“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you know what I mean,” he said.
He did not turn to look at her. He kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. They were passing through a section of the Bronx that used to be Italian but was now Latino. The small, joined, two-family row houses reminded him of the homes his father sometimes took him to when he was small, to visit this or that soldier in the organization, “Keep up the morale,” he told Andrew. The older men would smoke their guinea stinkers and pat Andrew on the head, and tell him, “Hey, you getta so big, Lino.”
“Was it your husband who had the place bugged?” he asked.
Still not looking at her. Eyes on the road.
“I told you I don’t know what you...”
“Sarah, you’re in serious trouble. If you know who I am, you know what I can do. I suggest you start telling me the truth.”
“All right,” she said.
“Was it your husband?”
“Yes.”
“Very nice. He uses his own wife to...”
“No,” she said. “That’s not true, Andrew.”
“No? Then how...?”
“I didn’t know about the bugs. He found out about us through the bugs.”
“But now he knows.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re still seeing me. Which means Sonny missed something, the place is still bugged. Otherwise, why would your husband...?”
“Yes, the place is still bugged.”
“How long have you known about me?”
“Since Mother’s Day.”
“You know since May sometime, and you keep seeing me. So what do you mean no? You are...”
“I see you because...”
“You are working for him, leading me on...”
“I see you because I love you.”
“Bullshit. You’re getting me to talk...”
“No...”
“Yes, you’re an informer, you’re here to send me to jail!”
“I had no choice,” she said.
She was thinking he would kill her. She had seen movies where people like him took informers to the country for a nice little ride. In his eyes, she was an informer.
“Yes, you had a choice,” he said. “You could have told me. You could have...”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Only because I already know!”
“I was going to tell you, anyway.”
She wondered if this was true.
He was wondering the same thing.
“Do you realize I can have you killed in a minute?” he said.
Which meant he himself was not about to kill her. But this didn’t exclude the possibility that he was driving her to a nice little place he knew in Connecticut, where two happy goons would be waiting with garrotes and chain saws.
“I don’t think you’ll do that,” she said.
“In a minute!” he said, and took his right hand from the wheel, and snapped his fingers for emphasis, still not looking at her, his eyes on the road. “A goddamn informer? A fucking rat? You know what we do with rats?”
He said nothing for the longest while, searching for a spot where he could turn off Bruckner onto a side street. He found one some three minutes later, pulled off the road, drove past a gas station pumping diesel for trucks, and then turned onto a sunny street with scrawny trees and small whitewashed houses. He drove along until he came to an empty corner lot with a Cyclone fence around it. There were junked cars heaped high in the lot. There was razor wire on top of the fence. Not a soul was in sight. He cut the engine. The sun-washed street was still except for the sound of cars and trucks rushing past in the distance. He turned from the wheel.
“Are you wired?” he asked.
“No.”
She was still wearing the sunglasses. He couldn’t see her eyes.
“Take off the glasses,” he said.
She took off the glasses. Reached into her handbag. Put the glasses into their case.
“Look at me,” he said.
She turned to look at him.
Blue eyes wide in that gorgeous face.
“Tell me again. Are you wired?”
“I’m not wired, Andrew.”
“Open your blouse,” he said.
She obeyed immediately, unbuttoning her blouse to expose her bra. He felt inside the bra, ran his fingers around and under her breasts, ran his hands over her back and her ribs and her belly and her buttocks, reached under her skirt to touch her thighs and her pubic mound. These were not a lover’s hands.
“Empty your handbag,” he said.
She looked at him stonily for a moment, and then she picked up her bag and turned it over, dumping its contents on the seat between them. She buttoned her blouse while he began rummaging through the items on the seat. The sunglass case, her wallet, her house keys, a package of chewing gum, her Filofax, a tube of lipstick, a comb, a hairbrush, a package of Kleenex, a paperback copy of Howard’s End, some loose change. He flipped through the pages of the book to make sure it hadn’t been hollowed out. He opened the Filofax to make certain nothing was buried in its pages. He turned the bag upside down, shook it, felt inside it with his hands. He found nothing even remotely resembling a recording device.
“All right,” he said at last, and turned away from her and started the car. As he drove back toward Bruckner, she put everything back in the bag, item by item, silently, slowly, deliberately, angrily. When they were on the highway again, she said, “Well, that was a nice little indignity.”
“Listen,” he said, “it’s your husband who’s the fucking DA, not mine!”
“Are you satisfied now?”
“Yes.”
“That I’m not wired?”
“Yes.”
“That I’m here only because I want to be here?”
“Yes.”
“Then slow down,” she said. “I don’t want to die in a car crash!”
He glanced swiftly into the rearview mirror, nodded, and eased up on the pedal.
“I didn’t realize I was going so fast.”
“You drive like a maniac,” she said.
They rode in silence for what must have been ten, fifteen minutes. At last he said, “Does he know you’re with me today?”
“Yes. He wants me to keep this going. Until he has everything he needs.”
“How much does he already know?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What did you mean when you said you had no choice?”
“My daughter.”
“What’s she got to...?”
“He threatened to take her away from me.”
“Would he do that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know him anymore. He has a video of me going in, he has...”
“A video! Jesus, what else have they...?”
“They’ve been watching the door on Mott Street,” she said. “They have pictures of anyone who goes in or out.”
This had to be the truth. She wasn’t wired. She was telling him the absolute truth.
“He showed me the video,” she said. “He also has tapes of everything you and I said together. He played them for me.”
“Who else?”
“Did he play them for? I guess the people he...”
“No, who else has he got on tape?”
“I don’t know. He’s going for an OCCA. Do you know what that is?”
“Yes, I know what that is.”
“He threatened to use the tape in a divorce action if I didn’t do what he asked.”
Andrew nodded.
He was silent for several moments.
Then he said, “They want me to have you killed. They know about your husband, they think you may have...”