And seven large file boxes of heavy cardboard, designed for transport. They were in two stacks, ready to go.
I grabbed the top one. It was full—had to weigh a good thirty, thirty-five pounds. Inside, nothing but paper. Case files; every single page a photocopy. I leafed through them quickly. As soon as I saw the name “Wychek” a dozen times in thirty seconds, I knew we were home.
Even with the fuel cell and the relocated battery hogging part of the space, there was still enough room in the Plymouth’s cavernous trunk for all seven cartons. I kept watch while Max did the loading, the best use of both our skills.
Before I turned off the light to the storage unit, I took a quick glance around. Removing the boxes didn’t create a visually empty space—it looked like everything else had been there for a while. I wondered where Sands lived.
I
dropped Max and the cartons in front of my building. By the time I’d stashed the Plymouth and walked on back, a quick jerk of Gateman’s head told me the Mongol had already gotten them all upstairs.
As I walked in the door to my place, the cell phone chirped in its holster.
“What?”
“They’re . . . ‘producing’ her, is what the lawyer said.” Pepper, sounding more like her usual upbeat self.
“When?”
“Today, for sure. Probably not until late afternoon, or even tonight. But it might be quicker. It depends—”
“—on the bus, I know. Look, I’m not going to be there this time. And you shouldn’t be, either.
None
of you, understand?”
“Yes.”
“As for going out to her house, you—”
“I
got
it,” Pepper said, voice edged with annoyance. “We didn’t start doing this yesterday, okay? I didn’t call for advice; I called to give you some information. Like I said.
I
got it. Now
you
got it.”
M
ax had laid the cartons out on the floor, waiting for me to decide what we were going to do with all the paper inside.
There were a hundred things I wanted to do. But I had this overwhelming feeling of stumbling blind, trying to disarm a bomb in the dark. I knew what my system was telling me. I put my palms together, held them to one side, and laid my cheek against them. Telling Max I needed sleep.
I pointed to my watch, gestured that I wasn’t going to be able to make the meet at Mama’s. There wasn’t enough to tell anyone yet, anyway.
Max scanned my face, a cartographer reading a map. He nodded agreement, signed that Mama would know where to find him, I should leave word when I wanted us all to get together.
I went into the back room, took off my jacket, and . . .
T
he phone buzzed, somewhere close. I reached out, flipped it open.
“What?”
“It took a bit longer than I anticipated.” Davidson’s voice. “Longer than it should have. The whole thing . . . Never mind. My client’s been released.”
“Is she with you?”
“I have no idea where she is. But I thought you and I might profit from a meeting.”
“Say where and when.”
“My office. ASAP.”
“One hour, no more,” I promised.
W
here I live, most of the light is artificial. Oh, there are windows, but they haven’t been cleaned for generations. Even the skylights are encrusted, and the surrounding buildings block off direct sunlight, anyway. I knew it was late, but seeing my watch read 10:44 knocked me back a bit. I’d been out for a long time.
A quick shower and change of clothes and I was on my way. I’d promised an hour, so the car was out of the question. I walked over to the subway on Varick, swiped my Metrocard through the turnstile, and grabbed an uptown 1-9 train. Davidson’s building was on Lex, just off Forty-second. The 1-9 is a stone local, but even with the crosstown walk when I got out, I beat the deadline with ten minutes to spare.
All the dull-eyed “security guard” at the front desk in Davidson’s office building wanted was for me to sign the register, so he could go back to his mini-TV.
Davidson’s office is on the twenty-eighth floor. I took the elevator to nineteen and walked up the rest of the way, on the off-chance that not everyone in the lobby was watching television.
The door to the suite was open. The receptionist’s cage was deserted. I walked on back, past where Davidson’s own secretary would normally be working. His door was open. So was one of the windows, but the air was still thick with cigar smoke.
“This case is dirt,” he greeted me.
“I know it is,” I said, taking a seat. “I just don’t know how deep it goes.”
“Me first,” Davidson said. “Once I verified the bond was in place, I was all set to spring her. Then, out of the blue, I get a call from Lansing at the DA’s Office. The little fuck tells me they’re bringing her down tonight, so I can make an application for bail reduction.”
