Strega

'I'll pay you your piece, okay? Let your manager go look for his commission someplace else. Fifty-fifty, right?'

She flashed me a quick smile and swivel-hipped her way back to the other girls. No car-trick whore splits fifty-fifty with a pimp, but letting her think I believed that myth was worth the discount-for both of us. It's a sweet life out on the stroll in this city-every street-whore has a guaranteed time-share in the jailhouse. And the emergency ward is her only pension plan.

I pulled the Plymouth through a wide U-turn into the mouth of the construction site, reached in my pocket for a smoke, and got ready to do some waiting.

22

THE REDHEAD wasn't good at waiting like I was- I could tell her life hadn't been like that. Too fucking bad. I let my eyes roam around the flatlands, watching the whores work, checking for any backup the redhead might have brought along. It's easy to tail a car in the city, but anyone following us would have to be some distance away or I'd have spotted them by now.

She shifted her hips on the bench seat, recrossed her legs. The silk-on-silk sound was smooth and dry to my ears. Like a gun being cocked. 'I've never been here before,' she said. 'What do you call this neighborhood?'

'After you talk to my friend, I'll talk to you, okay?'

'All I asked…'

'Don't ask me anything. Don't talk to me. When I know it's just me you're talking to, I'll answer, you understand? I'm not going to tell you again.'

I was watching her face when I spoke to her. If she was wired and the backups were out of eyesight, she'd want our location to go out over the air-and I wasn't having any. Her face told me nothing-nothing except that she wasn't used to being talked to like that and she didn't like it. Well, I didn't like any of this, but if Julio was turning into a public-address system, I had to find out why. Everybody has rules they live by. Mine were: I wasn't going to die. I wasn't going to go back to prison. And I wasn't going to work a citizen's job for a living. In that order.

I spotted my bird-dog whore before I saw Michelle. She walked quickly over to the Plymouth, holding the wiggle to a minimum. She wanted to collect from me before a new customer took her for a ride.

'She'll be here in a minute, honey. You got my quarter like you said?'

'Right here,' I told her, holding a twenty and a five in my left hand where she could see it.

The whore said nothing. I believed her that Michelle was coming-I'd had too good a look at her face for her to pull a Murphy game on me. That is, if she had any sense. But if she had any sense, she wouldn't be out here tricking.

Then I saw Michelle. The tall, willowy brunette was wearing pencil-leg red pants that stopped halfway up her calves-spike heels with ankle straps-a white parachute-silk blouse, the huge sleeves billowing as she moved. A long string of black beads around her neck and a man's black felt fedora on the back of her head. Like all her outfits, it would have looked ridiculous on anyone but her. That was the point, she told me once.

I released my hold on the bills and the whore flashed me a quick smile and moved back to her post. The redhead wasn't missing any of this, but she kept her mouth shut. I got out of the Plymouth and moved over to Michelle, my back blocking the redhead's view. I didn't have to watch her-Michelle would do that-she always knew what to do.

She put her left hand on my shoulder, reached up to kiss me on the cheek while her right hand snaked inside my jacket to the back of my belt. If there was a gun in there, she'd know the person inside the car was bad news. If I stepped to the side, the passenger would be looking at my pistol in Michelle's hand.

Michelle patted my back, whispered in my ear, 'What's on, baby?'

'I'm not sure,' I told her. 'The redhead in the car braced me outside the courthouse. She's related to that old alligator-Julio. She wants something-I don't know what yet. The old bastard gave her some information about how to find me. She made it clear she was going to stay on my case until I talked to her.'

'So talk to her, honey. You didn't drag me away from my lucrative profession to be your translator.'

'I want to see if she's wired, Michelle.'

Michelle's impossibly long lashes made shadows against her model's cheekbones; her fresh dark lipstick framed her mouth into a tiny circle.

'Oh,' is all she said. Michelle's life must have been hell when she was supposed to have been a man.

'I'll pull over around the corner behind the trucks, okay? You get in the back with her-make sure she's clean. I'll check her purse.

'That's all?'

'For now.'

'Baby, you know I started the treatmentsbut they didn't do the chop yet. Just the shots. And the psychiatrist-once a week. It's not cheap.'

'You definitely going through with it?'

'If I was gay, I could come out, you know? But like I am, I have to break out. You know.'

I knew. None of us had ever asked about Michelle, but she gradually told us. And the Mole had explained what a transsexual was…a woman trapped in a man's body. Even before she started getting the hormone injections and the breast implants, she looked like a woman-walked like a woman, talked like a woman. The big thing was, she had the heart of a woman. When you go to prison, the only people you could count on to visit you were your mother or your sister. I didn't have those people-it was Michelle who rode the bus for twelve hours one way and then walked through the ugly stares and evil whispering to visit me upstate when I was down the last time. She still worked the same car tricks-all she needed was her mouth. I knew what was in her purse- a little bottle of cognac she used for a mouthwash after each time. And the tiny canister of CN gas the Mole made for her.

'I don't have a price for this job, Michelle. It may not be a job at all, okay? But if she's got anything in her purse, we'll see about a donation.'

'Close enough,' she said, 'but if she's got no cash, you take me to the Omega to hear Tom Baxter before he leaves town. Deal?'

'Deal,' I told her, and she climbed into the back seat behind the redhead.

I found the dark spot in the shadow of the trucks and pulled in.

'Get in the back seat,' I told the redhead.

'Why?' she snapped.

'Here's why,' I told her. 'I don't know you-I don't know what you want. My secretary back there is going to search you. If you're wearing a wire, out you go. It's that simple. She's here because I can't search you myself.'

'I still don't see why…'

'Look, lady, you asked me to talk to you, okay? This is the way we do it. You don't like it, you take whatever business you have and you shake it on down the road.'

The redhead softly scratched her long nails across one knee, thinking. I didn't have time for her to think.

'Besides,' I told her, 'haven't you had enough experience with men telling you to