"So she figures he wants money, right? She knows that could be taken care of. But he don't want money, Burke. He wants her to take off her clothes for him while she's on the phone, the freak. He tells her to take the clothes off and say what she's doing into the phone."

The old man's eyes were someplace else. His voice was a harsh prison whisper, but reedy and weak. There was nothing for me to say-I don't do social work.

"She tells me she goes along with it, but she don't really take nothing off, okay?-and the freak screams at her that he knows she's not really doing it and hangs up on her. And that's when she hit the fucking panic button-she believes this guy's really watching her. All the time watching her, and getting ready to move on her kid."

"Why come to me?" I asked him.

"You know these people, Burke. Even when we were in the joint, you were always watching the fucking skinners and the baby-rapers and all. Remember? Remember when I asked you why you talk to them-remember what you said?"

I remembered. I told the old man that I was going to get out of that joint someday and I'd be going back to the streets-if you walk around in the jungle, you have to know the animals.

"Yeah," I told the old man, "I remember."

"So what am I gonna fucking do, ask one of them psychiatrists? You know about freaks-you tell me what to do."

"I don't tell people what to do."

"Then tell me what's going on-tell me what's in his head."

"He isn't watching her, Julio," I told him. "He just figured she wasn't going along, that's all. He's a freak, like you said-you don't ever know why they do something."

"But you know what they're going to do."

"Yeah," I told him, "I know what they're going to do." And it was the truth.