Choice of Evil (5 page)

“Yeah,” he said. And hung up.

I
lost almost all my tapes too. Hundreds and hundreds of them, put together over more than a dozen years. Oh, I still had a whole bunch in the Plymouth—I circulated them between my major stash and the car so I always had a fresh batch to listen to—but most were gone forever. I didn’t know how I was going to replace some of them. Judy Henske, that probably hurt the worst. Magic Judy is hard to find on vinyl. And her voice. . . impossible to find anywhere else on earth, period. I had some bootleg stuff of a couple of her live club dates that were just plain unreal.

Ah, fuck it. I know where to get more. But it just. . . hurt, somehow. I mean, I knew the thieving cops would appreciate the cash and the guns they “found” there, but the tapes. . . They were probably already in some Dumpster. Or maybe some techno-geek was patiently listening to every one, hoping for something incriminating. Well, good luck, sucker. You’ll never find anything, but you’ll be in love with Magic Judy by the time you’re through.

Replacing the guns was nothing. I’m not one of those loons who has a favorite piece. When it comes to firearms, I’m strictly a use-it-and-lose-it man. This city’s got some of the toughest gun-control laws in the country. Some of the harshest penalties for dealing drugs, too. And every drug-boy in town packs heat.

Michelle was more upset about the clothes than anything else. “Oh, baby, not your alligator boots? And your beautiful suits, the ones I bought you? And the lovely—”

“It’s all gone, Michelle,” I told her, not insane enough to mention that she’d bought it all with
my
money. “They got it all. Everything I didn’t have on my back.”

“Well, you know what, baby? That’s really a good omen.”

“Huh?”

“Honey, even with my careful, meticulous shopping, your wardrobe was hopelessly out of date. Now we can start over.”

If there was a God, I would have cursed him.

I
tried the area around the Greenpoint riverfront, but even with the
HAZARD
buoys floating everywhere in the slime that passed for a piece of the East River, the area was lousy with artists and entrepreneurs. Next thing would be a Starbucks on the corner. I kept looking.

The reclaimed swampland out around JFK had too many other operations going, besides the quick-trick motels and the topless joints. Too many warehouses without signs on them, too many rotting big rigs parked together like an elephants’ graveyard.

South Ozone Park was good once, but it’s chop-shop heaven all along Atlantic Avenue, and too many neighborly citizens in the little houses just beyond.

Most of Queens is lousy, in fact. The DA out there is so lame he can’t even make an organized-crime case at the airports. Pitiful. The feds have to do all of that stuff.

And you’re always reading about rapists and murderers who capture their victims in another county and truck them into Queens because it’s a softer spot if you get caught.

Everybody knows. And, sooner or later, dead meat brings flies.

I finally found a place. Not far from the Eastern District High School in Bushwick, right in the middle of the badlands. Just over the Brooklyn line, past a foul little river that ran under a rusting drawbridge beside a concrete plant. It was an old factory that the sweatshops hadn’t taken over because it needed way too much work—the life-support systems were all gone; even the copper tubing had been stripped for cash. No danger of pedestrian traffic in daylight. The area was deserted except for the buses that ran along Metropolitan Avenue, like spot-labor vans that cruised the corners picking up whoever wanted a day’s work. Only the bus cargo was all regulars—born-unlucky refugees who couldn’t even say “green card” in English.

And after dark, the only signs of life were the strip bars and the fast-food joints. Once you left the main drag, you could see more action in a graveyard.

I got Pansy used to our new home by camping there with her for a few nights. The Mole welded some steel stairs to the roof, and Pansy was accustomed to depositing her loads up there at the last place, so there wasn’t really any learning curve. One thing was different—a two-pump gas station on the Avenue had a little fenced-off area with dogs walking patrol, so the night was never quiet. But Pansy didn’t seem to care.

I put the place together slow. Real careful. Worked at night, coming and going. When I was finished, it still looked abandoned, but if you checked the city property records, you’d find out it was owned by a corporation. If you traced that corporation, you’d eventually dead-end. But it was mine, and I wasn’t worried about a surprise condemnation proceeding from the city, because Davidson was listed as the corporation’s agent, and he’d get notice in plenty of time.

