Blue Belle b-3

by Andrew Vachss

  "No."

  The Mole wiped his hands on his greasy jumpsuit. "You want something from inside?"

  "Just a look around. A good look."

  "When?"

  "I'll get back to you. But soon, okay?"

  "Okay."

  I stomped out my cigarette. "You can't take out the electricity. It's right in the middle of the cesspool. Takes a lot of juice to run all that neon."

  The Mole turned to Terry. "Get the master-blaster," he said.

  I followed the Mole to the entrance of his bunker. There's a network of tunnels under the junkyard, shored up with I-beams. He led me down some steps. Bright light ahead. Terry came up behind us.

  The Mole pointed ahead. "Streetlight," he said. "Like they have outside. Turns on at night - goes off in the daytime. You know how it works?"

  "Con Edison?"

  "No. Infrared sensor. When it gets light out, the sensor reads it. Shuts itself off."

  "So?"

  We turned the corner. Terry handed the Mole a portable spotlight. The kind you plug into the cigarette lighter in your car. The Mole aimed the spotlight, pressed the button. A flash of white-hot light. The streetlight went out. We stood in the pitch dark. I counted ninety seconds in my head. The streetlight came back on. I followed the Mole outside.

  "Car headlights, maybe seventy-five thousand candlepower on high beams. Cop's spotlights, maybe a hundred and fifty thousand. This throws a million. Tricks the streetlight - tricks motion sensors - anything."

  "Damn! What happens if you blast somebody in the face with it?"

  "They go blind for a few minutes. Too close, you burn the eyeballs."

  "Mole, you amaze me."

  "Let Terry drive the car out of the yard," he said.

  121

  Belle was lying on her stomach across the hospital bed, chin in her hands. Her legs were bent at the knee, feet twirling behind her. Like a teenage girl talking on the phone. The Prof was in an easy chair, the casts on his legs still separated by the bar, propped on a footstool. He looked sharp - clean-shaven, bright-red robe.

  "It's quiet?" I asked, stepping into the room.

  "This is a hospital, fool."

  "I mean . . ."

  "We all know what you mean. Everything's cool. Too bad you showed so soon, I was just getting ready to show the lady your baby pictures."

  I pulled up another chair. "You got something?"

  Belle climbed off the bed, sat down on the floor between us, her hand on my knee.

  The little man was back to himself. All business, but working in circles. "You remember J.T.?"

  "Yeah."

  He turned to Belle. "This J.T. was a real country boy when he came up here. A stone rookie. Wouldn't know a hoe-down from a throw-down. Couldn't decide if he was gonna be a yutz or a clutz. You follow?"

  Belle tilted her chin to look up at me. "What's a throw-down?"

  "A challenge. Or a fight."

  "How do you tell the difference?"

  "One you do with your mouth, the other with your hands. Now shut up - let the man finish."

  Her lips turned into a perfect pout, like she'd been practicing all her life.

  The Prof patted her arm. "Don't pay attention to this thug, girl. You can school a fool, but you can't make him cool. J.T., he's not what you call a mental heavyweight, but he's good people. A few years ago, he got into this beef over a girl. Working girl. He thought he was in love. Shot the pimp right on Forty-fourth Street. Girl starts screaming, J.T. starts running. I'm on my cart, see him flying. I told him to toss the piece. Buried it in my coat. The cops grabbed him a couple of blocks away, but they never found the gun. The pimp didn't die. We put together a package for J.T. Michelle talked to the girl, Burke talked to the pimp. Visited him right in the hospital. They held J.T. a few months, waiting for somebody to testify. Finally, they cut him loose. He's still a dumb-ass cowboy. Too dumb to hustle, and he's not cold enough for stickups. He's always out there, picking up spare change. You understand?"

  Belle nodded, a serious look on her face. Like there was going to be a test later.

  "Anyway, old J.T. hears what happened. Out there. He comes to see me. Like I said, he's good people, but he ain't swift. Wants to square the beef for me - take care of the people who busted me up. I tell him to back off, it's been handled. He gets a look on his face like I just downed him, you know? Like I think he ain't worth shit. So I give him this assignment, okay? Just do what he does, but keep his eyes open. Don't ask nobody nothing. Just watch. Last night, he walks in here. Brought me that radio," the Prof said, pointing to a suitcase-sized boom box sitting in the corner. "And he brought me this too."

