Strega (4 page)

5

T
HE THIRD shift was just getting started when I wheeled the big Plymouth up Flatbush Avenue to the gas station. I pulled up to the high–test pump, told the jockey to fill it up, and watched the shifty–eyed slob pour an extra twenty–eight cents' worth of gas down the side of my car just so the total would come out even and he wouldn't have to count to make change. When he came around to the window, I just said "Julio?" and he nodded toward the back. Before he could ask for his cash, I flicked the lever into Drive and took off.

As soon as I pulled behind the station and saw the white Coupe de Ville I knew Julio had sent one of his stooges to make the payoff—the old man's idea of a class act. The white Caddy had the driver's window down—the guy inside picked up the Plymouth and was opening his door even before I came to a stop. Just what I expected: a full–race Cheech— about twenty–five years old, blow–dried hair over a blocky face sporting an Atlantic City tan and dark glasses, white silk shirt open to his chest so I could see the gold chains, dark tight pants, shiny black half–boots. His sleeves were rolled up enough to show me muscular forearms, a heavy gold bracelet on one wrist, a thin gold watch on the other. Central Casting.

The Cheech stepped out of his Caddy, flicking the door shut behind him, strolling over to me.

"You Burke?" he wanted to know.

"Sure," I told him. I wasn't there for the conversational opportunity.

"I got something for you—from Mr. C."

I held out my left hand, palm up, keeping my right where he couldn't see it.

"I got ten big ones here," he said, tapping his front pocket.

I didn't say anything—the jerk was unhappy about something, but it wasn't my problem.

He peered into the Plymouth, watching my face. And then he came out with it. "You don't look so tough to me, man. Whatever you did for the old man—I coulda done it."

"Give me the fucking money," I told him pleasantly. "I didn't drive out here to listen to your soap opera.

"Hey, fuck you, you don't want to listen! Money talks, right?"

"I don't know, kid. But the money you're holding for me better
walk
, you understand?"—opening and closing my hand a couple of times so he'd get the message.

The Cheech took off his dark glasses, hooked them over his dangling chains, acting like he was really thinking about not paying me—or acting like he was really thinking, I couldn't tell which. Then he decided. He handed over the envelope without another word, something still on his mind. I tossed it into the back seat, giving him something else to think about. I took my foot off the brake and the Plymouth started to roll forward.

"Hey!" he said. "Wait a minute."

"What?"

"Uh…look, man. You ever use anyone else on jobs…you know. I could always use some extra coin, right?"

"No," I told him, my face flat as a prison wall.

"Hey, just
listen
for a minute, okay? I got experience, you know what I'm saying?"

"Kid," I told him, "I got warrants out on me older than you," and started to roll forward again.

The Cheech's hand went in his pocket again, but this time he came out with a snub–nosed revolver—he stuck it through the open window, holding it steady, about six inches from my face.

"Don't fucking move! You got that? You fucking sit there and you listen when I talk, you understand? I ain't no fucking nigger you can just walk away from—I'm
talking
to you."

I looked at him, saying nothing. There was nothing to say—Julio sent me a messenger boy with some dangerous delusions. It's hard to get good help nowadays.

"You show me some respect, huh?" barked the Cheech. "You ain't no fucking better than me."

"Yeah, I am," I told him, nice and calm and gentle. "I think about what I'm going to do before I do it. Now
you
think about it. Think about me coming here alone. Think about how you're going to get out of this alley if you pull the trigger. Think about what you're going to tell the old man. Think about it…then think about what you have to say—and say it."

The Cheech tried to think and hold the gun on me at the same time. It was too much work and his brain overloaded. The snub–nose trembled in his hand for a second and he looked at it as if it had tricked him. When his eyes came back up to me, he was looking at the sawed–off shotgun I was holding in my right hand.

"I'm listening," I told him. But he had nothing to say. "You know how to load that thing?" I asked him. "Or did someone do it for you?"

"I know…" he mumbled.

"Then fucking
un
load it, kid. And do it slow—or I'm going to blow your pretty gold chains right through your chest."

