“Darling, I have never heard of this particular freak, believe me-but that doesn’t mean I won’t. But I’d have to hear it long distance, you know? The cesspool is even more slimy than usual, if you can believe that. It’s no place for a sweet young thing like me, honey. There’s people working the place now that make even the freaks look good.”

“I just heard something like that from your friend.”

“You mean Margot? She’s a trip, all right. Comes out here every day and turns down tricks. Can you believe it? Her man’s elevator must not go to the top floor. She’s smart, though-went to college and all. She’s one of the few girls out here I consider my intellectual equal, honey.”

“Does she know what she’s talking about?”

“If you mean about some new scum moving into Times Square, she sure does, baby.”

“Any idea why?”

“Yes, darling. There are people who are into sordid things who are not just businessmen-people who just don’t know how to act, if you catch my drift.”

“Margot said they hate niggers.”

“That’s part of it, I guess. There’s only a few of them now, and they’re Americans. But they all play like they’re foreigners.”

“From where?”

“Think of a country even more vicious to people like me than this one, baby. Think of a country where half the freaks in this country dream of going someday.”

“Michelle, come on. Geography isn’t my strong point.”

“Maybe crime is your strong point-think of a country where they use capital punishment like we use fucking probation.”

“South Africa?”

“Give the man a gold star or a quick blowjob, whichever you’d prefer,” and Michelle went back to giggling.

“How do you know it’s South Africa?”

“Baby, I don’t know. It may be Rhodesia, or whatever they’re calling it today, or something like that. But it’s white men, with this African-soldier rap.”

And I thought of Mama Wong, and the dog with the dark colored spine-a Rhodesian Ridgeback, the kind they breed for tracking down runaway slaves. They can even climb trees. Not supposed to be good pets, but some folks are crazy about them. Michelle saw I was trying to catch the tip of a thought and run it down. She kept quiet, smoking. I thought about all the conversations in the yard when I was inside. The guys with the short bits dreamed about parole-the guys with the telephone-number sentences only thought about escape. And the warrior whites, the neo-Nazis, the cons with race war on their minds at all times… they always talked about Rhodesia like it was the Promised Land. Where they could be themselves.

“Michelle, what do they want?”

“Honey, God only knows, and She’s not telling. But they’re here and making a lot of trouble for some people.”

“What kind of trouble.”

“I can’t tell you. I don’t get up there much anymore. I just hear it around that they’re bad people to deal with, that they don’t know how to play the game, you understand?” I just sat there, looking out the windshield to the street. Michelle looked over at me. “You got some more questions, honey, or did you change your mind about the kiss of life?”

“One more question. Will you ask around about this freak I told you about?”

“Anything you say, Burke. Is there any money in this? I still want to visit Denmark and come back a blonde.” The giggle again.

“I honestly don’t know, Michelle, but there might be. I can give you this twenty on account,” and gave her a piece of last night’s cash.

More giggling. “On account of what?”

I touched my forehead in a half-salute and she slithered out of the car.

I didn’t know which Michelle needed more… an operation on her plumbing or her head, but it didn’t matter to me. Maybe the guys who paid her twenty-five bucks for a car trick weren’t exactly sure what they were buying, but I was. Her gender might be a mystery, but in my world, it’s not who you are, it’s how you stand up.

I FIRED UP the engine. The Plymouth rolled away from the pier and headed north as surely as though it had a radar cone dialed to Sleaze in its nose. I stayed as close to the river as I could on my way uptown, looking for someone I knew. Most of the street signs have long since disappeared once you get into the West Thirties, but I didn’t need them. I stopped for a red light beneath the underpass and made eye contact with a youngish guy wearing an army raincoat and black beret. He walked carefully toward the car, trying for a smile out of his bloated face. I kept looking at him, didn’t move. He opened the raincoat to display what looked like a scabbard with a long handle at the top and looked up at me to see if I was still watching. When he saw that I was, he pulled the handle up to show me part of a gleaming machete blade. Then he put the blade back into the scabbard, closed the coat, tried for a smile again, and held up his open right hand. Flashed it open and closed three times to show me he wanted fifteen bucks for the blade, raising his eyebrows to see if I wanted to buy or to bargain. I reached in my pocket and held up a gold shield-if you got close enough to read it, you’d see it said I was an official peace officer for the ASPCA. He didn’t get any closer but he didn’t run either. Just stepped backward a few feet until he disappeared. Like I said, I don’t need the signposts.

I drove slowly up and down the back streets in the West Forties until I found what I was looking for-a parking place, complete with attendant. The muscular black kid hardly looked up when I parked, didn’t move when I walked over to him. It wasn’t even dark yet and he didn’t have to work for a couple of hours. He was already dressed for work in green leather sneakers with bright yellow soles and gold suede stripes, dull green slacks topped off with a broad-banded green-and-gold short-sleeved T-shirt and green knitted tam with a big yellow button. Heavy leather bands studded with brass were on each wrist. He flexed his biceps when I first approached, but switched to flexing his leg muscles when I looked too much like a cop to suit him.

I took out a twenty, finally catching his full attention, and carefully tore it in half. I held out half the bill to him. “I don’t want anyone to bother my car for a couple of hours, okay?” He took the bill, gave me a quick look, nodded his head. I smiled to tell him there was nothing worth more than twenty bucks in the car, kept smiling at him until he realized I was memorizing his face, and walked off down the block. I didn’t look back-a survivor works with what he’s got. This was costing me a lot of cash already, but I figured there was still a thousand-dollar pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Without a description, I didn’t expect to run into the Cobra on the street, but I knew enough to check certain places first. Once before I was working on a locate and the target was a porno freak, so I dropped into a joint in the Village where I knew the owner. The place was called Leather Pleasure, and the owner was the prime mover in some kind of society where they get together for coffee and consensual torture. I told him my subject was addicted to porn, and the owner told me he ran a specialty house that didn’t cater to the general trade. When I asked him what he was talking about he launched into a long-winded explanation that began somewhere with the Roman Empire, touched on his unique brand of nationalism-“The Germans don’t understand the creativity in pain, they don’t understand that you have to give to get. Only the British genuinely conceptualize human relationships”-and ended up with a generous splat of snobbery. “If you just want porn, you know, like dirty pictures and all that, my friend, you must go to Times Square. Down here, each shop has its own unique character, its own personality, if you will. A client will know he’s in the wrong place in a minute should he come in here without the proper attitude.” Funny place-the owner was this pleasant guy who sounded like a college professor and his merchandise was full of all this violence.