Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [11]
I smiled at them. “No, private,” and they walked off in disgust. Nice guys.
4
I PUT THE key into the door, turned it twice right and once left to deactivate the alarm, and climbed inside. I just sat there for a minute; sometimes I go down to the garage and just sit in it, too. The car is a 1970 Plymouth that cost forty thousand dollars. It was supposed to be the ultimate New York City taxicab. It has independent rear suspension so even the West Side Highway doesn’t shake it up; a forty-gallon gas tank, fuel injection so it doesn’t stumble in traffic, a monster radiator with connecting tubes to cool the oil and transmission fluid so it can’t overheat, never-fade disc brakes all around, bulletproof Lexan instead of glass in all the windows, and bumpers that would turn a charging rhino. It weighs about two and a half tons, so it doesn’t get real good mileage, but when it was built that wasn’t a consideration. The kid who put it together told me this was the seventh version—he just kept doing it until he got it right. The super-cab was going to make him rich—rich enough so that wife of his could have everything she ever wanted. In the meantime, they went without everything—the cab was hungrier than a dope addict. All the kid did was drive a fleet cab and work on his prototype.
I got into the car when the kid hired me to watch his wife. He had the idea she was seeing someone else, and he got my name from Mama Wong, where he used to eat during his late shift. He told me there probably wasn’t anything to it, but he just wanted to be sure, you know. It didn’t take me long to find out what his wife was doing. She had a girlfriend in the same apartment house. I watched and listened for a few days, but I didn’t want to just go back and tell the kid his wife was making it with a woman—I figured there was more to the story.
I approached the wife one night while the kid was at work. I knew she always waited a couple of hours before she went upstairs to her girlfriend, so I just knocked on the door.
“Yes, who is it?”
“My name is Burke, ma’am. I’m here about your husband.”
She flung open the door, quick as a shot. She was wearing an old bathrobe, but her face was all made up.
“What is it? What’s happened? Is he . . . ?”
“Your husband’s okay, Mrs. Jefko. I’ve been doing some work for him and I have to talk to you about it.”
“Look, if it’s about that damn car, you’ll have to see him. I don’t—”
“It’s not actually about the car, ma’am. May I please come in for a minute?”
She looked me over carefully, shrugged, turned her back, and started walking toward the living room. I followed her but I walked past the entrance to the living room and sat down at the kitchen table. She fumbled for her cigarettes on top of the refrigerator and sat down facing me.
“Mrs. Jefko, I’m a private investigator. Your husband hired me to . . .”
“To fucking check on me, right? I knew he would. Marie said he would sooner or later.”
“Not to check on you, ma’am. He knew you were unhappy, and he thought that maybe something was wrong with you, something medical maybe, that you weren’t telling him about. He was concerned about you, that’s all.”
She started to laugh but she was out of practice. “Concerned about me. What a beautiful word—concerned. All he cares about is that fucking car and the millions and millions of dollars he’s going to make with it someday.”
“You know why he wants all that money, Mrs. Jefko?”
“No. I know why he says he wants the money. For me, right? What bullshit—he don’t care about me any more than I care about that car. He never talks to me, never looks at what I wear, doesn’t want to do nothing with me anymore. Marie says—”
“I know what Marie says.”
“How could you know? You got the phone tapped or something?”
“No, but I know what a recruiting pitch sounds like.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Marie understands you, right? Marie