Another Life (23 page)

* * *

“W
hat do you want this for?”
“I ask you to do something for me, now I have to fucking
explain
it first?” I said to Terry, my voice harder than it should have been.
“It’s…all over the map, Burke,” he said, ignoring me, concentrating on the task. His father’s son. “If I knew what you were looking for, I could narrow the search and—”
“I need all of this stuff first, kid. I have an…Ah, it’s not even good enough to call it an idea, not yet. But it’s not for me. It’s not even for this…job we have. It’s for Clarence.”
“Why didn’t you just say—?”
“I didn’t think I had to. But I guess you’ve got more of your mother in you than I thought.”
“Fifty-fifty,” the kid said, as focused on his work as a mongoose. “You know what that means?”
“Half of each?”
“No, Burke. It means I’m
theirs.
Nobody else’s.
Everything
in me is from them. Not one hundred percent,
more.
I’m not a total; I’m a gestalt. And there’s no room for anything else in that equation.”
“I shouldn’t have run my stupid mouth,” I apologized.
“That’s what Mom’s always telling you,” he said, chuckling to show I was forgiven.

* * *

N
ew York’s famous for its rats, but we’ve got the same vermin problem every other town has—the ones we voted into office.
The reason some of those imbeciles won’t let you teach evolution in school is because they don’t believe there’s any such thing. Why should they? If evolution was real, how could they
stay
that stupid for so many generations?
I guess they figure God created fossils to throw heretics off the scent.
You want proof evolution is for real, don’t waste your time with fossils; just check out the New York City rat. They started out as immigrants, stowaways in some ship’s cargo hold. Only the survivors got to breed, and they’ve been improving with every new litter. Smarter, faster, stronger. Getting ready to rule. Manhattan wouldn’t be the first island they took over.
That’s where I got the idea for the mission I sent Terry on. Half of it, anyway.

* * *

“I
t’s a shadow-stat,” the kid told me, a couple of days later.
“Dumb it down, little bro,” Gateman begged him. Rosie sat up expectantly, like she understood every word, but she didn’t fool me—Pansy used to do the same thing.
“You wanted to know how many cases of child abuse are never reported, right?”
I nodded, encouraging Terry to go on.
“That’s what they call a pure unknown,” he explained. “If you can find
one,
that means you’re never sure you found them
all,
see?”
“Cocksucker finally beats his kid to death,
that’s
when they find out he’s been doing it for years?”
“Yes,” Terry said to Gateman. “That’s it, exactly. We know
some
cases of child abuse are never reported, but how many? That number could never be anything but a guess.”
“Right. But how many crimes committed on kids by
strangers
aren’t reported?” I asked.
“
Absolute
strangers?” the kid asked. “Not teachers, or coaches, or ministers, or—”
“Total strangers,” I told him. “Mad-dog tree-jumpers, street snatchers, opportunity-grabbers.”
“Like I said, you can’t measure an unknown. But you can reason logically from known data, and come up with something pretty close.” He tapped some keys, looked, tapped some more. “If…
if
any of the type of cases you described
wasn’t
reported, that would be no more than a micro-percentage of the total.”
“Sure! That’s what blew the whole ‘missing children’ scam out of the fund-raising game. They got the grant money, all right. Only when the funders actually looked at the cases, they found out that almost all of them were some kind of custodial interference, not stranger abductions.”
“But
some
of them had to be—”
“Yeah, Gate. And
those
still get maximum media. Nothing like a good old Amber Alert to grab the headlines, right? But how many times you see the parents go on TV and beg for whoever snatched their precious baby to return her…and, later, it turns out the kid’s buried in their own backyard?”
“Somebody hurt
my
kid, I’d never call the cops,” the wheelchair-bound shooter said.
“You might have to,” I confronted him. “Sure, if you knew who did it, you could TCB yourself. But what if it was a wrong-place, wrong-time stranger-snatch? You’d have every lawman on the planet looking. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re not,” the old-school con admitted—it hurt him to even
think
about the prospect.
“Now, there’s reasons why this fucking prince, or sheikh, or whatever he calls himself, there’s reasons why he wouldn’t go to NYPD. But he reported the kidnapping to
somebody.
Otherwise, the people who hired Pryce would never have known about it.
“And now that we know what he was doing with that kid, I buy his story. The part about how he got taken down, I mean, not the car-switch crap. If
he
wanted that baby dead, all he had to do was ship him home. And
no
way he lets himself be humiliated, or takes a chance on some stranger stumbling over him.
“So I
do
believe he was still coming out of whatever they spiked him with when he first told the story. Later, when he realized what kind of problems that might cause, he had the clout to make the report go away. NYPD brass probably got a
real
quick visit from some very heavy hitters. Word’s out—any cop who runs his mouth about
this
one is a friendly-fire candidate.”
“So that fucking little dirtbag, he
does
want the baby back?”
“Not a doubt in my mind,” I answered Gateman.
“You know where the most expensive house in this whole country is?” Terry piped up.
“What difference does that—?”
“It’s in Colorado,” the kid said, unruffled. “Appraised at a hundred and forty-five
million
dollars. For a
house.
You know who owns it? Some former ambassador. Came here from Saudi Arabia.”
“Okay…” I let the thought trail off, as close to impatient as I allow myself to become.
“I get it now,” the kid said, proudly. “Why you wanted me to look that other stuff up.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah,” he said, speaking in a blend of his parents’ voices. “For some people, a billion dollars is nothing. For others, a dime would be the world.”
“That ain’t news,” Gateman said, kindly.
“It’s not about the fact, but what you can
do
with the fact,” Terry said. “You were right, Burke. This
is
the perfect way for Clarence to…”
He never said “live in the same world I’m going to” out loud, but my heart heard every word.

