Strega

hit the horn, the kid came over. I pushed the switch to lower my window and took a close look: black kid, about fifteen, husky build, Navy watch cap over a bushy Afro. I waved away the Daily News he offered.

'Roscoe working today?' I asked.

'Yeah, man. He working. 'Cross the way, you know?'

I already had the Plymouth rolling, timing it so I'd get caught at the light. I watched the black kid fly back across the street to tell Roscoe he had a customer. The twenty-four-hour news station was saying something about another baby beaten to death; this one in the Bronx. So many cases like that now, all they do is give you the daily body count.

The light changed. The Plymouth rolled forward until I spotted Roscoe standing on the divider, a bunch of papers in one hand, a big canvas bag held by a thick strap around his neck. Roscoe's about thirty, too old to be selling papers.

He recognized the car-looked close to be sure he recognized the driver too.

'Paper, mister?'

'Yeah, give me The Wall Street Journal,' I said, holding a twenty out toward him at the same time.

'Oh, yeah. I got one around here someplace,' he mumbled, rummaging in his canvas bag.

While he was looking down at his bag, I did a quick scan of the streets, knowing he was doing the same. Nothing. I reached my left hand out for the paper Roscoe was holding over the open top of his bag, snapped the twenty toward him, and dropped the sawed-off into his bag at the same time. Gravity is one law nobody fucks with.

Roscoe comes honestly by his name, if not his income. I tossed yesterday's News on the front seat and drove off, heading for Chinatown. I don't like to carry heat across the border.

7

THE CHINATOWN streets were just getting organized: young men pushing hand trucks loaded with fresh vegetables, older women lumbering toward another day in the sweatshops. I spotted Hobart Chan cruising the Bowery in his sable Bentley, a shark looking for blood in the water. Even gangsters go to work early in Chinatown.

I rolled past Mama's checking the front window. The white dragon tapestry was in place-everything cool inside. I tooled through the narrow alley and left the Plymouth in its usual spot, right underneath some Chinese writing on the wall that warned the local hoods not to park there. It didn't bother me-it was Max's writing.

I went through the kitchen and into the back like I usually do. When I opened the door, one of Mama's alleged cooks smoothly slipped his hand inside his white coat-he pulled it back empty when he recognized me. I walked to the front, pulled the two-star edition of the News from underneath the register, and walked to my table in the back, next to the kitchen. No one approached my table pretending to be a waiter, so Mama was around someplace. I read through last night's race results from Yonkers and waited.

I caught a shadow across the newspaper and looked up. It was Mama-looking as though she just stepped out of a 1950s beauty parlor, hair black and glossy in a tight bun at the back of her head, plain high-collared blue silk dress that almost covered her shoes, a jade necklace setting off her dark-painted lips. She's somewhere between fifty and ninety years old.

'So, Burke. You come to eat?'

'To eat and to see Max, Mama. He around?'

'Burke, you know Max not come around so much anymore. Not since he take up with that bar girl. You know that bar girl-the one from Vietnam?'

'Yeah, I met her.'

'That girl no good for Max, Burke. He not keeping his mind on business-not reliable like before, right?'

'He's okay, Mama. There's no problem.'

'You wrong, Burke. Plenty problems. Problems for me, problems for Max, maybe problems for you, okay?'

'I'll talk to him,' I told her, more to stop this broken record than anything else.

'Yes, you talk to him. I talk to him, he not listen, okay?'

'Okay. You got any hot-and-sour soup?'

But even the mention of her favorite potion didn't calm her down. Mama was a businesswoman in her heart. She wanted me to get on Max's case about the girl, but she hadn't been there when they first met. I had.

WE WERE working the box system that night on the subway: me lying across three empty seats on the uptown express, dressed in my Salvation Army suit and a smashed old fedora, Max right across from me wearing an old raincoat, staring straight ahead like he was on his way to some early-morning cook's job, the Mole at the other end of the car, Coke-bottle lenses fixed on pages and pages of his 'calculations' on some greasy paper. I had the papers we had contracted to deliver sewn into the lining of my suit jacket. I don't carry heat on this kind of job. The Mole was packing enough high explosive to turn the F Train into a branch of the space shuttle. Max had only his hands and feet-he was more dangerous than the Mole.

I didn't need a disguise-it's no great feat for me to look like a used-up wino. And the Mole always looks like the lunatic he is-not the kind of human you'd want to make eye contact with on the subway. Max can adjust his posture and muscles in his face so he looks like an old man, and that's what he was doing.

The deal is this: If anybody hassles me, I take any amount of abuse that won't cripple me or make me lose the papers. If anyone moves on the Mole, Max steps in, leaving me carrying and clear. And if anyone moves on Max, me and the Mole just sit there and watch. It never takes long.

But that night we weren't alone in the subway car. First this Oriental woman gets on at 14th Street. She was wearing a black cape with a red silk lining over a white silk dress. It buttoned to the throat, but the straight skirt was slit to past mid-thigh. Heavy stage-type makeup, overdone eye shadow, spike heels. Maybe some Off Broadway lames were reviving Suzie Wong. She looked at me without expression, didn't even glance at Max or the Mole. She sat there primly, knees together, hands in her lap. Her eyes were unreadable.

And we rode together like that until we got deep into Brooklyn, where the wolfpack boarded the train. Two white kids and a Puerto Rican, dressed alike in the standard hunting outfit: leather sneakers, dungaree jackets with the sleeves cut off, gloves that left their fingertips exposed, studded wristbands, heavy belts with chains dangling. One carried a giant radio, the others were empty-handed. They checked the car quickly, eyeballing the girl.

But they were looking for money, not fun. A fast score from some working stiff. And Max was the target.

Ignoring me, they surrounded him. One sat down on each side; one of the white kids remained standing, facing Max. The spokesman.

'Hey, Pop-how about twenty bucks for a cup of coffee?'

Nobody laughed-it wasn't a joke.

Max didn't respond. For one thing, he doesn't speak. For another, he doesn't pay a lot of attention to bugs.

I glanced over at the Mole under the brim of my hat. The yellow-orange subway