Afterburn

They walked to the far corner.

'Here.'

'Air's pretty bad down here.'

'It's for cars, not people.'

He wondered how well he would sleep. 'How do I get up and down? Take the elevator every time?'

'Nah, there's a stairway in the front, comes up right next to the booth. My name's Horace, in case you ask.'

Rick handed the man his spare key, then peeled off some bills. 'Hope you have fun with that, Horace. I had to go through some trouble to get it.'

The attendant pocketed the money. 'Nah, you? You kidding!' He threw back his head and burst into rotten- toothed laughter. 'Yeah, I expect you did go through some kind of trouble, I expect you did. You think I don't know who you is? I seen everybody, man, I seen them all! Everybody comes down here sooner or later, every kind of people, the good people and the bad people, the rich people and the poor, yeah.' His breath was coming in wheezes. 'Telling me about some kind of trouble? I know that, man, I know just who you is, my brother, you is trouble coming and trouble going!' His laughing became a raspy cough. 'Can't get no air down here!' he croaked. 'Can't breathe, my brother.' He hurried toward the elevator, his hack echoing through the cavernous space.

The next thing Rick needed was a quiet pay phone, not on the street. He walked west on Canal through Chinatown, then north toward the art galleries, enjoying the morning sun, glad to be free of the truck. The city had a lot of money in it now. The galleries and shops and restaurants were busy, full of Europeans and girls in tight dresses who thought they were doing something new. He noticed that people were getting out of his way on the sidewalk, including the black guys. He'd forgotten about that. At the corner, a cop on foot patrol watched Rick pass by and lifted his brow as they made eye contact. Take it somewhere else, pal, take it out of my beat. I've got to change my look, Rick thought, I'm not fitting in here. I look like a Hell's Angel or pro wrestler or somebody. He found a restaurant with a pay phone in the back, got a coffee cup full of quarters, and called information in Sarasota, Florida, for Christina's mother, a woman he'd met exactly twice, the last time the day that Christina was arrested.

'Mrs. Welles?'

'Who's that?'

'Rick Bocca, Mrs. Welles.'

'You looking for Tina?'

'Yes.'

'She's not here, Rick. She's in prison.'

So, he thought, the mother doesn't know. 'Well, I was wondering how she's been doing. She won't answer my letters, you see.'

'Last time we spoke was the winter. I've been traveling quite a bit. Just got back last night, and I'm leaving again soon.'

'How's Mr. Welles?'

'He's lying down-'

'Tired?'

'— and he's smiling.'

'Smiling?'

'He's lying down in the cemetery about eight miles from here, and he's smiling because he doesn't have me hollering at him.'

'I'm sorry,' Rick said. 'He was a pistol, I always thought.'

'Yes, he was, sugar, that's why I kept forgiving him.'

'He go out easy, Mrs. Welles?'

She inhaled. 'No, afraid he didn't. He missed Tina so much, you know, he used to have me come bring all her old high-school report cards and then he'd read them in his hospital bed. He missed her terribly, see. She got his mind, you know. My brain was no good, but Mr. Welles was quite something. I ever tell you why I married him?'

He was listening to a lonely middle-aged woman. The decent thing was to humor her. 'He was so good- looking?'

He heard her take a drag on a cigarette. 'No, it wasn't that. It was the Mustang.'

'I heard this once.'

'Mr. Welles bet a fellow that he could take apart a Mustang convertible and put it back together in two days. Not the seat cushions and not the inside of the radio, but all the engine pieces and the brakes and the body and the door and everything.'

'They got a lot of bedsheets, is the way Christina told me. And it had to be able to drive.'

'Yes, they taped a couple of old pink sheets down on the floor of the garage so they wouldn't lose any parts. He was allowed to have one friend put parts in little piles.'

'He won the bet.'

'He won more than that-he got me, too. I thought, Now, there's a man who can do things. We dragged that car around with us for the next thirty years.'

'I'm sorry he's not around.'

'I am, too, but I'm not letting it slow me down.'

'So you don't know how Christina is doing.'

'Haven't heard from her. Wish I did.'

'Okay, then.'

'I always liked you, sugar, just wished everything had turned out for Tina better. She got mixed up with the wrong people. That's all I ever knew about it.'

'She never told you what happened?'

'No. Just said she made a mistake. But I knew she got mixed up with the wrong people. That's always the story.'

He said goodbye. Christina's father had died while she was in prison and she'd never said goodbye to him. Carry that, you fucker, you have to carry that one, too, it belongs to you. He looked at his coffee cup of change, then pulled out Detective Peck's card. One ring, and he heard the man's voice.

'It's Rick Bocca.'

'Yeah?'

'I'm having trouble finding her. She was already gone from the prison.'

'They let her out downtown.'

'You didn't tell me.'

'I had bad information.'

You had bad intentions, Rick thought.

'You looking the right places?' said Peck.

'The old places, you know.'

The question was what the level of the game was.

'You try her mother?' asked the detective.

The question could be a coincidence. But they could be monitoring her phone, too. Grabbing the numbers called in and out. 'Yeah. Nothing.'

'Maybe she was lying.'

'Maybe.' Why would Peck think this? 'But I doubt it.'

'Why?'

'It didn't sound like that.' He waited a moment. Peck had to keep him involved. 'So she's out there and I have no idea-'

'Her mother's been getting some other calls,' interrupted the detective.

'Where from?'

'They came from the Jim-Jack Bar, down at Broadway and Bleecker.'

Same part of town where he was now. 'How do you know?'