He pointed the pistol up, popped the cylinder, held it upside down, and slowly dropped out the bullets. They made a soft plopping sound as they hit the ground. There was so much wet garbage in that alley you could have dropped a safe from a ten–story building without too much noise.

"Listen to me," I said, calm as an undertaker. "You made a mistake. You even
think
about making another one, go make out a will, understand?"

He just nodded. It was an improvement.

I tapped the gas and the Plymouth rolled out of the alley, heading home. By the time I crossed Flatbush Avenue, my hands had stopped shaking.

6

T
HE PLYMOUTH slowly made its way down Atlantic Avenue. It wasn't the fastest way back from Brooklyn, but it was the quietest. I eyeballed all the antique shoppes and trendo restaurants which had sprung to life in the last few months—the wino–rehab centers and storefront churches never had a prayer. The new strip runs from Flatbush all the way down past the Brooklyn House of Detention—pioneer–yuppie lofts with stained–glass windows sat over little stores where you could buy fifty different kinds of cheese. Some of the stores still sold wine, though not the kind you drank out of a paper bag. But news of the urban renaissance hadn't filtered down to the neighborhood skells yet—it still wasn't a good idea to linger at a red light after dark.

I turned up Adams Street, heading for the Brooklyn Bridge. The first streaks of filthy daylight were already in the sky. The Family Court was on my right, the Supreme Court on my left. It works good that way—when the social workers are done with the kids, the prisons can take them.

The newsboy was standing on the median strip just before the entrance to the bridge. He had a stack of papers under one arm, hustling for an honest buck. Motorists who knew the system beeped their horns, held their arms out the window, and the kid would rush over, slap a paper into your hand, pocket the change, and keep moving. Every once in a while a patrol car would decide the kid should work some other corner, but mostly the cops leave the kids alone.

I pulled into the Left Turn Only lane, ignoring the sign like everyone else. When I hit the horn, the kid came over. I pushed the switch to lower my window and took a close look: black kid, about fifteen, husky build, Navy watch cap over a bushy Afro. I waved away the
Daily News
he offered.

"Roscoe working today?" I asked.

"Yeah, man. He working. 'Cross the way, you know?"

I already had the Plymouth rolling, timing it so I'd get caught at the light. I watched the black kid fly back across the street to tell Roscoe he had a customer. The twenty–four–hour news station was saying something about another baby beaten to death; this one in the Bronx. So many cases like that now, all they do is give you the daily body count.

The light changed. The Plymouth rolled forward until I spotted Roscoe standing on the divider, a bunch of papers in one hand, a big canvas bag held by a thick strap around his neck. Roscoe's about thirty, too old to be selling papers.

He recognized the car—looked close to be sure he recognized the driver too.

"Paper, mister?"

"Yeah, give me
The Wall Street Journal
," I said, holding a twenty out toward him at the same time.

"Oh, yeah. I got one around here someplace," he mumbled, rummaging in his canvas bag.

While he was looking down at his bag, I did a quick scan of the streets, knowing he was doing the same. Nothing. I reached my left hand out for the paper Roscoe was holding over the open top of his bag, snapped the twenty toward him, and dropped the sawed–off into his bag at the same time. Gravity is one law nobody fucks with.

Roscoe comes honestly by his name, if not his income. I tossed yesterday's
News
on the front seat and drove off, heading for Chinatown. I don't like to carry heat across the border.

7

T
HE CHINATOWN streets were just getting organized: young men pushing hand trucks loaded with fresh vegetables, older women lumbering toward another day in the sweatshops. I spotted Hobart Chan cruising the Bowery in his sable Bentley, a shark looking for blood in the water. Even gangsters go to work early in Chinatown.

I rolled past Mama's checking the front window. The white dragon tapestry was in place—everything cool inside. I tooled through the narrow alley and left the Plymouth in its usual spot, right underneath some Chinese writing on the wall that warned the local hoods not to park there. It didn't bother me—it was Max's writing.

I went through the kitchen and into the back like I usually do. When I opened the door, one of Mama's alleged cooks smoothly slipped his hand inside his white coat—he pulled it back empty when he recognized me. I walked to the front, pulled the two–star edition of the
News
from underneath the register, and walked to my table in the back, next to the kitchen. No one approached my table pretending to be a waiter, so Mama was around someplace. I read through last night's race results from Yonkers and waited.

