Andrew Vachss - Strega

I finished my soup, ate a few of the dim sum the waiter brought, smoked a couple of cigarettes. I went up to the front desk and slipped Mama the three hundred for Maurice with another thirty for Max.

"You not such good gambler, Burke," she said, a little smile on her face.

"I don't get many chances to bet on a sure thing," I told her. "Like where dogs come from."

Mama wasn't insulted. "Only way to bet," she said.

It was time to visit Wolfe.

TRAFFICE WAS light on the way to the courthouse. I turned off Queens Boulevard and nosed past the D.A.'s parking lot, saw Wolfe's Audi near the door. The lot was half empty, but I didn't want to leave the Plymouth there. They have municipal parking a half-block away. It looked like a graveyard for the few cars still remaining. Dark and deserted-a mugger's paradise. I hit the switch to disable the ignition, not worrying about even the lowest-grade thief breaking in for the radio. I don't use a car alarm-they're a waste of time unless you're close by.

It was eight-forty-five when I pushed open the glass doors to the D.A.'s office. The guy at the desk looked up from his crossword puzzle. His eyes never reached my face.

"The jail's next door," he said.

"I know," I told him. "I have an appointment with A.D.A. Wolfe."

Still not looking at me, he picked up a black phone on the desk, punched in a couple of numbers.

"There's a lawyer here-says he's got an appointment with Wolfe." He listened for a second, looked up again. "Name?" he asked. "Burke."

He spoke my name into the phone, then put it down. "Turn right past the divider, last door at the end of the corridor." "Thanks," I said to the top of his head.

I found the place easy enough. Wolfe was sitting behind a big desk. The top was swept clean-a white orchid floated in a brandy snifter in one corner. Two monster piles of paper were on a shelf behind her. I guess she knew most cons can read upside down.

She was wearing a white wool jacket over a burnt-orange dress, a string of pearls around her neck. Her nails were a few shades darker than her lipstick-both red. Wolfe had a soft, pale face-one look and you could see it wasn't from fear, it was her natural color. The silver wings gleamed in her lustrous hair. When I came in the room she stood up, reached across the desk to shake hands.

"Thank you for seeing me," I said.

"I can't promise you much privacy," she replied. "There's a lot of people still working in the other offices."

I couldn't tell if it was a warning-it didn't matter.

"I've been working on something for a while," I said. "And I ran across some stuff I thought you'd be interested in."

She lit a cigarette with a cheap plastic lighter, pushing an ashtray with some hotel's name on it in my general direction. She was good at waiting.

"Anyway," I said, "I got to the point where I need some more information-another piece of the puzzle…"

"And you believe I have this piece?"

"I'm sure you do," I said.

A tall black woman stalked into the office, ignoring me as if I was a lump of furniture. Her mouth was a grim line.

"It was an acquittal," she told Wolfe.

Wolfe's face didn't change. "It figured to be," she said. "Did you stand up?"

"Stand up?" the black woman asked.

I knew what she meant even if the black woman didn't. Baby-rapers have a way of smirking when the jury refuses to believe their victims-as if the jury said it was okay, what they did. A good prosecutor looks them in the eye, memorizing their faces.

"What did you do when the foreman read the verdict?" Wolfe asked the question another way.

"I went over to the defendant-I told him I'd see him again," the black woman said.

"You stood up," Wolfe told her. "Round one, remember?"

"I remember," the black woman said. "He'll be back. And I'll be ready for him."

Wolfe smiled-I could feel the heat coming off the black woman standing behind me. She knew what the smile meant.

"Want to take tomorrow off?" Wolfe asked.

"I'll take a day off when Jefferson goes down," the black woman snapped.

"We all will," Wolfe said. It was a dismissal.

I lit another cigarette. Wolfe hadn't hung around just for a meeting with me. Time to get to it.

"I'm playing it straight down the line on this. Did Lily talk to you?"

"Lily did. McGowan called me too."

"And?"

"And I still don't know what you want, Mr. Burke."

"I want…" I started to say. A guy about five and a half feet tall and four feet wide walked in, stepping between me and Wolfe. His hair was cropped close to his scalp-he had a round face but cop's eyes. He was wearing a black knit shirt over some gray slacks. The shirt didn't have an alligator on the front, but it did feature a shoulder holster. The.38 was only a small dot on his broad chest. He looked like a retired wrestler or a bouncer in a waterfront bar.

"How's it going?" he asked Wolfe, never taking his eyes from me.

" Jefferson was acquitted," she said.

" Jefferson is a miserable fucking piece of slime," the big guy said, chewing on each word like it was raw meat.

Wolfe smiled at him. "This isn't Jefferson 's lawyer," she said.

The big guy shrugged. It was like watching an earthquake. "You want the mutt?" he asked.

"Sure, bring him over," Wolfe told him.

The big guy walked out, light on his feet. Maybe he'd been a boxer instead of a wrestler.

Wolfe lit another smoke for herself and held up her hand, telling me to wait.

The big guy was back in a minute, holding Wolfe's Rottweiler on a short leather leash.

"Hi, Bruise!" Wolfe said. The beast walked right past me, put his paws on the desk, and tried to lick her face. She slapped him away good-naturedly. "Bruiser, go to place!" she said.

The big guy unsnapped the leash. The Rottweiler walked to a corner of the room and flopped down on the carpet. He watched me like a junkie watching a mailbox on welfare-check day.

"I'll be around," the big guy said. I got the message-as if the Rottweiler wasn't enough.

"I'm listening," Wolfe said.

"I'm looking for a picture. Of a kid. A picture of a kid having sex with a man. I talked to a lot of people, went a lot of places. I think I know where the picture is. I think you know the people who have the picture. All I want is for you to give me a name and address."

"You said you had something for me?" she asked. One look at Wolfe and you knew she wasn't talking about money-even in Queens County.

I tossed the little leather address book I took from the pimp on her desk. She didn't make a move to touch it.

"It's from a guy who sells little boys. In Times Square. First names. Initials. Phone numbers. And some kind of code."

"How did you come by this?"

"I was taking up a collection-he donated it."

Wolfe took a drag of her cigarette, put it in the overflowing ashtray, picked up the book. She turned the pages slowly, nodding to herself.

"Did he get hurt making this donation?"

"Not badly," I told her. "If you want to ask him yourself, his name's Rodney. He works out of that fast-food chicken joint on Forty-sixth off Eighth."

Wolfe nodded. "And you want to trade this book for the information?"

I took a gamble. "It's yours," I told her. "No matter what you decide."

"You have a copy?"

"No," I lied.

Wolfe tapped her nails on the desk. It wasn't a nervous gesture-something she did when she was thinking. A phone rang someplace down the hall. It rang twice, then stopped.

A tiny little woman burst into the office, her face flushed, waving a bunch of papers in her hand. "We got the printout!" she yelled, the words sticking in her throat when she saw Wolfe had a visitor. The Rottweiler snarled at the intrusion. The woman had her hair all piled on top of her head; a giant diamond sparkled on her finger. She put her hands on her hips. "Bruiser, please !" she said.