I pulled out a dark suit, nice conservative blue shirt, black knit tie. A pair of black-rimmed glasses and an attache case and I was set.
Belle looked me over. 'I didn't know you wore glasses.'
'They're just plain glass - they change the shape of your face.'
'That's what I wish
'I like your face,' I told her.
'It doesn't look like his,' she said. 'But I still see him in the mirror sometimes.'
'If it hurts you, maybe you should fix it.'
'You mean like plastic surgery?'
'No.'
'Oh. You think . . . ?'
'Now's not the time, little girl.'
She nodded. A trusting child's face watching me. Listening.
Just about time to go. I let Pansy out to the roof, blanking my mind. No point speculating - the Prof would have something for me and I'd find out when I saw him.
Pansy strolled downstairs and flopped down in a corner. She wasn't into exercise.
'You want a beer?' I asked Belle.
'Who drinks beer at this hour?'
I pulled the last bottle of Bud from the refrigerator, uncapped it, and poured it into a bowl. Pansy charged over - made it disappear.
55
Saint Vincent's is in the West Village, not far from my office. 'Just act like you know where you're going,' I told Belle.
The information desk gave us a visitor's pass and we took the elevator. Room 909 was at the end of the corridor. I walked in first, not looking forward to shooting the breeze with Melvin, hoping the Prof was already on the scene.
He was. In the hospital bed, both legs in heavy casts, suspended by steel wires. A pair of IV tubes ran into his arm. His face was charcoal-ash, eyes closed. He looked smaller than ever - a hundred years old.
My eyes swept the room. Empty except for a chair in the corner. I came to the bed quietly, images jamming my brain.
The Prof didn't move, didn't open his eyes. I bent close to him.
'Burke?' His voice was calm. Drugged?
'It's me, brother.'
'You got my message?'
'Yeah. What happened?'
His eyes flicked open. They were bloodshot but clear, focused on my face. His voice was soft, barely a whisper. 'I was poking around. On my cart. Scoping the scene, you know? I was working Thirty-sixth and Tenth. By the Lincoln Tunnel.'
The Prof does this routine where he folds his legs under him and pulls himself along on a board with roller skates bolted to the bottom. It looks like he has no legs at all. Sometimes he carries a sign and a metal cup. Working close to the ground.
'You want to wait on this? Get some rest?'
His eyes hardened. 'They gave me pain, but I'm still in the game. The nurse'll be around in a few minutes to give me another shot. You need to know now.'
I put my hand on his forearm, next to the IV tubes. 'Run it,' I said, my voice as quiet as his.
'You ever hear of this freak karate-man they call Mortay?'
'The one who's hitting all the dojos? Challenging every sensei?'
'That's him. You know Kuo? Kung-fu man?'
'He teaches dragon-style, right? Over on Amsterdam?'
'He's dead, Burke. This Mortay hits the dojo, slaps Kuo in front of his own students. Kuo clears the floor and they go at it. Mortay left him right there.'
I let out a breath. 'Kuo's good.'
'He's good and dead, bro'. It's been going on for a while. This Mortay's been selling tickets - says he's the world's deadliest human. The word is that he was kicked off the tournament circuit - he wouldn't pull his shots. Hurt a lot of people. He fought a death-match about a year ago. In the basement under Sin City.'
'I heard about it.'
'Every player on the scene was there. They put up a twenty-grand purse, side bets all over the place. He fought this Japanese guy from the Coast. The way I heard it, Mortay just played with him before he took him out. Now he's hooked on it. Death. He finds a dojo, walks in the door. The sensei has to fight him or walk off the floor.'
'He's got to be crazy. Sooner or later . . .'
'Yeah. That's what everybody's been saying. But he's still out there.'
The Prof took a deep breath. 'He does work too.'
'For hire?'
'That's the word.'
'He did this to you?'
'I'm on my cart, talking to a couple of the working girls, handing out my religious rap. Like I'm the man to deal with the van, you know?'
'Yeah.'
'Car pulls up. Station wagon. Spanish guy gets out. Short, heavy-built dude. Big diamond hanging from his ear. Tells me he has someone wants to talk to me. I tell him that I bring the Word to the people, so the people got to come to me. The Spanish guy don't blink an eye. Pulls a piece right there in the street. Tells me he has to bring me, don't matter what condition I arrive in. I tell him not to get crazy - how am I supposed to go, walk? He calls to another guy. They each grab one end of my cart, put me in the back of the wagon. The girls just faded. They're hijacking me off the street, nobody's paying attention.'
The Prof's voice was the same quiet flow, his eyes focused on someplace else.
'They take me to one of the piers. Past where they have the big ships. I'm not blindfolded or anything. They haul me inside this old building at the end of the pier. Place is falling apart: big holes in the roof, smells like a garbage dump.
'Guy's waiting for us. Tall, maybe six two, six three. Couldn't weigh more than one and a quarter.'
'That thin?'
'Skinny as a razor blade, man. Arms like matchsticks. You'd look like a weightlifter next to him.
'Mortay?'
'Oh, yeah. Mortay. No mystery - he tells me who he is. Like his name is supposed to stand for something. He got this weird voice. Real thin, high-pitched. He says that he heard I been asking around. About the Ghost Van. He says that's a bad thing to do. Could make him mad, I keep doing that.
'I rap to him. Try my crazy act. He don't go for it. He says he knows me too. Calls my name - the Prophet. Asks, if I know the Word, why I can't cure myself. Fix my own legs.
'I tell him no man can change the will of the Lord. He comes over to me, kneels down, starts on me with his hands, pressing spots on my face, watching me. Then he says, You lie. Just like that. You lie. He slaps me right off the cart, tells me to stand up. For a minute, I thought my legs stopped working for real . . . but I got to my feet.
'He says he's going to have to show me it's a mistake to ask questions. I know bodywork's coming up. I got no place to go. I fucked up, brother,' the little man said, his voice shaking. 'I was scared. You know I don't spook easy, but this freak . . . It was like he was sending out waves. Hurting me inside, and he wasn't even touching me.'
