Flood

by Andrew Vachss

  It was getting into the late afternoon by then, so I rolled the Plymouth back toward the warehouse looking for Max before I made the call to the phony gunrunners. I pulled in, killed the engine, and waited. Before I was halfway through the first cigarette Max dropped onto the hood. I vacated the front seat and we went into the back room to talk.

  I pulled the lapels of my jacket to show Max I was talking about clothes, made the sign of something falling softly through the air, bowed deeply to show my appreciation of the robes he had given to Flood.

  Max dropped his own head in the briefest of bows, flowed into his own version of Flood’s crazy kata and ended with a two-finger strike, his hand darting in and out so quickly that only the rush of the silk sleeve ripping through dead air alerted me. He looked the question at me—could Flood do that? Could she finish the job, or was she just a dancer? So I told him about Goldor and the Cobra and what I wanted to do, how I wanted it all to end—a hiss came from Max. He was warming up.

  He followed me to the workbench where we cooked up another stencil out of some cardboard we kept lying around. I found a dozen or so of the little spray cans and pointed toward the car, made signs to show all the doors opening at once and people jumping out, walking down the street looking straight ahead—walking like warriors. I explained what the spray cans were for as Max smiled.

  It was still about a half hour before six so Max and I got out the cards and we played gin until it was time. My mind was on other things but I still beat him—Max is too superstitious to count cards like I had showed him. I hooked up the on-line phone set and dialed the gunrunners. James answered on the first ring—I guess he does all the public speaking for the two. “Yes?”

  “It’s me. I have a proposition for you. I’ll pick you up in two hours, right where you are, and we’ll talk, okay?”

  “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.

  45

  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 bu
siness, 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—”

  “That’s two thousand up front. I’m trusting you, right? For two grand—for two men. I haven’t seen any guns, right? I’m supposed to get a Bill of Lading, F.O.B., like we said. When I get that . . .”

  “Agreed,” said James, reaching out his hand for me to shake while Gunther did his best to repress a grin at my stupidity.

  The rest of the transaction didn’t take long. I gave them the address of the office building where they could set up, asked them what name they used for their outfit, and promised to have all the printing done by the next day. Before I handed over the two grand we had a nice professional discussion about the specific men I wanted them to recruit for my big operation.

  “I need an explosives expert, a night sniper, and a martial arts man,” I told them. “I want real professionals too, not some guys who took a course someplace. We pay the going rate, two grand up front per man sign-up bonus, payable on arrival overseas to any bank they want, or just cash in their hands. Okay?”

  “You said you had specific individuals?”

  “Yeah, but no square names, just handles, right? The explosives guy calls himself Mr. Kraus. A tall, German-looking dude, wears steel-rimmed glasses, brush-cut, very clean-looking. He’s worked Africa before—he knows the story. If he hears about you, he’ll sign right up. The sniper, all I know about him is the name Blackie. Ex-Marine, did two hitches in ’Nam. I heard he had some trouble with ATF so he may be hard to find, but I think he’d like a vacation for a while. And the karate guy calls himself the Cobra.”

  I threw in Wilson’s complete description, but not his right name. I wasn’t worried about paying the five Gs bonus on any of the other guys—they didn’t exist. And if they turned up the Cobra, he’d be worth the two grand I was fronting them.

  When I handed over the money, James wanted to shake hands again. Gunther didn’t move, keeping his eye on Max all the time, looking at his back. That’s as close as he’d come.

  “I’ll meet you at the new office tomorrow afternoon, say around two, okay? I may have some more info for you by then, and I’ll have all the printing done for sure. We run this thing for one week, maybe two at the most. Then we close the deal with whatever you have by then, okay?”

  “Right,” said James. Gunther still wasn’t talking. Under other circumstances I would have been happy to leave them on the pier to find their own way home, but I loaded them back in the Buick and we drove them back to their personal pay phone. Gunther kept on staring at Max like he was going to twist his head off his spinal column. I watched Max’s hands on the steering wheel—they looked like old, cracked leather stuffed full of steel pebbles. They were very still.

  On the way back to the warehouse Max made a fist of his right hand, squeezing it tighter and tighter as I watched. Then he looked at the top of his closed fist like something slimy was oozing out, scraped it away with his other hand, and made a throwing-away gesture. Yes. I told him, that was the idea—put enough pressure on the Cobra and he’d ooze out like pus from a wound.

  Back at the warehouse I got into the Plymouth and Max and I went off to do our separate work. While I drove over to one of my cold pay phones to keep the pressure on, Max would be meeting with the Blood Shadows and giving them their instructions and equipment.

