THE MEAT MARKET is a triangular slab hacked out of the West Village with the wide end opening onto the West Side Highway. Before they opened a bigger version in Hunts Point, all the city's butcher shops got their supplies down there. Every morning, way before the traffic stream thickens with citizens bound for City Hall and Wall Street, the streets are clogged with refrigerated trucks. By noon it's pretty quiet. In the evening, some of the city's best steak houses do a booming business. Yuppies can walk there from their million-dollar lofts. When they close, the meat market is home to the army of kids who spend the night selling the one thing they have left. To buy drugs to make them forget what that is.
The shelter is a clapboard shack the kids built out of abandoned packing crates. Scraps of carpeting on the floor, discarded mattresses, sometimes an old broken chair. The street kids drift out of Times Square like vampires being chased by daylight. They made this place for themselves. The cops leave them alone as long as they're back on the street by the time the truckers are gone. Nobody turns tricks in daylight down here. I found more than one runaway there over the years, especially when the winterhawk drops down.
Waiting for Morehouse. An abandoned window fan sat upright in the street, plugged into nothing, its blades rasping as it turned in the night wind.
The reporter's battered Datsun rolled around the corner. Spotted my Plymouth, pulled in behind. We got out to meet him. A dark-skinned man about my height, wearing a khaki jacket over a bulky sweatshirt, unpolished combat boots under a pair of chinos. Subway outfit. He'd been around for a while, but his face was unlined, hair cut close. Morehouse has an athlete's build, rangy. Next to Max, he looked like a stick. He held out his hand, smile flashing. The Island way. He ignored Max- the meeting was with me. The City way.
"This is all on the record, right?" he said. His idea of a joke.
"The Sutton Place killing…you cover it?"
"I write a column, man. I can't cover every breaking story."
"That means no?"
"That means I know the facts, but there's no column in it."
"How about this for a lead? Mafia don's estranged daughter snuffed. The number two written in blood on the wall. Head chopped off the body and stuck between her legs. Building doorman found dead. Cops cover up mob connection."
He blew a sharp breath through his teeth. "This is on the street?"
"Not yet."
"So you spoke to the cops. Or the killer."
"I don't just know how it went down, I know why. Want to trade?"
"Sure. What do you want?"
"Torenelli. He's holed up. And he's working with the cops. One of them knows where he is. Probably brass."
"So?"
"That's what I want to know."
"This is deep water, man. Deep and dark."
"Pretend you're back in Haiti." Morehouse had won a journalism award for his coverage of the insanity on that island after Baby Doc fled.
"I have to live here."
"It's your choice." I shrugged.
"What do I get?"
"You get the inside story. The why of it all. It wasn't a random murder and it wasn't a sex-freak mob. There's a job war coming down."
"Drugs?"
"No."
"What, then?"
"We have a deal?"
"Sure."
"You first."
"That isn't the way it works, Burke. I give you what I got, you give me what you got. Same time, no taking turns."
"Except you got nothing. Nothing now. You get what I want, let me know, and we'll trade. Deal?"
"You at the same number?"
I nodded.
"Sure," he said, watching the disconnected fan spinning in the street.