Safe House (30 page)

I gave it five minutes. Nothing.

Vyra never stopped talking.

I stepped away from the door and walked to one of the back bedrooms, motioning for them to follow. Vyra said something to Herk about putting on a fashion show for him. Then they both came down the hall. The bedroom had an adjoining bath. I positioned two chairs on either side of the bathroom door, then turned the shower on full-blast. When I turned around, I got my right hand up just in time to stop Herk from putting one of his bear hugs on me.

“Whoa! What happened to the hand, bro?”

“I forgot the rules,” I told him.

“What rules?” Vyra put in, noticing my hand for the first time.

“Hard to soft, soft to hard,” Herk explained. “You clocked someone in the teeth, huh?” he said to me.

“Yeah. Sit down. How much time you got?”

“Got? I dunno. We ain’t got a meeting until tomorrow night.”

“Start at the beginning,” I told him, shooting Vyra a look so she’d leave us alone. She ignored it, perching herself on the bed.

“Lothar and me had a meet. At that place where he works. He’s got a back room. Anyway, nobody was looking at nobody else, you know those kind of places.”

“What kind of places?” Vyra asked.

“Shut up,” I told her softly. “We’re not playing. This isn’t a game.”

“I’m in this too,” she said.

“Yeah, you are. So do your piece.”

“You mean, just sit here?”

“For now.”

“I don’t want—”

“Vyra, you can sit there nice and peaceful. Or I can use this,” I said, taking a Velcro tourniquet out of my pocket.

“What’s that?” she asked, as suspicious as a crackhouse doorman.

“It works just like handcuffs,” I told her. “And I got a nice clean handkerchief for your big mouth too. Is that what you want?”

“You—”

“Yeah, I would,” I promised her.

Her mouth snapped shut so hard flecks of lipstick flew off.

“From the beginning,” I said to Herk again.

“Anyway, I had to stay there until—”

“There?”

“In the back room. Of the porno joint. Lothar gets this message from me, right? At his P.O. box. Then we talk on the pay phone, right? Then we meet, I tell him what I had to do with . . . that guy, okay? The Jew. He had to tell the others, the guys he was with. He couldn’t bring me to them until he cleared it. So I had to stay there. Where he works. Overnight. It was weird, Burke. Being in that place all alone.”

“At least you had plenty to read.”

“That stuff? I tried to. . . . I mean, I looked through it and everything. But it’s all the same, you know what I mean?”

Vyra took an especially deep breath, as if to remind him that it really wasn’t. But she didn’t say a word.

“Yeah, I do,” I told him. “What happened next?”

“In the morning, before the place opens, he comes back. I had to stay for his whole shift, until it got dark. Then I went with him.”

“To . . . ?”

“This place they got. A house. Just the other side of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge.”

“You got the address?”

“Nah. What happens is, you go to this bar, okay? Then you make a call from the pay phone over against the wall. There’s all kinds of clicks on the line, like it’s switching back and forth. You wait there. One of them comes by and picks you up. You get in the back of this van. No windows. Then you ride for a while. When you get out, you’re in this garage, like. There’s a doorway cut right into the house. I can tell from the way it’s set up, the house is supposed to be all closed up. You can’t even see outside.”

“But when you want to leave . . . ?”

“You got to tell them. Then they take you. Through the garage and all.”

“They take you wherever you want?”

“Nah, they ain’t no taxi service. They drop you off near whatever subway you want. Or a cab stand. But I know they gotta drive that van a good half-hour before we get to the house from the bar.”

“So they could have followed you here?”

“I guess . . .” he said, puzzled.

I shrugged it off. If they had, they wouldn’t have learned much. Especially if they had monitored his calls to Vyra. “How many in the crew?” I asked him.

“There was like maybe six of them there. Not counting Lothar. He wasn’t there when they talked to me. What they did, they asked me a bunch of questions. Just like you said.”

“Any problems?”

“Nah. They mostly asked me about . . . the guy. How’d I do it and all. How’d we find out he was a Jew. Everything else, I just told them what was . . . what was true, I mean. About it. They told me about it, so I said I’d do it. Do
him,
I mean. Like you said.”

“Did one guy ask you all the questions? Was there a leader?”

