Andrew Vachss - Flood

“Yes, that’s why I came to you in the first place. I heard that you were a recruiter for one of the mercenary armies, that people who wanted to go overseas and fight had to be cleared by you first.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“There’s a bar in Jersey City, just on the other side of the river, a really weird place. It looks like a roadhouse in West Virginia or something. They play country-and-western music up front and I know they have all kinds of strange meetings in the back rooms.”

“Strange meetings? Like dope deals, guns, what?”

“No-like the KKK or the American Nazi Party.”

“Oh-that kind of strange.”

“Does that scare you?”

“Yes and no,” I said, and it was the truth. The freaks individually don’t scare me-they’re usually terminal inadequates. But the idea scares the hell out of me. It’s unnatural, you know what I mean? Freaks are supposed to stay by themselves-in furnished rooms, with their picture books and inflatable plastic dolls. We’re in bad shape when they start forming fucking affinity groups. “But I have done business with them in the past. I know a few of them.”

“What kind of business could you do with people like that?”

“Purely professional, nothing personal,” I said. No point telling her about the genuine recordings of Hitler’s speeches I sold them. Real expensive, exclusive stuff, pirated out of the bunker where Adolf the Asshole waited for his final reward. Only one other like it in the whole world, and that (of course) was in the archives of a neo-Nazi party in West Germany. Yeah, I had it on the best authority from an old Nazi who escaped to Argentina, where he’s recruiting mercenaries to attack Israel. I couldn’t sell the defectives on that particular venture, but they lapped up the tapes and paid the going rate. They apologized for not being able to understand German, (although one of them told me he was studying it by correspondence) but they said they had the exact translation of Adolf’s final speeches which they had purchased from some other enterprising businessman. What the hell-Yiddish sounds a lot like German anyway, and the six hours of Simon Wiesenthal’s address to the German crowds at a Holocaust memorial rally only cost me twenty bucks. A little reel-to-reel work, some Iron Cross lettering, a swastika or two, and I was ahead well over two grand. I gave them a discount price, of course, because after all; they were true believers. But Flood would never understand what a man has to do to make a living.

She gave me her shrug. “Like the professional recruiting business you do with mercenaries?” Maybe she did understand.

“Yeah, exactly like that. What about that bar?”

“I went there a few times and listened. Your name came up more than once.”

“Just about the mercenary scam?” There was no point in euphemisms anymore.

“Yes, nothing else. You’re quite a legendary figure to those people, Mr. Burke.”

“Yeah-to others too. I’m surprised you didn’t use your famous interrogation tactics on them to get more information.”

Another shrug. “I guess I did with one of them. He told me he had your telephone number in his car. I went out to the parking lot with him to get it and he tried to be stupid.”

“What happened?”

“I left him there.”

“Alive?”

“Certainly he was alive-do you think I walk around murdering people?”

“That action in the alley when you grabbed that kid’s family jewels is liable to stay on my mind for a while.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s not your everyday act, right? Would you really have given the kid the chop?”

“That’s not important. It was important that the others understood they had to move, had to obey. It took away their will to fight any more.”

“It almost took away my will to hold on to my lunch. Would you really have done it?”

“Do you remember what the one with the bushy hair said he was going to do to me? Do you think he was just trying to frighten me?”

“He was trying to frighten you.” I paused, recreating the scene in the alley. “But he would have done it, that’s right.”

“So I would have done it-but only because I threatened to do it and those are promises you must always keep. I would rather have just killed him.”

“Yeah, what the hell, a few more killings shouldn’t be any big deal.”

“Why do you try to sound sarcastic, Mr. Burke? I was willing to kill to live, not for the pleasure of it. You killed those three vermin just to kill them. They couldn’t have come after us.”

That knocked me over. “What? I didn’t kill anybody. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Those people we put into that room-you fired the gun so many times, right at them. You must have killed them.”

And that started me laughing. I must have kept laughing for a while, because the next thing I remember was Flood holding the lower part of my face in one hand and pressing the other against my stomach. I looked up at her-she was only inches away. She asked, “Okay now?” and I let out a breath and tried to explain.

“I was just laughing because… well, it’s not important. But I didn’t kill anybody in that room. The pistol was full of a special mixture a friend makes up for me. Look,” I said, and pulled out the.22 and the spare clip. “Here’s the gun I used, and here’s the bullets.” I popped them out of the clip one at a time and showed her the tiny mini-flares, the teargas cartridges, and the flat-faced slugs with the birdshot inside. Flood opened her mouth slightly in concentration as I explained.

“Watch. First you use a couple of the mini-flares so it looks like rockets are going off inside the room, then some birdshot for the stinging effect, which they think is shrapnel. They usually hit the floor and use up all their air holding their breath or screaming. Then you fire some teargas to start them choking and then some more mini-flares and birdshot to keep them down. It turns any closed space into hell, but it’s all in the mind-you can’t die from it. I wouldn’t kill anybody like that-that’s not my game. You couldn’t kill anybody with this gun anyway, loaded the way it is, even if you blasted them right in the face. It’s just to keep people where they are for a while, that’s all.”

Flood fingered the cartridges carefully, then smiled. “You’re just a man of peace, aren’t you, Mr. Burke?”

“That’s me. I’d have to be damn scared to kill anyone-it’s not worth it. I survive. I’m not looking for a whole lot more.”

“Was the other gun loaded with this stuff too?”

“No. With.38 specials-two wad-cutters, two hollow points, and one high-pressure load.”

Flood gave me that chuckle again. Maybe she thought she had me figured out, but I was way ahead of her. I noticed her breasts only bounced when she chuckled, not when she shrugged-very appropriate.

“I have to start looking,” I said.

“Is it safe for you?”

“I guess so. But I need some sleep first and to get a few things from my office-make a few calls-you know.”

“I know.” Flood shifted out of that damn lotus position so she was sitting next to me. She reached out that death-dealer of a hand and brushed my cheek with the back of it. I knew it was time to go.

THE OUTSIDE OF Flood’s studio was deserted, no action in the halls. I rang for the freight elevator and went to the stairs when I heard it start to move. Checked the elevator entrance, nobody around. The Plymouth was sitting untouched where I’d left it. I didn’t expect anything else-any fool who tried to take off the tires would have to be wearing razor-proof gloves, for openers.

I got back to the office just as the sun was breaking over the Hudson. A few solitary men were standing on the piers with fishing tackle, setting up for the day. The fish in the Hudson aren’t much to look at, never grow too big or have bright colors. But the guys who fish down there tell me they put up a hell of a fight. I figured that any fish who could survive the Hudson River would have to be tough, like a dog raised in the pound. Or a kid raised by the State.