NIGHTTIME. Strega's time. Could there be a good witch? Compared with Candy, Strega was as pure as driven snow. The kind they drive across the border in ten-kilo shrink-wrapped packages. Ice-pure.
I drove into Queens. Dialed her number from a pay phone.
"I'm waiting for you," was how she answered.
The empty spot in her garage was like the impression your body leaves when you get out of bed. The Buick fit.
She stepped into the garage as I closed the car door. Wearing a steel-gray seamless sheath that stopped at mid-thigh. Matching spikes. A single strand of black pearls. Her hair was wild, face scrubbed clean. Not quite ready to go out on the town. She took my hand, pulling me up the stairs. "Let's tell secrets," she whispered.
The living room was dark, pierced by thin beams from the track lighting mounted on the ceiling. The smoke from my cigarette spiraled up into the light.
She took my coat, slipped it off my shoulders, tossed it on the couch. Sat next to me.
"You don't carry a gun anymore?"
"Julio fixed that. I'm out on bail. I can't afford a fall."
"It doesn't matter. You don't need a gun here- it's safe."
"No man's safe around you."
She smiled a witch's smile- rheostated. "You're mine. I never hurt what's mine. Remember Scotty? Remember why I needed you? I never let anyone hurt what's mine. You wouldn't let anyone hurt me either. I know you."
Yeah, everybody knows me. "We had a deal," I said. "I kept my piece, you kept yours. This is another. Another deal."
"I know. I found him. The compound in Sands Point. It's out on the Island. It's a fortress, soldiers all over the place. Dogs. Electronic stuff. He stays in the basement. Julio said even if you dropped a bomb on the place, the don would be okay."
"Great."
"He can't even talk on the phone. He's too scared. He told Julio this man…Wesley?…is the devil. The real, real devil. He's going mad in his stone basement. He won't watch television- he thinks this man can see him through the screen. Julio, he thinks it's funny- the don would pay a million dollars for Wesley's head, but he doesn't even know what he looks like."
"Julio saw the don?"
"Oh yes. At the compound. Julio's got his own plan. He's going to make Wesley dead. Do what the don couldn't do. Be the boss. He'll never be my boss again."
"So he wins no matter what happens?"
"That's what he thinks. Ugly evil old man. He feels strong when he thinks of the don cowering in his basement, afraid of the dark. But when he thinks of me, his strength is gone. That's why he has to go. He thinks it's my time. Time to free himself But it's his time. I waited long enough."
"He's got to leave that basement sometime." Thinking of Train, safe in his house. With his human polygraph and his bodyguards who made little girls' bodies disappear.
She leaned into me, head against my chest. I'd never seen a black orchid, but then I knew what one smelled like. Her hand went to the inside of my thigh. "I'll tell you a secret now. In the chair."
"Jina…"
"Please."
Such a strange word from a witch. I sat in the big chair. She squirmed into my lap, lips against my neck. I heard every word, like she was talking into my brain.
"The don can't stay in the basement. He'd lose it all. The others, they'd know. And you know what happens then. When you drop the leash, the dog bites. So every Monday night, he meets with his captain. On the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge."
"How do they work it?"
"The captain's boys park on the Manhattan side. The don's boys park on the Queens side. Then they walk across. Soldiers in front, soldiers behind. They do their business and they go back."
"Every Monday night."
"At one in the morning."
She turned sideways so her thigh was across my lap. "I'm a good girl," she whispered in that witchy little girl's voice. Reaching for my crotch. Nobody home.
"Let the beast out," she said. "I know what to do with him."
"Ssssh" I said in the darkness. Patting her just above her hips, stroking her back. "It doesn't matter. There is no beast. You are a good girl, Jina."
Her hand came away from my crotch, pulled gently at a button on my shirt. "Sleepy," she said.
I shifted my weight. Her skirt rode up. A faint trail of light on her stockings. I wrapped my other arm around her, rocked her gently. "It's okay, girl."
She took my thumb into her mouth. Didn't bite it this time, or suck on it. Just left it there, touching it with her tongue. Made a quiet noise in her throat.
I held her for a long time while she slept.