lighting bounced off his thick glasses as he buried his head deep into some papers. He never looked up. The skells weren't paying any attention to me, just concentrating on Max. One of the white kids snatched Max's old raincoat, jerking the lapels toward him to pull Max to his feet. But nothing happened-I could see the muscles ripple in the kid's arm as he strained, but it was like he trying to pull up an anchor. The other maggots crowded in, and the Puerto Rican kid snarled, 'Give it up, old man!' The other white kid started to giggle. He pulled out a set of cheap brass knuckles, the kind they sell to kids in Times Square. He slowly fitted them over one hand, made a fist, smacked it into an open palm. The slapping sound brought the Mole's head up for a second. Max never moved.
The kid with the brass knuckles went on giggling to himself while the other white kid struggled to pull Max to his feet and the Puerto Rican kept up a steady stream of threats. None of them was in a hurry.
Then the girl got to her feet. I could hear the tapping of her spike heels as she closed the gap between herself and the maggots. They never looked her way until she hissed at them: 'Hey! Leave the old man alone!'
Then they spun to her, delighted with new prey, abandoning Max. The Puerto Rican kid was the first to speak.
'Fuck off, bitch! This ain't your business!'
But the woman kept closing on them, hands on hips. Now the whole wolfpack had its back to Max, moving toward her. The white kid was still giggling, still slamming his brass knuckles into an open palm. The woman walked right into the center of the triangle they formed. As the white kid reached a hand toward the front of her dress, I lurched to my feet in a drunken stupor and stumbled into him. He whirled to face me, brass knuckles flashing. I threw up a weak arm to try and fend him off as the Oriental woman unsheathed her claws and the Mole reached into his satchel. But then Max the Silent shed his dirty raincoat like an old scaly skin and moved in. It was too fast for me to follow-a hollow crack and I knew the Puerto Rican kid would never reach for anything again without major medical assistance-the flash of a foot and the biggest white kid screamed like ground glass was being pulled through his lungs- a steel-hard fist against the skull of the punk with the brass knuckles and I saw the front of his face open like an overripe melon too long in the sun.
The subway car was dead quiet inside, rumbling on unperturbed toward the next express stop. The Mole took his hands out of his satchel and went back to whatever he was reading. The three maggots were on the ground, only one of them conscious enough to moan-it was the Puerto Rican kid, blood and foam bubbling out of his mouth.
The woman stood shock-still, her face drained of color, her hands frozen at her sides. Max the Silent looked into her face, and bowed deeply to her. She caught her breath, and bowed back. They stood looking at each other, seeing nothing else.
Max gestured for me to stand, pointed at his mouth and then at me. The Oriental woman's eyes flashed, but she seemed beyond surprise now.
She stood swaying slightly with the train's rhythm, balancing easily on the spike heels, dark-lacquered talons on silky hips. She watched the wino remove his hat and smooth out his tangled hair. If she was expecting another transformation, she was deeply disappointed. The distance between the real Max the Silent and a helpless old man was cosmic-the distance between the real me and a bum was considerably less. But I bowed to the woman too.
'My brother does not speak or hear. He can read lips, and those who know him can understand him perfectly. He wishes to speak with you, through me. With your permission…?'
The woman's eyebrows arched, and she nodded, saying nothingwaiting patiently. I liked her already.
Max gestured toward her, two fingers held against his thumb. He turned that same hand back toward his heart, tapped his chest lightly, bowed, reached his left hand back to the old, discarded raincoat, held it in one hand, touched his eyes, one at a time, with the other. He touched his heart again.
'My brother says you are a woman of great courage, to protect what you thought was an old man against such dangerous people.'
The woman cleared her throat, smiled gently with the side of her mouth. She spoke as gravely as I had, with just the trace of a French accent in her speech.
'Your brother is quite deceptive.'
Max absently swung his foot into the rib cage of one of the maggots lying on the floor, never taking his eyes off the woman. I heard a sound like a twig snapping. He touched his eyes again, shook his head 'no.' He expanded his chest; his eyes flattened and power flowed from his body. He turned to me.
'My brother says a maggot cannot see a true man,' I told her.
Still with the same half-smile, she asked, 'Can a maggot see a true woman?'
Max took a pair of dark glasses from my coat pocket-he knows where I keep them-and put them on his face. He made a gesture like tapping with a cane, took off the glasses, threw both hands toward the woman, and smiled.
'My brother says even a blind man could see a woman such as you, I translated, and she was smiling too, even before I finished.
That's how Max met Immaculata.
8
TO MAMA, Immaculata was a 'bar girl,' her catchall phrase for anything from prostitute to hostess. A Vietnamese was bad enough, but one of mixed parentage was suspect beyond redemption. As far as she was concerned, a true warrior didn't need a woman, except on an occasional basis.
Mama never seemed to move from her restaurant, but nothing escaped her sight. She knew Max still lived in the back of the warehouse near Division Street, where his temple lay hidden upstairs. But he didn't live alone anymore. For Mama, anything that wasn't business was bad.
Immaculata had been working as a hostess in a Manhattan bar before she met Max. She had been trained as some kind of psychotherapist in France, but she couldn't practice in this country until she completed enough courses and got a license.
I saw her work one day when I went over to the warehouse looking for Max. I pulled the Plymouth into the garage on the first floor. It was empty-it always was. I got out of the car, closed the garage doors, and waited. If Max was around, he'd be there soon enough. If he didn't show in a couple of minutes, I'd just chalk a message to him on the back wall.
I heard the sound of fingers snapping, looked to my left, and there was Max. He was holding a finger to his lips-no noise. I climbed out of the Plymouth, leaving the door open, and walked over to where Max was standing. He motioned for me to follow him upstairs.
We padded along the narrow catwalk past the entrance to his temple. When we came to the blank wall behind the temple door, Max reached up and pulled back a curtain. We were looking through some one-way glass into what looked like a kid's playroom: kid-size furniture, brightly painted walls, toys all over the place. Immaculata was seated at a small table. Across from her was a little girl-maybe four years old. They were both in profile to us. It looked like they were playing with some dolls together.
I shrugged my shoulders, spread my hands, palms up. 'What is this?' I was asking Max. He patted the air in front of him with both hands and pointed to his eyes: 'Be patient and watch.'
There were four dolls on the table. Two were bigger than an average kid's doll; the other two were a lot smaller. From their clothes and their hair I could see that two were male and two female.
Immaculata put the dolls to one side of the table and asked the kid something, looking calm and patient. The little girl took one of the small dolls and started to undress it, slowly and reluctantly. Then she stopped. She took the big male doll and made it sort of pat the little girl on the head. The little doll pulled away from the pat, but not too far. Finally, the big male doll helped the little girl doll get undressed. The big male