“I don’t . . . think so. I mean, they was all talking. Most of the stuff they asked me, I didn’t know the answers.”

A warning bell went off in my head. “Like what?”

“Like what they was up to, the guys that was supposed to be with me . . . the guys I was supposed to be with. In my cell, like? Understand?”

“Yeah. What else did they want to know?”

“Like, what Lothar said about them. Stuff like that. I told them the truth . . . nothing.”

“Herk, they never searched you?”

“Oh yeah,” he said brightly. “They did that. Just like in the joint. Finger-wave and everything. Before they started talking. One of them, he asked me where I got the tattoo.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him an old Jewish guy gave it to me.”

“Jesus.”

“They thought that was real funny. They was all laughing at the guy who asked me.”

I took a long, shallow breath, looking deep into Herk’s eyes. They came back innocent, like the big damn kid he was. “Herk, did they say anything about what they were planning?”

“Nah. You know what? I don’t think they
gonna
tell me either. It’s like, I got to stay there, close anyway, ’cause they don’t know ’xactly what they gonna do with me. But they didn’t say nothing . . . uh, specific-like. Just . . . something’s gonna happen. I mean, everybody knows that. Knew that, I mean. In my crew. The one I was with that told me to—”

“Yeah, okay, I got it.” I took a deep breath, making sure I had the big man’s full attention. “Listen close now, Herk. What’s Lothar’s weight? Can you tell?”

“He ain’t no boss, Burke, I can tell you that. I don’t mean he’s like a flunkey or nothing, but he ain’t the big cheese, that’s for sure.”

“Herk,
think
for a minute. Close your eyes. Try and put yourself back there. Just . . . listen, okay? We’re not looking for the
boss,
we’re looking for the
brains,
understand?”

“Bro, when it comes to the brains in a crew, all I know, it ain’t never gonna be me.”

“They all asked you questions, right?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Were any of them like . . . hostile? You know, on your case hard?”

“Nah. Well, maybe this one guy . . . Kenny. But you could see he’s weak. You know how their voice gets a little . . . I dunno, jittery? No matter how hard they talking?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s Kenny. It
ain’t
him, that’s for sure.”

“And it’s not Lothar?”

“No way, man.”

“Herk, listen real close now,” I said urgently, lighting a cigarette. “I—”

“Can I have one too?” Vyra asked me.

Herk shot her a disapproving look.

“What did I do?” she asked, innocently, looking out from under her false eyelashes, her hands clasped in her lap . . . but squeezing her elbows to emphasize the cleavage.

“That stuff’ll kill you,” he said. “That’s why you don’t put weight on, all them cigarettes.”

“You
too?
You think I should—?”

“I think you should shut the fuck up,” I told her, turning back to Hercules, but handing Vyra a cigarette. “Now, listen,” I said again. “You know the difference between feelings and facts?”

“I . . . guess.”

I took a deep nose breath, drawing the oxygen all the way down to my groin, centering. If I couldn’t translate it down for Herk, I was lost. “Listen to these questions, okay?” I said, holding his eyes. “One: when did you go to the joint the last time? Two: was it worse than the time before? Three: what was the charges? Four: was your lawyer any good? All right?”

“Yeah.”

“Now answer them. One at a time. Concentrate.”

“Okay,” the big man said, brow furrowed. “I last went down in ’91. For A and R. That’s assault and robbery,” he said in an aside to Vyra, who was still holding the cigarette I gave her, unlit. “It
was
worse the last time. ’Cause none a you guys was in there with me. But it wasn’t that bad. I mean . . . you know how it is. I got crewed up quick. And . . . and . . . oh yeah! My lawyer fucking
sucked.
Miserable-ass weasel they give me in the court. He had me pled out before I could draw a breath.”

“Good. Now: which of those was facts, and which was feelings?”

“They
all
facts, bro. The stone truth.”

I had a piercing headache.

Vyra got off the bed and stood next to Herk, one hand on his shoulder, the other holding the still-unlit cigarette. She bent her face close to his. “Is true love a fact?” she asked him.

“Huh?”

“If you love someone, a true love, that’s a fact, yes?”

“Sure.”

“But it’s also a feeling, right, Hercules? Love is what you
feel,
isn’t it?”

