Mask Market (30 page)

“To be a Jew in Russia was always dangerous. And so it is today. More than ever, maybe. The skinhead gangs, they say they are targeting immigrants, but their alliances are with their brothers in Poland. In Croatia, too. The fascists are there in strength.

“The way we survive is the way we have always survived—we do not look to the government for protection; we look to each other.”

My eyes never left her face. A faint flush rose in her cheeks.

“You do not believe me?”

“About what you just said? Sure I do. But I guess I don’t understand what all that has to do with the phone call you made.”

“Because you are not a threat, so why should we need protection from you?”

“You
don’t
need protection from me. I didn’t even know you existed until a few days ago. You made that phone call because you
already
knew whoever you called wanted to talk to me.”

“So?” she said, raising her chin as if I was the butler, defying the mistress of the manor.

“That’s it?” I said to Charlie.

“No,” he said quickly. “Just have a little patience, all right?”

I sat back, waiting. He looked at his wife.

“The people I called are my family,” Galina said. “They ask; I do. This is always.”

I didn’t move. She looked at her husband.

“Yes, I knew they wanted to talk with you,” she finally said. “They are…crazy people. But they are my people. By blood. So if they want something from me…”

“They want a lot more than phone calls from you, Mrs. Siegel,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Remember I said I didn’t even know you existed until recently? Well, your people knew
I
existed before that. They knew I went to a meeting. A meeting with a client. Nobody knew about that meeting but me and the client. Your people might have been following the client. Maybe that’s how they spotted me.”

Her dark eyes never left my one good one.

“But I don’t think so,” I went on. “I think they knew my client had a meeting. I think they were listening in on his calls. And there’s only one way they get his number to do that.”

“We already talked it over,” Charlie said. “Galina was just doing—”

“Please don’t say ‘what she had to do,’” I said, chopping off whatever speech he was going to make. So long as Charlie Jones stayed a lizard, he could survive in the desert world of middlemen. But if he tried to go warm-blooded, the climate would kill him.

I squared up so I was right on Galina. “You understand what’s at stake?” I said.

“Yes,” she answered. She put her left hand to her mouth, kissed her wedding ring. Her way of telling me the man next to her wasn’t some long-term meal ticket; he was her heart. Charlie had been right—this one was no “bought bride.”

“I want to walk away from all this,” I said, just barely above a whisper. “That’s what you want, too. Your husband and I, we’re never going to do business again. You go back to your life; I go back to mine. If you ever see me again, feel free to call whoever you want. Understand?”

“Yes.” Ice-cold, now, and at home with it.

“Showing up at a man’s house without being invited, I understand how that could be seen as an act of aggression,” I said, rolling my shoulders slightly to include both of them in what I was saying. “But you understand…you understand
now
…I didn’t come for that reason, don’t you? You understand I had no choice.”

“Yes,” they replied, as one.

I shifted my total focus to the woman.

“I will never need to do that again,” I said. “I know how to reach your family now. I met with—”

“—Yitzhak, yes. He is my cousin.”

“And I know how to reach him,” I repeated. “But that would be my choice, not his. If I see him again, if I see
anyone
connected with you, even by accident, everything changes. I have people, too. Ask your husband.”

“I understand,” she said. “And it is fair.”

“T
hat’s not what we sell in our store, and you know it,” Pepper said, her voice a hard, tight ball of Freon.

“It’s information. And you deal in—”

“It’s information we can’t get.”

“Yeah, you—”

“
We
can’t get it,” Pepper said, as clear as spring water, and as cold. “Only
she
could do that. And you were already told—”

“I’m not coming sideways, Pepper. There’s only one thing I want,” I lied.

“Yes, one thing: You want her to take a risk. Worse, you want her to ask someone
else
to take a risk. More than one, actually. What you want, it’s complicated.”

“I know.”

“We came all the way down here,” she said, looking around at the restaurant, “because you said you had something very important. Too important to say on the phone.”

“And it was, right?”

“Important? I don’t have any idea. Important to you, maybe.”

“It’s…Look, Pepper, here it is. I told you what I want. What I want to
buy,
remember? I’m not asking to meet with Wolfe. I
got
that message, all right? I just want your crew to do what you do. Not for me, for—”

“Money.”

“Not for that, either. This is something…this is something you’d want to do.”

“Yes?” Skeptical-suspicious.

“I can’t tell you any more than I already have,” I said, knowing I’d already blown it. But I’d had to try.

Pepper exchanged a look with Mick. I couldn’t see a muscle move in his face, but she nodded like she’d just finished reading a long letter. Mick got up from the booth and walked out the front door. Max waited a few heartbeats, then moved out in the same direction.

Pepper stepped out of the booth, took out her cell phone, and deliberately turned her back to me as she walked off.

In a minute, she was back. “You have the best food in the whole city,” she sang out, as Mama passed by on her way to the kitchen.

Mama held one finger to her lips, but she was smiling.

One of the payphones rang.

Mama came back over to my booth.

“Police girl,” she said.

