Strega

take your clothes off?'

Her eyes flashed at me, hard with anger, but she didn't say a word. I looked straight ahead, heard the door open, slam, open and slam again. She was in the back seat with Michelle.

'Toss your purse over the seat,' I told her.

'What?'

'You heard me. My secretary's going to check your body; I'm going to check your purse…for the same thing.'

The lizard-skin purse came sailing over the back seat and bounced off the windshield. I picked it up, unsnapped the gold clasp. Sounds from the back seat: zippers, the rustle of fabric. The purse had a pack of Marlboros, a gold Dunhill lighter, a little silver pillbox with six five-milligram Valiums inside, a tightly folded black silk handkerchief, a soft leather purse with a bunch of credit cards and a checkbook-joint account with her husband-and three hundred or so in cash. In a flap on the side I found thirty hundred-dollar bills- they looked fresh and new, but the serial numbers weren't in sequence. No tape recorder. Not even a pencil.

'She's clean,' said Michelle from the back seat. I heard the door open and slam again, and the redhead was next to me.

'So…?' I asked Michelle.

'All quality stuff. Bendel's, Bergdorf's, like that. The pearls are real. Very nice shoes. But that underwear is just tacky, honey. Nobody wears a garter belt outside a motel room didn't your mother tell you that? And that perfume…honey, you need some heavy lessons in subtle.'

The redhead snapped her head around to the back seat.

'From you?' she asked, trying for sarcasm.

'Who better?' Michelle wanted to know, genuinely surprised at such a stupid question.

'How much do I owe you?' the redhead asked Michelle in the same voice she would have used on the man who tuned her BMW.

'For what?'

'Well, you are a prostitute, aren't you? I know how valuable your time is.'

'I see. Okay, Ms. Bitch-the hand job was on the house, but you can give me a hundred for the fashion advice.'

The redhead reached in her purse. She never touched the new bills. She put together a hundred from the other supply and tossed it into the back seat. Michelle was dismissed.

She floated around to the redhead's open window, winked at me to say goodbye. Then she spoke in a soft voice to the redhead. 'Honey, I may be a whore, but I'm not a cunt. Think about it.' And she was gone.

23

'WHAT NEXT?' the redhead wanted to know, in a voice meant to tell me she was just about out of patience.

'Now we drive someplace else, and you tell me your story,' I said, throwing the Plymouth into gear. We drove over to the West Side Highway in silence. I turned south, looking for a safe parking place near one of the abandoned piers on the Hudson River. I wheeled the car off the highway, pulled up to the pier, and backed in. From that spot, I could see every piece of traffic except the boats. If the redhead had friends with her, I'd know soon enough.

I hit a switch on the dash and both front windows opened. Another switch locked her door, just in case.

I lit a cigarette, leaned way back in my seat so I could watch her and watch the street too. 'Okay, lady, what is it you want?'

The redhead shifted her hips so she was facing me on the seat, her back to the window. 'I want you to find a picture for me.'

'A picture like a painting?'

'A photograph-a photograph of a kid.'

'Lady, will you just tell me the whole story? I don't have time to drag it out of you piece by piece, okay?'

'This isn't an easy thing to talk about.'

'Then don't talk about it,' I told her. 'I didn't ask you to show up. I'll drive you back to your car and you find somebody else, okay?'

'No! It's not okay. Can't you give me a fucking minute to get myself together? It took me a long time to find you.'

'Yeah. But you did find me, right? When you see Julio, tell him I'll remember this.'

'Don't blame Julio. All he gave me was that phone number…the one the Chinese lady answers.

'I got your messages.'

'So why didn't you call me?'

'Because I don't know you. I don't speak to strangers on the phone.'

'That's why I had to find your car. Vinnie told me what you looked like-and your car. One of Julio's crew saw you at the courthouse this morning and he called me.'

'Vinnie?' I said, thinking that I'd have to get the car painted and some new license plates.

'The guy who delivered the money to you from Julio.'

'I don't know what you're talking about, lady.'

'I told Julio why I needed to talk to you. He said it was none of his business-not family. He probably knew you'd never return my calls. So I told Vinnie to ask you for me.

'Nobody asked me anything.'

'I know. He told me you wouldn't talk to him.'

'I don't know what he told you. I don't care. I don't like people threatening me.'

'Vinnie threatened you?'

'I don't know any Vinnie. You threatened me. In the parking lot, right? Either I talk to you or you keep hounding me.'

'I didn't mean to threaten you.'

'You're threatening me with this whole conversation. Julio's got his people on the street looking for me? Very fucking nice.'

'Julio doesn't know anything about this. Vinnie did me a personal favor-and so did the guy who spotted you this morning.'

'People like to do you these favors?'

She moved her lips in something between a smile and a sneer. 'Men like to do me favors. You find that very surprising?'

'If this Vinnie is your idea of a man, no.'

'You don't like any of us, do you?'

'Who's this 'us' you're talking about? An old man with a loose mouth? A punk kid? A woman who threatens me?'

'Us Italians.'

'I don't like people who don't mean me any good, okay?'