Blue Belle

89

The front door was unlocked. I shut it behind me, walked through the cottage. Belle was out on the deck. I leaned on the railing, looking across the black water. Belle moved in next to me, fingering the necklace.

'You know why I danced in front of men?'

'Yes.'

'I know you do. You're the first man who ever looked at my face after I took my clothes off.' She pulled the cigarette from my mouth. Took a drag, handed it back.

'Nothing on this earth means anything all by itself. You know those orchids they sell in fancy flower shops? They grow wild in the swamp near where I was raised. And gator hide . . . It costs so much to make a little purse out of it, but the big old things are out there thick as mosquitoes. You know about gators?'

'Not much.'

'Baby gators, they ain't got much of a chance. It's easy to find the eggs - the mama gators just bury 'em and they walk away. Most of them don't make it even if the eggs do hatch. When they're born, they're only a couple of inches long. The big birds grab them up. Bobcats, panthers, coons, damn near everything in the swamp feasts on them. Baby gators, they're not like puppies or kittens. You know the difference between a six-inch baby gator and a six-foot bull?'

'No,' I said. Her face was turned in profile, tiny flat nose just a bump.

'Five and a half feet. They don't grow, they just get bigger, you understand?'

'Yeah.'

'What they say about gators . . . Most of the little ones, they never get to be big ones, what with everything out there trying to eat them and all. The ones that do get their full growth - they spend the rest of their lives getting even.'

'I know people like that.'

'I thought I was like that too, once. But it's not the whole world I need to get square with.'

'I know.'

She moved against me, hip bumping gently. 'There's things inside me. Bad things. In my blood and in my bones. I'll never have babies and I'll never get old. You're good with words, but there's things you don't like to say.'

'I don't understand.'

'Yeah, you do. Remember when I wanted you to taste me? When we first came together? I've met plenty of men good at romance, but I never met one any good at love. You're what I want, and you can't do things but one way. Your way.'

'Belle, I . . .'

She pressed her fingers against my mouth. 'Don't say anything. You already said all I need you to say. I'm with you to the end. Just make me one promise?'

'What?'

Tears rolled down her face, but her voice was steady. 'I know you have people. I don't have anybody. If my time comes, you settle my debts. Pay them off.'

'I will.'

'One more thing. Just one more thing, and I'm going to give you my life, Burke. I'll never take my clothes off for another man again. And I'll never take this necklace off either. You see that I'm buried in it.'

'Cut it out,' I said, smacking her on the rump, trying for a smile.

She turned her face to me, holding my shirt with both hands. 'Now's not the time for that. You can't change what's going to happen. You promise me. Promise me right now. I married the outlaw life - I've go a right to be buried in my wedding dress.'

'I promise, Belle.'

She pulled me close, her mouth butterfly-soft against mine. 'My mother saved my heart for me. She died to do it. I waited a long time. I'm giving it to you now. And I'll die to do it too.'

I held her against me in the dark. For that little piece of time, I didn't have to call on the ice god of hate to fight the fear.

90

Belle fell asleep holding me in her mouth. The bedside clock said four. I set it for six, stubbed out my last cigarette, and drifted off.

When the alarm went off, I was sleeping on my side. Belle was wrapped around my back. I slapped the clock to shut off the buzzer. The morning light was just coming through. Belle reached down for me, holding me in her hand, whispering in my ear.

'When I went shopping . . . to buy all that stuff to lean your office . . . I bought something else. A surprise for you. Something to give you nobody else has ever had. I was going to give it to you last night, when you came back. But you came back with my necklace. And all that other stuff happened. It's still here for you. Special. But not now,' she said, stroking me, 'not now. When your blood's up.'

I felt myself grow in her hand. 'Seems like it's up to me,' I said.

She laughed, a rich laugh from her belly, moving against me. 'When your blood's up, honey, I'll know. But as far as this other thing . . .' The big girl pushed against my shoulder, shoving me flat on my back, swinging one huge leg over me, her hand guiding me inside. 'Come on, now,' she whispered, her teeth in my shoulder.

91

An hour later, we were moving into the city. I had to be at the pay phone in the lobby of the Criminal Court before ten. The last phone in the long bank near the back wall. Telefono cuatro.

There were only two places in the city I could go for what I needed. This freak I had to meet could call himself 'death' if that's what got his rocks off, but I knew a guy who earned the title. A guy we did time with years ago. A guy who let the ice god into his soul like I'd wanted to. A guy named Wesley. Even saying his name in my mind made my hands shake. The other choice was the UGL.

Una Gente Libre - A Free People. Puerto Rican terrorists to the federates, hard-core independentistas to their people. The FBI had been trying to get a man inside for years - they'd have better luck getting Jimmy Hoffa to testify. The UGL didn't blow up buildings. They didn't write letters to the newspapers. Some of them fought in the mountains of their home, some in the city canyons of America. Their New York territory stretched from East Harlem to the Bronx. They kept their plate clean. You try to sell crack on their streets, you get cracked. You come back again, you get iced. The Colombians didn't like that much. One of their honchos sent a crew into UGL turf. Sprayed the streets with machine guns. Dropped five people, one of them a pregnant woman. The next day, the crack salesmen were back, stopping the BMWs and Mercedeses full of mobile slime on their way to the suburbs. Smiling. Three days later, the first salesman who showed up pushed his way through a crowd packed around a fire hydrant. The honcho's head was sitting on top of the fireplug like a bust in a museum display case. Whoever hacked it off hadn't been a surgeon. The last thing the salesman left on that street was his puke.

Dr. Pablo Cintrone was a psychiatrist. New York magazine did a profile on him once. Harvard Medical School graduate who returned to the mean streets to minister to his people. It made him sort of a hero to the upscale crowd for a couple of weeks. Not too many people in Spanish Harlem or the South Bronx read the magazine, but they knew El Jefe of the UGL.

92

Inside the office, I let Pansy out to the roof while I checked the security systems. Nobody'd made a move on