19

I MADE my way back through the dirty marble corridors of the Criminal Court, thinking my thoughts. Wolfe reminded me of Flood-so did the Rottweiler.

It was late March, but the sun was already blasting the front steps of the court. Maybe a real summer this year, not like the whore's promise we'd been getting for the past weeks-the sun would shine but the cold would be right there too. Only city people really hate the cold. In the city, it gets inside your bones and it freezes your guts. In the country, people sit around their fireplaces and look at the white stuff outside-saying how pretty it is, how clean it looks. The snow is never clean in the city. Here, people die when the Hawk comes down-if the cold doesn't get them, the fires they start to keep warm will.

I reached in my pocket for a smoke, looking out over the parking lot across the street where I'd stashed my Plymouth. A black guy with a shaved head, resplendent in a neon-orange muscle shirt with matching sweatband, caught my eye. "Got a cigarette, pal?" he asked.

At least he didn't call me "brother." When I got out of prison in the late 1960s, that bullshit was all over the street. Being an ex-con was never too valuable a credential, but back then at least it was a guaranteed introduction to girls. And the Village was full of them-promiscuously sucking up every shred of revolutionary rhetoric like marijuana-powered vacuum cleaners.

I made a good living then. All you needed was some genuine Third World people for props and you could raise funds faster than Reverend Ike-telling hippie jerkoffs that you were financing some revolutionary act, like a bank robbery. It was open season in the Village. Better than the Lower East Side. The hippies who lived over there believed they were making a contribution with their plotting and planning and their halfass bombs and letters to the editor. They were too busy organizing the oppressed to see the value of cash transactions, but they never knew where to buy explosives, so I did business with them too. Good thing they never tried to take out the Bank of America with the baking soda I sold them.

That's how I got started finding missing kids. It may have been Peace amp; Love in the streets, but the back alleys were full of wolves. The worst of the animals didn't just eat to survive-they did it for fun. So I'd run some of the kids down and drag them home. For the money. Once in a while one of the wolves would try and hold on to his prey. So I made some money and I made some enemies. I used up the money a long time ago.

When the revolution died-when BMWs replaced jeeps and the hippies turned perfectly good lofts a human could rent for a little money into co-ops with six-figure down payments-I stopped being relevant. I was ready for it. Some of the Third World wasn't, and they took my place in the jailhouses. Those that didn't go quietly got the key to Forest Lawn instead.

When things got nasty in New York, I rolled the dice on Biafra. I figured I'd do the same thing over there I was doing in New York, only on a grand scale-save a bunch of kids and make myself a fortune in the process. I didn't do either one, but I beat the odds anyway-I walked away from it. It's what I do best.

That was then. The black muscleman asking me if I had a cigarette was now.

"You taking a survey?" I asked him.

Our eyes locked. He shrugged, shifted his position, and went back to scanning the street. He probably didn't even smoke-just keeping in practice. His act needed work.

20

THE PLYMOUTH was in the parking lot across the street. Even on a warm day, that lot's always cold. The three courthouses surrounding it make a perfect wind tunnel. The car's fresh coat of primer made it look like it had been painted with rust-the Mole always changes the color after the car is used on a job and we hadn't decided on what to use next. It looks like a piece of junk, but it's anything but, with its independent rear suspension, fifty-gallon tank, fuel injection, heavy-duty cooling and shocks, bullet-proof glass, rhino-style bumpers-all that stuff. It wasn't fast, but you couldn't break it no matter what you did. It was going to be the Ultimate Taxicab, but it didn't work out that way.

The woman was standing in front of the Plymouth, tapping her foot impatiently like her date was late. All I could make out was that she was female. She was wearing a tan summer trenchcoat over dark slacks, her head covered with a black scarf and her face hidden behind sunglasses with big lenses. Nobody I knew, but I put my hand in my pocket anyway-some people subcontract their revenge.

Her eyes were on me all the way up to the Plymouth, so I walked past it like it meant nothing to me. But when I heard "Mr. Burke?" I knew there wasn't much point.

I don't like problems out in public-especially when half the public is cops.

"What?" I snapped out at her.

"I want to talk to you," she said. Her voice was shaky but determined. Trouble.

"You got me confused with someone else, lady."

"No, I don't. I have to talk with you," she said.

"Give me a name or get lost," I told her. If she knew my face from the courthouse but didn't have a referral from someone I knew, I was gone.

"Julio Crunini," she offered, her face close to mine now.

"I don't know anybody named Julio, lady. Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying, okay?" And I reached past her to open the Plymouth 's door and get the hell away from her and whatever she wanted. Julio's been out of prison too long, I was thinking-his mouth was getting loose.

She put her hand on my arm. Her hand was shaking-I could see the wedding ring on her finger, and the diamond sparkling in the sun next to it. "You know me," she said.

I looked into her face, and drew a blank. She must have seen what I was thinking-one hand went to her face and the sunglasses disappeared. Her face meant nothing to me. Her mouth went hard, and she pulled away the scarf-her flaming red hair fired in the sun.

"You know me now?" she asked bitterly.

It was the jogger from Forest Park.

21

NOTHING CHANGED in my face-I was raised in places where it isn't a good idea to let people know what you're thinking-but she wasn't looking for recognition.

"I don't know you, lady," I told her, "and I don't want to."

"You don't like my looks?" she challenged me. A real Mafia princess all right-she was used to this.

"I don't like your smell, lady. You stink of trouble, and I got enough of my own.

I pushed past her like I had someplace else to go. Her hand reached out and grabbed my forearm-I gave her the same look I'd given Julio in the garage, but she didn't have enough sense to know what it meant. Her hand was aristocratic-dark-red polish over manicured nails.

"If you don't talk to me here, I'll just come to Murray Street, Mr. Burke-to your hotel."

It was a good, hard shot-she thought. Julio must have opened up like the Red Sea. Only a few people knew I lived at the Deacon Hotel. Of course, those people were all wrong. The front desk would take a message for me from force of habit-the only force any junkie recognizes-but I hadn't lived there for years, ever since I got off parole. It didn't matter now-this broad was making word sounds from her mouth, but all I heard was "tick, tick, tick…"

Her face had the smug look of a woman with lots more cards to put on the table. Uncle Julio's halfass omertà was the modern version-rock-solid until it got a better offer.

"Get in the car," I told her, holding the Plymouth 's door for her to slip past me.

"My car's right over there," she told me, gesturing toward the inevitable BMW sedan. "It'll be more comfortable-it's air conditioned."