The next thing you do is run up some credit accounts. It doesn’t take much-most of the charge card companies will issue one of their pieces of magic plastic to someone on welfare. Then you pay the bills, not exactly on time but close enough. When a cop stops you, there’s nothing like the American Express Gold to make him think you’re a solid citizen, especially if you’re outside New York.

People used to use post office boxes as a mail drop, but that’s out of fashion now. Any process server can get the Post Office to disclose the home address of anyone who took out a box if he says he has no other way to serve legal papers. Anyway, all anyone has to do is watch who comes to the box and follow them home. I work mine a bit differently. The return address I put on any correspondence is a box, all right, but no mail ever goes there. As soon as I opened it (using another name and an address that would be somewhere in the East River if it existed), I put in a change-of-address card that got my mail forwarded to a place in Jersey City. The guy there sends it on to a warehouse that Mama Wong owns, although her name doesn’t appear on the incorporation papers. They put all my mail in this old battered desk in the back, and Max the Silent picks it up once every couple of weeks or so. Then he gives it to me or to Mama. The delivery isn’t fast, but I don’t get any personal mail anyway. If anyone came around the warehouse asking questions, they’d be told that mail comes there for me regularly and they just as regularly throw it in the garbage. If the investigator asked why they didn’t notify the post office that I don’t live there, he’d get either a lot of broken English laced with Cantonese or an unbroken stream of hostility, depending on his attitude. But no information. The guys who work there would never rat on Mama Wong-it wouldn’t be worth it to them. Anyway, Mama doesn’t have my address.

So Wilson could be using a post office box to pick up VA checks, if he was getting any. That would be the easiest way. You’d think the government wouldn’t allow you to get checks at a post office box, but you’d be wrong. First of all, in New York a lot of folks on welfare and social security get their checks at the post office because their own apartment mailboxes are considered withdrawal windows by the local junkies. Secondly, the VA doesn’t want to know who’s getting the checks-it would just depress them. Remember that Son of Sam freako who killed all those women a while back before the cops stumbled onto him? Well, there’s a contract out on him in prison, I heard. Not because the cons hate a sex offender-that doesn’t happen anymore-but because some reporter found out he was getting a VA disability check every month while doing about seven life sentences. That snapped out the public, and a later investigation revealed there were literally thousands of prisoners getting checks while they did time. Some of the cons noted the media explosion about this, and figured Son of Sam was to blame, so there’s a lot of hostility. (They should save their energies for scamming the parole board-no politician is going to vote to take away a government benefit merely because the recipient is locked up. It would hit too close to home.)

If Wilson was using a box anywhere between lower Manhattan and the Village, I could find him sooner or later if I knew what the hell he looked like. Flood wouldn’t be much help there either. I halfheartedly checked through my resume file (from applicants for mercenary work), but none of them had a picture attached and none of them sounded or smelled sufficiently like my man to make me think we’d get lucky there.

Pansy trotted downstairs while I was still going through the files, and I put together some breakfast for her. Then I went to the phone, checked to be sure the hippies hadn’t become early risers in my absence, and dialed the number Flood gave me.

“Yoga School.”

“Is that you, Flood?”

“Yes, what’s happening?”

“Some things-I can’t talk long on this phone. You know where the Public Library is, on Forty-second Street?”

“Yes.”

“Meet you inside the doors, all the way to the right, at about ten o’clock, tomorrow morning, okay? The doors off Fifth Avenue, with the lions?”

“I know where it is.”

“Okay, listen, you have a pair of white vinyl boots, like go-go dancers wear?”

“Burke! Are you crazy? What would I want with things like that?”

“For the disguise.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ll explain when I see you, Flood. At ten, right?”

I could almost hear the exasperation in her voice but she kept it under control and just said, “Right.”

AFTER I FINISHED talking to Flood, I spent some time just sitting by the open back door looking out toward the river with Pansy next to me, explaining the whole mess to her. Part of me just wanted to stay where I was, where it was safe. But I had already thrown too many pebbles into the pool for that. If I just wouldn’t get involved with any other people-if I could just live like the Mole. But it’s not too good to start thinking like that. It makes you crazy. Scared is okay-crazy is dangerous.

Some people get so scared of being scared that they go crazy from the fear-I saw a lot of that in prison. When I was only about ten years old there was this dog the Boss Man kept in the dormitory-a fox terrier named Pepper. He kept Pepper for the rats in the place. Pepper was a lot better than some miserable cat-he really liked rumbling with a juicy rat about half his own size-and he knew his work. Pepper would just kill the rats-he didn’t play around with them. It was his job.

I never would have had the guts to run away from that joint except that Pepper went with me. I ended up by the same docks I use now. Sitting there, scared of everything in the whole world, but not of the waterfront rats-I had Pepper with me for that. I stayed out for almost six months until some cop picked me up because he thought I should have been in school. I could have gotten away but I didn’t want to leave Pepper.

I thought they would put us both back in the same joint, but they didn’t. They put me in some place upstate-the judge said I was incorrigible, and I didn’t have any family. She was a nice judge, I guess. She asked me if I wanted to say anything and I asked her if I could have Pepper with me and she looked sort of sad for a minute-then she told me that there would be another dog where they were sending me. She was a liar, and I haven’t trusted a judge or a social worker since then. I hoped they put Pepper someplace where there were rats, so he could do his work. There were plenty of them where they sent me.

I went into the side room, found a good dark conservative suit, a dark blue shirt, and a black knit tie. I set Pansy up for the day and went off to the docks to find Michelle. For once it didn’t take long-she was in the back booth at the Hungry Heart, sipping some evil-looking potion and eating a rare steak with some cottage cheese. I walked right on through to the back, feeling the looks and giving off businessman vibes like I was Michelle’s date. No problems-I sat down and a waiter appeared, looking at Michelle to see if I was trouble for her. She extended her hand like a bloody countess, smiled, and the waiter withdrew. Nobody came there for the food.

“Michelle, can you do a phone job for me?”

“Starting today?”

“In a few hours.”

“Honey, it’s a known fact that I give the best phone in all New York. But I suspect this has nothing to do with someone’s love life, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re going to tell me more?”

“When we get there,” I said.

“So mysterious, Burke. Is this a paying customer?”

“How much do you want?”

“Now don’t be like that, baby. I’m not like that. If you’re on a budget, just say so. If this is a money-maker for you, I should get something for the time my money-maker’s out of action, yes?”