Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [90]
A young transit cop with the obligatory mustache walked through the train listening to his walkie-talkie and nodding to himself. I saw a skinny Spanish kid about fourteen years old practicing his three-card monte moves on a piece of cardboard. He had very smooth hands, but his rap was weak—I guess he was an apprentice. Two blacks in Arab robes with white knit caps on their heads moved through the cars, rattling metal cups, looking for donations with a story about a special school for kids in Brooklyn. Some people went in their pockets and put coins in the cups.
I moved through a couple of cars again. Sat down next to a blond kid wearing only a cut-off sweatshirt, no jacket. He looked peaceful. I checked his hands—one large blue letter tattooed on each knuckle. H A T E. The letters were set so they faced out. I moved on before the fellows collecting money asked this boy for a contribution.
The last car had nothing more troublesome than some kids staring out the front window like they were driving the train, and it lasted all the way to 161st Street.
The South Bronx—not a bad place if you had asbestos skin. A short walk to the Criminal Court Building, almost eleven now. The Bronx Criminal Court is a brand-new building—the juvenile court is in the same building, just with a different entrance. I guess the city figured there was no point making the delinquents walk a long distance before they reached their inevitable destination.
I found a quiet bench, opened my copy of the News, and kept an eye on my watch. Nobody approached. It was getting near the end of the arraignment shift and only a few losers were waiting around. I spotted one of the hustlers, a young Spanish guy with a lawyer’s suit. I’d heard about this one—he works Blumberg’s game, only in the Bronx. Next to him, Blumberg is Clarence Darrow.
I left the bench with five minutes to spare, climbed out of the basement to the first floor, and went out the 161st Street exit. I lit a cigarette and waited. At eleven-thirty a dark red gypsy cab with the legend Paradiso Taxi on the door and a foxtail on the antenna pulled up. I walked out of the shadows, smartly said, “Hey, my man,” and the driver looked me over. “Where to, amigo?”
“Oh, someplace downtown, you know?”
“Like the Waldorf?”
“That’s it.” I climbed in the back without further negotiations. The cab shot straight up 161st like it was headed for the highway to go downtown and I leaned back and closed my eyes. Rules are rules. The local cops aren’t too bad, but some of the federal lunatics don’t believe the Constitution applies to banana republics like the South Bronx. If I ever got strapped into a polygraph, I wanted the needles to read No Deception Indicated when they asked me where Una Gente Libre had its headquarters.
35
EITHER THE DRIVER really worked a gypsy cab as a regular job or he was a hell of an actor. Even with my eyes closed I could feel the lurch of the miserably-maintained hunk of metal every time we floundered around a corner. Normal potholes put my head against the ceiling, and each genuine home-grown South Bronx edition almost knocked me unconscious. He had the radio tuned to some Spanish-language station at a volume that reminded me of the holding tank at Riker’s Island—and for an added touch of authenticity he screamed “Maricon!” and waved his fist out the open window at another driver who had the audacity to attempt to share the road with us.
We turned a sharp corner; the driver doused the radio. He switched to a smooth cruising mode and spoke distinctly without taking his eyes from the windshield. “At the next corner, I stop the cab. You get out. You walk in the same direction as I drive for half a block. You see a bunch of lobos in front of a burn-out. You walk right up to them and they let you through. You go into the burn-out and someone meet you there.”
I said nothing—he obviously wasn’t going to answer questions. Lobo may mean wolf in Spanish,