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
When 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
My 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.