Safe House

“For the . . . for the network, for Crystal, I don’t know. For the women, I don’t know. For me, I know. The rest of them, it was to protect their . . . lives, or their children. Or something important. Me, it was to protect my spoiled little ass. My . . . money.”

“And now you feel guilty?”

“You’re a miserable person to talk to me like that,” she said bitterly.

“I’m not downing you, Vyra. It’s way too late for petty bullshit like that. Herk said I misjudged you. Maybe I did. I never got to know you, and—”

“—now you never will,” she finished for me.

“No, I never will,” I agreed. “And if that’s my loss, I’ll have to carry it.”

“I never got to know you either.”

“That was no loss,” I promised her.

“Oh God, I wish he’d call,” she said softly.

Vyra finally agreed to go take a nap after I swore I’d wake her as soon as her phone rang. But it was my cellular that buzzed first.

“Have your lawyer go to the Southern District tomorrow, first call. Tell him to go to the fourth floor and just wait. Tell him to wear a carnation in his lapel.”

“What color?”

“This time of year? He’ll be the only one wearing a flower, don’t worry. Tell him to just wait. Somebody will come and get him.”

“And make the deal?”

“Yes.”

“You sure there’s anybody to make a deal for?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. And hung up.

The buzzing of the cell phone had woken Vyra, and now she wouldn’t go back to sleep.

“He’s so different,” she said. “I never met a man . . . I never met anyone like him.”

“Yeah, Herk’s one of a kind, all right.”

“You don’t understand a word of what I’m saying, do you?” she said sadly. “He told me about his life. His whole life. From when he was a little boy. You never told me anything like that. I’ve known you for years . . . and you’re a stranger to me. And he asked me about my life too. You never did that. Burke,” she giggled, “you know what he said?”

“How would I—”

“He asked me about growing up. What it was like for me. I told him I was a JAP. You know what he said? He said: ‘I thought you was a Jew.’ Can you believe it?”

“From Herk? Sure.”

“You don’t get it,” she said, peat-moss eyes alive in her made-up face. “Okay, he didn’t know what ‘JAP’ means. So what? Where he was raised, he’d never heard the term. But the thing is, it didn’t make any difference to him. It’s me he likes. Not my money. Not just my . . . tits,” she said, flicking her hand against her breasts like she was dismissing them.

When she started to cry, I told her a shower might make her feel better. Naturally, she argued, but I made the same promise I had when she took her nap, and she finally went along.

When the hotel phone rang, I hit the bathroom on the first ring. I pulled the shower curtain away, held my fist to my ear like it was a telephone. Vyra leaped out of the shower covered in suds, hair wet, a loofah in one hand. She ran to the phone, snatched it up.

“Hello.”

She held the phone slightly away from her ear so I could listen, but I didn’t move . . . just in case.

“Ah, you promised, honey,” she cooed into the receiver. Then she listened for a minute before she said: “All right, baby. Whatever you say. You’re the boss. I’ll wait for you, okay?”

Whatever he said in return was real short. Vyra whispered, “I love you, Hercules,” and hung up.

Then she started to cry, hands over her face. I stepped to her, gently held her shoulders, standing at arm’s length to keep her breasts off my chest. “What?” I asked her.

“He’s all right. He’s all right,” she sobbed.

“So why are you crying?”

“Because I’m happy, you moron!”

“What did he say?”

Vyra walked over to the bed and sat down, oblivious to the instant puddle she created.

“He said he couldn’t keep our date. For tonight. He told me I was his bitch, and he’d come when he could. And to shut up and do what he told me,” she said, a sunburst smile turning her little face lovely like I’d never seen it in all the years I’d known her.

I went down to my own room in the hotel and called Davidson, gave him the word.

“Wear a carnation?” he squawked. “Jesus, are these guys for real?”

“Oh yeah,” I told him. “No question.”

“Then consider it done,” he said. “Give me a call tomorrow night. Anytime after six.”

“You heard from the Prof?” I asked Mama.

“Right here,” she said. “You come now, okay?”

“I’m rolling,” I told her.

It wasn’t just the Prof at the restaurant. Clarence was there too. And Max. And Michelle.

“What’s all this?” I asked them.

“Grab a pew, Schoolboy,” the Prof said. “We need to sound what’s going down.”

“With . . . ?”

“With that fool Hercules. And you.”

I sat down. Had some soup while the others waited, their faces masks of patience. Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough for them to try and take on Mama.

Then I told them. Everything.

“You capped a guy? In front of a fed?” the Prof asked, an angry-puzzled look on his face.

“I don’t think he’s a fed,” I said. “Not like any fed I ever heard of, anyway. Wolfe says he’s an outlaw. Me, I don’t know. He got stuff done. . . . I don’t know how a free-lancer could pull that kind of weight.”

“I fucking knew it,” the little man said. “This was a hoo-doo from the get-go. I thought you was done with guns, son.”

“I am. Or I was. I . . . There was no other way to do it, Prof. Without the immunity, Herk was just a piece of Kleenex to this guy Pryce. Use him and throw him away, right?”

“Why didn’t we get together, figure something out?” he wanted to know.

“This one’s mine,” I told him. “Herk was with us Inside, but it’s me who owes him. Then the whole thing with Crystal Beth’s safehouse. And the women . . . I wasn’t gonna drag everyone else in it with me.”

“I don’t feel a thing for most of them,” Michelle piped up, dismissing all the women under Crystal Beth’s protection in one fell swoop. “They don’t protect their babies, they’re not real women in my book. They’re stupid or they’re cowards, makes no difference to me. Some of them would go on a date with Ted Bundy and leave John Wayne Gacy to babysit the kids.”