Flood (17 page)

When we got to the first-floor landing we saw the steel door with no doorknob. I told Margot to wait, and in a few seconds it buzzed and popped open. I pulled it closed from the other side, knowing there was no way to go back through it. If anyone else tried to come through the door legit, Pop would buzz once like he just did and they’d get through. But if someone was forcing him to do it he’d hit the buzzer a few times rapidly. That wouldn’t open the door, but it would seem like he was trying to—anyone in the building would know it was time to split. Even if the law hit the door with the usual fireaxes and battering rams you’d have at least fifteen minutes to get out. More than enough. Pop didn’t allow any dope-dealing in the place, but anything else went, and guys sometimes went up and down these stairs with enough explosives to put the whole block into orbit.

I used the key to open the first door on the second floor, and Margot and I went inside. Large, barely furnished suite of rooms, two bathrooms, convertible couch, empty refrigerator. If you wanted it, you had to bring it. I found an ashtray and lit up. Margot let out what sounded like a groan and sat down on the couch. I looked over at her. “So?”

“I’ve got a job for you.”

“I don’t need a job, Margot. I need to talk to Michelle.”

“I already talked to her. I’ve got a message for you.”

“Which is?”

“First I want to talk about the job.”

“Hey, what is this crap? Just tell me what Michelle said.”

She took off her glasses again, gave me a dead smile to go with her eyes. “Don’t be tough, Burke—don’t be a hard guy. Don’t threaten me. I’ve had everything that can be done to a person done to me except killing and I don’t care about that. Don’t threaten me, just listen to me, okay?”

I said nothing, smoking. Margot lit one of her own.

“Something has to be done about Dandy.”

“Your pimp?”

“My pimp.”

“I don’t know him, never heard of him.”

“He’s from Boston. He just came down here.”

“What has to be done?”

“Murder.”

“You’re talking to the wrong man. That’s not me.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“Then you heard wrong.”

“How much?”

“Forget it. You’re a fucking dummy—you don’t want this creep, get on a bus and split.”

“I can’t leave.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit—first he has to die.”

“Don’t even tell me about it.”

“Would five thousand do the job?”

I got up from the couch and walked over to the window. Layers of filth made it impossible to look through, even in the daylight. I still needed that message from Michelle, so I gave Margot some free advice. She listened like it was worth what I was charging. “Look, dummy. You pay a man five G’s to knock off some halfass pimp and he takes your money and says thank you and never does it.
Then
what the fuck do you do?”

“I earn some more money and now I have a list of two people.”

“At that rate you’ll be on social security before you find someone who’s for real, and he’ll want a million dollars for your whole list.”

“I can make a million dollars if I have to—I got my money-maker right here,” Margot said, slapping herself on the rump and smiling her dead smile. We were getting nowhere.

“Look, I don’t do that kind of work. Just leave him and be done with it.”

“He has to be dead first.”

“Because he’ll come after you or what?”

“The first.”

“If I could—and I’m not saying I can—arrange it so he never comes near you again in life, would that do it?”

“You don’t know him.”

“Yes I do.”

“I thought you said you’d never heard of him.”

I blew an attempt at a smoke ring at the ceiling, went back over to the couch and motioned her to come over and sit next to me. Margot hesitated, biting her swollen lower lip. “What the fuck’s the matter with you?” I asked her. “You come into a strange place with a strange man, you ask him to kill someone, and now you’re afraid of a couch?”

It didn’t even get a smile out of her, but she did walk over and sit next to me. And listened.

“Look, let’s say a man works in a maggot factory. You know, where they dig up maggots from under rocks and put them into little containers for people who need maggots, like fishermen and scientists and abstract artists or whatever. Okay, he works in this factory for twenty years, right? He watches maggots work, he watches them play, he watches them breed. He sees them individually and in groups. He observes their every fucking characteristic, all right? Now you find a man like this and you ask him if he knows your
personal
maggot. And he says no. But he knows maggots, you understand? And one maggot’s not a hell of a lot different from the other maggots? Okay?”

“Yes.”

“So I never heard of this Dandy.”

“I got it.”

“Okay, now what’s the message from Michelle?”

“Wait. You’ll do something with Dandy?”

“For five thousand dollars. But I won’t kill him—and you’ll have to participate.”

“Why? How?”

“The why is so you don’t end up testifying against me and my people. The how I don’t know yet.”

“This is straight?”

“You tell me.”

Margot looked into my face like there was something she could learn. There wasn’t, but she was satisfied, I guess. She nodded okay.

“Now . . .”

“This is the message from Michelle, word for word. She said, ‘Tell Burke that the man who knows the Cobra made a movie star out of a corpse.’ That’s all.”

“That’s the whole thing—that’s all she said?”

“That’s it. She made me say it twenty times until I got it down perfect.”

“What’s she think I am, Sherlock-fucking-Holmes?”

“Burke, I don’t know. That’s what she said. Not like it was a riddle but like you’d understand.”

