Most of the people who live here travel underground to get anywhere—some subway stops have longer distances between them, that’s all. Now, Staten Island, that’s an island. But it doesn’t get tourists. Neither does the part of the Bronx where the Mole lives. Everything’s the opposite of Manhattan—the subway goes there all right, but it rolls outdoors, on elevated tracks. It’s the Mole who lives underground. I knew if Michelle ever found out I’d made the ride without asking her to come along, she’d go ICBM on me. I also knew the Mole wouldn’t talk. Thing is, he wouldn’t lie, either, not to his woman. But I needed him for what I had to have, so I risked it. I celled him from Bruckner Boulevard, heard him pick up. I knew he wouldn’t speak until he heard a voice, so I asked, “Okay to come by now?” “Yes.” I thumbed the cell into lifelessness and concentrated on negotiating my way through Hunts Point until I got to the junkyard. Passed by burned-out buildings, so far gone that the gang graffiti had faded—turf not worth claiming.
