Flood (20 page)

30

AS WE DROVE back toward the office I felt Flood staring at the right side of my face where she’d done her work.

“You’ve had some real training, haven’t you?”

“Why would you say that?”

“It has to be hurting you, but you’re breathing properly.”

“That’s not training—it just hurts to breathe through my damn mouth.”

Flood slid across the seat until she was right up against me and gently squeezed my thigh. “Maybe you’re just a tough guy, Burke.”

I’m not a tough guy. If I could figure out a way to run from pain I’d do it at Olympic speed. I can’t do that so I let it just move through me like I was taught. But I couldn’t do it and drive the damn car at the same time. Actually, I couldn’t do it that well at all.

I put the Plymouth away and walked around to the front with Flood holding onto my arm. When we walked in the entranceway I leaned against the mailboxes like I was dizzy. She immediately threw her arm around my waist and pulled me against her, supporting me up the stairs. When I touched the mailbox the red-and-white lights the Mole had strung all around the office would start to flash in sequence. It was the signal for Pansy to stop whatever she was doing. Her aggressive juices would start flowing when she saw the flashes, she would pad over to her designated spot to the left of the door so she’d be just out of sight when it opened. There’s also a light switch that sets off a monster strobe light the Mole had mounted in what looked like a stereo speaker, blinding whoever walked in the door. If the strobe fired so would Pansy. She’d also fire if I walked in the door with my hands up, strobe or not. But I’d only hit the downstairs switch to keep her working and alert. Any dog will lose whatever conditioning you’ve put into her if you don’t reinforce and reward constantly.

When we got to the top of the stairs I told Flood to take my hand. She did it without questioning—I think she finally understood that my office wasn’t the place to act stupid. I opened the door, pushed the light switch down instead of up and walked in holding Flood’s hand. Pansy was standing to the left—chest out, fangs bared, and trembling with eagerness. She was supposed to wait in silence but a low rumbling growl escaped. Still, she didn’t move and she let Flood and me walk in hand-in-hand. I told Flood to sit on the couch, turned around and told Pansy “Good girl.”

She came loping over to me and I patted her hard enough to make a normal dog lapse into unconsciousness. Her giant tongue slobbered out and covered my face. Ignoring Flood, I told Pansy to stay and went next door to get her a slab of steak—small compensation for not being able to chew on a human being, but she would have to make do for now. I opened the back door and let her onto the roof and told Flood to stay just where she was until Pansy came back downstairs—you can only train a dog so much.

When Pansy came down I gave her the hand signal for
friends
and she ambled over to her spot on the Astroturf and lapsed into the semicoma that’s her normal waking state. I got out my medical kit and told Flood to give me a hand.

With everything laid out on the desk I turned on the overhead light so Flood could see what she was doing and leaned way back in my chair. Flood looked at the equipment. “You’ll have to tell me what to do.”

“First, spray some of this Xylocaine completely over the area.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s a nerve deadener. You may have to probe around in there and I know how clumsy you are.”

“I wish you had some real anesthetic here.”

“Flood, let me tell you something. Anesthesia isn’t like going to sleep the way the goddamned doctors tell you—it’s a disease the body eventually recovers from, that’s all. I’ve got some stuff like that but it’s not for working on myself, you understand?”

She said nothing, just tested the spray against her hand, then turned and shot it into my face where she’d kicked me. The spray stung, burned, then turned cold like it was supposed to. I reached in and removed the upper right-side bridge. It came out easily, covered with blood and some flesh, so she was right about me needing some stitches.

“Flood, take the swabs and the orange stuff there and clean out the whole thing so you can see what you’re doing.”

She did what I told her. She was breathing shallowly through her nose, and I tried to match my rhythm to hers. She saw what I was doing and gave me a quick smile of encouragement.

“Now take those little scissors and trim away anything that’s hanging loose. Just the part that looks like it’s going to be dead skin.”

Flood worked carefully but quickly. She would have made a great surgeon, but I guess her calling in life was to make work for the medical profession—or the undertaker.

“See if you can press the edges together—do they match up?”

“Almost.” She grimaced.

“Okay,” I said out of the good side of my mouth, “can you hold the edges together and sew with one hand?”

“I don’t think so.” She sounded upset.

