Andrew Vachss - Strega

The blond stared at me, still not sure if I was laughing at him.

"You serious?"

"Dead serious," I told him, slipping my hand into my coat pocket.

The blond couldn't make up his mind, his eyes shifting from Pansy to me. The guy with the sunglasses finally closed the books. "Let it rest, B.T.," he said. The blond let out a breath. "Okay," he said.

The blond started over to me for the money-Pansy went rigid. Her teeth ground together with a sound like a cement truck shifting into gear.

"I'll give it to you when I leave," I told the blond. Even a genius like him understood. He stepped back against the fence, still flexing the muscles in his arms. Pansy was real impressed.

"Can we do business?" I asked the guy with the sunglasses.

He waved me over to the side, against the fence by the Mustang. I flatted my hand against Pansy's snout, telling her to stay where she was, and followed him over. I lit a cigarette, feeling Bobby against my back.

"One of your guys did some bodyguard work. Delivered some money to a day-care center-money was in a little satchel-like a doctor's bag."

I couldn't see the guy's eyes behind the sunglasses; he had his hands in his pockets-waiting for me to finish.

"There was a woman with the bodyguard. Maybe he was protecting her, maybe he was guarding the cash-I don't know."

"Anything else?" he asked.

"The woman, she's no youngster. Maybe my age, maybe older. And she has a house somewhere outside the city. Big house-nice grounds. Has a guy who works with her-a big, fat guy. And maybe a schoolbus-type vehicle."

"That's it?"

"That's it," I told him.

"And you want to know what?"

"All I want to know is who this woman is-where I can find her."

"You got a beef with her?"

I thought about it-didn't know if the bodyguard work was a one-shot deal or if the Real Brotherhood had a contract with her. "She has something I want," I told him, measuring out the words as carefully as a dealer putting cocaine on a scale.

He didn't say anything.

"If you've got a contract with her…then I'd like to ask you to get this thing I want from her. I'll pay for it."

"And if there's no contract?"

"Then I just want her name and address."

He smiled. It might have made a citizen relax; I kept my hands in my pockets. "And for us to get out of the way?" he asked.

"Yeah," I told him. "Exactly."

The blond moved away from the guy in the sunglasses, his back to the fence. Pansy's huge head tracked his movement as if she was the center of a big clock and he was the second hand.

"B.T.!" Bobby said, a warning in his voice. The blond stopped where he was-a slow learner.

"What is this thing you want?" the leader asked.

"That means you have a contract?"

"No. And I don't know where her stash is either."

"It's not dope I'm after," I told him.

The leader took off his sunglasses, looked at them in his hands as though they held the answer to something. He looked up at me. His eyes had that soft, wet glaze only born killers get-after they've fulfilled their destiny a few times. "You're a hijacker, right? That's what you do?"

I held my hands together and turned my palms out to him-cards on the table. "I'm looking for a picture-a photograph."

"Who's in the picture?"

"A kid," I told him.

He looked a question at me.

"A little kid-a sex picture, okay?"

The leader looked at the dark-haired guy standing next to him. "I thought it was powder," he said.

The dark-haired guy kept his face flat. "I never asked," he replied.

The leader nodded absently, thinking it through. "Yeah," he said, "who asks?"

I lit a cigarette, cupping my hands around the flame, watching the leader from a corner of my eye. He was scratching at his face with one finger, his eyes behind the sunglasses again.

"Bobby, you mind taking your friend inside for a couple of minutes? We've got something to talk over out here, okay?"

Bobby put his hand on my shoulder, gently tugging me toward the garage. I slapped my hand against my side, telling Pansy to come along. She didn't move, still watching the blond, memorizing his body. "Pansy!" I snapped at her. She gave the blond one last look and trotted over to my side.

Inside the garage, I opened both front doors of the Plymouth and told Pansy to climb inside.

"B.T.'s okay, Burke," Bobby said. "He's just a little nuts on the subject of niggers, you know?"

"I know," I said. "No big deal."

We waited in silence. Pansy's dark-gray fur merged into the dim interior of the garage-only her eyes glowed. She missed the blond.

The back door opened and they came inside. The leader sat on the Plymouth 's hood, leaving his boys standing off to one side.

"The woman told us she had to deliver money to various places-serious cash, okay? She was worried about somebody moving on the money-taking it away from her. Victor"-he nodded his head in the direction of the dark-haired guy-"he picked up a grand for every delivery. He carried the cash. We thought it was a regular series of payoffs- she never took anything back when she turned over the money."

I didn't say anything-I had a lot of questions but it wasn't my turn to talk.

"She told Victor no weapons-if someone made a move on them with a gun, he was supposed to turn over the bag he was carrying. He was just muscle, okay?"

I nodded. The woman wasn't worried about a hijack-Victor was there to intimidate the people who supplied the kids. He could do that just by being himself.

"You're sure she has this picture?" he asked. "No question," I told him.

"This means she has others-that she does this all the time?"

"It's what she does," I told him.

The leader was wearing his sunglasses even inside the garage, but I could feel his eyes behind the dark lenses. "I'm a thief," he said, "just like you are. We don't fuck kids."

"I know that," I said.

"Some of our guys…they're a little crazy…like B.T. He'd stab a nigger just to stay in practice, you know?"

"I know."

"But none of us would do little kids. Our brotherhood.

I bowed my head slightly. "You have everyone's respect," I told him.

"We do now ," he said, his voice soft. "If word got out that we were involved with kids like this…"

"It won't," I said.

He went on like he hadn't heard me. "If that word got out, we'd have to do something serious, you understand? We can't have anything hurt our name-people would get stupid with us."

I kept quiet, waiting.

"We give you the information you want-you going to try and buy this picture from her?"

"If she'll sell it."

"And if she won't?"

I shrugged.

"Victor made a lot of those cash runs for her," he said. "A couple of day-care centers, private houses…even a church. There has to be a fucking lot of those pictures around."

"Like I said-she's in the business.

The leader ran his fingers through his hair-I could see the tattoo on his hand. His voice was still soft. "Her name is Bonnie. The house is on Cheshire Drive in Little Neck, just this side of the Nassau County border. A big white house at the end of a dead-end street. There's a white wall all around the property-electronic gate to the driveway. Big, deep backyard, trees and shrubs all around. Two stories, full basement, maybe some room in the attic too."

"Anything else?" I asked him.

"She has that schoolbus you talked about-a little one, maybe a dozen seats in the back. She uses the big, fat guy as the driver.

"Any security in the house?"

"I don't know," he said. "The Real Brotherhood-we play it straight-we weren't even thinking about taking her off."

I handed him two grand, all in hundreds. "That square us?" I asked him.

He smiled. "I'll take B.T.'s money out of this," he said.