Andrew Vachss - Flood

Margot was drumming her nails against the face of her watch.

“I don’t want to go back on the streets right away-Dandy might see me or something. You going to stay here long?”

“No-I got to go to work.”

Margot leaned forward, partially blocking my way. “You think it shows?”

“What?”

“On me-you think it shows… being a hooker?”

“No, when you’re not one.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s not important. Your eye’s healing, right? My face’s going to heal, right?” She noticed my face for the first time.

“What happened?”

“I got bit by a baby dragon.”

“Where?”

“It’s not important. Look, you call, okay?”

Margot stood up. “Burke, as long as I’ve got to be here anyway, you want…?”

I looked at her, tried to smile, not sure if it came off. “It’s the best offer I’ve had in a long time. But not now, I got to work. Can I raincheck it?”

Margot looked like she’d expected the answer. “I shouldn’t be thinking about tricking all the time, huh?”

“If I was you, I’d think about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like how I’m going to solve my problems.”

“You’re going to solve my problems.”

“I’m going to solve one of your problems, kid. But you make problems for yourself-you do wrong things.”

“Like what?”

“Like calling the Prophet an old nigger,” I told her, getting up to walk her to the door.

MARGOT HAD NO sooner walked out the door than Max appeared-he waits as silently as he does everything else. I gave him four grand, holding out one for myself for the running expenses of this case, and told him to stash it for me someplace. Less four hundred for Max, this thing still had the chance to show a decent profit if it worked out.

I asked Max if he wanted something to eat, purposely avoiding the subject of horseracing, and I saw a tiny flicker pass across his face. So he thought I already knew the results and wasn’t admitting anything. Okay, just for that I’d torture him until he demanded to know the truth.

I didn’t have long to wait. As soon as we got to the restaurant Max made the sign of a galloping horse to ask me what happened last night. Instead of telling him I showed him that harness horses don’t gallop-that’s against the rules. In fact, they’re called standardbreds instead of thoroughbreds because they’re bred to a standard gait, either a trot or a pace. They evolved from working horses, not from rich men’s playthings like the useless nags who run in the Kentucky Derby. I showed him with my fingers how pacers move their outside legs together and then their inside legs together in rolling motion, while trotters put one front leg and the opposite rear leg forward at the same time. I showed him what it meant to break stride, or go off gait, and why pacers were generally faster and less likely to break than trotters.

Max sat through this entire explanation with the patience of a tree, figuring he would outwait me. But he finally cracked under the strain, just as I was explaining about new breeds now being developed in Scandinavia, how they aren’t as fast as American-style trotters but they have tremendous endurance. Jumping up, he stalked over to the cash register for the News and fired it over to me hard enough to break bones. Then he folded his arms across his chest and waited.

As I opened the paper I had a momentary flash of panic. What if the goddamned Times was wrong? But there it was in greasy black and white. We won. I showed Max the chart of the ninth race-Honor Bright had left cleanly, grabbed a quick tuck fourth at the quarter, moved outside with cover at the half, then fired with a big brush on the final paddock turn to blow past the leaders and win going away by almost two lengths. Max insisted I show him what the charted race would have actually looked like if we’d been there watching, so I got some paper and diagrammed the whole thing for him. Max really showed class. He never asked how much we had won-the victory itself seemed enough. Of course, he could have already figured it out. But the real class showed when he agreed to pick the money up from Maurice and never said a word about making another bet. I’d proved something to him, and that was enough-he didn’t think he’d found the key to the vault.

I dropped Max at the warehouse where I used a pay phone to call Flood and tell her I wouldn’t be seeing her until very early the next morning. I told her I’d ring her from downstairs before I came up.

My face hurt a bit and I wanted to change the dressing-and I wanted to sleep. But when I got back to the office I had to explain the whole race again to Pansy and feed her too, so it was after four in the afternoon when I finally lay down.

THE TINY BATTERY-POWERED alarm woke me just past eight. When I picked up the desk phone to call Flood I heard some freak yell, “Hey, Moonchild, are you on the line?” and hung up quietly. I could have used another shave for cosmetic purposes but it wasn’t necessary for the role I had to play. I had to be a guy waiting around the night court for a friend or a relative. I didn’t want to look too much like a lawyer-I don’t work the Bronx courts (neither does Blumberg or any of my regulars-you have to be bilingual to do it), and I didn’t want people talking to me. I didn’t want to look too much like a felon either-some smartass rookie might decide to ask me if there were any warrants out against me. There weren’t but I had to time things right. I had to be in front of the court at eleven-thirty like I’d been told, so I had to get there earlier to make sure. But not too early-I didn’t want to be hanging around there either.

I got out a pair of dark chino pants, a dark-green turtleneck jersey, a pair of calf-high black boots, a fingertip leather jacket, and one of those Ivy League caps. I changed quickly, shoved a set of I.D. in my pocket, added three hundred bucks, and snapped a second set of I.D. papers into the jacket’s inner sleeve. No weapons-the court’s full of metal detectors and informants, and Pablito’s people might have even a worse attitude than the law. So no tape recorder either, not even a pencil.

Now for the bad part-riding the subway without nuclear weapons, or at least a flamethrower. But it was early enough and I walked until I came to the underground entrance. I played with the local trains for a while, backtracking and crisscrossing until I got to the Brooklyn Bridge station. I found a pay phone there and called Flood-she said she was doing okay and she’d stay there until I called her, sounding subdued but not depressed. It’s bad to be depressed at night-that kind of thing is easier to handle in the morning. That’s why when I’ve only got a couple of bucks in my pocket I get some action down on a horse or a number or something before I go to sleep-something to look forward to. And if it doesn’t come through for me, at least it’s another day where I beat the system-it’s daylight, I’m not looking out through prison bars, the suckers are getting ready to go to work, and there’s money for me to make. It works for me, but I don’t think Flood’s a gambler.

I grabbed the uptown express, rode it to Forty-second Street, and crossed the tracks like I was looking for the local. I took a look around. Lots of freaks working the second shift tonight-chain snatchers, child molesters, flashers and rubbers, the usual. No Cobra, though. Sometimes you get dumb-lucky, not this time. I waited for two more express trains to come on through and took the third one.

A guy in the seat across from me was wearing a tattered raincoat buttoned to the neck, denim washpants, new loafers with tassels, no socks. He had neatly trimmed hair and crazy eyes. Nice disguise, but he’d left the plastic hospital tag around his wrist when he’d gone over the wall. He had one hand in his pocket and his lips were moving. I got up quietly and moved to another car.