Free The Lure by Felice Picano

He couldn’t get it out of his mind: these were the last clothes Monica had worn.
    Vega chugalugged the rest of the beer. “Let’s go.”
    “You’re not serious?”
    “Why not?” Vega was sincerely surprised.
    “Look at me.”
    “I’m looking. Man, you look so fucking hot those queens are going to trip all over themselves. Get something straight, Professor, I don’t know what kind of crap the Fisherman laid on you, but your job with Whisper is to look as pretty as you can. That’s all. Don’t act smart. Don’t talk to anyone more than you have to. Don’t try to be a hero. Just keep quiet, even mysterious. Hide everything you can about yourself. Stand behind that bar and look pretty. That’s all we need you for: the wrapping. You’re the bait for the big motherfucking fish to bite on. You got that?” he asked, patting Noel on one cheek with a dirty fingertip.
    “That’s what Loomis said, but—”
    “But nothing. You fuck up on this, you talk too much, and you are D-E-A-D, man. Let’s go. I don’t want to be late for work.”
    They hailed a cab and Vega directed the driver to West Street. Noel had felt funny entering the lobby dressed so uncharacteristically, but no one else seemed to notice: not the doorman, not the teenaged girls who lived on the next floor, not even the cabby.
    “We’re late, so I won’t have the chance to run you up and down the way I wanted to, showing you off,” Vega said in the cab, lighting a hand-rolled cigarette.
    “Is that grass?” Noel asked.
    “Sure. You want some?”
    “No. But…the driver and all.”
    Vega tapped the window that separated them from the cabby. The driver’s face looked back at them. “What you want?”
    “You mind if we smoke some reefer, man?”
    “Hell, no, bro.” The driver smiled. “I got ripped myself.”
    “Good deal,” Vega said, inhaling deeply. “Maybe you ought to have a few tokes, too, man. You’re a little nervous. You afraid of dying young?”
    Noel declined the grass. “You were saying? Showing me off?”
    “Going to have to do that tomorrow. I want people to really take a look at you. They will at the bar. But some folks don’t go into bars. I want everyone to see you. Everyone. So, tomorrow or the day after, we’re going to take us a little stroll. You wear those same pants, hear? We’ll go from Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street to Christopher Street, check in a few places there, then down to the pier. Everyone cruises Christopher.”
    “Looking for sex?”
    “Whatever,” Vega said, then seemed to come alert. “That’s a word you didn’t know, right?”
    “I wasn’t sure.”
    “Any other words you hear you’re not sure of, you ask me. But not in company, you hear?”
    They were stopped at a light. Noel was annoyed with Vega. “You don’t like me, do you?” he asked.
    Vega puffed on the joint, face averted to look out the cab window so that his words came out low, almost muffled.
    “I don’t like or dislike you, man.”
    “Why are you treating me like an idiot then?”
    “You want to stay alive? Then you listen to me. Hear?”
    “Or is it that I’m not a cop?” Noel asked, dropping his voice with the last word so it was barely audible. “Is that it?”
    “Something like that,” Vega admitted.
    “Well, don’t worry about that. I’m a professional, Mr. Vega. Maybe not in your line, but in my own. I can take care of myself. Evidently the Fisherman knows what he’s doing. No?”
    “Maybe,” Vega said, not sounding convinced. “Right here,” he said in a louder voice, tapping the guard window between them and the driver.
    Noel let Vega pay for the ride and hassle with the cabby about a receipt—no doubt later reimbursed by the Police Department. Meanwhile, he stared at the bar and its environs.
    The Grip was located at one end of a block that faced the elevated West Side Highway and the scores of huge moving vans parked under the closed road, a single-story building with stucco up to a series of