Sacrifice (11 page)

55

I
crossed over the Kosciuszko Bridge, heading south for Brooklyn. Slag yards underneath to my right, yawning black, spot–fires spurting. Suicides, they never jump off this bridge—water tells a better lie about what's waiting. Past them, way off in the distance, Manhattan neon told its own lies.

Two weeks.

Luke and Burke. Lurk.

I'd told Wolfe I knew. Didn't tell her how I'd learned.

1971. Lowell, Massachusetts, a struggling mill town. Sitting in a mostly empty downtown parking lot in the front seat of a dull brown Ford, stolen a couple of hours earlier. License plates looked good—they were two halves of two different plates, welded together with the seam at the back. Beer cans on the dashboard, radio turned down low. Two guys taking a break from their construction job. Me and Whitey, waiting. Watching.

Every Friday, a young woman walked past that parking lot. It was a joy to watch her. Pretty–proud, long brown hair bouncing on her shoulders, matching the swing in her hips. Not a traffic–stopper, but a juicy fine thing just the same.

We'd been watching her every Friday for a month. Watching her carry a leather bag over one shoulder. Her outfit changed each time, but the leather bag stayed the same.

She'd walk back the same way. Past us. With the leather bag heavier then. Her boss made the payroll in cash every Friday afternoon. The brunette made the bank run. Flouncing along, walking the way girls walk, one hand swinging with her rhythm, the other patting the bag at her hip. Taking her time, enjoying the sunshine and the stares.

We'd checked the traffic patterns, the escape routes. Had a garage all rented about a half mile away. One quick swoop and we'd make our own withdrawal. Hole up, listening to the sirens. Nighttime, we'd go down the back stairs, separate at the bus station.

Saturday, Whitey would be in Boston. I'd be in Chicago.

The brunette had on an egg–yolk–yellow dress that stopped at mid–thigh.

"Beautiful, huh?" Whitey whispered. He didn't mean the girl.

The radio said something about Attica. I turned it up. Riot at the prison, guards taken hostage, the whole joint out of control. State troopers had the place surrounded.

Whitey had done time before I was born. He cupped a cigarette, hiding the flame out of habit. Spoke softly out of the side of his mouth.

"They gonna kill all those niggers."

"How d'you know it's blacks?" I asked him.

"When the Man comes down on them, they'll
all
be niggers," Whitey said. "Dead niggers."

Blood–bought wisdom from an old man I'd never see again. We took the omen, aborted the snatch.

You stay in the sun long enough, you get a tan. I know why Ted Bundy went
pro se,
represented himself at his murder trial in Florida. You go
pro se,
you get whatever a lawyer would get. Like discovery motions. The prosecution wanted to introduce the crime–scene photos, show the jury the savage slasher's wake. Bundy got his copies too. So he could go back to his quiet, private cell and jerk off to his own personal splatter films. He told the TV cameras that pornography made him kill all those women, lying as smoothly as the lawyer he never got to be. Dancing until they stopped the music.

The Prof schooled me too. In prison and out. We're in the lobby of a fancy hotel. I'm dressed in a nice suit. The Prof is applying the final touches to my high–gloss shoes.

"Watch close, youngblood." Nodding at an average man. All in gray. Dull, anonymous. The uniformed bellman reached for the gray man's suitcase. The gray man snatched it away, keeping it in his left hand while he signed the register with his right.

A few minutes later the bellman came over to us, whispered something to the Prof. Cash flashed an exchange. A few blocks away, the little man ran it down.

"Man don't want to pay, what's it say?"

"That he's cheap."

"The bellhop walked him to the room. Opened the door for him, okay? Didn't carry the bag. And the man still throws him a dime, right on time. Take another look, read the book."

"I don't get it."

"The man ain't cheap, he's into somethin' deep. That bag's full of swag, son."

I read books too. Especially when I was inside. A plant's growth is controlled by the size of its pot. A goldfish won't grow to full size in an aquarium. But we lock children in cages and call it reform school.

I know some things. You don't turn off your headlights when dawn breaks, everyone will know you've been out driving that night.

56

I
slept until past noon. Pansy trailed after me as I got dressed, begging with her eyes.

"You want to go see your boyfriend?" I asked her. "Barko?"

She made a little noise. I thought we'd established a new level of human–dog communication until she started drooling while I was eating breakfast. I scooped a couple of pints of honey–vanilla ice cream into her bowl. Watched her slop it all over the walls and floor in a frenzy. Then she curled up and went to sleep.

57

I
found Storm in her office at the hospital. She saw me coming, said something into the telephone, hung up.

"We have ten days," I told her. "And then?"

"Then he comes in."

"You think that's enough time?"

"I don't know—it's not up to me. I did what you asked."

"Not all of it." Lily, walking through the back door, her face sweaty, hair mussed, like she'd been exercising.