“All right, all right, no big deal. Take my hand and show me where to put it, I’ll hold everything together. You take this needle”—I pointed to the tiny curved piece of shiny steel—“and put some
small
stitches in as careful as you can, okay? Remember, they have to come out. Make sure the edges are together firmly so it’ll knit. You understand?” Flood nodded, still concentrating. She threaded the tiny needle as easily as putting a pencil in a donut hole. “Work from one end across to the other. Don’t overlap, I’ll have to take them out later. Tie a big knot at the end. That’s where we’ll cut them off.”

Flood put the stitches in silently, occasionally motioning me to move my hands so she could see better. When she finished I held up the mirror to check. Lovely work. I smeared the gauze pad liberally with Aureomycin ointment and put it in place. It didn’t taste too sporty but it would drain well and stop any infection in its tracks. I poured alcohol over my bridge and let it sit in the glass—I wouldn’t be using it for a while—then flicked off the overhead light and lay back in the semidarkness with my eyes closed. Flood lit a cigarette from my pack. “Can you smoke?” She touched her own mouth. I nodded, took it from her. Smoked silently, watching the red tip glow illuminating Flood’s blonde hair.

She shifted her hips, sat down on the desk next to me and asked in a matter-of-fact tone what was next. She was still afraid I’d panic. I took another drag, handed the butt to her, and she stubbed it out for me. “I have to call someone about Goldor. Can’t do it until seven in the morning when they open up.”

Flood glanced toward the still-open back door. “That’s still a couple of hours, just about. You have any pain-killers here?”

“No good—they put you to sleep, slow you down. Have to do a lot of talking soon. Work things out for Goldor.”

“And you’re a tough guy, right? Don’t need ’em.”

“Right—that’s me.”

Flood stood up, took off the jacket she was wearing, and pulled the jersey top over her head. Her breasts looked like hard white marble in the dim light. She came back over to me, sat on the desk again.

“Does next door have a shower or a bath?”

“Why?”

“I want to make love to you, Burke. And if there’s no shower here, I’ll never get these damn pants on again afterward.”

“There’s a shower, but—”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to take them off.”

“More ancient Japanese techniques?”

“I don’t think so, but it’ll work just as well. Make you nice and sleepy, yes?”

“You sure?”

“Would you rather that way . . . or are you afraid I’ll hurt you if we . . . ?”

“Both,” I said.

“Sold,” said Flood, and reached for my belt.

31

WHEN I CAME to, I was still in the chair. Pansy was muttering at me. I told her to go on the roof—the door was already open. I needed a shower and a change of clothes. I figured I couldn’t shave my face the way it was and I was glad of the excuse—I hate shaving. But Flood, who looked as fresh as new flowers, said she could shave me painlessly as long as I got my face warm and wet. It was awkward in the tiny bathroom, but Flood sat on the sink facing me and did a beautiful job. I never felt a thing. While she was shaving me I watched her breasts bounce ever so slightly in the morning light—she was biting her lip in concentration, and I thought how fine it would be to have her around all the time. I realized I’d been hit harder in the head than I’d thought.

At a little past seven in the morning I sat down at my desk again, checked the phones to make sure the hippies weren’t changing their ways, and dialed. It was picked up on the second ring.
“Clinica de Obreros, buenos dias.”

“Doctor Cintrone, por favor.”

“El doctor esta con un paciente. Hay algun mensaje?”

“Por favor llamat al Señor White a las nueve esta mañana.”

“Esta bien.”
And we both rang off.

Flood was staring at me. “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”

“I don’t. I just know a few phrases for certain situations.”

“You asked him to call you tomorrow?”

“Today, Flood.
Mañana
just means morning—like in German
morgen
means tomorrow, but if you say
guten morgen
it means good day.”

“Oh. So who’s this doctor?”

“Nobody. You didn’t hear that conversation. That knock on the head you gave me is making me stupid. I’ll do this, not you. Okay?”

Flood shrugged.

“I have to go out and see someone. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. You want to wait here, at your place, or what?”

“Would it be a problem to take me back to the studio? You could call me there.”

“No problem, I need the car anyway.”

