Andrew Vachss - Flood

Flood came to me with her hands open in front of her, bowed slightly. I nodded that I was ready. She approached with small, light steps, floated up on her toes and sideways into a cat-stance, and suddenly lashed out with her left foot at my right knee. She caught the open glove squarely with a harsh pop, spun on her right leg, planted her left foot, and whipped the right up at my right shoulder. It never came off-the skin-tight material held her legs together at the crotch and she fell, immediately rolling to the side, hands clasped near her head, elbows out.

I knew what she was going to say. “It’s no good. I can’t get any speed or leverage above the knee. We have to get something else.”

“Okay, Flood, I don’t want you to feel helpless.”

“It’s not a joke.”

“It doesn’t bother you to fight with no clothes on, but-”

“I had to train for a long time before it didn’t. We all have to practice like that, so that we don’t think about ourselves, just about the task.”

“So didn’t you ever train to fight wearing clothes?”

“Burke, listen to me. I could fight no matter what, yes? At least I could defend myself. But I need room to move or I can’t develop any power.”

“So when you fight this Cobra freak…”

“Yes.”

“Flood, I’m not promising it will end like that.”

“You just find him for me.”

I went back to the window and sat down on the floor, lit up. Flood padded over to me, floated down into a lotus position, sat there quietly for a while. Maybe keeping me company, maybe thinking too. She didn’t understand a fucking thing.

“Flood,” I said, “you know how to fight an attack dog?”

“I never have.”

“There’s just one secret, okay? When he bites you-and he is going to bite you-you have to ram whatever he bites back into his mouth as deep and as hard as you can.”

“And then?”

“And then you use whatever you have left to cancel his ticket.”

“So?”

“So the dog expects you to do just one thing-pull away as hard as you can. He’s a hunter and that’s what his prey is supposed to do. Panic and run.”

“So?”

“So there’s no such thing as a fair fight with a dog.”

“Wilson’s not a dog.”

“You know what he is, Flood?”

“No.”

“Well, I do. So you do it my way-you listen to me.”

Flood’s eyes narrowed, then relaxed with a calmness that reflected through her body as she spoke. “There’s a right way, a correct way to do anything.”

“There’s a right way to rape little kids?”

“Burke! You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean-and you’re out of luck, kid. The only way to do anything is to do it so you walk away from it.”

“And if I don’t agree?”

“Then you walk into it alone.”

Flood’s eyes bored into my face, looking for an opening. There was none. I didn’t know why I’d even come this far, but I wasn’t going past my own limits. The only game I play is where winning means you keep playing. She smiled. “You’re not so tough, Burke.”

“Endurance beats strength. Didn’t they teach you that over in Japan?”

She thought about it for a minute, then flashed a lovely, perfect smile. “You think they make these kind of pants in some stretch material?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you check it out early tomorrow morning before you go to court?”

“We’re going to court?”

“Not me, just you. I have something to do on my own and besides, I don’t like to go to court in the daytime.”

I lay down on the floor, put my arms behind my head, and blew smoke rings at the ceiling. Flood leaned on one elbow and rubbed the side of my face with her knuckles while I told her how you look up a docket number in the Criminal Court Building. It was quiet and peaceful there, but I had to make that call around six. I kissed Flood good-bye, got my stuff, then climbed the stairs to the roof, where I checked the street. Nothing. I rang for the elevator and hit the stairs down as soon as I heard it move.

The car was just as I’d left it. Must be a pretty crime-free neighborhood-this was two times running.

It was almost evening and I wanted everything secure before I called this James character, so I stopped at a pay phone on Fourteenth Street to reserve a ride for the night. I have this arrangement with the dispatcher-I call him, he gives me a cab for the night shift, and I don’t have to return it until morning. I keep whatever I earn for the evening on the meter and he gets a flat hundred bucks. I also keep a hack license for Juan Rodriguez (the same guy who makes his living working in that Corona junkyard) behind the false wall at the rear of the Plymouth’s glove compartment.

You have to be fingerprinted to get a hack license in New York. It costs you an extra fifty to bring your own fingerprint card already made out for the inspectors. I have a couple of dozen cards stashed, already fingerprinted, but with no names or other information on them. I don’t know the real names of any of the guys who would match those prints, but I know the cops would have a hell of a time interviewing any of them.

The old man who works as a night watchman in the city morgue told me how the cops sometimes fingerprint a dead body while it’s still fresh so they can make an identification. He showed me how it was done. I got the blank cards easily enough, waited a few weeks, and the old man let me make a few dozen prints from a corpse that came in on the meat wagon one night. Nasty car accident-the guy was headless, but his fingers were in perfect shape.

Driving a cab in New York is the next best thing to being invisible. You can circle the same block a dozen times and even the local street-slime don’t look twice. The cops do the same thing in their anticrime cars-only trouble is their union won’t let them work the cars alone, so when you see two guys in the front seat of a cab, you know it’s the Man. Very subtle.

I drove past Mama’s to check her front window. Usually there are three beautiful tapestries of dragons on display-one red, one white, one blue. Tonight the white one was missing-undercover cops of some kind were inside. If the blue was gone, it would mean the uniformed police. I kept rolling like I was supposed to do. I could have gone inside, since only the red dragon standing alone meant danger, but I needed to find Max and he wouldn’t be inside, at least not upstairs with the customers. When Max wanted to leave he climbed down to the sub-basement, below the regular storage area. It was pitch-dark down there, and dead quiet. I was there once when two uniforms came looking for him. The young cop wanted to go down there after him but his partner had more sense. He just told Mama to ask Max to stop by the precinct because they wanted to talk to him. Going down in that basement after Max would be about as smart as drinking cyanide and have the same long-term effect.

I pulled into the warehouse with the headlights off, rolled down the window, lit a cigarette, and waited. It was quiet there, so quiet that I heard the faint whoosh of air before I felt the gentle thump on the car’s roof. I stared straight ahead through the windshield until I saw a hand press itself against the glass, fingers pointed down. I told Max that one day he would break his fool neck jumping from the second-story balcony on to the roof of cars. He thought that was hilarious.

We went into the back room and I pointed to one of the chairs, then spread my hands to ask “Okay?” When he nodded, it meant he’d wait there for me. He knew I’d explain when I got back.

The basement of the warehouse was my next stop. The only light down there came from the diffused rays of a streetlight through one of the dirty narrow windows, but it was bright enough for me to find the exit door behind a pile of abandoned shipping pallets. Inside one of the pallets was a rubber-covered dial telephone with two wires ending in alligator clips and a set of keys. One of the keys let me into another basement halfway down the alley, and the second got into the telephone wire box for the commercial building on the corner. It was peaceful-the collective of Oriental architects who inhabited the place in the daytime never worked at night. I checked my watch. Another three or four minutes until James would be expecting the call. I opened the telephone junction box, hooked up the handset, checked to see if anyone else was on the line, got a dial tone, and waited. At fifteen seconds to six I dialed the number James had given to Mama. Someone answered on the first ring.