Blue Belle

We turned the corner. Terry handed the Mole a portable spotlight. The kind you plug into the cigarette lighter in your car. The Mole aimed the spotlight, pressed the button. A flash of white-hot light. The streetlight went out. We stood in the pitch dark. I counted ninety seconds in my head. The streetlight came back on. I followed the Mole outside.

'Car headlights, maybe seventy-five thousand candlepower on high beams. Cop's spotlights, maybe a hundred and fifty thousand. This throws a million. Tricks the streetlight - tricks motion sensors - anything.'

'Damn! What happens if you blast somebody in the face with it?'

'They go blind for a few minutes. Too close, you burn the eyeballs.'

'Mole, you amaze me.'

'Let Terry drive the car out of the yard,' he said.

121

Belle was lying on her stomach across the hospital bed, chin in her hands. Her legs were bent at the knee, feet twirling behind her. Like a teenage girl talking on the phone. The Prof was in an easy chair, the casts on his legs still separated by the bar, propped on a footstool. He looked sharp - clean-shaven, bright-red robe.

'It's quiet?' I asked, stepping into the room.

'This is a hospital, fool.'

'I mean . . .'

'We all know what you mean. Everything's cool. Too bad you showed so soon, I was just getting ready to show the lady your baby pictures.'

I pulled up another chair. 'You got something?'

Belle climbed off the bed, sat down on the floor between us, her hand on my knee.

The little man was back to himself. All business, but working in circles. 'You remember J.T.?'

'Yeah.'

He turned to Belle. 'This J.T. was a real country boy when he came up here. A stone rookie. Wouldn't know a hoe-down from a throw-down. Couldn't decide if he was gonna be a yutz or a clutz. You follow?'

Belle tilted her chin to look up at me. 'What's a throw-down?'

'A challenge. Or a fight.'

'How do you tell the difference?'

'One you do with your mouth, the other with your hands. Now shut up - let the man finish.'

Her lips turned into a perfect pout, like she'd been practicing all her life.

The Prof patted her arm. 'Don't pay attention to this thug, girl. You can school a fool, but you can't make him cool. J.T., he's not what you call a mental heavyweight, but he's good people. A few years ago, he got into this beef over a girl. Working girl. He thought he was in love. Shot the pimp right on Forty-fourth Street. Girl starts screaming, J.T. starts running. I'm on my cart, see him flying. I told him to toss the piece. Buried it in my coat. The cops grabbed him a couple of blocks away, but they never found the gun. The pimp didn't die. We put together a package for J.T. Michelle talked to the girl, Burke talked to the pimp. Visited him right in the hospital. They held J.T. a few months, waiting for somebody to testify. Finally, they cut him loose. He's still a dumb-ass cowboy. Too dumb to hustle, and he's not cold enough for stickups. He's always out there, picking up spare change. You understand?'

Belle nodded, a serious look on her face. Like there was going to be a test later.

'Anyway, old J.T. hears what happened. Out there. He comes to see me. Like I said, he's good people, but he ain't swift. Wants to square the beef for me - take care of the people who busted me up. I tell him to back off, it's been handled. He gets a look on his face like I just downed him, you know? Like I think he ain't worth shit. So I give him this assignment, okay? Just do what he does, but keep his eyes open. Don't ask nobody nothing. Just watch. Last night, he walks in here. Brought me that radio,' the Prof said, pointing to a suitcase-sized boom box sitting in the corner. 'And he brought me this too.'

He put it in my hand. An eight-sided gold metal coin. Embossed on one side was a nude woman, one hand behind her head, spike heels on her feet. I turned it over. On the other side it said 'Sin City.'

'It looks like a subway token,' Belle said.

'It works the peep-show machines. Costs a quarter.'

'So what's the . . .'

I chopped a hand in the air to cut her off, holding the coin in my fingers. 'He say anything else?' I asked the Prof.

'Said he followed the guy - not Mortay, the Spanish dude - into the railroad yards. On Forty-third, off Tenth. Spanish guy disappears. J.T. figures, the hell with it, he'll go watch a movie. He goes right to Sin City, goes in the front door. Now, that's the only door, babe. And who does he see when he gets to the bar? The Spanish guy. J.T. says there ain't no way in the world that the Spanish guy could've got there first.'

'So there has to be another way in?'

'Has to be.'

'What time was this?'

'Like eleven in the morning, man. Broad daylight.'

I lit a smoke. 'He did good, Prof.'

'When you cast bread upon the waters . . .'

'Yeah. You got anything else?'

'Just one more little piece. I reached out for Tabitha, asked her to make the run up to see Hortense, explain to her I was laid up. Now, you know Tabitha; she owes Hortense too. So she did it. Anyway, she comes back to see me. Said Hortense said she'd whip her ass when she got out, Tabitha didn't do something for me now. So Tabitha, she's in the life, but she's straight, she tells me she saw the duel.'

'Mortay and the Jap?'

'Right on. In the basement. So I put it together, ask her how she got into the basement, dig? She says she and her man, they go downstairs from the main floor. Big metal spiral staircase. Everybody goes down that way, everybody goes out that way. Get it?'

'Yeah.'

'One more thing, she says. This Spanish guy, she knows him too. Her man, Earl, he won't let none of his women anywhere near the Spanish guy. Word is he uses blood the way some freaks use Vaseline.'

'I heard that too. Just today.'

The Prof went on like he hadn't heard me. 'But Tabitha, man, she thought that was funny. The Spanish guy, he don't want nothing to do with nothing that ain't white. No Puerto Ricans, no Chinese . . . nothing that's out there but white meat.'

I drew on my smoke, watching Belle's face half hidden under the thatch of honey-taffy hair. Coming together.

'I'm out of here, Prof. It's coming down. I may not be back for a while.'

'What's coming down, home?'

'A hard wind, brother. Hold tight to your alibi.'

'You going to work solo? That ain't the way.'

I bent close to him, lowering my voice even more. 'What am I gonna do, wait till you're out of the hospital? Max is out of this - he has to be. I'm working on something . . . but I don't have it yet.'

He tapped the end of my bandage. 'That ain't much of a plan, man.'

'That's the backup, not the plan. It all connects. Everything. But I can't call the shots. This is just in case he moves first.'

The little man's eyes were hard, the yellowish cast gone. He was the Prophet again, the man who could see the future. 'This freak feels froggy, he's gonna leap - I know you can't wait. But use your head, schoolboy. Pearl Harbor. When it comes to Nazis, the Mole don't play the role.'

I squeezed his hand - his grip was hard as his eyes. Nothing more to say.

Belle bent to kiss him goodbye. 'Remember what I told you, lady. Outside hell, blood don't tell.'

'I'll remember.'