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By Root 628 0

New York a lot of folks on welfare and social security get their checks at the post office because their own apartment mailboxes are considered withdrawal windows by the local junkies. Secondly, the VA doesn’t want to know who’s getting the checks—it would just depress them. Remember that Son of Sam freako who killed all those women a while back before the cops stumbled onto him? Well, there’s a contract out on him in prison, I heard. Not because the cons hate a sex offender—that doesn’t happen anymore—but because some reporter found out he was getting a VA disability check every month while doing about seven life sentences. That snapped out the public, and a later investigation revealed there were literally thousands of prisoners getting checks while they did time. Some of the cons noted the media explosion about this, and figured Son of Sam was to blame, so there’s a lot of hostility. (They should save their energies for scamming the parole board—no politician is going to vote to take away a government benefit merely because the recipient is locked up. It would hit too close to home.)

If Wilson was using a box anywhere between lower Manhattan and the Village, I could find him sooner or later if I knew what the hell he looked like. Flood wouldn’t be much help there either. I halfheartedly checked through my resume file (from applicants for mercenary work), but none of them had a picture attached and none of them sounded or smelled sufficiently like my man to make me think we’d get lucky there.

Pansy trotted downstairs while I was still going through the files, and I put together some breakfast for her. Then I went to the phone, checked to be sure the hippies hadn’t become early risers in my absence, and dialed the number Flood gave me.

“Yoga School.”

“Is that you, Flood?”

“Yes, what’s happening?”

“Some things—I can’t talk long on this phone. You know where the Public Library is, on Forty-second Street?”

“Yes.”

“Meet you inside the doors, all the way to the right, at about ten o’clock, tomorrow morning, okay? The doors off Fifth Avenue, with the lions?”

“I know where it is.”

“Okay, listen, you have a pair of white vinyl boots, like go-go dancers wear?”

“Burke! Are you crazy? What would I want with things like that?”

“For the disguise.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ll explain when I see you, Flood. At ten, right?”

I could almost hear the exasperation in her voice but she kept it under control and just said, “Right.”

12

AFTER I FINISHED talking to Flood, I spent some time just sitting by the open back door looking out toward the river with Pansy next to me, explaining the whole mess to her. Part of me just wanted to stay where I was, where it was safe. But I had already thrown too many pebbles into the pool for that. If I just wouldn’t get involved with any other people—if I could just live like the Mole. But it’s not too good to start thinking like that. It makes you crazy. Scared is okay—crazy is dangerous.

Some people get so scared of being scared that they go crazy from the fear—I saw a lot of that in prison. When I was only about ten years old there was this dog the Boss Man kept in the dormitory—a fox terrier named Pepper. He kept Pepper for the rats in the place. Pepper was a lot better than some miserable cat—he really liked rumbling with a juicy rat about half his own size—and he knew his work. Pepper would just kill the rats—he didn’t play around with them. It was his job.

I never would have had the guts to run away from that joint except that Pepper went with me. I ended up by the same docks I use now. Sitting there, scared of everything in the whole world, but not of the waterfront rats—I had Pepper with me for that. I stayed out for almost six months until some cop picked me up because he thought I should have been in school. I could have gotten away but I didn’t want to leave Pepper.

I thought they would put us both back in the same joint, but they didn’t. They put me in some place upstate—the judge said I was incorrigible, and I didn’t have any family. She was a nice judge, I