  He put it in my hand. An eight-sided gold metal coin. Embossed on one side was a nude woman, one hand behind her head, spike heels on her feet. I turned it over. On the other side it said "Sin City."

  "It looks like a subway token," Belle said.

  "It works the peep-show machines. Costs a quarter."

  "So what's the . . ."

  I chopped a hand in the air to cut her off, holding the coin in my fingers. "He say anything else?" I asked the Prof.

  "Said he followed the guy - not Mortay, the Spanish dude - into the railroad yards. On Forty-third, off Tenth. Spanish guy disappears. J.T. figures, the hell with it, he'll go watch a movie. He goes right to Sin City, goes in the front door. Now, that's the only door, babe. And who does he see when he gets to the bar? The Spanish guy. J.T. says there ain't no way in the world that the Spanish guy could've got there first."

  "So there has to be another way in?"

  "Has to be."

  "What time was this?"

  "Like eleven in the morning, man. Broad daylight."

  I lit a smoke. "He did good, Prof."

  "When you cast bread upon the waters . . ."

  "Yeah. You got anything else?"

  "Just one more little piece. I reached out for Tabitha, asked her to make the run up to see Hortense, explain to her I was laid up. Now, you know Tabitha; she owes Hortense too. So she did it. Anyway, she comes back to see me. Said Hortense said she'd whip her ass when she got out, Tabitha didn't do something for me now. So Tabitha, she's in the life, but she's straight, she tells me she saw the duel."

  "Mortay and the Jap?"

  "Right on. In the basement. So I put it together, ask her how she got into the basement, dig? She says she and her man, they go downstairs from the main floor. Big metal spiral staircase. Everybody goes down that way, everybody goes out that way. Get it?"

  "Yeah."

  "One more thing, she says. This Spanish guy, she knows him too. Her man, Earl, he won't let none of his women anywhere near the Spanish guy. Word is he uses blood the way some freaks use Vaseline."

  "I heard that too. Just today."

  The Prof went on like he hadn't heard me. "But Tabitha, man, she thought that was funny. The Spanish guy, he don't want nothing to do with nothing that ain't white. No Puerto Ricans, no Chinese . . . nothing that's out there but white meat."

  I drew on my smoke, watching Belle's face half hidden under the thatch of honey-taffy hair. Coming together.

  "I'm out of here, Prof. It's coming down. I may not be back for a while."

  "What's coming down, home?"

  "A hard wind, brother. Hold tight to your alibi."

  "You going to work solo? That ain't the way."

  I bent close to him, lowering my voice even more. "What am I gonna do, wait till you're out of the hospital? Max is out of this - he has to be. I'm working on something . . . but I don't have it yet."

  He tapped the end of my bandage. "That ain't much of a plan, man."

  "That's the backup, not the plan. It all connects. Everything. But I can't call the shots. This is just in case he moves first."

  The little man's eyes were hard, the yellowish cast gone. He was the Prophet again, the man who could see the future. "This freak feels froggy, he's gonna leap - I know you can't wait. But use your head, schoolboy. Pearl Harbor. When it comes to
Nazis, the Mole don't play the role."

  I squeezed his hand - his grip was hard as his eyes. Nothing more to say.

  Belle bent to kiss him goodbye. "Remember what I told you, lady. Outside hell, blood don't tell."

  "I'll remember."

  When I looked back, he was pushing the button to call his nurse.

  122

  I walked Belle over to the Pontiac, let her in the passenger side.

  "What happened to the Plymouth?"

  "On vacation."

  "I'm glad you didn't have to dump it. That's one fine machine."

  "Yeah."

  "What d'we do now?"

  "Wait. There's stuff out there - I have to wait for a bite."

  I drove back to Queens. Stopped at a deli in Forest Hills, waited in the car while Belle picked up some food. It was the first time I'd been to her house in the middle of the day. The street was quiet. Working people at work, kids at school. Belle saw me sweeping the street with my eyes.

