Flood (12 page)

18

I GOT TO Bryant Park around nine-thirty. This little plot of greenery located behind the Public Library is supposed to enhance the citizens’ cultural enjoyment of their surroundings. Maybe it did once—now it’s an open-air market for heroin, cocaine, hashish, pills, knives, handguns—anything you might need to destroy yourself or someone else. There’s a zoning law in effect, though—if you want to have sex with a juvenile runaway from Boston or Minneapolis, or to buy a nine-year-old boy for the night, you have to go a few blocks further west.

Not too much activity when I first got there. The real scores are at lunchtime. But the predators and the prey were already doing their dance: broads walking through with gold chains and swinging handbags, solid citizens hustling to get to whatever hustle they do for a living, amateur thugs who wouldn’t know an easy score from a steady job lurking as subtly as vultures in a graveyard, small packs of kids moving through fast on their way to one of the porno movies in Times Square, some old lunatic feeding the pigeons so bloated from slopped-around junk food that they couldn’t fly, a bag lady looking for a place to rest her body for a few minutes before she nomads on.

I looked around carefully. There were no real hunters on the set (like someone who got burned in a dope deal looking for the salesman). I sat down on a bench, lit up. Like always, I was early. Sometimes if you come late for one of those meetings, you never leave.

I was smoking my cigarette and watching the flow around my bench when I saw the Prof approach. He was making his way carefully through the clots of people, occasionally stopping to exchange a few words but moving steadily in my direction. Not quite a midget, he was maybe four-and-a-half feet tall, even with the giant afro that shot out of his skull like it was electrified. Maybe forty years old, maybe sixty. Nobody knows all that much about the Prof. But he knows a lot about people: some say “Prof” is short for “Professor,” some say it stands for “Prophet.” Today he’s wearing a floor-length cashmere overcoat that probably fit the guy who originally brought it from Brooks Brothers and was dumb enough to hang it on a restaurant coathook—it trails behind him like the robes of royalty. The Prof speaks from the streets or the skies, depending on his mood:

“Today it is seven-twenty-seven. That’s the plain truth, and that’s no pun.”

“How’s business, Prof?”

“Do you hear the word, Burke? The number today must be seven-twenty-seven.”

“Why?” I asked, not looking up. The Prof was standing to one side, not blocking my view. No matter how he talked, he knew how to act.

“Not what you think, Burke. Not what you think. Not the airplane seven-twenty-seven, but a doom dream in reverse.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Do not mock the Word, Burke. Last night I dreamed of cards and death. Not the Tarot cards—gambler’s cards. You know the Dead Man’s Hand?”

“Aces and eights?”

“This is true. Aces and eights. And death means time, and time means hope, and to hope is to reject death, is it not?”

“Time don’t mean hope when you’re
doing
it, Prof.”

The Prof doesn’t like to be challenged when he’s talking nonsense.

“Who you talking to, chump? A tourist? Hear what I got to say before you go on your way.”

“Okay, Prof. Run it down,” I told him. That was a cheap shot about time anyway: small as he was, the Prof had stood up when we were inside.

“See the face of a clock in your mind, Burke—the reverse of one is seven, and the reverse of eight is two. The Death Number is one-eighty-one—so the Life Number must be seven-twenty-seven. And today is Life.”

“And you know this how?”

“Every man has a life sentence, brother. I know because I know. I know things. When I appeared, you were listening to a song in your mind.”

“So? What song?”

“A song of aces and eights.”

“I was listening to ‘Raining in My Heart.”

“By Slim Harpo?”

“The very one.”

“And some mock the words of the Prophet! I know what I see, and what I see others do not know. Play seven-twenty-seven today, Burke, and be wealthy for a week to come.”

I reached in my coat pocket and came out with a five, slapped it into his upturned palm. The money vanished.

“You may count on me, Burke. For it is written: those who cannot be counted
on,
may not be counted
in.
I will hold the proceeds for you until next we meet.”

“May it be in a better place,” I said, bowing my head slightly.

The Prof said nothing, just stood there sniffing the air like we were back inside, on the yard. And then, from the side of his mouth: “You working?”

“Just waiting for the library to open up so I can do some legal research for a client.”

“How’s Max?”

“The same.”

“I heard your name a couple of nights ago.”

“Where?”

“In a pub near Herald Square—two men, one with a loud voice and a red face, the other better-dressed, quiet. I didn’t get everything they said, but they spoke British.”

“British? You mean English?”

“No, Burke. Like British, but not quite the same. Like with a British accent or something.”

“Hard guys?”

“The loud one, maybe, and only if you let him. Not city people.”

“What’d they say?”

“Just that you were being cute with them, and that they had to meet with you to do some business.”

“How’d you get so close?”

