Mask Market

“White male. Between five eight and five ten, slim build. Brown eyes, brown hair. Looks to be somewhere in his fifties.”

“You think he’s on paper somewhere?”

“No. Far as I know, he’s never taken a fall.”

“And you want what exactly?”

“I want to know where he lives. If he’s still at the same place, that would be good enough. If not…”

“You’ve seen him personally, or are you just working off that vague description?”

“I know him.”

“So you want a picture? Of him at the address?”

“Yeah. That’d do it.”

“All right,” she said, all business. “You know we can’t give you a price until we know how long it’s going to —”

“I know,” I said, grinding out my cigarette. “Be careful, Pepper. This guy’s no citizen.”

“How could I have guessed?” she said, smiling. At Max.

“Want to go someplace with me?” I asked Loyal, later that night.

“Someplace nice?”

“Afterwards.”

“Do I get to dress up?”

“You’re always dressed up.”

“Yeah?” she said, deep in her throat.

“This isn’t so much fun,” she said later, doing it in baby talk to take the sting out.

“I thought you loved acting.”

“Well, I do. But this isn’t…I mean, all we’re doing is driving around.”

“Why are we driving around?”

“We’re tired of paying a fortune to rent in Manhattan, and co-op prices are just ridiculous. We heard this neighborhood has real value in it,” she said, in the bored tone a schoolgirl uses to tell you, yes, she did do her homework.

“That’s good!”

“It’s only good if someone asks us,” she said, pouting. “And who’s going to ask us anything if we just keep driving around?”

“I was thinking a cop.”

“A cop? You mean…Oh my God! Are we, what do you call it, casing someplace to rob? Is that what you really—?”

“I don’t do things like that,” I said, my tone indicating that a criminal of my stature didn’t do manual labor. “We’re just…scouting, okay? You know what eminent domain is, little girl?”

“Yes!” she said, suddenly interested. “I once had a…friend who was a lawyer. A real-estate lawyer, in fact. He told me all about how it works.”

“Good. See all these houses?” I said, turning my head from side to side to indicate I was talking about the whole area. “They’ve gone up in price like a rocket, the past couple of years. Nobody knows where the top floor is. Everyone here thinks they’re sitting on a gold mine, okay?”

“Okay….” she said, interested despite her pose.

“What if the rumor got started that the city was going to cut a big swath right through this area, to sell to some private developer? The Supreme Court says they can do that now.”

“The government never pays fair market value,” she said, firmly.

“Right. And…?”

“And people would want to sell before the word got out so that…Oh!”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the kind of thing you do?”

“One of them.”

“I hate these seat belts,” she said, crossing her legs and taking a deep breath. “They make me feel all… restrained, you know?”

“I eyeballed the house,” I said. “Nice size, solid, set close to the sidewalk.”

“Look like anyone was home?” the Prof asked.

“Couple of lights on, behind curtains. And one out front, but that was more for decoration.”

“My man got burglar bars?”

“In that neighborhood? They’d probably run him out of town for messing up the decor.”

“Might be going electronic.”

“Sure.”

“Could you see the yard?”

“In front, there isn’t much of anything at all. I got some old City Planning maps of the neighborhood. Near as I could tell, if those houses have back yards, they’re postage stamps.”

“He could still have a hound on the grounds.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been thieving since way before you was born, Schoolboy.

Any crib can be cracked. But that one’s in a bad neighborhood for B-and-E. If Charlie’s holed up there, it’s a mortal lock that he’s got the place wired.”

“I’m not thinking about going in, Prof.”

“Then what’s with all the—?”

“I’m not thinking about going in,” I repeated. “But I have been thinking. If Charlie’s there, he’s been there for a long time. He might have a wife, kids, who knows? But, whatever he’s got set up, he’s got a big investment in it.”

“How does that help us, mahn?” Clarence said.

“Motherfucker’s not bringing his work home,” the Prof announced, holding a clenched fist out to me. I tapped his fist with mine, acknowledging that he’d nailed it.

“I do not understand,” Clarence said, without a trace of impatience.

“Charlie’s been at this forever,” I told him. “If he’s still at the same place, it means he went to a lot of trouble to keep one life separate from the other. Charlie never goes hands-on, remember. He probably leaves his house to go to work, just like everyone else in his neighborhood. Which means…?”

“He has an office, somewhere else.”

“Good!” the Prof said to his son.

“And if that’s true, what?”

“Then his home would be sacred to him, Burke.”

“Yeah,” I said, slowly. “This is starting to look less like a muscle job every minute.”

“If your man’s info is still good,” the Prof cautioned.

The next morning, the sun came out of its corner swinging. It didn’t have a KO punch in its arsenal—not this time of year, not in New York—but it came on hard enough to drive the Hawk back against the ropes. My breakfast was a hot mug of some stuff that Mama gives me to microwave. It’s almost as thick as stew, and smells like medicine, but it unblocks your nasal passages like someone went in there with a rototiller.

I checked the paper to see if there was anything new on the dead man, and came up empty. Some half-wit —or, maybe, bought-and-paid-for—columnist had a piece about how the Bush administration was finally winning the war on drugs. Seems all that money poured into Colombia was paying off. Or maybe God really is on his side.

The writer had an orgasm over how the number of acres under coca cultivation was down 75 percent. That’s like dipping a yardstick into the Atlantic and reporting back that it’s three feet deep.

There’s only one way to measure how “the war” on any contraband is going—street price. When the Taliban was running Afghanistan, they banned poppy farming. No more opium, on pain of death. Being such devout Muslims,