Two weeks.
Luke and Burke. Lurk.
I'd told Wolfe I knew. Didn't tell her how I'd learned.
1971. Lowell, Massachusetts, a struggling mill town. Sitting in a mostly empty downtown parking lot in the front seat of a dull brown Ford, stolen a couple of hours earlier. License plates looked good— they were two halves of two different plates, welded together with the seam at the back. Beer cans on the dashboard, radio turned down low. Two guys taking a break from their construction job. Me and Whitey, waiting. Watching.
Every Friday, a young woman walked past that parking lot. It was a joy to watch her. Pretty-proud, long brown hair bouncing on her shoulders, matching the swing in her hips. Not a traffic-stopper, but a juicy fine thing just the same.
We'd been watching her every Friday for a month. Watching her carry a leather bag over one shoulder. Her outfit changed each time, but the leather bag stayed the same.
She'd walk back the same way. Past us. With the leather bag heavier then. Her boss made the payroll in cash every Friday afternoon. The brunette made the bank run. Flouncing along, walking the way girls walk, one hand swinging with her rhythm, the other patting the bag at her hip. Taking her time, enjoying the sunshine and the stares.
We'd checked the traffic patterns, the escape routes. Had a garage all rented about a half mile away. One quick swoop and we'd make our own withdrawal. Hole up, listening to the sirens. Nighttime, we'd go down the back stairs, separate at the bus station.
Saturday, Whitey would be in Boston. I'd be in Chicago.
The brunette had on an egg-yolk-yellow dress that stopped at mid-thigh.
"Beautiful, huh?" Whitey whispered. He didn't mean the girl.
The radio said something about Attica. I turned it up. Riot at the prison, guards taken hostage, the whole joint out of control. State troopers had the place surrounded.
Whitey had done time before I was born. He cupped a cigarette, hiding the flame out of habit. Spoke softly out of the side of his mouth.
"They gonna kill all those niggers."
"How d'you know it's blacks?" I asked him.
"When the Man comes down on them, they'll all be niggers," Whitey said. "Dead niggers."
Blood-bought wisdom from an old man I'd never see again. We took the omen, aborted the snatch.
You stay in the sun long enough, you get a tan. I know why Ted Bundy went pro se, represented himself at his murder trial in Florida. You go pro se, you get whatever a lawyer would get. Like discovery motions. The prosecution wanted to introduce the crime-scene photos, show the jury the savage slasher's wake. Bundy got his copies too. So he could go back to his quiet, private cell and jerk off to his own personal splatter films. He told the TV cameras that pornography made him kill all those women, lying as smoothly as the lawyer he never got to be. Dancing until they stopped the music.
The Prof schooled me too. In prison and out. We're in the lobby of a fancy hotel. I'm dressed in a nice suit. The Prof is applying the final touches to my high-gloss shoes.
"Watch close, youngblood." Nodding at an average man. All in gray. Dull, anonymous. The uniformed bellman reached for the gray man's suitcase. The gray man snatched it away, keeping it in his left hand while he signed the register with his right.
A few minutes later the bellman came over to us, whispered something to the Prof. Cash flashed an exchange. A few blocks away, the little man ran it down.
"Man don't want to pay, what's it say?"
"That he's cheap."
"The bellhop walked him to the room. Opened the door for him, okay? Didn't carry the bag. And the man still throws him a dime, right on time. Take another look, read the book."
"I don't get it."
"The man ain't cheap, he's into somethin' deep. That bag's full of swag, son."
I read books too. Especially when I was inside. A plant's growth is controlled by the size of its pot. A goldfish won't grow to full size in an aquarium. But we lock children in cages and call it reform school.
I know some things. You don't turn off your headlights when dawn breaks, everyone will know you've been out driving that night.
56
I slept until past noon. Pansy trailed after me as I got dressed, begging with her eyes.
"You want to go see your boyfriend?" I asked her. "Barko?"
She made a little noise. I thought we'd established a new level of human-dog communication until she started drooling while I was eating breakfast. I scooped a couple of pints of honey-vanilla ice cream into her bowl. Watched her slop it all over the walls and floor in a frenzy. Then she curled up and went to sleep.
57
I found Storm in her office at the hospital. She saw me coming, said something into the telephone, hung up.
"We have ten days," I told her. "And then?"
"Then he comes in."
"You think that's enough time?"
"I don't know— it's not up to me. I did what you asked."
"Not all of it." Lily, walking through the back door, her face sweaty, hair mussed, like she'd been exercising.
I lit a smoke. Lily was so worked up she forgot to frown at me. "Keeping him hidden won't do any good, Burke. Nothing will change in ten days."
"What do you want, Lily. Spell it out."
"He could go someplace else. Far away. Disappear."
"Until he does it again."
"No! Until he gets better."
"You know what that would take…?"
"I don't care. I could take him. He couldn't do anything to me…he's too little."
"He'd try, Lily. When he got the signal, he'd try."
"We could use the time," Storm put in. Her parents must have picked her name because she was always so calm. "Luke will need a defense when he comes in, Lily. He needs to see a psychiatrist, maybe a couple of them."
"He wouldn't go to jail," I added.
We left it like that. Nothing settled.
58
I felt it as soon as I hit the street— an inversion in the atmosphere. Heavy air, ozone-clogged. Muggy, with a bone-chill core. Like in prison, just before the race wars came. You felt it in the corridors, on the tiers. In the blocks, on the yard. Skin color the flag, any target an opportunity. The Man would feel it too, but the joint wouldn't get locked down until they had a high enough body count.
I walked in the opposite direction from where I'd left the Plymouth, heading for the subway. Maybe it was just the neighborhood. Something going down, nothing to do with me.
Early afternoon, subway traffic was light. I scanned the car, pretending to read the posters. All the services of the city: AIDS counseling, abortions. Cures for acne, hemorrhoids, and hernias. Food stamps, Lotto, 970 numbers, party lines. Another promised you could Ruin a Pickpocket's Day if you followed its advice: avoid crowds.
When I came up for air at Fifty-ninth Street, it felt the same. Not the neighborhood, then.