Flood (27 page)

42

THE PLYMOUTH ROLLED silently through the empty streets, heading for the West Side. Flood was quiet until we got to the highway, but her hand on my thigh wasn’t tense. When I went into the entrance ramp she looked over at me. “You got any more of that music?” and I reversed the cassette and we listened to Gloria Mann sing her “Teenage Prayer” and I guess we both thought about the things we wanted when that song was on the street. There was a lot of music in the juvenile prisons back then. Guys would get together in the shower rooms because the echo effect made everything sound better—it was all groups, nobody thought about being a solo artist. We only heard what came over the radio—it was no big racial thing, all the groups were trying for the same sound. The last time I was locked up for a few days there was almost a race riot—some of the white guys objected to the constant diet of screaming-loud soul music that they piped in twenty-four hours of every bleak day. Music was more participatory when I was a kid—you got three or four guys together and that was it. Whatever they sounded like on the street corner is what they sounded like on the record. Too many kids today don’t seem to give a damn about music, they only envy the musical lifestyle—gold chains and limos and all the coke they can stuff up their noses. But the kids themselves haven’t changed—the newspapers say they have, but they don’t know the score. As long as you have cities you have people who can’t live in them and can’t get out either. As long as you have sheep, you have wolves.

Flood took her hand off my thigh, patted around in my clothes until she found a cigarette. She found the wooden matches and lit one, holding it to my mouth for me to take a drag. Between Flood’s kick and Goldor’s backhand, my mouth was a little below par, but the cigarette tasted good. Or maybe it was just good to be smoking while Goldor burned.

I use the West Side Highway when I have to go uptown. It’s not always the fastest route but it’s the safest. The Plymouth might not be able to outrun anything on the road—although it will blow away any normal patrol car—but the special suspension gives it a real edge on a rough road and they don’t come much rougher than the West Side Highway. I swung back towards Flood’s studio and found a safe-looking place to park. It was the dead hour on the street—late enough for the predators to have retired for the night and not yet early enough for the first citizens to emerge from their fortresses to try to make an honest living. The sky looked reddish to me, but I couldn’t tell if it was the coming sunrise or my blurry vision. Flood walked along next to me, but the bounce was gone. She walked straight ahead like a soldier—her hips never brushed against me like they usually did. She didn’t understand yet, and I had to make her see what had really happened if we were going to flush a snake out of the urban grass.

Her key unlocked the downstairs door. The staircase was unlighted, and Max’s black robes made most of her disappear ahead of me. I could just barely see the blonde hair and hear the whisper of silk. The studio was empty again. We walked past the marked-off section and into her space, and Flood sat down. She was still off her game—usually she would be throwing off her clothes by now and heading for the shower, but I guess she figured some dirt doesn’t come off with soap. I took out a cigarette but she didn’t stir, so I went and found something to use for an ashtray myself. I sat and smoked in silence while I thought it through. Finally I looked over at Flood. “You want me to tell you a story?”

She started to shrug like she didn’t give a damn what I did, then gave me a half-smile and said “Sure” without enthusiasm.

I said, “Come here, okay?” and she got up and walked over to me. She sat down real close and I took her shoulders in my hands, spun her around like a top, the silk pants sliding smoothly on the polished floor until she was facing away from me. I pulled gently until she was lying on her back, her head in my lap, looking up in my direction—but not seeing me. I stroked her fine hair as I told her the story.

“I was in the can once with this hillbilly. Actually he was from someplace in Kentucky but he had lived most of his life in Chicago. They had two men in a cell then—the joint was overcrowded and the race situation was bad. Virgil was a good man to have in your cell—quiet, clean, and ready to take your back if he had to. He didn’t look for problems, just wanted to do his time. In the joint you don’t generally talk about your beef—you know, how you got there and all—but if you cell with a man, sooner or later you hear his story. Or at least the story he wants to tell.

