“Andrew Vachss bursts forth with more of the slashing prose that has earned him a reputation as one who gives no quarter in his exposure of the evils of the human mind. The man knows whereof he speaks.”

—
Newsday

“A steamy, fetid world delivered with convincing authenticity. . . . Astonishing.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Andrew Vachss’s work is all about horror, outrage, moral indignation and the blood of commitment. Vachss is the voice of righteousness confronting a powerful and cowardly evil.”

—James Ellroy

“There’s no way to put a [Vachss book] down once you’ve begun. . . . The plot hooks are engaging and the one-liners pierce like bullets.”

—
Detroit Free Press

“Outside the herd of self-serving, navel-magnifying American novelists, one man walks tall and almost alone: Andrew Vachss. . . . You can read him for razor edged entertainment, or you can read him for help in understanding the monsters who stalk America’s streets.”

—James Grady, author of
Six Days of the Condor

“Vachss seems bottomlessly knowledgeable about the depth and variety of human twistedness.”

—
The New York Times

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The ultimate poverty is to fail to acknowledge your debts. For the material in this book and in others to come, I am indebted to many people, some as close as my blood, some forever to be my enemies. I will never forget any of them.

INTRODUCTION
TO THE VINTAGE EDITION

Flood
was not my first published book. The first effort was nonfiction: a textbook on juvenile violence and proposed solutions which arose from my stint running a maximum-security prison for youthful offenders. That first book was a “critical” success, but it never reached outside the “profession.” An itinerant preacher with a then-unacceptable brand of gospel that we make our own monsters and build our own beasts, that pervasive abuse and neglect of children is a greater danger to our species than cocaine and Communism combined, I longed for a bigger congregation. So I turned to “fiction,” essentially adding plot, characters (keeping the characteristics) and (I hoped) sufficient narrative force to get the reader engrossed sufficiently to present my case.

But I couldn’t get anyone to publish
Flood,
despite the best efforts of a wonderful, dedicated agent (Victor Chapin, to whom this book is dedicated) who maintained his belief in me despite reams of rejection letters which looked like photocopies: all saying what a wonderful writer I was, what a great “ear” for dialogue I had, what a “powerful narrative voice,” but . . . the material was “just impossible.” At that time (the early 1980s), the material that drives all my work was dismissed as “horror stories” or “grotesque exaggeration.”

We know better now. If I had one wish, it would be that the material from which I draw my novels was “fictional.” Once journalism “discovered” child abuse, it quickly became apparent that I was not “inventing” or “imagining” anything. . . . I was simply reporting from Ground Zero. Where I have worked for three ugly decades.

Critical reaction to my books has varied (widely) ever since. But criticism on “authenticity” grounds has vanished with the tidal wave of headlines. The truth is inescapable. All that remains are the solutions, and the will to implement them.

Victor didn’t live to see
Flood
published. I wish he had. And I wish that this reprint was now “dated.” It is not. The beast still walks among us. I see myself not as a “writer,” but as a soldier in the only “Holy War” worthy of the name. This was the first shot I fired.

Andrew Vachss

November, 1997

FLOOD

I GOT TO the office early that morning—I think it was about ten o’clock. As soon as the dog saw it was me, she walked over to the back door and I let her out. I went outside with her as far as the fire escape and watched her climb the metal stairs to the roof where she would deposit her daily load. Someday I’m going to go up there and clean it all up, but in the meantime it keeps the winos from using my roof as a sleeping porch—too many of them smoke in bed.

The dog is a hell of a lot better than a burglar alarm. The cops wouldn’t rush into this neighborhood in the middle of the night anyway, and with Pansy on the job the burglar would still be there when anyone showed up. She’s a Neapolitan mastiff—about 140 pounds of concentrated hatred for all humanity except me. My last dog was a Doberman named Devil. She bit some clown and I got hit with a $100,000 lawsuit, so she had to run away from home. She never had a license and I’m about as judgment-proof as a man can get, but this lawyer I refer cases to sometimes told me that I should give my next dog a name that wouldn’t sound so negative. I thought of naming her the Neapolitan Homicide and calling her Homo for short, but the lawyer told me you never know who is going to be on a jury, especially in New York—so I compromised and called her Pansy. A lot of my clients don’t like the dog, but that doesn’t amount to a whole hell of a lot of people.

When Pansy came back downstairs, I shut the back door and got out her food. I only feed her the dry stuff, but she still slobbers like a politician near money. That’s why I have the floor covered in Astroturf—it handles anything, you just wash it off. A lot of my clients think that’s low-class too, but, like I said, there aren’t enough of them to make a difference.