I set out some food for Pansy, hung around a few moments until she snarfed it down, set up the office again, and we went downstairs to the garage. I moved quickly to get Flood home, and she seemed to understand that I was working on a schedule now. Jumping out of the Plymouth while it was still rolling to a stop, she threw me a quick wave over her shoulder and ran into her building. I had to be at the pay phone on Forty-second and Eighth at nine on the dot. That’s what the Mr. White message would mean to Dr. Pablo Cintrone, director and resident psychiatrist at the Hispanic Workers Clinic in East Harlem.

Pablo was a towering figure in the city, a graduate of Harvard Medical School who turned down a small fortune when he went back to where he came from. He’s a medium-sized, dark-skinned Puerto Rican with a moderate afro, a small beard, rimless glasses, and a smile that made you think of altar boys. He worked a twelve-hour day at the clinic, six days a week, and he still found time for his hobbies, like leading rent strikes and campaigning against the closing of local hospitals. The rumor that he went to medical school to learn how to perform abortions because the cost of the pregnancies he caused were going to break him was untrue. Other people thought he was dealing prescription drugs out of the clinic or that he was a secret slumlord. All bullshit, but he allowed the stories to circulate because it kept the focus away from things that were really important to him—like being
el jefe
of Una Gente Libre.

Una Gente Libre—A Free People—didn’t operate like most so-called underground groups. No letters to the newspapers, no phone calls to the media, no bombs in public places. They had been blamed for a number of outright assassinations over the years—a mixed bag of sweatshop owners, slum landlords, dope dealers, and apparently some honest citizens. But infiltration was impossible—they’d never applied for a government grant. The word would go on the street that UGL wanted someone—and someone would die. UGL was a dead-serious crew.

You can’t hang around Forty-second and Eighth. It’s a trouble-corner, especially after dark. But early in the morning there’s still a few citizens around. And, of course, plenty of whores in case the citizens want their cocktail hour a bit early. But the phone booths were empty, like I expected. I’d rather have used someplace else, but the rule is you can’t ever make calls from Mama’s. This conversation wouldn’t last long anyway. I knew where I had to go—I just had to be sure I could go there safely.

I rolled up on the phone with a minute or so to spare. It rang right on the money.

“It’s me.”

“So?”

“Have to meet you. Important.”

“Hail a green gypsy cab with a foxtail on the antenna in front of the Bronx Criminal Court tonight at eleven-thirty. He’ll ask you if you want to go to the Waldorf.”

And that was the whole conversation. Time was running short—I could put off the business with Dandy, but I’d given the phony gunrunners a deadline. I put the Plymouth in gear and rolled.

32

WHEN YOU’RE RUNNING, you have to pace yourself. I hadn’t had a chance to see the morning papers yet and I wanted to study last night’s charts so I’d be able to give Max a good, solid excuse for the failure of our joint investment. I needed something to eat and a place where I could work out some of the angles in peace and quiet.

Since I had to meet Margot at noon I thought I’d run over to Pop’s basement, shoot a few racks, have a sandwich, and calm myself down. Nothing really to do until this evening. A man of leisure.

I parked, went downstairs, got a box of ivory balls from the guy in charge, carried it over to a back table, and went over to the private racks for my cue. When I took it down I unscrewed it at the joint in the middle, put both halves on the table and rolled them back and forth to see if the balance was still true. I unscrewed the cap at the butt to see if anyone had left a message for me—not this time. By then the old man who’s always there had the balls racked up for me. I gave him a buck, told him I was just going to be practicing, and he moved off. In a game for money the old man racks each round and the players throw him something each time. For a big match he gets paid a flat fee. Some of the cheapskates won’t pay him anything when they’re just going to practice. Stupid—who knows when the old man’s going to give you a bad rack when some money is on the line?

I tried a hard approach shot to the full rack, slamming into it from behind. The object was to bank the head ball off the left long rail into the short rail where I was standing and then into the right side pocket. I can make it sometimes—this wasn’t one of them. But my shot scattered the balls sufficiently and I gently nudged them around the table for a few minutes until my stroke came to me, then started working on sinking them. It was quiet, just the click of the balls and the occasional muttered curse from one of the other tables. The poolroom had a giant No Gambling sign over the entrance which was universally ignored, but the other rules were religiously observed: no loud talking, no fighting, no weapons, no drugs. If you wanted conversational pool, you could shoot down at one of the front tables near the door. The back tables were for money games or for practice, and they were in much, better shape.