* * *

T
he restaurant was closed to customers. Nothing new: Mama still has the sign the last health inspector threatened to slap on the door if she didn’t pay the “tax.”
He was a real piece of work, that guy. Figured Mama claiming not to understand English was a ruse, so, when she wouldn’t cough up, he came back and showed her he meant business.
It was only when he returned to pick up his loot that he learned she did, too. The restaurant hasn’t been inspected since, but the CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE NEW YORK CITY BOARD OF HEALTH sign still goes up whenever it’s needed.
The big round table in the corner usually had a plastic RESERVED sign on it, tastefully ornamented with dead flies. Today, it was covered in linen you could make a bridal gown from.
All of us were there except for the Prof. You don’t bring a man to his own surprise party until you finish building the gift you’re going to present him with.
“It’s called ‘micro-lending,’” I said to Clarence. “In some countries, you do it right, a man goes from watching his family starve to death to watching them grow up. Grow up into more than he ever dreamed they could.”
“We’re not talking about Welfare, honey,” Michelle assured him, patting his hand. “This isn’t charity; it’s a bridge to another life. Nobody has to trade their dignity for food. No begging, no ass-kissing, no soup-kitchen religion.”
“It ain’t sharking, either,” Gateman added. “Paying back a loan, that’s nothing but showing the guy who fronted you the coin that he was right to trust you in the first place.”
“I cannot just travel around the world looking for—”
“Come on, Clarence; you know what a
susu
is.”
“That is different, mahn. A
susu
is no loan. All contribute, every month. Then, when your turn comes, you—”
“Every group that comes here has some kind of way to do that,” I told him. “You think it’s only people from the Islands? The Koreans do the same thing. So do the Greeks. It’s not about where you come from; it’s about
why
you came.
“I’m not talking about illegals in sweatshops, working off their bonds; I’m talking about people who came here to
stay
here. What do they all want? Same thing anyone else wants: something of their own.
“So they work. You know what a Jamaican woman calls a man with two jobs?”
“Lazy,” Clarence said, grinning.
“Yeah. Some people come here with skills they never get to use; some people are born here, and they teach themselves. After a while, they got everything they need to make a go of working for
themselves,
except for…”
Max pulled a wad of cash out of somewhere, dropped it on the table between us.
“Right,” I echoed. “But what’re they going to do, get an SBA loan? Not for the kind of businesses I’m talking about.”
“I thought you were—”
“Not crime,” I cut him off. “Remember where you lived before you found the Prof? That neighborhood, I mean?”
“Of course, mahn.”
“You always loved that Rover of yours, right? But when you needed work done on it, you never brought it to some certified mechanic in a fancy shop, did you? Even when you finally had the money to take it anywhere you wanted, you stayed close to home. How come? Because you knew guys who could make a dead car get up and walk, am I right? Word-of-mouth beats the Yellow Pages, every time.”
“This is true, but—”
“That’s the way it is, all over,” I said. “Say you want some barbecue, okay? You know the best joint might not even have a sign on the door. Electricians, plumbers, carpenters…anything people need doing, there’s somebody knows how to do it. Do it
good.
They make their living because word gets around. Yes?”
“Ah. Yes, we always have our own—”
“And what about the
craftsmen
?” I overtalked him. “There’s men who can make miracles with their hands, build you a bookcase you could sell on Fifth Avenue for a fortune. But the only wood they’ll ever touch is the broom they push in some ware-house. This city’s full of silversmiths who scrub toilets. Women who could make you a copy of a designer gown from a damn
picture,
no pattern…and you’d never be able to tell it from the original. But the only sewing machine they’ll ever see is in a sweatshop. You got gardeners who could grow lemon trees on concrete, but they’ll never have any land to do it on. Right or wrong?”
“This is all truth. But how could I—?”
“My girlfriend Alitha, she found herself a man with