I lit a smoke. Lily was so worked up she forgot to frown at me. "Keeping him hidden won't do any good, Burke. Nothing will change in ten days."

"What do you want, Lily. Spell it out."

"He could go someplace else. Far away. Disappear."

"Until he does it again."

"No! Until he gets better."

"You know what that would take…?"

"I don't care. I could take him. He couldn't do anything to me…he's too little."

"He'd try, Lily. When he got the signal, he'd try."

"We could use the time," Storm put in. Her parents must have picked her name because she was always so calm. "Luke will need a defense when he comes in, Lily. He needs to see a psychiatrist, maybe a couple of them."

"He wouldn't go to jail," I added.

We left it like that. Nothing settled.

58

I
felt it as soon as I hit the street—an inversion in the atmosphere. Heavy air, ozone–clogged. Muggy, with a bone–chill core. Like in prison, just before the race wars came. You felt it in the corridors, on the tiers. In the blocks, on the yard. Skin color the flag, any target an opportunity. The Man would feel it too, but the joint wouldn't get locked down until they had a high enough body count.

I walked in the opposite direction from where I'd left the Plymouth, heading for the subway. Maybe it was just the neighborhood. Something going down, nothing to do with me.

Early afternoon, subway traffic was light. I scanned the car, pretending to read the posters. All the services of the city: AIDS counseling, abortions. Cures for acne, hemorrhoids, and hernias. Food stamps, Lotto, 970 numbers, party lines. Another promised you could
Ruin a Pickpocket's Day
if you followed its advice: avoid crowds.

When I came up for air at Fifty–ninth Street, it felt the same. Not the neighborhood, then.

I turned into a little gourmet supermarket, wandered the aisles, watching. A woman in a cashmere sweater–dress with a gold chain for a belt searched out a can of politically correct tuna. A guy in a dark blue suit over a striped shirt, port–wine tie with matching suspenders made the same two turns I did. I stepped to one side and he rolled past, his eyes linked to the gold chain.

Back outside. Streets thick with stragglers from lunchtime, shoppers. Crowds have a rhythm. You move through them the way you match your breathing to the sleeper next to you. Find the pattern and merge. I entered the stream, blending.

Lexington Avenue. I flowed with the clot, ignoring the traffic lights. A man on the sidewalk, younger than me, squatting on a piece of cardboard, a huge glass bottle like they use in water coolers next to him, some coins and a bill visible at the bottom. Sign propped up next to the bottle, something about Homeless. Humans passed him by. I did too. Took a couple of quick steps past. Whirled, like I'd changed my mind, reaching into my pocket for some change.

A dark–skinned black man in a black suit backed into a doorway just as my eyes came up. A fat white man was coming out and they bumped. The black man saw me watching and took off, running in the opposite direction. I ran to the street, saw a cab parked at the curb. Jumped onto the trunk, falconing from the high ground. Saw the black suit disappear into the front seat of a black sedan. Lexington Avenue is one–way, they had to go right past me. I stayed where I was. Every car that passed me by stared at the man standing on the cab. Except the sedan, a Chevy Caprice, one of those two–ton jobs with the rear fenders extending halfway down the tires. When it rolled by my post, the driver was staring straight ahead. And the passenger seat was empty.

59

A
cab pulled to the curb, its hood popped open just a crack, latched in place to cool the engine. I jumped in, told the driver to head downtown. The driver didn't speak much English—I had the same problem with the No Smoking sign. Rolling downtown along Broadway, I started sorting it out.

Just before we hit Herald Square a bike messenger sliced in from one of the side streets as the cab in front of us was changing lanes. They T–boned and the messenger went down. Traffic stopped…for the red light. The bike was a twisted piece of metal tubing—the messenger had blood running down his calf, just below the bicycle pants. The cabdriver got out, started inspecting his hack for damage. The messenger unwrapped a heavy length of chain from the bike, started limping toward the cab. The driver jumped back inside, took off just as the chain smashed through his back window.

People watched as the bashed–in cab jumped the light, squeaking across the intersection to the blare of horns. The messenger stood in the street, swinging his chain. I heard sirens behind us.

The light turned green and we took off.

I caught a subway at Eighteenth Street, picked up my car, checked it over. Nobody had been playing with it. I drove carefully to Mama's, watching for heavy Chevys.

60

T
en days. I cut it shorter with Lily, leaving myself a margin. There's always an edge—sometimes it's not sharp.

I went through Mama's kitchen, took my booth in the back. She was at her register. I caught her eye, held my fist to my ear, telling her I had to make some calls.

First to SAFE. They called Immaculata to the phone.

"It's me. Is Max around?"

"Yes."

"Ask him to take a look around. Outside."

"For what?"

"Watchers."

"I understand."

Another quarter in the slot. Like Atlantic City, except nobody called me sir.

Jacques came on the line.

"You know my voice?"

"Not so many white men call here, mahn."

