Flood (26 page)

Flood said yes again and kind of moaned, and I wondered if there was any way to shoot him with the lipstick so that he wouldn’t die and I could finish him off myself.

Goldor kept on. “Do you want me to help you? Help you get the things you want, be the woman you can be? A
life,
a life of truth and beauty and richness?”

“How? I mean, what do I—”

Goldor’s voice shifted pitch, got tighter and harder. “Go over to that table on your left, you see it?” Flood nodded that she did. “You’ll find something on it. I want you to bring it to me, Debbie. Bring it over here to me.”

Trancelike, Flood walked over to the table, bent and picked up something. She turned around and walked back to Goldor, holding a short whip with three separate lashes at the end. She bent forward slightly and handed the whip to him. He looked steadily at her, said, “Do you understand?” and she said, “Yes. The truth . . . to be free.” Goldor took the whip from her and climbed off the stool. He stood to one side, holding the stock of the whip in one hand and the tips of the lashes in the other. Flood stood there watching him, hands clasped just below her breasts.

“Now, Debbie, I want you to bend over, turn your head to the side and put your face on this cushion.” He indicated the bar stool.

“Can’t I . . . ?”

“Debbie, you have to do this. I have explained it to you. I don’t want to think you didn’t understand.”

“But first . . . I mean, shouldn’t I . . . ?”

“What?” The barest hint of impatience crept into that controlled voice.

Flood said, “Can’t I . . . ?” and reached down and unsnapped the button to the bottle-green pants.

Goldor’s rich, dark-toned laugh boomed out. “Of course. Debbie, my child, you understand so beautifully. Yes—most appropriate. I’m so glad you
do
see.”

Goldor patiently held the whip as Flood hurriedly jerked the pants down over her hips, hooking her thumbs so that her panties came down with them. She started to walk over to the bar stool, stumbled, let out a nervous laugh, and bent to unzip the white boots. She pulled off the boots, climbed out of the pants, kicked everything away from her, and walked to the stool again. Goldor saw the fire-scar on her rump and grunted in surprise—then smiled with teeth so perfect and even that they must have been false or fully capped.

Flood bent over the stool, flexed each leg like a ballerina warming up, and Goldor let out a moan like a man with stomach cramps and stepped toward her, raising the whip to his shoulder. I heard the whistle of the whip in the dead quiet of the room—Flood’s right leg flashed in the orange light and I saw a whitish blur and heard a thump like a boxer’s fist slamming into the heavy bag and Goldor went flying backward. He hit the floor like a bag of wet garbage.

Flood spun with the momentum of her kick like a kid’s top gone berserk until she was almost on top of Goldor. Another spin and her foot shot into his throat, lifting his heavy body right off the ground. Then she whirled and ran over to me. She unsnapped the straps from the chair’s arms, crying and trying to talk at the same time.

“Burke, Burke, are you all right? Oh don’t be dead, Burke. Burke . . .”

“Flood . . . I’m
okay.
Just help me get up.”

She pulled me to my feet and we walked over to Goldor. Forget it. The maggot had finally found the truth. He was as dead as a junkie’s eyes. When I put my fingers to the side of his neck to be sure, there was no pulse, no breathing. I felt along his chest—three or four ribs on the right side were just plain gone, probably right through his lung. I felt his throat too but I couldn’t even find his Adam’s apple in the pulpy mess Flood had left.

I had my legs back, if not my stomach. We didn’t have much time. My watch said 9:22. Flood was out of it, still mumbling to herself—or to me, I couldn’t tell. I grabbed her shoulders, made her look at me. “Flood, listen to me. He’s gone. We can’t talk to him now. Take this,” I said, pulling a black silk handkerchief out of my pocket, “and go over
everything
we touched, understand? We weren’t here, got it?” She moved away like a robot, mechanically wiping every surface in the place. She was out of it. I told her to put on her clothes and stand there while I wiped things myself. I didn’t know how much time we’d have.

I ran through the house until I found the giant kitchen, grabbed a handful of cleaning fluids and some paper towels, and rushed back to the room with the orange lighting. I soaked the paper towels in the fluids, took out half a dozen cigarettes, lit them one by one, then put each burning butt inside a book of paper matches so that the fire would come in contact with the match heads when they burned down to the end. I loosely wrapped each little firebomb in the fluid-soaked paper towels, planting them all around the room. A final sprinkling of the fluid over the arms of the leather chair and the seat of the bar stool, a quick run to the kitchen to replace the fluid containers and wipe them down. I checked the room—Flood was still sitting there, a white-faced statue.

