Blue Belle - Andrew Vachss [14]
"Speak!" I yelled at her, tossing the slab of pork in a gentle arc toward her face. It didn't last as long as a politician's promise. I tried a big fat egg roll. One chomp, and Pansy was swallowing in ecstasy, pieces of egg roll all over the floor. "You're a slob," I told her. She nodded happily.
Pansy's food–supply system is against the wall. A pair of hollowed–out cement cinder blocks with a forty–pound sack of dry dog food suspended above one and a tube connected to the sink above the other. When either bowl is empty, she pushes against the tube with her snout and it fills again.
I filled a big ceramic bowl with three quarts of Mama's cooking and told her to make a pig of herself. She buried her face up to the eyes in the steaming mess, making noises Stephen King never dreamed of. I threw some of the marrow bones into a pot and put them on the hot plate to boil.
I went inside to my desk. It was almost seven–thirty, and the woman Mama had spoken to said to call before nine. There was a phone on my desk. It never rang, and I never got a bill from Ma Bell—the Mole had it connected to the trust–fund hippies who lived downstairs. I could use it early in the morning, when the sensitive artists were still recovering from trying to find the light at the end of the marijuana tunnel they'd explored the night before, but not otherwise.
I'd had the phone for years. No problems. I never used it for long–distance calls. That's why God made other people's credit cards.
The office looked the same way it always does. I don't get clients coming here much. The last one was Flood. The day I let her in, she came in too deep. I lit a cigarette, not wanting to think about the chubby little blonde headhunter. She came into my life, got what she came for, and left me empty.
I didn't want to think about Flood. She came too often in my sleep. "I'm for you, Burke," I can still hear her saying. The way only a woman can say. And only say it once, if it's the truth.
It was.
Part of the full bloom I was still waiting for.
I went out to make my phone call.
18
ALMOST EIGHT by the time I found the pay phone I wanted. Near the river, just a couple of blocks from the Yuppietown the developers had built by reclaiming a piece of the Hudson. Within eyeshot of the bullshit "security lights" flanking the high–rise but safe in a pool of darkness.
Like I was.
I don't like cold calls. My phone number's circulated all over this city. The phone's listed to Juan Rodriguez, and the address is the back end of a junkyard I own. The old man who runs it draws me a paycheck every two weeks. I cash it and give him back the money. It makes me a citizen—I pay my taxes, build up my Social Security, all that. Having a citizen's name is important. The name opens the door to all the goodies: legit address, driver's license, Social Security card. don't lose any sleep worrying about the FBI, but the IRS is another game. I have a birth certificate too. It's so phony it even has a father's tame on it.
My credit with Ma Bell is excellent. Never miss a payment. Never make any toll calls. I never make any calls at all. Anyone who calls the junkyard number activates the call diverter I have set up. The signal bounces over to one of the phones at Mama's.
I unscrewed the mouthpiece of the pay phone and slipped in the flat disk the Mole gave me. It changes my voice just enough to throw off the machines, in case anyone's listening. I pulled the tiny tape recorder from my coat and hit the switch; the booth was flooded with the background noise from a bowling alley. The number had a 718 area code. Brooklyn or Queens. I dropped a quarter and dialed the number.
She answered on the third ring. A young girl's voice, with