Andrew Vachss - Strega

I didn't wait for the fat guy. "Bobby around?" I asked.

"What do you need, man?" he wanted to know, his voice still neutral.

"I want to try a nitrous bottle. Bobby told me he could fix me up.

"For this?" he wanted to know, looking at the Plymouth 's faded four doors. Street racers use nitrous oxide-laughing gas-for short power-bursts. You need a pressurized tank, a switch to kick it in, and enough cojones to pull the trigger. They're not illegal, but you want to fix things up so your opponent won't know you're carrying extra horses. The Plymouth didn't look like his idea of a good candidate-or maybe it was the driver.

I pulled the lever under the dash and the hood was released-it popped forward, pivoting at the front end. The fat guy went around to the passenger side as I got out, and we lifted the entire front end forward together. The whole front-end assembly was Fiberglas-you could move it with two fingers.

The fat guy looked into the engine bay, nodding his head.

"Three eighty-three?" he wanted to know.

"Four forty," I told him, "with another sixty over."

He nodded sagely. It was making sense to him now. One four barrel?" he asked-meaning, Why just one carburetor for so many cubic inches?

"It's built for torque-got to idle nice and quiet."

"Yeah," he said, still nodding. The Plymouth wasn't for show-just the opposite. He walked around the car, peering underneath, noting that the dual exhausts never reached the bumper. The rear undercarriage puzzled him for a minute. "It looks like an I.R.S. Jag?"

"Home-built," I told him. Independent rear suspension was better for handling, but it wouldn't stand up to tire-burning starts-drag racers never used it.

And that was his next question. "Whatta you run with this…thirty-tromp?"

You can race from a standing start or side-by-side at a steady speed and then take off on the signal. Thirty-tromp is when each driver carries a passenger-you reach thirty miles an hour, make sure the front ends are lined up, and the passenger in the left-hand car screams "Go!" out the window and both cars stomp the gas. First car to the spot you marked off is the winner.

"Twenty's okay," I told him. "It hooks up okay once you're rolling."

"You want the nitrous bottle in the trunk?"

"Where else?" I asked him. I opened the trunk to let him look inside.

"Motherfucker! Is that a fuel cell?"

"Fifty-gallon, dual electric pumps," I told him. The kid who built it would have been proud.

The fat guy's suspicions were gone-he was in heaven. "Man, you couldn't run this more than one time-it's a fake-out supreme ! Where do you race?"

"Wherever," I said, "as long as they have the money."

"What do you duel for?"

"A grand-minimum," I said.

The fat guy scratched his head. He was used to guys spending thousands and thousands to build a car and then racing for fifty-dollar bills. Guys who put a good piece of their money into the outside of their cars-like the Camaro sitting there. He'd heard about guys who treated the whole thing like a business-no ego, all for the bucks-but he'd never seen one before. "I'll get Bobby for you," he said, "wait here."

I lit a smoke, leaning against the side of the Plymouth. I let my eyes wander around the garage but kept my feet where they were. I knew what was in the back.

IHEARD a door slam somewhere and Bobby came out of the darkness, hands in the pockets of his coveralls. A big, husky kid-with his long hair and mustache, he looked like an ex-college football player. He came on slowly, not hesitating, just careful. The fat guy was saying something about the Plymouth, but Bobby wasn't listening.

He got close enough to see. "Burke! That you?" he yelled.

"It's me," I said in a quiet voice, knowing what was coming.

The kid crushed me in a bear hug, almost lifting me off my feet. "Brother!" he yelled. "My brother from hell!" I hate that stuff, but I hugged him back, mumbling some words to make it okay.

Bobby turned to the fat guy. "This is my man. Burke, say hello to Cannonball."

"We met," I told him.

"Yeah…right. What's happening , man?"

"He wants some nitrous…" the fat guy said.

"My brother don't want no nitrous…do you, Burke?" Bobby said in a superior tone.

"No," I said, watching the fat guy. Bobby's eyes dropped to my right hand. It was balled into a fist, the thumb extended, rubbing a tiny circle on the Plymouth 's fender. The jailhouse sign to get lost.

"Take a walk, Cannonball," Bobby told him.

"You oughta get the nitrous, man," Cannonball said by way of goodbye. He went off into the darkness in the back.

Bobby reached into my coat, patting around like he was doing a search. I didn't move. He pulled out my pack of cigarettes, lit one for himself. A prison-yard move-okay if you were tight, a spit in your face if you weren't.

"You want to move cars?" Bobby asked. The back of his garage was a chop shop. He took stolen cars and turned them into parts in a couple of hours. A good business, but it takes a lot of people to make it work.

"I'm looking for a couple of your brothers, Bobby," I told him.

The garage got quiet. "You got a beef?" he asked.

"No beef. I'm looking for somebody they might have done some work for. That's all."

"They're not in it?"

"They're not in it," I assured him.

"What is in it?" he wanted to know.

"Money," I told him.

"Same old Burke," the kid said, smiling.

I didn't say anything, waited. "You got names?" the kid asked.

"All I got is this, Bobby. One of them had the lightning bolt on his hand. Big guy. And they did some work for a woman. Older woman. Delivering money.

"With her?"

"Yeah. Bodyguard work."

"We do that…" he mused, thinking. Bobby rubbed his forehead- saw my eyes on his hand. The hand with the twisted lightning bolts- twisted into something that looked like a swastika.

"You never joined us," he said, no accusation in his voice. Just stating a fact.

"I joined you ," I reminded him.

BOBBY'S FIRST day on the Big Yard, he was just off Fish Row, where they lock all the new prisoners. A happy kid despite the sentence he was just starting. Not state-raised-he didn't know how to act. Virgil and I were standing in the shadow of the wall, waiting for some of our customers who had miscalculated the results of the World Series. Bobby walked in our direction, but he was cut off at the pass by a group of blacks. They started some conversation we couldn't hear, but we knew the words. Virgil shook his head sadly-the stupid kid even let a couple of the blacks walk around behind him. It was every new kid's problem-they test you quick and there's only one right answer. The next time he hit the yard he'd better be packing a shank-or spend the rest of his bit on his knees.

The whole yard was watching, but the kid couldn't know that. "Take my back," said Virgil, and started over to the group. Virgil was a fool-he didn't belong in prison.

Virgil strolled over to the group, taking slow, deliberate strides, not in a hurry, keeping his hands where you could see them. I was two steps behind-he was my partner.

"Hey, homeboy!" Virgil shouted out. The blacks turned to face us. Their eyes were hot, but they kept their hands empty. The kid looked at Virgil, a blank, scared look on his face.

Virgil shouldered in next to the kid, put his arm on the kid's back, guiding him out of the circle. One of the blacks stepped in his way. "This is your man?" he asked.

"He surely is," said Virgil, his West Virginia accent like the coal he used to mine-soft around the edges but hard enough to burn inside.

"This your homeboy too?" the black guy asked me, sarcasm dripping from his lips. One of his boys chuckled. The yard was quiet-we all listened for the sound of a rifle bolt slamming a shell home, but even the guards were just watching.