Mask Market

the case anyway. Unless he’d been a gorgeous girl—then I would have taken it for nothing, of course.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Can you tell me how much it would cost to do that? Find…the person, I mean.”

“No,” I said. “I can’t tell you that. Here’s how it works: You pay me by the day. I keep looking until I find whoever you’re looking for, or until you tell me to quit trying.”

“Well, how much is it a day, then?”

“Same as you just paid me. I cover all expenses out of that. And there’s a twenty-G bonus if I turn up what you want.”

“Ten thousand a week,” he said, the slightest trace of a question mark at the end of the sentence.

“We don’t take weekends off,” I told him. “One week, that’s fourteen. Payable in advance.”

“That could run into a lot of money.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ll have to think that one over.”

“You know where to find me,” I said.

“Well, actually, I don’t. I mean, the man who I…spoke to, he just took my number, and you called me, remember?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“So how do I…? Oh. You mean, now or never, right?”

“Right.”

He took a hit off his drink. “I don’t walk around with that kind of cash,” he said. “Who does?”

“Best of luck with your search,” I said, moving my untouched glass to the side as I started to stand up.

“Wait,” he said. “I’ve got it.”

I settled back into my seat. If we were still in that movie, I would have told him that lying was a bad way to start a relationship. If we were going to work together, I would need the truth, all the way. Down here, we play it different: “true” means you can spend it.

“Not on me,” he said. “But close by. In my car. I keep an emergency stash. You never know….”

I let my mouth twitch. Let him guess what that meant.

“Hold on to this,” he said, handing me a black CD in a pale-pink plastic jewel case, as if it sealed a bargain between us. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, and we’ll go over everything.”

I pocketed the CD. Folded my gloved hands like a kid waiting for the teacher to come back.

He got up and left. I counted to thirty; then I got up, too, heading for the restrooms. I walked past the twin doors until I found myself in the open space behind the bar. I crossed the space, moving like the Prof had taught me a million years ago. I can’t phantom through a room without displacing the air like he does, but I can move smooth enough not to disrupt the visuals unless someone’s staring directly at me.

The back door had a heavy alarm box next to it, but I could see it was unplugged. I opened the door just wide enough to slide through, clicked it soft behind me, and made my way down a short flight of metal steps to the alley.

I didn’t want my car. I knew what direction he’d come from; if I cut the alley right, I’d come out close enough to see that camel’s-hair coat.

Nothing.

Quick choice: was he still behind me, or ahead? I felt the Hawk’s bite, remembered how the guy was dressed, and figured he’d be moving as quick as he could. I took off the glasses, switched my black watch cap for a red one, hunched my shoulders against the wind, and started covering ground.

I saw him cross ahead of me, moving toward the river. I gambled on another alley, and drew the right card. I marked the direction he was going in, and moved out ahead.

The big Audi was parked mid-block, a purebred among mutts. I floated into a doorway, wrapping the shadows around my shoulders. If he just took off, instead of getting something from inside his ride and walking back to the bar, I’d figure he was busy on a cell phone, and company was coming—I wouldn’t be there when it arrived. But if he really kept that kind of cash in his car, I wanted that license number.

He walked past me on the opposite side of the street. I stayed motionless, but he never glanced my way.

Two men came toward him from the far end of the block, walking with too much space between them to be having a conversation. The guy in the camel’s-hair coat was almost to his car before he saw them. He put his hands up and started backing away, making a warding-off motion with his palms.

A car door opened. A man in a black-and-gold warm-up suit stepped onto the sidewalk behind the man in the camel’s-hair coat. He brought his two hands together and spread his feet in one flowing motion. The man in the camel’s-hair coat went down. The shooter waved the other two back with his free hand, then walked over to the man lying on the sidewalk, an extended-barrel pistol held in profile. The whole thing was over in seconds, as choreographed as an MTV video, on mute.

A vapor-colored sedan pulled out of its parking spot. The shooter got into the back seat, and it drove off. The two men who had blocked the target were gone.

The street stayed quiet.

I took a long deep breath through my nose, filling my stomach. I let it out slowly, expanding my chest as I did.

Then I got gone.

My Plymouth looks like a candidate for the junkyard. But it’s a Rolex under all the rust, including an independent rear suspension transplanted from a wrecked Viper some rich guy had thought made him immune to physics, and a hogged-out Mopar big-block with enough torque to compete in a tractor pull. So I feathered the throttle, even though I wasn’t worried about snow on the streets.

The same year my car had been born, the mayor had been a guy named Lindsay. He was the ideal politician, a tall, good-looking, Yale-graduate, war-veteran, “fusion” Republican who ran on the Liberal ticket. He got a lot of credit for New York not going the way of Newark or Detroit or Los Angeles during the riots the year before. But when the big blizzard hit in February of ’69 and paralyzed the city, Lindsay took the heat for the Sanitation Department being caught napping, and that was the end of his career.

Every mayor that followed him got the message. New Yorkers will tolerate just about anything on their streets, from projectile-vomiting drunks to mumbling lunatics, but snow is un-fucking-acceptable.

I made my way over to the West Side Highway, rolled north to Ninety-sixth, exited, and looped back, heading downtown. Even at two in the morning, I couldn’t be sure I didn’t have company—in this city, there’s always enough traffic for cover. But I knew a lot of places that would expose a shadow real quick, some as flat and empty as the Sahara, others as clogged as a ready-to-rupture artery.

I opted for density. Took a left on Canal, motored leisurely east, then ducked into the Chinatown maze. Made two slow circuits before I finally docked in the alley behind Mama’s joint, right under a white square with a freshly painted black ideogram. My spot. Empty as always—the Chinese calligraphy marked the territory of Max the Silent, a message even the baby-faced gangsters who infested the area understood.

I flat-handed the steel door twice. Seconds later, I found myself staring into the face of a man I’d never seen before. That didn’t matter—he knew who I was, and I knew what he was there for.

The restaurant never changes, just the personnel. Like an army base with a high turnover. I went through the kitchen, past the bank of payphones, and sat down in my booth. The place was empty. No surprise—the white- dragon tapestry had been on display in the filthy, streaked front window when I had driven past. If it had been blue, I would have kept on rolling. Red, I would have found a phone, made some calls.

Mama appeared from somewhere behind me, a heavy white tureen in both hands. “Come for visit?” she said.

“For soup.”

“Sure, this weather, good, have soup,” Mama said. She used a ladle to dole out a steaming portion into a red mug with BARNARD in big white letters curling around the side. Mama is no more a cook than the place she runs is a restaurant, but her hot-and-sour soup is her pride and joy. Failure to consume less than three portions per visit would be considered a gross lack of respect.

I took a sip, touched two fingers to my lips, said, “Perfect!”—the minimally acceptable response.