Blue Belle

When I looked back, he was pushing the button to call his nurse.

122

I walked Belle over to the Pontiac, let her in the passenger side.

'What happened to the Plymouth?'

'On vacation.'

'I'm glad you didn't have to dump it. That's one fine machine.'

'Yeah.'

'What d'we do now?'

'Wait. There's stuff out there - I have to wait for a bite.'

I drove back to Queens. Stopped at a deli in Forest Hills, waited in the car while Belle picked up some food. It was the first time I'd been to her house in the middle of the day. The street was quiet. Working people at work, kids at school. Belle saw me sweeping the street with my eyes.

'It's real quiet here until the summer. Once they start coming out to the water with their boats and all, it fills up.'

'It'll all be over way before then.'

'You're sure?'

I didn't answer her. I parked the Pontiac behind her Camaro. 'That car's been moved since the last time.'

'I took it down to the gas station. Changed the oil, front-end alignment.'

I looked a question at her. 'Just in case,' she said.

'I don't need a driver on this, Belle.'

This time she didn't answer me.

We brought the food inside. I called Mama. Nothing. Nobody looking for me. On the phone, anyway.

Belle made some sandwiches. Roast beef, boiled ham, lettuce and mustard. Opened a bottle of beer for herself, ginger ale for me. I opened the Daily News, scanned it quickly for any news of the Ghost Van. Nothing. I flipped to the race results out of habit, but I couldn't concentrate.

'Is it good?' she asked.

'What?'

'The food.'

'Oh. Yeah. Great.'

Her face went sad. 'I'm not a good cook. Sissy was a fine cook. She was going to teach me. . .'

'Who cares?'

'I thought you would. Remember when I cleaned your place? I did a good job, didn't I?'

'Perfect.'

'Well . . .'

'Let it go, Belle. It was so important to me, I would have learned how to do it myself.'

She pulled her chair next to me. 'You can't do everything for yourself.'

'Where's this going?'

She got up, moved in little circles. Like she was lost. 'You're walking around with that ugly thing in your hand . . . Maybe we won't have a little house with a white picket fence and all that . . . but I'm not gonna sit around and make plans for a funeral.'

I slipped my hand around her waist, pulled her against me. 'I know. But you got it wrong. I'm back on track now, I can feel it. This is just in case, like I told you. It's coming together. There's a way to take him down and walk away too. I need a couple more bits arid pieces.

'And you'll know where to look?'

'Yeah. In my head. I have to keep feeding stuff in, work it around. I can't go in the street and look for him - I have to figure it out. Where he is. This thing in my hand is only if he finds me first.'

'What if you don't get any more information?'

'I have to. What I got, it's not enough. There's pieces missing. Maybe only one piece. I don't know yet. But if you don't feed the fire, it goes out. You get trapped.'

She sat next to me again, her hand on my arm, watching me close.

'Trapped?'

'Patterns. Like I told you. I'm looking for a guy, right? I think he's holed up in a certain neighborhood. So I walk around, ask questions, leave notes. Sooner or later, he's looking for me.'

123

Late afternoon. I called Morelli.

'Anything?'

'Yeah. I'm not finished. Can't talk now - I gotta work the phones before the record rooms shut down for the day.'

'Can I call you later?'

'I'll be here till nine.'

'Eight-thirty,' I said, hanging up.

Mama said it was all quiet. Asked me when I was coming around. I told her soon.

I put the phone down. 'I got to get out of here.'

'Why, baby?'

'I wasn't kidding about inertia, Belle. If there's an answer, it's in my head. No matter what kind of bites I get out there, I have to put it together. I can't work here. I need my stuff.'

'Stuff?'

'In my files. It's not that I can't think here. I can think in a cell. But that stuff I've collected - it's like having a conversation . . . I ask it questions, sometimes it talks back. Okay?'

'Okay,' she said, opening her bureau drawers. 'As long as I'm around when you have that talk.'

124

Belle sat in the front bucket seat of the Pontiac, watching the road. She giggled to herself.

'What's so funny.'

'The Prof. I told him. About me. Not the whole thing, but enough. That's what he meant about blood only tells in hell.'

'What's funny about that?'

'He said when the Lord made people He made them all the same for starters. But life marks people. If you know the way, you can read them like maps. He said the Lord made you so ugly for a test.'

'What?'

'That's what he said. I told him I thought you were real good-looking. He said that was the test - I wasn't deep in love with you, I couldn't say such an outrageous lie.'

'He should fucking talk.'

'Burke! He is a handsome little man. I thought that nurse was gonna claw my eyes, she saw me with him.' She giggled again. 'He told me God only made one mistake. He said, you see a red-haired, blue-eyed nigger, you're looking at a stone killer.'

'Sure, everybody knows that.'

'Don't be crazy. He was just playing.'

'Hell if he was. Every one I ever saw was a life-taker.'

'That's ridiculous.'