  "It's real quiet here until the summer. Once they start coming out to the water with their boats and all, it fills up."

  "It'll all be over way before then."

  "You're sure?"

  I didn't answer her. I parked the Pontiac behind her Camaro. "That car's been moved since the last time."

  "I took it down to the gas station. Changed the oil, front-end alignment."

  I looked a question at her. "Just in case," she said.

  "I don't need a driver on this, Belle."

  This time she didn't answer me.

  We brought the food inside. I called Mama. Nothing. Nobody looking for me. On the phone, anyway.

  Belle made some sandwiches. Roast beef, boiled ham, lettuce and mustard. Opened a bottle of beer for herself, ginger ale for me. I opened the Daily News, scanned it quickly for any news of the Ghost Van. Nothing. I flipped to the race results out of habit, but I couldn't concentrate.

  "Is it good?" she asked.

  "What?"

  "The food."

  "Oh. Yeah. Great."

  Her face went sad. "I'm not a good cook. Sissy was a fine cook. She was going to teach me. . ."

  "Who cares?"

  "I thought you would. Remember when I cleaned your place? I did a good job, didn't I?"

  "Perfect."

  "Well . . ."

  "Let it go, Belle. It was so important to me, I would have learned how to do it myself."

  She pulled her chair next to me. "You can't do everything for yourself."

  "Where's this going?"

  She got up, moved in little circles. Like she was lost. "You're walking around with that ugly thing in your hand . . . Maybe we won't have a little house with a white picket fence and all that . . . but I'm not gonna sit around and make plans for a funeral."

  I slipped my hand around her waist, pulled her against me. "I know. But you got it wrong. I'm back on track now, I can feel it. This is just in case, like I told you. It's coming together. There's a way to take him down and walk away too. I need a couple more bits arid pieces.

  "And you'll know where to look?"

  "Yeah. In my head. I have to keep feeding stuff in, work it around. I can't go in the street and look for him - I have to figure it out. Where he is. This thing in my hand is only if he finds me first."

  "What if you don't get any more information?"

  "I have to. What I got, it's not enough. There's pieces missing. Maybe only one piece. I don't know yet. But if you don't feed the fire, it goes out. You get trapped."

  She sat next to me again, her hand on my arm, watching me close.

  "Trapped?"

  "Patterns. Like I told you. I'm looking for a guy, right? I think he's holed up in a certain neighborhood. So I walk around, ask questions, leave notes. Sooner or later, he's looking for me."

  123

  Late afternoon. I called Morelli.

  "Anything?"

  "Yeah. I'm not finished. Can't talk now - I gotta work the phones before the record rooms shut down for the day."

  "Can I call you later?"

  "I'll be here till nine."

  "Eight-thirty," I said, hanging up.

  Mama said it was all quiet. Asked me when I was coming around. I told her soon.

  I put the phone down. "I got to get out of here."

  "Why, baby?"

  "I wasn't kidding about inertia, Belle. If there's an answer, it's in my head. No matter what kind of bites I get out there, I have to put it together. I can't work here. I need my stuff."

  "Stuff?"

  "In my files. It's not that I can't think here. I can think in a cell. But that stuff I've collected - it's like having a conversation . . . I ask it questions, sometimes it talks back. Okay?"

  "Okay," she said, opening her bureau drawers. "As long as I'm around when you have that talk."

  124

  Belle sat in the front bucket seat of the Pontiac, watching the road. She giggled to herself.

  "What's so funny."

  "The Prof. I told him. About me. Not the whole thing, but enough. That's what he meant about blood only tells in hell."

  "What's funny about that?"

  "He said when the Lord made people He made them all the same for starters. But life marks people. If you know the way, you can read them like maps. He said the Lord made you so ugly for a test."

  "What?"

  "That's what he said. I told him I thought you were real good-looking. He said that was the test - I wasn't deep in love with you, I couldn't say such an outrageous lie."

  "He should fucking talk."

  "Burke! He is a handsome little man. I thought that nurse was gonna claw my eyes, she saw me with him." She giggled again. "He told me God only made one mistake. He said, you see a red-haired, blue-eyed nigger, you're looking at a stone killer."

