Hard Candy (4 page)

15

I
DIDN'T GET any more visitors. They let me out when they were supposed to. I caught a cab back to the city. Switched to a subway, walked the last few blocks to my office. Pansy was right where she was supposed to be too—on guard. She made a growling noise in her throat, so glad to see me she vibrated. Doing a five–day bit wasn't any big deal to her, but she hadn't liked the food any better than I had. I opened the back door and she lumbered up the iron stairs to the roof. I folded the heavy sheets of vinyl I leave spread over a section of the floor into a giant garbage bag and tied it closed with a loop of wire. Opened the back window to air the place out. I had a system for leaving dry dog food and water for her when I had to be gone for a while, but depositing her loads was always a problem. That's what the roof was for. I took an aerosol can of pure oxygen from the bathroom and emptied it into the room she had used. It wasn't the worst thing I'd smelled in the past few days.

16

I
TOOK a shower. Shaved. Opened the refrigerator and gave Pansy a quart of vanilla fudge ice cream. She snarfed it down while I made myself some rye toast. I fed it into my stomach slowly, sipping ginger ale. Scratching Pansy behind her ears the way she liked. Talking softly to her—praising her for protecting our home while I was gone. Working on calm.

Changed into a dark suit, a pale blue shirt, and a black tie.

Davidson's office is in midtown, a rifle shot from Times Square. The receptionist was a light–skinned black woman with a severe face. When her smile flashed, her face turned beautiful, then went back to business. She goes to law school nights, waiting for her time to come. I gave her the name Davidson and I agreed on. She buzzed back, got the word, told me to go ahead.

The meeting didn't take long. "What they got is a bad bust," he told me. "An unsolved homicide wouldn't make them that crazy, so it's something else running. You know what it is?"

"Maybe."

"Any chance…?"

I knew what he meant. "No," I told him.

"If they need us back in court, I'll get a call."

"Okay. We're square for now?"

"Yeah."

I shook hands and walked out. Davidson would do his piece, but he was a lawyer. For him, survival was a Not Guilty verdict. The jury of my peers was still out.

17

I
T STAYED that way for a while. Hard looks. Role–playing. I felt Wesley's chill but it never got close to the bone. I drifted back to the anchor. Calmed down. Davidson said the murder charge would stay open, but they'd never press it. I worked the perimeter, nibbling. Some good scams were cooking all over town, but I didn't see my way in.

Another college kid killed his parents. Said "Dungeons and Dragons" made him do it. A creature killed a woman because she tried to leave him after twenty years. He told the cops she was his. His daughter. A beast slaughtered his girlfriend, raped and killed her teenage daughter, stabbed his seven–year–old son in the heart, and set fire to the apartment. The little boy lived. Identified him at the trial. The jury acquitted him. He went to court and demanded custody of the boy. The Transit Authority set up bulletproof token booths so they couldn't be robbed. Anyone who's done time knows what to do about that—you fill a plastic bottle with gasoline, squirt it through the slot, toss in a match, and wait for the clerk to open the door for you. One of them couldn't get the door open. A youth worker confessed to sodomizing more than three dozen boys over a ten–year period. The judge wanted to sentence him to a speaking tour. Gunfire crackled like heat lightning on streets where the franchise to distribute rock cocaine was disputed by teenage robot–mutant millionaires.

18

I
MMACULATA sat across from me in the last booth. Max's woman. Mama was at her front desk with the baby, bouncing the plump little girl on her lap, telling her how things worked.

"It's okay now," Immaculata said, voice thick with something I didn't recognize.

"Sure."

"Max understands. He was just…hurt. That you left him out."

"I had to."

"I know."

"Yeah, you know."

"Burke, why be like this? You made a judgment… it was your call to make. It's over."

"But you think the judgment was wrong."

"It was just an ego thing, yes? It's hard to believe this man would have killed our baby just to make Max fight him."

I looked up. Her eyes were veiled under the long lashes but it didn't help. She couldn't make it stick.

"I have to stand with Max," she said.

I bowed, empty. Her eyes were pleading with me. "You still have your baby," I said.

She put her hand over mine. "You still have your brother."

The pay phone rang in the back. Mama walked past, the baby balanced on one hip.

She came back in a minute. Handed the baby to Immaculata, slid in next to her.

