And all my tapes are the blues.
Kids can't sing the blues; when they try, it sounds wrong. They have the pain, but not the range.
We rolled over the Triboro to the Bronx. The kid watched as I tossed a token into the basket in the Exact Change lane. Learning. Don't call attention to yourself. When we pulled up to the junkyard, Terry made a circle with his finger. Go around to the back.
The back fence was heavy-gauge cyclone mesh, with three twisted bands of razor wire running across the top. Everything was two-tone: pollution-gray and rust.
A big dog the same color as the fence was basking in a patch of late-afternoon sunlight. His lupine face was impassive as we approached, but his ears stood straight up. Yellow eyes tracked the car, locking onto the target like a heat-seeking missile. An American Junkyard Dog. Best of a breed the American Kennel Club never imagined. City wolf.
I pulled the car parallel to the fence, Terry's door closest to the dog. The beast growled deep in his chest. Dark shapes moved behind the fence. Dots of light and flashes of white. Eyes and teeth, both ready.
'Tell the Mole Michelle has his money.'
'Okay, Burke.'
Terry climbed out of the Plymouth, flipped the door closed behind him. Walked over to the dog, talking in a low voice. The beast walked over to meet him. Terry scratched the dog behind his ear, standing next to him. I knew the dog wouldn't move until I did, so I wheeled the car in a tight circle, heading back the way I came. When I looked back, Terry was down on all fours, following the dog through a cutout section of the fence. He had to twist sideways to get in.
16
It was dark by the time I turned into the narrow street behind the old paper-tube factory where I have my office. The garage is set into the building just past the sidewalk. When the landlord converted the joint into living lofts, he bricked up the old loading bay, where the trucks used to pull in, to make room for storefronts. The garage only has room for one car, right at the end of a row of little shops. I pulled in, hit the switch; the door rattled down, leaving me in darkness. I locked the car, took the steel steps up four flights, walking quietly past the entrance to each hallway. The doors lock from the outside and I keep them that way. There's another flight of stairs at the far end of each floor. If there's a fire, the tenants know which way to go.
When I got to the top floor, I let myself into the hall. I closed the door behind me. It looked like a blank wall.
There's no sign on my door. My name's not on the directory downstairs. As far as the tenants know, the fifth floor is sealed off. Most of it is.
I don't have a lease. I don't pay rent. The landlord's son did something very stupid a few years ago. The landlord is a rich man, and he spent the right money in the right places. The kid has a new name, a new face, and a new life. Home free. Until I found him. I wasn't looking for the little weasel, but I knew who was. They still are.
It's not a home, it's where I live for now. When the time comes I have to leave, I won't look back. I'll take everything I need with me.
And when I walk away, there won't even be a fingerprint left for them to play with.
17
I turned the key, listening to the bolts snap back. Three dead bolts: one into the steel frame on the side, another at the top, the final one directly into the floor. The hall's too narrow for a battering ram. By the time anyone broke in, I'd have long enough to do anything I needed to do.
Another key for the doorknob. I turned it twice to the right and once to the left, and stepped inside.
'It's me, Pansy,' I said to the monster sitting in the middle of the dark room.
The monster made a noise somewhere between a snarl and a growl. A Neapolitan mastiff, maybe 140 pounds of muscle and bone, topped with a head the size of a cannonball and just about as thick. So dark she was almost black, Pansy blended into the room like a malevolent shadow, teeth shielded, cold-water eyes unflickering. Pansy can't handle complex thoughts. She wasn't sure if she was glad to see me or sorry she wasn't going to get to tear some flesh. Then she smelled the Chinese food and the issue was settled. The snarl changed to a whine, and slobber poured from her jaws. I threw her the hand signal for 'Stay!' and hit the light switch.
The office is one small room. Desk facing the door, one chair behind, one in front. No windows. Couch against one wall. To the left, there's another door, leading to the office where my secretary works. The door's a fake. So's the secretary. The other wall is covered with a Persian rug that never got closer to Iran than 14th Street. The floor is covered with Astroturf. I told my decorator I wanted low-maintenance modern.
I pulled the rug aside and stepped into another room, even smaller than the office. Tiny stand-up shower I installed myself, sink and toilet in one corner. Hot plate and refrigerator in another. A cot between them. The back door opens out to a landing. The fire escape rusted off years ago.
I opened the back door, calling for Pansy, and stepped out to the landing. Watched the Hudson River slime- flow to the west, patting my dog's head as she stood next to me. Three rooms, with view.
Pansy ambled past me, taking the stairs to the roof. She's been dumping her loads up there for years. There's stuff growing on the roof I don't even want to think about.
Pansy came back downstairs as I was putting away the food Mama packed for me. I pulled a big slab of roast pork from a container, held it in front of her. Every fiber of her dim brain focused on that pork. An icicle of drool formed in one corner of her gaping mouth, but she didn't move. She wouldn't take the food until she heard the magic word. It's called poison-proofing.
'Speak!' I yelled at her, tossing the slab of pork in a gentle arc toward her face. It didn't last as long as a politician's promise. I tried a big fat egg roll. One chomp, and Pansy was swallowing in ecstasy, pieces of egg roll all over the floor. 'You're a slob,' I told her. She nodded happily.
Pansy's food-supply system is against the wall. A pair of hollowed-out cement cinder blocks with a forty- pound sack of dry dog food suspended above one and a tube connected to the sink above the other. When either bowl is empty, she pushes against the tube with her snout and it fills again.
I filled a big ceramic bowl with three quarts of Mama's cooking and told her to make a pig of herself. She buried her face up to the eyes in the steaming mess making noises Stephen King never dreamed of. I threw some of the marrow bones into a pot and put them on the hot plate to boil.
I went inside to my desk. It was almost seven-thirty, and the woman Mama had spoken to said to call before nine. There was a phone on my desk. It never rang, and I never got a bill from Ma Bell - the Mole had it connected to the trust-fund hippies who lived downstairs. I could use it early in the morning, when the sensitive artists were still recovering from trying to find the light at the end of the marijuana tunnel they'd explored the night before, but not otherwise.
I'd had the phone for years. No problems. I never used it for long-distance calls. That's why God made other people's credit cards.
The office looked the same way it always does. I don't get clients coming here much. The last one was Flood. The day I let her in, she came in too deep. I lit a cigarette, not wanting to think about the chubby little blonde head-hunter. She came into my life, got what she came for, and left me empty.
I didn't want to think about Flood. She came too often in my sleep. 'I'm for you, Burke,' I can still hear her saying. The way only a woman can say. And only say it once, if it's the truth.
It was.
Part of the full bloom I was still waiting for.
I went out to make my phone call.
18