“I was on my cart.” He meant a flat piece of wood with some roller-skate wheels on the bottom. When he kneels down on this and propels himself along wearing his long coat, you’d think he had no legs. It’s a living.

“If you run across them again, I’d like to know where they live,” I said, handing him another bill—a ten.

The Prof took the money, but more slowly this time. “I don’t like those folks, Burke. Maybe you should stick to your legal research.”

“It’s all part of the same case, I think.”

The Prof nodded and put his hand on his forehead as if he were getting a message. Instead, he gave me one: “If there’s a reason; there’s a season,” he said, and flowed back into the crowd.

I watched him disappear into the murk, checked both sides of the street, and got up to meet Flood.

19

FLOOD WAS STANDING right where she was supposed to, just inside the doors past the entrance guarded by stone lions. She had her back against the wall, pocketbook over one shoulder, left hand in front of her, right hand holding the left wrist. She was wearing another one of those loose jackets with a bodysuit underneath, pale gray this time, with floppy wide-legged pants so loose at the cuffs I couldn’t see her shoes underneath. Her hair was piled into a chignon at the top of her head but it didn’t make her look any taller.

She didn’t see me and I stayed in the doorway a minute to watch her. I still hadn’t figured out how she could breathe without moving her chest. Flood had her eyes nailed to the door I was supposed to use. Human traffic flowed around her, but she never moved. Some professorial-looking person with an open book in one hand stopped and said something to her. He might as well have been talking to one of the stone lions out front—her big dark eyes never flickered. The professor shrugged elaborately and moved on.

I went in the door and Flood spotted me but stayed where she was. “Nice disguise, Flood,” I said, and reached down to take her hand. She pulled it away but rose up on her toes and kissed me quickly on the cheek to show she wasn’t telling me to get lost. Then she moved her hand toward her waist so fast I only saw the vapor trail, smiled like a little girl who’d just done something clever and held her hand out for me to take. She had small, chubby hands, not what you would expect if you’d seen her use them.

We walked down the lion-guarded steps hand in hand, me being careful on the steps and Flood bouncing along like she was on level ground. Maybe we looked like some graduate student who had stayed in school too long and his date. Hard to tell what we looked like but I guess we didn’t look like a survival expert and a deadly weapon. So maybe the disguises weren’t so bad after all.

It was good walking with Flood in the sunshine, so I made a complete circle of the block just to make it last—and to see if anyone was more interested in us than they should have been. As we turned into the park, I dropped Flood’s hand and slipped my arm around her waist, squeezing her side to get her attention. She looked up at me. Quietly, out of the side of my mouth, I said, “What did you have in your hand?”

Flood looked at me, shrugged, and opened her closed hand. I hadn’t seen her hand move back to her waist, but that was where she must have stashed it—a flat piece of dull metal shaped like a five-pointed star with a hole in the middle, about the size of a half dollar. When I reached for it, it sliced into my finger so cleanly that I didn’t feel the pain until I saw blood—the goddamned thing was nothing but a star-shaped razor. Flood pulled it out of my finger, bent over to look at the wound, put my finger into her mouth, sucked sharply for a second, spit some blood onto the ground. “Hold it closed with your other hand for a few seconds and it’ll stop bleeding. It’s a clean cut.” The star went back into her waistband someplace. I squeezed Flood’s waist again to see if I could make her body bounce a little bit. She was so much fun. “What the fuck is that thing?”

“It’s a throwing star. A defense tool when your opponent is beyond your hands and feet.”

“You
throw
that thing?” By then we were walking toward one of the old trees that somehow had managed to survive the steady diet of wild dog urine, alcoholic upchuck, and junkie blood for which the park was justly famous. She rolled her shoulders slightly and I heard a faint whistling noise and then a tiny
snick
like when a knife snaps open. Flood tilted her chin toward the tree and I could see the throwing star sticking out of the mangy bark. We walked over and I tried to pull it out without defingering myself—no go. Flood put her thumb against the side of the star, pushed hard to the right, then shifted her hand and carefully removed it with two fingers. It disappeared again. I didn’t know what the future was going to be for Flood, but I was reasonably certain she’d never be a battered wife.

We walked through the park to the car. I saw one of the local denizens looking at Flood’s pocketbook and was tempted to let her walk on alone just so at least one miserable purse-snatcher would meet justice head on, but it wasn’t worth it. Actually, I wouldn’t have minded Flood walking ahead of me just to watch her walk.

When we got to the Plymouth, I checked it quickly, opened my door, and Flood slid in first. We drove over toward the East Side Drive, down to the Park & Lock joint near the river. I wanted to approach the Daily News Building on foot. I turned off the engine, rolled down the window, lit a cigarette, and waited. It’s always good to wait. Most people lack patience, especially when they’re doing something they really don’t want to do.

