Andrew Vachss - Flood

I could see Max wasn’t down to normal operating temperature yet, so I started telling him about this Cobra freak and Flood and what I wanted to do. The more we talked about how we’d pull it off, the calmer he got. Except when I told him how it all started, with me hitting that horse at Yonkers for a grand from Maurice. That he simply refused to believe, so I told him to go to Maurice’s and pick up the money himself and hold it for me. I wouldn’t even have to call Maurice and let him know Max was authorized to make the pickup-Max the Silent has a better reputation for honesty than the Orthodox Jews in the diamond industry. Max is often used as a courier for that reason, plus the fact that ripping him off would be past the capabilities of your average SWAT team. Max only moves money or things like money-jewels, paper, computer printouts. He won’t move dope, and people know better than to ask him anymore. He’s not bonded, so all you get for your money is his word. To a warrior like Max, that means you get your stuff or his life. Uptown when they want stuff delivered, they have guys in fancy uniforms who have passed polygraphs, given their fingerprints and all that-down here we have Max the Silent.

I told Max that finding the Cobra would be the real problem, and he made the sign of maggots under a rock again, then shook his head, held his hands toward the sky, and snapped his fingers like a magician pulling things from thin air. I got it. Maggots don’t come from outer space, they’re on the earth for a reason. They only move in the direction of decay-they help it along, eventually make it disappear and then they move on again. Like an old-time burglar told me once, explaining why he never worked with dope fiends, “Dead meat brings flies.” The Cobra had to be swimming in slimy waters or he’d stick out like an honest man at a political caucus.

That didn’t narrow the search much. Some people think slime is subject to zoning laws. They pick some part of a city and call it the Tenderloin, or the Combat Zone, or the Block, or even the Red Light District if they have a blue nose. Assholes. You don’t need a Ph.D. in sociology to understand slime. Slime needs fresh meat to live, and if you don’t bring it around, the slime goes shopping. The uptown glitzo who gets ready for Saturday night by slipping a vial of cocaine into the glove compartment of his Mercedes can’t see the slime lapping at his hubcaps. He pays his money and the money gets passed around until it coagulates into a movable mass. All money moves. Dope money moves into a pipeline, and at the other end you get loan-shark cash on the streets and kiddie-porn operations in the basements. The glitzo goes to his hip party and whips out his vial of nose candy and shows the other jerks that he’s connected-he’s down with the program.

A few blocks away, some dirtbag pimp passes his vial around in an after-hours joint. He got the money for his dope out of the body of some thirteen-year-old runaway who thought the smooth-talking man in the Port Authority Bus Terminal was going to make her a star.

Yeah, they’re both connected-to each other.

I move through slime like a poacher on some rich man’s estate. I take what I can. Whatever money’s out there is as much mine as any dirtbag’s. Some of them don’t like it-most of them don’t know it. I guess some people are still waiting for a man to walk on water. I wish them a lot of luck-I walk on quicksand. One time when I was a kid in the juvenile prison I made the mistake of telling one of those half-assed counselors what a bitch it was growing up in the orphanage-the miserable punk told me you have to play the cards they deal you, like that was supposed to bring on a flash of insight and make me into a good citizen. As I got older and kept doing time I began to realize that maybe the counselor had been right-you do have to play the cards they deal you-but only a certified sucker or masochist would play them honestly.

I asked Max if he would ride with me over to the piers to see if Michelle had learned anything. He nodded okay and I drove the Plymouth west. I told Max to stay in the car no matter what he saw going down. One time when I was looking for someone on the docks Max saw this freak all dressed up in a stormtrooper outfit standing out on the abandoned pilings. He was waving a giant bullwhip around like he was getting ready to drive some galley slaves. A bunch of locals were standing around watching the show-just entertainment for them, I guess-but old Max decided that they were all terrorized by this freak, and he slid out of the car and kicked the poor fellow into the Hudson River before I could stop him. When he pivoted to the crowd like he was expecting applause, the audience ran like they’d just seen their future up-close. Max isn’t desperate for recognition, and the locals weren’t exactly his peer group, but you could see he wanted some acknowledgement of his feat. So I told him he was now the undisputed champion of that pier.

Max doesn’t have a big ego about that kind of thing, but I didn’t want him suddenly deciding to defend his title, so I repeated the deal about staying in the car no matter what.

The piers were dark and murky, like they always are. Couples walked to empty buildings, hustlers waited, predators watched. No Michelle. No Margot. No cops either.

I drove Max back to the warehouse, waved good-bye, and watched him disappear into the interior. Drove back to my office, put the car away, went upstairs. As I put the key into the floor-level lock I heard Pansy’s low growl. When I got the door open she was poised about three feet away, the hair on the back of her neck standing straight up and her fangs, like they say, bared. Somebody had been around to visit-maybe a visitor for the hippies upstairs who got the wrong address, maybe someone with some bad ideas. I asked Pansy, who didn’t say. Whoever it was hadn’t gotten into the office.

I got some marrow bones out of the fridge and put them on to boil while I changed clothes and listened to the news. I switched to the police band for the local precinct, using the crystals I wasn’t supposed to be able to buy over the counter. The radio runs into an antenna lead, and the antenna itself runs up through the useless chimney stack on the roof, protruding about a foot. I got perfect reception, but all it picked up were routine crime-in-progress calls and cops telling the desk man they were going off the air for personals, which could mean anything from a bathroom visit to a shakedown.

I used a strainer and poured the boiling water off the marrow bones to let them cool. Pansy came down from the roof, a lot calmer now-whoever had come around hadn’t come over the rooftops. I started thinking about the roof and how I’d like to have a garden up there someday-there was sure as hell enough fertilizer already in place. I could tell I was getting tired because I was starting to think like a citizen. Putting down roots, even on a city roof, is blubber-brained. Roots are nice, but a tree can’t run.

When the marrow bones cooled I gave one to Pansy and sat patting her massive head while she crunched it. Maybe real private eyes make up lists of things to do and places to go, but I like to work them out in my head-an old prison habit. Trees can’t run and people can’t Xerox your thoughts. If they could, they never would have let me out of that orphanage when I was a kid.

WHEN I WOKE up the next morning I was still in my chair. It didn’t look like Pansy had moved either. My watch said it was almost nine. I opened the back door to let Pansy out and went next door for a quick shower and shave. By the time Pansy trotted downstairs to supervise my work with the razor, it was just about time for my phone call. I went back into the office, picked up the receiver to check for hippie-interference, noted their usual early-morning silence, and dialed the direct line for an assistant D.A. I know in Manhattan. Toby Ringer was a real hardnose, with no political hooks, who battled his way up the bureaucracy by being willing to try cases that scared most of the other D.A.’s. You know the kind I mean-where the bad guy’s a hundred percent guilty but there’s no solid evidence and the odds are you’re going to lose it in front of a jury and get a black mark against your record. Some of those wimps won’t even touch a case unless there’s a videotaped confession and four eyewitnesses. Toby’s no cowboy-he doesn’t have fantasies of some death squad wiping out all the vermin in the city someday, but he has a genuine hate for the real slime, so we’ve been able to help each other out on occasion. He’s not State-raised, but he’s been around long enough to know how to act.