Safe House

One good thing about Red Hook, you never have to go far to find some privacy. I docked the dark-green Volvo sedan next to one of the piers, backing in carefully so I could spot any visitors. I didn’t expect cops—even when the weather is warm and the piers are crawling with longshoremen, the rollers working the pad know the money men only come out in daylight.

Porkpie was in the front bucket seat, Max right behind him, one hand on the weasel’s neck. Max’s hands are hard autobiographies: big leather-colored maps of seamed scar tissue with callused ridges of horn along the knife- edges—flesh-and-bone sledgehammers with bolt-cutters for fingers. Porkpie couldn’t see the hand, but he could feel it, the fingers pressing his carotid artery, thumb hooked just under his Adam’s apple. What he could see was the pistol in my gloved left hand, held at my waist, pointed at his crotch.

“Open the glove compartment,” I told him softly.

“Burke, I . . .”

“Open it, Porkpie.”

He pushed the button and the door came down. In the light from the tiny bulb he could see the coil of piano wire. And the barber’s straight razor with its mother-of-pearl handle.

“We wrap your hands and your ankles in the wire,” I told him. “We got a couple of car batteries in the trunk for the weight. Then I take the razor and open you up so you don’t float, understand?”

“Jesus! Don’t . . .”

“It’s a hell of a way to die,” I said. “But you tell us quick, I’ll do you a solid, okay? I’ll put a slug in your head first, so you don’t feel nothing.”

His stink filled the front seat.

“There’s only one way out,” I said, breathing through my mouth.

“Anything,” he blubbered. “Just tell me, I’ll—”

“You got Hercules to do a job for you. The girl, the one this guy was threatening, she yours?”

“No. No, man. I don’t know her. I ain’t never even seen her.”

“So somebody paid you, right?”

“Right. It was just—”

“Shut up, punk. Just answer what I ask you. Who paid you? And what was the job?”

“I don’t know her name. Honest to God, Burke! She found me in Rollo’s. Said it was her sister, that girl. The one this guy was—”

“Don’t make me tell you again,” I said. “I don’t want to hear your stories. How much was the job?”

He hesitated. I nodded to Max. Porkpie spasmed in his seat, his spinal fluid turned to liquid pain. “I don’t like this part,” I told him. “I’d rather ice you right now than keep hurting you, understand?”

“Yesss . . .”

“How much was the job?”

“Five grand.”

“And you were supposed to do . . . what?”

“Just scare the guy. Like, spook him, you know? Run him off.”

“Not total him?”

“You crazy? I ain’t no hit man.”

“That’s right, punk: you ain’t.”

“Burke, listen to me. Please. If I was gonna have Herk do him, would I go along? I didn’t know nothing until he comes charging back to the car. I . . .”

“That’s enough,” I told him. The smell of truth came right through the stench. Porkpie didn’t have the cojones to be anywhere within a mile of a killing, even as the wheelman. “Describe her.”

“I told you—I never even seen her, not once.”

“The woman who paid you, Porkpie. Her.”

“Oh. She’s some kinda Chink.”

“Chinese?”

“I don’t fucking know, man. Something like that. Small. She had a hat on, with one of them veil things, black, like they wear at funerals.”

“What did she call herself?”

“She didn’t say no name, man. Just asked me, could I get it done? I told her the price. She paid me. That’s all. I never seen her again.”

“But she gave you a phone number.”

“No, I swear it! Nothing. I didn’t need to talk to her—she paid me the whole thing up front.”

“So how come you didn’t stiff her? Just take the cash and walk?”

“She said she could find me again. I . . . believed her, like.”

“You believe I can find you again, Porkpie?”

“Yeah. I know your rep.”

“You know who’s holding your neck? That’s Max the Silent. You know his rep?” I asked him gently.

He shuddered a reply.

“I’m gonna trust you,” I lied. “We’re gonna let you slide on this. You take the car. Drive it anywhere you want and leave it there. But don’t fuck around with it—it’s hot. Understand?”

“Sure. I mean—”

“Ssssh,” I said, holding my right finger to my lips. “You get popped dumping the car, that’s your problem. I can find you in jail, Porkpie. You know I can. You’d be easy in there. This is your last chance. That woman calls you, you call me. And if you’re holding anything back, you’re landfill, understand?”

“I’m not! I—”

I nodded to Max. He released his grip, slid out of the back seat, quiet as Ebola. I opened the car door and backed out, still pointing the pistol at Porkpie.

Max and I faded back into the shadow of the pier. In a minute, we heard the Volvo start up. We watched Porkpie pull away fast, the rear wheels spinning on the slick pavement.

Clarence pulled up at the wheel of my Plymouth and we all went back across the border.

I worked the relay over the pay phones, got the word to Hercules: Stay put.

And hoped the Prof wasn’t right about him.

Days passed. I vacuumed the newspapers, listened to the radio, even watched some TV. Nothing about the homicide. There was no outcry, no pressure. It would probably disappear into the black hole the cops called Unsolved. It wouldn’t be the first time—not all floaters go into the water.

There was a cop I could ask, a cop who owed me, but that would be the same thing as telling him I was connected in some way. Even if you trust a man not to play certain cards, there’s no point in dealing them to him.

Time was on our side. But the statute of limitations wasn’t. So I went to see a lawyer. Davidson’s a hard- nosed criminal-defense guy, but he passed for honest in our world. He might jug you a little on the fee, but he wouldn’t favor-trade with the DA, and he wouldn’t sell a client for some favorable press ink, the way some of the others do.

His office is in midtown, just one good-sized room with a secretary’s station outside. At one time, he had a big joint with a bunch of associates, but he went lean-and-mean a few years ago. His office is furnished in early Salvation Army—all the money’s in technology. And in the heavy cork paneling. In Davidson’s business, traveling sound can get you killed.

“Feels like a decent justification defense to me,” he said, puffing appreciatively on one of the mondo- expensive Expatriados cigars I’d brought him. “Where’d you get these?” he asked.