The first floor was empty, and I left it that way. For a while, the occasional wino would try and catch some sleep there, but it was too full of rats big enough to hunt cats. . . and dogs hungry enough to go after
them.
A swirling river of predators. Didn’t smell great either, especially with the pigeons who visited through the broken windows, looking for leavings and leaving more than they took every time.

The rust-covered steel door on the side of the building got brand-new locks, multiple spikes driven deeply into the four-inch frame. The best pick man in the world might have beaten it without a key, but even if you could convince thieves of that class there was anything worth stealing in this neighborhood, even if they put together a watch-your-back team while one worked on the door, even if they got inside, they’d just see a blinking red light and a keypad. And a digital counter, working its way down from 30. At that point, they could start punching numbers or start running.

Past all that was another staircase, with a motion-sensor-and-trip-wire combo that would stop a counter-terrorist sweep team.

On the top floor was Pansy, roaming loose. That’s where I lived. Different from the last place. Lots more room, lots less light—a trade-off for the one-way glass. I used a generator for electricity, so nothing registered with Con Ed. No phone, but I had a steady supply of cloned cellulars from the Mole. And a bunch of fresh extra-sweet pineapples for deodorizers that I replaced every couple of days.

I parked indoors, using a million-candlepower hand-held spot to clear the area every time I pulled in. It always drove whatever was there back far enough for me to make it to the stairs. Nobody could get into the Plymouth, even with a crowbar, so I didn’t worry about that much either.

None of the rats made it upstairs, but occasionally a mouse would flit past in the corner of my vision. Mice and rats don’t coexist, so I guess the rats preferred the lower bunk.

Mice aren’t the real problem in city apartments anyway. I remember one day in the joint, we were all out in the yard, swapping stories. Throwdown was telling us about a place he once had. I never knew his citizen name. We all called him Throwdown because he was the sweetest guy in the world, big black dude with a lot of miles on him. But if you challenged him, he’d just go off. He was one of those anesthetics, didn’t feel pain. The hacks discovered that when they tried to club him out once. And mace only made him mad. After that, one of the Goon Squad always carried a hypo full of Thorazine when they came for him.

“Rather have mice than roaches any day,” Throwdown said. “Mice at least got the good taste to stay away when you got company over, you understand what I’m saying? Motherfucking roaches, they see people, they think it’s a business meeting, and they all invited. Now, I had ’em
both,
okay? So I figure, I’ll do somethin’ about them mice first. They was in the closet. I could hear ’em moving around. So I get me this trap. Now, I know you supposed to use peanut butter, ’cause the little motherfuckers’ll just pick the cheese right out, but I didn’t have none, so I used a piece a salami, okay? Anyway, I’m kicking, doing a dube, waiting for my woman to show, and I hear the trap
snap!,
right? So I figure, I gotta get that dead mouse outa there before I get company. I opens the door, and there’s this big-ass roach hauling the fucking salami away!”

“Damn! What’d you do?” one of the guys asked.

“Booked,” he said, grinning.

T
he Mole could have hooked me up with air conditioning too, but window units would have given away the game. And I wasn’t looking forward to winter, even with the space heaters we had lining the walls. But, right then, the asphalt was boiling and getting out was the best way to deal with the weather, so I saddled up the Plymouth and took Pansy to the park.

We got settled in and watched. One guy was going through a complex ritual with himself—stretching, flexing, getting ready for. . . whatever. One of those boys who thinks his body is a temple, I guessed. I lit another cigarette, scratched Pansy behind the ears, both of us grateful for the shade.

A gorgeous redhead with legs longer than a bust-out gambler’s last hope swiveled by. She took a glance at the temple and decided she was an atheist. Watching her walk away was almost enough to make me do some jogging of my own.

The day went on. Close to that special twilight where everything is outlined in black against the sky. Wolfe said she might meet me there, but not to count on it. I’d give her another hour and roll down to Mama’s, hang out there until the commuter traffic vanished.

I wanted a woman. Not the hard-eyed ones I’d been playing with ever since Crystal Beth was taken. Yeah, those were the ones I thought I wanted—as far away from love as I could get, now that mine was gone. But. . . I can’t explain it. Women can fake orgasms, but they can’t fake that wonderful big-eyed look they give you when you’d done something fine.