I caught a shadow across the newspaper and looked up. It was Mama—looking as though she just stepped out of a 1950s beauty parlor, hair black and glossy in a tight bun at the back of her head, plain high–collared blue silk dress that almost covered her shoes, a jade necklace setting off her dark–painted lips. She's somewhere between fifty and ninety years old.

"So, Burke. You come to eat?"

"To eat and to see Max, Mama. He around?"

"Burke, you know Max not come around so much anymore. Not since he take up with that bar girl. You know that bar girl—the one from Vietnam?"

"Yeah, I met her."

"That girl no good for Max, Burke. He not keeping his mind on business—not reliable like before, right?"

"He's okay, Mama. There's no problem."

"You wrong, Burke. Plenty problems. Problems for me, problems for Max, maybe problems for you, okay?"

"I'll talk to him," I told her, more to stop this broken record than anything else.

"Yes, you talk to him. I talk to him, he not listen, okay?"

"Okay. You got any hot–and–sour soup?"

But even the mention of her favorite potion didn't calm her down. Mama was a businesswoman in her heart. She wanted me to get on Max's case about the girl, but she hadn't been there when they first met. I had.

WE WERE working the box system that night on the subway: me lying across three empty seats on the uptown express, dressed in my Salvation Army suit and a smashed old fedora, Max right across from me wearing an old raincoat, staring straight ahead like he was on his way to some early–morning cook's job, the Mole at the other end of the car, Coke–bottle lenses fixed on pages and pages of his "calculations" on some greasy paper. I had the papers we had contracted to deliver sewn into the lining of my suit jacket. I don't carry heat on this kind of job. The Mole was packing enough high explosive to turn the F Train into a branch of the space shuttle. Max had only his hands and feet—he was more dangerous than the Mole.

I didn't need a disguise—it's no great feat for me to look like a used–up wino. And the Mole always looks like the lunatic he is—not the kind of human you'd want to make eye contact with on the subway. Max can adjust his posture and muscles in his face so he looks like an old man, and that's what he was doing.

The deal is this: If anybody hassles me, I take any amount of abuse that won't cripple me or make me lose the papers. If anyone moves on the Mole, Max steps in, leaving me carrying and clear. And if anyone moves on Max, me and the Mole just sit there and watch. It never takes long.

But that night we weren't alone in the subway car. First this Oriental woman gets on at 14th Street. She was wearing a black cape with a red silk lining over a white silk dress. It buttoned to the throat, but the straight skirt was slit to past mid–thigh. Heavy stage–type makeup, overdone eye shadow, spike heels. Maybe some Off Broadway lames were reviving
Suzie Wong
. She looked at me without expression, didn't even glance at Max or the Mole. She sat there primly, knees together, hands in her lap. Her eyes were unreadable.

And we rode together like that until we got deep into Brooklyn, where the wolfpack boarded the train. Two white kids and a Puerto Rican, dressed alike in the standard hunting outfit: leather sneakers, dungaree jackets with the sleeves cut off, gloves that left their fingertips exposed, studded wristbands, heavy belts with chains dangling. One carried a giant radio, the others were empty–handed. They checked the car quickly, eyeballing the girl.

But they were looking for money, not fun. A fast score from some working stiff. And Max was the target.

Ignoring me, they surrounded him. One sat down on each side; one of the white kids remained standing, facing Max. The spokesman.

"Hey, Pop—how about twenty bucks for a cup of coffee?"

Nobody laughed—it wasn't a joke.

Max didn't respond. For one thing, he doesn't speak. For another, he doesn't pay a lot of attention to bugs.

I glanced over at the Mole under the brim of my hat. The yellow–orange subway lighting bounced off his thick glasses as he buried his head deep into some papers. He never looked up. The skells weren't paying any attention to me, just concentrating on Max. One of the white kids snatched Max's old raincoat, jerking the lapels toward him to pull Max to his feet. But nothing happened—I could see the muscles ripple in the kid's arm as he strained, but it was like he trying to pull up an anchor. The other maggots crowded in, and the Puerto Rican kid snarled, "Give it up, old man!" The other white kid started to giggle. He pulled out a set of cheap brass knuckles, the kind they sell to kids in Times Square. He slowly fitted them over one hand, made a fist, smacked it into an open palm. The slapping sound brought the Mole's head up for a second. Max never moved.

