Crystal Beth took her face out of the pillow and looked over her shoulder at Vyra. “I win,” she said, a happy laugh bubbling in her voice.
“Sleepy,” Vyra murmured, her face against Crystal Beth’s broad hip.
I covered them both with the sheet and went downstairs.
“You know how much this weighs?” Herk asked me. He was doing curls with some setup he’d jury-rigged from the supplies we’d laid in—two pairs of two-and-a-half-gallon plastic jugs of water threaded together with insulated wire through the handles and anchored with a piece of wood he used as a grip. He had one set in each hand.
“About forty pounds apiece,” I told him.
“How’d you know that, bro?” he asked, grunting rhythmically with each lift.
“Quart of water weighs about two pounds,” I said. “Four quarts to a gallon. That’s eight, right? Times two and a half is twenty. Double that and you got each hand.”
“No. I mean, I can do numbers. That kind, anyway. How’d you know what a quart weighs and all?”
“I don’t know, Herk,” I said honestly. I know stuff, stuff I read, stuff I heard. It’s all in there somewhere, mixed in so thick I could never separate it out.
“You know how big an acre is?” he asked me.
“About the size of a city block. The whole block, square.”
“Yeah! That’s the kinda stuff I gotta know too.”
“For farming?”
“Nah. I ain’t gonna be no farmer. Gardens, they ain’t like farms.”
“Because they’re smaller?”
“ ’Cause you do it all with your hands, gardening. Remember when they asked old Dante if he wanted to be a trusty, work outside on the grounds?”
“Yeah.”
“He wouldn’t do it, right?”
“Dante was old-school,” I said. “He thought all trusties were rats.”
“Maybe. But that wasn’t it,” Herk said, not breaking the rhythm of his curls, banded muscle popping out on his forearms. “You know what he told me? They had nice gardens outside. Flowers and all. But they worked the beds with those little tractors. Dante, he wouldn’t have none of that crap. He said, if you didn’t work it with your hands, you wasn’t a gardener, you was a farmer.”
“I got it.”
“He gonna go for it?” Herk asked.
I knew what he meant. Didn’t know the answer. Shrugged.
“But if he don’t, you got another plan, right?” the big man asked hopefully.
“Got a bunch of them,” I promised.
“Knock knock.” A woman’s voice at the head of the stairs. Herk and I both turned in the direction of the sound. And the click of spike heels on the steps.
Vyra popped into view, all dressed up again but with her hair piled on top of her head and the makeup gone.
“Can you come—?”
She stopped when she saw Hercules. He stood bare-chested, his long hair matted with sweat, frozen halfway through a curl, the bandage white against his skin. Over his heart, where the swastika lurked.
“Crystal Beth didn’t tell you to come downstairs, did she?” I asked mildly.
“She said to get you,” Vyra said, a defensive tone in her voice.
Hercules just stared at her.
“She said to call me, right?” I told her. “Not to come down here.”
“Well, it’s too late for that, isn’t it?” Vyra came back, standing with her hands on her hips.
I said Fuck it to myself. And out loud: “Vyra, this is Hercules. Herk, this is Vyra.”
The big man carefully placed the water bottles on the basement floor, wiped his palms on the side of his jeans and walked over to where Vyra was standing. He held out his hand. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he said.
“Likewise.” She smiled.
“Those are beautiful shoes,” Herk said.
Vyra looked down at her feet. At the iridescent green high heels with a tiny dot of gold at the toes. Kept her head down while she said “Thank you” in a little girl’s happy-embarrassed voice.
I left them there.
“Now you know,” Crystal Beth said defiantly. As though she was expecting something bad. And was ready to deal with it.
“What is it that I know?”
“About me and Vyra. About what we . . . do.”
“So what?”
“So that’s what Pryce knows too. That’s what he knows that would end everything for her.”
“I don’t get it,” I told her, puzzled.
“Her husband. He would never . . . I don’t know if I can explain it to you. Men have . . . boundaries. Different ones for different men. He knows Vyra has . . . relationships. But he would never—”
“How can you know that?” I asked her. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“They watch . . . movies together. Not movies, I guess. Tapes. Vyra picks them up. She picks everything up for him—he almost never goes out of the house. He doesn’t much . . . It takes a lot to get him . . .”
“What?”
“Look, I’m not . . . comfortable with this.”
“Just say what it is, Crystal Beth. Whatever it is, it’s not yours, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, drawing a breath like she was about to get a shot from the doctor. “He’s not easily . . . aroused. The tapes . . . help him. And some of Vyra’s . . . outfits too. As he gets older, it gets harder and harder. Whoops!” She giggled. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
“Anyway, Vyra would get different tapes. She knows what he likes. Once she was talking to some other women. At some club she belongs to. And they all agreed, nothing turns a man on more than seeing two girls . . . make love. So she got a few of those tapes and brought them home. But when he saw the first one, he went ballistic. Told her it was the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen. He pulled the tape right out of the cassette. He told her, if she ever brought filth like that into the house again, he’d divorce her. Vyra said he looked like a maniac. It scared her.”
“How did Pryce find out about you and Vyra?”
