Pansy growled again, this time in anticipation. "Pansy, jump!" I barked at her, and she lay down in the back seat without another sound.

I got out of the car and lit a cigarette-Julio wouldn't call me out to Brooklyn just to give Pansy some cheese.

"Burke, an old friend of mine comes to me last week. He says this freak is doing something to his daughter, making her crazy-scared all the time. And he don't know what to do. He tries to talk to her and she won't tell him what's wrong. And the daughter-she's married to a citizen, you know? Nice guy, treats her good and everything. He earns good, but he's not one of us. We can't bring him in on this."

I just watched the old man. He was so shook he was trembling. Julio had killed two shooters in a gunfight just before he went to prison and he was standup all the way. This had to be bad. I let him talk, saying nothing.

"So I talk to her-Gina. She won't tell me neither, but I just sit and we talk about things like when she was a little girl and I used to let her drink some of my espresso when she came into the club with her father-stuff like that. And then I notice that she won't let this kid of hers out of her sight. The little girl, she wants to go out in the yard and play and Gina says no. And it's a beautiful day out, you understand? They got a fence around the house, she can watch the kid from the kitchen-but she's not letting her out of her sight. So then I ask her, Is it something about the kid?

"And then she starts to cry, right in front of me and the kid too. She shows me this brown envelope that came in the mail for her. It's got all newspaper stories of kids that got killed by drunk drivers, kids that got snatched, missing kids…all that kind of shit."

"So what?" I ask her. What's this got to do with your kid? And she tells me that this stuff comes in the mail for weeks, okay? And then this animale calls her on the phone. He tells her that he did a couple of these kids himself, you understand what I'm saying?-he snatches the kids himself and all. And her kid is going to be next if she don't do what he wants.