Hard Candy

'Just the money?'

'Just the money.'

'I know you, Burke. I know you forever.' It sounded like a threat.

'We've been through that.'

'You're not here just for the money.'

'I'm not here at all, you don't tell me what you want.'

She took a breath. Her breasts blossomed. 'Train,' she said.

'What's that mean?'

'Not what you think.'

'I don't have time for this.' I started to get off the couch. She threw herself across my lap. I reached under the wig to the back of her neck, squeezed. Hard. Pulled her face up to mine. Her eyes were measuring, calculating. 'You like that? You want to hurt me?'

My hand came off her neck by itself.

She locked my eyes. Saw the truth. 'No, that's not you,' she whispered. 'Hard man, soft center. I know you. Remember the kitten? I was with you when you found it. In the basement, remember?'

SIMON. He was in the gang with us. A freak. Liked to hurt things. Especially small things. Liked to set fires too. Nobody said anything. Simon was a good man in a rumble, quick with a razor. We weren't running a therapeutic community. The kitten was hanging from a noose made out of a coat hanger, ripped from chin to balls, its guts trailing out all the way to the floor. Making sounds no living thing should make. Candy was with me. We were hurrying down there for the darkness and the sex when we heard the tiny shrieks.

I remembered. I unhooked the kitten. Laid it on the concrete floor. Found a brick. Pounded its head into flat jelly. I didn't know how to stop its pain, so I made it all stop.

I found Simon out on the flatlands that night. Burning something on a spit over a little fire. I didn't want to know what it was. I left him there. When I threw the tire iron into the street it was so slick with pulp that it skidded for half a block.

'I PAID that off.'

'Yeah. You kept your name. But I remember. You cried for an hour over that kitten. Cried like a baby. You were shaking so hard I didn't think you'd ever get up. You were going to do the same thing to Simon. Remember how you swore that? And how you told the others it was your kitten Simon tortured? Liar! You never had a kitten- you don't even like them.'

She sounded like the judge who told me I was a menace to society.

'That never happened,' I said, lighting a cigarette. 'Your mind is all fucked up.'

'I kept your secret. I could have told…'

'Who'd listen to a little cunt like you?'

'Anybody who wanted it- and they all did.'

''Cause they paid?'

'That's the way you tell.'

'That's the way you tell. That's all you know.'

'I know you,' she said, the dress sliding off her shoulders.

I got up to leave. She stood before me, stepping into my chest. I remembered the basement. How she watched while I cried. How she never touched me- waiting to see who'd win. It wasn't hard keeping my hands from her body. Just from her throat.

I turned sharply away from her, my shoulder cracked against her jaw.

'You never knew how to hold a woman,' she said.

'I know how to hold what matters.'

'A gun?' she sneered.

'A grudge,' I told her, stepping out of the whorehouse.

71

COLD FIRE inside me. Ugly acid, all the way to my eyes, burning off the haze. I felt them cut through the darkness as I neared my car. Everything in sharp-edged black &white. I wanted to talk to whoever took Belle from me and offered this sociopathic slut in return. Just for a hair-trigger minute.

A lump of shadow against the building wall a few feet from the passenger side of the Plymouth. I stepped forward fast on my left foot like I was going to charge, locked on the pavement, pivoted, and threw myself behind the car, turtlenecking like a gunshot was coming. Heard a grunt, a body slamming into the passenger side. Silence. Steel-palmed hands clapped once, twice. Max.

He was standing on the sidewalk, a body at his feet. His hands went parallel to the ground, palms down, patted the air twice. The body was alive. I knelt down to take a look, Max watching my back.

A small body, wrapped in a Navy pea coat, hooded sweatshirt inside covering the head. Dark gloves. Jeans and sneakers. I pulled the hood away from the face. Elvira, the wolf-child. Eyes closed, face blue-toned in the streetlight. I pinched her lower jaw- her tongue slid out. I looked up at Max. He tapped his diaphragm with two stiffened fingers. Just the wind knocked out of her. I touched the face of my wristwatch. Max's finger made one full circle, flashed his hand open and closed. She'd been waiting over an hour- since I'd parked the car.

I opened the passenger door and we put her into the front seat. I motioned for Max to climb in behind her. He bowed, brought his hands together, and disappeared. He was doing his work, not mine.

72

BY THE TIME I got near the river she was sucking in ragged gulps through her mouth. I hit the power-window switch to give her some air.

'Breathe through your nose. Shallow breaths. In and out. You're okay.'

'I'm going to be sick…'

I pulled over. Went around to her side and helped her out. She walked toward the water under her own power. I smoked a cigarette while she left her supper in the parking lot.

Michelle had left one of her old street-trick kits in the back of the Plymouth. I gave the girl one of the premoistened towelettes to wipe her face. Handed her the airline-size bottle of cognac. 'Rinse out with this,' I told her.

I moved the car deeper into the darkness, backing it in against an abandoned pier. Dropped my own window, listening for sounds a human would make. Nothing. I lit another smoke. She still had some of the cognac left, sipping at it, watching me, color coming back in her face.

'What was that?'

'What was what?'

'What happened to me?'

'You set off the burglar alarm.'

'I thought I was going to die.'

'You could have- you're playing with dangerous things.'

'I had to talk to you.'

I snapped my smoke out the window, watching the little red dot through my black &white eyes. 'So?'

'I have to go back.'

'To Train?'

'Yes.'

'So go.'

'It's not that easy. She'd send you after me again.'

'How d'you know?'