Andrew Vachss - Strega

The E Train has modern cars-blue-and-orange plastic seats set perpendicular to each other instead of lined up against the side like the older versionssubway maps set behind thick clear-plastic sheetsstainless-steel outer skins. Even the air conditioning works sometimes. By the time the train hit the long tunnel connecting Manhattan and Queens the car looked like a forest of newspapers and briefcases-gothic romances and crossword puzzles covered faces. A transit cop got on at Queens Plaza, a young guy with a mustache, carrying fifty pounds of equipment on his belt. His eyes swept the car for a second; then he started writing something in his memo book. The car was thick with people, but no skells-nobody smoking dope, no portable radio blasting. Working people going home from work. I felt like a tourist.

Roosevelt Avenue was the next stop on the express. The transit cop got off- Roosevelt Avenue was the Queens version of Times Square -the only thing free out on the streets was trouble. Next came Continental Avenue, where most of the yuppies made their exit. The train goes all the way out to Jamaica; by the time it got to the end of the line there wouldn't be too many white faces left.

I got off at Union Turnpike, stuffing the T-square back into my briefcase, checking my watch. I still had almost fifteen minutes to wait for Strega.

THE SUN was dropping into the west as I made my way across Queens Boulevard to the statue. The courthouse was to my right, a squat, dirty piece of undistinguished architecture that hadn't been put up by the lowest bidder-not in Queens County. Looming behind it, the House of Detention cast a shadow of its own, six stories of cross-hatched steel bars, cannon fodder for the processing system citizens call Justice. The guys inside-the ones who can't make bail-call it "just us." Wolfe's office was somewhere in the courthouse complex.

I found a seat at the base of the statue-some Greek god covered with tribute from the passing pigeons. I lit another smoke, watching my hands holding the wooden match. Citizens passed me without a glance-not minding their own business because it was the right thing to do, just in a hurry to get home to whatever treasures their VCRs had preserved for them. The statue was right behind a bus stop, just before the boulevard turned right into Union Turnpike. The human traffic was so thick I couldn't see the street, but I wasn't worried about missing Strega.

I was into my third cigarette when I felt the change in the air-like a cold wind without the breeze. A car horn was blasting its way through the noise of the traffic-sharper and more demanding than the others. A fog-colored BMW was standing right in the middle of the bus stop, leaning on its horn and flashing its lights.

I walked over to the passenger door. The window glass was too dark to see through. The door wasn't locked. I pulled it open and climbed inside. She had the BMW roaring into the traffic stream while I was still closing my door, the little car lurching as she forced it into second gear. We shot across to the left lane, horns protesting in our wake.

"You were late," she snapped, staring straight ahead.

"I was where I said I'd be," I told her, fumbling for my seat belt.

"Next time wait at the curb," she said. Telling the cleaning woman she missed a spot.

She was wearing a bottle-green silk dress, with a black mink jacket over her shoulders, leaving her bare arms free. A thin black chain was around her waist, one end dangling past the seat-it looked like wrought iron. Her face was set and hard behind the makeup mask.

I leaned back in my seat. Strega's skirt was hiked to mid-thigh. Her stockings were dark with some kind of pattern woven into them. Spike heels the same color as the dress. She wasn't wearing her seat belt.

'Where are you going?" I wanted to know.

"My house. You got a problem with that?"

"Only if it isn't empty," I said.

"I'm alone," said Strega. Maybe she was talking about the house.

She wrestled the BMW through the streets to her house, fighting the wheel, riding the clutch unmercifully. The car stalled on Austin Street when she didn't give it enough gas pulling away from the light. "Goddamned fucking clutch!" she muttered, snapping the ignition key to get it started again. She was a lousy driver.

"Why don't you get a car with an automatic transmission?"

"My legs look so good when I change gears," she replied. "Don't they?"

I didn't say anything.

"Look at my legs!" she snarled at me. "Aren't they flashy?"

"I wouldn't get a car to go with my looks," I said, mildly.

"Neither would I-if I looked like you," she said, softening it only slightly with a smile. "And you didn't answer my question."

"What question?"

" Don't my legs look good?"

"That isn't a question," I told her. And this time I got a better smile.

SHE PULLED the BMW around to the back of her house and hit the button on a box she had clipped to the sun visor to open the garage. I followed her up the stairs to the living room, watching her hips switch under the green dress-it looked like a slip in the soft light. She carried the black mink like a dishrag in one hand, tossing it in the general direction of the white couch as she went by.

Strega passed through the living room to another flight of stairs, and climbed toward a light at the top, not saying a word. The bedroom was huge, big enough for three rooms. The walls were a dusky-rose color, the wall-to-wall carpet a dark red. A Hollywood bed, the kind with a canopy over the top, was in the precise middle of the room, standing on a platform a few inches off the carpet. It was all in pink-pink gauze draped from the canopy almost to the floor. The spread was covered with giant stuffed animals-a panda, two teddy bears, a basset hound. A Raggedy Ann doll was propped against the pillows, its sociopath's eyes watching me. A bathroom door stood open to my right-pink shag carpet on the floor, a clear lucite tub dominating the room. A professional makeup mirror was against one wall, a string of tiny little bulbs all around its border. A walk-in closet had mirrored doors. It was half yuppie dreamscene, half little girl's room. I couldn't imagine another person sleeping there with her.

"His bedroom is on the other side of the house," she said, reading my mind. "This is just for me."

"Your husband works late hours?" I asked.

"My husband does what I tell him. I give him what he wants-he does what I want. You understand?"

"No," I told her.

"You wouldn't," she said. Case closed.

I patted my pockets, telling her I wanted to smoke. I couldn't see an ashtray anywhere.

"I don't smoke cigarettes in here," she said.

"So let's go somewhere else."

Strega looked at me like a carpenter checking if there was enough room for a bookcase.

"You don't like my room?"

"It's your room," I replied.

Strega slipped the straps of the green slip over her shoulders, pulling it down to her waist in one motion. I heard the silk tear. Her small breasts looked hard as rocks in the pink light. "You like my room better now?" she asked.

"The room is the same," I said.

She took a breath, making up her mind. "Sit over there," she said, pointing to a tube chair covered in a dark suede-it looked like something growing out of the carpet. I shrugged out of my coat, holding it in one hand, looking toward the bed. "Put it on the floor," she said over her shoulder as she walked out of the room.

She came back with a heavy piece of crystal, kneeling in front of me to put it on the carpet. Whatever it was supposed to be, it was an ashtray then. She was as self-conscious about being topless as two dogs mating-you wanted to look, that was your problem.