He leaned back, took a deep drag, face dark with anger.
“Then he says, here’s the deal: Just make the same application I made before. Ask for something reasonable, like fifty, and his office will
consent
to it.”
“Maybe the judge thought it over, had his law secretary make a few discreet calls,” I said.
“It’s possible, but I think this was their own play. Question is, why?”
“Because they know she didn’t do it,” I said. “And they’re afraid she’s going to find out who did.”
“Why would they give a damn if . . . ? Wait! You’re saying they already know Wolfe wasn’t the shooter? Not that they
suspect
it, they
know
?”
“Do I think the skell admitted it wasn’t Wolfe who shot him?” I said. “I don’t know. But here’s what I
do
know. Never mind Wolfe, it’s their so-called victim who doesn’t want out.”
“What the hell are you talking about? How could he admit
anything,
much less ask to stay in the hospital?” Davidson said. “He’s in a coma, right?”
“Not anymore, he’s not,” I said.
Davidson shook his head, like a fighter who had just taken a hard shot but wouldn’t go down. “How could you possibly—?”
I told him what Sands had told me, word for word. I can do that. Always could, even when I was a little kid. I would have made a perfect witness against the people who did those things to me. Only, back then, they didn’t bring stuff like that into court.
“Christ on a crutch, Burke!” Davidson said, when I was finished. “That’s more questions than answers.”
“Yeah.”
“Those fucking cocksuckers. They didn’t say word one about this guy being out of his coma. They just consented to my application for a bail reduction.”
“What did you get?”
“Since I knew it was wired, I repeated the ROR app. Bail money’s just for showtime now—no reason they couldn’t just release her on her own recognizance and be done with it. But instead of just going along quiet, they weasel back with the fifty K.
“The judge looks over at me like somebody should let him in on the joke. So I figured, fuck Lansing and his deals. I say to the judge, If something isn’t
real
wrong with the case, how come the DA’s Office itself had just dropped their bail demand so radically?
“By now, Hutto’s looking at Lansing very strange. Then Lansing goes into a whole speech about needing time to develop their case in full, and since Ms. Wolfe isn’t considered a flight risk . . .
“So I immediately start stomping on him like a fucking grape. It was pitiful. Anyway, bottom line, Hutto’s off the hook now, so he sets it at the fifty the DA asked for.”
“Beautiful.”
“And we don’t need that bondsman of yours,” Davidson said. “That amount, Wolfe put it up herself. In cash, from nice clean assets. That’s what took so long: getting the damn paperwork done.”
“You’ve still got your discovery coming,” I told him. “And I’ve got some of my own to do. But so far, everything this Sands has told me has been gospel.”
“You want me to run his name past Wolfe?”
“I’d rather ask her myself.”
“I don’t know if she—”
“Ask her,” I said.
T
he next day I called Big Nate on one of my cells.
“You heard?” I asked him.
“I heard,” his amplified voice said. “But—”
“You and me, we’re both the same,” I said, very softly. “Sometimes, there’s things you don’t want to do, but you do them, because all the other choices are worse. You were ready to do what you had to do. So was I.”
“Yeah. So—we’re quits?”
“You’ll never see me again,” I said, cutting the connection.
I
was in my booth when Michelle came in, dressed in that princess/slut style only she can bring off.
She sashayed over and took a seat. Mama was only a few steps behind her, clapping her hands for more soup.
“I took care of it,” Michelle said. “Turns out I was right. Anyone tried to hurt Wolfe out there, it would have been a major mistake. I got
that
just off the first phone call.
“Then I found that they’d brought Hortense down from Bedford Hills to testify in some other case. As
if.
So I went out and visited her myself. No problems after that, guaranteed.
“On my way out, I left money on the books for ’Tense. I didn’t do the same for Wolfe, just in case anyone was . . .”
“Thanks, honey. You’re perfect.”
“This is true.”
“And Wolfe’s already sprung.”
“Yes! They dropped that bogus—?”
“No. Not even close. But Wolfe’s got friends on the other side, too.”
