Choice of Evil (14 page)

Then he made a hand-washing gesture. The sign for mixing, melding, blending. . .

“It’s made up of seven different metals?” I asked aloud.

“Yes,” Mama said. “Called ‘singing bowl.’ Very sacred. From. . .” She hesitated, catching a warning look from Max. “Tibet,” she finished.

I understood that part. Mama’s Chinese. Mandarin Chinese. She can trace her ancestors back to way before Christ, or so she says. In fact, she can trace
any
goddamned thing to her ancestors, from gunpowder to telescopes. It’s not political with her. She fled to Taiwan a long time ago, and she thinks the Chinese government—Mao Chinese, she calls them—are the scum of the planet.

Everyone takes Max for Chinese, but he’s not. He’s a Mongol, from Tibet. Something happened to him there when he was a kid. He wasn’t born deaf. He showed me once how they
made
him deaf, and it makes me sick to even see it in my mind. I don’t know if Max can’t speak, or he just refuses to—I never asked. He goes along with the game that he’s Chinese because Mama took him for her son. Mama wants to claim that it was the Chinese who invented haiku, that’s okay with Max. She wants to say Max’s daughter Flower is pure Mandarin, hell,
royal
Mandarin, no problem. But he was damn well going to claim this “singing bowl” for his own country. . . and Mama got it.

He handed me the bowl, showed me how to strike it, guided my hand in smooth whisks around the rim until I could make it sing too. Then he bowed and handed it to me. A gift.

I held it in my hand, still feeling it vibrate faintly. I could feel its age and its power. And I knew why my brother had given it to me.

I put it aside and we started to play casino. Max was into me for another ten grand by the time the Prof breezed in the front, Clarence in tow.

“
W
hat’s up, Schoolboy?” the Prof greeted me. “I know you been looking and cooking—the wire’s been on fire.”

I brought him up to date, even down to what Mama had been saying. . . or not saying.

“Can’t be.” The little man dismissed it with a wave of his hand.

I just shrugged.

“Why you doing this anyway, son?” the Prof asked.

“Fifty large. Paid up front. No refunds.”

“Cool. But why
try
? The sting’s the thing.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’s all. . . connected, right?”

“How could this be connected, mahn?” Clarence, speaking for the first time.

“Whoever killed Crystal Beth, they were killing queers, far as they knew, right?”

“That’s what it say in the papers,” the young man replied, tone telling what he thought of that source.

“The
next
thing happens,” I said, ignoring his tone, “is that this ‘Homo Erectus’ guy starts killing
them
. . . fag-bashers, right?”

“That deal is real,” the Prof put in. “Man is taking heads, and dead is dead.”

“Okay, so the cops, maybe they thought I was involved. Some of them, anyway. But they know better now. . . even though I still think I could get rousted if they need headlines bad enough. But, if he could kill
all
of them, he’d get the ones who killed Crystal Beth in the bargain, right?”

“Bro, you too dense to make sense. He was gonna do all that, your move is: Get out the way, let him play.”

“Sure. But the people who hired me to find him, they don’t want to turn him in, they want to help him get away.”

“Maybe the boss plans a cross,” the Prof said.

“You mean. . . play for the reward? Nah. He’s already out a hundred G’s—Davidson got half.”

“Not for money. Who knows, bro? Everybody got game, but it ain’t all the same.”

Nadine flashed in my mind. I just nodded.

“I’m gonna meet someone,” I told them all. “Meet her right here. I think I got a way now.” Then I showed them the picture of the little dinosaur thing.

“What’s that?” Clarence asked.

“I don’t know. Not exactly, anyway. But I know who will.”

“
W
ant to go for a ride, honey?” I spoke into the cellular.

“You mean. . . work?” Michelle asked, clearly less than excited about the prospect.

“I’m gonna visit an old pal. Thought you might like to tag along.”

“Someone I know?”

“No question about that, girl. I guess what everyone wonders is, how
well
you—”

“That’s enough of your smart mouth, mister. I’ll be ready in forty-five minutes.”

“Forty-five minutes? I’m just down the block. Come on. I’ll meet you out front in—”

“Forty-five minutes, you gorilla. Not one second sooner. I am not going
anywhere
dressed like this. Go amuse yourself or something.”