substantial
assets,” Michelle said, touching the Islander’s sleeve. “Now, she can get her hair done at one of those places that’ll lick your feet while they paint your toenails. But she’s still not letting anyone but Miss Jasmine touch
her
hair.”
Clarence just looked puzzled.
“Alitha’s a black girl,” Michelle explained. “Where she’s from, Miss Jasmine is famous. She doesn’t have a shop; you have to sit in her kitchen while she works. But, like your father always says, when you want magic, you go wherever the magician is.”
“Yes,” Clarence said, gravely. “The man who works on my car—he is a genius. I would never think of allowing anyone else to touch my treasure. You are saying, if Miss Jasmine had her own shop…”
“Damn, kid. If you cleared leather as quick as you think, those fancy suits of yours would look like Swiss cheese by now,” Gateman told him.
“Oh, stop that!” Michelle scolded. “Any kid can get all speedy; it takes a grown man to know when to take his time. Especially with something
real
important.”
Gateman blushed at Michelle’s triple-entendre. That’s my baby sister. She gave up a lot of things when she chose the Mole, but making macramé out of men wasn’t one of them.
She used to do surgery, too. I still remember her, back when we were runaway kids. A little tranny, way south of a hundred pounds, back against an alley wall, facing a quarter-ton rough-off artist. He had a bicycle chain; she had her straight razor. “You hungry?” she hissed at him. “Come on, fatso! I got your diet, right here.”
The tough guy hadn’t seen me in the shadows—if he had moved on her, I’d have planted my switchblade deep into his liver by the second step. But Michelle was so raged-up she couldn’t see anything but a pig who thought he could muscle her onto her knees. He wanted a quick piece, but Michelle wanted a piece of
him.
I came back to business, said: “What did you think, our big plan was for you to be some
bodeguero
? You’re not going to be building a little shop, Clarence; you’re going to be building a network. Instead of collecting interest on the loans, you’ll own a piece of every business you finance. A
little
piece, but there’ll be a lot of those. You’re going to have scouts all over the city. They know who to look for; the rest is up to you.”
“Money-lending is a dirty business,” the Mole said.
We all looked at him, waiting for more, as if we didn’t know better.
“What Mole means is—” Michelle began, before a look from the father of her child made
her
blush.
“That is why I would not be lending, I would be investing, yes?” Clarence said, dubiously. “But there would have to be a
source
of the money I invest in any legitimate business. How would I explain—?”
“For government, very easy.” Mama spoke for the first time. “You own little building—maybe eight apartments. Plenty equity. Rents pay mortgage, leave plenty income. You use that money smart. Maybe buy special jade pieces. Some collectors, they pay big money. They tell government how much they pay. Tell insurance company even more.”
“This is…” Clarence struggled for the words he needed. “But how could
I
do such things? Even if we could find this baby, Pryce would owe us nothing. What we are doing now, that is not earning; it is working off our own debt.”
“You do what Burke tell you, build, how you say, ‘network’?
Then
you have cash, yes?” Mama asked.
“But you have to
start
with cash, Mama. I cannot—”
“Cash goes in bank. Not like our bank, one of theirs. Pay taxes, everything.”
Clarence nodded, but confusion was all over his face.
Mama tapped a long crimson fingernail against a glass to get our attention. “Americans always say stupid things like they saying smart things. ‘Money not grow on trees.’ Then why money always have roots?”
“Yes, Mama,” the young man said, choosing his words carefully. “But an apartment building, that cannot exist only on paper.”
Mama smiled, said, “On
this
paper,” and placed an official-looking document on the tablecloth in front of him.
Clarence picked it up, handed it to Michelle. She glanced at it, then passed it around the table. It was the deed to a building a few blocks from where we had gathered.
“Wedding present,” Mama said.
Michelle started to cry. Clarence embraced her. Gratefully, so his own tears wouldn’t show.
We all managed to look somewhere else.
But we all saw the same thing.