Andrew Vachss - Flood

A kid about the size of a two-family house was standing in the middle of the next car, playing his giant portable stereo loud enough to crack concrete. Everybody was looking the other way. A citizen with a delicate beard and a belted trenchcoat was complaining to the girl next to him about noise pollution. The kid watched the whole conversation with reptile eyes. I moved on to the next car.

A young transit cop with the obligatory mustache walked through the train listening to his walkie-talkie and nodding to himself. I saw a skinny Spanish kid about fourteen years old practicing his three-card monte moves on a piece of cardboard. He had very smooth hands, but his rap was weak-I guess he was an apprentice. Two blacks in Arab robes with white knit caps on their heads moved through the cars, rattling metal cups, looking for donations with a story about a special school for kids in Brooklyn. Some people went in their pockets and put coins in the cups.

I moved through a couple of cars again. Sat down next to a blond kid wearing only a cut-off sweatshirt, no jacket. He looked peaceful. I checked his hands-one large blue letter tattooed on each knuckle. H A T E. The letters were set so they faced out. I moved on before the fellows collecting money asked this boy for a contribution.

The last car had nothing more troublesome than some kids staring out the front window like they were driving the train, and it lasted all the way to 161st Street.

The South Bronx-not a bad place if you had asbestos skin. A short walk to the Criminal Court Building, almost eleven now. The Bronx Criminal Court is a brand-new building-the juvenile court is in the same building, just with a different entrance. I guess the city figured there was no point making the delinquents walk a long distance before they reached their inevitable destination.

I found a quiet bench, opened my copy of the News, and kept an eye on my watch. Nobody approached. It was getting near the end of the arraignment shift and only a few losers were waiting around. I spotted one of the hustlers, a young Spanish guy with a lawyer’s suit. I’d heard about this one-he works Blumberg’s game, only in the Bronx. Next to him, Blumberg is Clarence Darrow.

I left the bench with five minutes to spare, climbed out of the basement to the first floor, and went out the 161st Street exit. I lit a cigarette and waited. At eleven-thirty a dark red gypsy cab with the legend Paradiso Taxi on the door and a foxtail on the antenna pulled up. I walked out of the shadows, smartly said, “Hey, my man,” and the driver looked me over. “Where to, amigo?”

“Oh, someplace downtown, you know?”

“Like the Waldorf?”

“That’s it.” I climbed in the back without further negotiations. The cab shot straight up 161st like it was headed for the highway to go downtown and I leaned back and closed my eyes. Rules are rules. The local cops aren’t too bad, but some of the federal lunatics don’t believe the Constitution applies to banana republics like the South Bronx. If I ever got strapped into a polygraph, I wanted the needles to read No Deception Indicated when they asked me where Una Gente Libre had its headquarters.

EITHER THE DRIVER really worked a gypsy cab as a regular job or he was a hell of an actor. Even with my eyes closed I could feel the lurch of the miserably-maintained hunk of metal every time we floundered around a corner. Normal potholes put my head against the ceiling, and each genuine home-grown South Bronx edition almost knocked me unconscious. He had the radio tuned to some Spanish-language station at a volume that reminded me of the holding tank at Riker’s Island-and for an added touch of authenticity he screamed “Maricon!” and waved his fist out the open window at another driver who had the audacity to attempt to share the road with us.

We turned a sharp corner; the driver doused the radio. He switched to a smooth cruising mode and spoke distinctly without taking his eyes from the windshield. “At the next corner, I stop the cab. You get out. You walk in the same direction as I drive for half a block. You see a bunch of lobos in front of a burn-out. You walk right up to them and they let you through. You go into the burn-out and someone meet you there.”

I said nothing-he obviously wasn’t going to answer questions. Lobo may mean wolf in Spanish, but I understood he was describing a street gang that would be in front of an abandoned building.

The cab stopped at the corner and got moving again as I was swinging the rear door closed. I looked at the cab as it moved away-it sure looked like a gypsy cab, but someone must have stolen the rear license plate. I marched the half block until I spotted about a dozen kids-some sitting on the steps of the abandoned building, some standing. Only about half of them were looking in my direction.

The lobos came fully equipped-they all wore denim cut-offs with a winged and bloody-taloned bird of prey on the back-the birds had human skulls instead of heads. I spotted bicycle chains, car antennas, and baseball bats-one kid had a machete in a sheath. No firearms on display, but two of them were sitting next to a long flat cardboard box.

As I got closer I could see they weren’t kids at all-none of them looked under twenty years old. They wouldn’t fool a beat patrolman too easily either-no radios playing, no wisecracking among themselves, just quietly watching the street.

I glanced up and saw a gleam of metal at one of the windows-there wouldn’t be any winos sleeping in that building tonight. A car turned into the block from the other end and came toward me. The lobos moved off the steps and I stepped back in the shadows. The car was a year-old white Caddy-it never slowed down but I glimpsed three people in the front seat-two girls and a driver with a plantation hat. Some pimp was on his way to the Hunts Point Market, and suddenly I knew just about where I was in the South Bronx.

When I got within fifty feet of the building I saw hands go into pockets but I kept on coming. It wasn’t bravery-there was no place else to go. When the hands came out of the pockets with mirror-lensed sunglasses I figured I was going to be all right. Nobody needs a disguise to take your life.

I approached the gang. They looked briefly at me then past me to see if I had come alone. I kept walking up the broken steps, heard movements behind me, didn’t turn around. I went through the door into a black pit-and stopped. A voice said: “Burke. Don’t move, okay? Just stay where you are.”

I didn’t. I felt a hand on my arm. I didn’t jump-it was expected. The hand groped, found mine, and a heavily knotted rope was pushed into my palm. I grabbed one of the knots and felt a gentle tug. I got the message and followed along in the direction I was pulled. I couldn’t see a damned thing-the guy leading me must have been using sonar or something.

The same voice finally said, “In here,” and I stepped through a door covered with dark blankets. Now I could see a dim light ahead and I followed the back of the man leading me down a long flight of stairs until we came to another blanket-covered door at the bottom. My guide felt his way through the blankets until he found a bare spot, knocked three times, waited patiently, heard two raps from the other side, rapped once in response, waited, rapped one more time. He gently pushed against my chest to indicate that we should stand back, and then from the other side of the wall bolts sliding, metal scraping, something heavy being moved. I wanted a cigarette but I didn’t want to move my hands. After a couple of minutes the door slid open and a large man parted the blankets and stepped out. I couldn’t see him too well but there was enough light to catch the highlights bouncing off the Uzi submachine gun he held in one hand. He stood there covering us both for what seemed like a long minute, saying nothing.