Then she hung up on me.

Aargh. I slammed in a forty-five-minute cassette, lay back, slitted my eyes against the midday glare, and let the music take me to someplace else. The Brooklyn Blues. East Coast doo-wop. The Aquatones’ classic “You” set the scene. . . and the river was flowing deep into “Darling Lorraine” by the Knockouts when I came to. Checked my watch. . . perfect.

I cranked up the Plymouth and motored over to Michelle’s. She was standing on the sidewalk in a burnt-orange parachute-silk coat, tapping the toe of one black spike heel impatiently.

“It’s
hot
out here,” she bitched as she climbed into the front seat.

“You keep
me
waiting forty-five minutes; I’m ten seconds late and you’re already running your—”

“As much as you know about women, I’m surprised you’re not still a virgin,” she snapped, cutting me off.

I surrendered without firing another useless shot, heading uptown toward the only place I could ever be sure Michelle would always want to go.

But I was thinking about what she said, even as we crossed the bridge.

“Michelle, could I ask you a question?”

“Who better?” she wanted to know, still not mollified over the enormous wait I’d put her through.

“About what you said. About women?” I stalled, thinking Michelle was the only person on the planet I ever asked about women. As if the vicious trick nature had played on her—she’d been born a transsexual, into a nest of maggots—had made her an authority. And how I’d never say that.

“I am waiting,” she said, tapping her long, burnt-orange-tipped nails on the dashboard to show me how patient she wasn’t going to be with me for a while.

“What is it with bisexuals?”

“That means. . . what?”

“I met this girl. . . .”

“Go figure,” she sneered.

“Michelle, come on. You’re
this
mad at me for being a few seconds late?”

“How do I look?” she asked, opening her coat to display an ivory blouse over black pencil pants.

“Fabulous,” I assured her. “But you always do, for chrissakes.”

“And you don’t think it might be nice to. . . reassure a girl once in a while?”

“I never thought—”

“Because you are, in your heart, a pig,” she reassured
me.

“All right, already. I’m a pig. A late pig too, okay? I was going up to see the Mole, figured you’d like to ride along, and now I get all this?”

“Sweetie,” she said softly, one hand on my right forearm, “I am trying to teach you something, all right? Little Sister’s not mad at you. But ever since that. . . ever since Crystal Beth died, you haven’t really been yourself. A new woman is
exactly
what you need. And, knowing you, what it’s going to bring you is more pain. Maybe if you knew how to act around a
normal
girl, you wouldn’t always be—”

“How do you know I’m—?”

“Baby, how long have I known you? A million years? This bisexual you asked me about, that wouldn’t be Crystal Beth, now would it?”

“No.”

“Huh!” she half-grunted in surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

“All right, Burke. What do you want to know?”

“I guess. . . what I asked you.”

“This is a bisexual woman, then? The one you met?”

“Yeah. At least I think so.”

“And Crystal Beth was—?”

“You know what, Michelle? I never knew
what
she was. I mean, she
said
she was. And I knew she had. . . I knew her and Vyra—”

“Vyra!” Michelle spat the name out. “The one with the shoes, right?”

“Yes. But she’s gone now. Remember?”

“No, I do
not
remember. I had no dealings with that one. Don’t
you
remember?”

I didn’t know how to reel her in. Michelle was all tangents when she wasn’t working. But I tried another route anyway.

“Forget Vyra, okay? And Crystal Beth, all I know is that she
said
she was bi, okay? That’s why she went to that rally, even though she said the others didn’t really want her there.”

“The others?”

“Gay people. She said bisexuals were, like, caught between the two worlds.”

“I don’t think so,” Michelle said. “It’s not that. They’re caught between stereotypes, that’s all.”

“What?”

“Look, if a woman, a straight woman, if she has lots of lovers, she’s a slut, right?”

“I didn’t—”

“Oh, never mind what
you
think,” she dismissed me. “I’m talking about. . . them,” she said, indicating the rest of the world with a sweep of her hand. “But straights, they think
all
gays are promiscuous, right? All they know about are the glory holes and the quick meets in the park—the anonymous stuff. You tell them a couple of gay men are together, really
with
each other, and they, like, can’t quite get it, see? Now, a bisexual
man,
what everyone assumes is he’s really gay, all right? Maybe he can close his eyes and make it with a woman, but how many times you ever hear of a gay male telling his lover it’s all over, he’s found out he’s straight and he wants to be with a woman?”