  I got to the phone, set up the machinery to meet with Pablo’s people, caught the second call, and made delivery of the posters. Pablo agreed to handle the distribution. I gave him as many details as I reasonably could about Goldor’s death without mentioning Flood, explaining that it was unavoidable. I told him I’d thought about leaving some sort of UGL calling card in Goldor’s house but decided it was better not to—he said that I’d done right. I knew that—I’d never really thought about doing anything but getting the hell out of there, but I didn’t want him to think I’d been ungrateful for the information and the trust it implied.

  I left Pablo and found another phone. From there a previously reliable informant told a certain DEA agent that a man precisely answering the Cobra’s description was going to be moving some major narcotics through either Kennedy or LaGuardia Airport in the next week or two: They’d listen—the last tip from this informant had netted them fifteen kilos of high-grade cocaine on the way in from Peru.

  I checked my watch—just enough time to hit Times Square, make the last phone call of the night, and watch the Blood Shadows at work. I found a booth near Ninth Avenue and Forty-second Street, just around the corner from the national headquarters of SAVE (Sisterhood Against Vice and Enslavement).

  I told the young lady answering the phone that a very bad thing would happen to each and every member of that organization if they didn’t shut their mouths about all this kiddie-porn nonsense. The young woman gave the phone to their executive director, and I ended up threatening her with hideous mutilation if she didn’t get off my motherfucking case. When she calmly asked, “Who is calling, please?” I told her, “The Cobra, you fuckin’ cunt,” and slammed down the phone.

  Still holding down the hook, I unscrewed the mouthpiece and removed the encoder disc the Mole had made for me. It didn’t so much disguise my voice as make it impossible to voice-print. I had a few of the discs, but there was no harm in using the same one for the SAVE people as I used for the DEA—no reason why a drug informant couldn’t be a child molester too.

  I was walking toward my car just as two of the war-wagons rolled past me and slammed to a halt. All the doors opened at the same time, discharging a cold-eyed cargo. The young Chinese marched down the wide street in military formation, looking straight ahead. They walked in silence—nobody barred their way. Their leader saw a porno shop on his left, pivoted on his heel, and entered. His men followed at his back. I knew what would be happening inside—the leader would engage the man at the desk in some polite conversation (like, “You don’t move, please,” punctuated with a 9-mm automatic leveled at the clerk’s face), and the rest of the army would fan out through the shop. They would find an appropriate space on a wall, slap on the stencil we’d made up, take out a can of the spray paint and do their work. When they pulled off the stencil, the wall would say COBRA BE WARNED! THE MONGOOSE IS COMING! Then they would walk out—nobody would call the cops, and if someone did a petty vandalism arrest with a guarantee that no complaining witne
ss would ever come to court wouldn’t bother these boys. I could just see Blumberg defending this one on the ground that the Blood Shadows were engaged in some citywide anti-porn campaign.

  It would take the army less than an hour to cover the whole area, then they would vanish. I’d given Max three hundred for the job to cover expenses in case the kids asked—but I didn’t think they would.

  I had a couple more things to do before I rested for the night. First, another stop at the printer’s to make up the stationery and business cards for James and Gunther, who’d decided to call themselves Falcon Enterprises—white paper, green ink. While I was there I used the machine and made up a plastic sign for their office door too. Nothing but first class all the way.

  By then it was almost ten-thirty so I headed toward the Village. I had seen a meeting of the Boundaries Society advertised in one of the local slime sheets. The topic for the night’s meeting was Inter-Generational Sex, the new euphemism for child molesting. I had been to one of those meetings before—all about how early sexualization prepares a child for the realities of modern living. Most of the audience had been male, some of them with their “wards.” It was a long shot that the Cobra would show up to greet his brothers, but still, a shot worth playing.

  When I got there the guardian of the front door said “No police,” and I looked around like I was frightened at the very word but it was no go—I wasn’t getting inside without a major beef.

  I decided it probably wasn’t worth the hassle, but I still had a job to do so I sat in the Plymouth listening to Judy Henske for another two hours until the meeting disgorged its vermin into the streets. I watched each face carefully. No Cobra.

  It was almost one in the morning by the time I nosed the Plymouth out of its parking space and headed for Flood.

  46

  I LET MYSELF into Flood’s place, working the downstairs locks with my set of picks. It took about a minute—a very secure setup. I moved up the stairs, checking for feedback visually, then closed my eyes, regulated my breathing, and rechecked on audio. Nothing. I rapped on Flood’s studio door with two gloved knuckles. No response—at least she wasn’t a total idiot. I knew she’d be near the door so I called out, “It’s me, Flood” just loud enough for her to hear and the door swung open into a darkened room. I turned as it closed behind me and caught a flash of Max’s black robes. The light was dim inside, but I knew my way and I walked around the taped-off section of the floor over to Flood’s private place. She was right behind me.