Blue Belle - Andrew Vachss [12]
Terry was halfway through the giant mountain when he looked up at Mama.
"What's MSG?" he wanted to know.
"Bad stuff. Special salt. Make weak food taste strong, okay? Chemical. Fake. No good for you."
Terry smiled at her, putting it together. "No MSG here, right?"
Mama smiled back at him. "Right."
I lit another cigarette. "How's business?" I asked her.
"Always same."
I put the money from the lawyer on the table. Split it into two piles. "For Max," I told Mama, touching one pile. "For the bank," I said, touching the other. Mama would hold the money for me. Her bank didn't pay interest. In fact, she took a piece for a storage fee. But her bank was open twenty–four hours a day and it didn't file federal paper every time you made a deposit.
Mama's long fingers flashed over the money, faster than a black–jack dealer's. The two piles became four. She pointed at each in turn. "For Max. For the bank. For Mama. For baby."
I nodded agreement. I knew the pile marked for Flower had some of my money and some of Mama's. Max knew nothing about it—it wasn't his business. Whenever Mama saw Immaculata, she would have a pink silk purse in her hand. "For baby," is all she ever said.
Down where we live, every day is a rainy day.
14
WE WERE in the back room, the one between the restaurant and the kitchen, waiting for the cook to finish chopping up a pile of thick marrow bones, putting together a food package for me. Terry was in the kitchen, watching everything. Staying out of the way.
Three pay phones stood in a bank against the wall. The one at the end rang. Mama looked at me. I nodded. She picked up the receiver.
"Mr. Burke not here. You leave message, okay?"
I couldn't hear the other end of the conversation. It didn't matter what they said—Mama never went past the script.
"Not here, okay? Don't know. Maybe today. Maybe next week. You leave message?"
Mama listened. Wrote something on a scrap of paper. Hung up.
She handed me the paper. A phone number I didn't recognize.
"Woman. Young woman. Say you call this number before nine tonight."
"She say what she wanted?"
"A job for you."
"Anybody we know?"
"I never hear the voice before. Woman say her name is Belle."
"I don't know her."
Mama shrugged. Bowed goodbye to me and Terry. The steel door closed behind us. I turned the Plymouth north to the Bronx.
15
TERRY WAS quiet on the ride back. I let him have his silence—it's something a man has to learn. As he got older, I'd teach him not to give things away with his face.
I didn't fill the silence with the radio or my tapes. The radio works, but the faceplate is really just to disguise the police–band scanner built into the dash.
And all my tapes are the blues.
Kids can't sing the blues; when they try, it sounds wrong. They have the pain, but not the range.
We rolled over the Triboro to the Bronx. The kid watched as I tossed a token into the basket in the Exact Change lane. Learning. Don't call attention to yourself. When we pulled up to the junkyard, Terry made a circle with his finger. Go around to the back.
The back fence was heavy–gauge cyclone mesh, with three twisted bands of razor wire running across the top. Everything was two–tone: pollution–gray and rust.
A big dog the same color as the fence was basking in a patch of late–afternoon sunlight. His lupine face was impassive as we approached, but his ears stood straight up. Yellow eyes tracked the car, locking onto the target like a heat–seeking missile. An American Junkyard Dog. Best of a breed the American Kennel Club never imagined. City wolf.
I pulled the car parallel to the fence, Terry's door closest to the dog. The beast growled deep in his chest. Dark shapes moved behind the fence. Dots of light and flashes of white. Eyes and teeth, both ready.
"Tell the Mole Michelle has his money."
"Okay, Burke."
Terry climbed out of the Plymouth, flipped the door closed behind him. Walked over to the dog, talking in a low voice. The beast walked over to meet him. Terry scratched the dog behind his ear, standing next