Three tables down from me one of the professionals was practicing. The same shot each time—cue ball to the eight ball lying on the long rail into the corner pocket with the cue reversing the short rail and smacking into the area where the rack would be. Over and over. He tried dozens of variations on the cue ball, but the shot itself never varied. The black eight ball dropped in each time. Our eyes met and he raised his chin slightly to see if I was interested in losing some money. Not today. He went back to what he was doing. At a buck an hour you can practice for days at these tables without hurting yourself.

Pool is a fascinating game. I know a structural engineer who took years to figure out a way to make a shot if the cue ball was exactly in the spot where the head ball would be if there was a full rack. It looks damn near impossible, but he could do it every time. He’s been waiting years for the situation to come up in a game—when it does, he’ll be ready.

I dropped the balls in their pockets and they rolled down their runners to be collected at the head of the table. Like this caper—a whole lot of balls and a whole lot of pockets. I kept shooting, occasionally trying to imitate the subtle, relaxed stroke of the professional three tables down. It would never come to me. He had the technique perfect—he never looked up. Once you do you lose your concentration and you have to refocus your eyes. I can’t do that, can’t keep my eyes only on the table. Probably cost me a few games over the years, but I’ve won the ones that count. Every morning I wake up, I beat the system. And every morning I wake up and I’m not in jail, I beat the hell out of it.

I saw it was getting close to eleven-thirty so I called Mama’s from the pay phone and asked her to have Max drop by the poolroom later on. She said there were no calls for me so I had to assume Margot was still coming. If she was and if she wasn’t running a con, I’d need Max to move the cash for me. I told Pop I was expecting to do some business and I’d need the room. He said sure, but didn’t make a move. When the other person showed up he’d hand over the key, not before. Pop wasn’t going to be a concierge for anyone. I turned in the balls and paid for the table, then went into the lobby to wait for Margot, munching on a package of chocolate-chip cookies Pop had for sale at the counter. They weren’t any older than me, and not as sweet.

She was on time, carrying a big purse and wearing one of those huge floppy hats that belong in midtown. I gave Pop the money, took the key, and we went upstairs.

Margot couldn’t wait to open her mouth. “Burke, I’ve got to tell you this . . . Dandy said—”

“Have you got the money?”

“Sure. Now listen, I—”

“Where is it?”

She snapped open her purse, took out a wad of hundreds wrapped in a rubber band, tossed it over to me. “You want to count it?” She seemed unsurprised when I did. It was all there. On surface inspection, it was all good too. Used bills, but not ready for the shredder, no consecutive serial numbers, the right paper, clean inking, no engraving problems. Even if it was bogus I could move stuff this good without any problems.

I still checked it carefully though—some counterfeiters are lunatics and you never know what they’ll do. I was watching that TV show about Archie Bunker in a bar one night waiting for a client’s husband to come in and make a fool of himself with the go-go dancers, and they had this bit about funny money. Seems the counterfeiter had engraved “In Dog We Trust—instead of “In God We Trust.” Everybody watching thought that was hilarious, but the counterfeiter watching from the barstool next to me thought it was blasphemy. He muttered to me that the buffoon who’d done that job had no class. It was okay to do something on the front of a bill for a joke—a spit on the system—but the lame on TV was just a guy who couldn’t spell. I nodded like I understood, and the guy pulled out a beautiful twenty-dollar bill and asked me to look it over. The bill was real as far as I could tell, but instead of “In God We Trust,” it said “By God We Must.” Now
that,
the counterfeiter told me, was a genuine act of social commentary. I asked him how much he wanted for the bill and he said half face-value. I said that was too much, so he bet me the ten bucks he could shove the bad bill by the bartender even if I warned him.

As he paid the bartender I made some crack about a lot of queer twenties making the rounds. The bartender checked it over carefully, pronounced it perfect and shoved it in the till. So I paid up the ten bucks for the bet and another ten for one of the special twenties, fair and square. Later that night, I gave the twenty as change to the woman who’d hired me to check her husband. It’s not often you can get your money back after the race is over.

