Andrew Vachss - Flood

I FLICKED THE Volvo’s shift lever to pull it out of gear and let it coast toward a parking space across from Flood’s door. She didn’t make a move to get out. I had to move fast, there were a lot of things to do before the sun came up on what was left of Goldor.

“Flood. Flood, listen to me. Look, you’re home now. Come on.” Flood looked over at her building but still didn’t move.

“This is not my home,” she said in a dead, blue voice.

“Flood, we don’t have time for you to be fucking mystical. I’ll talk with you later, okay? Just get out. I’ve got to do some work.”

She still didn’t budge, so I tried something else. “Flood, you want to come with me? Want to help me?”

“Help you?”

“Yeah, I need some help. I need a friend, okay?”

The tears were still coming but she had control of her mouth. A first step. She said, “Okay,” and patted my hand like I was the one walking on the ragged edge.

I pulled the Volvo out and found a decent spot near where the Mole had left it the first time. I slipped into the parking garage like a burglar, but nobody was around-no problems. I found the Plymouth, fired it up, and rolled it down the ramps to the checkout point. I paid the toll and split. If the cops came around someday they’d have to get a subpoena and search the records. Even if they got lucky, all they would ever find is that I was checking into the garage about the same time Goldor was checking out. Okay so far.

Flood was standing in the shadows where I’d left her, but she was still too stiff as she walked over to the car door. She slid into the passenger seat, staying over against her door-not crying now, her breathing pretty good, but still a long way from being in control. I found a pay phone near the drive and called Pablo’s clinic-I knew it would be open until at least midnight. I left a message for him to call Mr. Black at eleven that night. Then we got back into the Plymouth, heading for the phone I’d told him to call. I gave myself about a half hour-if Pablo called and I didn’t answer it would take another couple of days for me to reach him. Me not answering was the signal that the wheels had come off someplace. He should connect that with Goldor, but I didn’t want to chance it.

The pay phone for Mr. Black was in a converted storage shed near the back of Max’s warehouse. The message from Mr. Black meant that we were in an emergency situation, so I had to be sure that the phone we used was absolutely reliable. The only way to do that was to make sure it wasn’t used most of the time. I didn’t want to bring Flood into that neighborhood but she was shredding all my choices with her behavior-all I needed was for her to run amok someplace and bring the cops back to talk to me.

Flood could do time, do it standing on her head. There’s not too many guns in jail and without one even the toughest diesel-dyke couldn’t make Flood blink. She’d go deep into herself and make it last for the whole term. I could survive in there too, but so what? By the time I got out all I had built up out here would be just so much garbage and I’d have to start all over again-I was getting too old for all that and I could feel the fear coming in closer and I didn’t have the time to deal with it the way I was supposed to-so I pointed the Plymouth toward the warehouse and concentrated on driving.

We made it into the front entrance with a good ten minutes to spare. I told Flood to just sit there, stay where she was, and slapped my palm twice on the hood of the car as I got out in a see-you-later gesture, to let Max know there was someone else in the car if he was watching. If Max was there, Max was watching.

The number Pablo had for Mr. Black would ring in a pay phone in a candy store in Brooklyn, one of four in that joint. It was hooked up to a call-diverter which would bounce the signal over to the phone we never used in the storage shed. The diverter was a mechanical thing and not really all that reliable, but if it didn’t bounce the call and Pablo heard any voice but my own he’d hang up and know the Mr. Black signal was for real. Maybe he’d put it together and understand about Goldor and maybe he wouldn’t-this was as close to him as I was willing to get until the crime lab people picked the carcass clean and the grand jury made its secret decisions.

I had time to open the door to the shed, check the dust to satisfy myself that nobody had been around since the last time, and light a cigarette.

And then Pablo called. I grabbed it on the first ring, reminding myself that the whole conversation had to be under thirty seconds. “It’s me, okay?” I said.

“I hear you.”

“The legal research I told you I’d be doing? The stuff you said you might be interested in yourself? Forget it. It’s a dead issue.”

“That is too bad, hermano. You are certain?”

“Dead certain.”

“Adios.”

It would be hours before I could get a paper, and even then I couldn’t count on coverage of Goldor’s death, so I’d have to be especially careful not to talk to people. Fortunately, that comes easily to me-practice makes habit.

I gave Pablo about ten seconds to clear the line, reached under the phone, and pulled out the little gadget that looked like a rubber-edged cup with push buttons numbered one to ten on its face. I placed this over the mouthpiece to the phone, checked to see the seal was tight, and punched in the number of the candy store-the same Mr. Black number Pablo would have written down someplace. When it answered I was connected to the dead line next to the first pay phone. They wouldn’t answer that phone in the store-it had a permanent Out of Order sign on the booth. This hooked me into the diverter’s code box, and I used the push buttons to signal electronically and set the diverter to forward all future calls made to the Mr. Black number over to a pay phone next to a gas station in Jersey City. That broke the circuit. Even if the federales had a pen register on whatever phone Pablo had used, they’d never work it back to this shed. When I had some time, maybe in a few months, I’d go over to Brooklyn and uproot the diverter and install it someplace else. I’d notify Pablo too when I got the chance. For now, I was more interested in burning bridges than in building them.

I walked slowly back to the warehouse, expecting to see Flood’s blonde hair shining through the windshield, but there was nothing behind the glass. I glanced up at the balcony, couldn’t see a thing-I still didn’t know if Max was on the set. Then I heard a low moaning sound, flowing deep, ending with a grunt. Over and over, like someone working up the strength to do something ugly and then finally getting down to it. Flood-in the semidarkness off to the side where I’d parked the Plymouth. Flood-in one of those elaborate katas I’d seen her do in the studio, flowing between the hood of the car and the side wall, whirling, spinning, thrusting. Her body flashed white in the murky haze of the warehouse. I looked around without moving and saw the bottle-green pants and the jersey top on the floor where she had thrown them, and I knew she’d never walk in disguise again.

It was like no kata I’d ever seen. Flood backed away from the car in tiny, ankle-hooking steps and turned completely, moving her hands like she was sculpting a statue from smoke with her fingers. She flicked a leg toward the sky, rocked back on her heel, and clapped her hands against the upraised foot, like a child playing in the sun. She rolled her body toward the car’s hood and leaned her back against it, pushed her hands down and raised herself until she was parallel with the ground, her legs straight out in front of her. She slowly lowered herself to the ground on her knees, then leaped to her feet and turned so she was facing the car again. She leaned forward, bent at the waist, wiggled her hips like a prizefighter rolls his shoulders, and the leg with the fire-scar lashed out-again and again like a pumping piston gone mad. And then she stopped and I heard the jet-stream of her nasal intake as she danced away from the car. I watched her kill Goldor over and over again and I thought she would never stop the death-dance. She was all alone.