"Call for you. Woman say old friend."

A honeycomb of tiny bubbles in my chest. Flood. How could she have known now was the time?

It must have shown in my face. Mama's voice was soft. "No" is all she said.

I lit a cigarette, biting into the filter. The little bubbles in my chest popped—a tiny string of explosions, like baby firecrackers.

"Woman say old friend. Need to talk to you. Very important."

I looked at Mama. Her lips curled, short of a sneer. "Always important. Woman say to tell you Little Candy from Hudson Street. You know her?" Mama asked, handing me a slip of paper with a telephone number.

I nodded. It didn't matter.

19

M
AX WENT everywhere I went. Behind me, not with me. Guarding my back. Protecting me from a ghost. His warrior s soul screaming for combat to make it right. Too late for the battle.

We were on a pier near the Yacht Basin, waiting for a buyer to show up. The buyer had advertised over an electronic bulletin board, using the modem on his personal computer. He wanted a little girl. No older than ten. White. Someone he could love. He'd have ten grand with him. To prove his love.

Max took a restaurant napkin out of his pocket, a felt–tip pen from mine. Drew a rising sun, touched his heart gently. Pointed at me, turned the finger around to include himself. We could go to Japan. Find Flood. Bring her home.

I shook my head. She was home. So was I.

The headlights of the buyer's car flashed. Once, twice. Max merged into the shadow next to my Plymouth. I walked over to the buyer's car, a beige Taurus station wagon. The driver's window whispered down, air–conditioned breeze on my face. It didn't make sense for that time of the year until I saw the fat man inside. Ice–cream suit, straw hat, sweating.

"Mr. Smith?" he asked in a pulpy voice.

"That's me," I assured him.

"She's with you?"

"In the car," I said, tilting my head to show him the direction.

I stepped aside to let him out. The light went on inside the station wagon when the door opened. Empty. He took a black attaché case off the seat next to him.

"She's still a little dopey," I said, walking beside him.

"No problem."

I lit a cigarette, the cheap lighter flaring a signal to Max.

"She's inside," I told the fat man, patting the Plymouth's trunk.

"Let's see."

"Let's see the money."

He popped open the briefcase on the trunk lid. Clean–looking bills, nicely banded. And a small plastic bottle with a spray top, some white handkerchiefs, plastic wristbands—the kind they give you in the hospital.

"Got everything you need, huh?"

"Hey, look, pal. This kid isn't for
me
, okay? I'm a businessman, just like you. In fact, you got any more where this kid came from, you just let me know. I got customers waiting."

His fat body slammed into the back of the Plymouth as Max took him from behind—a paralyzing shot just below the ribs, a lightning chop to the exposed neck as he went down. Vomit sprayed onto the Plymouth.

I ripped open his shirt. No wire. Pulled his wallet from an inside pocket, stripped off his watch, passed up the rings, snatched the brief–case. And left him where he was.

It didn't make the morning papers.

20

T
HE GILT LETTERS on the pebbled–glass door said "Simon J. Rosnak—Attorney at Law." Max and I stepped inside. The girl at the front desk was a cunty brunette with sparkle–dust for mascara and the kind of mouth that would make you throw out the postage meter so you could watch her lick the stamps.

"Can I help you?"

"I want to see Rosnak."

"You have an appointment?"

"No."

"Well, Mr. Rosnak isn't in yet. If you'll leave your name and number…"

"He's in. I don't have time." I glanced down at the console on her desk. None of the lights were lit.

"You can't…"

I walked past her. "Call a cop," I advised her, leaving Max behind to keep her company.

I found a carpeted hall, followed it to the end. Rosnak was sitting at an old wooden desk, reading some kind of ledger. He looked up when he saw me, a tired–looking man in his forties.

"What?"

"I need to talk some business with you."

"I don't know you. Speak to Mona. I'm busy."

I sat down across from him. Lit a smoke. There was no ashtray on his desk. "I need to speak with you," I said, calm and relaxed.

"Look, buddy, this isn't a supermarket. I don't know who sent you here, but…"

"You represent Johnny Sostre?"

"That's not your business."

"Attorney–client privilege, huh?"

"You got it."

"Only one problem. You're not an attorney."

His eyes tracked me. Camera shutters. Waiting.