“I don’t know,” she said, voice cracking around the edges. “I don’t know how he knows anything.”
“He has photos? Wiretaps? What?”
“I don’t think he has anything. Not like what you’re talking about. But it wouldn’t matter. Vyra is a lousy liar.”
I knew how true that was, but I kept the thought to myself.
“Vyra’s really confused now,” Crystal Beth whispered to me later in bed.
“What do you mean?”
“Remember when you were . . . watching us?”
“Yeah.”
“You know what our bet was about? The one between me and Vyra?”
“No . . .”
“She said if you watched us you’d get turned on and . . .”
“And . . . ?”
“Want to join in.”
“Oh.”
“She’s . . . been with you, she says. A lot. But she doesn’t know you.”
“And you do?”
“Yes,” she said, turning to throw one thick thigh over the top of mine. “She doesn’t understand how important self-control is to you.”
“Meaning?”
“Vyra thought you would get turned on. And then you’d do something about it.”
“But you thought—?”
“I thought you’d get turned on. But I knew you’d just sit there unless . . .”
“Unless what?”
“Unless we asked you to . . . join us. Did you want to?”
“I don’t know,” I told her.
“How could that be? Either you did or—”
“It’s not that simple. Part of me, I guess, wanted to. But it also seemed like it wouldn’t be . . . private, I guess.”
“Privacy is important,” she said solemnly. “I understand.”
“You think so?” I asked her. “Me, I’ve been in places where there wasn’t any privacy. None at all. Where you can’t even be
alone with your thoughts. I just wanted to . . . respect whatever you were doing. Even if I didn’t understand it.”
“You don’t understand two women making love?”
“I didn’t understand why you were . . . why you didn’t want me to leave.”
“Maybe I hoped Vyra would win the bet,” she said in my ear.
“What was the bet anyway?” I asked her, stepping away from where she was going.
“Next time you come here, you won’t recognize my place,” she said. “Vyra has to clean it all. Top to bottom. Every square inch.”
“What if you had lost?”
“I would have had to shine her shoes.”
“That doesn’t sound—”
“All her shoes,” Crystal Beth said.
“Nah, you didn’t want to lose,” I told her, wrapping my arm around her neck to pull her down to me, pictures of her and Vyra together flashing on and off my screen.
By first light, I was on the roof with Pansy. She had greeted the assortment of cold cuts I’d picked up at the all-night deli with mixed enthusiasm, turning her nose up at the dark-edged liverwurst. I didn’t think twice about trying it myself, settling for some rye toast and a few fresh celery sticks with ice water.
I dialed up Mama on the cellular. Nothing happening.
After we came down from the roof, I looked around the dump I lived in, thinking maybe I should have been in on the bet with Vyra. Then I spent a couple of hours cleaning, filled two thirty-gallon plastic trash bags before I was done. Pansy followed me around for a while, then gave it up when she saw it wasn’t going to be any fun.
When I was done, we took a break. Pansy got a quart of honey-vanilla ice cream. I got a cigarette. She finished first, licking the bowl so hard she even took the smell off.
I put on the TV set for her, changing channels until she settled down. I wished I had cable. The only old stuff you can get on regular TV is crap like “The Three Stooges.” I always hated that show when I was a kid. Fucking buffoons. They weren’t partners, those guys. Not like Abbott and Costello. Or good criminals, like Bilko.
Around noon I went back over to Crystal Beth’s. Called her first so she could let me in downstairs. She’d never offered me a key of my own. Sending me a message? Or maybe she’d figured out that the Mole had already taken care of it.
I spent most of the afternoon with Herk, rehearsing. Called Mama around five.
“Man come. With envelope. Two envelopes.”
“White man? Tall? Broad shoulders, clean face, long hair?”
“Not long hair,” Mama said. Meaning the rest of my description was on the money. I’d figured the messenger to be Mick, Pepper’s man. But his hair was long.
“Can you open it, Mama?” I asked her. Like she already hadn’t.
“Sure.” After about ten seconds: “Paper.” Meaning: not money.
“A lot of paper?”
“One, two, three . . . seven pages,” Mama said, taking her time. The only thing she speed-counted was cash. “And picture.”
“Anything else? In the other one?”
“More paper. Writing. Say ‘Call me.’ ”
“That’s all? No signature?”
“Say ‘Call me.’ ”
“Okay, Mama. Thanks. I’ll pick it up later.”
“You working, right?” Meaning: doing something against the law. For money.
“I’m working,” I assured her.
During the drive to Mama’s, I reached out for Wolfe on the cellular. Left word where I’d be, thinking how it was time for our crew to change numbers—the Prof was picking up a fresh set of cloners from the Mole.
The pay phone at Mama’s was ringing as I came through the kitchen.
“You got my package?” Wolfe asked as soon as she heard my voice.
I hand-signaled to Mama, who brought the two envelopes over. I leafed through the contents quickly, holding the phone against my shoulder with my head. “Yeah.”
“The picture is . . . the subject. From his employment application.”
“Thanks.”
“There’s . . . enough there,” she said. “To make the connection. Be sure you look through the thick one first.”
“Got it.”
“Listen, that envelope you wanted dropped off?”
