does he? He has to work.”
“Marie works too.”
“You know what I mean, Mrs. Jefko. This has got to end.”
“You can’t make me do anything-I have my own life-”
“I’m not telling you what to do-I’m saying this has to end. And you know it does too. Sooner or later your husband will find out-or you’ll move out to be with Marie, or something. I just mean it won’t go on like it has been.”
I looked at her face and I saw that she hadn’t been thinking that far ahead, although the odds were that Marie had. Then she asked me what she should do, and I said I didn’t know. I told her the only reason I was there was that I didn’t want to be the one to tell her husband, that I thought she could try again with him, maybe move to a different place. “Talk to someone, the two of you together. I don’t know. But something.”
“You don’t look like Dear Abby.”
“What do I look like?”
“You look like a nasty, cold man. And I think you should get out of my house.”
I thought so too. There wasn’t anything else I could say. I didn’t have the right words, and she understood that. I went back downstairs and back to my office. When I saw the kid a few hours later, I told him that his wife wasn’t involved with any other man as far as I could tell.
A couple of days later, he grabbed me outside of Mama Wong’s. He told me his wife had told him the whole story, even about me being there. His eyes looked bad, and he wanted to go in two different directions. “Mr. Burke, I know why you went to see her. You should have told me yourself. You ain’t no fucking marriage counselor. It’s my problem, and I can handle it.”
“All right, kid. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you’re sorry. You did it all wrong. You should have just told me.”
“Look, kid-”
“Hey, fuck you, okay? How much I owe you for the last work?”
“Two hundred.”
The kid looked at me, trying to make up his mind. He finally did. “Well, you can go scratch for that money, Burke. I ain’t paying you. You didn’t do your fucking job. How’s that?”
“Okay, kid,” I said, and just walked away. I knew he was staring after me but, like he said, I hadn’t earned the money.
Mama Wong got a letter for me from the kid a few weeks later. As soon as I saw the return address, I knew what had happened. I went to see the kid in the Tombs, wearing my nice pinstripe with an attache case full of file folders and business cards in case the guards wanted proof I was a lawyer. But they didn’t give a damn. They were holding the kid for homicide-his wife. He looked all right when they brought him down to the interview room, calm and relaxed, his hands full of documents. “Mr. Burke, my lawyer says I’m going to trial on this in a few weeks. I wanted to talk to you first.”
“What can I do now?”
“Nobody can do nothing now. I did what I had to do, what I thought was right. Just like you did-just like she did. I just got to clear something up first. About my car.”
“What about the car, kid?”
“I don’t want the lawyer to have it, okay? He already got paid too much by my father. My father don’t know any better-he wants me to cop to manslaughter or something, says I’ll only get a few years. I don’t want a few years.”
“You want me to investigate…?”
“I don’t want you to do nothing, Mr. Burke. I understand a few things now. Not everything, but a few things- enough. I just want to get everything in order, make things right.”
“What things?”
“Those things that are left. Nothing ever would have worked out with Nancy anyway-I knew that, I guess. But if that scumbag lawyer gets my car…”
“What do you want, kid? I can’t just-”
“Here’s the title. I had my father send it over. I’m gonna sign it over to you. I owe you money anyway. Besides, you’ll
“Look, you don’t have to do this. You’re a young guy still. You can do the time. I know-I’ve been inside. It’s bad but it’s not impossible. There’s ways, things you can do. And then you can come out and finish the car.”
“The car is finished, Mr. Burke. It’s really been finished a long time, I guess. It never was the money, you understand?”
I do now, but I didn’t then. So the kid signed the car over to me, and I went and got it registered. I even found a guy who would insure me-no problem, just minimum coverage. That car doesn’t need collision insurance.
It wasn’t hard to figure what the kid was going to do. I didn’t say anything to anyone-he was a man and he was entitled to that much respect. Even the guards knew what was coming so they put him in a special cell, suicide- proof. It didn’t stop the kid. After all, he was a mechanical genius, they said. He hung up a couple of days later. I heard his lawyer was asking questions about the car, but they only found another 1970 Plymouth that the kid was cannibalizing for parts. That was a few years ago. I used to think about the kid every time I drove the car. Then no more until tonight, for some reason.
5
I CRUISED SLOWLY over to Mama Wong’s. That Flood broad was going to go about finding her Cobra the wrong way for sure. You can’t find a freak by chasing him. You have to use the herd-spook technique and make him show himself. When I was in Africa, I noticed that a lot of the predators would size up a herd and then do something to make it stampede. They used different ways-wild dogs would charge like they were trying to bring down an antelope, and lions would just deliberately piss on the ground. It had the same effect-the antelopes would run like hell and the predators would just watch and wait. Soon you could see at least one of the antelopes couldn’t run too good. Maybe it was too old, or too sick, or whatever. But after they saw that, the predators would all concentrate on that one beast, and it would be over soon. The best way to find a particular freak is to get them all moving around, out of their caves, so you can spot them easily. But she wouldn’t know that, the dumb broad. She’d probably just go around and ask a lot of fool questions and maybe get herself blown away. Just because she took out some super who was trying to cop a feel from what he thought was a helpless girl didn’t make her any certified freak-fighter in my book. She probably was in the can for a while, but she probably avoided the freaks like the plague, if she could. I didn’t do that-I watched them. She may have been thinking she was going to a better place when she got out of the joint, but I knew better.
When I got to Mama’s, she was at the front cash register like she always is. Like always, she didn’t greet me. I just walked past her to the last booth in the back, ordered some duck and fried rice and waited.
She came back after about a half hour and sat down herself. Then she said something in Chinese to the waiter who had appeared a split-second after her. He left and came right back with a large tureen of hot-and-sour soup and two bowls.
“Burke, you eat some of this soup. Very good. Make you feel better quick.”
“I feel fine, Mama. I don’t want any of that soup.”
“You eat soup, Burke. Too much here for just one. Better for you than duck.” She filled the bowl and passed it to me. “Chinese way, serve man first always.” I smiled at her. She kept stirring soup in the tureen, looked up, smiled back and said, “Not all Chinese ways so good.”
The soup was rich and clean at the same time. I felt my nasal passages opening up just putting it near my face. Mama’s eyes swept the room, better than any electronic device. She lived in fear of being discovered by tourists and having enough diners in her joint to ruin her business. I was there the night she got an advance tip that the restaurant critic from
