Sacrifice (5 page)

20

T
hey worked it like a drill team. Lily flashed something to Immaculata, who immediately drew Luke close to her as Storm muscled the other kids out of the room.

"Hi, Mac," I said. "Who's your pal?"

"This is Luke," she said gravely, one hand on his shoulder, the long, lacquered nails spilling against his chest. Talons, guarding.

The kid's eyes were pearly darkness. "What's your name?" he asked me, trembly thread in his voice.

"Burke."

"How do you spell that?"

I told him.

The kid's eyes went thoughtful, rolled up into his head, snapped right back. "Our names are linked," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"They have the same letters. U. K. E. In both our names. Maybe they have the same root. Mine is from the Bible. Is there a Burke in the Bible?"

"Not by that name."

"Are you Immaculata's friend?"

"She is my brother's wife."

"Max is your brother?"

"Yes."

"It's true," Mac assured him.

"Immaculata is my friend."

"I know. That means you're my friend too."

His eyes flickered again, straightened. "Do you know any monsters?" I hunkered down next to him, getting my eyes on the same level.

"Yeah, I know some."

"Do you fight them?"

"I have."

"Do you win?"

"Sometimes."

"Are you scared…when you fight them?"

I held his eyes, willing them to stay on mine. "Yes," I told him. "Yes, I'm scared."

He held out his hand to me, a soft child's hand. "Don't be scared. If you're my friend, you don't have to be scared."

"I'm not scared now."

His eyes rolled again. Came back slower this time. "Burke?" he asked. Like he was seeing me for the first time, waking up from a dream.

"Yeah?"

"If we put our names together, you and me, do you know what they would be?"

"No. What?"

"Burke and Luke. Together it would be Lurk. What do you think?"

"I think you're right." Watching his eyes, holding them steady. Tiny lights dancing in them now—candlepoints in the night.

I got to my feet.

"Are you coming back?" he asked.

"Count on it," I told him.

21

B
ack in Lily's office. I lit another smoke, waiting.

"He's got a genius IQ," Lily said. "Tests right off the scale."

"I could tell."

"What else can you tell?"

"He's video–phobic, right? Somebody photographed him, maybe videotaped. While something ugly was going on…maybe to him. You see the same reaction from some kids when a flashbulb goes off."

Storm edged forward. "He was examined at our hospital. After the attack on his baby brother. They found something besides the knife scratches."

I turned my face to her, waiting.

"A prolapsed rectum," she said, icy hate in her soft voice.

"The parents?"

"Wolfe thinks so," Lily said, something standoffish in the way she said it. I wasn't going to let it go by twice.

"Wolfe is your pal, right?"

"Sure."

"Your sister?"

"What's your point?"

"What's yours?"

She looked across the desk to Storm. Shrugged her shoulders. "Luke's been sexually abused. Wolfe should be right on top of it—she knows what we know. But she's waiting…like there's something more.

"And she doesn't like him." Immaculata's voice, stepping into the room.

"How do you know?" I asked over my shoulder.

"Luke knows. He told me."

Immaculata had a baby. Lily had a glowing teenager named Noelle. Storm was pregnant. Wolfe had no children. I never would. I glanced at Storm's swelling belly. "You're sure you're not…?"

Lily caught my look. "No, it's not that. Wolfe is just like us. She adores Noelle. And Flower. She
knows
something."

"And you want…?"

"We have to protect the child," Immaculata said. "That's what we do here."

"Wolfe won't talk to me," I said.

Lily smiled her Madonna's smile. "She might…she likes you.

Storm giggled.

Women. "I'll take a look," I told them. Immaculata kissed me on the cheek.

22

M
ax and I motored over to West Street, took it north past the triangular wedge of the short–stay motel at Fourteenth Street, hooked a U–turn, and headed back downtown. Horatio Street runs through the Village, a nice block, brownstones, well kept. On the other side of the highway, it's a dead–end street, runs right up against the filthy Hudson River.

The Prof was there, wrapped in his long overcoat, a flaming red silk scarf around his neck, the ends trailing almost to his feet.

Midafternoon now. When it turns dark, the long parking lot parallel to the river becomes a hustler's strip. Boys work the pavement, competing for the attention of the cars that slowly cruise the circuit. Manicured fingers push buttons—tinted glass slithers down. Young faces ravaged by the acid of their lives appear in the opening, auditioning on a private TV screen. The winners get to climb in the front seat and open their mouths. They usually finish at the end of the concrete strip—it doesn't take long. The kids get out of the cars and wait for the next customer. Sometimes a dark posse car comes by, loaded with cold–eyed blacks fondling automatic weapons. The crack express. Then the kids become customers themselves.

Out here, the winners go to jail. The losers get dead. Freaks don't like their little boys covered with condoms, but they don't mind a shroud.

We got out of the car, standing side by side. The Prof stepped into the space between us.

"There was more to the score," the little man said.

