'I appreciate your concern, Mr…?'
'Burke,' I told her.
'Oh, yes. I've heard about you.'
'Was it a good reference?'
'Good enough-Toby Ringer said you pull your own weight. And that you helped him on some cases.'
'Maybe I could help you.'
'I don't think so, Mr. Burke. Toby also said you work the other side of the street too often.'
'Not when it comes to freaks,' I told her.
'I know,' Wolfe said, giving me just the hint of what I knew could be a beautiful smile-for someone else.
'It was me who found that dirtbag you just dropped inside, right? You think the Warrant Squad would've turned him up?'
'No,' she admitted, 'but this case is finished.'
We were slowly walking toward her car-a dull, faded blue Audi sedan. The parking lot was bathed in sunlight, but the watchers were there. A pro wouldn't try to strong-arm anyone in the D.A.'s parking lot, but a junkie would.
'That's my car,' Wolfe said, reaching in her pocketbook for the keys. I stepped ahead of her like I was going to hold the door-and a massive dark form shot up from the back seat. Its huge head was a black slab laced with gleaming shark's teeth. A Rottweiler-a good lapdog if you were King Kong. They look as if some mad scientist took a Doberman, injected it with anabolic steroids, and bashed its face in with a sledgehammer. I froze where I was-this was one lady who didn't need an escort.
Wolfe opened the door and the Rottweiler lunged forward. 'Bruiser! Down!' she snapped, and the beast reluctantly moved back to let her in. She turned to me over her shoulder. 'Mr. Burke, if you ever get a case that I'd be interested in, give me a call, okay?'
It was a dismissal. I bowed to her and the Rottweiler, touched the brim of my hat, and moved back where I belonged. The huge beast pinned me with his killer's eyes out the back window as the Audi moved off.
19
I MADE my way back through the dirty marble corridors of the Criminal Court, thinking my thoughts. Wolfe reminded me of Flood-so did the Rottweiler.
It was late March, but the sun was already blasting the front steps of the court. Maybe a real summer this year, not like the whore's promise we'd been getting for the past weeks-the sun would shine but the cold would be right there too. Only city people really hate the cold. In the city, it gets inside your bones and it freezes your guts. In the country, people sit around their fireplaces and look at the white stuff outside-saying how pretty it is, how clean it looks. The snow is never clean in the city. Here, people die when the Hawk comes down-if the cold doesn't get them, the fires they start to keep warm will.
I reached in my pocket for a smoke, looking out over the parking lot across the street where I'd stashed my Plymouth. A black guy with a shaved head, resplendent in a neon-orange muscle shirt with matching sweatband, caught my eye. 'Got a cigarette, pal?' he asked.
At least he didn't call me 'brother.' When I got out of prison in the late 1960s, that bullshit was all over the street. Being an ex-con was never too valuable a credential, but back then at least it was a guaranteed introduction to girls. And the Village was full of them-promiscuously sucking up every shred of revolutionary rhetoric like marijuana-powered vacuum cleaners.
I made a good living then. All you needed was some genuine Third World people for props and you could raise funds faster than Reverend Ike-telling hippie jerkoffs that you were financing some revolutionary act, like a bank robbery. It was open season in the Village. Better than the Lower East Side. The hippies who lived over there believed they were making a contribution with their plotting and planning and their halfass bombs and letters to the editor. They were too busy organizing the oppressed to see the value of cash transactions, but they never knew where to buy explosives, so I did business with them too. Good thing they never tried to take out the Bank of America with the baking soda I sold them.
That's how I got started finding missing kids. It may have been Peace amp; Love in the streets, but the back alleys were full of wolves. The worst of the animals didn't just eat to survive-they did it for fun. So I'd run some of the kids down and drag them home. For the money. Once in a while one of the wolves would try and hold on to his prey. So I made some money and I made some enemies. I used up the money a long time ago.
When the revolution died-when BMWs replaced jeeps and the hippies turned perfectly good lofts a human could rent for a little money into co-ops with six-figure down payments-I stopped being relevant. I was ready for it. Some of the Third World wasn't, and they took my place in the jailhouses. Those that didn't go quietly got the key to Forest Lawn instead.
When things got nasty in New York, I rolled the dice on Biafra. I figured I'd do the same thing over there I was doing in New York, only on a grand scale-save a bunch of kids and make myself a fortune in the process. I didn't do either one, but I beat the odds anyway-I walked away from it. It's what I do best.
That was then. The black muscleman asking me if I had a cigarette was now.
'You taking a survey?' I asked him.
Our eyes locked. He shrugged, shifted his position, and went back to scanning the street. He probably didn't even smoke-just keeping in practice. His act needed work.
20
THE PLYMOUTH was in the parking lot across the street. Even on a warm day, that lot's always cold. The three courthouses surrounding it make a perfect wind tunnel. The car's fresh coat of primer made it look like it had been painted with rust-the Mole always changes the color after the car is used on a job and we hadn't decided on what to use next. It looks like a piece of junk, but it's anything but, with its independent rear suspension, fifty-gallon tank, fuel injection, heavy-duty cooling and shocks, bullet-proof glass, rhino-style bumpers-all that stuff. It wasn't fast, but you couldn't break it no matter what you did. It was going to be the Ultimate Taxicab, but it didn't work out that way.
The woman was standing in front of the Plymouth, tapping her foot impatiently like her date was late. All I could make out was that she was female. She was wearing a tan summer trenchcoat over dark slacks, her head covered with a black scarf and her face hidden behind sunglasses with big lenses. Nobody I knew, but I put my hand in my pocket anyway-some people subcontract their revenge.
Her eyes were on me all the way up to the Plymouth, so I walked past it like it meant nothing to me. But when I heard 'Mr. Burke?' I knew there wasn't much point.
I don't like problems out in public-especially when half the public is cops.
'What?' I snapped out at her.
'I want to talk to you,' she said. Her voice was shaky but determined. Trouble.
'You got me confused with someone else, lady.'
'No, I don't. I have to talk with you,' she said.
'Give me a name or get lost,' I told her. If she knew my face from the courthouse
