She said she was and reached to flick on the tape recorder.
“Did you ever, like, want to be a cop?”
She didn’t ask who it was. “I am a cop.”
“You’re a problem. You’re a target. If you want out, just get them to cut you a deal, take the package and move to San Francisco or something. Open a rainbow bookstore. Quit fucking around.”
She didn’t recognize the voice. There was no attempt to deepen it or disguise it. She played light. “I don’t run.”
“Do you drink?”
“Who is this? What do you want?”
“Well,” the voice said, “I’m Ray Tate. I’m the guy hired to spike you into the ground.”
Chapter 5
Phil Harvey wouldn’t go into Agatha Burns’s apartment building. He called her on the cell and told her to come out the back entrance, to bring the stuff down herself, not to use the muscleman in the stairwell or to let him know she was going out. He said he’d keep an eye on the packages as she made as many trips as it took. He told her not to use the phone, not to call out, not to answer it. From here on, he said, her training began.
He waited in his black Camaro, bubbling the engine while he watched traffic move through the winding streets of the South Project. He was parked where he could see the rear entrance but couldn’t be seen by the moneyman on the ground floor patio or be captured by the security cameras in the lobby.
He looked at his hands clutching the steering wheel. Grey, glistening waves of burns disappeared under the sleeves of his beige cotton jacket. He wouldn’t wear nylon: nylon, when it burned, stuck to you like napalm. You couldn’t get it off. If you pulled it off, your flesh came with it, like pulling off a glove inside out. Sometimes the fingernails came off. Phil Harvey had four fingernails left and he kept them immaculate, although nobody noticed.
His face hadn’t suffered as much as his hands, but it was pretty bad on the right side. Tissue had been eaten away. His left ear was a gnarled nub. He wore his grey-streaked, black hair very long, below his shoulders, to hide the angry nub, tying it back in a ponytail when he had to work, loosening it into a curtain he could hide behind when he was in public. Hair burned too but didn’t smell half as bad as the pig roast cloud of fire that rose when your flesh melted in a flash fire. When he’d been a young speeder he never thought he’d be a middle-aged man with an Ozzy Osbourne hairdo. He knew the bikers out in the badlands called him Pork Chop behind his back.
It was about dues. Paying ’em, playing ’em, he believed.
When Agatha Burns appeared at the rear door of the apartment building, dragging a cardboard box, Harv punched in Captain Cook’s number and started laying track. “Hey, so I’m here. Where’s she at?”
“She’ll be there. Probably having a bubble bath. Relax, Harv.”
“I been here a half hour.” He watched her look around, kick at the box, then go back inside, dressed for a party in platform heels, pale, long legs that vanished into a minimal black miniskirt, and a tight, short, red, shiny jacket. A red scarf was looped around her neck a couple of times. “She’s not answering the phone.”
“Just wait. She’s hungry for it. Probably doing herself up, getting ready for her first day of school, impress the teacher.”
Harv clicked off. Over the next twenty minutes Agatha Burns made four trips with cardboard boxes. It took her a long time. After each trip she wobbled on the heels then leaned, exhausted, against the side of the building, looking around. Her muscles had clearly deteriorated from chemical excess and she spent bursts of energy at a rapid rate. At a distance her hair looked grey.
A boneless black guy with a baseball hat sideways over a do-rag, a knee-length basketball tank top, and a heavy gold chain approached her.
“Oh, fuck.” Harv reached under the seat and dragged out a heavy silver revolver.
Agatha Burns shook her head at the black guy and he touched her shoulder. He jittered. Harv wrapped the magnum in a sweater with four inches of wicked ribbed barrel poking out. He shut off the turbo and climbed out. When he was ten feet away he heard the man whispering, “Where yo tote where yo tote?” and trying to look behind her, to see what was in the cartons, to see if she had a purse.
Harv glanced around and held the revolver in his hand with the barrel sticking out, straight down his leg. “Yo. Hey, Yo.”
The black man whirled. “Who the fuck you be fucking yo-ing, Yo?”
Harv felt like laughing. He said, “I be fucking yo-ing you, Yo. Yo?” He’d have to tell Connie about this, later, leaving out the Agatha Burns part. He started laughing and pointed the gun at the black guy. “Don’t yo my ho’.”
The man saw the size of the gun. “Fuuuuuck.” He began backing away, his palms out. “S’cool, s’cool.” He spoke rapid-fire in a childish voice: “I’m a player I’m a player I’m a player.”
Harv realized the dude was a dummy and hung his arm straight down and wiggled the gun. “Hold on there, player. You want to make ten bucks? Load that shit in the black Camaro over there.” He aimed a device at the car and the trunk lid raised. “Neatness counts, right?”
The black guy looked at the boxes, then at the Camaro, then at the silver barrel. “Yeah, yeah I can do that. Twenty bucks, though.”
“Twenty, sure,” Harv said, still smiling, “if I can shoot you one time, after.”
“Naw. Naw, ten’s cool.” He hoisted the boxes two at a time and fitted them into the trunk. He put some boxes into the back seat. Harv gave him a ten and slammed the trunk shut.
“What happened to you there, mister?” the man said with childish curiosity. “Under your hair. Can I ask?”
“I was going down on your momma and she came in my face. You should fuck off right about now, okay?”
The black man backed away.
Harv held up his hand and Agatha Burns stayed by the rear door. He dialed Cornelius Cook and told him, “Fuck it, she didn’t show and I’m outta here.”
Cornelius Cook said, “Whatever.” Harv heard him stifle a laugh.
He waved Agatha Burns over. He opened the passenger door for her, told her to belt up, and rounded the car. He put the gun, wrapped in the sweater, under the seat. The black guy was standing across the parking lot, watching, shuffling. He had his riff-and-rap persona back. Harv waved and the guy grabbed his baggy crotch and yelled, “Yo this, you bacon faced motherfucker.”
Cruising out of the projects, Harv kept his eyes in the mirrors. “Fucking place. Our people must be the only whites in the whole fucking colony.”
“Connie wants it like that. Connie likes it here. He’s got —” She ran on and Harv didn’t listen. A blue Pontiac was behind him and he watched it until it turned off. Then there was a black van but as it got closer he saw it was two Yos bouncing in their seats. It wheeled off into another housing project. When the mirror was clear he headed for the Interstate. He slipped off and on at random, running neighbourhoods, counting cars behind him.
Agatha Burns was still going a mile a minute about Connie and his wants, his needs, his plans. She spoke to the windshield and didn’t look at Harv’s face. “— so he comes by and says, hey I want you to go to school with Harv. I didn’t wanna but he said I hadda. That okay? With you? Harv? That I hadda? I said, no, Harv is the man, he’s the wizard, but Connie just said if I don’t it’s my ass, you know? I don’t like that but you know how Connie is. So I gotta, right? If I don’t —”
“It’s your ass.”
“Right. Right, Harv. You got it. So I got, like, no choice.” She listened to the silence and didn’t like it. Silence was a no man’s land where anything could be