Safe House

“Sure, I know. Let’s just pretend I’m an agent. Your agent. Agents get a cut. Ten percent, right?”

“You want a hundred thousand dollars?”

“Yeah.”

“Done,” he said, no expression on his face.

I handed the parking ticket to the drone at the gate. He made an impatient gesture, waving his hands in aggravation. A small TV set flicked in his booth.

“What?” I asked him. Not friendly—people tend to remember anything unusual.

He pointed at a slot on the outside of the booth. I fed the ticket into the slot. A panel lit up: $4.00. I handed him a five-dollar bill. He managed to overcome his annoyance at me not having exact change long enough to hand me a single. Compared to him, the toll-takers on the bridges were complex mathematicians.

I exited the airport, taking the highway east toward Long Island. Did the same double-back I’d done coming in and picked Max up where I’d dropped him off.

On the way back, he made a series of gestures I hadn’t seen before. It took me a few tries before I got what he was telling me.

In the country, the morning sound of early spring is birds calling. Down here, it’s car alarms screaming their impotence. In either place, only the tourists pay attention.

The sun was bright and strong when I got up, spring’s promise closer to truth now. The refrigerator was empty, so I trudged over to one of those all-night Korean bodegas that pop up so often down here. They usually close just as quick, soon as they find out all the working people disappear after dark. Even the strip bars do most of their business in daylight.

I loaded up heavy on provisions, but Pansy scarfed most of it in one sitting.

When I called in, Mama said, “Girl call. Late.” Meaning earlier that morning.

“Vyra?”

“No. Other girl.”

“Okay. She say what she wanted?”

“Talk to you.”

“Did it go all right?” Crystal Beth asked as soon as she heard my voice on the phone.

“I’ll tell you all about it. Later, okay?”

“When later?”

“Tonight. Around . . . nine?”

“Good. Are you—?”

“You got room there?”

“Room?”

“For a . . . guest. Part of what we’re doing.”

“Sure. As long as she’s—”

“See you then,” I said, thumbing the cellular into silence.

“You wanted another chance,” I told him. “This is it.”

“Be a rat? That’s your fucking idea of another chance?”

“This isn’t being a rat, Herk. It’s like being a . . .” I searched for the word “. . . spy. Like behind enemy lines, during a war.”

“Dropping a dime is still—”

“This isn’t dropping a dime, okay? What we got is a bunch of lunatic motherfuckers planning to blow up some buildings, kill a whole bunch of people. The Man already knows about them. They been penetrated to the max. The Man already has a guy inside. Only thing is, he’s one of them, see?”

“One of who?” Herk asked. A reasonable question.

“One of the Nazis. Now, he’s a rat, see what I’m saying? Those are his boys. And he’s gonna dime them, just like you said. You know how it works. The Man’s gonna give him a free pass. New face, new ID, new everything. We play this right, that’s yours. Instead of his, yours.”

“Oh man, I ain’t doing no Witness Protection—”

“You’re not gonna be a witness, Herk. This isn’t about testimony. And you’re not gonna be in the Program either. You’re not gonna have a PO, nobody to report to. You get all the new stuff, a little bit of cash to get you started, and then you’re on your own.”

“What about the guy I—?”

“Forget that. It’s gonna be covered, all right? The Man won’t be looking for you. Not for Hercules, not for the new guy, whoever that’s gonna be. You, I mean.”

“Burke, I dunno. . . .”

“Listen, Herk. This all started with . . . you know. Okay, let’s say you slide on that beef. So what? Where are you? Back where you was, right? Nowhere. This here is what you said you wanted. Another chance. What you got going here that’s so fucking great?”

“Nothing, I guess. But . . .”

“You’re going back to the joint,” I told him. “Sure as hell, that’s where you’re going. You got no job, no trade, a long record. What do you know how to do except fuck people up? And you don’t even like to do that. You go back to the street, the wiseguys are gonna use you until the Man takes you down. You pull this off, you can be a gardener, right? Find yourself a greenhouse somewhere out west maybe. Start fucking over.”

He paced the little room, listening to me. Then he finally snapped to what he was doing—practicing for his next bit, already boxed up in an eight-by-ten in his mind. When he looked over at me, I said: “It’s a dice-roll, partner. You throw a few naturals, you make your point and catch it, you’re golden. You’re crap out, and it’s over. One way or the other, you go into this, you don’t come out the same.”

“Those books you gave me? The last time you was here? I gotta, like, memorize all that?”

“No. Not word for word. But you heard it all before, right?”

“I guess. . . .”

“Sure you did,” I encouraged him. “Inside. Plenty of guys were into that.”

“And I gotta cut my hair?”

“Why?”

“Look like one of them skinhead motherfuckers, right?”

“Nah. You go in the way you are, Herk. You look like a fucking Viking anyway—it’ll be perfect.”

“You’d be like . . . around?”

“Not in there with you. But I’d be like your . . . coach, okay? There’s stuff we have to find out first, but we don’t have much time, Herk. If you don’t wanna do it, that’s okay. I got some cash here. Right with me. Say the word and you’re in the wind.”

“Burke . . .”

“What?”

“You’re right, bro. Fuck it, I ain’t goin’ back Inside. Let’s do it.”

I parked Herk in Mama’s. The Prof was already there. He’d handle the first round of coaching. Pryce was going to call Crystal Beth around midnight, so I fired up the Plymouth and headed over