I pulled out my pocket flash and worked my way down to the basement. I knew I’d find what I needed down there . . . a complete set of barbells suspended over a stand used for bench presses. I wrapped the silk handkerchief around the heavy steel bar and carefully pried off the weights.

Back to the orange-lighted room. I dragged Goldor against one of the tapestry-covered walls, propped him up in a sitting position, took the steel bar in my hands, and swung from the heels, crushing his throat until his head was almost ready to fall off. Next I went to work on his chest and ribs until the skin broke open and his insides started to run onto the rug. When they did the autopsy the cops would tell the doctors about the steel bar—at least they wouldn’t be looking for a martial arts expert.

Flood just sat there, watching me, holding the white boots in one hand. I grabbed her other hand and dragged her to the front door, still wiping off surfaces we could have touched or brushed against. I opened the door and looked out into silent darkness. The floodlights were dead—the Mole had done his work. I could hear the crackle of the flames behind us. We were out of time.

I slipped out with Flood right behind me and quietly opened the doors to the Volvo, whispering to Flood to throw her boots inside and help me push the car from behind her door. I did the same with mine, holding onto the steering wheel with my right hand. The Volvo rolled smoothly down the paved driveway and into the street, and I hopped in when it was moving too fast for me to keep up. Flood did the same a second or so after me. I slipped the stick into second gear, popped the clutch and it fired right up.

I crawled around the corner, took another turn, and flicked on the headlights, then drove out of the area heading north, piloting the Volvo like it belonged there, I hoped.

We passed other cars, but no cops. Route 95 was right where we’d left it. Flood started crying when we crossed into New Rochelle, looking straight ahead out the windshield with tears rolling down her face like she didn’t know they were there. I kept to the exact change lanes through New Rochelle, hooked the Hutchinson River Parkway and exited toward the Triboro. I didn’t say anything to Flood, letting her cry quietly in peace. It was too late for talking.

We were supposed to come away from this trip to the suburbs with an address for the Cobra. Instead we had netted one dead sadist, one homicide investigation, one possible arson rap, and a cold dead trail. By the time we neared Flood’s place I knew I was starting to recover from Goldor’s Taser attack—I could tell by the taste of blood in my mouth.

41

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.

I quietly opened the door of the Plymouth, reached over, and opened the other door too. I looked for the right cassette, fitted it into the player and hit the switch, and the solitary guitar intro rolled out of the speakers and into the empty warehouse.

Flood spun and slammed to a stop in the middle of her mad dance, whipping her hands into a defense against the music. But it flowed out and surrounded her anyway. “Angel Baby,” by Rosie and the Originals, the high, clear voice of the girl singer reaching for something that would maybe never be there, but giving it everything she had. And Flood stood there—white stone in silk underwear, waiting.

I walked out of the shadows toward her, willing her to feel the music and be someplace else, my hands open at my sides. “Hey, Flood,” I called softly, “remember reform school?”

She stepped into my arms like she was back at those dances they used to give in the juvenile joints where they would invite the bad girls from the training schools so we could learn the social graces. We danced like we all used to then—our feet hardly moved, we didn’t cover much ground. At first she held me as rigid as a steel vise, but as the tape played through and another song from the fifties came on she loosened her grip, her hands moving up until they hung around my neck, her face buried in my chest. We moved together like that until the whole tape ran down and there was silence in the empty warehouse. I kissed her on the forehead and she put her arms around my neck and ground her hips into me like girls did back then. I felt the muscles in her back smooth out and she laughed deep in her throat and I knew she was past it, back to herself.

I held out my hand as if the dance were finished, she took it and we walked back toward the car to sit the next one out. On the hood was a pile of black silk. She seemed to know what it was. She put on the loose, flowing pants and the thigh-length robe with the wide sleeves. As she stepped into the black silk I saw the red dragons embroidered on each sleeve and I knew Max had been there.

We gathered up Flood’s whore-clothes and threw them in an old oil drum—I knew they would disappear into ashes and she seemed to know it too. I got into the Plymouth. Flood slid in beside me, slammed in close to me, put her left hand on the inside of my right thigh and left it there while I backed out and pointed the car’s nose toward her studio.