"I'm all right, Mama."

"I get him here. You call later, okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay," I told her.

"That's a beauty, isn't it?" Bondi whispered, looking at my face under the gentle reflected light from one of the baby spots. I was lying on her couch, shoes off, a pillow under my neck, darkness just coming outside through the closed blinds of her showplace window.

"It's okay," I told her. "Not too bad."

"Ah, a tough boy you are, huh? You let them Xaray it?"

"I didn't go to the hospital. It was a punch, that's all. An amateur punch."

"What happened to the other guy?"

I watched her face to see if she knew something, but her grin was innocent- impish, just playing. "It's all done," I said. "Finished. Don't worry about it."

"She called here. Heather...that big fat woman I told you about."

"So?"

She leaned over me, eyes narrowing in concentration, working hard to make sense out of whatever she was going to say. "She said there was money for me. A...bonus, like. What I needed, I mean, what I needed to do, I had to get you to meet with her."

"Meet with her where?"

"Anywhere, luv, that's what she said. Said it just like that, too. But it had to be soon."

"Soon?"

"Tomorrow," she said softly.

"And how much is your...bonus?"

"Five thousand, she said. In cash. And Burke..."

"What?"

"She said she'd give it to you. For me, I mean. She'll give it to you when you meet with her."

"So she knows- "

"Oh I don't know what that damn witch knows!" Bondi snapped at me. "I'm not a player, am I? Never a player. Me, I'm always the goddamned game."

"Why you biting at me, girl? This isn't mine, and you know it."

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I know it's not you. It's not even just...men, now. Not with...her in it. I wish I'd never started with that miserable bastard."

"The guy- "

"Yes! The man across the street," she said, voice hardening. "That's right. Him."

I closed my eyes, drifting with her rhythm. "How're you supposed to tell her?"

"She's going to call. At eight tonight. I told her I'd reach out for you. But I couldn't be sure if you'd- "

"It's all right, Bondi. Tell her I'll do it, okay?" Then I told her about a certain park bench.

It was eight on the nose when the phone rang. Bondi left the couch, punched one of the lines on the phone console.

"Yes?"

"Yeah, I did that."

"Tomorrow, then. Seven in the morning."

"Yes, in the morning- that's what he said."

"I don't know, do I? He just said seven in the morning, that's all."

Then she told the voice I couldn't hear where to come.

"Maybe cats have the right idea," Bondi said, her face so close to mine it was out of focus. In her bedroom, the queenasized bed walled in with suitcases, all packed and ready.

"About what?"

"About licking their wounds," she purred, coming close, her pouty breasts brushing my chest, tongue flicking across my cheek where Heather had hooked me.

"Bad idea," I said, wincing from the little stab of pain.

"No," she whispered. "Just a bad place." She licked my stomach. Gentle, tipaofatheatongue licks. "See?" she said softly.

"I'm leaving tomorrow, honey," she said later. "I hate this place. I hate this life. I'm going home."

"The man across the street- "

"- doesn't matter to me anymore. It was a bad idea. Maybe just someone else using me the way they always do, I don't know. But if you want to mail the money to me- her money, what she's going to give you tomorrow- I'll leave you my address at home. If you..."

"I want it anyway," I told her, the words coming so smoothly out of my mouth that I didn't stop to think if they were true. But they bought me a smile, her small white teeth flashing in the darkness.

The phone rang, a sharp intrusion. My eyes blinked open. The digital clock on the nightstand said 12:44.

"It's him," she said, wide awake, not moving.

"So fucking what?" I asked her. "Guess he's gonna miss his little show for once."

The phone rang again. Three times more. Then it stopped.

"Ah, it's my fat bum he wants tonight," Bondi said, an ugly edge on her voice. "I never liked that one."

"What difference- ?"

"I know how I can do it," she said, suddenly sitting up in the bed. "I know what would square it. How I can get him. Right now."

"Bondi..."

"Will you help me, honey?"

"I'm not going over- "

"No," she said softly, her lips to my ear. "I know a better way. Please..."

When the miniablinds opened a few minutes later, whoever was watching saw Bondi's last performance. She put everything she had into it, doing it all.

Only this time, she had a coastar.

"You pick up the stuff?" I said into the cellular. It was about fourathirty in the morning. The city was still dark through the windshield of the Plymouth as I worked the West Side Highway downtown.

