Choice of Evil (4 page)

“Done.”

“Burke. . .?”

“What?”

“Anything you want to tell me?”

“I got nothing to do with this one.
Any
of them.”

Davidson nodded, not doubting. If I’d killed anyone, I would have told him. He was sure of that—I’d done it before. He was a good lawyer, knew all the tricks. He wanted to get paid, but he did the work. Better than most, that last part.

“
Y
ou can’t stay here,” Lorraine said, the second she crossed the threshold to Crystal Beth’s place.

“I know,” I replied.

She didn’t know what to say to that; a look of surprise froze on her face. “I. . . didn’t mean you had to get out this minute,” she said stiffly. “I just meant. . . I mean, you know why we set this place up. You know what we do. Having a man here. . .”

“I understand. I’ll be out in twenty-four hours. It’s not like I got a lot of stuff to pack.”

Pansy’s enormous head swiveled back and forth, following the conversation but dismissing the woman as a threat.

“Burke. . .”

“What?”

“I never liked you,” Lorraine said. “But I know what you did for. . . us. Before, I mean. And I know you loved. . . her.”

“Crystal Beth. You can say her name.”

“Maybe
you
can. It. . . hurts me just to. . .”

“All right. Never mind. I told you, I’ll be out in—”

“Do you think they’ll ever catch him?”

“The guy who killed her?”

“No. The guy who’s killing all of. . .
them
.”

I shrugged.

“You don’t care?” she asked, an extra-aggressive tone sliding into her already hard voice.

“What are you asking me, Lorraine?”

“If he were to. . . kill them all, he’d get the one who killed. . . her, right?”

“Kill every fucking fag-basher in the city? Right. That’d do it.”

“I wish he would. I wish
I
could.”

“So why don’t you give him a hand?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Why? Because it’s a gay thing?”

“It’s a woman thing.”

“Yeah? Then how come you keep saying the killer’s a man? It’s easy enough to alter a voice on tape.”

“He
is
a man. Everyone knows that. I meant. . . Crystal Beth. Her. And me. Between us. You could never get that.”

“And
that’s
what you hate me for?”

“I didn’t say I hated you. I said I never liked you.”

“You know what, Lorraine? I never liked you either.”

“
T
hat matter we discussed the other day?” Davidson’s voice, treading carefully over the line at Mama’s.

“Yeah.”

“Your. . . surmise was, in fact, reasonably accurate. The individuals to whom you referred have expressed a desire for an interview, but they cannot seem to locate the. . . object of their interest.”

Meaning: yes, the cops want to talk to you, and no, they don’t know where you are.

“You think this ‘interview’ should take place?” I asked him.

“Assuming the factual content of the material you imparted during our prior conversation is unchanged, I do. If only to. . . reorient their interest.”

Meaning: yes, if I really had nothing to do with the murders, I should go in and talk to the cops, answer their questions, show them they were wasting their time so they’d leave me alone.

“Set it up,” I told him.

“
W
hat do you need a lawyer for, you coming in here to assist us with our investigation and all?” the sandy-haired plainclothes cop asked me, nodding his head in Davidson’s direction.

“Oh, I’d be scared to come here by myself,” I told him. “I heard you guys do terrible things to people when nobody’s watching.”

“A comedian, too?” his partner asked, a short guy with a round face and a boozer’s nose.

“Me? Nah. I even heard you guys sometimes put a telephone book on top of a guy’s head and whack it with a nightstick. Doesn’t leave marks, but it kind of scrambles your brains.”

“Where’d you hear that?” the sandy-haired one asked.

“My brains are still scrambled from the last one, and that was a long time ago,” I told him, nice and quiet, but letting him know I was done dancing. “You’ve been looking for me. Okay, here I am. You want to ask me some questions, do it. You don’t, see you around.”

“My client is here at the request of the DA’s Office,” Davidson put in. “Since he’s not a suspect, I assume you won’t be Miranda-izing him?”

“Sure, counselor,” the one with the boozer’s nose said. He opened a notebook, looked over at me. “Name?”

“See you around,” I said, getting to my feet.

