There's others like me. Children of the Secret. Raised by so many different humans. Those who ignored us, those who tortured us. No place to run, so survival becomes all. For us, a religion. Nourished on lies so that we alone know the truth. An army of us. You can't see us, but we find each other. Like a special breed of damaged dog, responding only to the silent whistle.
All things come to those who wait.
Some of us wait in ambush.
Burke isn't my name. It was my mother's, I think. Baby Boy Burke it said on my birth certificate. Weighed 7 pounds 9 ounces, born 3:03 a.m. Mother's age at birth: 16. Father: Unknown. Number of children born alive prior to this birth: None.
I never looked for her, my mother. Never wondered if she believed she was doing the right thing by giving me up.
I have plenty of birth certificates now— you need one to get a passport.
Juan Rodriguez is the name on my driver's license. Juan's a citizen: pays his taxes, contributes to Social Security. He gets a parking ticket, he takes care of it.
Juan owns property too, but nobody knows. A piece of a junkyard in the Bronx— not the Mole's joint, a little slab of dirt not far from Yankee Stadium. The deal is this: The guy who runs it pays me a salary. I endorse the checks and he turns them into cash. Keeps a piece of each check himself for his trouble. Kicks out a W-2 form for me every year, pays the Workmen's Comp, the Unemployment, all that. You can hide your sins, but the IRS will find the paper.
Mama is my bank account. She doesn't pay interest, but she doesn't make bad loans to politically protected looters either, so my money is safe. Most of the cash gets converted into hard currency: gold, diamonds, like that.
In case I have to use one of my passports someday.
33
Pansy's ice-water eyes flickered disappointment as I let myself in. She always looks like that when I'm alone— she was born to war.
The phone on my desk never rings, at least not for me. It's not mine— the Mole wired it up from the loft downstairs. I can call out, as long as I do it early in the morning when the delicate souls who live below me are still sleeping off last night's chemicals. They can sleep easy, subsidized by their parents, immune to the NEA jihad.
I made Pansy and me some breakfast from the scraps in the tiny refrigerator. Drank a little ginger ale to settle my stomach. Smoked a cigarette while Pansy went up to her roof.
Slept through the day.
34
My sleep was full of refracted dreams. Like trying to read through a diamond.
Belle's red Camaro flying at a wedge of police cars. Gunfire. The Camaro pulled to the side of the road. The big girl got out, hands held high. Prison wouldn't hold her.
Flood bouncing a baby on her knee. A fat little baby. Japanese screen in one corner of the room, daylight pouring in. A hand on her shoulder. Not mine.
Strega on my lap, wearing blue jeans and Elvira's
The Prof's voice: 'Nobody knows where he's going, but everybody knows where he's been.'
Candy: 'Take the leash. Feel the power.'
Me standing over Mortay in the construction site, gun in my hand. Blood-lust shredding the fear in me. Asking the wounded death-dancer: 'You still want Max?'
Blossom's face close to mine, covering me with her body, moaning, her copper-estrogen smell filling the shark cage, machine-gun fire in the night.
Lily and Immaculata, walking down the street, each holding one hand of the same little kid, swinging him between them.
I woke up, shaking like the malaria was back.
35
I let Pansy back out to her roof while I took a shower. Dressed slowly, in no rush. Promised Pansy I'd bring her something back from Mama's.
But first, another look. Time to collect a bargaining chip to put on Wolfe's table. I beat the late-afternoon rush-hour traffic out to Queens. Needed daylight to face what I had to do.
The Plymouth rumbled to a stop on the shoulder of the Grand Central, right across from the highway mile marker I remembered from last night. I hit the emergency flashers, positioned the mini hydraulic jack under the frame, pumped the rear end of the big car off the ground, loosened the lug nuts with a T-handled wrench.
I pretended to rummage through the trunk, checking the space around me. Nobody stopped to help— this isn't Iowa. Traffic droned on my left. The jungle waited to my right.
I slipped on a pair of heavy leather gloves. Lined with a thin layer of chain-mail mesh, they'd handle fire or razors. The machete was Velcro'd to the back of the fuel cell, waiting. I took an army blanket-poncho from the trunk, pulled it over my head. One more 360 look around and I was into the jungle.
The leather bag was swinging from the tree, bursting at its seams, the afternoon sun glistening on the hide. It seemed to squirm with life— like a cocoon ready to birth. I climbed the steep slope, reached up. I could just touch the lowest tip— no good. I climbed to higher ground, draped the nylon loop to the machete around my neck, and pulled myself onto the tree. Crawled out a thick limb until I was close enough. Grabbed the rope in one hand and hacked at the knot holding it to the branch. Three hard shots and it came free. I crawled backward off the tree limb, holding the bag in one hand like a fishing line with slimy bait at the end.
I pulled the poncho over my head, wrapped it around the bag.
