"Sure."
"Let us do business, mahn. Good business for me, good business for you."
"How good?"
"Couple of hours of your time, say…five?"
"Okay."
"Yes?"
"I'll see you in a couple of days," I told him, hanging up.
I heard the surprise in Jacques's voice. A deal like this had to net him six figures, and I was going cheap. But I had a secret he didn't know about. I didn't give a fuck.
I LEFT THE Plymouth just off the West Side Highway near Forty-second and walked over to Eighth Avenue to catch the E train for South Jamaica. A young white dude was sprawled on a bench, chuckling over something he was reading in a magazine. I put one foot on the bench, lit a smoke, took a look over his shoulder. An article about how to make your car burglarproof.
I dropped underground, fishing a token from my pocket. A young black woman dressed like a nun was sitting just past the turnstiles, a flat basket full of coins in her hands. Her face was calm, eyes peaceful.
"Help the homeless?" she asked.
"Say something in Latin first."
"Fuck you," she said, her voice soft.
Everybody's got a pimp.
I caught my train. A huge black guy got on at Queens Plaza. Walked up and down the car announcing that this was his train. He was a combat-trained Vietnam vet and nobody was going to pull any stuff on his train- all the passengers could feel safe with him. Took off his cap and went up and down the row, collecting contributions for his program. Right across from me was a young Oriental, a folded copy of the Times in one hand, a small dictionary in the other. The black man collected some change from the lady a couple of seats down from me, checked my face, passed me by. The guy next to me looked like a lab rat. He threw some coins. When the collector strolled back up the other side, I watched the Oriental. The black guy shoved his cap right in the Oriental's lap. The Oriental was stone-faced. The black guy was covering his newspaper with the cap, not moving. The Oriental reached into the cap, took out a handful of change, jingled it in one fist, watching the black man. The black man pulled his cap back. The Oriental tossed the change into it.
The black guy moved on, into another subway car. Maybe he really was a Vietnam vet.
I rode the train nearly to the end of the line. Walked up Sutphin Boulevard, looking for the house Jacques had described to me.
Three young blacks were watching the traffic from a topless white Suzuki Samurai. The driver stared through the windshield, his passenger watched the street. Another draped a casual hand over the padded roll bar to watch me approach. The passenger got out to sit on the hood, cradling a cellular phone in a white leather shoulder bag. Ten pounds of gold around his neck, brand-new orange leather sneakers on his feet. Wearing a white leather jacket with layered lapels. I kept coming, hands out where they could see them. The driver reached under the dash. The largest one climbed out of the back. Three gold rings on his right hand, welded into a slab across the knuckles. He put his hand to his cheek. I read "Stone" in raised gold letters. The one with the cellular phone took off a pair of dark shades, raised his eyebrows, tapped his nose. I looked through him, went on past. Crack dealers, not hiding it. Nujacks, they called themselves. Flashing. The way a fuse does before it reaches the dynamite.
They were marking out territory in the wrong neighborhood. This turf belonged to a Rasta posse. The last crew from Brooklyn had ended up extremely dead. That's the only War on Drugs going down around here.
I found the house. Knocked four times on the side door. Stepped into a basement. Nobody said a word in English- a couple of the men muttered in something that sounded like French. They pointed to a suitcase. Opened it. I looked inside, counted. They pointed to a phone. I called Jacques.
"It's me. They got one twenty-five."
"New or used?"
"Used, not in sequence. But I got no blue light with me, pal."
"That's okay, mahn. Put them on."
The guy who pointed at the suitcase listened to Jacques, said something to the others. They went out through a different door than the one I'd used. I sat down to wait. I'd told Jacques that the cash looked good, but I wasn't vouching for it. If it was funny money, I was taking the same risk he was- my five grand would come out of the suitcase.
I sat down to wait. Put my hand in my pocket for a smoke. The guy waiting with me said, "Easy, easy." I took it out real slow. I had the match to my cigarette before I realized the guy wasn't talking to me.
It was less than two hours later when they came back.
I hit the street with the suitcase. Before I got to the corner, a dark sedan pulled over, flashing its high beams on and off. The window came down. An Island voice said, "Burke?"
I got in the back. It took off smooth and easy. At the next corner, an identical car pulled in front of us. There'd be another one behind. I didn't look. We stopped at a light on Queens Boulevard. A guy in the front got out of the car carrying the suitcase. He handed it over to the car in front, got back in as the lead car took off in a squeal of rubber.
They dropped me off in Times Square. Handed me an envelope. I walked to the Plymouth by myself.
I WALKED BY myself a lot then. The court case was pending, but not hanging over my head. Davidson was right- if I didn't do something stupid, I was okay.
I didn't feel okay.
After a few more dead days, I called Candy.
39
SHE OPENED the door, wearing an apricot sweatshirt that came down almost to her knees, face sweaty, no makeup. No contact lenses either, yellow cat's eyes patient.
The apartment looked the same. Fresh rosebuds in a steel vase on the coffee table. The air smelled sharp, ionized. Like after a hard rain.
I sat on the couch. She curled her legs under her, wrinkled her nose when I lit a cigarette. I waited.
"I have a daughter," she said.
I dragged on the cigarette, watching the glowing tip.
"You don't seem surprised."
"I don't know you."
"I know you. You're the same. So am I."
"Okay."
"She's almost sixteen years old. Always had the best. The very, very best. Designer clothes, dance lessons, private schools. The last school she went to, they even had a rule about boys in the rooms. You had to have one foot on the floor at all times."
Candy's mouth curled- her laugh didn't come from her belly.
"Imagine that, huh? I was older than her before I knew people fucked lying down. Remember?"
I remembered. The dark stairwell at the back of the building where she lived with her mother in a railroad flat on the top floor. Candy standing one step higher than me, her back to me, her skirt bunched around her waist. I remembered taking down a drunk in an alley just past a waterfront bar with two other guys from the gang. Thinking my share of the loot would buy her a sweater she wanted. And me another few minutes on those stairs.
"Her name is Elvira. Pretty name, isn't it? I wanted her to have everything I didn't." She waved her hand, taking in the sterile waiting room to her office. "That's what I started all this for."
I watched her lying eyes, waiting.
"A few months ago, she ran away from school. She's staying with this cult. Over in Brooklyn. I don't know much about it…even what it's called. The man who runs it, he's called Train. I don't know how he got to her. I went there once. They wouldn't let me speak to her. I told them she was underage, but they must know something about me. Maybe she told them. Call a cop, they said."