I pointed to the car. Pansy jumped into the back seat. I slammed the back door. Put my key in the lock and twisted it, left and right. Stood aside as Wesley tried both doors, Pansy's huge head looming behind the glass, tracking him. The second twist of the key had popped the trunk. If I called her, she'd come out that way.
'Go ahead,' he said, pointing into the underbrush. I followed a narrow dirt path, feeling him behind me. We came to an abandoned pickup truck, rusting to death, its nose buried in one of the I-beams holding up the overpass.
'Sit down,' he said.
I hoisted myself up to the pickup's open bed, legs dangling. 'Can I…?'
He held his finger to his lips. I counted to fifty before he spoke again.
'Yeah, you can smoke. I know you not carrying.'
I took one out, bit hard into the filter to stop my mouth from trembling. Fired it up, cupping the flame. Wesley stood facing me, legs spread, hands behind him. The Uzi was gone.
He didn't look like much. If you didn't know, he could walk up to you- you wouldn't know him till you felt him. The same way cancer works.
'Why am I here?'
'You totaled a freak. Mortay.'
I waited. A tiny gleam of white at his mouth. Wesley's smile. 'You think I'm trying to get you to confess? Working for the Man?'
'I know you, Wesley. You don't ask questions.'
'Yeah I do. I always ask who. Never ask why.'
'Okay.'
'We go back a long way, Burke.'
'This a reunion?'
'You know what I do. Ever since I got out the last time. They give me a name, I do my work. This Mortay, he was off the rails. He had to go. I was tracking him when you went nuts and blew him up.'
Toby Ringer had told me the truth. Belle died for nothing. If Wesley was tracking Mortay, all I had to do was wait. All for nothing. 'I didn't know,' I said, working to keep my voice from cracking. I never said truer words.
'They don't want to pay me,' he said. Like God was dead.
'So?'
'So I don't work for them anymore.' His body shifted slightly. I thought about the Uzi. Dismissed it- on the best day of my life, I wasn't fast enough. 'You got in the way with that freak. You fucked things up. That's one time. It happens. But now the word's all over the street- you're in business. My business.'
'I'm not- that's not me.'
'I know. You're a hijacker. A sting artist. You got
'What's your problem?'
'Train. You know him.'
'Yeah.'
'He's on the spot. He has to go down. You've been sniffing around. Either you're working for him or you're looking to take him out.'
'No. I had a contract. I pulled a girl out of his joint.'
'I saw that.'
'That's it. There's no more.'
'You know what he does?'
'No.'
'Don't find out.'
I lit another smoke, watching my hands near the flame. They didn't shake. Wesley took you past fear.
'Wesley, I got no beef with you. You know that. You want to know something, ask me. And let me go.'
'You know why I wanted you out here? You're a fucking nut-case yourself, Burke. You got this Jones for kids. I know about the day-care center too. Out in Queens. Why didn't you use the Chinaman on Mortay?'
'He wasn't around.'
'Something about a kid, right?'
I just watched him.
'Yeah, you're bent. Remember when we were coming up? Learning the rules? You don't work with drunks, you don't work with dope fiends, you don't work with skinners, right? You don't work with
Tracks. I was a kid again in my mind. In a subway tunnel. Me and Rupert facing each other. Chins on the tracks, bodies spread out behind. The rest of the gang waited off to the side. I heard the rumble of the train, felt the track tremble under my jawbone. Watching Rupert. Last one off the tracks was the winner. Sixteen years old. Don't mind dying. I read my tombstone: Burke Had Heart. Better than flowers. Rupert's face a few feet from mine. He'd offered a knife fight, I bumped the stakes with the train tracks- the tunnel. No matter what happened, I'd have a name. It wouldn't hurt, I told myself. The train roared at us, coming hard, a hundred-ton mindless life-taker. Light washed the black tunnel. Rupert jumped back. Me! My legs wouldn't work. Hands grabbed my ankles, jerked me off the track, cracking my jaw. The train shot past.
That night, on the roof, Candy took my cock in her mouth for the first time.
'I was the last off the track,' I reminded him.
'Yeah.' A robot's voice. He knew the truth. Even when we were kids, Wesley knew the truth. He'd been there. His hands on my ankles. If he hadn't pulled after Rupert jumped back, I'd still be there. 'Train's a dead man. My dead man. You get in the way again, you go with him.'
'I'm not in the way.'
His face moved closer, watching mine. No psychiatrist could read his eyes- you can't take a census when there's nobody home. I held his gaze, letting him in. See the truth, monster. See it again.
He stepped back. 'You're not good enough,' he said. Not putting me down, just saying it. 'You still do that trick? Where you memorize something without writing it down?'
'Yeah.'
He said a number. 'You call this number. Anytime. Let it ring three times. Hang up. Do it again. Then you wait by the number I have for you.'
'I don't need to call you.'
'Yeah you will. I know how things work. You used to know too.'
He put his gloved hands together, looking down at the temple they made. 'Kids…what fucking difference does it make, Burke?'
Once I thought it did. Prayed to that god in the orphanage, in the foster homes, in reform school. Somebody would come. Be my family. I found my family in prison. Prayed to another god. Belle in my mind.
'You're a burnt-out case,' the monster told me. 'You're done.'
'Okay.' Nothing to argue about.
'Train's safe for a bit. I'll get to him. But first I got a whole lot of Italians to do.'
'Do what you have to do- I'm not in it.'
His eyes were tombstones. With no date of birth and no epitaph. 'I know how things work. You'll get a call, hit man. Then you call me, got it?' The Uzi came into his hands again. 'Stay where you are for a few minutes.'
He didn't make a sound moving off past the pickup, away from the Plymouth.
I sat staring into the darkness. Counting the years. Lit another smoke. It was snatched out of my hand. Max the Silent held it to his own lips.
