Safe House

“Sure.”

“So what did you do for . . . sex?”

“Went steady with my fist.”

“But I heard . . . I mean, if you have sex in prison, it doesn’t make you gay.”

“So?”

“Is that true?”

“Prison’s like the rest of the world. All kinds in there.”

“Is that why you never did it? In there? Because you hate them?”

“Hate who?”

“Gay people?”

I slid my right hand around to the back of her neck. She smiled down at me. I suddenly twisted my hand, shoving her face down into the mattress. I moved to one side, held her down with my right hand while I pressed my left thumb into the base of her spine, hard. I leaned down and put my lips to her ear.

“You like this?” I said softly.

“No! Let me—”

“Rape is rape,” I whispered. “It’s not gay, it’s not straight. I don’t give a good goddamn how people fuck, long as it’s what they want to do, understand?”

“Yes.”

I let her go. She popped up on one elbow. “I didn’t mean anything, honey,” she said, a fake-contrite tone in her voice. “I was just curious.”

“You’ve got a sweet little nose,” I told her. “Just watch where you stick it, okay?”

“You watch,” she giggled.

I pulled away from the hotel an hour later. Winter was against the ropes bleeding, but it refused to go down for the count. That gray day in March, spring was still a whore’s promise—nylons whispering, but no real juice waiting.

I cursed the cold as the Plymouth slid around another corner, its wipers all but surrendering to the leaden sleet sneering down from a sullen sky. The anemic sun had vanished along with Vyra.

The Plymouth was an anonymous drab shark in an ocean of quicker, brighter little fish—all of them darting about, secure in their front-wheel drive, ABS-equipped, foglight-blazing perkiness—at war with glowering pedestrians, all engaged in a mutual ignorance pact when it came to traffic signals. I feathered the throttle, knowing the Plymouth’s stump-puller motor could break the fat rear tires loose in a heartbeat, wishing the guy who had built what he thought was going to be the ultimate New York City taxicab had lived to finish the job.

The meet was set for just off Frankfort Street, under the Brooklyn Bridge. The downtown subway system was a disease incubator in winter, and I’d be damned if I was going to walk in the miserable weather. I hadn’t set the meet up, and I couldn’t change it. When I’d called in, Mama had given me the done-deal message.

“Man call. Say name. Herk Kew Leeze. Say friend. From Upstate.”

Hercules. Big strong good-looking kid. I’d done time with him, years ago. Solid as a railroad spike. And just about as shrewd. He was stand-up all the way. Dead reliable. Inside, those two words intersect a lot. But we couldn’t let him crew up with us on the bricks. The Prof had cast the veto. “Boy can’t go pro,” the little man told us. “Heart don’t count the same as smart.” I’d heard Hercules was heavy-lifting for hire. Not a made man, not even part of an organization. He was a disposable samurai, and whatever he wanted to tell me wouldn’t be good news.

“What did he say, Mama?”

“Say meet. Second shift. Butcher Block. Okay?”

Meaning: did I understand what he meant?—because Mama sure as hell didn’t.

“Sure. It’s all right. I’ll take care of it.”

“You need Max?”

“No, Mama. He’s a friend.”

“I not know him?”

“No.”

“Sure,” Mama said, cutting the connection. I wondered what I’d done this time.

The second shift meant prison time—three in the afternoon to eleven at night. When you set up a must-come meet the way Hercules had, you always give the other guy a wide margin for showing up. The Butcher Block is an abandoned loading dock under the Brooklyn Bridge. It got its name because thieves used to meet there to cut up the swag from the trucks in the nearby Fulton Fish Market. Hercules didn’t know where I lived. Guy like him knows that, he drops by one day, just to say hello. Maybe brings a six-pack. Or the cops.

I slid the Plymouth to a stop on Broadway, just across from the outdoor homeless shelter the politicians call City Hall Park. In another few seconds, the passenger door popped open and the Prof climbed in.

“If it’s Herk’s game, you know it’s lame. Gonna be some motherfucking sorryass shame,” the little man greeted me, his voice sour with disgust.

“You want to pass?” I asked him.

“You know I can’t do that, Schoolboy. Man was with us, right? He took the weight, we got to pay the freight.”

That said it all. We’d hold up our end. Obligation and honor, same thing. But that was no middle-class citizen’s one-way street. What drove us was the certain knowledge that, if we called Hercules from a pay phone in Hell, he’d drop right in.

You can’t buy loyalty like that. But you have to pay what it costs. In installments.

“Where’s Clarence?” I asked him.

“Clarence? That boy don’t have nothing to do with this, whatever it is. He don’t owe, so he don’t go.”

“Fair enough,” I told him, meaning it.

I hooked left just before Vesey Street, doubled back up Park Row, ignored the entrance to the bridge and forked to the right, staying low like I was heading for the FDR. When I spotted the opening, I nosed the Plymouth inside, peering through the windshield.

“I got him,” the Prof said. “Over there.”

A man was approaching the car. A big man with long dark hair, looking even bigger in an ankle-length yellow slicker like traffic cops wear. The Prof jumped out and slipped into the back seat, leaving the front door open, a clear invite. The big man piled in, shaking himself like a damn Saint Bernard, showering me with icy water.

“Burke!” he said, extending his hand to shake.

“Herk,” I greeted him back, my voice low, sending him a message. Which he promptly ignored as soon as he spotted who was in the back seat.

“Prof! Hey, this is great!”

“Be cool, fool,” the Prof told him. “This ain’t no reunion. You got business, right?”

The big man shook his head again. Hard, like he was trying to remember something. Something important. “I’m up against it,” he finally said.

“Spell it out,” I told him.

“There was this girl. . . .”

“Goddamn it, Schoolboy. What’d I tell you? This chump is a bull, and gash is the pull.”

“Easy, Prof. Whatever it is . . .” I let the sentence trail away, turned to Herk, opened my hands in a “Tell-me” gesture.

“There was this girl,” he said again, like he was starting the tape from the beginning. “She was getting . . . stalked, like. You know what I mean?”

“No,” I said, edging my voice just enough to tell him to get on with it.

“Okay. Her boyfriend used to beat on her. All the time. For nothing. Then he’d say he was sorry and she’d