Now that she's a mother.
So she does phone jobs, suckers letting their credit cards run wild while she talks them over the top. Or she visits her clients indoors.
It was only right that she and Hortense would work a sting together. Walking different sides of the same oneway street.
23
I felt bad, and I didn't know why. I was some cash ahead, for a change. The last job went down like sweet syrup, and maybe there would be some more of that kind of work down the road. Nobody was looking for me.
I didn't spend time thinking about it. I used to do that. I used to do time. A couple of bad habits.
Pansy ambled over to where I was sitting, put her huge head on my lap. She made a noise that sounded like a growl, but I knew what she wanted.
'Not today, girl,' I told her, scratching her head between her eyes. Max and I were training her to stay low when she hit. Most dogs leave their feet when they attack, some deep instinct forcing them to go for the throat. That doesn't work on people: human throats are too far off the ground. We take Pansy over to this vacant lot in Brooklyn. Pay some kid ten bucks and talk him into putting on the agitator's suit -leather covered with padded canvas. I hold Pansy on a snap leash, facing the agitator. Max stands to the side with a long bamboo pole. When I send Pansy, Max brings the pole down. Hard. If she stays low, about groin-height, she can nail the kid wearing the suit. If she leaves her feet, Max cracks her in the head. Lately she's been getting through most of the time. I call her off as soon as she gets a good bite.
I have to get a different kid each time. The suit feels like it's armor-plated, but Pansy can turn a leg into liquid right through it.
I flipped the channels on the TV until I found a pro wrestling match. Pansy's favorite. I gave her one of the marrow bones and stretched out on the couch, opening the racing sheet. Maybe I'd find a horse I liked. Make my own kind of investment.
The last thing I remember before I fell asleep was Pansy grinding the marrow bone into powder.
24
It was past ten when I woke up. On the TV, a private detective was getting hit over the head with a tire iron. I lit a smoke. Opened the back door for Pansy. When I walked back inside, the private eye was wide awake and looking for clues.
I took a shower. Looked at my face in the mirror. Deep, past the image. Looked into myself, breathing through my nose, expanding my stomach, exhaling as my chest went out.
When I came out of it, I felt clear. Centered. Ready to go to work.
I shaved carefully. Combed my hair. I put on a pair of dark-gray slacks and a white silk shirt. Alligator boots. Custom-made, but they were a pretty good fit on me anyway. I moved aside some shirts in the bottom drawer of my dresser. Looked at a whole pile of rings, watches, bracelets, gold chains. The spoils of war.
I held a smuggler's necklace in my hand. Each link is a one-ounce gold ingot; it comes apart one piece at a time. Too classy for this job. I pawed through the stuff until I found the right combination: a thick gold neck chain, a gold bracelet, and a gold ring set with a blue star sapphire.
Checked myself in the full-length mirror on the door of the closet. Something missing. I found some gel in the bathroom. Ran it through my hair until it looked thicker and a bit greasy. White hair shot through the black just past my temples. It didn't bother me - the only thing I ever posed for was mug shots.
I slopped some cologne all over my face and neck. To throw the dogs off the scent.
A few hundred bucks in my pocket, one of the Mole's butane lighters, a wallet I stripped of bogus credit cards, and I was ready to visit a strip joint.
25
JFK Airport sits at the end Queens, near the Long Island border, sticking out into the bay. The surrounding swampland is slashed with two-lane side roads running off the expressway. Warehouses, light industry, short-stay motels.
The Highway Department keeps the roads in good shape, but they don't waste any money on streetlights. A bandit's paradise.
I found The Satellite Dish easily enough. A one-story blue stucco building, standing alone on a slab of blacktop. Two long, narrow windows framing a set of double doors, the dark glass covered with fluorescent promises: Go-Go Girls. Topless. Bottomless. Exotic Dancers.
I nosed the Plymouth through the parking lot. General Motors must have held a white-on-white sale: Eldorados, Buick Regals, Oldsmobiles. Vinyl tops, tinted glass, hand-painted monograms on the doors. I left the Plymouth at the edge of the blacktop, dull paint fading into the shadows. It looked abandoned.
I stepped through the double doors into a square foyer. White walls, red carpet. Hawk-faced guy in a powder-blue double-knit suit sitting at a little table to one side. The joint wasn't classy enough to have a hat-check girl - and not hard-core enough to shake you down for weapons.
'Ten bucks cover, pal. And worth every penny,' the hawk-faced guy said. His heart wasn't in it.
I paid, went through the next set of doors. The place was bigger than it looked from the outside, so dark I couldn't see the walls. A T-shaped bar ran the entire width of the room, with a long perpendicular runway almost to the door. Small round tables were spread all over the room. Two giant screens, like the ones they use for projection TV, stood in the corners at each end of the long bar. The screens were blank.
The tables were empty. Every man in the place was seated at the bar, most of them along the runway. Hard-rock music circled from hidden speakers. Three girls were on top of the bar. Two blondes and a redhead. All wearing bikini bottoms, high heels, and sparkle dust. Each girl worked her own piece of the bar, bouncing around, talking to the customers. The redhead went to her knees in front of a guido with a high-rise haircut and diamonds on his fingers. She spun on the bar, dropped her shoulders. The guido pulled down her panties, stuffed some bills between her thighs, patted her butt. She gave him a trembly wiggle, reached back and pulled up the panties, spun around again, ran her tongue over her lips. Danced away.
It was somewhere between the South Bronx shacks where the girls would blow you in the back booths and the steak-and-silicone joints in midtown where they called you 'sir' but wouldn't screw you out of anything more than your money.
I found an empty stool near the left side of the T. A brunette wearing a red push-up bra under a transparent white blouse leaned over the bar toward me. She raised her eyebrows, smiling the smile they all use.
'Gin-and-tonic,' I told her, putting a fifty on the bar. 'Plenty of ice. Don't mix them.'
She winked. I was obviously a with-it guy. No watered drinks for this stud.
She brought me a tall glass of tonic, jigger of gin on the side. Put four ten-dollar bills back in front of me. Class costs.
'My name is Laura,' she cooed. 'I go on after the last set. You going to be here?'
I nodded. She took one of the ten-spots off the bar, looked a question at me. I nodded. She stuffed it between her breasts, winked at me, and went back to work. I left the money on the bar.
I sipped my tonic, waiting.
The music stopped. A short, stocky guy in a pink sport coat over a billowy pair of white slacks stepped to the intersection of the T. The lights went down. The house man hit the stocky guy with a baby spot. He had a wireless microphone in one hand.
'Here's what you've heen waiting for . . . the fabulous . . . Debbie, and the Dance of Domination!'
The bar went dark again. Most of the men moved to the back tables. A door at the right of the T opened, and two dim shapes walked to the intersection. The music started. No words, heavy bass-lines and drums. One of the
