Andrew Vachss - Flood

I buttoned up the coat to show Max I was leaving, and he glided out into the front area to make sure nobody was around. Max is a bonafide member of the warrior class-he doesn’t need combat to prove what he is. A lot of clowns who spend half their time slobbering about “respect” should see how the rest of the world treats Max.

As I pulled out of the garage, Max gestured that I should let him know if things got difficult. Implicit in his gesture was the belief that almost anything was too difficult for me to do alone.

THE DRIVE OVER to Mama’s was uneventful. The Plymouth was running smooth as a turbine. I checked the tape recorder hidden inside the dash to be sure it was working, then switched over to some cassette music. Charley Musselwhite’s version of “Stranger in a Strange Land” came back at me through the four speakers. He was a perfectionist once, but he’d left his best efforts in Chicago a dozen years ago-I don’t play any of his latest stuff. Too bad you can’t keep people’s best performances on tape cassettes like you can music. It wouldn’t matter in my case, though-I haven’t had my best shot yet, I hope.

I parked next to the dumpster in Mama Wong’s alley. It’s perfectly legal to park there, but nobody does. There’s some kind of Chinese writing on the wall, courtesy of Max the Silent. I don’t know what it means, but nobody parks there. I knocked twice on the steel door to the back of the restaurant, heard the peephole slide back, and one of Mama’s alleged cooks let me in. Mama was sitting at her tiny black-lacquered desk, sipping a cup of tea and writing in her ledger book. I guess a lot of people would like to take a look at that book-I guess a lot of people would like to be rich, happy, successful, famous, secure, and healthy too. They’ve got about the same chance. Mama greeted me with her usual blend of Far Eastern subtlety and politeness.

“Burke, why you wearing that silly hat?”

“It’s a disguise, Mama. I’m working on a case.”

“Not so good disguise, Burke. You still look like European.” (Mama likes to pretend all Occidentals look alike to her.)

“Max said you got a phone call for me?”

“Burke, you only one that can talk to Max except for me. Max like you. Max say that you are a man of honor. How come he say that?”

“Who knows why Max says anything?” (Meaning: That is between Max and me-he may work for you but he and I are a separate thing. Mama knows this but never stops trying. She thinks all secrets are dangerous except her own.)

“Burke, you get phone call from same man. James, he say. I tell you before, this man not good, okay?”

“What did he say this time?”

“He say I better tell you to call him. That this mean good money for you and you be mad at me if I don’t tell you.”

“Did he scare you, Mama?”

“Oh yes, very frightened. Many people killed over the telephone, right?” (Meaning: The phone number I give people rings in Mama’s restaurant, but the actual instrument is located in the back of the warehouse, with the bell disconnected. It’s hooked up to a diverter, which bounces the signal to the junkyard’s pay phone in Corona, where another diverter picks it up and rolls it back to the pay phone in the kitchen. Bribing a phone company employee will eventually get you the address of the warehouse, but that’s as close as you’d get. And going there with threats for Mama Wong would be fatal.)

“He leave a number, Mama?”

“Same number as last time. He say you can call him between six and seven tonight.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“No, nothing else. You want something to eat, some hot-and-sour soup?”

“You got it prepared already?”

“Always ready, always on stove cooking. Cook adds things during the day, but same soup, okay?”

I nodded yes and sat down at one of the front tables. The place wouldn’t open for another couple of hours, and the curtains were drawn across the windows. One of the cooks came out with a big bowl of soup and some hard noodles, the Daily News and tonight’s Harness Lines, which is the working-class version of the Daily Racing Form. It was a perfect breakfast, sitting there with the hot soup and the papers. Quiet, peaceful, safe. I couldn’t concentrate on the racing form, so I let my mind drift off and slowly finished the soup. If this James was up to something in Africa, it had to be diamonds, ivory, or soldiers. A connection with Wilson? No, Wilson couldn’t know I was looking for him. Besides, James had been calling Mama’s even before this business with Flood started. It wouldn’t come together.

I cleaned off the table and took out a pack of cigarettes, arranging ten of them in a star formation with the filters pointing toward the open center, then stared deep into the center until the cigarettes disappeared and walked around in the empty space in my mind for a while. Nothing came. Tendrils of thought licked at my brain but nothing ignited-I would have to wait for it to surface when it was ready. I’d already taken too many chances with the Flood thing.

I got up, returned all the cigarettes but one, stuck that one in my mouth unlit, went out to the kitchen with the plates. “See you later, Mama.”

“Burke, when you call this man on the telephone, you meet him at the warehouse, not your office, okay?”

“Mama, I’m not going to call him. I don’t need the work right now. I already have a case.”

“You meet him at the warehouse, okay? With Max, okay?”

“How do you know I’m going to meet him, Mama?”

Mama just smiled, “I know.” She went back to her ledgers.

I made the alley, fired up the car, and headed for the library to meet Flood.

I GOT TO Bryant Park around nine-thirty. This little plot of greenery located behind the Public Library is supposed to enhance the citizens’ cultural enjoyment of their surroundings. Maybe it did once-now it’s an open-air market for heroin, cocaine, hashish, pills, knives, handguns-anything you might need to destroy yourself or someone else. There’s a zoning law in effect, though-if you want to have sex with a juvenile runaway from Boston or Minneapolis, or to buy a nine-year-old boy for the night, you have to go a few blocks further west.

Not too much activity when I first got there. The real scores are at lunchtime. But the predators and the prey were already doing their dance: broads walking through with gold chains and swinging handbags, solid citizens hustling to get to whatever hustle they do for a living, amateur thugs who wouldn’t know an easy score from a steady job lurking as subtly as vultures in a graveyard, small packs of kids moving through fast on their way to one of the porno movies in Times Square, some old lunatic feeding the pigeons so bloated from slopped-around junk food that they couldn’t fly, a bag lady looking for a place to rest her body for a few minutes before she nomads on.

I looked around carefully. There were no real hunters on the set (like someone who got burned in a dope deal looking for the salesman). I sat down on a bench, lit up. Like always, I was early. Sometimes if you come late for one of those meetings, you never leave.

I was smoking my cigarette and watching the flow around my bench when I saw the Prof approach. He was making his way carefully through the clots of people, occasionally stopping to exchange a few words but moving steadily in my direction. Not quite a midget, he was maybe four-and-a-half feet tall, even with the giant afro that shot out of his skull like it was electrified. Maybe forty years old, maybe sixty. Nobody knows all that much about the Prof. But he knows a lot about people: some say “Prof” is short for “Professor,” some say it stands for “Prophet.” Today he’s wearing a floor-length cashmere overcoat that probably fit the guy who originally brought it from Brooks Brothers and was dumb enough to hang it on a restaurant coathook-it trails behind him like the robes of royalty. The Prof speaks from the streets or the skies, depending on his mood: