'And come up empty?'
Another nod.
'So you want me to take a shot?'
Her generous mouth wrinkled at one corner. 'Was that a pun?'
She was quiet for a while. I felt the grid beneath the tires on the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. Max was going straight up Queens Boulevard to the courthouse.
'You think people really worship the devil?' Wolfe asked. 'Sure. It's the perfect religion— you fuck up, you go to heaven.' Her rich laugh filled the cab.
139
The rolling blindfold slowed to a stop. Max rapped twice on the barrier to let us know we'd arrived. Wolfe gathered her purse. The back door opened on my side. Her hand touched my forearm.
'Don't take this the wrong way, okay? All this…the way you are…did you ever see a psychiatrist?'
'Yeah. One of them owed a guy I know some money once. Her smile came. 'Don't take this the wrong way either,' she whispered. Kissed me softly on the cheek.
She didn't look back.
140
Max drove us to the junkyard. The Mole wasn't around. Terry gave me back my Plymouth. I told him Luke loved the puppy, told him her new name.
Max didn't communicate all the way back. Inside himself. I dropped him off at the warehouse. He stood there in the shadows, holding me with his eyes. Finally, he gestured like he was shuffling a pack of cards. Dealt them out around an imaginary table. Pointed at himself, face set an concrete lines.
I nodded.
He bowed, sealing the pact.
141
Still early, but I went back to the office. I could make a call, see if the Central Park lady wanted to have dinner. Or take a drive, pick up Bonita, bend her over the convertible couch in her living room, try and get lost in it. Come and go.
Thought about getting lost in it. What I'd lose if I did.
I kicked back, lit a cigarette. Watched the smoke drift toward the ceiling. Why had Wolfe mentioned Silver to me? The Prof had sent me to him, a long time ago. When we were all inside.
'Listen and learn, schoolboy,' he said. 'Silver knows the play, the old way, see? He's a quality thief— good gunfighter too, way I heard it.'
'A hit-man?'
'No, fool. I said gunfighter, not gunman.'
'What's the difference?'
'A gunfighter, the other guy has one too.'
We were talking quietly on the yard, Silver telling me a secret in his hard-sad voice. 'I don't mess with the sissies in here. They're like bitches on the street, get you into a knife fight in a minute. My wife's picture's in my house— I jack off to it every night, looking at her. These other guys, they do it to girls in the skin magazines. Those ain't real people— they don't know those girls. Me, I'm making love to my wife. To Helene. Those other guys, they're just playing with themselves.'
Like I was with Bonita.
Silver did his time, counting the days. Never made trouble for anyone. Someone went in his cell, stole his wife's picture. Anyone could have done it, prison's like that. If it hadn't turned out to be a black guy, Silver might have turned out different himself.
The Prof tried to ease it down. Told Silver it was just a picture— his wife would send him another one. Told the thief, Horace his name was, a rapist, told Horace he was risking a shank in the back for nothing. Even volunteered to handle the transfer himself
Horace had a better way, he thought. Got himself an African name, joined some crew.
I filled out the pass for Horace to report to the psychiatrist. Silver was waiting for him in the corridor. He was only going to cut him, but Horace had a blade too.
Silver got cut. Horace got dead.
Blood on the institutional green concrete walls, drying to an abstract painting only a convict could interpret.
When Horace's crew came after Silver, he went the only place he could.
A white supremacist, Wolfe called him. An assassin. He was doing better than me. Even locked up, he had his love.
142
Things went back to the way they'd been. A few days later, Lily gave me a thick envelope. From Wolfe. Whatever she had was in there. Wasn't much, and her people would already have worked it to death.
I was in a Manhattan courtroom. One of the motion parts. They were supposed to bring Silver over from the jail, some kind of bullshit bail application. A farce— they wouldn't cut him loose.
A halfass defense attorney was in front of the bench, babbling something about the Constitution. Roland was his name, a certified dummy. He'd been an ADA once, a stone incompetent Plenty of guilty men walking the streets
