Blue Belle

Michelle smiled. Gave me a kiss. Kissed Belle. 'I'll get a cab,' she said.

147

'Take everything you're going to need,' I told Belle. We were back in her cottage, two in the morning. She bustled around, filling two big suitcases.

'What about my car?'

'You follow me back to the city with it when we go in for the last time. Day after tomorrow. I'll stash the Pontiac on the street. We'll keep your car in the garage.'

She was on her hands and knees, poking around in a corner near her bed. She came up with two handfuls of cash. 'I've got about fifteen thousand here,' she said.

'I'll show you where to hide it.'

'You want . . .'

''No.'

I walked out onto the deck, lighting a smoke. I felt Belle behind me. 'How's this?'

I turned around. She was wearing a flimsy red wrapper, tied at the waist with a thin ribbon. Her breasts were barely veiled, slash of white skin down the middle.

'You'll freeze out here.'

She moved into my arms. She was warm, soft. Her hips trembled against me. My hand slid to her butt.

'Doesn't this thing come with pants?'

'I'd just have to take them off,' she said. 'Come on.'

148

In the car heading back, Belle fiddled with the radio. Full-throated, late-night blues. 'I'm a stranger, and afraid' - the singer well within himself, coming to grips, looking it in the eye.

'He's telling the truth,' Belle whispered. 'I've been both all my life.'

I found her hand in the darkness.

The disc jockey broke in. 'That was Johnny Adams, out of New Orleans. Singing a new Doc Pomus tune, 'A World I Never Made.' You all remember Doc Pomus, the man who gave us 'Save the Last Dance for Me,' 'Little Sister,' and so many other monster hits. Doc's one of the world's great bluesmen. Now here's the flip side. Down and dirty. Like they don't do anymore.' Rattling soft piano, sinuous spiking guitar notes dancing on the top, teasing. Johnny Adams, making his promises, bragging his brag. 'I'm your body and fender man, let me pound out your dents.' In case anyone listening had maple syrup for brains, he spelled it out:

I don't care if your body's brand new

Or it's been knocked around . . .

I swear they're all the same, babe,

When you turn them upside down.

'He's off the mark there,' Belle said.

'No, he's right. There's no such thing as a golden snapper - the difference is in here,' I said, tapping my chest.

'Here,' she said, pulling my hand to her breast.

I lit a smoke. Doc Pomus on the radio again. Like that night I left my basement. Full circle.

149

The Pontiac slipped into the garage. I showed Belle the circuit-breaker panel in the back corner. 'You know what this is?'

'Sure. Like a fuse box.'

'Watch.' I punched the switch marked Hall. Then Lobby. Then Second Floor. The box popped open, flat plate inside. I used a thumbnail to open the setscrews. Behind it was a deep, lead-lined box. A revolver rested on a neat stack of bills. 'Put your money in there.'

'That's neat. It has wires running from it and everything.'

'The wires run to the house current. Electromagnetic switches. Like a combination lock. You remember?'

'Hall, lobby, second floor.'

I patted her butt. 'Good girl.'

'If I tell you again, will you pat me some more?'

'Upstairs.'

150

'You ready to go over it again?'

'Honey, I got it down pat.'

'One more time - it's got to be pertect.'

'Okay,' she sighed.

I took the handcuffs from the drawer, hooked one cuff to her right wrist, the other to the back of a chair. She took the long-handled speed key from the desk, holding it in her left hand.

'Go!'

She twisted her wrist, exposing the key slot, slammed the speed key home, twisted it, pulled free.

'Beautiful.'

She stood up. 'I am. A beautiful young girl. Like you taught me.'

151

Late that night. Belle on her knees in front of me, her head bent between my legs. Licking me like a cat cleans her kittens. Thick thatch of hair falling. I felt the beads of the necklace lapping against my thigh.

Her head came up. Whispering in the dark. 'You think it's too much?'

'What?'

'This. The way I am. I'm just like this with you. I swear it.'

'What're you talking about?'

'I want your hands on me - want you inside me. All the time. Everyplace inside me. When you just pat me on the bottom, I get wet.'

'It's your way of dealing with it. Everybody's lying but you and me, Belle. To each other. This all started out with a lie. Some punk lawyer, chumping me off, he thought. And Marques, with his fifty-grand bounty. He probably collected a hundred. Maybe made a side bet about taking the van off the street. I lied to Max to get him out of the way. Mama helped me. McGowan trying to tell me the federales had the massage parlor. Me telling him I'm going to give him the van, and Sally Lou too. There's no letter for him - there never will be. The Mole, he could never tell Michelle he's made a Nazi-hunter out of the boy. Morelli, he thinks there's a story in this for him. Mortay. He's the only one who told the truth.'

His name hung over us in the dark. I could see it. Neon-red, dripping.

'I looked in his eyes. He wasn't lying. He's earned his name. Scared me past death. Till I came out the other