questions, I had the answer in my pocket—a key to a small room on one of the lower floors. That gave me a place to duck into if I needed it. And another way into the hotel, through the underground parking garage.
Vyra was wearing one of those simple black dresses that would cost a workingman a month’s pay. A long thin gold chain around her neck. Plain black patent leather spikes with a tiny row of gold rivets up the back of each heel.
“You going out?” I asked her as I walked through the door.
“Why? You think I look nice?”
“You look great,” I told her. “Like you put on some weight.”
“That’s a
“Sure.”
“It’s my butt, right?”
“Huh?”
“My butt. It’s . . . flat. You like them when they stick way out. Like . . . hers.”
“Huh?”
“Oh stop it! You know who I’m talking about.”
“I never really . . .” I said lamely.
“Sure. Well, it doesn’t matter. Different men like different things.”
“And women don’t?”
“I don’t think so,” she said seriously. “I mean, not as much, anyway. I never met a woman who only liked blonds, the way some men do.”
“What do you like, Vyra?”
“I like . . . fun. At least, I thought I did. Fun. Whatever that is.” She sounded sad.
“Look, maybe—”
A rap at the door. I motioned for Vyra to answer it, stepping back into the hall.
“Hey, baby!” It was Herk. Two big hands around Vyra’s waist, picking her up in the air, kissing her hard. Vyra bent her legs at the knee, sticking her feet straight back, arms around his neck. If anyone was watching, they’d see what they were supposed to see.
Herk stepped inside, closed the door behind him, still carrying Vyra, walking deep into the room. When he finally put her down, I stepped into sight, held my finger to my lips, pointed to the living-room couch. Herk walked over there, Vyra at his side. They both sat down. I made a “yap-yap” gesture with my fingers. Herk looked puzzled, but Vyra got it and started chattering away, asking Herk where he’d
I gave it five minutes. Nothing.
Vyra never stopped talking.
I stepped away from the door and walked to one of the back bedrooms, motioning for them to follow. Vyra said something to Herk about putting on a fashion show for him. Then they both came down the hall. The bedroom had an adjoining bath. I positioned two chairs on either side of the bathroom door, then turned the shower on full- blast. When I turned around, I got my right hand up just in time to stop Herk from putting one of his bear hugs on me.
“Whoa! What happened to the hand, bro?”
“I forgot the rules,” I told him.
“What rules?” Vyra put in, noticing my hand for the first time.
“Hard to soft, soft to hard,” Herk explained. “You clocked someone in the teeth, huh?” he said to me.
“Yeah. Sit down. How much time you got?”
“Got? I dunno. We ain’t got a meeting until tomorrow night.”
“Start at the beginning,” I told him, shooting Vyra a look so she’d leave us alone. She ignored it, perching herself on the bed.
“Lothar and me had a meet. At that place where he works. He’s got a back room. Anyway, nobody was looking at nobody else, you know those kind of places.”
“What kind of places?” Vyra asked.
“Shut up,” I told her softly. “We’re not playing. This isn’t a game.”
“I’m in this too,” she said.
“Yeah, you are. So do your piece.”
“You mean, just sit here?”
“For now.”
“I don’t want—”
“Vyra, you can sit there nice and peaceful. Or I can use this,” I said, taking a Velcro tourniquet out of my pocket.
“What’s that?” she asked, as suspicious as a crackhouse doorman.
“It works just like handcuffs,” I told her. “And I got a nice clean handkerchief for your big mouth too. Is that what you want?”
“You—”
“Yeah, I would,” I promised her.
Her mouth snapped shut so hard flecks of lipstick flew off.
“From the beginning,” I said to Herk again.
“Anyway, I had to stay there until—”
“There?”
“In the back room. Of the porno joint. Lothar gets this message from me, right? At his P.O. box. Then we talk on the pay phone, right? Then we meet, I tell him what I had to do with . . . that guy, okay? The Jew. He had to tell the others, the guys he was with. He couldn’t bring me to them until he cleared it. So I had to stay there. Where he works. Overnight. It was weird, Burke. Being in that place all alone.”
“At least you had plenty to read.”
“That stuff? I tried to. . . . I mean, I looked through it and everything. But it’s all the same, you know what I mean?”
Vyra took an especially deep breath, as if to remind him that it really wasn’t. But she didn’t say a word.
“Yeah, I do,” I told him. “What happened next?”
“In the morning, before the place opens, he comes back. I had to stay for his whole shift, until it got dark. Then I went with him.”
“To . . . ?”
“This place they got. A house. Just the other side of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge.”
“You got the address?”
“Nah. What happens is, you go to this bar, okay? Then you make a call from the pay phone over against the wall. There’s all kinds of clicks on the line, like it’s switching back and forth. You wait there. One of them comes by and picks you up. You get in the back of this van. No windows. Then you ride for a while. When you get out, you’re in this garage, like. There’s a doorway cut right into the house. I can tell from the way it’s set up, the house is supposed to be all closed up. You can’t even see outside.”
“But when you want to leave . . . ?”
“You got to tell them. Then they take you. Through the garage and all.”
“They take you wherever you want?”
“Nah, they ain’t no taxi service. They drop you off near whatever subway you want. Or a cab stand. But I know they gotta drive that van a good half-hour before we get to the house from the bar.”
“So they could have followed you here?”
“I guess . . .” he said, puzzled.
I shrugged it off. If they had, they wouldn’t have learned much. Especially if they had monitored his calls to Vyra. “How many in the crew?” I asked him.
“There was like maybe six of them there. Not counting Lothar. He wasn’t there when they talked to me. What they did, they asked me a bunch of questions. Just like you said.”
“Any problems?”
“Nah. They mostly asked me about . . . the guy. How’d I do it and all. How’d we find out he was a Jew.