"Made the call, got it all," the Prof came back. "Heavy package too. When you need it?"

"Couple of hours, if that's okay. I need something else too: a triangle. At the park bench. Can you do it?"

"I can do two, that's always true. But has the third heard?"

"I can do that part, I think."

"What time does it rhyme, bro?"

"I made it for seven. Got to shade it at least a half hour."

"How many for breakfast?"

"One. Better be one. Any more than that, it's a red zone, got it?"

"Dead and buried, Schoolboy. What's the rules? Got to keep hands showing, what?"

"It's not like that. Just watch, okay?"

"Yeah. One person you said. Looks like....what?"

"A woman. Big woman. And she'll be limping."

I got hold of Mama, wondering for the thousandth time if she ever slept. And where. She said she'd get Max to the spot in plenty of time. The Mongolian would eyeball Clarence and the Prof first, then he'd fit himself into the triangle.

Pansy was glad to see me. And overjoyed at the cold filet mignon Bondi insisted I take from her refrigerator. "I'm not one to let good food go to waste, honey. And when he comes over here, he's not gonna find anything except the bare walls, I promise you. And I plan to leave him a little something there too," she said grimly, an uncapped red lipstick in her right hand.

It didn't take us long to say goodbye. Sharing secrets doesn't always make you close.

I took a quick shower, changed my clothes, checked with Mama to make sure Max got the message. Almost six by then. Time to start my walk.

Battery Park is a pocket of green at the very southern tip of Manhattan, on the far side of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. The bench we always use faces out toward the Hudson River. There's a couple of ways to get to it, but no cover for the approach. And watching is real easy down here. At seven in the morning, you still got joggers and bikers and lurkers and drunks and wrongly discharged mental patients and drug dealers and the occasional tourist killing time until they open the ferry to the Statue of Liberty- no way to tell who's who no matter how suspicious you might be.

I was in place by six fortyafive. Had the bench to myself, so I didn't have to pull any of the various disgusting moves in my considerable repertoire to clear the space. I thought Clarence and the Prof would be working their shoeshine routine, but I couldn't spot either of them. Even if someone else could, they wouldn't see hardware. Clarence isn't just fast; he's magic. One second you see his hand, the next, it's full of nineamillimeter heat- like the pistol just materialized.

Max was easier. He was standing right by the water's edge, performing a slowamotion kata, a lengthy one that looked like t'ai chi if you didn't know much about it. Passersby watched him with mild curiosity- the routine wasn't interesting enough to make them stop and didn't look threatening enough to make them hurry past.

On the back of one of the other benches, graffitiasplattered in bright yellow: SCHIZOPHRENICS ARE NEVER ALONE!

She came up the path a couple of minutes before seven, gimping along slow but steady, a black walking stick in her left hand and a white leather purse that looked like a horse's feedbag slung over the opposite shoulder. She was wearing a hotapink sweatsuit, her body back in harness underneath. Her breasts jutted like heavy weapons, not a trace of jiggle anywhere. She halted a few feet from me, tentative, making sure she caught my eye. I nodded, not greeting her, just acknowledging her presence. She came over to the bench, raised her pencilaline black eyebrows. I took a deliberate glance at a spot next to me, still not talking.

She turned her back to me and sat down buttafirst, the way you get into a lowariding sports car. Then she unslung the purse, put it gently on the wood bench between us.

"That's yours," she said.

"For what?"

"For nothing. I mean, not for doing anything. It's an apology, that's all. Go ahead, take a look."

"I don't have Xaray eyes," I said. "And I don't open strange packages myself."

She nodded as if that made sense. Reached down and pulled the zipper on the bag, using two hands to hold it wide open, like she was spreading the jaws of a giant clam. I looked inside. Banded cash. A lot of it.

"Twentyafive thousand dollars," she said, looking at her hands in her lap. A big diamond glittered on her left hand. An engagement ring? "Hundredadollar bills," she said. "Used bills, no consecutive serial numbers."

"That's a big apology."

"I fucked up big time. Twenty of it's for you, five for the whore."

"The whore?"

"You know who I mean. Bondi, whatever her name is."

"And she's a whore?"

Her orange eyes caught the early morning light. "I did a stupid thing, but I'm not stupid," she said. "The research wasn't wrong, I was."

"So...?"