yeah," I agreed, sharing the old man's profound respect for citizens.

"So what do we do?" the old man asked me."Where did this 'we' come from, Julio?"

"You do bodywork, right? I heard around for years—you do this kind of work, like private–eye shit and all."

"So? This is different."

"What's so different? Just nose around and find out this guy's name for me—where he lives and all."

"Not a chance," I told him.

The old man looked into my eyes, slipping into a new game quicker than a striking snake.

"Burke, this is family."

"Yeah," I said, "
your
family."

"In the joint, we was like family," he told me, his voice quiet.

"You been reading too many books, old man. I was never in your fucking family."

"Hey, come on, Burke. Just 'cause you ain't Italian don't mean nothing to me," he said, with all the sincerity of a real–estate broker.

"I went to prison because I wasn't going to spend my life kissing ass," I said, "and kissing some old man's pinky ring don't race my motor either. A boss is a boss—I don't have much but at least I don't have a fucking boss, you hear me?"

The old man kept his face flat against this sacrilege, but his lizard eyes blinked. He said nothing, waiting for me to finish.

"I showed you respect then—and I show you respect now," I said, letting him save face. "But don't disrespect me with this bullshit about 'family,' okay?"

The old man thought he got it. "You want money?" he asked.

"For what—for doing what?"

"I want to make this freak stop hurting Gina."

"Will she do what you tell her?" I asked him.

The old man made a clenched fist, pounded his chest where his heart would be if he had one. It was all the answer I needed.

"I'll take a shot," I told him. "Tell her to go to the park on Friday, just like the freak told her to. I'll be around, okay?"

"Burke—you'll do it right?"

"There is no 'right' about this, Julio. I'll get it done or no charge, how's that?"

"How much?"

"Ten large," I told him.

The lizard eyes didn't blink. "You got it."

I climbed back into the Plymouth. It was only two days to Friday and I'd need some help for this one. The old man's small hand reached for my arm—I stared down at the hand the way you do in prison when someone touches you who shouldn't—it was boneless—nothing but parchment skin and blue veins.

The old man looked at me. "Burke," he pleaded, "take him off the count."

"I don't do that kind of work, Julio."

The old man's eyes shifted again. "You said thirty large, right?"

"I said ten, old man. I don't do that kind of work. Period."

Julio tried to look injured. "You think I'm wearing a wire?"

"No, old man, I don't think you're wired. But you know better than to ask me to drop someone. I'll do what I said I'll do. That's it. Say yes or say no."

"Yes," said the old man, and I backed out of the garage, heading back to the city.

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