Safe House

“Okay. Whatever you say.”

Vyra walked away from me. Sat down on a straight chair facing a corner, sulking. I left her there, went back to checking the place for problems.

“Are you still mad at me?” she finally asked. Not turning around—talking over her shoulder.

“Mad at you? For what?”

“For Crystal? For what we—”

“That’s your business,” I told her.

“You were with her too.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it? ‘Okay’? What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t want to argue with you. Not now. When this is all done, you can throw a fit if that’s what you want.”

“What do you want, Burke?”

“I want this to be done.”

“Me?”

“What?”

“You want me?” she asked, standing up and turning around. “You want me to take my clothes off now? This is a hotel room, isn’t it? That’s us—you and me. That’s what we do.”

“Not now.”

“You mean not ever, don’t you?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

“Well, you better think about it. What happens after—?”

“Vyra, this isn’t the way to do it, putting pressure on me.”

“You think she’s better than me, don’t you?”

“Who?”

“Don’t be such a swine. Crystal! Because she has that . . . purpose she’s always talking about. Me, all I do is spend money, yes? Maybe, if you listened to me once in a while, you’d hear something. I’m a person too.”

“I played square with you,” I told her. “I never hustled you, never scammed you, never took your money, nothing.”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Nothing.”

“It’s too late for that now.”

“You’re not getting another chance,” she said, unbuttoning her blouse to play what everyone had been telling her was her trump card since she’d been thirteen.

“Whoever does?” I asked her. Then I walked out the door.

“Just be yourself,” I told Hercules for the fiftieth time. “Don’t get fancy. Don’t get cute. They’re not gonna ask you about the other guys in your cell. Anyone does that, you just pin him. With your eyes, okay, don’t chest him. Like, why the fuck would he be breaking security with a question like that, understand?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Your life, Herk. Whatever it was, that’s what you say. The truth. You went to the kiddie camps, you went to the joint, you went . . . wherever. Don’t change anything.”

“Okay.”

“This guy you took out. You did it because he . . .”

“. . . was a Jew. A secret Jew.”

“You think he was with ZOG?”

“Nah. He was just a wannabe, you know?” the big man said, slipping smoothly into the party line. “He wanted to be with us. But he couldn’t be. None of them ever can. It’s blood. They was born different, they gonna die different. A whole lot of them gonna die soon.”

“Good! Now, look, all we know for sure is that they’re in the area. Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, I don’t know, but close. What you’re doing, you’re breaking camp, all right? They’re gonna find you a new place to hole up. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

“They can’t be keeping that tight a rein—fucking Lothar seems to be able to go out whenever he wants. Besides, you got the big ticket—you’re a certified life-taker, they’re all gonna know that. They’re not geniuses, but they know undercover cops don’t kill people just for front.”

“Just be myself, tell the truth,” Herk muttered, working his mantra.

“You get to a phone, you call Vyra,” I told him. “At the number I gave you. You know where the hotel is. Whatever time you can get away, you meet her there. Don’t ask her, tell her. That’s your bitch, understand?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s where we’ll meet, you and me. No place else.”

“Okay.”

“You got money?”

“I think—”

“Herk, how much cash do you have, exactly?”

It only took him a minute to count it. “Twenty-seven bucks.”

I gave him eight hundred in various bills and a few subway tokens. “That’ll hold you,” I told him. “Take this too.” I handed him a roll of quarters. He squeezed it experimentally, then tested the clenched fist against an open palm, nodded an okay to me.

“Don’t get caught carrying anything heavier,” I said. “You get popped, Pryce is gonna think we did it on purpose. Then the dime goes down the slot. And we don’t have Porkpie yet.”

“I ain’t no shooter,” he said.

“No shanks either,” I warned him.

He nodded again, unhappily this time.

“It’s us and them, brother,” I said, dropping my voice like we were back out on the yard. “They got their plans, we got ours.”

Then I told him ours.

“All we can do now is wait,” I told Crystal Beth.

“How long?”

“I don’t know. That piece is out of my control. But it’s down to weeks, not months.”

“I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this. How do you tell?”

“Tell what?”

“If you’re strong enough.”

“You’re as strong as you act,” I told her.

Wondering if I was.

“He’s in.” Pryce’s voice on the phone. I glanced down at the receiver the Mole had given me. It looked like one of those mini-TV sets. When I thumbed it on, the screen showed a hollow black circle on a gray background. Inside the circle, a blinking dot, like the cursor on a computer. Wherever Pryce was, he was within range.

“You sure?”

“They left together.” Meaning Lothar and Hercules. The meet had been set for the bookstore where Lothar