noticed her doing one. “Chinese invent, Japanese copy. Like always”—and she keeps three sets of books in her head. But when she gambles, the fever burns up the abacus in her brain like it was dry-twig kindling.
I held up both hands, fingers splayed, asking if Max wanted to try gin. He shook his head, held up four fingers.
Okay, casino it was.
I shuffled and dealt. The flop was the queen of spades, ten of clubs, ace of clubs, and seven of diamonds. I was holding a king, a pair of nines…and the deuce of spades, a money card.
Max studied the table. Mama pounded on his arm with a jeweled fist, hard enough to raise a bruise on a two-by-four. Max ignored her, concentrating.
Max took the queen with one of his own. I’d given up trying to teach him to count cards and spades; when it came to gambling, Max was a Taoist.
I dropped my king.
Max threw the jack of spades.
That left me with two choices: throw my Good Two on top of the seven, building nines, or put one of the nines, a club, on the table, in case Max was holding a ten. But if Max had been holding the ten of diamonds, he would have snatched the club ten off the table with it in a heartbeat. The ten of diamonds is worth two points; they don’t call it the Big Ten for nothing.
Or would he? I knew Mama would have; maybe that’s what she was beating on him about….
I threw the nine of clubs.
Max slowly and deliberately turned to face Mama. She looked away as the Mongol dramatically produced the Big Ten. He showed it to me, scooped the nine of clubs and the ace of hearts plus the ten of clubs into his hand. Three points, four cards, one move.
I bowed, and put the Good Two on the seven.
Max threw down the four of diamonds, and bowed to me as I took in my build.
Mama looked disgusted.
One of the payphones rang.
“You mean Pepper, Mama?”
“Police girl,” she repeated, adamantly.
I must have gone blank for a minute. Next thing I heard was, “Burke! You want number?” I nodded. “Police girl” is what Mama always called Wolfe, even years after the beautiful prosecutor had gone on TV to denounce a sweetheart deal the DA was giving to a bunch of frat boys who’d raped a coed.
Wolfe’s pale, gunfighter’s eyes had been chips of dry ice, the white wings in her dark hair flaring as if in anger. She knew this was going to cost her more than just being Bureau Chief of CityWide Special Victims: She’d never work as a prosecutor again, anywhere. But she never took a backward step.
After that, when every legit door closed in her face, Wolfe had gone outlaw, running the best info-trafficking cell in the city. But to Mama, there’s lines you can’t cross. To her, Wolfe would be “police girl” for life.
I grabbed a throwaway cell, dialed the number Mama had given me.
“That was quick.” Wolfe’s voice.
“Anytime you—”
“This isn’t about me,” she said, softly but with no warmth. “Not about you, either. I have half of what you asked for—the half I had to do myself.”
Meaning she had to ask a cop. Ask him personally. I wondered if it was the same sex-crimes detective who was so in love with her that he’d committed a half-dozen felonies to protect her when Wolfe had been false- arrested a while back. Sands, that was his name.
I don’t know what he got for going out on that limb for her. Me, I went a lot further out than he did. And when it was over, all she had for me was a goodbye.
“How do I get it?” I said.
“I don’t know where you are now,” she said, not expecting me to tell her. “You know the short piece of Park Lane, on the northeast edge of Forest Park? Not Park Lane South, or Park Lane North, the little connecting piece, just up from Queens Boulevard?”
“Yeah. I was—”
“Can you get there in an hour?”
My watch said ten-twenty. “Give me to eleven-thirty?”
“Okay. Look for a light-colored Chrysler 300.”
“Finally traded in that old wreck of yours—” I started to say. But she had already cut the connection.
At that hour, I didn’t play with side streets, just grabbed the BQE to the LIE to the Van Wyck to the Interborough. When I exited at Union Turnpike, I was only a few blocks from the meet, twenty minutes to the good.
The big Chrysler was sitting at the curb next to the park, steam burbling from its tailpipes. I drove past, glanced over to my right, saw a bulky male shape behind the wheel. Wolfe might still have her old car somewhere, but she sure had a new friend.
I spun the Plymouth into a U-turn, crawled along back the way I’d come until I found a place to pull over. I got out, started walking toward the Chrysler. The passenger door opened, and Wolfe stepped out into the spray of light. She was wrapped in a grape-colored coat with a matching toque, moving toward me quickly, as if to keep me from getting too close to the Chrysler.
I let her make the call, stopped in my tracks. She closed the ground between us, as sure-footed in spike heels as a Sherpa on sandpaper.
“It’s too cold to stand around out here,” she said. “Let’s sit in your car.”
I did an “after you” gesture. She strolled over to the Plymouth, let herself in. By the time I got behind the wheel, she had lowered her window and fired up a cigarette.
“You’ve got something for me?” I said, matching her all-business posture.
“Not with me. Pepper has it. I told her to bring it over to that restaurant of yours by one.”
“One in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not a lot of time for me to—”
“You’ll have plenty of time,” she said, dragging on her cigarette. “This won’t take long.”
I didn’t say anything, not liking it already.
“That other thing you asked for? It’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not what we do,” she said. Her voice was gentle, but hardcored. “Information, that’s what we deal in. You know that. I won’t put my people in risk situations.”
“All I wanted was—”
“You wanted my people to get you a photo…or some other kind of confirm on a certain person at a certain address.”
“Right. And what’s so—?”
“You think I don’t know what Charlie Jones does, Burke?”
“He’s just a—”
“What? A ‘businessman’? I don’t think so. And the only reason a man like you would be looking for him is if he put you into something and it went wrong.”
“A man like me?”
“A man like you,” she repeated, turning to face me. “You used to be…something else, once. When we first met. You had, I don’t know, a…code of some kind.”
“I still do.”
“Is that right?” she said, snapping her cigarette out the window. “Remember that first time, what you were doing? Why you were doing it? When’s the last time you worked a kid’s case?”
“I’m working one now,” I said, hurt in a place I didn’t know I had.
