Andrew Vachss - Strega

I didn't say anything, frozen there, my hand mechanically grinding the cigarette butt into tobacco flakes.

"You think I'm just teasing you, don't you?" she whispered again. "Dressing like this.

I pulled back to look at her but she hung on, coming with me. "You do what you want," I told her.

"I will if you close your eyes," she said in my ear. "Close your eyes!" she said, a baby demanding you play a game with her.

I was still so cold. Maybe it was the room. I closed my eyes, leaned back. Felt her stroke me, making a noise in her throat. "Sssh, ssh," she murmured. She was talking to herself. I felt her hands at my belt, heard the zipper move, felt myself strain against her hand. I opened my eyes a narrow slit; her red hair was in my lap. "You promised!" she said in the baby voice. I closed my eyes again. She tugged at the waistband on my shorts, but I didn't move-she was rough and clumsy pulling me through the fly, still making those baby noises in her throat. I felt her mouth around me, felt the warmth, her tiny teeth against me, gently pulling. I put my hands in her soft hair, and she pulled her mouth off me, her teeth scraping the shaft, hurting me. "You don't touch me!" she whispered, the voice of a little girl.

I put my hands behind my head so they wouldn't move. And she came back to me with her mouth, sucking hard now, moving her mouth up and down until I was slick with her juices. My eyes opened again- I couldn't help it. She didn't say anything this time. I opened them wider. The redhead's face was buried in my lap, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. My eyes closed again.

I felt it coming. I pushed my hips back in the chair, giving her a chance to pull her mouth away, but she was glued to me. "Just this!" she mumbled, her mouth full, a little girl talking, a stubborn little girl who made up her mind and wasn't giving in. My mind flashed to a girl I met once when I was on the run from reform school. This was all she'd do too-she didn't want to get pregnant again. Somehow I knew this wasn't the same.

It was her choice. She shook her head from side to side, keeping me with her. I felt the explosion all the way to the base of my spine, but she never took her face away-never reached for a handkerchief-I could feel the muscles in her cheeks work as she took it all.

I slumped back in the chair and she let me slide out of her mouth but kept her head in my lap. Her little-girl's whisper was clear in the quiet room. "I'm a good girl," she said, calm and smug. "Pat me. Pat my head."

My eyes opened again as I brought my hand forward, stroking her red hair, watching her hands twist behind her in the handcuffs she'd made for herself.

Her head came up. She was licking her lips and her eyes were wet and gleaming. Her hands came forward, taking one of my cigarettes and lighting it while I pulled myself in and zipped up. She handed me the lit cigarette. "For you," she said.

I took a deep drag. It tasted of blood.

"I have you in me now," she said, in her own voice. "Get me that picture."

I had to get out of there. She knew it too. I put on my coat, patting the pockets, putting the pictures and the other stuff she gave me inside.

"Come," she said, taking my hand, leading me back to the garage.

The Mercedes had a regular license, but the one on the BMW said JINA. "Is that the way you spell your name?" I asked her. "I thought it was Gina-G-I-N-A."

"They named me Gina. I didn't like it. When I have something I don't like, I change it."

"Who's Zia Peppina?" I wanted to know.

"Me. Auntie Pepper, you capisce ? When I was a little girl, I was a chubby, happy child-always running, getting into mischief. With my red hair, they used to call me Peppina. Little Pepper. But when I got older, when I got to be myself, they stopped calling me that baby name. I only let Scotty call me that because he's special to me."

"People call you Jina now?"

"No," the redhead said, "now they call me Strega."

The side door slammed behind me and I was alone.

I drove too fast getting out of her neighborhood, cold speed inside me, rushing around like cocaine. Even the twenty-five grand in my coat couldn't keep out the chill. Strega . I knew what the word meant-a witch-bitch you could lust after or run from. You could be in the middle of a desert and her shadow would make you cold. And I had taken her money.

ISLOWED the Plymouth into a quiet, mechanical cruise when I hit the Inter-Boro. A dark, twisting piece of highway, paved with potholes. Abandoned cars lined the roadside, stripped to the bone. I lit a smoke, watched the tiny red dot in the windshield, feeling the tremor in my hands on the wheel. Not knowing if I was sad or scared.

The blues make a rough blanket, like the ones they give you in the orphanage. But they keep out the cold. I shoved a cassette into the tape player without looking, waiting for the dark streets to take hold of me and pull me in, waiting to get back to myself. When I heard the guitar intro I recognized the next song, but I sat and listened to the first call-and-answer of "Married Woman Blues" like the fool I was.

Did you ever love a married woman?

The kind so good that she just has to be true.

Did you ever love a married woman?

The kind so good that she just has to be true.

That means true to her husband, boy,

And not a damn thing left for you.

That wasn't Strega. She wasn't good and she wasn't true-at least not to her husband. I popped the cassette, played with the radio until I got some oldies station. Ron Holden and the Thunderbirds singing "Love You So." I hated that song from the first time I'd heard it. When I was in reform school a girl I thought I knew wrote me a letter with the lyrics to that song. She told me it was a poem she wrote for me. I never showed it to anyone-I burned the letter so nobody would find it, but I memorized the words. One day I heard it on the radio while we were out in the yard and I knew the truth.

I never had to explain things like that to Flood. She knew-she was raised in the same places I was.

There was too much prison in this case-too much past.

I tried another cassette-Robert Johnson's "Hellhound on My Trail" came through the speakers. Chasing me down the road.

BY THE next morning, the magnum was back in my office and all but five thousand of the money was stashed with Max. I told him most of what happened the night before-enough so he could find the redhead if things didn't work out. I couldn't take Max with me on this trip-he was the wrong color.

I took Atlantic Avenue east through Brooklyn, but this time I rolled right on past the Inter-Boro entrance, past the neighborhood called City Line and into South Ozone Park. In this part of Queens, everybody's got territory marked off-the gangsters have their social clubs, the Haitians have their restaurants, and the illegal aliens have their basements. When you get near J.F.K. Airport, you move into the free-fire zone-the airport is too rich a prize for anyone to hold it all.

I pulled into the open front of a double-width garage. A faded sign over the door said "Ajax Speed Shop." A fat guy sat on a cut-down oil drum just inside the door, a magazine on his lap. His hair was motorcycle-club-length; he had a red bandanna tied around his forehead. He was wearing a denim jacket with the arms cut off, jeans, and heavy work boots. His arms bulged, not all from fat. He'd been a body-builder once; now he was slightly gone to seed.

A candy-apple-red Camaro stood over to my right, its monster rear tires filling the rear tubs under the fenders. The garage specialized in outlaw street racers-guys who made a living drag racing away from the legal strips. The back of the joint was dark.