During the drive to Mama’s, I reached out for Wolfe on the cellular. Left word where I’d be, thinking how it was time for our crew to change numbers—the Prof was picking up a fresh set of cloners from the Mole.
The pay phone at Mama’s was ringing as I came through the kitchen.
“You got my package?” Wolfe asked as soon as she heard my voice.
I hand-signaled to Mama, who brought the two envelopes over. I leafed through the contents quickly, holding the phone against my shoulder with my head. “Yeah.”
“The picture is . . . the subject. From his employment application.”
“Thanks.”
“There’s . . . enough there,” she said. “To make the connection. Be sure you look through the thick one first.”
“Got it.”
“Listen, that envelope you wanted dropped off?”
“Yeah.”
“There is no Mr. White at that address. Mick was insistent—he had the apartment number, remember? So they showed him the place. It’s the model suite—the one they use to attract tenants. Nobody lives there.”
“Okay.”
“Anything else?”
“No. Thanks. Hey, did Mick cut his hair?”
“All part of the job.” Wolfe chuckled. “A small sacrifice.”
The security guard’s photo showed a man in his thirties, black hair cut fashionably short, generic European face with an unprominent, slightly bladed nose, staring straight into the camera, unsmiling. Nothing there.
He was born on Long Island. Mother’s maiden name was Wallace. On the birth certificate, someone had placed one of those red plastic pull-off arrows that say “Sign Here”—the kind lawyers attach to contracts they want you to sign in a half-dozen places—next to the name. Why? I kept looking. High-school graduate. Unremarkable military career. Associate-of-arts degree in criminal justice from a community college. Employed steadily, but he changed jobs a lot. Process server, credit-collection agency, store detective. All quasi-cop “investigator” stuff. Almost three years as an auxiliary police officer. That fit—authority freaks gravitate to stuff like that.
Credit report showed him as slow-pay. Not enough to discourage a sizable loan on a 1991 Corvette, bought used in 1995. Arrest record was clean, attached to his application for a pistol permit. Must have been before his short stay on Rikers Island—I guess the security-guard companies don’t do periodic rechecks. Once he got the piece, his pay had gone up to $9.50 an hour. Married a few years ago. Divorced. No children.
His medical scanned normal, except for asthma. Attached was a photocopy of a printout from a fertility clinic. He and his wife had been trying to have a baby some years back. Genetic counseling was checked on the form. That was marked with one of the red plastic arrows too.
I went to the second envelope. Just two pieces of paper. The first was an exact duplicate of the birth certificate, only this version had an official certificate embossed into the lower right corner and a stamp on the back indicating it was a “true and accurate copy.” I followed the red arrow—now his mother’s maiden name was Wasserstein.
The other page was a duplicate of the fertility-clinic stuff. The red arrow took me to the genetic counseling section—now it said: SCREEN FOR TAY-SACHS. The substitute papers were beautiful work, impossible to distinguish from the originals. Wolfe was more outlaw than I’d thought. And she had access to some fine forgers too.
I removed the red plastic arrows, substituted the new pages for the old and sat down to reread the new, unified version.
The death warrant.
I’ve heard that plenty of women clean house in the nude, but I’d never seen one do it in lipstick-red four-inch heels. When Crystal Beth showed me into her place, Vyra was wrestling with the vacuum cleaner like it was an artifact left behind by aliens, muttering to herself, her pale skin shining under a thin sheen of sweat. She saw me, bent to find the cut-off switch, a puzzled look on her face. After a minute of hunting around, she ripped the cord out of the wall in one mighty tug, then looked up in triumph.
“I didn’t want to mess up my outfit,” Vyra said to Crystal Beth, nodding her head in the direction of the bed, where a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of red and black and white silk stuff lay in a confused jumble. “Anyway, I’m almost done.”
“Almost done?” Crystal Beth laughed. “You only started a few minutes ago.”
“Well, what else is there?” Vyra demanded, crossing her arms under her breasts. She always did it that way. For the lift—I think she knew they were way too big to look good without a bra.
“There’s the baseboards, the shelves, the bathroom, the—”
“The bathroom? I’m not cleaning anybody’s—”
“Yes you
Vyra turned away from the onslaught, walked over and sat down on the arm of the easy chair, crossing her legs and arching her back as though a camera lurked. “Well, I wouldn’t have lost if you weren’t such a wuss,” she said to me.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Yes, well, it’s not you that has to do all this work. It’s your fault—the least you could do is help.”
“And miss a chance to watch you? No way.”
Vyra flashed me a smile, taking it as a compliment. But she didn’t go back to work.
“I’ve gotta go talk to Herk for a bit,” I told Crystal Beth. “Let me know when Vyra’s done.”
“
“Better put some clothes on first,” I told her. “It’s drafty down there.”
“This is like in the joint, huh?” Herk said to me.
“The joint? This place is fucking Paradise compared to—”
“I didn’t mean . . . this,” Herk said, making a sweeping motion with his arm. “I mean . . . talking, like. Remember, in there? The Prof was always tryin’ to explain stuff. Like how to do crime good and all?”
“Sure.”
“Well, this is like that. You been explaining to me, right? How I gotta act and everything.”
“That’s right.”
“Only it’s different this time, Burke. Real different.” He took a deep breath, thought showing on his face, the heavy bone structures prominent under the flesh. The white flesh. Part of the passport he’d use to slip past a checkpoint very soon. “In there,” he said, “the trick was, like, not to come back, you know what I mean? We was
“How?” I asked him.
“This deal here, it’s my last crime, Burke. I swear to fucking God. We pull this off, it works like you say, I’m done. And you know what else?”
“What, Herk?”
“This ain’t like before. This time I’m listening real good.”
“You don’t like my shoes?” Vyra asked Hercules, standing at the foot of the stairs, one red spike heel on the floor, the other propped one step up, posing.
