closed. Bonita on her knees, facing away from me, looking back over her shoulder, admiring the dimples over her heart-shaped butt. Her body still gleamed from oil and sweat.
A long time ago, I had a girlfriend. A poet, she was. 'I can always see the end of everything,' she told me. Explaining why she cried when we had sex.
Things don't end for me, they loop. Same stage, new players. A homing pigeon released from a poisonous coop, hung up in the sky. Waiting for them to open the door again. Watchful for hawks.
I thought about Blossom. So truly beautiful a woman it was a pleasure just to watch her dress in the morning. How even her sweat was blonde. A flash of pink in the night before a sex-sniper went down. Hard innocence.
Fresh and new. But only for me. No plastic slipcovers on her soul.
I thought about promises.
Down here, innocent doesn't mean naive. It means Not Guilty.
Bonita was telling me something about moving to another place. A place of her own. Where we'd have more privacy. But money was tight. If she could just swing the first couple of months' rent and security…licking at her lips, like the idea made her hot.
Knocking at her door, I'd wondered why I'd come. Soon as I had, I wondered again.
I closed my eyes. Not sleepy. Tired.
169
Heat boiled asphalt and tempers, the summer sun fried dreams. Gunfire rattled the windows of high-rise slums from Brooklyn to the Bronx. A teenager shot a boy his own age in Harlem. 'It was about a diss,' he told the cops.
Another teenager was stabbed to death on the subway. On his way home from his part-time job. His neck chain and bracelet were taken. 'I begged him not to wear his gold on the train,' his father told the TV reporter.
On Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, I came out of a storefront off another cold trail, hit the sidewalk. A white Cadillac at the curb, its flanks scored with gouges from a vandal's key. An old woman walked by, saw me looking, made a sad sound with her lips. 'You cain't keep nothin' nice in this city no more,' she said, moving on.
170
I chased dead trails. Followed a rumor about a safe house for pedophile priests. Where they take them for therapy until the heat's off And put them right back in another parish, never saying a word to the congregation.
If there's a devil, he's laughing at this new way to recycle garbage. And if there's a God, somebody should sue him for malpractice.
171
I took a puddle-jumper plane up to Marcy, the state joint for the criminally insane. Sat in the visiting room listening to a psychopath who'd dissected a kid with an electric knife tell me he knew how to find any devil- worshiper in the country. Just get him out, he'd lead me right to the people I was chasing. I told him I couldn't do that…but maybe I could pull some strings, get some time cut off his sentence. He smirked at me— he wasn't that crazy.
172
Showed the mug shots around, asked everyone. Drew blanks at every turn. I rattled every cage I could think of, but all I got back was the snarl of beasts.
173
It was eight days before he called. Mama answered, told him I wasn't around. He wouldn't leave a message, just said to make sure I was there, same time tomorrow. Said to have her tell me it was my friend calling.
He called the next day. Heard my voice, said an address into the phone, hung up.
174
That should have wrapped it.
I waited for Max to show up, got in the car, went over to Lily's. I was going to give her the address, let her deal with Wolfe, stand back.
But when I got to SAFE, Lily took me into a back room without me saying a word.
'I got it,' I started to tell her.
'It doesn't matter. Not now.'
'Why?'
'There's parts I don't know. Wolfe said to meet her. She wants to tell you herself.'
175
I called Wolfe. Followed instructions. Almost daylight when I pulled into her driveway. She opened the door, already dressed for work, makeup in place.
'You want coffee?'
'No, thanks.'
'I'll just finish mine, then, okay?'
'Sure.'
She sat at a round wood table, sipping from a white china mug. The ashtray next to her had a couple of lipsticked butts in it already, scraps of phone messages at her elbow. The Rottweiler curled at her feet, face on the floor between his paws, looking like a fatalist.
'I got their address,' I told her.
'I know. I knew you would. It's no go.'