“Okay.” I told her I’d drop her off wherever she wanted.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to be off the streets for a few hours. I’ll tell Dandy I turned a freak trick for two bills. That’s what he wants anyway. He says that’s where the money is.”

“So?”

“So can I stay here and have you got the two bills?”

“You must be crazy. You go through all this to offer me five grand and you haven’t got two hundred?”

“I got it, Burke. I just don’t have it here. I couldn’t carry it around with me, could I?”

“I already laid out a yard for this place.”

“I’ll have your money tomorrow—meet you here at noon?”

I just looked at her, her eyes were still dead. But Michelle must have trusted her if she gave her that message to pass on. “Burke, if you do this, I swear you’ll never regret it.”

“I already regret it.”

“I got nothing here to give you, nothing except my body—and I’m sure you don’t want that.” And suddenly, damn her, her dead eyes got wet and she started to cry.

And so Burke the great scam artist, the never-suckered city poacher, sat on a couch and held a crying whore for almost three hours and then gave her two hundred dollars and drove her back to the streets. Before I went into that room, Dandy was a maggot. Now he was a maggot who owed me money.

26

AFTER I DROPPED off Margot I kept thinking about how her eyes didn’t look dead anymore. Maybe they were alive with hope, maybe with the joy of ripping off another sucker. There was only one sure way to find out, and that meant I had to find the Prof and Michelle both. There was only one place in the whole city where I might hit that exacta, a midtown joint called The Very Idea. So I stashed the Plymouth back at the office, walked a few blocks, and caught a cab uptown.

The Very Idea isn’t exactly closed to the public, but it’s not the kind of place where a citizen would stay very long. It’s supposed to be just for transsexuals and their friends—no transvestites, drag queens, fag hags, or hustlers—and most especially no tourists. It’s over near First Avenue, just a snort away from some of the heaviest singles bars. I heard that the folks in The Very Idea used to get together and practice their routines on each other before they tried them out on the citizens. They’re all supposed to do this while they get the hormone injections—Michelle told me you have to cross-dress for a year, stay in therapy, and get a clean bill of psychiatric health before they let you have the sex-change surgery. But the citizens are too easy to fool, and it’s not a good test. The club was the idea of a few of them, a private subscription deal. They didn’t expect to make money, just to have a place to hang out in peace. But somehow the joint caught on and now it does a good business. It’s not frantic like a gay bar, and I can see why folks like to just drop in to spend a few bucks and enjoy the quiet. But, like I said, most people aren’t welcome there.

I had the cab let me off a few blocks away, walked over to the river, and doubled back to the club. There was a middle-sized lunch crowd already in place and it looked more like Schrafft’s than a gay bar. Well, like Michelle said, it
wasn’t
a gay bar.

I didn’t see Michelle so I headed for the long counter. As usual, Ricardo was in place. He serves as sort of a maitre d’ and bartender at the same time, selected more for his courtly manners than anything else, I suppose. I know for damn sure they don’t need a bouncer in that joint. One time some jerkoff sailors found their way inside and started some trouble with Ricardo. He didn’t participate personally—just watched while his customers made short work of the sailors. I don’t know if the Shore Patrol declared the place off-limits after that or what, but I do know the sailors’ threats to return and demolish the place never came to anything. “Ah, Mr. Burke,” Ricardo greeted me, “a pleasure to see you again, sir. Will you have the usual?”

I said sure without the slightest idea of what he was talking about. Ricardo thinks questions like that add a lot of class to the joint. He put some silly-looking glass filled with dark liquid and a slice of lime in front of me. I didn’t touch it—I don’t drink. I put a twenty on the bar, Ricardo made it disappear and threw a bunch of bills back in the original spot. I let them ride and asked, “Seen Michelle?”

“Today?” A blank look on his face.

“Ricardo, you know me—what’s the problem?”

He let his eyes drift down to the money on the bar. Sure—if I was there as a friend, why would I have to bribe this guy just to find out where she was? Ricardo wasn’t as dumb as he acted. So I said, “For my drinks . . . and hers, right?”

He smiled. The man had about twice the normal allotment of teeth. “She’s in the dining room, sir.”

The dining room crack just meant she was around someplace, and that he would let her know I was here. I don’t know how they do that, and I never asked. But the system works—in less than five minutes Michelle swished through the door of the ladies room and took the stool next to me.

“Looking for company, handsome?”

“Actually,” I told her, “I’m looking for the Prophet.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“No, baby, I mean
Prof,
you know?”

“Oh,
that
Prof. He’ll be here. This place is on his regular rounds. But I guess you knew that.”

“Yeah. Look, I have to ask you something about your friend Margot.”

“Ask me what, honey?” said Michelle, her face calm but her eyes alert.

“Is she straight?”

“She’s a who-ah, sweetie, a pros-tit-tute.”