“When Virgil arrived in Chicago to work the mills, he met this girl from his hometown and they fell in love and got married. Before she met Virgil, this girl had been with this other man from down south—a real evil, vicious freak. He had done time on a road gang for beating a man to death with a baseball bat. Virgil’s wife thought she’d left this man behind her, but he showed up one day when Virgil was at work. He slapped her around, hurt her without making any marks—he knew how to do that. He made her do some things she didn’t want to do. Then the freak told her he would be back, anytime he wanted, and if she told Virgil, he’d kill her man.

“And it went on like that, you know, for months and months. Virgil would go to work, and this freak would come around. Sometimes he would take the money Virgil left for his wife to buy food and all. Once he took some Polaroid pictures of her—said he’d show them to Virgil if she ever said anything—nobody would believe her now.

“Virgil got laid off at the mill but he still went out every day looking for work. And he’d leave money with his wife for food and other stuff for the house. One day, he comes home and there’s no money in the place. She had given it all to the freak. Virgil got into a beef with his wife about it and she couldn’t tell him what happened to the money, and Virgil had been drinking a little bit because he was down and out of work and she still wouldn’t tell him anything—he got crazy and slapped her. That was the first time he ever hit her. And then she started to cry and it all came out and he told her he would make it all right and he was sorry he hit her. Finally he calmed her down.

“He told his wife he was going to speak to the police the next day, and he left that morning like he always did. Virgil didn’t know where to find the freak, but he knew he would come around sooner or later. He was patient—when he saw the freak go upstairs he followed right behind, but when he threw open the door the freak was trying to hold his stomach together from where his wife had stabbed him—she was holding a kitchen knife in her hand and going after the freak to finish the job. The freak just lay there on the floor while Virgil and his wife screamed at each other loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear—she was yelling at Virgil to get the hell out and let her finish what she’d started and he was trying to make her get in the bedroom and she wouldn’t go—Virgil finally just took out his own knife and gutted the freak like you would a deer you just shot. Then he went next door and borrowed a phone to call the police.

“When the cops came Virgil said he had killed the freak but his wife kept saying
she
was the one. They both got arrested, but Virgil made a deal and took the whole weight himself. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and his wife was waiting outside for him to finish his time so they could be together—she came every visiting-day . . . I had this little racket going with some of the cons and I had Virgil help me out with some of it—he sent the money he made home to his wife through a hack we knew was all right.”

I looked down at Flood, still stroking her hair. Lying next to me, she was quiet as death but her eyes were focused and I knew she was listening.

“Anyway, one day the parole board came in to interview all the guys who were eligible for release. I used to make good money coaching some of the guys on how to act in front of those lames, and I went over the whole thing with Virgil to make sure he got it right—no prior record, crime of passion, a workingman, home and family waiting for him, roots in the community, regular churchgoer—he realized that he was wrong and was full of remorse, he would be a good citizen in the future. All that bullshit.

“Before you actually get to see the board you have to see this guy we call the I.P.O., that’s Institutional Parole Officer. He does all the preliminary screening and most of us believed that the board would go with whatever he recommended. I went with Virgil to the interview and sat down at the desk right outside the I.P.O.’s office like I was the next case. It cost me twenty packs to get the seat but I wanted to make sure Virgil handled himself like we’d rehearsed. He did real fine, said everything I told him to say. But then the I.P.O. got to the crime itself. He asked Virgil flat out, ‘Why did you kill that man?’

“And Virgil just told him, ‘He needed killing.’

“That was it for the interview—it was over right then, you understand?”

Flood spoke for the first time. “I . . . think so. I don’t know.”

“Flood, how do you explain killing a cockroach? There’s some things that shouldn’t be on this planet, some things that are born to die, nothing else. Not
everything
fits in this life, baby, no matter what the ecology freaks say. Who needs rats? Who needs roaches? From the very second that two people sat together around a fire in the forest, there was another human out there who felt better in the dark. You understand? You’re trying to sort out Goldor in your head and it won’t work, right?”

“Yes.”