It was quiet and dark in the lot, even in the middle of the day, and Flood didn’t seem in a hurry. She just sat quietly, watched me smoke, and finally said, “You’re not carrying guns today, are you?”

I turned away from the window. She was sitting with her legs crossed, elbow on one knee, chin in her hand. “Why do you say that?”

“A person walks differently when he’s carrying a weapon. He moves differently. You can always tell.”

“You learn that in Japan?”

“Yes.”

“Well, they told you wrong. I don’t walk differently, I don’t move differently.”

“Burke, you’re not carrying those guns.”

“I’m armed.”

She looked at me, smiled, and said “Bullshit” in a merry voice. I looked as injured as possible under the circumstances.

“You want to search me?”

Flood gave me a throaty laugh, said “Sure,” and put her hands inside my coat, under the arms, down my ribcage, around to my back, into the waistband of my slacks, dropped her hands to my ankles. Came up empty. She raised her eyebrows, patted my groin and round the inside of my thighs. Back to the groin again. “Is this what you mean?”

I tried to look serious, settled for a kiss on the tic-tac-toe scar instead and lit another cigarette. Flood looked pouty.

“Look,” I said, “those folks in Japan don’t know everything. I’m not trying to put them down, but you won’t survive long if you believe everything someone else tells you.”

“I still don’t see any guns.” Flood tapped her fingers on my knee as if she were patiently waiting.

I tightened my right fist, brought it up against my shoulder, flexed my bicep hard until I popped the Velcro flap inside the sleeve at the elbow joint. I pulled my fist rapidly away from my shoulder, opening it just in time to catch the short metal tube as it slid down my sleeve through the silk channel into my open hand. It wasn’t as smooth as Flood and her star, but her mouth popped open like she’d just seen magic. She clapped her hands delightedly. “Burke, what’s that?”

“What’s it look like?”

“Like a big fat lipstick.”

I held it in my hand and told her to look closely. The tube was perfectly machined steel, about two-and-a-half inches long. Inside was a .357-magnum hollow-point slug. All you do is press hard on the back of the tube and the slug comes out the front. The Mole wouldn’t guarantee accuracy over five feet but he did guarantee it would work. Flood reached for it but I jerked it away from her.

“Can’t you unload it and let me look at it?”

“You can’t unload it. Once you force the slug in against the spring, that’s it.”

“Can you reload it after you use it?”

“Nope. You shoot it once—it blows up a piece of your hand and whatever’s in front of your hand, and that’s all there is.”

“What a crazy thing.”

“You just searched me. Did you find it?”

“The star is better.”

“Better for
you.
It takes skill to throw that damn thing. All it takes for this is the guts to push the button.”

She sat there for a while, obviously thinking it over. Like she knew something was wrong but couldn’t get a grip on it. I smoked another cigarette while she was thinking. Finally she said, “It’s no good. It doesn’t even look like a gun. You couldn’t hold it on anyone and make them do anything. It wouldn’t scare anyone.”

“It’s not supposed to scare anyone. Nobody’s even supposed to see it, much less get scared by it. It’s just in case.”

“In case of what?”

It was my turn to shrug. I took off the jacket, put the tube back inside, refastened the Velcro flap, tried it back on, and moved around inside the jacket until I was comfortable again. “Ancient philosophy covers everything, right? People have evolved since those Japs went into the mountains to study the fine art of breaking other people into little pieces. We got all kinds of freaks walking around this planet who didn’t even exist a hundred years ago. This is for them, not for me. You have a reason to be here, but only for a while. Then you’ll go back to wherever you came from and do whatever you did before. I have to stay here—it’s a life sentence for me. So don’t tell me how a man looks when he’s carrying a gun—you don’t know, little girl. You may be the toughest broad on this whole earth, okay? But in this little section of it you’re ice cream for freaks.”

Flood looked like her whole face went flat except for her eyes. I didn’t let it stop me. “Don’t get an attitude, Flood. I’m not trying to be your daddy. If I was in fucking Japan looking for someone I’d at least have enough sense to find a translator first, right? We’ve got work to do, and I can’t have you stomping around like a fool—you’ll fuck things up. And I’ll get my ticket cancelled.”

Flood tried to sound bitter. “That’s the real issue, huh?”

“Ah, kiss my ass.” I threw my hand up in disgust and opened the door to get out. Flood’s hand turned into a grappling hook as she hauled me back inside like I was a featherweight and slammed me back against the driver’s seat.

Still holding the lapel of my jacket, she thrust her square little face right against mine, growled “Maybe later,” and giggled. Then she leaned over and kissed me hard on the mouth. “Let’s be friends, okay?”

“I
am
your friend,” I said, “I just don’t want—”

Flood made a shut-up gesture with her hands. “That’s enough. I’ll listen to you—you’ll listen to me. Let’s do it.”

I nodded my head. We both got out of the car and started up the block to the Daily News Building.