The kid with the brass knuckles went on giggling to himself while the other white kid struggled to pull Max to his feet and the Puerto Rican kept up a steady stream of threats. None of them was in a hurry.

Then the girl got to her feet. I could hear the tapping of her spike heels as she closed the gap between herself and the maggots. They never looked her way until she hissed at them: "Hey! Leave the old man alone!"

Then they spun to her, delighted with new prey, abandoning Max. The Puerto Rican kid was the first to speak.

"Fuck off, bitch! This ain't your business!"

But the woman kept closing on them, hands on hips. Now the whole wolfpack had its back to Max, moving toward her. The white kid was still giggling, still slamming his brass knuckles into an open palm. The woman walked right into the center of the triangle they formed. As the white kid reached a hand toward the front of her dress, I lurched to my feet in a drunken stupor and stumbled into him. He whirled to face me, brass knuckles flashing. I threw up a weak arm to try and fend him off as the Oriental woman unsheathed her claws and the Mole reached into his satchel. But then Max the Silent shed his dirty raincoat like an old scaly skin and moved in. It was too fast for me to follow—a hollow crack and I knew the Puerto Rican kid would never reach for anything again without major medical assistance—the flash of a foot and the biggest white kid screamed like ground glass was being pulled through his lungs— a steel–hard fist against the skull of the punk with the brass knuckles and I saw the front of his face open like an overripe melon too long in the sun.

The subway car was dead quiet inside, rumbling on unperturbed toward the next express stop. The Mole took his hands out of his satchel and went back to whatever he was reading. The three maggots were on the ground, only one of them conscious enough to moan—it was the Puerto Rican kid, blood and foam bubbling out of his mouth.

The woman stood shock–still, her face drained of color, her hands frozen at her sides. Max the Silent looked into her face, and bowed deeply to her. She caught her breath, and bowed back. They stood looking at each other, seeing nothing else.

Max gestured for me to stand, pointed at his mouth and then at me. The Oriental woman's eyes flashed, but she seemed beyond surprise now.

She stood swaying slightly with the train's rhythm, balancing easily on the spike heels, dark–lacquered talons on silky hips. She watched the wino remove his hat and smooth out his tangled hair. If she was expecting another transformation, she was deeply disappointed. The distance between the real Max the Silent and a helpless old man was cosmic—the distance between the real me and a bum was considerably less. But I bowed to the woman too.

"My brother does not speak or hear. He can read lips, and those who know him can understand him perfectly. He wishes to speak with you, through me. With your permission…?"

The woman's eyebrows arched, and she nodded, saying nothingwaiting patiently. I liked her already.

Max gestured toward her, two fingers held against his thumb. He turned that same hand back toward his heart, tapped his chest lightly, bowed, reached his left hand back to the old, discarded raincoat, held it in one hand, touched his eyes, one at a time, with the other. He touched his heart again.

"My brother says you are a woman of great courage, to protect what you thought was an old man against such dangerous people."

The woman cleared her throat, smiled gently with the side of her mouth. She spoke as gravely as I had, with just the trace of a French accent in her speech.

"Your brother is quite deceptive."

Max absently swung his foot into the rib cage of one of the maggots lying on the floor, never taking his eyes off the woman. I heard a sound like a twig snapping. He touched his eyes again, shook his head "no." He expanded his chest; his eyes flattened and power flowed from his body. He turned to me.

"My brother says a maggot cannot see a true man," I told her.

Still with the same half–smile, she asked, "Can a maggot see a true woman?"

Max took a pair of dark glasses from my coat pocket—he knows where I keep them—and put them on his face. He made a gesture like tapping with a cane, took off the glasses, threw both hands toward the woman, and smiled.

"My brother says even a blind man could see a woman such as you, I translated, and she was smiling too, even before I finished.

That's how Max met Immaculata.