Andrew Vachss: Strega

"Uh…look, man. You ever use anyone else on jobs…you know. I could always use some extra coin, right?"

"No," I told him, my face flat as a prison wall.

"Hey, just listen for a minute, okay? I got experience, you know what I'm saying?"

"Kid," I told him, "I got warrants out on me older than you," and started to roll forward again.

The Cheech's hand went in his pocket again, but this time he came out with a snub-nosed revolver-he stuck it through the open window, holding it steady, about six inches from my face.

"Don't fucking move! You got that? You fucking sit there and you listen when I talk, you understand? I ain't no fucking nigger you can just walk away from-I'm talking to you."

I looked at him, saying nothing. There was nothing to say-Julio sent me a messenger boy with some dangerous delusions. It's hard to get good help nowadays.

"You show me some respect, huh?" barked the Cheech. "You ain't no fucking better than me."

"Yeah, I am," I told him, nice and calm and gentle. "I think about what I'm going to do before I do it. Now you think about it. Think about me coming here alone. Think about how you're going to get out of this alley if you pull the trigger. Think about what you're going to tell the old man. Think about it…then think about what you have to say-and say it."

The Cheech tried to think and hold the gun on me at the same time. It was too much work and his brain overloaded. The snub-nose trembled in his hand for a second and he looked at it as if it had tricked him. When his eyes came back up to me, he was looking at the sawed-off shotgun I was holding in my right hand.

"I'm listening," I told him. But he had nothing to say. "You know how to load that thing?" I asked him. "Or did someone do it for you?"

"I know…" he mumbled.

"Then fucking un load it, kid. And do it slow-or I'm going to blow your pretty gold chains right through your chest."

He pointed the pistol up, popped the cylinder, held it upside down, and slowly dropped out the bullets. They made a soft plopping sound as they hit the ground. There was so much wet garbage in that alley you could have dropped a safe from a ten-story building without too much noise.

"Listen to me," I said, calm as an undertaker. "You made a mistake. You even think about making another one, go make out a will, understand?"

He just nodded. It was an improvement.

I tapped the gas and the Plymouth rolled out of the alley, heading home. By the time I crossed Flatbush Avenue, my hands had stopped shaking.

THE PLYMOUTH slowly made its way down Atlantic Avenue. It wasn't the fastest way back from Brooklyn, but it was the quietest. I eyeballed all the antique shoppes and trendo restaurants which had sprung to life in the last few months-the wino-rehab centers and storefront churches never had a prayer. The new strip runs from Flatbush all the way down past the Brooklyn House of Detention-pioneer-yuppie lofts with stained-glass windows sat over little stores where you could buy fifty different kinds of cheese. Some of the stores still sold wine, though not the kind you drank out of a paper bag. But news of the urban renaissance hadn't filtered down to the neighborhood skells yet-it still wasn't a good idea to linger at a red light after dark.

I turned up Adams Street, heading for the Brooklyn Bridge. The first streaks of filthy daylight were already in the sky. The Family Court was on my right, the Supreme Court on my left. It works good that way-when the social workers are done with the kids, the prisons can take them.

The newsboy was standing on the median strip just before the entrance to the bridge. He had a stack of papers under one arm, hustling for an honest buck. Motorists who knew the system beeped their horns, held their arms out the window, and the kid would rush over, slap a paper into your hand, pocket the change, and keep moving. Every once in a while a patrol car would decide the kid should work some other corner, but mostly the cops leave the kids alone.

I pulled into the Left Turn Only lane, ignoring the sign like everyone else. When I hit the horn, the kid came over. I pushed the switch to lower my window and took a close look: black kid, about fifteen, husky build, Navy watch cap over a bushy Afro. I waved away the Daily News he offered.

"Roscoe working today?" I asked.

"Yeah, man. He working. 'Cross the way, you know?"

I already had the Plymouth rolling, timing it so I'd get caught at the light. I watched the black kid fly back across the street to tell Roscoe he had a customer. The twenty-four-hour news station was saying something about another baby beaten to death; this one in the Bronx. So many cases like that now, all they do is give you the daily body count.

The light changed. The Plymouth rolled forward until I spotted Roscoe standing on the divider, a bunch of papers in one hand, a big canvas bag held by a thick strap around his neck. Roscoe's about thirty, too old to be selling papers.

He recognized the car-looked close to be sure he recognized the driver too.

"Paper, mister?"

"Yeah, give me The Wall Street Journal ," I said, holding a twenty out toward him at the same time.

"Oh, yeah. I got one around here someplace," he mumbled, rummaging in his canvas bag.

While he was looking down at his bag, I did a quick scan of the streets, knowing he was doing the same. Nothing. I reached my left hand out for the paper Roscoe was holding over the open top of his bag, snapped the twenty toward him, and dropped the sawed-off into his bag at the same time. Gravity is one law nobody fucks with.

Roscoe comes honestly by his name, if not his income. I tossed yesterday's News on the front seat and drove off, heading for Chinatown. I don't like to carry heat across the border.

THE CHINATOWN streets were just getting organized: young men pushing hand trucks loaded with fresh vegetables, older women lumbering toward another day in the sweatshops. I spotted Hobart Chan cruising the Bowery in his sable Bentley, a shark looking for blood in the water. Even gangsters go to work early in Chinatown.

I rolled past Mama's checking the front window. The white dragon tapestry was in place-everything cool inside. I tooled through the narrow alley and left the Plymouth in its usual spot, right underneath some Chinese writing on the wall that warned the local hoods not to park there. It didn't bother me-it was Max's writing.

I went through the kitchen and into the back like I usually do. When I opened the door, one of Mama's alleged cooks smoothly slipped his hand inside his white coat-he pulled it back empty when he recognized me. I walked to the front, pulled the two-star edition of the News from underneath the register, and walked to my table in the back, next to the kitchen. No one approached my table pretending to be a waiter, so Mama was around someplace. I read through last night's race results from Yonkers and waited.

I caught a shadow across the newspaper and looked up. It was Mama-looking as though she just stepped out of a 1950s beauty parlor, hair black and glossy in a tight bun at the back of her head, plain high-collared blue silk dress that almost covered her shoes, a jade necklace setting off her dark-painted lips. She's somewhere between fifty and ninety years old.

"So, Burke. You come to eat?"

"To eat and to see Max, Mama. He around?"

"Burke, you know Max not come around so much anymore. Not since he take up with that bar girl. You know that bar girl-the one from Vietnam?"

"Yeah, I met her."

"That girl no good for Max, Burke. He not keeping his mind on business-not reliable like before, right?"