Footsteps of the Hawk (3 page)

"No…"

"You keep starving yourself, you end up looking like a child again. No curves, no shape. All flat lines, right? Like a skinny little girl again."

"I…"

"They don't want grown women," I told her, sharing the truth—we both knew who "they" were. "They want
little
girls," I said quietly. "You're not keeping them away, Susan—you're playing your old tapes."

"I
hate
you!" she shrieked at me. Then she started to cry. Deep, racking sobs. Her bird's–wing ribs looked like they were going to snap from the pressure and Doc was on his feet in a split–second, arms around the girl, crooning something soft in her ear, patting her back until she stopped holding herself so rigid, walking her out the door.

I finished my cigarette, looking around the office, someplace else in my head. But I wasn't that far gone—I used the time to slip a couple of Doc's Rx pads into my pocket.

Doc was back in a few minutes. If he noticed the missing pads, he didn't say anything. "You should have been a therapist, hoss. We've been discussing how we could confront Susan with her real agenda for weeks now."

"I'm sorry. I—"

"Don't be sorry. I wasn't kidding you—that was what she needed. I guess it was better hearing it from a stranger. She was sent to us for anorexia, but we weren't getting anywhere. Another week and she'd have had to go on IV."

"Who sent her?"

"Her dad."

"The same one who…"

"No. It was her grandfather. Happened maybe ten, twelve years ago. They never did anything about it. Oh sure, they kept her away from him, but that was it. They thought everything was fine until she just stopped eating."

"The weight she's trying to lose, it's got nothing to do with calories, huh?"

"Right on the money, hoss. But now we got ourselves jump–started. And Susan got herself a chance." Then he leaned back in his chair and told me what he wanted.

I told Doc I couldn't handle a 24–7, but he promised that his client's daughter would be on the midnight bus out of Cincinnati. That was the job—a runaway. At least that's what
she
thought. The kid's parents made the arrangements with Doc. She'd go right into his clinic. And she wouldn't have to go home if she didn't want to. If you wanted Doc to treat your kid, you had to sign that last part. Notarized.

I didn't ask Doc anything else. I got up to leave but he stopped me, using the same traffic–cop gesture he'd used on the girl with the carrot skin.

"You know, Burke…the way you handled that thing with Susan…I don't understand why you live the way you do."

"You don't know how I live," I told him, trying to shut this off.

"I've got an idea," Doc replied. "Look, I know
you
—I know you a long time. Even back…inside…you were always studying something. Reading, asking questions. You've got an amazing vocabulary—it's almost like you're bilingual—sometimes you sound like a mobster, sometimes you sound like a lawyer, sometimes you—"

"I do have a great vocabulary," I interrupted. "It's so fucking big, I even know what the word 'patronizing' means.

Doc nodded—like he'd tried his best, but the case was hopeless.

W
hen I walked in the Eighth Avenue entrance everyone was in their places. The Prof was sitting on his shoeshine box, industriously working over a pair of alligator loafers. Clarence was in the loafers, eyes sweeping the terminal. Max was slumped on a bench, his body disguised under a filthy old raincoat, a battered felt hat shielding his eyes.

I was wearing one of the suits Michelle had made me buy. Gray silk, fall weave. Carrying a black anodized–aluminum attaché case in my left hand.

I strolled past a bank of pay phones, listening to a United Nations babble—all kinds of people, calling home. Calling home is a big business in this city. You can find special setups in any heavy ethnic neighborhood—phone centers, they're called. They set them up almost like tiny apartments—nice comfortable chair to sit in, couple of spares in case you want to crowd the whole family in too. Some of them have desks, shelf space, writing paper. And their rates are cheaper than you could get on your own phone, because the guys who run it buy blocks of trunk time to specific locations. In Flushing, it's Korea, India, Southeast Asia: two seventy–nine for the first minute, then seventy–five cents for each additional minute. In Jackson Heights, it's Colombia: a buck twenty–six for the first, forty–nine cents after. People who use the centers, they're not thinking of a quickie call—some of them stay for hours.

