Free False Allegations by Andrew Vachss Page B

guy on his right nodded approval.
    Asshole. I got back in the car, lit a cigarette. Max rapped the dashboard. I leaned forward, caught his eyes. Put my inside wrists together, clapped my hands, making a “yap yap” gesture. I tapped my watch, held up my hand, fingers spread. Meaning: another five minutes, they’ll get tired of the game and move the truck— no big deal. Max started to get out of the car. I held my palm out like a traffic cop. No— it wasn’t worth it.
    “He wants to tell those guys to get a move on?” Clarence asked me.
    “Yeah,” I said. “But he wouldn’t tell them nicely and I don’t want trouble.”
    “I tell them, mahn,” Clarence muttered, his hand snaking under his jacket.
    “Chill,” I told him. “They’re just profiling. Give ‘em a minute, they’ll move the truck. Nothing to it.”
    Horns honked behind us. I smoked my cigarette. A red–faced fat slob knocked on my window. I hit the switch to let it down— his sweat–smell flooded in.
    “What’s the fucking problem?” the slob wanted to know. His face looked like an overripe muskmelon, about to burst from the heat.
    “There’s no room to get by. The truckers said they’d move out the way in a minute. We’re just waiting.”
    “Well, I’m not,” Fatso snarled, walking over to the guys on the loading dock.
    He came back with the three truckers. All screaming at each other, lots of fingers being pointed. And nothing moving. Horns really blasting now— a lot of them, it sounded like. Someone was going to do something stupid, guaranteed.
    Max hit the switch and his window came down. One dark, deep–veined hand extended out. He grabbed the mirror on the truck and twisted. There was a crack and the mirror came free in his hand. Max held the mirror in one hand high above the car. As soon as he was sure the truckers saw it, he flipped it over the top of the Rover in their direction, flicked the gear shift into first, let out the clutch and pulled away. Slow.
    By the time we got over to Canal, Clarence had calmed down a bit.
     
     
    W e were heading up First Avenue, pointed toward Sutton Place, the address Kite had given me. “I’ll ring every fifteen minutes or so,” I told Clarence, holding up the cell phone. “Don’t answer it. Don’t do anything. A half hour goes by and it doesn’t ring, call this number and ask to speak to me,” I said, handing him Kite’s card. “You don’t get an answer, or they won’t put me on the phone, come on up. Both of you.”
    “Got it, mahn.”
    “The Prof looked it over?” I asked him.
    “My father says it is Old Money, mahn. Very exclusive. No funny stuff in that place, that is for sure.”
    “And he’s in the penthouse?”
    “Yes. It has a separate elevator, the last one in the row.”
    “Security?”
    “My father did not go up, mahn. But even when they had to throw him out of the lobby— he had his shoeshine kit— they only had a couple of old men with uniforms. No professionals, not on the ground floor, anyway. If he has muscle, it will be inside his apartment, I am sure.”
    When we pulled up front, Clarence was out the door before I was, going over his beloved Rover with a chamois cloth, checking for scratches.
    Max just sat there, waiting.
     
     
    I told the deskman my name. He didn’t bother to pick up the phone, just pointed at an elevator standing open at the end of a four–car row.
    At the top of its ride, the elevator car opened inside a small foyer painted a robin’s–egg blue. It was all clean–cut lines in the wood, stark and sharp–edged, without a scrap of furniture. On the far side of the foyer was a narrow opening covered top to bottom with wrought–iron grillwork— it looked like the door to an upscale prison cell. As I walked closer, a dark shape materialized behind the grille. A woman, thick–bodied but curvy, with the kind of pinched–in waist that you can’t get from genetics. Another step and I could see she had jet–black hair,