I told the dog to stay where she was and went to check the other office. Actually, it’s just the next room, but there’s no connecting door and the outer door was sealed shut years ago. I just use it when people I don’t want to see knock on my door—once I stayed there for three days. It has a private john, a fridge, a hotplate, and even a TV with earphones. Not bad—but the only ventilation is the little window that opens off the fire escape where I climb in so I don’t use it too much.

I don’t make a lot of money at what I do, but the overhead is no problem—I have my own form of rent control. By accident, I once found out that the landlord’s son did something to some people and they’ve been looking for him ever since. I found the kid too, but his own mother wouldn’t recognize him. The landlord bought him a new face, got him started in business, and the kid was golden—except that I knew about him and I told the landlord I did. I haven’t paid rent in about four years. There’s no ethics problem—nobody ever hired me to find the little weasel.

I checked the mail first—a letter from American Express addressed to one of my other names demanding immediate payment of $3,504.25 or else they would wreck my credit rating for openers, a package on the latest FM transceiver bands from the U.S. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration addressed to the Crime Prevention Foundation, and a check for $771.25 from the Social Security Administration addressed to Mrs. Sophie Petrowski (the unfortunate Mr. Petrowski’s only survivor), proving to me that despite a lengthy sojourn in the federal joint the Mouse was continuing his one successful scam. There were also four handwritten letters containing the requisite ten-dollar money order in response to my ad promising information about “mercenary opportunities in foreign lands for qualified adventurers.”

I threw the American Express garbage where it belonged, put the Petrowski check inside a handsome envelope engraved with
Law Offices of Alexander James Sloan,
and typed the Mouse’s righteous name and institutional number on the outside. Stamped with my bold red
Confidential Legal Mail,
the envelope next went into my postage meter, a machine which could never be returned to Pitney Bowes for service. I understand the Mouse has a friendly guard who will cash these for him, obviously a future roommate. I added the four would-be mercenaries’ names to my Rolodex, took a manila envelope for each and enclosed a Rhodesian Army recruiting poster (Be a Man Among Men!), an Exxon map of Afghanistan, two phone numbers for bars in Earl’s Court, London, and the name of a hotel on the island of Sao Tome off the coast of Nigeria. As usual, none of them had enclosed the self-addressed, stamped envelope. The world is full of crooks.

The buzzer sounded, telling me either I or the dope-crazed hippies in the lower loft had a customer. I switched the toggle over to
Talk,
and hit the
Play
switch on the cassette recorder. A sweet female voice lilted out of the recorder and into the microphone connected to the downstairs speaker, “Yes please?”

A woman’s voice came back from downstairs, “I would like to see Mr. Burke, please.”

I hit the second switch on the recorder, and my faithful secretary asked, “Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but it’s very important. I don’t mind waiting.”

I thought for a second, contemplated the state of my finances, and selected another switch from the two remaining. “Very well. Please come up and Mr. Burke will see you shortly.”

“Thank you,” came the woman’s voice.

As soon as I hit the opener for the downstairs door, which also sends down the elevator, I went through the back door to the fire escape and climbed out past the connecting window to the second office. I kept going until I was near the end of the building, where I had a periscope mounted to give me a view of the entire hall from the elevator on down. It was a miserable arrangement even with the floodlights in the corridor—when it was raining or dark outside, you couldn’t see that much—but at least you could tell if it was more than one person outside the office door. It wasn’t this time and I went back inside.

Pansy growled softly. I adjusted the fake Persian rug on the right-hand wall (the second office is against the left wall) so that it looked as though there were a connecting door, and I opened the outer door just as she was getting ready to knock again. I motioned her to come inside and sit on the low couch next to my desk, activated a switch to open the phony intercom, and said “Sally, hold my calls for a while, okay?” A quick push of the second switch got me “Certainly, Mr. Burke.” I then turned to look at my new client.

The low couch usually bothers people but this lady couldn’t have cared less. I guess she measured about five feet total (maybe an inch or so less), white-blonde hair, high forehead, thin nose, wide-set dark eyes, and a kind of thick chunky build you would call buxom if you hadn’t had a look at her from the waist down. I hadn’t yet so I mentally settled for old-fashioned “buxom.” She wore wide-legged gray wool slacks over medium-heeled black boots, a white turtleneck pullover covered by one of those unstructured ladies’ jackets, no hat, no jewelry that I could see, pale lipstick, too much eyeliner, and some rouge that didn’t quite hide the tiny scar just under her right eye. It looked as though someone had engraved a tic-tac-toe crosshatch with a fine scalpel. She crossed her legs and folded her hands over her knee; one of the knuckles had a faint bluish tinge.

