I just nodded.
'Did Vinnie get stupid?' he wanted to know.
'Vinnie is stupid,' I told him.
Julio didn't say anything. Being stupid wouldn't disqualify Vinnie from employment.
'The girl threatened me,' I said. 'Like I do her work or else…'
'She don't know no better, okay? When she wants something, she's like a crazy person. I'll talk to her.'
'Do that. I'd appreciate it.'
'It's done,' he said. The old man put his hand in his pocket, came out with a roll of bills wrapped in a rubber band. He handed it to me. I pocketed the money, waiting.
'For your trouble,' he said.
'My past trouble or my future trouble?'
'For the past. I apologize. I never thought she'd go all the way on this.'
'You know what it is?'
The old man took a breath. The smoke came out his nose in two faint wisps. He took too long to think about the answer. 'Yeah,' he said. 'That picture.'
Now it was my turn to just nod. The jackpot question was still on the table.
'I just walk away? No problems?' I wanted to know.
'Burke, you want to walk, you walk. But if you did this thing…for the girl…if you did it, I would be grateful. You would have my gratitude, understand?'
I nodded again. A hundred feet away the two cars stood in silence. They looked like two giant dogs, nosing each other to see who was in control. It was a good question.
The old man walked over to the Caddy. He never looked back. His door closed; the Caddy backed away from the Plymouth and pulled out with a chirp of tires on the pavement. I was alone.
27
I SAT in the front seat for a minute, lighting a cigarette and looking around. The pier was empty. I didn't expect anything else. There was no need for Julio to have me followed-I don't advertise in the Yellow Pages, but people know where to find me if they want to bad enough.
The bridge was quiet too, that time of day. I drove slowly back to Manhattan, thinking my thoughts, trying to put it together. I was making the turn onto Allen Street when this old fool stepped right in front of the Plymouth. I hit the brakes just in time. Instead of apologizing, the old bastard gets red in the face and screams, 'Why didn't you blow your horn?' A real New Yorker. 'If I'd known you were fucking blind, I would've!' I shouted back. I live here too.
I pulled into the alley behind the old industrial building near the Hudson where I have my office. It's all been converted to 'living lofts' and the landlord is making a bundle. Except on me. I unlocked the garage and drove the Plymouth inside. The back stairs go all the way up to the top floor, where I have the office. Steel doors block the stairway at the top and bottom. There's a sign that says the doors have to be kept unlocked in case of fire, but it's always too dark to read it. The top floor has a door near the front stairs and another near the back. The one near the back is sealed from the inside-I haven't tried to use it in years. The other door has a fat cylinder set into the middle-when you turn the key, a bolt drives into both sides of the doorframe and into the floor too. I never use it unless both Pansy and I are out. I don't carry the key with me either-I leave it in the garage.
I took the door-handle key out and twisted it hard to the left before I turned it to the right to make it open. I heard a low rumbling from Pansy as I stepped inside. 'It's me, stupid,' I told her as I stepped over the threshold. If I hadn't twisted the key to the left first, a whole bar of lights aimed at the door would blast off, and whoever entered would get a few thousand watts in their face and Pansy at their groin. She wasn't supposed to move unless the lights went on or if I came into the office with my hands up, but I didn't want to get careless with her-like I seemed to be with everyone else lately.
Pansy goes through personality splits whenever I walk into the office alone. She's glad to see me, but she's disappointed that there's nobody to bite. She followed me through to the back of the office. There's a door back there that would open out to the fire escape if this building still had one. The metal stairs go up to the roof. Pansy knew the way-she'd been dumping her loads up there for years, and I guess she still had room to spare. I keep telling myself that one day I'm going to go up there and clean up the whole damn mess. One day I'm going to get a pardon from the governor too.
The office is small and dark, but it never makes me depressed. It's safe there. A lot of guys I know, when they get out of jail after a long time, the first thing they do is find themselves some kind of studio apartment-anything with one room, so it feels like what they're used to. I did that too when I first hit the bricks, but that was because even one room was a strain on my budget. I was on parole at first, so my income was limited.
The office looks like it has two rooms, with a secretary's office on the left as you walk in. But there's nothing there-it's just a tapestry on the wall, cut so it looks like there's a way through. That's okay-there's no secretary either. Michelle made me up a bunch of tapes so I can have her voice buzz someone in from downstairs if I have to. I can even have her voice come over the phony intercom on my desk in case some client has to be reassured that I run a professional operation. To the right, it looks like a flat wall, but there's a door to another little room with a stall shower, a toilet, and a cot. Just like jail, except for the shower. It was supposed to be for when I had a big case running and I'd have to spend a lot of time in the office. I stopped kidding myself about stuff like that when Flood left. I stopped kidding myself about a lot of things-it's dangerous to lie to yourself, especially when you're as good at it as I am. I live in the office. I have a good relationship with the hippies who live downstairs. I don't know what they do for a living, and they don't know I use their phone.
The whole floor is covered in Astroturf. It's easy to keep clean, and the price was right. I can lock the front door with a switch on the desk in case I want to keep someone from leaving too quick. And the steel grate on the window makes it real tough for anyone to just drop in unless they bring along a cutting torch. Michelle always says it reminds her of a prison cell, but she's never been in prison. It's not a prison when you have the keys.
I left the back door open so Pansy could let herself back in when she finished on the roof. She lumbered over to me, growling expectantly. She was just looking for a handout, but it sounded like a death threat. Neapolitans were never meant to be pets. I checked the tiny refrigerator: I still had a thick slab of top round and a few slices of Swiss cheese. There's only a hot plate-I can't cook anything except soup. I cut a few strips from the steak, wrapped each one in a slice of cheese, and snapped my fingers for Pansy to come. She sat next to me like a stone lion-her cold gray eyes never blinked, but the drool flowed in rivers through her pendulous jowls. She wouldn't take the food until she heard the magic word from me-I didn't want some freak throwing a piece of poison-laced meat at her. I tossed one of the cheese-wrapped pieces of steak in the air in front of her. It made a gentle arc before it slapped against her massive snout, but her glance never flickered. Satisfied that she was in no danger of backsliding, I tossed her another piece, saying 'Speak!' at the same time. The food disappeared like a junkie's dreams when he comes out of the nod. Her jaws didn't move but I could see the lump slip down her throat as she swallowed. 'Can't you ever
I sat there for a few minutes, patting her huge head and feeding her the rest of the steak and cheese. Pansy wasn't a food-freak like a lot of dogs. Most dogs will eat until they kill themselves if you let them. It's left over from being wild-wild things never know where their next meal is coming from, so they pack it in when they get the chance. When Pansy was a puppy, I got four fifty-pound sacks of the dry food she was raised on and lugged them up the stairs. I opened them all, dumped all the dog food in one corner of the office, and let her loose. She loved the stuff, but no matter how much she ate, there was always a big pile left. She ate until she passed out a couple of times, but once she got it that there would always be food for her, she lost interest. I
