"That'd get him dead."
"Yes." She made a clicking sound with her tongue. The Rottweiler sat up. Wolfe held the coffee mug steady as he lowered his snout and slurped. "It's decaf," she said, like I was accusing her of dog abuse.
"We'll take them in. Throw a bunch of charges at them, see if one'll crack even without the homicide hammer. It depends how many of them there are, how well organized, who's representing them. You know how it works."
"Yeah. Discovery motions'll get them Luke's statements. He ends up hospitalized too. And they walk away."
"Maybe next time," she said, looking right into my face. "What's the address?"
I ground out my cigarette, getting up to leave. "I didn't bring it with me," I said.
She didn't say another word. I let myself out.
176
I spent that day drifting. The building where they were holed up was freestanding, but it hadn't been designed that way— rubble from the wrecker's ball still on either side. In the South Bronx, just over the Willis Avenue Bridge. Pioneer-yuppie territory. When real estate prices went out of control in Manhattan, every square inch of land turned gold. Yuppies charged out of the center like maggots exposed to light:
Long Island City, Flatbush, Harlem, anywhere you could find dwelling space. If you could get in first, you could get in cheap. Staking out the frontier. You held the land against the natives, you could turn it over for cash, big time. The people who'd been living there first, they got the '8os equivalent of smallpox-treated blankets. Then God died on October 19 and the real estate market crashed. Some of the pioneers were cut off from the supply lines. Too late for the natives to make a comeback, though— they got tickets in the Projects lottery, sleeping on the streets while they waited their turn.
The next-nearest building was maybe twenty-five feet to the right. Six stories, abandoned. No windows in its eyeless corpse. Chain link fence all around the occupied property, glimpse of cars parked around the side. Satellite dish on the roof, all the ground-floor windows barred. A meter-reading scam wouldn't get me inside.
It was just an address— still couldn't be sure it was them. The vampire may have gotten it wrong. Or gotten me right.
177
I was still drifting when it got dark. I let it happen. Found myself on the BQE to Queens. Thought I was heading to Wolfe's when I felt the amulet around my neck. A hot spot— the kind you get from fever.
Pulled up outside the house. Turned off the engine, giving them plenty of time to notice me. Started it up again, pulled into the driveway, around to the back.
The messenger didn't seem surprised to see me.
She was downstairs, two young women with her. They stepped aside as I approached, bowed to her, and moved away. It was so dark, I couldn't tell if they were still in the room with us.
"You are troubled," she said.
"Yes."
"Ask your questions."
"I found the people I was looking for. But they're beyond the law."
"As you are."
A soft light glowed to my left— looked like flame floating in water.
"I'm not beyond the law," I told her. "They could bring me down like swatting a fly."
"Do you seek justice?"
"No."
"What, then?"
"Revenge."
"Yes, truth does not change with names. You are afraid?"
"Not of them. Not now."
"But once, yes?"
"Yes. When I was a kid."
"These are not the same people who hurt you."
"Yes, they are. You said it yourself. Only their names have changed."
"So it is not for the child you seek them?"
"Maybe. I don't know. That's the truth— I don't know."
"That is your sacrifice. To tell me the truth. A truth you have told no other, yes?"
"Nobody knows."
"You have it on you, hunter. You will never be free. Not until you cross over. Do not fear, treasure your sadness. This earth will not hold happiness for you, but your spirit will return. Clean and fresh."
"Without hate?"
"It is your spirit to hate, hunter. Your true path is to hate righteously. Guard the health of your spirit— do not endanger your soul."
"I'm going to…"
"I know. Any man can break the circle, but no man can prevent it from closing again. That man, the one who came to us with the baby's body. For the sacrifice. There is one who loved the baby. She still lives."
"The mother…"
"She is not the one. She was never the one. The mother is with child now. She will not survive the new infant— she will die in childbirth. And she who loved the baby who died will have a new child to love."
"How…?"
She put her hands behind her head, arched her back like a cat, stretched. Her smile was the secret of sex. "In the Islands, in the jungles just outside the cities, people whisper. No man lives without food. Even the spirits must eat. They must mate too. I know. It is that to be Queen. Listen now: some say baby snake eggs hatch in the stomachs of those who have offended. The babies hatch, their poison kills. Then you must cut open the body to let the spirit-snake free. The inside of a bamboo stalk is many tiny little hairs, like baby snakes. In your food, the hairs cause great sickness. Some die. The spirits are surgeons, not butchers. The mother will die, the baby will live. We will make our sacrifice— I will give myself— they will come into me. It will happen."
"Give yourself?"
"The myths are true, hunter. As I told you. I can raise the dead. As you were dead, once. Tell me this is true."
I saw Candy in my mind. Bound and gagged. And deadly. Later, on her stairwell, skirt hiked to her waist, losing my impotence inside her, paying the price.
Raise the dead— for the first time, I knew what it meant.
"It's true," I said. "Do I…?"
"You too, hunter. You will not find what you seek with your own sacrifice, but it is your spirit's destiny to seek. Remember what I have told you."
I stood up. Bowed. She stood too, moved close to me. She was much shorter than I'd thought. Hands reached up around my neck, pulled my face down. Her tongue was fire in my mouth. "When you come back, it will be yours," she whispered, raising the dead.
178
The gypsy cab rolled past their house, me driving, Mole in the passenger seat, Max in the back.
"You see any way in?" I asked.
The Mole ignored me, scribbling something on a notepad strapped to his thigh.
Back in the junkyard, he looked up from a drafting table. "My friends told me you visited that…person. Off Fifth Avenue."
"I didn't hurt him."
"You should have told me."
"Your friends, they ask you if you knew about it?"
"Yes."
"Nice to be able to tell your friends the truth, isn't it?" The Mole took off his Coke-bottle glasses, rubbed them on his greasy jumpsuit, said nothing.