Strega - Andrew H. Vachss [15]
The subway car was dead quiet inside, rumbling on unperturbed toward the next express stop. The Mole took his hands out of his satchel and went back to whatever he was reading. The three maggots were on the ground, only one of them conscious enough to moan—it was the Puerto Rican kid, blood and foam bubbling out of his mouth.
The woman stood shock–still, her face drained of color, her hands frozen at her sides. Max the Silent looked into her face, and bowed deeply to her. She caught her breath, and bowed back. They stood looking at each other, seeing nothing else.
Max gestured for me to stand, pointed at his mouth and then at me. The Oriental woman's eyes flashed, but she seemed beyond surprise now.
She stood swaying slightly with the train's rhythm, balancing easily on the spike heels, dark–lacquered talons on silky hips. She watched the wino remove his hat and smooth out his tangled hair. If she was expecting another transformation, she was deeply disappointed. The distance between the real Max the Silent and a helpless old man was cosmic—the distance between the real me and a bum was considerably less. But I bowed to the woman too.
"My brother does not speak or hear. He can read lips, and those who know him can understand him perfectly. He wishes to speak with you, through me. With your permission…?"
The woman's eyebrows arched, and she nodded, saying nothingwaiting patiently. I liked her already.
Max gestured toward her, two fingers held against his thumb. He turned that same hand back toward his heart, tapped his chest lightly, bowed, reached his left hand back to the old, discarded raincoat, held it in one hand, touched his eyes, one at a time, with the other. He touched his heart again.
"My brother says you are a woman of great courage, to protect what you thought was an old man against such dangerous people."
The woman cleared her throat, smiled gently with the side of her mouth. She spoke as gravely as I had, with just the trace of a French accent in her speech.
"Your brother is quite deceptive."
Max absently swung his foot into the rib cage of one of the maggots lying on the floor, never taking his eyes off the woman. I heard a sound like a twig snapping. He touched his eyes again, shook his head "no." He expanded his chest; his eyes flattened and power flowed from his body. He turned to me.
"My brother says a maggot cannot see a true man," I told her.
Still with the same half–smile, she asked, "Can a maggot see a true woman?"
Max took a pair of dark glasses from my coat pocket—he knows where I keep them—and put them on his face. He made a gesture like tapping with a cane, took off the glasses, threw both hands toward the woman, and smiled.
"My brother says even a blind man could see a woman such as you, I translated, and she was smiling too, even before I finished.
That's how Max met Immaculata.
8
TO MAMA, Immaculata was a "bar girl," her catchall phrase for anything from prostitute to hostess. A Vietnamese was bad enough, but one of mixed parentage was suspect beyond redemption. As far as she was concerned, a true warrior didn't need a woman, except on an occasional basis.
Mama never seemed to move from her restaurant, but nothing escaped her sight. She knew Max still lived in the back of the warehouse near Division Street, where his temple