“Sure, friends?” Mama asked.
“Looks like, so far, anyway,” I told them. Then I filled them in on what I’d gotten from Sands, and what happened when Davidson went back to court.
“Have you looked through all that paperwork yet, honey?” Michelle asked.
“Just a quick glance. That cop must have spent all night at the photocopier. Took some big-time risks.”
“If the stuff’s real, he did.”
“Wolfe’s out,” I reminded her. “Soon enough, we’ll get a straight answer. And—I had an idea. Remember when we had all that paper, on that girl who got killed out on—?”
“Yes,” Michelle interrupted. “You want Terry to scan it all into a computer for you again?”
“That, and maybe do some sorting programs. . . .”
“Well, let’s go get him,” she said, flashing her gorgeous smile.
“Michelle, he’s all grown up now, remember? He drives his own car. We don’t need to go all the way up to the Bronx. Why can’t he just—?”
“You know why,” she said, winking at me.
I
’d been out to the Mole’s place so many times, my eyes didn’t even register the burnt-out buildings, or the burnt-out humans who staggered between them, pipe-dreaming.
They say real estate in the city is so precious that every square inch of it is going to be gentrified someday. If that ever happens in Hunts Point, I’ll believe it.
Michelle’s cat’s-eye makeup didn’t mask her excitement. She was going to people she loved.
Terry was her son. I had street-snatched him from a kiddie pimp years ago, and Michelle had adopted him in that same minute. Back then, she was still pre-op, and still working car tricks, fire-walking with freaks every night. Michelle came from the same litter I did. Our hate made us kin.
Michelle had claimed Terry for her own. But it was the Mole—a for-real mad scientist, living in an underground bunker beneath the junkyard he owned—who really raised the kid.
For years, Michelle and the Mole orbited around each other, never touching.
Finally, she had the operation. She had been talking about getting it done for as long as I’d known her, but it wasn’t until the Mole became Terry’s father that Michelle became his wife. I remember, a long time ago, when she asked the Mole if he could ever understand how it felt, to be a woman trapped in a man’s body.
“I understand trapped,” is all the Mole said. It was enough.
The surgery didn’t change Michelle to any of us. She was always my sister, from the beginning. Always Terry’s mother. But maybe it meant something between her and the Mole. I don’t know.
The Mole doesn’t like to leave his work, and his work isn’t portable. Michelle didn’t even like
visiting
the junkyard.
None of that mattered.
I pulled up to the entrance, a wall of razor wire, growing like killer ivy through the chain link. The pack of feral dogs that inhabit the place assembled quickly, but I knew the Mole’s sensors would have announced us way before I brought the Plymouth to a stop.
The dogs watched, too self-confident to bark, except for a few of the younger ones, who were still learning.
“Looks like Terry’s not here, honey,” I said. “He would have been out to pick us up in the shuttle by now.”
“Then Mole will just have to come himself,” she said. “The exercise certainly won’t kill him.”
Not being clinically insane, I didn’t say anything.
Eventually, we spotted the Mole’s stubby figure, making his way toward us. He was wearing his usual dirt-colored jumpsuit, Coke-bottle lenses on his glasses catching the late-afternoon sun. He shambled over to the sally port, threw open the first gate, then moved aside to let us through.
I drove the Plymouth in, extra-slow. The Mole locked up behind us.
He came around to my side of the car, standing in the river of killer dogs like a kid in a wading pool.
“Mole!” I said.
He answered me the way he usually does—a few rapid blinks behind his glasses, waiting for me to get to the point.
“We’re looking for Terry,” I said. I could feel the cold heat from Michelle’s ice-pick eyes at the back of my neck, but I knew they weren’t aimed at me. Mole had gone to the wrong window, and the poor bastard would have to pay that toll by himself.
“Not here,” he said.
“Right. But I’ve got Michelle with me—”
“Oh,” he said.
“—and I thought we could hang out a bit, while we wait for Terry to show.”
“Where is that . . .
Jeep
thing you use?” Michelle demanded, over my right shoulder.
“Back at the—”
“Well, go
get
it,” she said, tartly. “I’m not going to—”