False Allegations

'Ah, it's my fat bum he wants tonight,' Bondi said, an ugly edge on her voice. 'I never liked that one.'

'What difference—?'

'I know how I can do it,' she said, suddenly sitting up in the bed. 'I know what would square it. How I can get him. Right now.'

'Bondi…'

'Will you help me, honey?'

'I'm not going over—'

'No,' she said softly, her lips to my ear. 'I know a better way. Please…'

When the mini–blinds opened a few minutes later, whoever was watching saw Bondi's last performance. She put everything she had into it, doing it all.

Only this time, she had a co–star.

'You pick up the stuff?' I said into the cellular. It was about four–thirty in the morning. The city was still dark through the windshield of the Plymouth as I worked the West Side Highway downtown.

'Made the call, got it all,' the Prof came back. 'Heavy package too. When you need it?'

'Couple of hours, if that's okay. I need something else too: a triangle. At the park bench. Can you do it?'

'I can do two, that's always true. But has the third heard?'

'I can do that part, I think.'

'What time does it rhyme, bro?'

'I made it for seven. Got to shade it at least a half hour.'

'How many for breakfast?'

'One. Better be one. Any more than that, it's a red zone, got it?'

'Dead and buried, Schoolboy. What's the rules? Got to keep hands showing, what?'

'It's not like that. Just watch, okay?'

'Yeah. One person you said. Looks like….what?'

'A woman. Big woman. And she'll be limping.'

I got hold of Mama, wondering for the thousandth time if she ever slept. And where. She said she'd get Max to the spot in plenty of time. The Mongolian would eyeball Clarence and the Prof first, then he'd fit himself into the triangle.

Pansy was glad to see me. And overjoyed at the cold filet mignon Bondi insisted I take from her refrigerator. 'I'm not one to let good food go to waste, honey. And when he comes over here, he's not gonna find anything except the bare walls, I promise you. And I plan to leave him a little something there too,' she said grimly, an uncapped red lipstick in her right hand.

It didn't take us long to say goodbye. Sharing secrets doesn't always make you close.

I took a quick shower, changed my clothes, checked with Mama to make sure Max got the message. Almost six by then. Time to start my walk.

Battery Park is a pocket of green at the very southern tip of Manhattan, on the far side of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. The bench we always use faces out toward the Hudson River. There's a couple of ways to get to it, but no cover for the approach. And watching is real easy down here. At seven in the morning, you still got joggers and bikers and lurkers and drunks and wrongly discharged mental patients and drug dealers and the occasional tourist killing time until they open the ferry to the Statue of Liberty—no way to tell who's who no matter how suspicious you might be.

I was in place by six forty–five. Had the bench to myself, so I didn't have to pull any of the various disgusting moves in my considerable repertoire to clear the space. I thought Clarence and the Prof would be working their shoeshine routine, but I couldn't spot either of them. Even if someone else could, they wouldn't see hardware. Clarence isn't just fast; he's magic. One second you see his hand, the next, it's full of nine–millimeter heat—like the pistol just materialized.

Max was easier. He was standing right by the water's edge, performing a slow–motion kata, a lengthy one that looked like t'ai chi if you didn't know much about it. Passersby watched him with mild curiosity—the routine wasn't interesting enough to make them stop and didn't look threatening enough to make them hurry past.

On the back of one of the other benches, graffiti–splattered in bright yellow: SCHIZOPHRENICS ARE NEVER ALONE!

She came up the path a couple of minutes before seven, gimping along slow but steady, a black walking stick in her left hand and a white leather purse that looked like a horse's feedbag slung over the opposite shoulder. She was wearing a hot–pink sweatsuit, her body back in harness underneath. Her breasts jutted like heavy weapons, not a trace of jiggle anywhere. She halted a few feet from me, tentative, making sure she caught my eye. I nodded, not greeting her, just acknowledging her presence. She came over to the bench, raised her pencil–line black eyebrows. I took a deliberate glance at a spot next to me, still not talking.

She turned her back to me and sat down butt–first, the way you get into a low–riding sports car. Then she unslung the purse, put it gently on the wood bench between us.

'That's yours,' she said.

'For what?'

'For nothing. I mean, not for doing anything. It's an apology, that's all. Go ahead, take a look.'

'I don't have X–ray eyes,' I said. 'And I don't open strange packages myself.'

She nodded as if that made sense. Reached down and pulled the zipper on the bag, using two hands to hold it wide open, like she was spreading the jaws of a giant clam. I looked inside. Banded cash. A lot of it.

'Twenty–five thousand dollars,' she said, looking at her hands in her lap. A big diamond glittered on her left hand. An engagement ring? 'Hundred–dollar bills,' she said. 'Used bills, no consecutive serial numbers.'

'That's a big apology.'

'I fucked up big time. Twenty of it's for you, five for the whore.'

'The whore?'

'You know who I mean. Bondi, whatever her name is.'

'And she's a whore?'

Her orange eyes caught the early morning light. 'I did a stupid thing, but I'm not stupid,' she said. 'The research wasn't wrong, I was.'

'So…?'

'So I know what she does. For money.'

'I do things for money too.'

'Would you let somebody fuck you for money?'

'Meaning you wouldn't?'

'No. I wouldn't. I would never do that. It's wrong.'

'So you don't just punch people out, you're a goddamned judge too?'

'If you like.'

'No, I don't like. I don't like you. A woman takes money for sex, she's no good according to you, right? But you, you want to do some bodywork on me, bang me around, scare me into doing something you want…that's okay?'

'I said I was wrong.'

'No, bitch. You said you guessed wrong, that's all. It worked for you before, didn't it?'

'What?'

'Slapping people around.'

'You chipped a bone in my ankle,' she said, a little–girl undertone to her voice. 'It hurt, what you did.'

'You hurt yourself,' I told her. Thinking of an ancient aikido master standing in a dojo years before, talking to a student who was moaning and holding his broken hand, telling him it was the student's desire to hurt another that caused him so much pain.

'I cop to it, okay?' she said flatly. 'When you do something wrong, all you can do is apologize and take what's coming to you.'