I pocketed Margot’s money. No problem doing that—with the coats I wear, I could make a lot more than that disappear. Now I’d listen. “Dandy said some old nigger came into the Player’s Lounge and told him he was the Prophet himself, right? And that Dandy should walk in the ways of righteousness or his offenses would rise up like a tidal wave to drown him.”

“So?”

“So Dandy’d been doing a bit of coke, right, and he was high and feeling good. So he kicked the old nigger’s ass out of the club and they all had a good laugh, he says.”

“So?”

“So
listen,
Burke. He keeps talking about it, right? Like he wants to laugh it off or something but it’s almost like he’s scared—I mean it was just some old wino or something.”

“He didn’t work you over?”

Margot smiled, a tiny bit of her dark lipstick showing on her teeth. “Dandy doesn’t hurt me anymore hardly at all, Burke. I know it’s going to be over soon so I just go into my stash every day and give him money. All he wants is for me to tell him what the trick did to me and then fuck him. He doesn’t hurt me himself much. He’s like a trick too, you know—some of them just want you to talk. Only he doesn’t pay.”

“He will.”

“That’s what Michelle said.”

“You told Michelle I was doing something?”

“No, I’m not stupid. But I told her what happened in the Lounge and she said this old nigger really
is
the Prophet. Weird, huh?”

“You think Michelle is crazy?”

“Man, I know she’s not even
close
to crazy, but it doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Then don’t worry about it.”

“You’re going to do the thing with Dandy?”

“We agreed that the object was to get Dandy to stop his action with you, to let you walk away and not come after you, right?”

“Right.”

“That’s
all,
right?”

“Well, it doesn’t seem like a lot for five grand.”

“Since when? That was the deal—there’s no more coming to you.”

“I’m not saying anything. Just when—”

“When it happens it happens, Margot. You’ll know because you’re going to be in on it, right?”

“Yes, I know.” She seemed tired all of a sudden. Walking over to the blackened window, she tapped her nails against the sill. I asked her if she had the
News
with her, and she pulled a copy of the
Times
from her giant purse. Did they have the race results in that uptown rag? I sat down to check while Margot kept up a steady patter of insights about the streets and the life. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out how she ended up with the likes of Dandy, but that wasn’t my job. I used to dream about how someday people would pay me to think, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Nodding occasionally to Margot so she’d keep talking quietly, I was left pretty much to myself. I hadn’t expected anyone in the poolroom to comment about how my face looked, but I’d thought Margot would say something. She never saw it—obsessions give you tunnel vision. I should know.

I finally found the race results, appropriately displayed in lowercase (and upper-class) type. Damn! Honor Bright, ninth race, the winner, paid $11.60. That was all the information the sissy
Times
would give me, but it was enough. I was now on the longest winning streak of my life with the horses. Come to think of it, with anything at all. But I didn’t want to spoil the moment by dwelling on it, and I didn’t want to share it with Margot either. So I said, “Okay, I won’t be able to reach you, I guess. So you can call me at the number you have in a couple of days and we can make a meet. By then we should have everything in motion.”

Margot was drumming her nails against the face of her watch.

“I don’t want to go back on the streets right away—Dandy might see me or something. You going to stay here long?”

“No—I got to go to work.”

Margot leaned forward, partially blocking my way. “You think it shows?”

“What?”

“On me—you think it shows . . . being a hooker?”

“No, when you’re not one.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s not important. Your eye’s healing, right? My face’s going to heal, right?” She noticed my face for the first time.

“What happened?”

“I got bit by a baby dragon.”

“Where?”

“It’s not important. Look, you call, okay?”

Margot stood up. “Burke, as long as I’ve got to be here anyway, you want . . . ?”

I looked at her, tried to smile, not sure if it came off. “It’s the best offer I’ve had in a long time. But not now, I got to work. Can I raincheck it?”

Margot looked like she’d expected the answer. “I shouldn’t be thinking about tricking all the time, huh?”

“If I was you, I’d think about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like how I’m going to solve my problems.”

“You’re
going to solve my problems.”

“I’m going to solve one of your problems, kid. But you make problems for yourself—you do wrong things.”

“Like what?”

“Like calling the Prophet an old nigger,” I told her, getting up to walk her to the door.