We smoked in silence for a minute.
The other guy made a face. 'You ought to start working out,' he said to Davidson. 'Give up those weeds.'
'I can kick your ass on the basketball court,' Davidson sneered at him.
'Please! You got to be fifty pounds overweight.'
'A little bulk's good for you.' Davidson truly believes that. His son is two years old— kid looks like a sumo wrestler.
The drug lawyer shot his cuffs, looked at his watch. Total self-absorption was the one commitment he never failed to keep. 'I was thinking…maybe being married isn't such a bad thing. Ever since I got divorced…this AIDS thing…really puts a damper on your social life. You ever read the Personal ads…like in the
'No,' Davidson said.
'I read them all the time,' I told him.
'Yeah? You think it's a good idea?'
'What?'
'Putting an ad in…maybe meet something really good?'
I shrugged.
'You ever met anybody you wanted to meet that way?'
'Sure,' I said.
Davidson smiled. He knows what I do.
The guy rubbed his chin. 'The wording…that's tricky. I mean, you don't want to say too much, but…'
'I got the ad for you,' I told him.
He looked up, waiting.
'Got a pencil?'
He whipped out a fat Montblanc pen, like doctors use to write prescriptions.
'Take this down: Woman wanted. Disease-free. Self-lubricating. Short attention span.'
His face went blotchy-red. Davidson raised his hand above his head. His silent partner looked up from a law book, slapped him a high-five. The drug lawyer gave me what he thought was a hard look and walked out.
I ground out my smoke. Handed Davidson a business card. Mitchell Sloane. Private Investments. Address, phone number, fax number too. Clean engraved printing, very classy. The address and the numbers were Davidson's.
'I need a corporation formed,' I told him. 'Just like it says on the card.'
'How long is this corporation going to be in business?'
'A month, maybe two. No more.'
'You need a sign on the door?'
'I thought, maybe a nice brass plaque.'
'Un-huh. And the phones?'
'The number on the card, I can bounce it to anywhere I want. Say to one of your dead-end lines?'
'I'll have Glenda pick it up during business hours. You want a tape on the machine for evenings and weekends?'
'Yeah.'
He spread his palm out before me. Five. I counted out the cash.
'It's done,' he said. 'Glenda will sweep the tapes every morning when she comes in, okay?'
'Okay. You licensed to practice in Indiana?'
'I'll get a local guy to do the paperwork,' he said. Davidson took cases all over the country.
We shook hands. He was dictating the incorporation memo as I walked out the door.
18
BACK AT THE office, I tried to hustle Pansy into a vacation at the Mole's junkyard. She acted like she didn't know what I was talking about, so I let her out to her roof while I fixed her a snack. A half gallon of honey vanilla ice cream with a couple of handfuls of graham crackers mixed in. It was waiting for her when she ambled downstairs. Lasted about as long as a politician's promise. It would end up being worth the same too. The beast prowled a step behind me as I went through the place throwing everything I'd need into an airline-size bag.
It's easy enough to beat the scanners they use in the security corridors at the airport, but I was traveling clean.
A handful of loose change spilled on the floor. Pansy snarfed at it experimentally. I let her play with the coins. I wouldn't even tell a dog to drop a dime.
19
TERRY OPENED the gate for me at the junkyard. It seemed like he was bigger every time I saw him. He wouldn't have a kid's body much longer. His eyes hadn't been a child's even when I found him. When he was for rent on the streets.
The dog pack swirled around Terry, growling and snapping, eyes down. Waiting. Simba bounced into the circle, his ears up, tail rigid as a flagpole behind him. 'Simba-witz!' I greeted the beast. He ignored me, eyes pinning Pansy. The Neapolitan watched him from her higher perch, calm as stone if you didn't know her. But I saw the hair on the back of her neck bristle and felt her tail swish rhythmically against my leg. Terry jumped on the hood of the Plymouth and I pressed the gas. Some of the pack yapped after us, but Simba stood rooted, confident that he had faced down the new arrival without bloodshed.
I followed the path Terry pointed out, planted the Plymouth in a spot between two gutted yellow cabs. I gave Pansy the signal and she didn't protest when Terry came close. We walked the rest of the way to the Mole's bunker.
'I'll get him,' the kid said, disappearing down the tunnel, leaving me outside with my dog.
'You'll be okay for a couple weeks, girl,' I told her. 'You've been here before, remember?' She growled an acknowledgment, not bitching about it.
The Mole shambled up to us, seating himself on the cut-down oil drum he uses for a deck chair. Greeted me the same way he answers his phone…by waiting for someone to speak.
'Mole, I got to go away for a while. An old buddy of mine got himself in a jackpot in Indiana. You can keep Pansy for me…let me leave the Plymouth here too?'
'Okay.'
'The Prof will be calling you. Once a day, all right? I need to get a message to him, I'll leave it with you.'
'Okay.'
'You working on anything?' I asked. Just to give him room— I couldn't understand the stuff he does if I had another life sentence to study it.
'The Mole's teaching me about heavy water,' the kid piped up.
'I'm sure your mother will be pleased,' I said to the kid, giving the Mole an opening.
'Michelle called you?' he asked.
'Mole, you know the deal. She said she was going to Denmark. That's a name, a name for what she wants done. Not a place. She could be in Europe, could be down to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. She'll call when she's coming home. You know that.'
'I get letters,' the kid said. Proudly.
Michelle, the beautiful transsexual hooker. The slickest hustler I ever knew. The woman who made Terry her son. The strange, lovely woman who danced for years with the Mole. Never touching. But she'd never change partners. When I was coming up, I always wanted a big sister. Big sisters, they taught you to dance, told you how to act around girls, stepped into the street for you when it came to that. Showed up on visiting days when you were locked down. Sold whatever they had to pay for lawyers. Little sisters, they were nothing but grief. You had to jump in anyone's face who messed with them. And their girlfriends, by the time they were old enough for you to play with, your little sister didn't bring them home after school. They'd get married, get beat up by their husbands. More