  "Sure, everybody knows that."

  "Don't be crazy. He was just playing."

  "Hell if he was. Every one I ever saw was a life-taker."

  "That's ridiculous."

  I shrugged.

  The highway slipped by. Battery Tunnel coming into view.

  "Burke?"

  "What?"

  "Why would the Prof call somebody a nigger?"

  "It's just a word. Anybody can use words. I can't really explain it . . . You say some words - say them the right way - they lose their power to hurt. The Prof, he'll say, 'That's my nigger,' he means that's his main man. Somebody else says the word, he's ready to rumble."

  "But why . . ."

  "I told you the truth. I really can't explain it. Maybe the Prof can, I never asked him, not really."

  "Maybe I will, someday."

  125

  The office was quiet. Pansy was her usual sluggish self. She brightened a bit when I rolled the extra roast beef and ham into a fat ball and tossed it in the air for her.

  Belle curled up on the couch with the newspapers. Pansy jumped up there too, growling. "What does she want?"

  "Television."

  "She wants to watch television?"

  "Yeah. See if you can find pro wrestling; that's her favorite. But leave the sound on low, okay?"

  Belle gave me one of her looks, hauled the portable over to the end of the couch. Pansy sat up, tail wagging. I went back to my work.

  "Honey," Belle's voice broke through to me.

  "What?"

  "It's eight-thirty. Don't you have to make a call?"

  I looked at my watch - I'd been out of it for three hours. I snatched the phone, hoping the hippies weren't discussing their latest dope deal. The line was quiet.

  "Morelli."

  "It's me."

  "Come over to Paulo's tonight. Eleven. We'll have some supper.

  I hung up quick. Looked over at the couch. Belle and Pansy were both watching me.

  "Good girl," I said. Pansy came off the couch, strolled over to me. "I meant her," I told the beast, pointing at Belle. Pansy slammed a paw on the desk. "You too," I told her. I let Pansy out to her roof. Walked over to the couch, turned
off the TV set.

  "That's one strange dog, honey. She really does like pro wrestling. I thought dogs couldn't see TV. Something about their eyes."

  "I don't know if that's true or not. Maybe she just likes the sound."

  I lit a smoke. "Was I asleep?"

  "I don't think so - I think you were somewhere else. Your eyes were closed some of the time. But you smoked a lot of cigarettes."

  I rubbed my face, trying to go back. I gave it up - it'd come when it was ready.

  "Burke, could I ask you something?"

  "Sure."

  "You know about this?" she said, pointing to a head-line in the paper. I knew the story -it had been running for weeks. High-school cheerleader, sixteen years old. Father started raping her when she was eleven years old. While her mother was dying of cancer in the hospital. She finally told her boyfriend, he told somebody else. Ended up she hired another kid to kill her father. For five hundred bucks. Drilled the old man right in his driveway. Everybody pleaded guilty. The kid who did the shooting got a jackpot sentence, seven to twenty-one years. The radio talk shows took calls from freaks who said the little girl should have told the social workers - that is, if it "really" happened. Some people thought the father got what was coming to him. Not many. The judge sentenced her to a year in jail.

  "Yeah. I know about it."

  Her eyes burned. A little girl asking a priest if there really was a god. "Burke, do you think the little girl did anything wrong?"

  "Yeah."

  Belle's face twisted. "What?"

  "She hired an amateur."

  "The lawyer . . . the one who pleaded her guilty?"

  "Not the lawyer. The shooter."

  Her face calmed, but she was still struggling with it. "But he killed the guy . . ."

  "He wasn't a pro, Belle. Left a trail Ray Charles could follow. Talked about it to everyone who'd listen. Kept the gun. And he opened up when they popped him. You hire a killer, you buy silence too."

  She took the cigarette from my mouth, pulled on it. "I'd like to break her out of that jail."

  "Forget it, Belle. She wouldn't go. The kid's no outlaw. She's a nice middle-class girl. It wasn't simple for her - she didn't work it through. She still feels guilty about the guy getting killed. Incest, you don't just walk away from it like if a stranger raped you. That was her father. He's dead. Her mother's dead. She's gonna need a lot of help - she can't go on the run."