I FELT BETTER when I got up the next morning. Not good enough to bet on a horse, but like something bad was over. It was still early enough to risk using the phone in my office. My phone is just an extension run from the collection of deservedly unknown artists who live downstairs. They don't know about it- neither does Ma Bell. They probably wouldn't care if they did know- they don't pay their own bills.

"Any calls, Mama?"

"No calls. You come in today, okay?"

"Anything wrong?"

"Someone leave note for you."

"So?"

"Talk later," she said, hanging up.

I took a quarter-pound slab of cream cheese out of the refrigerator, dropped it in the bottom of Pansy's bowl, covered it with her dry dog food. "I'll bring you something good from Mama's," I promised her.

MAMA WAS at the table almost before I sat down. She handed me a cheap white business envelope, the top neatly slit open. The note was typed:

Burke: Be by your phone at 11:00 tonight. Don't have anybody take a message. Be there yourself. Wesley

I drew a narrow breath through my nose. Let it out. Again. Feeling the fear-jolts dart around inside my chest, looking for a place to land. I lit a cigarette, holding the note against the match flame, watching it turn to ash. Wishing I'd never seen it.

"You see him?"

"A boy. Street boy. Around five o'clock this morning."

"He say anything?"

"Not see me. Push this under the front door, run away."

"You opened it?"

She bowed. It was okay. I knew why she told me to come in. She never met Wesley, but she knew the name. Every outlaw in the city did.

"Burke? What you do?"

"Answer the phone when it rings," I told her.

I SAT THERE quietly while Mama went to call Immaculata. To tell Max the devil was loose. Wesley never threatened. He was terror. Cold as a heat-seeking missile. He took your money, you got a body. Years ago my compadre Pablo told me about a contract Wesley had on a Puerto Rican dope dealer uptown. The dealer knew the contract was out. He went to a Santeria priestess, begging for voodoo heat against the glacier coming for him. The priestess took the dealer's money, told him Chango, the warrior-god, would protect him. She was an evil old demon, feared throughout the barrio. Her crew was all Marielitos. Zombie-driven murderers. They set fires to watch the flames. Ate the charred flesh. Tattoos on their hands to tell you their specialty. Weapons, drugs, extortion, homicide. The executioner's tattoo was an upside-down heart with an arrow through it. Cupid as a hit man.

The priestess called on her gods. Killed chickens and goats. Sprinkled virgin's blood on a knife. Loosed her death-dogs into the street looking for Wesley.

The dealer hid in her house. Safe.

Blazing summer, but the kids stayed off the streets. Winter always comes.

A UPS driver pulled up outside the apartment house where the priestess kept her temple. Her Marielitos slammed him against his truck, pulling at his clothes. Eyes watched from beneath slitted shades. They took a small box from the driver, laughing when he said someone had to sign for it.

They held the box under an opened fire hydrant, soaking the paper off. One of the Marielitos held the box to his ear, shaking it. Another pulled a butterfly knife from his pocket, flashed it open in the street, grinning. They squatted, watching as the box was slit open. Looked inside. They stopped laughing.

They took the box inside to the priestess. A few minutes later, the dope dealer was thrown into the street, hands cuffed behind his back, duct tape sealing his mouth. He ran from the block.

They whispered about it. In the bodegas, in the after-hours joints, on the streets. They said the priestess found the hand of her executioner inside the box, the tattoo mocking her. Chango was angry. So she found a better sacrifice than a chicken.

The cops found the dealer a few blocks away, a tight group of four slugs in his chest, another neat hole in his forehead. Nobody heard shots.

MAX CAME Into the restaurant. Sat across from me. Made the same gesture of getting a chill through his back he'd made when I'd asked him about being followed. Now we knew. Gold tones shot through his bronze skin- the warrior's blood was up. He showed me a fist, stabbed his heart with his thumb. I wasn't dealing him out of this one. Max tapped my wristwatch. Shrugged. I knew what he meant: why wait? I shook my head, held an imaginary telephone receiver up to my ear. If Wesley wanted to come for me, he wouldn't play games. It had to be something else.

Max folded his arms across his chest. I wanted to wait, he was waiting with me.

I told Mama I'd be back before the call came through, catching Max's eyes. No games- I'd be there.

PANSY TORE into the gallon of meat and vegetables Mama had put together for her. No MSG. I closed my eyes and lay back on the couch. Watching the smoke drift toward the ceiling. Wondering how long it would be before the office got back to its usual filthy state. The way it had been for years until Belle hit it like dirt was her personal enemy.

Wesley. We'd once worshiped the same god. But only Wesley had been true.

It had been a long time.

I WAS BACK at the restaurant before ten. "Max still here," Mama told me. "In the basement."

There's a bank of three pay phones past the tables, just outside the kitchen area. One of them is mine. People call, Mama answers. Tells them I'm not in, takes a message. It's worked like that for years.

The phone rang at ten-thirty. I looked at my watch. It wasn't like Wesley to be cute. I grabbed the phone.

"Yeah?"

"You answer your own phone now?" Candy.

"What?"

"I have to see you."

"I'm busy."

"I know what you're busy with…it's about that. You want me to talk on the phone?"

"I'll call you when I can come."

"Call soon. You don't have a lot of time."

AT ELEVEN the phone rang again I picked it up, saying nothing.

"It's you?"

"It's me," I said to the voice.

"We need to talk."

"Talk."

"Face to face."

"You know where I am."

"Not there."

"Where, then?"

"Take the bridge to the nuthouse on the island. Pull over as soon as you get in sight of the guard booth. Midnight tomorrow. Okay?"

"Want me to wear a bull's-eye on my back?"

"I don't care what you wear, but leave the Chinaman at home."

"What's this about?"

"Business," Wesley said, breaking the connection.