Part 6 (1/2)

You just walk through the gate, get on the bus. They've got one going downstate every day. Costs more than a plane ride, but they can charge whatever they want-there's no compet.i.tion. Like with the collect calls. You can only call collect if the person you're calling agrees to accept it...and that means they pay through the nose for every minute. The phone company splits the take with the prison. They got guys in here for working that same kind of racket on the street.

I'd X'ed out my old apartment the minute they'd clamped the cuffs on. I wouldn't ask anyone to go back there for me; anything of mine was long gone by now. The super wouldn't know nothing. The landlord was some company name. And the cops weren't running a storage facility.

I didn't have much in there, anyway.

They'd vouchered what I had on me when I was picked up. Only the three grand and change got turned into six C-notes.

I wondered what they'd done with the pistol, but I wasn't worried about trace evidence on any of my clothes. After the job, we'd all gone back to this place Solly had rented. Left every st.i.tch of clothes in these plastic bags he'd left behind. Took a good, long hot shower. Rubbed ourselves down with alcohol. Nails, hair, everything.

Then we each put on the stuff we'd been wearing when we first met up there.

”A good thief takes money, not chances,” Solly said. He was always saying it.

He believed it, too. Solly never went along on any job he put together.

I had a phone number for him. I knew it was just a pay phone, someplace in Manhattan. Indoors, so n.o.body could try and set up shop with it.

But first I had things to do.

I had almost seven hundred left over-what I had on the books and my gate money. Not enough. I wasn't going anywhere near my share until I was carrying more than high hopes.

The money was enough for a prepaid cell and a night at this hotel every loser in the city knows about. One step above a flophouse, and they still charge over a hundred a night. Taxes, you know.

I didn't even bother to undress. The room made my cell look ritzy. The lock wouldn't stop a drunk who forgot his room number, never mind a guy who knew where to kick. No phone.

I could smell the disinfectant they probably hosed down the dump with every day. Didn't see any roaches, but I wasn't going to take a chance on bedbugs-or worse-in that foul-looking pad they called a mattress.

After I fixed the place so I'd get some warning if anyone tried to visit me, I rolled up my jacket on the floor and closed my eyes.

The next morning, I found a pay phone.

”What?” is all the guy at the other end said.

”I'm an old pal of Solly's,” I said. ”Haven't seen him for quite a while. About five years.”

”Ain't no Solly here, friend.”

”Let me leave you my number, just in case he walks by.”

When he didn't hang up, I knew I was connected.

I went back to that fleabag. They kick you out at eleven-thirty in the morning, pounding on the doors like they had search warrants. When I hadn't heard anything by noon, I checked in for another night, just to be off the street.

The same desk clerk took my money. If he remembered me from the night before, you couldn't tell. I signed the register with a different name. He didn't look at it, just gave me the key and the usual speech about how I'd be held responsible if...It was a long list; I walked off while he was still talking.

My new cell rang a little after dark. I pushed the b.u.t.ton, heard: ”Don't say my name.” Solly's voice.

”Okay.”

”Say something that'll show me you're who I think you are. Nothing stupid, understand?”

I knew then that Solly had already recognized my voice from the ”Okay.” Solly liked me. He knew I was certified stand-up. h.e.l.l, he knew I'd just finished proving it all over again. But he never had too high an opinion of my IQ.

”Thanks for the warning,” I said.

I could hear him chuckling before he said, ”You got a place?”

”No.”

”Good. Why don't you drop by? We'll talk over old times.”

”When?”

”I'll keep a light on for you.”

The light was at the back of an old apartment building, hanging over the stone steps down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. It sat inside a little cage of wire mesh. You couldn't break the light by accident, and if you tried to poke something through the wire, a pair of giant navigation lights like they use on fis.h.i.+ng boats would blast off right in your eyes.

There was a camera mounted behind the door. The lens was like the peephole for an apartment door, and the camera's motor drive would start firing as soon as the lights went on. A cable ran from the camera to some kind of computer. Solly once told me that even if someone used a battering ram on the door, their pictures would be in a safe place before they could get to the computer, so I guessed the computer automatically sent the pictures someplace else.

I didn't know all this because Solly trusted me. I know why he told me. Me and anyone else who knew where to find him. That's why I called and got the okay from him first.

Even so, I stood under the light long enough for him to see whatever he needed. Then I rapped two knuckles on the door. Three times, tap-tap-tap. I waited a couple of seconds, then I did it again. Seven, that time. Another wait before I slapped my palm against the panel. You had three shots to hit blackjack, and a flat palm counted as an ace.

I heard the metal-against-metal sound of a deadbolt being thrown open. Heavy metal. I didn't wait after that. Just turned the k.n.o.b and stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind me.

The room was so dark all I could make out was the shape of a man behind a desk.

”What more do you need?” I said.

”I didn't get to be this old taking chances,” Solly said. Not from behind the desk. That shape was a dummy. If you walked in shooting, you'd be punching holes in some plastic thing with clothes on it. Solly would be off to the side, one of those old Jew submachine guns in his lap. One long burp, everything on the wrong side of the barrel is dead.

And if more men were waiting outside, Solly still had an out. There was a second room behind the first one. Nothing in there but a giant freezer and piles of old books. And a door that would take him out to the hall. By the time anyone got a flashlight working, he'd be upstairs, in the apartment he lived in.

I'd never been in that apartment. Couldn't even tell you what floor it was on. Or even if Solly was telling the truth about it. What he told me was all I knew. I never asked him any questions.

”So?” Solly says. ”Come on over and sit with an old friend.”

A soft light showed me Solly's chair and another one, empty. One, only. Solly never let more than one person at a time in his bas.e.m.e.nt.

That's what he told me, anyway.

I sat down. The chair looked old. It was comfortable, though. And soft, real soft. You sank deep down into it. Like sitting in quicksand.

There was some kind of little table to my right. Fresh ashtray, little box of matches.