"You have enough time?" I asked him.

"I didn't Hoover the place, Ace. You never know when the maid's gonna show."

The Prof had graduated from shotgun bandit to hotel burglar, one of the very best. Worked with a shoeshine box over his shoulder, no nerves. But he wasn't perfect—I'd met him in prison. Every wheel has a double zero someplace, you spin it long enough.

I barely felt the little man's touch as something slipped into my coat pocket. We worked this 50–50.
The Prof got half for taking the up–front risk of going inside—I split my half with Max.

"The cash ain't wrapped in trash, bro'. The freak had a Xerox in his pad. I made you some copies."

I fingered a roll of paper. The money would be inside.

"Pictures?" I asked.

"The Yellow Pages, man."

A pedophile's address book. Maybe worth more than the cash.

Traffic noise at a distance. Safe and quiet where we were. Little knots of people all around, dealing. Nobody looked too close.

"Drop you anywhere?"

"I'm cribbed up north, 'home. Get me to the tunnels, I'll ride the rails."

We dropped him off at Fourteenth and Eighth. Headed back downtown.

23

T
he white dragon tapestry was barely visible in the streaked window of Mama's restaurant. All clear. We parked in the alley behind the joint, entered through the unmarked steel door. The kitchen crew nodded to us, eyes over our shoulders in case we hadn't come alone.

We took my table in the back. I held my hand at stomach height, indicating a child. Then I went rigid, holding my arms out so tight they trembled. Pointed at Max, a question on my face.

He nodded. Taking me to see Luke had been his idea. Mama stood between us—I hadn't seen her approach. She bowed to Max, to me. We returned her greeting. She snapped something at the young Chinese pretending to be a waiter. I should know the Cantonese words for hot and sour soup by now, but Mama never seems to say the same thing twice.

The tureen of soup came. Mama served Max first, then me, then herself.

Max took a sip. Made the sign of a flower opening itself to the sun. I told her it was the best she ever made. Mama nodded curtly—any lesser praise would be a grievous insult.

Mama toyed with her soup, hawk–watching me and Max to make sure we emptied our bowls. Refilled them without being asked.

The waiter cleared the table, put glasses of clear water before us, a small porcelain ashtray.

I pulled the Prof's package out of my jacket, unwrapped it carefully. Separated the cash from the paper, put the paper back inside my pocket.

Mama riffled through the money, counting it quicker than any machine could. Almost six grand. She cut it in half, pushed one pile to me, one to Max. We each separated a piece, handed it back to her. Mama was my banker, holding a piece of every score, keeping ten percent off the top for herself.

She held up the bills Max handed her. "For baby," she said, not bothering with sign language. Max didn't argue with her—he wasn't tough enough for that. He lit himself a smoke from my pack.

"Everything good now," Mama said. "Back to old ways.

24

W
hen Mama got up to attend to her business, I made the sign for Luke again, telling Max I wanted to know why he was pulling me into this.

The warrior opened his eyes wide, pointed to them. He'd seen it too.

Nothing more to say.

I needed an excuse to see Wolfe again. It would come to me. Max and I went through the Harness Lines, but I couldn't find a horse that appealed to me.

I thought about the racetrack. About going there with Belle, watching as the big girl so deeply identified with a game mare who came from off the pace. Bouncing in her seat, yelling, "Come on!" Her battle cry.

The last words she screamed at the police before they cut her down.

If love would die along with death, this life wouldn't be so hard.

A tap on my shoulder. Mama. The bench opposite me was empty. My watch said four–thirty. I must have gone somewhere else, losing track of time.

"Call for you. Island man."

I picked up the pay phone, one of several standing in a bank between the dining room and the kitchen.

"Yeah?"

"Greetings, mahn. I have some work for you."

It was Jacques, a sunny–voiced gun dealer who worked the border between Queens and Brooklyn. Firepower to go, wholesale lots, cash and carry.

"I got plenty of work now."

"This
is
your work, mahn."

"I don't do deliveries anymore."

"Your true work, mahn. Everybody knows. Come see about me."

"In a couple of hours," I told him, and hung up.

25

M
y true work. Wesley said it was a bull's–eye painted on my back. But he was gone, hunting the devil, not even leaving the cops a scrap of flesh to put under their microscopes. Wesley, the stalking sociopath. The perfect hunter–killer. We'd come up together, practiced the same religion when we were kids. But the ice–god had come into his soul until he wasn't human anymore.

In the dark part of the streets, people whispered he wasn't really dead.

The sun dropped behind me as I drove along Atlantic Avenue toward deeper pockets of darkness. Turned into a narrow driveway, flashed my high beams twice.

A barge–sized old Chrysler rolled slowly across my field of vision in the rearview mirror. It came to a stop, blocking my Plymouth from the street. I looked straight ahead, waiting. Heard the icy dry sound of a pistol being cocked.

"Come on out of your car, nice and slow. Leave the keys." West Indian voice, not Jacques's.