“I never—”

“Me either. But the reverse, that’s all the time, yes? Man’s been married twenty years, getting some on the side in the gay bars, but profiling straight. He tells his wife the truth, she’s busted up, sure. But the
rest
of the world, it just nods its head and says, ‘Sure,’ like it was going to happen sooner or later.”

“Yeah, but. . .”

“Bisexual
women,
it’s like there’s no such thing. Not to. . .
them
. So when a woman says she’s bi, the only thing
they
figure is she’s fucking everyone on the planet, right?”

“I don’t—”

“Oh, who
cares
? That’s what
they
think. Any married couple wants to jazz up their sex life, first thing they do is advertise for a bi girl, am I right? But what’s this got to do with anything, anyway?”

“This girl? The one I met?”

“Yessss. . .?”

“Well, she’s bi. Or she was once. I don’t know. She says she’s a lesbian now. Heavy-duty top too, the way she fronts it.”

“But she’s coming on to you?”

“Yeah. At least. . . I think so.”

“Because you’re dense? Or because. . .?”

“Because she’s. . . ambiguous. She doesn’t say anything about herself. Just about me. How I supposedly want her so bad, and I’m not admitting it.”

“Roles are. . . weird. Like it’s. . . I don’t know. . . safer, maybe, if you have a role. If you know what you’re
supposed
to do, you can’t make a mistake. But if she’s a top, maybe she’s just plugged into your testosterone, honey.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means every man wants to spank a dom. The ones who don’t want to take it themselves, that is. That’s what the scene-players believe—that everybody would be doing what they do if they had the guts. And if you play that way, sometimes you
stay
that way. You can get. . . stuck. And you never think there’s a middle. So if she does men too. . .”

“I don’t know. She only said—”

“Doesn’t matter. If she’s a top, she knows other tops. And some of
them
do men. Big money in it. Even over the phone. Little Sister knows
that
part by heart, honey.”

“So I—?”

“So you. . . what? You like her?”

“No. She’s not real. . . likable, I don’t think. But. . .”

“You want to fuck her?”

“Not even that. Michelle, look, she wants to work with me. On this. . . thing I’m doing. What I’m going to see the Mole about. Says she’s in love with this ‘Homo Erectus’ guy.”

“The one who’s killing all those—”

“Yeah.”

“In love with. . . what he’s doing, maybe. Or the. . . power thing. But she’s pushing you too?”

“It. . . feels like all she wants me to do is bite, so she can pull the apple away and laugh.”

“There’s those,” Michelle conceded. “But it wouldn’t have anything to do with her being bi.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, honey. That’s just a label. Even gays don’t really want people like her in the club. I mean, they
say
they want
everyone,
right?”

“No. Crystal Beth said they didn’t—”

“What they
say,
baby. Even when I was. . . Back then. Before I had the operation. There was room for people like me too. ‘Transgenders.’ Isn’t that special? Like they want us all, but they only mean the roles. And if you don’t fit one of
those,
they all think you got a piece missing.”

“So there’s no—”

“Baby, the only thing for sure is, this girl, whatever she wants, it’s not as simple as how she likes to play.”

H
unts Point never changes. It continues its celebration of quick violence and slow decay no matter how many times some star-gazer tries to turn the Urban Renewal trick. The development money always vanishes, swag cut up by elected thieves. And the blight stays—a permanent resident, building its strength, awaiting the next impotent assault.

Michelle went quiet as soon as we turned off the boulevard and moved deep into the prairie. She’s seen the same route a thousand times, but it never fails to make her sad. All hope has been vampired out of this place, cut down past the bone, into the desolate marrow.

But she perked up as soon as I nosed the Plymouth into the V made up of rusting cyclone-fence gates wrapped in concertina wire. The dog pack moved in even before I shut off the engine. They were more curious than dangerous—so confident they could take down any intruder that they didn’t need to put on a show. Besides, none of them would make a move until Simba showed. That beast had a lot of miles on his odometer, but he still was the pack leader, and none of the young studs had so much as tried him yet, far as I knew.