Andrew Vachss - Flood

“Certainly,” he said, and I rang off.

I gestured to Max that we were going to meet the same characters who had been in the warehouse before. He made the sign of a man reaching for a gun and I told him no-it wasn’t going to be a duel, just more talk. Seated at the table, I reached for an imaginary steering wheel and turned it a few times as if I were peering through a windshield. I looked a question at Max, pointing first at him then out into the street. He nodded, he would get us a car. I pointed at my watch and Max held up one finger-it would take him about an hour.

Max faded out the door and I hooked up the phone again and called Flood. “Hi, baby.”

“Hi. Are you working?”

“Working hard.”

“Anything yet?”

“I got most of the ingredients, but… uh… the cake’s not in the oven yet.”

“That’s good-I’m very hungry.”

“Me too. I’ll be working late tonight. Okay to come by when I’m finished?”

“Yes, call first. How late?”

“After midnight.”

“I love you, Burke.”

“You don’t have to motivate me-I told you I was on the job.”

“Don’t be a coward-you can say you love me too.”

“Later,” I said, and hung up. I disconnected the phone, went back inside, and looked through the paper Max had left. I couldn’t even concentrate on the race results. Stupid Flood.

THE ASHTRAY WAS filling up by the time Max roared into the warehouse at the wheel of a Blood Shadows war-wagon-a huge black Buick Electra four-door sedan. The Chinese street gangs prefer the four-door models so the maximum number of shooters can hit the street at the same time. The Blood Shadows all come from Hong Kong with burning ambitions and psychopathic personalities as standard equipment. Thirty years ago a Chinese street gang was about as common as a forgiving loan shark. But in one quantum leap the Hong Kong kids overtook their ethnic counterparts all over the city, passing up territorial warfare and gang rape for the more practical activities of extortion and homicide. Shaking down their elders with complete disregard for the consequences, these kids made the old Tong Wars look like a polite debate-the intensity of their disputes was always measured in body counts. The only time they killed Caucasians was by accident, so they weren’t considered a major law-enforcement problem.

Chinatown was their base, but they were moving into Queens and Brooklyn, and they linked up nationally with gangs in Boston and D.C. and on the Coast. A few years ago they had made the mistake of asking Mama for a contribution. Since then Max the Silent had been their hero, especially after four members of their hit squad had been released from the hospital-the other one stayed in the morgue. The survivors told the police they had been hit by a train. When they weren’t spending their extorted cash on fingertip leather jackets or silk shirts or 9-mm automatics they haunted the kung fu movies. And when they moved out of the moviehouses into the darkness of Chinatown’s streets they would argue among themselves about who was the greater-the celluloid warriors on the screen or Max the Silent.

Max flipped the lever into reverse and we backed out of the warehouse. As he drove up the East Side Drive toward the Thirty-fourth Street exit I began a systematic search of the car-in the glove compartment, behind the sun visors, under the seats. I felt a tug on my hand, looked at Max and he shook his head to indicate the car was already clean. Good. The war-wagon moved over the potholes like a rusty tank-the gang kids didn’t maintain their cars, just their guns.

We found the block where the gunrunners would be waiting and Max drove carefully up to them-in his world, the insult Gunther had given demanded revenge. I couldn’t explain to him that in their world there was no such thing as an insult, just profit and loss. James and Gunther were standing where they were supposed to be. I opened the front door, let them have a look at me. They climbed into the backseat without a word and the war-wagon rolled toward the Hudson River. We were silent in the car-Gunther and James because they were acting like they were afraid of microphones, me because I had nothing to say to them.

When we got to the pier Max pulled the Buick in, turning it so it was parallel to the river about twenty feet from the pier’s end. The place was deserted. Gunther and James followed me out of the car. I reached in my pocket for a smoke, watching their faces. They didn’t react. They were relaxed-greedy, not frightened. Good.

“You said you had a proposition for us?” James opened.

“Yes.”

“Is this a good place to talk?”

“Why not?”

“What if someone comes by?”

I looked over to where Max was standing by the Buick, arms folded across his chest. They got the message.

“Here’s the deal,” I said. “I’ll be honest with you. I need some of the guns for myself, okay? And I need some men, about twenty experienced men who want to make some money. Short-term work.”

“Out of the country?”

“What difference does it make?”

“It’s just if you need them to go international there are items like obtaining good passports-”

“I see you know your business. Ever done any spot-recruiting?”

“Some, in London. Maybe we had the same client?”

“If so he wouldn’t want us to discuss it, right?”

“Right. You said a proposition?”

“I need two hundred full-auto long arms, preferably AR-16s, but I’ll take anything close. Only in 5.56 caliber, nothing bigger. A thousand rounds for each piece. And a bunch of other field supplies I could buy right here with no trouble, but I’ll let you handle it all if we can make it a package.”

“Like flak jackets, helmets, standard ordinance?”

“Yeah, and some fragmentation grenades, some plastique-”

“You can’t buy that stuff here.”

“Who can’t?”

“All right, we won’t argue. You’d pay cash?”

“On delivery.”

“To…?”

“London’s okay.”

“Maybe to you it is-not to us. With all the IRA business, you can’t move a bloody thing in London. No good.”

“Two more choices, that’s it. Either Lisbon or Tel Aviv.”

“Lisbon’s okay-the kikes have the right idea on South Africa but I don’t like working with them, can’t trust’em.”

“Lisbon it is. You know the airport setup? The old Biafra runway?”

“I heard about it but I’ve never done it.”

“I’ll get you the papers,” I said, watching his eyes gleam and then quickly go flat again. Greedy bastard.

“What’s the timetable?”

“You get me the men lined up first, and I want the stuff ready to roll within three weeks from then. Okay?”

“The stuff’s no problem. But we’re not set up to do recruiting here. That takes time-”

“Look, I told you I had a proposition. I know a perfect place you can rent, and I can use my connections to get you enough publicity so every merc in the area will be knocking down your doors. You stay open one week, no more. If you don’t have the twenty men by then I’ll pay you so much a head, take the string, and pick up the guns later. Deal?”

“How much a head? And who fronts for the office?”

“A grand a head,” I told him, “plus a five-grand bonus if you find me any of three guys I’m looking for. Specialists.”

“And the office?”

“You pay for everything and I’ll handle the publicity. But I’ll throw two grand up front for the first two guys, and if you don’t get me the full twenty I’ll do the original deal on the guns, hold my string, and call you when I’ve got all the men together.”

“That’s twelve thousand all together-ten for the guns, like we agreed, and another two for the men-”