"You're not an attorney," I said again. "You went to law school, but you dropped out in your last year. You never took the Bar. You've been running a sweet hustle, representing wiseguys. They know you're not a lawyer. You try the case, do the best you can. You win, they walk. You lose, they wait a couple of years, then they discover the truth, right? You get exposed. They file an appeal. And the court lets them walk. Ineffective assistance of counsel, they call it. Never fails. Josephs did the same thing a few years ago."

He watched me, waiting.

I tapped cigarette ash onto his desk. "Only problem is, you got to have perfect timing. This scam works just one time, no repeats. You got…what? Ten, fifteen clients now? Got half a dozen guys already upstate doing time. You get exposed at the right time, all the convictions get reversed. And it's a few years later. Witnesses disappear, memory gets soft, people forget, evidence gets misplaced…you know how it works. But you move too soon, it's all for nothing. The DA still has everything he needs, and they just try the cases again. Besides, you're in the middle of a bunch of new cases. They discover the truth now, and you're out of business."

He leaned forward. "The people I represent … you know who they are?"

"Yeah."

"You know they wouldn't like this kind of thing."

"Don't tell them."

I ground out my smoke, waiting.

He raised his eyebrows.

"One time," I told him. "One time only. Fifty large, and I'm gone."

"You're crazy."

"But not bluffing."

He fumbled with some papers on his desk. "I need some time."

"This is Tuesday. Friday, you get the cash. I'll call, tell you how to drop it off."

I got up to go. Looked down at him. "I'll save you some phone calls. Burke."

"Who's Burke?"

"Me."

Friday, the juicy brunette took a cab to Chinatown at lunchtime. She got out, and the crowd swallowed her up. When she caught another cab, she didn't have her pocketbook with her.

21

I
WAS AT Mama's when a call came in. Julio. I called the old gangster back at the social club he uses for headquarters. His dry snakeskin voice sounded like a cancer ward.

"You did me a service once, I don't forget. So this is a favor, Burke. You stung Rosnak. He went crying to the boys. I squared it, okay? There's no comeback on this one. But give it a rest—stay out of our business."

I let him feel my silence. The phone line hummed.

"You hear what I'm telling you?"

"Sure."

"You found out some things. Okay, a man's entitled to make some money, he finds out some things. You made enough money. Stick to citizens."

I hung up.

22

T
HERE WAS money out there. The city was a boom town. Drugs, not oil. The prospectors drove triple–black Jeeps, wore paper–thin Italian leather, mobile cellular telephones in holsters over their shoulders. Music in their brain–dead heads: Gotta Get Paid. Gold on their bodies, paid for with bodies on the ground. Babies got killed in the crossfire. Children did the shooting. Cocaine was the crop, in countries whose names they couldn't spell. And here, crack was the cash. Named for the sound it made when it hit the streets.

"Gold on their wrist, a pistol in your fist," the Prof rapped, trying to pull me in. Easy pickings. It wasn't for me.

I couldn't let it go. I read a copy of the Penal Law Davidson gave me. Incest. The legislature put it in the same class as adultery. I guess they thought a kid should Just Say No.

23

I
MET MICHELLE in Bryant Park, next to the Public Library right off Times Square.

"I'm going away for a while," she said.

"Okay."

"To Denmark, Burke. I'm going to have it done."

"You got enough cash?"

"Yes. I've been saving for a long time. You impressed?"

I nodded.

"It has to be. I'm not having my boy grow up an outlaw, Burke."

"You're going to take him from the Mole?"

"I wouldn't do that. He's ours, not just mine. I know that. But that's no life for him. I want him to be something."

"The Mole's something."

Her hand on my forearm, lacquered nails shining in the late autumn sun. "I know, baby."

I lit a cigarette.

"I won't be any different," she said.

"I know."

"But
you
are."

I didn't say anything.

"You don't want me to go, say the word."

"Go."

"You can get me the papers?"

"A passport?"

"And… later…I want to adopt Terry. Make it legal."

"Why?"

"Why? You know what I am. Trapped all my life in this body. I can change that. Be myself. The boy…I don't want him to grow up like…"

"Like me?"

"I love you, Burke. You know that. I'd never walk away from you." She kissed my cheek, walked away.