“Hold it!” the sandy-haired one said. “What’s your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem. You guys do. I came here, in good faith, because I thought
you
thought I could help you. You know who I am. You got my rap sheet and my mug shots right there in front of you. What else you want to know?”

“A current address would be nice.”

“Sure as hell would,” I told him. “Problem is, I don’t have one.”

“You’re homeless, right?”

“Yep.”

“So you’re sleeping in the shelters?”

“I look that fucking stupid to you?”

“Hey, Johnny, relax,” the boozer-nosed one said to his partner. “Burke here, he got a lot of friends he could stay with. Besides, they don’t let no dogs in the shelters, right?”

“What dog?” I asked him.

“Ah, it’s gonna be like that.”

“Last chance,” I said, meaning it.

“Okay, okay. Relax. Come on. Let’s just deal like men, all right?” the sandy-haired one lied. “We know your girlfriend was one of the ones killed in that drive-by, at that queer rally.”

I looked at him like I was watching a TV test pattern.

“And we figured, maybe, you’d like to find the guys who did that.”

I kept looking at him.

“And we know you’ve been asking around. . . .”

“Do you?” I said, uninterested.

“Yeah, we do. We got a witness to it, all ready to walk in and talk to a grand jury.”

“And the crime is. . . what? Asking questions? That was true, all reporters would be doing life.”

“And we got a
bunch
of fucking murders,” he went on. “All fag-bashers. So, the way we figure, somebody don’t like fag-bashers. Brilliant so far, huh?”

“About up to par,” I acknowledged.

“And we figure, there’s at least one, maybe two, or even three fag-bashers that
you
don’t like.”

“Oh. You mean, you solved that case? You got the shooters.”

“You’re one sarcastic motherfucker, aren’t you? How about this one,
Mister
Burke. How about you tell us where you were on the thirteenth? Say, between four in the afternoon and eleven at night?”

“I can’t remember,” I said flatly. “You know how it is, drifting around, looking for a place to stay.”

“So you got no alibi for that time?”

“I got no alibi for
any
time,” I promised him.

“You fit,” boozer-nose said.

“Fit what?”

“The profile. Everyone knows you’re a revenge freak. They killed your girlfriend, so you. . .”

“I what? I don’t know who did it. You know, why don’t you tell me, find out if your theory’s correct?”

“We don’t know,” the sandy-haired one said. “And we figure, you don’t, either. So maybe you’re just working your way through the whole list.”

“You know why I came in here?” I asked him. “You know the real reason?”

“No. Why don’t you tell us.”

“I came in because I thought you guys were actually trying to get whoever killed Crystal Beth. I thought maybe you knew who it was, but you didn’t have enough to arrest them. And that maybe you were going to let that. . . slip, understand? Then you’d close the case. Call it ‘exceptional clearance’ and keep your stats up. But now I see what’s going on. All this bullshit game-playing crap. You think it’s
me
? That I’m a fucking serial killer? Jesus H.—”

“Hey, pal, it’s not like you never—”

“Never what? Went around whacking people for the freakish fun of it?”

“Nothing freakish about it,” boozer-nose assured me. “Somebody did
my
girlfriend, I’d wanna take ’em out too.”

“And if you knew it was a Spanish guy, you’d kill every Latino in New York?” I asked him.

“Gentlemen,” Davidson interjected. “It is quite obvious that my client is unable to meaningfully assist in your investigation.
And
that you are not going to arrest him. I am quite certain of the former. Unless I am mistaken about the latter, we are, in fact, leaving.”

I followed Davidson out the door. Neither of the cops said anything.

“
T
hat’s really why you wanted to come in?” Davidson asked me in the car on the way over to his office.

“Yeah. It happens. Some cases, they close ’em that way: ‘Exceptional clearance.’ Means they know who did it, but they can’t prove it. Every once in a while, it eats at a cop, and he lets a name slip out. . . to somebody who just might do something about it.”

“You figure they wanted you to kill the guys who—?”

“How could they lose? Not only do they close one case, they get a beautiful new felony handed them on a platter, complete with perpetrator. One step closer to that gold shield.”

“I thought
I
was cynical,” Davidson said.

“You are,” I assured him.