Down in the Port Authority, they have the low–rent version—you make your call with someone else's credit card. Thieves rent the credit–card numbers—all you can use for twenty–four hours, one flat fee. The Port Authority is the best place to use them—plenty of pay phones always available, impossible to stake out, anonymous.

My watch said it was eleven–forty. Plenty of time even if the bus was on schedule. The Port Authority cops were all around, watching for runaways. No shortage of pimps either, trolling for the same fish, using different bait.

It went so smooth I almost didn't trust it. While the predators hovered, I walked straight on through. I met the bus, told the girl I was with Project Pride, a safe house for runaways. Promised her a nice private room, free food, and counselors to help her find a job. She told me she was going to be an actress. I told her lies of equal weight. She got into my Plymouth. I drove her to the clinic, half–listening to her stream of chatter, hating how easy anyone could have gotten this little girl to come along with them.

I found a place to park, rang the bell. The door opened. I left the kid there.

T
he next morning, I went back to work. Ever since I got back from Connecticut, I've been bottom–feeding, picking at carrion. I run my scams in the Personals—promising whatever, delivering never. I also use my P.O. boxes—offering losers a real pipeline to "mercenary opportunities." The only mercenary they'll ever meet that way is me. Kiddie–porn stings don't have much bite to them today—the freaks all want to sample the merchandise over a computer modem before they buy. Or they want you to fax a teaser. And even the pedophiles who want hard copy insist you use FedEx so the
federales
can't bust you for trafficking through the U.S. mail. But that's okay—there's never a shortage of targets who can't go crying to the cops when they get fleeced.

I deal with citizens too. Every time the government adds a new tax to cigarettes, the market for bootleg butts goes bullish. And brand–name counterfeiting is always a sure thing: Mont Blanc pens, Rolex watches, Gucci bags—they're all best–sellers for street merchants. Most of it's made in Southeast Asia, where child labor is real cheap. In Thailand, the Promised Land for baby–rapers, it's so cheap that the freaks organize tours: for one flat rate you get round–trip to Bangkok, a nice hotel…and babies to fuck. The planes are always filled to capacity.

But even if hustling, scamming, and grafting all dried up, I could always sell firearms—hate never goes out of style. I only deal in bulk, like a case of handguns. And I won't touch the exotics—titanium crossbows that cost three grand, mail–order SAMs—that kind of stuff's for the borderlands, the far–out frontier where psychosis and technology overlap.

I sell to the usual suspects, mostly far–right dim–bulbs who sit in their basements stroking the gun barrels…the firearms equivalent of the inflatable women they sell in the freak–sex catalogs. Most of my customers are pretty easy to scope out, but when an unsmiling young woman in overalls and a flannel shirt wanted to buy enough
plastique
to level a high–rise, I raised my eyebrows in a question. She told me she was an animal lover, like that explained it all.

I passed on that one. I don't play much—and when I do, it's with my deck.

M
y bottom–feeding wasn't limited to business. I've known Vyra forever, met her when she was engaged to marry an architect. She didn't go through with that one. After working her way through another half–dozen guys, she eventually settled on an accountant. All throughout that, we'd get together once in awhile. We never had that much to say to each other—came together as smooth as chambering a round, parted as easy as firing it.

Vyra was a slim girl, not very curvy, with breasts way too big for her frame. The only bras she could wear had industrial–strength under–wires—when she took them off you could see the violent red marks where they had cut into her. They made her back ache too, she said. And sometimes her neck hurt so badly she had to have it braced.

"Why don't you get them fixed?" I asked once, lying next to her on a hotel bed.

"You mean like the rest of me?" she asked, not sure whether to try sarcasm or tears—she always had both on tap. I'd known Vyra before she started on the plastic surgery—hell, I knew her when she was still Myra—but I'd never tried to talk her out of it. She finally got her nose reduced, earlobes cut down, and an implant at the tip of her chin. All in one visit—I didn't see her for about three months. When I did, she was the same sweet bitch–on–wheels she'd always been, only with more confidence,

"Why not?" I replied. "You could get the best—"

"Men
love
them," she said. "I mean, they
worship
them. You have no idea…"

"But if it's going to keep you in pain all the—"

"Don't worry." She smiled, her perfectly capped teeth white in the afternoon dimness. "I make them pay for it."