The big man sat there pondering, Vyra’s perfectly manicured hand sitting on his hyper-muscled shoulder like a butterfly on a boulder.

I didn’t say a word.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “It is. Sure.”

“Did any of them ask you what it was like in prison?” I asked him quickly, trying to catch the ripple from the rock Vyra had dropped into the pool.

“Oh yeah, bro. Like, they was
all
interested in that. I figured it was ’cause none of them been—”

“What about the other questions?
When
you went down, what you went down for?”

“Nah, they was . . . Wait a minute. Yeah! One guy. Scott, that was him. He was the only one asking me about that fact stuff. Yeah! When I went in. Even what joints I was in. And—”

“—and your date of birth?” I cut in, smelling blood. That’s the key to a criminal-records search, the foundation stone that unlocks all the data.

“Sure did, bro! I ask him, what’s he want to do, send me a fucking birthday present? Couple of the guys laughed, but Scott, he still wanted to know.”

“You told him, right?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“He’s the man, Herk.”

Vyra gave him a big wet kiss on the cheek. “You figured it out, honey!” she said.

Herk grinned broadly, Vyra’s lipstick mark clear on his face. I made a grunting noise and his eyes swung back to me. “Whatever you do,” I told him, “don’t ask any questions. Keep your nose out of things, understand? They wanna tell you something, you listen. They don’t, that’s it.”

“I got it, bro.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Burke?”

“What?”

“It’s gonna be all right, ain’t it?”

“Yeah it is.”

“You just tell me what to do and I’ll—”

“I know. You got your own place yet?”

“I’m staying with Lothar. Right in the porno store. Only upstairs. He got a whole apartment up there. You can’t even tell from the street. Pretty slick, huh?”

“Yeah. Lothar try and make conversation with you?”

“Just bullshit. Not about business. Well, not about . . . I mean, he got business of his own. Burke, did you know there was Nazi porno?”

“Nazi porno?”

“Yeah, like Nazis raping a girl. And torture stuff. Wearing those uniforms with what I . . .” He touched his chest. Where the tattoo was.

“Lothar’s into that?”

“
Big
-time,” Hercules said. “I think . . . maybe . . . ah, never mind—I’m too fucking dim to be playing Sherlock Holmes and all.”

“What?” I asked him, leaning forward, putting my damaged hand on his thick forearm. “Come on.”

“It’s just a . . . feeling, like,” he said, glancing over at Vyra. “But I think Lothar was doing that stuff first. I mean, the porno. And those other guys . . . one of them, anyway . . . comes in the shop, or he hears about what Lothar’s got, I dunno. I mean, one of the guys from his first cell, not the one he’s in now. The one I was supposed to be . . . Anyway I think he wasn’t like . . .
with
them first. He’s not a guy with guns or bombs or nothing. He used to write stuff. . . .”

“What stuff?”

“I dunno. About the Jews and niggers and all.”

“You get the impression he’s being cagey? Like maybe they got a bug in his apartment?”

“Man, I
never
know when someone’s being cagey. That’s what the Prof always says. Me, I’m thick. I mean, I never knew him before, so how’m I gonna know if he changed, right?”

“Right.”

“When this is over, I’m going away,” he said quietly.

“It’s a long way from over,” I warned him.

“And it’s a long way I’m going, bro,” Hercules said. “Either way, I’m gone. Live or die, I’m done with this.”

I
left Herk there. Told him to hang around a minimum of a couple of hours. Watch TV or something. Vyra still hadn’t lit the cigarette.

I took the stairway to my room. Ducked inside. The message light wasn’t blinking on the phone.

Good.

I called Mama. Nothing.

Even better.

I know what happens when there’s too many loose threads—somebody weaves them into a noose. Panic was my enemy, but I knew how to deal with it: Aikido. In my head. My spirit against the enemy.

I stripped down to my underwear and closed my eyes, watching the loose threads dance on a tiny 3-D screen.

A movie. Only I wasn’t just a spectator. Or even an actor. I was the director.

Working on the final cut.

N
o point trying to call Davidson. He doesn’t trust phones and he’d go so elliptical that it’d take him an hour to say hello. I went over to his office, told his receptionist that I had an appointment. She couldn’t find it on her calendar, so I told her to ask him, gambling that he wouldn’t be in with a client first thing in the morning.