huge shack made of tarpaper and copper sheeting somewhere near the back fence, I stopped. I knew what to do from there, and Simba did too. He went off someplace into the artificial darkness, and I stood there waiting.
The pack hadn’t exactly lost interest in me, but you could tell they weren’t going to get excited. Most of them probably hadn’t seen anybody get this far before. I kept my eyes on the shack as though the Mole would emerge any minute. I knew better, but I knew the rules too.
I heard Simba grunting behind me and knew the Mole was coming, but I didn’t turn around until I felt his hand on my shoulder. I turned, and there he was. The Mole-even in the dim light, his skin looked transparent, the blue veins corded on his hands like there wasn’t enough skin to cover everything. Short, stubby, clumsy-looking Mole, blinking his tiny eyes rapidly at the unaccustomed light of day. He was wearing one of those one-piece coverall outfits like mechanics use in gas stations and carrying a toolbox. In spite of his pale skin he was so dirty from his work that he looked like he was prepared for night surveillance. He moved close to me, bumping Simba aside like the beast wasn’t there. And Simba, with that respect for genuine lunacy shared by all animals, moved aside without even a growl.
The Mole put his hands in his pockets, looked carefully at me for a moment or two, and mumbled something to Simba, who immediately trotted off. Then he motioned that I should walk ahead of him to the shack.
As soon as I got past the hanging door I smelled muscatel, urine, and old wet rags. There was an orange crate in one corner with some old newspapers on top and a dirty raincoat lying open on the ground like it was a wino’s bed. Some empty bottles, candy wrappers, a broken piece of wood that had been a chair once. The Mole walked past the stuff like it wasn’t there, and I breathed through my mouth as I followed him.
At the very back of the shack he fiddled with some levers and pulleys, then bent and yanked something and there was an opening in the ground. He sent me in first, climbed down after me, reached back and made some more adjustments. I felt the Mole slip past me in the dark, then he led the way through the tunnel. We must have walked a hundred yards or so until he found the door and stepped through, and then we were in his den.
I’m not sure how he worked it, but it’s like a half-underground, half-above-ground bunker. The top is covered with the bodies of wrecked and rusting cars, but there was some way that light filtered through because the place wasn’t that dark. It was as clean as the shack had been foul, and much bigger inside.
The room we entered was like the Mole’s parlor, or whatever the equivalent would be for underground bunkers. He had an old leather easy chair with matching ottoman in one corner, a two-person sofa facing it on an angle. I think the floor was hard-packed dirt but it was covered with several sheets of flattened linoleum and there was an oval throw rug in the middle. I had never gotten past this room but I knew there were others-a place to sleep and some kind of bathroom in the back, maybe even a kitchen. It smelled clean down there, but the air was sharp, like the filtered stuff you get in operating rooms. The Mole had some way to vent everything to another part of the junkyard, but I don’t know how he did it.
The junkyard itself wasn’t open to the public. The Mole and the dogs and God knows what else lived there in perfect symbiosis. We all pick our ways to survive, and the Mole decided this was his way a long time ago. He never left the place except to do his work. I thought I knew the city as well as anybody, but I would never have known of the Mole except for one of my forays into bounty hunting. A man from the Israeli secret service (at least that’s what he told me) found me a few years ago and asked my price for locating a Nazi concentration camp guard who had come to the States after the war and gone underground somewhere in Manhattan. You could see the Israeli was a professional, but he didn’t know what he was looking for. He came to me because I had done some business with a neo-Nazi group out in Queens and he figured all Nazis were alike. Anyway, I did find the old freak and gave the information to the man who said he was from Israel. I watched the papers for a few weeks after that, but I didn’t see anything.
I met the Mole when the Israeli took me out to the junkyard and told him I was working for their cause on a special assignment and to help me if he could. He couldn’t then, but he has a few times since, as I’ve already mentioned.
The Mole will do anything to hunt down Nazis, but he’s not interested in too much else-so most every time I come back to see him it’s about Nazis. I’m not a political analyst, but it seemed to me that Goldor qualified, and Wilson was a likely candidate too. It didn’t matter-the Mole never asked for details. Each time I went to him you could see him balancing the risk that I would bring the heat back with me against the chance that there could be one or two less Nazis doing the looking. Each time I caught the green light.
The Mole flopped into his chair without ceremony, took some gadget out of his overalls, and started fiddling with it. Finally he looked over at me, blinking. “So, Burke?”
“I need a car, Mole. Some license plates. And some help with a power system.”
The Mole just kept looking at me, nodding and blinking. There was no question but that he would do it-he always had. If there’s one thing I know about it’s how to survive, and here was one of the few people living who could teach me something more on the subject. But the Mole had his survival down so well he never talked about it. He looked up. “I’ll see you outside. Wait for me. Sit, have a smoke, talk with Simba-witz. I’ll come soon.”
I stumbled my way back through the tunnel to the shack-the doors to the outside were already open. I don’t know how he does that. I found my way outside, sat down on an empty milk crate, and lit up. Simba came back into the yard and stood there looking at me. He approached slowly. When he got close enough I scratched him behind his ears-even his growl of contentment sounded life-threatening. I told him, “Simba-witz, have I got a girl for you! Her name’s Pansy and she is a thing of beauty-a face like an angel and a body that just won’t quit. I told her all about you and she’s anxious to get together. What do you say, pal? Down for a little action?”
Simba snarled, which I took for agreement. Depending on how this caper came out, I might have to go someplace for a few months, and if I did I wanted to be sure Pansy had a home. And the puppies would be beautiful, no doubt about it.
The Mole materialized from the shadows. When he was just a kid he used to read
He was the target of a lot of freakish games by other kids, and he got beat up a lot. He would come home all battered and his father, a dockworker, would tell him to go back and fight it out with the kids or he would give the Mole worse than what he got from the bullies-very creative psychology on a kid with a genius I.Q. The Mole built some kind of homemade laser gun in his basement, went back to school, and blew away half a wall instead of the biggest tormentors-even then, his eyesight wasn’t too good.
The police came to his house, there was some kind of confrontation with his father, some talk about therapy, and the Mole ran away from home. He’s been out here ever since, first in an apartment over on Chrystie Street and now in the junkyard. I guess he will stay here until he dies. I know this much-if they ever come to take the Mole to a psychiatric ward, he is going to put his own personal Middle East policy into effect. I’m not sure exactly what this is, but one time the Mole asked me if I could get him some plutonium.
When it became obvious that the Mole wasn’t going to be any more conversational than usual, I told him what I wanted. “I need you to take out the security system in this house I have to visit.”
The Mole blinked a lot of times. “What kind of security system?”
“I don’t know exactly. I’ll draw you what I have from the plans, but I think there’s also a hookup to the police station. I want the whole damn system to go down, and only at a certain time. Like at eight o’clock, bang! nothing works… okay?”
“You want a bang?”
“No, Mole. That’s just an expression.”
The Mole stared at me as he would any lower form of life. “Does it have to be restorable?”
“No, I don’t care if the system stays down forever. You set it up so you can kill the whole thing at a certain time, right? Then you do it, and you leave. That’s all.”
“In the city?”
“Westchester County.”
“Multiple dwelling?”
“No, a big house.”
“Access?”
“Up to you. No guards, no dogs that I know of. But a wealthy neighborhood-the Man will be around all the time.”
