'I don't care. I could take him. He couldn't do anything to me…he's too little.'
'He'd try, Lily. When he got the signal, he'd try.'
'We could use the time,' Storm put in. Her parents must have picked her name because she was always so calm. 'Luke will need a defense when he comes in, Lily. He needs to see a psychiatrist, maybe a couple of them.'
'He wouldn't go to jail,' I added.
We left it like that. Nothing settled.
58
I felt it as soon as I hit the street— an inversion in the atmosphere. Heavy air, ozone-clogged. Muggy, with a bone-chill core. Like in prison, just before the race wars came. You felt it in the corridors, on the tiers. In the blocks, on the yard. Skin color the flag, any target an opportunity. The Man would feel it too, but the joint wouldn't get locked down until they had a high enough body count.
I walked in the opposite direction from where I'd left the Plymouth, heading for the subway. Maybe it was just the neighborhood. Something going down, nothing to do with me.
Early afternoon, subway traffic was light. I scanned the car, pretending to read the posters. All the services of the city: AIDS counseling, abortions. Cures for acne, hemorrhoids, and hernias. Food stamps, Lotto, 970 numbers, party lines. Another promised you could
When I came up for air at Fifty-ninth Street, it felt the same. Not the neighborhood, then.
I turned into a little gourmet supermarket, wandered the aisles, watching. A woman in a cashmere sweater- dress with a gold chain for a belt searched out a can of politically correct tuna. A guy in a dark blue suit over a striped shirt, port-wine tie with matching suspenders made the same two turns I did. I stepped to one side and he rolled past, his eyes linked to the gold chain.
Back outside. Streets thick with stragglers from lunchtime, shoppers. Crowds have a rhythm. You move through them the way you match your breathing to the sleeper next to you. Find the pattern and merge. I entered the stream, blending.
Lexington Avenue. I flowed with the clot, ignoring the traffic lights. A man on the sidewalk, younger than me, squatting on a piece of cardboard, a huge glass bottle like they use in water coolers next to him, some coins and a bill visible at the bottom. Sign propped up next to the bottle, something about Homeless. Humans passed him by. I did too. Took a couple of quick steps past. Whirled, like I'd changed my mind, reaching into my pocket for some change.
A dark-skinned black man in a black suit backed into a doorway just as my eyes came up. A fat white man was coming out and they bumped. The black man saw me watching and took off, running in the opposite direction. I ran to the street, saw a cab parked at the curb. Jumped onto the trunk, falconing from the high ground. Saw the black suit disappear into the front seat of a black sedan. Lexington Avenue is one-way, they had to go right past me. I stayed where I was. Every car that passed me by stared at the man standing on the cab. Except the sedan, a Chevy Caprice, one of those two-ton jobs with the rear fenders extending halfway down the tires. When it rolled by my post, the driver was staring straight ahead. And the passenger seat was empty.
59
A cab pulled to the curb, its hood popped open just a crack, latched in place to cool the engine. I jumped in, told the driver to head downtown. The driver didn't speak much English— I had the same problem with the No Smoking sign. Rolling downtown along Broadway, I started sorting it out.
Just before we hit Herald Square a bike messenger sliced in from one of the side streets as the cab in front of us was changing lanes. They T-boned and the messenger went down. Traffic stopped…for the red light. The bike was a twisted piece of metal tubing— the messenger had blood running down his calf, just below the bicycle pants. The cabdriver got out, started inspecting his hack for damage. The messenger unwrapped a heavy length of chain from the bike, started limping toward the cab. The driver jumped back inside, took off just as the chain smashed through his back window.
People watched as the bashed-in cab jumped the light, squeaking across the intersection to the blare of horns. The messenger stood in the street, swinging his chain. I heard sirens behind us.
The light turned green and we took off.
I caught a subway at Eighteenth Street, picked up my car, checked it over. Nobody had been playing with it. I drove carefully to Mama's, watching for heavy Chevys.
60
Ten days. I cut it shorter with Lily, leaving myself a margin. There's always an edge— sometimes it's not sharp.
I went through Mama's kitchen, took my booth in the back. She was at her register. I caught her eye, held my fist to my ear, telling her I had to make some calls.
First to SAFE. They called Immaculata to the phone.
'It's me. Is Max around?'
'Yes.'
'Ask him to take a look around. Outside.'
'For what?'
'Watchers.'
'I understand.'
Another quarter in the slot. Like Atlantic City, except nobody called me sir.
Jacques came on the line.
'You know my voice?'
