Blue Belle - Andrew Vachss [6]
Nobody came near the Plymouth. I was into my third smoke, and Henske was breaking chops with both hands on "Good Old Wagon" by the time the gypsy cab pulled in at an angle next to me, its nose aimed at the Plymouth's trunk. The kid jumped out first, the goalie's mask gone, his baby face glowing with pride.
"Hey, Burke!"
"Keep it down," I told him, climbing out of the car.
"Did you see it? It went perfect!" He was bouncing up and down like he just hit a home run in Little League. Snatching money off the street was as close as Terry would ever get.
The Mole slowly emerged from the darkness of the gypsy cab. He was wearing a greasy pair of coveralls, a heavy tool belt around his waist, with another strap running over his shoulder. Something glinted off his Coke–bottle lenses—I couldn't tell if it was the sun. He walked into the shadow where our two cars touched and squatted on the ground, fumbling in his leather satchel. Terry hunkered down beside him, his hand on the Mole's shoulder, trying to peer inside the satchel. The Mole's pasty–white hands with their stubby fingers looked too awkward to open the clasp, but he had a touch like a brain surgeon. He pulled out the foil disk and dropped it in my palm, looking up at me with a question.
"Let's see," I told him, unwrapping it carefully.
In a neat, almost prim handwriting were the words "Maltrom, Ltd." Nothing else. I didn't need anything else.
"Nice work, Mole," I told him.
The Mole grunted.
"You drop Max off?"
He grunted again. Max the Silent didn't get his name because he moved so quietly. A Mongolian freelance warrior who never spoke, Max made his living as a courier, moving things around the city for a price. His collateral was his life. He was as reliable as cancer, and not nearly as safe to play with. The wino who stumbled into the switchman had been Max. He'd taken the kicks to the ribs, even though he could have snapped the switchman like a matchstick. A professional.
The Mole was still hunkered down in the shadows. The kid was next to him. Waiting quietly now, like he'd been taught.
"I got about an hour," I told the Mole.
His face moved—the Mole's idea of a smile. "You don't want to call your broker first?"
I don't have a broker. I don't get mail and I don't have a phone. Maybe it's true that you can't beat them—you don't have to join them either.
"I have to see Michelle," the kid piped up. I caught the Mole's eye, nodded okay.
"Give her my share," he said.
5
I WHEELED the Plymouth across the highway and started to work my way through the back streets of SoHo. Carefully, like I do everything.
Lily runs a special joint that works with abused kids. They do individual and group therapy, and they teach self–defense. Maybe it's all the same thing.
Max's woman works there. Immaculata. It wasn't so long ago that she tried to stop three punks from attacking what she thought was an old man on the subway. The old man was Max. He went through the punks like a chain saw through Kleenex, left them broken and bleeding on the subway floor, and held out his hand to the woman who stood up for him. Their baby was born a few months ago—two warriors' blood in her veins.
Terry watched me without turning his head, working on what we'd been teaching him. But he was doing it for practice—he wasn't scared anymore. The first time I took him away in a car, he was a rental from a pimp. We were working a deep con, looking for a picture of another kid. We picked up Michelle on the street so she could watch Terry while we got ready to deal with his pimp.
I lit a cigarette, thinking back to that night. "Want one?" I asked him.
"Michelle doesn't want me to smoke."
"I won't tell her."
The kid knew better than to use the dashboard lighter in the Plymouth. I snapped a wooden match into life, held it across to him. He