When I was a little kid I once saw a bunch of men get together on the street in Little Italy. There was this vacant lot with all kinds of old rotting stuff in it, and rats were living there right out in the open. One of them had bitten a kid. The men surrounded the lot and poured gasoline all over the place and then set it on fire. When the rats poured out, the waiting men formed a line and tried to hammer them all to death with baseball bats. They killed a lot of them but a lot more got away. One poor bastard hadn’t been prepared-he hadn’t dressed for the part. A shrieking rat ran up his pants leg and tried to rip its way to freedom with its teeth. When they finally pulled off the guy’s pants there was only blood where his testicles should have been. If they ever started one of those fires down here it’d be worse than what happened to that poor guy.

No point in staying in the background any longer-too many people could catch wise by now anyway. Max and I hit the street with the Cobra’s picture at the ready, without much real hope, but we had to give it a try. Who knew?

The street didn’t look any better close up than it had from behind the car windows. Max and I stood near the corner watching the flow, me thinking of our next move, Max indifferent. I scanned the length of the block-the only living thing doing legitimate work was a seeing-eye dog that had no way of knowing his owner had 20/20 vision and a few dozen pills for sale in his tattered pockets.

I picked a dive at random. The side of beef at the door was wearing a skin-tight red muscle shirt under a pair of thick black suspenders and carrying a flashlight that did double duty as a night stick. He held out a beefy palm, and I gave him twenty to cover admission for Max and me. We found a table in the smoke-clogged darkness a few feet away from the long bar on which two tired-looking girls exposed themselves to music. It was about as sexy as a visit to the morgue, and nowhere near as clean.

The waitress took one look at us, saw we weren’t citizens, threw us the single obligatory shake of the silicone, and brought us the two lukewarm Cokes that came with the cover charge we’d paid at the door. The joint was useless-the Cobra could be sitting ten feet away and we wouldn’t spot him. I took out the picture, held it so the waitress would see it was something she was supposed to notice. She pretended to take a close look.

“Seen him recently?”

“Never saw him before, honey.” A waste of time.

Max and I got up to leave. We approached the side of beef and I took out the picture again and held it up. “You know this guy?”

“Maybe,” meaning, what’s in it for me?

“Maybe yes, or maybe no?”

“Just plain maybe, pal. We don’t like private cops asking questions in here.”

“Look, my friend has something to give this guy, okay? Maybe he could just give it to you instead.”

“You ain’t giving me nothin’,” he snarled. Max grabbed one of his hyperflexed biceps like he was feeling the muscle. The beef’s face shifted color under the greasy lights, his hand went toward his back pocket… until he looked at Max’s face and thought better of it.

“Hey, what is this? I don’t know the fuckin’ guy, all right? Lemme go.”

I could see it was no use and signaled to Max. We walked out the door leaving the beef rubbing his bicep and muttering to himself.

We checked a couple of porno shops, admired the MONGOOSE stenciling of the Blood Shadows, drew nothing but more blanks.

Over on Forty-fourth we ran into McGowan. He flashed his Irish grin, but his partner hung back, wary. A new guy.

“Burke, how’s it going? And Max?”

I said, “Okay,” and Max bowed. I showed McGowan the picture but he shook his head.

“Seen the Prof?” I asked the detective.

“He’s around. I heard he had some trouble with a pimp, got slapped around a bit…”

“Yeah,” I said, “I heard that too.”

McGowan just nodded. He just wanted to be sure I had the information-whatever happened to a pimp wouldn’t cost him any sleep.

Another two hours on the street and we could see we weren’t going to score. We found the Plymouth, rolled over to the Village, checked a few of the leather bars, even the one that specialized in police costumes. Nothing. We tried a few of the sleazo hotels off West Street, but the desk clerks were their usual fountains of information. Even with flashing some fairly serious money, we kept drawing blanks.

But the Cobra was out there-I could smell him. He hadn’t left. Not yet. Going underground was impossible for him-I lived there and he’d just be a tourist. But time was pressing against us and we weren’t any closer. All he had to do was go hop a Greyhound to anyplace and he’d be out of our reach. My one hope now was that the cub reporter would do a newspaper number in his column by tomorrow’s edition and Wilson would snap at the bait. He didn’t have the credentials to work professional crime-no working thief would include a freak like him as part of a team. He’d need the VA money soon. Did he have a passport? And if the government bagged him before I did, could I work something out? Getting him canceled in prison was no problem, but it would be too long a wait. For Flood. For me too.

Max sensed my feelings, reached over, and put a hand on my forearm. He clasped his hands in front of his chest to say that patience should be my ally, not my enemy. Sure.

I was so depressed I hadn’t even checked to see who was running at Yonkers that night. I hadn’t played a number in days. The only thing I had to look forward to in the morning was a newspaper column by a kid who wouldn’t know a mercenary recruiter from a polo pony.

I dropped Max at the warehouse, went back to my office, and called Michelle to check on things. Nothing happening, but she was holding strong. So I went up there, brought her a bag of food, spelled her for a few hours while she napped on the floor in the sleeping bag I’d brought. It was getting light outside when I left to buy a paper.

51

THE STREETS WERE still calm and quiet when I hit the sidewalk, heading down Fifth toward Twenty-third Street, looking for a newstand. There’s a little park right across from the Appellate Division Courthouse between Fifth and Madison. Usually it’s packed with three-card monte operators and soft-dope dealers, but it was nearly deserted at that hour. I spotted an old man wearing four or five layers of clothing, catching a piece of sleep, guarding his plastic shopping bag full of God knows what. He opened his eyes as I approached, too tired and too weak to run, probably thanking whatever he still believed in that I wasn’t a kid looking to douse him with gasoline and set him on fire for the fun of it.

The weather was changing, you could tell. In the country they look for the robins-in the city we look for the old men coming out of the subway tunnels into the daylight. Those abandoned tunnels are nice and warm, but the territory belongs to the rats and it’s hard to sleep. Somehow the bag ladies can operate above the ground even in the winter, but the old men can’t cut it. They have to go for the Men’s Shelter down on the Bowery or the TB wards or the subway tunnels. So when they finally come up for air you know the good weather can’t be too far behind.

I cut through one of the crosspaths in the park, walking slowly. When I stopped to light a smoke I spotted a youngish white man slouching on one of the benches. He was wearing an old army jacket and a light-blue golfer’s hat, engineer boots, dark glasses. Smoking a joint. I knew the type-too heavy for light work and too light for heavy work. He was out there watching-a finger for some kind of operation, not a face-to-face man or a planner. I walked past him, puffing on the butt, hands in my pockets. I could feel his eyes focus behind the sunglasses, but I kept rolling along out of the park.