When I first saw Vyra, she was a hat–check girl in a nightclub, wearing one of those imitation bunny outfits—a one–piece bodysuit cut high on the thighs with a deep V at the chest. A customer gave her ten bucks to reclaim his hat, watched hungrily as she stuffed the bill deep into her cleavage.

"I'll bet you could stuff a hundred bucks down there," the guy said. "All in singles."

"I don't play with singles," Vyra shot back, telling him the score.

She married a guy she met in the club. Or a guy she met in the club introduced her to the guy she married. Or the guy was married when she met him and divorced his wife over her. Or something like that…When Vyra tells her stories, I don't listen too hard.

Next time I ran into her, it was an accident. I was working a tracking job over in Jersey—she was sitting out in front of a café, at one of those little round tables with big Euro ashtrays, sipping something from a tall narrow glass. I sat down across from her, grateful for the vantage point and the cover.

Vyra told me about her life, flashing a diamond ring that must have cost five figures wholesale. She gave me her phone number, but the calling instructions were so complicated—only on Tuesday and Thursday, between two and four in the afternoon, but not if it falls on the first day of the month…crap like that—I never got around to it.

But when she called me, she caught me just right. I was in Mama's, not doing anything, and she was in the Vista Hotel, right across from Battery Park. It only took me a few minutes to get there. About the same time it took both of us to get done with the only thing there ever was between us.

She was good at it—a lifetime of faking passion blurred the line so much that, sometimes, she actually thought she was letting go.

"You're the only one who ever made me come," she told me. It was a good line, as such things go. "You were the first" would have been deeper sarcasm than "I love you," but making a woman come for the first time in her life—hell, most men's egos would slip–slide around that credibility gap with ease.

Vyra's good at sex. Practiced, athletic, responsive…controlling enough so she does most of the work, but not so much so that you
feel
controlled. On a good day, she can bite a pillow hard enough to make you think you were driving steel like John Henry never dreamed, the Boss Rooster with his pick of the chicks. Vyra must have learned the truth early on in her life—faking love is a snap, but faking lust is a bitch.

Vyra's great at girl–gestures—whipping off an earring to make a phone call, tossing her hair off her face with a quick movement of her neck, walking with one hand on her purse, the other swinging in time with her hips, like a conductor directing musicians—not an original move in the lot, but all of them sweet, smooth and sexy.

Vyra's a good person too—just tell her about an abandoned baby or a wounded animal, her checkbook opens faster than a bagman's hand. She's one of those girls…I really can't explain them. It's like they're running parallel to you all the time. The lines never cross, but, sometimes, they get close enough to almost touch.

It was always hotel sex, except for one time in her car. She never asked to come to my place—never asked me much of anything. Sometimes we made a date on the phone, sometimes she'd just call when she was around…and if I was too, we'd get together.

It's as though our lives are checkerboarded—when our pieces land on the same square, we get together, take care of business, and move on.

Vyra wants something she can't call by name. I know what to call it, but I don't want it.

She offered me some money once. Real money, so I could go into a business or something. It was a sweet thing she was trying to do, maybe the only way she knows how. I didn't take it—told myself it was better to leave that kind of offer in the bank, for when I might really need it.

I didn't need Vyra, either. But when I called in, and Mama said there was a message from her, I aimed the Plymouth at the Vista without thinking much about it.

V
yra had a new pair of shoes. Blue spikes, with little red bows at the back. She liked them so much, she kept them on.

Afterwards, she wanted to tell me all about what she'd been doing—she was a volunteer counselor in some "therapeutic community" on the other side of the Hudson. I lay on my back, blew smoke rings toward the ceiling. She propped herself on one elbow, sprouting prepackaged wisdom—"there's no such thing as a free lunch" seemed to be her favorite. I closed my eyes, letting her voice wash over me.