"You have people watching me?"

"No, mahn. For sure. You have been a friend."

"That past tense?"

A cloud passed over the sun in his voice. "We were watching you, mahn, you would not know to ask."

"Any chance of Clarence free–lancing?"

"No chance. No chance at all. You have enemies, my friend?"

"I don't know yet. Maybe I'm just spooked."

"That is a racist slur, mahn?"

"Lighten up…I mean, look, a crew's been following me, I think. I'll know for sure later—there's not that many places they could watch."

"Our people?"

"I didn't talk to them, just saw them."

"We just
look
alike, mahn."

"Who does your material, Jacques? Listen up: I got a crew on me, maybe it has something to do with you, understand?"

"Let us know, mahn. Everybody knows, West Indians, we pay our debts."

One more call. I couldn't make it from the restaurant. I told one of the cooks I'd be right back. He said something in Chinese.

61

F
ound a pay phone near the OTB on the Bowery. Dialed Albany, listened to the operator tell me the toll for the first three minutes, forked over the coins. Good thing the State gives commissioners private lines—I'd use up the money I had on deposit just getting past the secretary.

He grabbed it on the first ring.

"What's wrong now?" Resigned good humor, a faint bluegrass flavor to his speech.

"Trouble on 7–Up, Doc. Microwave Marvin's not coming out of his house—the fool thinks he's got hostages in there with him."

"Who is this?"

"Your old typist, Doc. Please don't say my name on the phone."

"Good to hear from you, hoss. You must be on the bricks, talking like this."

"Yeah. For now, anyway. I need you to see someone, Doc. Give me an opinion."

"I don't make house calls anymore."

"This'd be outside. I need you to do your trick with the girasol."

"I've been hearing stuff about you, over the years. Never could be sure, jailhouse gossip and all that. What do you want me to look at?"

"A baby killer."

"Forget it.
That's
what I heard about you. You want information, go to the library."

"Not a freak who kills babies, Doc. A baby killer, you understand?"

"You mean…a killer baby?"

"Yeah. That's exactly what I mean."

"I'll be in the city in a couple of weeks. Some stupidass budget meeting. Give me a call at…"

"There's no time, Doc. None at all."

"Look…"

"Sophie would want you to do this, Doc."

"You calling in the marker?"

"If that's the only way."

"I'll be on the early train tomorrow, son."

62

I
let myself back into Mama's joint. It was like I'd never left. It's always like that. I came home from jail one time—walked in, sat down in my booth. Mama came and sat down across from me, serving her soup. Maybe that's why she doesn't age—in her spot, she controls time.

I called around. Left word for the Prof, dropping seeds on the ground. He'd turn up. Michelle used to do that kind of thing for me, fronting between our world and theirs. She'd be back. I knew my sister—missing, not lost.

Then I called the Mole. To make a reservation.

When Mama made no move to come over, I got up, went to the register. Luke was sitting next to her on a padded stool. You couldn't see him until you got close.

"Hello, Burke," he said, his frail, strangler's fingers grasping an abacus.

"Hello, Luke. Mama's teaching you how to work that thing?"

"Yes. It's fun."

"Very smart boy, Burke," Mama said. "Teach him how to use beads, never could teach you."

"I was never good with math."

"Math is money," Mama said. Like God is Love.

"I've got to talk with you."

"Okay. You want soup?"

"Sure."

She patted Luke's fair hair, voice softening. "You go in kitchen, baby. Tell cooks bring some soup to Mama."

"I don't speak Chinese," the little boy said. Being serious, not a wiseass.

"Speak like Max, okay?"

A smile brightened his face. "Sure!"

He trotted off. We took our seats.

"Baby not right," Mama said, tapping her temple with one manicured nail.

"Why do you say?"

"This morning, Mac bring him by to stay with me. Very good boy, sit quiet, read a book, okay? But later, talk funny. Baby talk, babble–babble. His name Susie, he says. I say, that a girl's name. He say, I'm a little girl…pretty little girl. He
sound
like a little girl, Burke. Ask me to play with him. I just hold him. Then he says, why you holding me, Mama? Luke, boy's voice. I ask him, what about little girl? He look at me like I crazy. Just been sitting, reading his book, he say to me."

"Yeah."

"Not surprise?"

"No."

"Baby need a doctor."

"I know, Mama. I found him one. Tomorrow, okay?"

She bowed agreement.

Luke marched in with a tureen of soup as the register phone rang. Mama got up to answer it.

"Here's the soup, Burke."

"Thank you." I helped myself. The kid sat across from me, self–possessed.

"Luke, tomorrow I'm going to visit an old friend of mine. A couple of old friends, actually. You want to come along?"

"I guess…"

"We can do something you'd like to do first, okay? What would you like to do?"

His little face concentrated. Then he rubbed his head, like it hurt. "I'd like to go to the zoo," he said. "I always wanted to go."