Choice of Evil

my life. Like the rest of my life.

I asked Mama. The herbalist she sent me to was so ancient he would have been New Age in the Roaring Twenties. He made about a dozen piles of stuff, then dealt a heavy pinch of each into six little brown paper bags. It looked like: thick white Popsicle sticks, basil leaves like they use for topping veal marsala in Tuscan restaurants, tiny clumps of twigs like from a finch’s nest, sections of tree bark—dark outside, pure clean white inside—gnarled lumps of dark reddish roots, big rubbery slabs of mushroom cap.

“You have malaria, yes?”

“Once.”

“Africa or Asia?”

“Africa.”

“Never go away,” he promised. “You soldier?”

“What difference?” I asked him.

He shrugged at that truth. Said, “Parasites, back now. Go away soon, you do medicine. You put this in big pot, okay? Boil into tea, drink three times every day. Two, three weeks, all gone.”

So I did it. Washed each glass down with a hit of dark chocolate between sips.

And he was right.

I’d met with Wolfe by then, too. She backed her hammered maroon Audi sedan into a spot between my Plymouth and a Dumpster, managing to scrape a little off each.

“Nice work,” I told her.

“Parking a car is like docking a ship,” she said. “It’s a controlled collision. You do it slow enough, you can’t hurt anything, not really.”

“Terrific,” I said, indifferent to another welt in the Plymouth’s flanks. Then I told her what I needed.

“You’re talking a big number,” Wolfe said, eyebrows going up for emphasis, the white wings in her long dark hair flaring along for the ride.

“I have no choice. The cops got everything when they took my place away.”

“You’re really going to start over?”

“Not. . .”

Her gray eyes watched me, waiting.

“Not my life,” I answered her question.

“Too bad,” she said, so softly I almost didn’t hear it.

“Why?” I asked her.

“Because you. . . it would be. . . I mean, it would be cheaper. There is a real you, right? A real Burke, I mean. There’s a legit birth certificate somewhere. You could apply for a Social Security number, start over. . . .”

“I’m not changing my ways,” I told her, making it clear. Meaning: I was going to thieve. Maybe not at gunpoint anymore, but I was going to take stuff from other people and I needed a shield-screen of fake ID to do that. And still more to keep the IRS off me if I ever stepped on the wrong land mine.

“You hear about that Canine Liberation Front thing?” Wolfe asked, a sorceress smile on her lips.

“No. What the hell is that?”

“Ah. I figured you don’t read the papers much. Never mind. I can understand. If somebody ever took my Bruiser from me, I’d do. . . whatever to get him back.”

The stallion Rottweiler stuck his head out the side window of Wolfe’s Audi and snarled agreement.

“You can do it?” I asked her. Not really a question.

“You have the cash, sure.”

“You need it all up front?”

“It’s not like, say, a shipment of guns,” Wolfe said, her smile thinner now that she knew I was going back to my old ways, making it clear she knew what some of those were. “You know, ID; it’s not something you can just turn around and sell to somebody else if the buyer defaults.”

“I wouldn’t—”

“And a lot of it has to be fronted at my end. Besides, you never know if your client’s going to be around. . . .”

“Yeah.” Nothing much else to say. Wolfe was telling me that, no matter what I called myself, she’d always know who I was. Truth is, she’d always known. Only now she’d know the names I’d be using, too.

“Want to set up a—?”

“No need. I got it right here,” I told her, nodding at the trunk of the Plymouth. “You okay carrying that much? I don’t see any of your crew around. . . .”

Bruiser growled at me again. I got the picture.

Her price was actually a few grand short of what I’d guessed. I popped the trunk, opened the false bottom next to the NASCAR fuel cell, and handed her enough cash to buy a new car. A nice new car. She opened her sling purse and I dropped it in. She never glanced at it. Even trust is a different thing down here. I’d never stiff Wolfe a penny on the fee, never slip her funny money or a Chicago bankroll. And she knew that. But. . . who’d stiff anyone holding the key to your whole new ID anyway?

“Could take a while,” she said.

I shrugged. It was out of my hands.

“I’ll get word to you,” Wolfe promised.

The Audi belched oily black smoke as she fired it up. She waved a quick goodbye and pulled out. The Rottweiler’s head swiveled to watch me until they were out of sight.

The new place felt safe, but it wasn’t. . . the same. Anyway, I didn’t spend much time there, so Pansy started riding with me a lot.

She was with me for that first meeting on West Street. And she wasn’t the only one in the joint wearing a collar and leash.

It had taken them a long time to get in touch. Mail was stacking up in PO boxes of mine all over the city, but they were never going to be emptied. I hadn’t left the keys or the addresses in my old place, but a lifetime of playing it to the far side of safe kept me away.

So a few wannabe mercenaries wouldn’t get stung, a few kiddie-porn collectors wouldn’t get a ticket to the slammer instead of more trophies, some assorted chumps wouldn’t get taken. No loss.

All the names I used for stings were gone. But anyone who wanted Burke bad enough could find a phone number if they asked in the right places. The number for a Chinese laundry in Brooklyn, set on permanent bounce to the pay phone at Mama’s.

The ones who wanted the meet, they didn’t know me. The only ticket they had was a name. A dead man’s name. It was me they wanted, but they didn’t know where to look. So it took a while before the word came in. I returned the guy’s call, told him I’d meet him, and he told me where. I figured it was a job. And a job was one of a lot of things I didn’t have, then.

“You can’t bring. . . that in here,” the bouncer said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Pansy took my hand signal and stood rock-steady. She watched the bouncer with disdain, her ears slightly perked in case I told her to sit. If I did, she’d nail the muscleman before he could scream—high-thigh chomps are her specialty. And then all he’d do is scream until he passed out from pain or blood loss —Pansy’s a one-bite beast.

“I’m supposed to meet someone here,” I said mildly. “He’ll okay it.”

“Who would that be?” the bouncer asked, arms still crossed, flexing hard, unable to keep his gaze away from Pansy’s ice-water eyes, and wishing he could.

“Lincoln’s all he told me.”

“You mind waiting outside?”

“Me? No. I don’t mind where I wait, pal. I just mind how long I wait, understand?”

I made another hand signal. Pansy wheeled and followed me outside. I lit a cigarette and leaned against the outside of the one-story black-walled building. The traffic was all gay, mostly leather, a few tourists in business clothes. Some looked at me; none spoke. I wasn’t sporting a handkerchief in a back pocket, wasn’t pierced, not even a lousy earring, and I was dressed in what people went to work in when they got paid by the hour. Pansy lay