I wanted to do something fine. See that look.

I don’t buy what citizens mean by “faithful.” Sex isn’t love. But I had to be faithful to Crystal Beth my way. So, before I could search for that look in a woman’s eyes again, I needed to see some dead bodies.

Pansy spotted a squirrel hauling a hunk of discarded pizza back to its nest. An hors d’oeuvre in motion, but even Pansy’s brick brain knew she’d never score, so she contented herself with just watching.

Like I was.

Wolfe never showed.

T
he heat got worse, visible waves hovering just above the ground. TV cranked it up more. CNN especially. Not the weather reports—the footage of Hutu and Tutsi slaughtering each other on both sides of the Rwanda border again. The mass-homicide images flashed me back. Headaches. Fevers. Night sweats. And that terrifying visitor they call ague: cold, bone-marrow-deep, so bad you can’t close your jaw or your teeth will crack like dry twigs from the chattering, an electric shaking that has to work its way through your body before there’s any peace. It never announces its coming—it’s just
there,
and all you can do is ride it out. Biafra, that genocidal nightmare, intruding now like it never had before. Pansy recoiled at the smell coming off me.

I took some of the quinine they’d given me years ago, but it just made my ears ring. I went to a doctor who specialized in tropical diseases. She said the ringing was tinnitus. Common thing for malaria victims—the tiny cilia in the ear become brittle and snap. Nothing can be done about it. The ringing would just come and go for the rest of my life.
Like
the rest of my life.

I asked Mama. The herbalist she sent me to was so ancient he would have been New Age in the Roaring Twenties. He made about a dozen piles of stuff, then dealt a heavy pinch of each into six little brown paper bags. It looked like: thick white Popsicle sticks, basil leaves like they use for topping veal marsala in Tuscan restaurants, tiny clumps of twigs like from a finch’s nest, sections of tree bark—dark outside, pure clean white inside—gnarled lumps of dark reddish roots, big rubbery slabs of mushroom cap.

“You have malaria, yes?”

“Once.”

“Africa or Asia?”

“Africa.”

“Never go away,” he promised. “You soldier?”

“What difference?” I asked him.

He shrugged at that truth. Said, “Parasites, back now. Go away soon, you do medicine. You put this in big pot, okay? Boil into tea, drink three times every day. Two, three weeks, all gone.”

So I did it. Washed each glass down with a hit of dark chocolate between sips.

And he was right.

I
’d met with Wolfe by then, too. She backed her hammered maroon Audi sedan into a spot between my Plymouth and a Dumpster, managing to scrape a little off each.

“Nice work,” I told her.

“Parking a car is like docking a ship,” she said. “It’s a controlled collision. You do it slow enough, you can’t hurt anything, not really.”

“Terrific,” I said, indifferent to another welt in the Plymouth’s flanks. Then I told her what I needed.

“You’re talking a
big
number,” Wolfe said, eyebrows going up for emphasis, the white wings in her long dark hair flaring along for the ride.

“I have no choice. The cops got everything when they took my place away.”

“You’re really going to start over?”

“Not. . .”

Her gray eyes watched me, waiting.

“Not my life,” I answered her question.

“Too bad,” she said, so softly I almost didn’t hear it.

“Why?” I asked her.

“Because you. . . it would be. . . I mean, it would be cheaper. There
is
a real you, right? A real Burke, I mean. There’s a legit birth certificate somewhere. You could apply for a Social Security number, start over. . . .”

“I’m not changing my ways,” I told her, making it clear. Meaning: I was going to thieve. Maybe not at gunpoint anymore, but I was going to take stuff from other people and I needed a shield-screen of fake ID to do that. And still more to keep the IRS off me if I ever stepped on the wrong land mine.

“You hear about that Canine Liberation Front thing?” Wolfe asked, a sorceress smile on her lips.

“No. What the hell is that?”

“Ah. I figured you don’t read the papers much. Never mind. I can understand. If somebody ever took my Bruiser from me, I’d do. . . whatever to get him back.”