Strega - Andrew H. Vachss [46]
28
NONE of this was getting me any closer to the answers I needed. I pulled out the roll of bills Julio had handed me at the pier. There was a century note on the outside, and it was no Chicago bankroll—every bill was the same, fifty of them, all used. Five thousand bucks. Too big to be a tip for the Forest Park job and not enough for the work the girl wanted me to do—but just the right amount for a warning. In case I missed the message, the last piece of paper inside the roll wasn't green—it had a phone number and the name "Gina" in a spidery, old–man's handwriting.
I went back into the other room and got a piece of mirror glass with a small red dot painted in the middle. I set it up so I was comfortable and sucked a deep breath in through my nose and down into my stomach, expanding my chest when I exhaled. I kept working on this, taking the air deeper and deeper each time, forcing it down to my lower stomach and then to my groin. I kept watching the dot, waiting to go inside, setting my mind to take this problem with me. The dot got bigger and bigger, filling the surface of the mirror. I concentrated on the sound of my own breathing, picturing the breath moving inside my body, waiting for it to happen. Images floated in: all gray tones—the prison yard, Julio's lizard eyes, a pool of dark water, a street in the rain. I came out of it slowly, feeling the cold spot between my shoulder blades. My hands were shaking.
I lit a cigarette, blew the smoke at the ceiling. The old man was trying to tell me something, and him wanting me to do the job for the girl was only part of it. I didn't need the dough, for a change. The girl wasn't going to lay off, and the old man wouldn't call her off. I should never have taken any work from Julio. My parole officer used to have a sign in his office: "Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life." Sure. The trick is to make sure the first day isn't the last day.
I wanted to sleep for a while, but I knew what that meant. I wasn't tired, just depressed. And scared. It was safe in my office, so I wanted to stay. Some guys tried to sleep through their whole bit in prison. You could get all the medication you wanted from the unlicensed reject that passed for a doctor, and they let you have a TV in your cell too. But when they finally open the door, you could get killed while you were blinking at the light.
I always know what the right thing to do is—the hard thing. So I gave Pansy a pat, told her I'd bring her back a treat, and hit the street to buy some time.
29
I PULLED out of the garage thinking about what I'd need to cover my trail. The Plymouth is legally registered—to Juan Rodriguez, who lives in an abandoned building in the South Bronx. I wasn't worried about it being traced to me: in the South Bronx, every abandoned building has dozens of registered voters—they never miss an election.
You have to change with the times—using Juan Rodriguez as an alias today was like using John Smith thirty years ago.
The name "Burke" was legally registered too—I took some of the cash from a decent score a few years ago and invested fifteen grand in a piece of a junkyard in Corona, a Queens neighborhood that's Italian to the south and black to the north, with an expanding seam of Puerto Ricans down the middle. I'm on the books as a tow–truck driver. Every two weeks, the owner mails a check for my salary to the post–office box I keep at the main station, across from Madison Square Garden. I cash the checks at this bar near the junkyard and give everything but fifty bucks back to the junkyard owner. It's a good deal for both of us: he gets a business deduction for paying an employee and I get a W–2 form and a legit source of income in case anyone asks. The owner even throws in a set of dealer plates I can legally slap on any car when I do salvage work for him. I give the desk clerk at the hotel where I used to live ten bucks a week for insurance, and I'm covered all the way around. If I get arrested, the desk clerk verifies that I'm