He said, “Your name is Matt, right?” I allowed that it was. “You like that story tonight?”

“It was interesting,” I said.

“You wanna hear an interesting story? I heard a story about a man uptown with a broken face and two broken legs. That’s some story, man.”

I felt a chill. The gun was in my dresser drawer, all rolled up in a pair of socks. The knives were in the same drawer.

He said, “You got some pair of balls, man. You got cojones, you know what I mean?” He cupped his groin with one hand like a baseball player adjusting his jock. “All the same,” he said, “You don’ wanna look for trouble.”

“What are you talking about?”

He spread his hands. “What do I know? I’m Western Union, man. I bring the message, tha’s all I do. Some chick gets herself iced in a hotel, man, is one thing, but who her friends are is another. Is not important, you know?”

“Who’s the message from?”

He just looked at me.

“How’d you know to find me at the meeting?”

“Followed you in, followed you out.” He chuckled. “That maricón with the broken legs, that was too much, man. That was too much.”

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Tuesday was largely devoted to a game of Follow the Fur.

It started in that state that lies somewhere between dreaming and full consciousness. I’d awakened from a dream and dozed off again, and I found myself running a mental videotape of my meeting with Kim at Armstrong’s. I began with a false memory, seeing her as she must have been when she arrived on the bus from Chicago, a cheap suitcase in one hand, a denim jacket tight on her shoulders. Then she was sitting at my table, her hand at her throat, light glinting off her ring while she toyed with the clasp at the throat of her fur jacket. She was telling me that it was ranch mink but she’d trade it for the denim jacket she’d come to town in.

The whole sequence played itself off and my mind moved on to something else. I was back in that alley in Harlem, except now my assailant had help. Royal Waldron and the messenger from the night before were flanking him on either side. The conscious part of my mind tried to get them the hell out of there, perhaps to even the odds a little, and then a realization screamed at me and I tossed my legs over the side of my bed and sat up, the dream images all scurrying off into the corners of the mind where they live.

It was a different jacket.