Blue Belle - Andrew Vachss [9]
We rolled into the Wall Street canyon, following Michelle's directions. She had customers down there too. I pulled over to the curb.
She gave Terry another kiss and flowed from the car. We watched her make her way into the building. Watched men turn to look at her, thinking they had never seen a woman with so much style. I used to wonder what men would think if they knew the truth, but I don't anymore. The man waiting for her knew the truth.
10
I WHEELED the Plymouth around the corner and slid along until I found an empty spot, just past the little park where they assemble crowds who want to visit the Statue of Liberty. A lot of people bring their cars down to the river to work on them. Guys were changing the oil, draining radiators, doing tune–ups. I pulled over and popped the trunk. The inside was lined with the padding that furniture movers use. A steel box in one corner covered the battery; a fifty–gallon fuel cell took about half the storage space, but there was plenty of room for a man to wait comfortably. A neat row of quarter–inch holes was punched through the tip of the trunk. I pulled the piece of duct tape away so air would circulate. "You know where everything is?" I asked the kid.
He looked at me the way the Mole does sometimes, his eyes shifting to the cable that would open the trunk from the inside and let him out. He knew he could also get out through the back seat if he had to. Two plastic quart bottles were bolted to the side of the trunk, one full of a water–and–glucose solution, the other empty. A man could stay there for a couple of days if he had to.
I pulled a thick roll of neon–red tape from the trunk, peeled off a precut piece, and handed the end to Terry. He pulled it taut, and we walked it over to the hood. It fit perfectly. Another piece went over the roof. One more for the trunk, and we had a distinctive racing stripe from front to back. Terry took the rubber block I handed him and smoothed out the little bubbles under the tape while I attached a foxtail to the antenna and snapped some blue plastic covers over the parking lights in the grille. I pulled another set of license plates out of the trunk and screwed them on over the ones I'd been using. In ten minutes we had a different car. With untraceable plates.
Terry patted himself down, making sure he had his butane cigarette lighter. Michelle didn't mind him carrying the lighter. It was a gift from the Mole. Loaded with napalm. The tiny Jewish star the kid wore on a chain around his neck gleamed dull against his pale skin. It was made of steel. "They took gold from our people's mouths to make their evil ornaments," the Mole once said, explaining it to me.
The kid made himself comfortable. I closed the lid and climbed back inside. On schedule.
11
THE LIMO was already there when I pulled up. I left the Plymouth a half–block away and walked toward the blacked–out passenger windows, hands in my pockets. He must have been watching my approach. The door swung open.
I handed him the foil–wrapped disk. Watched as he carefully opened it, smearing any fingerprints that would have been on it if I had left any. He held the paper away from me so I wouldn't get a look at the magic name. His hands shook. His tongue ran around his lips. He was looking at his ticket up the ladder.
"This is it," he said. Reverent.
"Good. Give me the money."
"Sure. Sure…" he said, almost absently, reaching in his briefcase, counting it out, not making a ceremony of it this time. Handing it over to me, not even watching as I buried it in my coat pocket.
I reached for the door handle. "Wait a minute," he said.
I waited, my hand wrapped around a roll of quarters in my pocket, measuring the distance to the spot just below his sternum, breathing through my nose, calm.
"How did you get this?"
"That wasn't our deal."
"I'm just curious."
I looked at his face until his eyes came up to mine.
"Ask Mr. C.," I advised him.
The limo was pulling away before I took three steps back to the Plymouth.