B
ut nothing happened. Nothing changed. There’s a million places to live in this city, but it’s hard to find one off the radar screen. The Mole had done it. Even if you suspected he lived in an underground bunker in a Hunts Point junkyard, you wouldn’t go poking around there to make sure. The Prof used to live in the subways until he hooked up with Clarence. Then they found a crib over in East New York, right off one of the prairies. Bought the whole building, a gray brick eight-flat, for a song and started the rehab. Only they’re never going to have tenants. They offered to let me stay, but they blended into that neighborhood and I didn’t. It wouldn’t take long for somebody to notice.

Plenty of places I could hole up, but not for long. I even called a girl I knew from a few years ago on the off-chance. . . And I scored. She was by herself again, and wanted to have a try. Asked me if I was ready for a commitment. Not hard to lie to her—comes naturally to me, and I hate extortionists anyway—but once she saw the size of my commitment, all hundred and fifty pounds of Pansy, she decided the whole idea was overrated.

I
know a lot about junkyards. Fact is, I own one. And Juan Rodriguez, he used to work there. Simple enough scheme: The guy who runs it for me, he writes me a check every two weeks. I cash it, kick back most of it, and I got that Visible Means of Support thing knocked. Being Juan Rodriguez is the same as being John Smith, only it doesn’t trip the IRS alarms, at least not coming out of New York. I protected that identity for years, never risked it doing anything wrong under that name. Always kept up the Social Security, Workman’s Comp. . . everything. Juan Rodriguez wasn’t just a citizen, he was a
good
citizen.

Such a good citizen, matter of fact, that the guy who runs the junkyard for me made a mistake about him. I dropped by, told him he’d be hiring someone else pretty soon. No big deal. But he got stupid. Told me, after all, it was
his
name on the title, right? So I gave him a history test. Asked him if maybe he remembered how his name got there. And who I got the place from. And how I got it.

He passed the test.

Now all I needed was a new set of papers, starting from scrap.

I
know plenty of people who can make paper. Any kind you want: Passports. Birth certificates. Bearer bonds. Social Security cards. Only problem with them is that they’re merchants. I don’t trust merchants. Today you pitch, tomorrow you catch. Anyone who sells you outlaw stuff is always a risk to sell
you
if the Man makes the right offer. I never worried about that with the Juan Rodriguez stuff. I’d built it up myself over the years, slow and careful, starting with a dead baby’s birth certificate—a baby who’d be around my age if he’d lived. But I didn’t have time for that now.

Until last year, I didn’t know Wolfe could get paper made. But she’d shown me different, manufacturing a Jew in the background of a dead guy to buy my brother Hercules a ticket into the White Night underground. And she had one credential none of the other paper-makers did—I knew I could trust her.

I could never say why. Not out loud. And never to anyone who wasn’t part of me. But I know I’m not wrong. I’ve known Wolfe since she was a prosecutor. We worked opposite sides of the law then, but sometimes we got close enough to the line to hold hands over it. Never more than that. And never for long.

I guess I. . . I don’t know why I can’t say it different, say the truth: I always wanted her to be with me. But alligators don’t mate with egrets, even if they live right next to each other in the same swamp.

When Wolfe had been chief of City-Wide Special Victims, she was working in a counter-evolutionary world where you could travel faster on your knees than standing up. And if you stood up too long, they took you down. She’d sneered at the firing squad. Everyone on both sides of the line respected her for it.

I never could tell Flood I loved her. She went away from me knowing it, but never hearing me say the words. Women know it, somehow. Before you do. I did tell Belle—it was the last thing she asked for before she left, full of bullets she took for me.

I never told another woman since.

I couldn’t tell Wolfe. But I could call her.

“
W
hat?” A man’s voice, not Pepper’s. Not sweet either.

“How you doing, Mick?” I asked.

“What?” he said again, like he hadn’t heard me. I don’t know what Mick does, except it’s something with Wolfe’s crew. I know he’s Pepper’s man, know he’s some kind of fighter. Big guy, good-looking, like an actor. But his eyes are flat and he’s got that
ki
-alert radiating all the time.

“You know who this is?” I asked.

“No.”

Fine. All right: “It’s Burke. I want to see Wolfe. Can you tell her?”