“And it never will, baby. You keep a clean house, right? You don’t sit around trying to figure out where dirt comes from—you just sweep it out of the way or vacuum it up or whatever you do. You just don’t want it in your house—you already know it’s no good for you. Goldor’s just dirt, Flood. Don’t make any more out of him.”

Flood looked up at me. She started to talk slowly, but then the words ran together and she was talking like she’d never stop. “In that room, where he took us. First I thought you were dead . . . I thought he’d killed you with that space-gun thing. But then I could see you breathe and I thought about that lipstick thing you showed me once and I was afraid you would kill him if he came near you again and I wanted him to tell me about Wilson and I thought I’d play along with him and then it got all crazy and I forgot why I was there and I knew what I was going to do—I knew I’d never find Wilson if I did and I couldn’t stop myself and I wished I could kill him some more, some more times, and I thought about the girl you told me about on that film—she was just as important as Flower and she had people who would kill Goldor if I didn’t and I knew he was going to die anyway and I wanted to keep him talking—I knew you would take the pain over in that chair and wait and I knew I could take whatever he had and I’d live through it too—I wanted him to keep talking so he’d tell me something and I thought about tying him up like he did to you and making him tell us and I couldn’t think of even
touching
him and then I . . .”

I was rubbing her face with the back of my hand and she was talking quietly and fast and the tears were rolling again. I talked softly to her, like a mother crooning her baby to sleep. “Flood, we
will
have him, baby, we have his face, we’ll have his body . . . Flood, listen to me, I understand now about the sacred weapon, I understand, okay? I know why you wanted to wear that ribbon. Lucecita knows, baby—just like Flower will know. I wanted to cancel Goldor’s ticket myself, even while I was strapped into that chair I was thinking that there must be a better way of killing him so it would mean more than just stepping on a roach. You did what was right . . .” I whispered, my voice trailing off as I patted her face, still wet with tears.

“The robes?” she asked, looking up at me.

“Yes, the black robes came from my brother, the one I told you about—the master. It was a message from him, from Max, to go and do your work. Your work with Goldor is over. Goldor’s over. Lucecita is smiling down at you now, like Flower and Sadie soon will . . .”

“Burke, if you do that for me, I swear I’ll never leave you.”

“We’ll do it—me for my reasons, you for yours. But you have to get past this, I can’t do it by myself.”

“I can’t seem to get back to myself,” she was sobbing again “—I’m trying . . .”

“I didn’t think you were a coward, Flood—I thought you were a for-real warrior. My brother thinks so too. If you can’t get back, if you left yourself in that room with Goldor, then he
won.
You want that? He was going to torture you for a few minutes to entertain himself. Does he get to torture you for the rest of your life? Reach down for something, damn it—and if it’s not there you just hide in this little house and I’ll go and do my work—”

“It’s not
your
work.”

“Yeah, it is. Dead meat brings flies. I stirred up too much already. Wilson has to go—if he’s here, sooner or later he comes for me, or he does something, I don’t know what. I put my money on the table and I paid to see the last card. You’re spitting on the only good thing in this life—we survived. We walked away from that maggot’s house. We’re alive and he’s not. And now you want to die inside so you’re not a woman anymore, not nothing. I’m not going to be nothing. When I check out of this fucking hotel it won’t be because I’m a volunteer—and you can bet your ass it won’t be with the bill paid in full either.”

Flood looked up at me, rolled over on her stomach with her head in my lap, hugging my legs hard. I patted her back, stroked her hair—waited for her decision. I’d said my piece with my mouth—but it was my mind screaming at her to stand up one more time. She muttered something, her mouth buried in my lap.

“What?”

“You’re not so tough,” said Flood.

On a new roll now, and not knowing how to handle that last, I weighed in with, “The winner is the guy who walks out of the ring, not the guy who won the most rounds.”

“Still on that endurance thing of yours?”

“It’s the best card I have to play.”

Flood turned her head slightly so she could see me out of the corner of one eye. I couldn’t see her face, but I felt her smile in my lap.