Everything fit together on her nicely but you can’t always tell what a woman spends on her get-up the way you can with a man—no jewelry, for example, didn’t mean she was broke. She sat as calmly as a toad waiting for flies, and the dog’s presence didn’t seem to unsettle her. It didn’t look like a matrimonial to me, but I’ve made a career out of being wrong. So I just asked, “How can I help you?” in my neutral professional voice.

Now that she wasn’t coming over the speaker, her voice sounded like she forgot to clear her throat. “I want you to find somebody for me.”

“Why?” Not that I give a senator’s morals for her reasons, but this kind of question usually gives you a good clue to how much money the customer wants to spend.

“Is that important?” she asked.

“It is to me. How do I know you don’t want to find this person and do some damage to them, for example?”

“If I did, you wouldn’t take the job?”

I didn’t need sarcasm this early in the morning. Even Pansy grinned appreciatively at her before rolling over and cracking another piece of her marrow bone.

“I didn’t say that. But I have to know what I’m getting into . . .”

“So you can fix the price?”

Okay, sure I have to fix the price. But she obviously didn’t understand the complexities of my business. If I put a flat fee on the job and I find the guy right away, I make some money. But if I don’t, then I’m out a lot of time and I don’t make out so well. And if I set a daily rate and happen to find the guy right away, I still have to keep him under surveillance for a few more days before I turn him over to the client so that I make a decent buck. I do a lot of locates, especially for bondsmen, but I don’t bring the people in myself—I have a gorilla I use for that work and I can only use him when he’s out of jail. He’s such a genius that I once got him to turn himself in on a bail-jumping rap for half the commission. So I said, “I get paid for the work I do and the risks I take, just like anyone else. If I have to go looking down a sewer, I have to be paid for the possibility of rat bites even if I don’t get bit, you understand?”

“Yes, I understand quite well. But I don’t have time to bargain with you. I’m not a good bargainer. I will pay you a thousand dollars if you will spend one week trying to find him—period.”

I pretended to think that one over. It was no contest—a grand a week is more than what some legitimate private eyes make.

“Okay, sounds reasonable to me. I’ll just need some basic facts and then I’ll get right to work.”

“Are you sure you can clear your calendar?” she wanted to know.

“Look, I didn’t solicit this business, right? If you would prefer someone more in tune with your social station, just say the word. I’m sure you can find your own way out.”

“All right, I’m sorry—maybe that wasn’t necessary. But I don’t want you to think I’m some dummy you can pull a cop-and-blow on.”

(That was a funny one. She didn’t look like a hooker—and she couldn’t be paying me to find a pimp. If those weasels aren’t visible, they’re not earning. And if they’re not earning, they’re hanging around some dummy’s apartment, spending the welfare check and planning their big comeback.)

“Where did you hear an expression like that?”

“I read it in a book. Let’s cut the snappy dialogue—just tell me who to make my check out to.”

“Make it out to cash. Then take it to your bank, hand it to the teller, exchange it for greenbacks and bring them all back to me. I’ll be happy to give you a receipt, but we don’t take checks in this business.”

Kind of hard to take checks when you don’t have a bank account, but let her think that her own honesty wasn’t exactly certified at my end.

“Okay, I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” She got off the couch, sort of shook herself so her clothes settled back on her frame without a wrinkle, and went over to the door. Her hips moved the way a woman’s do when she’s annoyed but not ready to sever the relationship. Even Pansy seemed entranced—she called upon some hidden reserves of energy and raised her massive head a couple of inches to watch the lady leave. I’m not one of those who wants to see a check so he can tell what bank the customer is using—who cares? Anyone with half a brain knows how to get around that dodge, and she looked like she had more than enough smarts.

If I was a detective, I would have spent the next few hours productively trying to deduce what kind of case this was. I never read Sherlock Holmes but I saw all the movies, so I did the intelligent thing and totally analyzed her character from her clothes. I came up with a flat zero. When I checked it out with Pansy, she confirmed my diagnosis.

I picked up the telephone gently to see if the trust-fund hippies downstairs were discussing one of their major marijuana deals again. It’s their phone—I simply had an associate hook me up an extension so I could make calls without the inconvenience of monthly bills. But I don’t abuse the setup—I have a good supply of slugs for the pay phone downstairs when I have to go long distance. The line was clear, which it usually it is until the late afternoon when the hippies get up—it must be nice not to have to work for a living. Thinking about it, I was sure that the lady would be back soon, and I’m not a man to leave money lying around uninvested. So I put in a quick call to my broker, Maurice.

“Yeah?” came the friendly greeting.

“Maurice, this is Burke. Give me a yard to win on the three-horse in the seventh tonight at Yonkers.”

“Three-horse, race number seven, at Yonkers—that right?”

“Perfect,” I told him.

“I doubt it,” says Maurice and he hangs up.

BOOK: Flood

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