Andrew Vachss - Strega

The big dog subsided. Wolfe laughed. "I'll look at it later, okay?"

"Okay!" the other woman shouted, running out of the office as if she was going to a fire sale.

"Are all your people so worked up?" I asked her.

"We don't have draftees in this unit," she said, her eyes watching me closely.

"Not even the dog?"

"Not even him." She fingered her string of pearls. "What do you need?"

"I know the woman I'm looking for is named Bonnie. I know she lives on Cheshire Drive in Little Neck. Maybe with a fat guy.

"That's it?"

"That's it. She's running a kiddie-porn ring-I figure you have your eye on her."

Wolfe said nothing, waiting for me.

"And if you don't," I told her, "then I just gave you some more information, right?"

Wolfe took a breath. "What is it you really want, Mr. Burke? You obviously already know how to find this person.

I lit a cigarette for myself-it was time to tell her.

"I have to go in there-I have to get that picture. If I can buy it, I will."

"And if you can't…?"

I shrugged.

Wolfe reached behind her and pulled a bunch of papers onto her desk. Some of the sheets were long and yellow-I knew what they were.

"Mr. Burke, Lily did call me, as I said. But I did a little checking on my own before I agreed to this meeting."

"So?"

"So you are not exactly unknown to law enforcement, are you?" She ran her finger down one of the yellow sheets, reading aloud, lifting her eyes to my face every once in a while. "Armed robbery, assault one, armed robbery and assault. Attempted murder, two counts. Possession of illegal weaponsShould I go on?"

"If you want to," I told her. "I was a lot younger then."

Wolfe smiled. "You're rehabilitated?"

"I'm a coward," I told her.

"We have twenty-seven arrests, two felony convictions, three placements in juvenile facilities, one youthful-offender adjudication."

"Sounds about right to me," I told her.

"How did you beat the attempted-murder case? It says you were acquitted at trial."

"It was a gunfight," I told her. "The cops arrested the winner. The other guys testified it was somebody else who shot them."

"I see."

"Anything on that sheet tell you I don't keep my word?" I asked her.

Wolfe smiled again. "Rap sheets don't tell you much, Mr. Burke. Take this one-it doesn't even give your first name."

"Sure it does," I told her.

"Mr. Burke, this shows a different first name for every single time you were arrested. Maxwell Burke, John Burke, Samuel Burke, Leonard Burke, Juan Burke…" She stopped, smiling again. " Juan ?"

" Dónde está el dinero ?" I said.

This time she laughed. It was a sweet chuckle, the kind only a grown woman can do. It made my heart hurt for Flood.

"Do you have a true first name, Mr. Burke?"

"No."

Wolfe's smile was ironic. "What does it say on your birth certificate?"

"Baby Boy Burke," I told her, my voice flat.

"Oh," Wolfe said. She'd seen enough birth certificates to know I'd never have to worry about buying a present on Mother's Day. I shrugged again, showing her it didn't mean anything to me. Now.

Wolfe took another piece of paper off her desk-this one wasn't yellow.

"The FBI has a sheet on you too," she said.

"I never took a federal fall."

"I see that. But you are listed as a suspect in several deals involving military weapons. And a CIA cross-reference shows you were out of the country for almost a year.

"I like to travel," I told her.

"You don't have a passport," she said.

"I didn't come here to ask you for a date," I said. "I'm not applying for a job either. I admire what you do-I respect your work. I thought I could help you-that you could help me too."

"And if we can't work this out?"

"I'm going into that house," I told her, looking her full in her lovely face like the crazy bastard this case had turned me into.

Wolfe picked up the phone, punched a number. "Nothing's wrong," she said. "Come in here." She hung up. "I want to be sure you're not wearing a wire, okay? Then we'll talk."

"Whatever you say," I told her.

The bouncer came back in, the.38 almost lost in his meaty hand.

"I told you nothing was wrong," Wolfe said.

"That was a few seconds ago," he snapped. The Rottweiler growled at him. "Good boy," he said.

"Would you please take this gentleman with you and see if he has anything on him he shouldn't have," Wolfe told him.

The big guy put his hand on my shoulder-it felt like an anvil.

"There's no problem," Wolfe said to him, a warning note in her voice.

We went past a couple of offices-the tall black woman was reading something and making notes, the little lady with the piled-up hair was talking a mile a minute on the phone, a handsome black man was studying a hand-drawn chart on the wall. I heard a teletype machine clatter-bad news for somebody.

"Doesn't anybody go home around here?" I asked the big guy.

"Yeah, pal-some people go home. Some people should stay home."

I didn't try any more conversation-starters. He took me into a bare office and did the whole search number, working at it like a prison guard you forgot to bribe. He took me back to Wolfe.

"Nothing," he said, disappointed. He left us alone.

The Rottweiler was sitting next to Wolfe, watching the door as she patted his head. She pointed to his corner again and he went back, as reluctant as the big guy was.

"Mr. Burke, this is the situation. The woman you intend to visit is Bonnie Browne, with an 'e.' She sometimes uses the name Young as well-it's her maiden name. The man she lives with is her husband. George Browne. He has two arrests for child molesting-one dismissal, one plea to an endangering count. Served ninety days in California. She's never been arrested."

I put my hand in my pocket, reaching for a smoke.

"Don't write any of this down," Wolfe said.

"I'm not," I told her, lighting the smoke.

"We believe this woman to be the principal in a great number of corporations-holding companies, really. But she doesn't operate the way most of the kiddie-porn merchants do. You understand what I mean?"

"Yeah," I told her. "You want the pictures-videotapes, whatever-you send a money order to a drop-box in Brussels. When the money clears, you get a shipment in the mail from Denmark, or England, or any other place they're established. Then the money orders get mailed to an offshore bank-maybe the Cayman Islands -and the bank makes a loan to some phony corporation set up in the States."

Wolfe looked at me thoughtfully. "You've been at this quite a while."

"I do a lot of work-you get bits and pieces here and there-you put it together."

"Okay. But this woman doesn't work like that. Her product is special. She guarantees all her stuff is so-called collector's items. No reproduction-every picture is one of a kind."

"What's to stop some freak from copying the pictures?"

"She puts some kind of mark on every picture she takes-like this." Wolfe showed me a tiny drawing of a standing man, his hand on the shoulder of a little boy. It looked like it was hand-drawn with one of those needlepoint pens architects use. Only it was in a soft blue color. "The mark won't survive a copy-she uses something called chroma-blue ink. She puts every mark on herself-by hand."

"What's the point?"

"There's two points, Mr. Burke. The first is that she gets a minimum of five thousand dollars a picture, so she can achieve huge profits without a lot of volume."

I took a drag on my cigarette, waiting.

"The other point is more significant. She produces pictures to order."

"You mean some freak calls her and says he wants to see a certain thing go down?"

"Yes. If you want a blond boy wearing a snowsuit, you got it."