“Yeah.”
“There is no Mr. White at that address. Mick was insistent—he had the apartment number, remember? So they showed him the place. It’s the model suite—the one they use to attract tenants. Nobody lives there.”
“Okay.”
“Anything else?”
“No. Thanks. Hey, did Mick cut his hair?”
“All part of the job.” Wolfe chuckled. “A small sacrifice.”
The security guard’s photo showed a man in his thirties, black hair cut fashionably short, generic European face with an unprominent, slightly bladed nose, staring straight into the camera, unsmiling. Nothing there.
He was born on Long Island. Mother’s maiden name was Wallace. On the birth certificate, someone had placed one of those red plastic pull-off arrows that say “Sign Here”—the kind lawyers attach to contracts they want you to sign in a half-dozen places—next to the name. Why? I kept looking. High-school graduate. Unremarkable military career. Associate-of-arts degree in criminal justice from a community college. Employed steadily, but he changed jobs a lot. Process server, credit-collection agency, store detective. All quasi-cop “investigator” stuff. Almost three years as an auxiliary police officer. That fit—authority freaks gravitate to stuff like that.
Credit report showed him as slow-pay. Not enough to discourage a sizable loan on a 1991 Corvette, bought used in 1995. Arrest record was clean, attached to his application for a pistol permit. Must have been before his short stay on Rikers Island—I guess the security-guard companies don’t do periodic rechecks. Once he got the piece, his pay had gone up to $9.50 an hour. Married a few years ago. Divorced. No children.
His medical scanned normal, except for asthma. Attached was a photocopy of a printout from a fertility clinic. He and his wife had been trying to have a baby some years back. Genetic counseling was checked on the form. That was marked with one of the red plastic arrows too.
I went to the second envelope. Just two pieces of paper. The first was an exact duplicate of the birth certificate, only this version had an official certificate embossed into the lower right corner and a stamp on the back indicating it was a “true and accurate copy.” I followed the red arrow—now his mother’s maiden name was Wasserstein.
The other page was a duplicate of the fertility-clinic stuff. The red arrow took me to the genetic counseling section—now it said: SCREEN FOR TAY-SACHS. The substitute papers were beautiful work, impossible to distinguish from the originals. Wolfe was more outlaw than I’d thought. And she had access to some fine forgers too.
I removed the red plastic arrows, substituted the new pages for the old and sat down to reread the new, unified version.
The death warrant.
I’ve heard that plenty of women clean house in the nude, but I’d never seen one do it in lipstick-red four-inch heels. When Crystal Beth showed me into her place, Vyra was wrestling with the vacuum cleaner like it was an artifact left behind by aliens, muttering to herself, her pale skin shining under a thin sheen of sweat. She saw me, bent to find the cut-off switch, a puzzled look on her face. After a minute of hunting around, she ripped the cord out of the wall in one mighty tug, then looked up in triumph.
“I didn’t want to mess up my outfit,” Vyra said to Crystal Beth, nodding her head in the direction of the bed, where a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of red and black and white silk stuff lay in a confused jumble. “Anyway, I’m almost done.”
“Almost done?” Crystal Beth laughed. “You only started a few minutes ago.”
“Well, what else is there?” Vyra demanded, crossing her arms under her breasts. She always did it that way. For the lift—I think she knew they were way too big to look good without a b
ra.
“There’s the baseboards, the shelves, the bathroom, the—”
“The bathroom? I’m not cleaning anybody’s—”
“Yes you are,” Crystal Beth said, advancing on her. “You lost fair and square.”
Vyra turned away from the onslaught, walked over and sat down on the arm of the easy chair, crossing her legs and arching her back as though a camera lurked. “Well, I wouldn’t have lost if you weren’t such a wuss,” she said to me.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Yes, well, it’s not you that has to do all this work. It’s your fault—the least you could do is help.”
“And miss a chance to watch you? No way.”
Vyra flashed me a smile, taking it as a compliment. But she didn’t go back to work.
“I’ve gotta go talk to Herk for a bit,” I told Crystal Beth. “Let me know when Vyra’s done.”
“I’ll let you know,” Vyra said.
“Better put some clothes on first,” I told her. “It’s drafty down there.”
“This is like in the joint, huh?” Herk said to me.
“The joint? This place is fucking Paradise compared to—”
“I didn’t mean . . . this,” Herk said, making a sweeping motion with his arm. “I mean . . . talking, like. Remember, in there? The Prof was always tryin’ to explain stuff. Like how to do crime good and all?”
“Sure.”
“Well, this is like that. You been explaining to me, right? How I gotta act and everything.”
“That’s right.”
“Only it’s different this time, Burke. Real different.” He took a deep breath, thought showing on his face, the heavy bone structures prominent under the flesh. The white flesh. Part of the passport he’d use to slip past a checkpoint very soon. “In there,” he said, “the trick was, like, not to come back, you know what I mean? We was gonna do crime, right? All of us. We was thieves. So we made plans. This time it’s different.”
“How?” I asked him.
“This deal here, it’s my last crime, Burke. I swear to fucking God. We pull this off, it works like you say, I’m done. And you know what else?”
Safe House Page 19