“I
thought we had an understanding.” Wolfe’s voice, through the receiver.

“We do,” I said. “But this, what I need, you’re the only one who can get it for me.”

“Even if that was true, why should I?”

“I’m back to…what I was when you met me.”

“When I met you, you were a lot of things.”

“You know what I mean.”

She was quiet for a few seconds. Then: “Yes, I know what you mean. What I don’t know is whether you mean it.”

“I swear I do.”

“On what?”

I stayed silent, waiting.

“What does a man like you swear on, Burke?”

I’d never said it before. Not out loud. And, probably, if I’d thought about it, I wouldn’t have said it then. I was just reaching for one true thing, and…

“I swear on my love,” I told the woman who had always known.

“W
on’t you have another slice, sugar?”

“Slice?” I said, looking at the gaping empty wedge in the French-silk chocolate pie sitting on the kitchen table. “That was a
slab,
girl. Three normal pieces, easy.”

“Didn’t you like it?”

“It was the best pie I ever had,” I told her, holding up my palm in a “the truth, the whole truth” gesture. “I’m just not used to eating so much.”

“Oh, I can see that. You’re way too skinny, Lew. You’re not one of those men who think skinny means high-class, are you?”

“Come here, brat.”

“M
en are so lucky,” she said, an hour later. “Fashions don’t change for you. A big deal is when ties get narrower, or lapels get wider—stuff like that. For us, you can go from being just right to all wrong in a month.”

“I don’t see what that mat—”

“Do you like these jeans on me?” she said, turning her back and looking over her left shoulder.

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Uh-huh. Except nobody hardly even
makes
jeans like this anymore.”

“They’re just regular—”

“They are
not.
These are old-fashioned. See how high the waist is? The new ones, they ride so low on your hips they almost make your butt disappear.”

“There’s no chance—”

“Don’t you even
say
it!” she said, her voice caught between threat and giggle. “The
point
is, I’m not built for the new ones. Everything they make now is for those girls with Paris Hilton bodies.”

I made a sound of disgust.

“What? You don’t think she’s cute?”

“I think she looks like a really effeminate man. And when she opens that lizard-slit of a mouth, she makes Anna Nicole sound like Madame Curie. I wouldn’t just kick her out of bed; I’d burn the sheets.”

“Oh, you’re so
mean.
”

“You asked me.”

She came over to where I was sitting, turned, and dropped into my lap. “How about we go for another ride in that car of yours, big boy?” she giggled. “I’m all dressed for it.”

“P
eople around here don’t do this,” Loyal said, her shoulder just brushing mine. “Go for drives, I mean. They get in their cars to be going someplace, not just to be going.”

“We’re going someplace,” I said.

“Where, Lew?”

“I don’t mean tonight. I just meant, you and me, we’re going someplace, aren’t we?”

“You’re the driver,” she purred.

“W
here do you get all that music of yours?”

“The CDs? A friend of mine mixes them for me.”

“‘Mix’ is the truth,” Loyal said. “I never heard such a…collection of different songs before.”

“You like any of them?” I asked her. Between the Midtown Tunnel and the Suffolk County line, the Plymouth’s speakers had gushed out a real medley: Little Walter’s “Blue and Lonesome,” Jack Scott moaning “What in the World’s Come Over You?,” Dale and Grace begging you to “Stop and Think It Over,” Chuck Willis pleading “Don’t Deceive Me,” Sonny Boy’s “Cross My Heart,” even a rare cut of Glenda Dean Rockits, “Make Life Real,” sounding like Kathy Young backed by Santo and Johnny.

“That ‘Talk of the School’ one was so sad. Kids can be so mean, especially in high school.”

“You know who that was, singing?”

“No. But I’m sure I never heard him before.”

“But you did, girl. That was Sonny James.”

“
The
Sonny James?”

“Yep.”

“But he’s country, not—”

“Not doo-wop? Roy Orbison had a doo-wop group himself once.”

“For real?”

“Sure. Roy Orbison and the Roses.”

“My goodness.”

She drifted into a sweet, connected silence. We were encapsulated, the Plymouth sliding smoothly through the night.

“I
loved
that girl singer,” she finally said. “You know the one?”

“Sounded like a young Patsy Cline?”

“Yes! Can we play hers again?”

I hit the “back” button until I found the cut. A driving, insistent bass line, the plaintive haze of a steel guitar hovering over the top. A nightingale’s voice cut through the steel like an acetylene torch:

You say that was your cousin

But I know what I saw

And if that girl was your cousin

You both was breaking the law

“Oh, I know I should just hate that,” Loyal said, chuckling, “but that Kasey Lansdale is just too good! That child’s going to be
big
someday.”

“Why should you hate it? The song, I mean.”

“Well, it’s another of those stupid stereotypes, isn’t it? You know, rednecks and incest. Tobacco Road stuff. We’re supposed to be all kinds of bad, Southerners. To hear some of the people around here talk, we’re all Bible-thumping, ignorant racists with no teeth, living in shacks. Well, you know what, sugar? That’s just another kind of prejudice.”