I did what the voice said. He was a slim young man, hair cropped close, prominent cheekbones dominating a pretty face, tiny, lobeless ears pinned flat to his skull, big eyes with a bluish cast in the night light, long lashes shadowing. Reddish highlights dominating mahogany skin. Wearing a dark green Ban–Lon long–sleeved shirt buttoned to the neck over dark slacks. Looked like the kind of kid the wolves would jump on as soon as he hit the prison yard. They wouldn't know what they were dealing with until the guards came. With the body bags.

He stepped to one side, the gun tracking me, waist high. I walked straight ahead. A door opened. I heard the Plymouth's engine kick over.

Down a flight of metal steps. Felt the young man behind me, heard the door close, bolts snap home.

Horseshoe–shaped table, the midpoint against the wall. Jacques in the center, an old woman on his left. One man sat on each wing. I stepped into the open space, waiting.

"So you came, my friend." A faint light glinted on Jacques's high cheekbones.

"Like you asked."

Another man stepped out of the shadows. Patted me down, neck to ankles. I stood still for it—every church has its own ceremonies.

The man stepped back. Returned with a straight–backed chair. I sat down.

"Anything you want, mahn? A drink, maybe? Some fine rum we have here."

"A cigarette?"

"You don't have any?"

"I came empty."

A smile bloomed on the Islander's noble face. I'd shown him respect by walking in with empty pockets. He knew what you could fit in a pack of cigarettes—he was in the business. Jacques nodded at one of the men on the table's wing. "Get my friend cigarettes."

The man got up, extended a pack to me.

Jacques's voice was soft. "Mahn, that is not what you do. My friend does not want
your
cigarettes, he wants his own."

"How I know what he smokes?" the man said sullenly.

Jacques's voice went chilly. "You
ask
him, mahn. Ask him nicely. Then you go out and you get what he wants. A fresh, new pack. Is that so hard, now?"

"What you smoke?" he asked me.

I told him. He walked away.

Jacques shrugged his shoulders. "Young boys, Burke. All hot blood. Better they learn from a gentle man like me, huh?"

"Yeah."

"This lady has a problem, my friend. I would like for her to tell you. All right?"

"Sure."

He turned to the old lady. "You tell the man now, missus."

"He look like the police to me," the woman said.

Jacques chuckled. "Don't let that ugly white face fool you, lady. This is a very bad man."

"He gonna help me?"

"We will see. First, you tell him what you tell me. Come on now.

The old lady gathered herself, her face turned toward me, her eyes somewhere else.

"I got a grandson. Derrick. My daughter's child. He almost four years old. My daughter on the Welfare, lives in that hotel out by the airport. Her man is a vicious beast. Beat her all the time, take her check. He beat my grandson too. For nothin'. Right in front of my eyes. I go to stop him once, an' he punch me right in my face. Broke this bone, right here." Touching her face, eyes focusing on me now.

"Monday my daughter calls me. Says her baby run away. I tell her, how could that be?—he too small to run away. She cryin' and all, says the police there. Ain't nobody seen her man. My Derrick is gone."

A tap on my shoulder. Jacques's man, handing me a pack of cigarettes. I slit the cellophane, took one out. The man handed me a paper packet of matches—I fired one up.

Jacques leaned forward. "We found the man, Burke. Talked to him. He say he knows nothing. Okay. We talk to the girl too. Same story. It
is
a story, mahn. Finally, she tells us the man took the baby out of there, said he's going to give the child to another woman of his."

I dragged deep on the smoke. Still waiting.

"What we need is a man to look, Burke. Look around."

"Why me?"

"It's what you do, mahn. Your work, like I said. People know, word on the street—Burke looks for runaways, yes?"

"The baby didn't run away."

"I know. This good lady here, she is one of us. Like a mother, always to help, that is the way she is. She wants her grandson back."

"Why don't you ask the man? Ask him again."

"He has vanished, mahn. We are looking for him, but…for now, until we find him…"

"It's a long shot."

"I know, mahn, but…"

"Obeah," the old woman said. Like it explained everything.

"Why do you say that, ma'am?" I asked her.

"That is what I heard, white man. You know them?"

"No."

"Her man, Emerson, that is his name. He is with those people. I think that is where he take my grandson. To be with them too."

"You take a look, mahn?" A soft undertone in Jacques's voice, the sun banked.

"A quick look," I warned him.

"Clarence will go with you," he said, nodding at the young man who met me in the parking lot. "In case there is a problem with any of our people, yes?"

"So long as he listens."

"Clarence, for this work, Burke is your boss, you understand? Like it was me talking. I told you about this guy. You listen, and you learn."

The slim young man nodded agreement.

"We have anything else to discuss?" he asked. Meaning: how much?

"We'll settle at the end," I told him. "No guarantees. Clarence has all the information?"

"I have it all." Clarence's voice, gentle and calm.

"Let's do it, then," I said.