“That’s not what I mean, Michelle. She told me some things, and maybe she asked me to do some things. I don’t want to get it caught in a wringer.”

“One of my friends got it caught in a wringer. It cost a lot of money—she should have gone to Sweden. You know they don’t do the operations at Johns Hopkins anymore?”

“Yeah, I know. Do you know Margot’s pimp?”

“Dandy? Yes, I know the swine.”

“A swine because he’s running girls or—?”

“A swine, darling. A pain-freak—there’s a lot of them around nowadays. I don’t even think he’s a righteous pimp, you know? Like he marks the girls in the face—what kind of pimp does that?”

“What’s his weight?” I asked.

“Strictly fly, baby. He came from Boston where he was working some runaways. That’s his real thing, you know. He has some boys too. I heard he was even pimping when he was in the joint.”

“Why would he come down from Boston?”

“Baby, don’t you know the way it works? It’s harder to pimp in a small town. You have to be in good with the locals, and you can make enemies
so
easily. Here in the Rotten Apple there is room for everyone—you don’t have to be connected to work street girls, you don’t have to make payoffs, don’t even need a trick book. All you need is meat on the street, just some meat on the street. Maybe he had some trouble back in Boston—who knows?”

“You saying Margot is good people?”

“Honey, for a biological woman, she’s all right.”

“Okay,” I said, “now what about the message you gave her for me?”

Michelle leaned against me, put one hand on the back of my neck to bring me closer to her lips, and whispered, “I heard about a freak who did some kids, did them real bad. And when he got popped he dropped a pocketful of dimes, okay? I don’t know if he’s your man, but he sounds right. And one of the heavies he is supposed to have given up is this man who makes ugly movies. Burke, I won’t even say this man’s name—get it from someplace else.”

“Where?”

“Honey, I don’t know. I already said too much, even to you. This is the man you have to see if you want a snuff film, okay?” Michelle released her grip. “I love you, Burke,” and she leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. She swung off the stool and disappeared back into the club without another word.

I asked Ricardo for a roast beef sandwich and got some three-decker nonsense on toast with the crusts neatly trimmed off. I was eating and checking the paper when the Prof appeared in a floor-length raincoat and carrying an umbrella. The city was in for a long dry spell.

“It’s going to rain?” I asked the Prophet.

“It will rain,” he promised.

“What happened to seven-twenty-seven?”

“It was the wrong plane, my son. The number came seven-forty-seven. When you work with me, you have to think big.”

“So it was my fault?”

“God gives the word—mortals interpret the word of God. There is more than a single version of the Bible, and for good reason.”

“Do you think you might be persuaded to give the word to an individual here on earth?”

“This is always possible,” he said. “Are you going to finish that sandwich?”

“No,” I said, and shoved it across, signaling to Ricardo to give him whatever he wanted to drink. Ricardo appeared, looked questioningly at the Prophet, who asked, “Buttermilk?” smiling his sweet smile.

Ricardo served it up like he had a call for buttermilk every day. Maybe he did.

I turned to the Prof. “You know a halfass pimp named Dandy?”

The Prof handled the segue back to the prison yard without breaking stride. “I got the slant on the whole plant, Burke. He’s a new boy, green to the scene—talks a tough game but he hasn’t been with us long.”

“The word is he won’t be with us much longer if he doesn’t change his ways.”

“Talk to me,” said the Prof.

“Let me put it this way,” I said. “Sometimes you have to play the same hand you deal to other people.”

“What goes around, comes around—true enough. Who’s down on his case?”

“Among others, Max the Silent.”

“Max?
Max the life-taking, widow-making, silent wind of death?”

“The same.”

“I got the message, Burke. The Prof will not be around when the shit comes down.”

“No, that’s not it, Prof. I want this fool to understand what he’s playing with, okay? I want to send him a message.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“Clean up his act or take it on the road . . . alone.”

The Prof thought for a minute. “Leave his string behind, is that it?”

“As far as I know, he’s got no string—just one lady, and he’s working her too hard.”

“I got it. And I’ll give him the word. Can I tell him in public?”

“Why?”

“Look, Burke, I got to survive on these streets too. If I lay the message on him and he doesn’t listen, then Max moves on him, right?”

“Right.”

“So people connect
me
with Max—that’s a better insurance policy than Prudential.”

“Good enough. But he’s supposed to be a nasty bastard, Prof—he may not take the message too well.”

“If he wants to play, he’s got to pay,” said the Prof, and I put a pair of tens into his hand. He slid off the barstool, turned, and said: “What’s the word?”

“If there’s a reason, there’s a season?” I ventured.

“Yes, and if it’s truth, it can’t be treason,” he replied, and vanished into the daylight outside.

I left a ten on the bar for Ricardo and followed in the Prophet’s footsteps. At the rate this case was going I could end up on welfare—or veteran’s assistance, or disability, workman’s compensation, unemployment, or any of the other government paths to a regular income. I hoped not—it was a drag keeping track of all that paperwork.