Flood (4 page)

5

I CRUISED SLOWLY over to Mama Wong’s. That Flood broad was going to go about finding her Cobra the wrong way for sure. You can’t find a freak by chasing him. You have to use the herd-spook technique and make him show himself. When I was in Africa, I noticed that a lot of the predators would size up a herd and then do something to make it stampede. They used different ways—wild dogs would charge like they were trying to bring down an antelope, and lions would just deliberately piss on the ground. It had the same effect—the antelopes would run like hell and the predators would just watch and wait. Soon you could see at least one of the antelopes couldn’t run too good. Maybe it was too old, or too sick, or whatever. But after they saw that, the predators would all concentrate on that one beast, and it would be over soon. The best way to find a particular freak is to get them all moving around, out of their caves, so you can spot them easily. But she wouldn’t know that, the dumb broad. She’d probably just go around and ask a lot of fool questions and maybe get herself blown away. Just because she took out some super who was trying to cop a feel from what he thought was a helpless girl didn’t make her any certified freak-fighter in my book. She probably was in the can for a while, but she probably avoided the freaks like the plague, if she could. I didn’t do that—I watched them. She may have been thinking she was going to a better place when she got out of the joint, but I knew better.

When I got to Mama’s, she was at the front cash register like she always is. Like always, she didn’t greet me. I just walked past her to the last booth in the back, ordered some duck and fried rice and waited.

She came back after about a half hour and sat down herself. Then she said something in Chinese to the waiter who had appeared a split-second after her. He left and came right back with a large tureen of hot-and-sour soup and two bowls.

“Burke, you eat some of this soup. Very good. Make you feel better quick.”

“I feel fine, Mama. I don’t want any of that soup.”

“You eat soup, Burke. Too much here for just one. Better for you than duck.” She filled the bowl and passed it to me. “Chinese way, serve man first always.” I smiled at her. She kept stirring soup in the tureen, looked up, smiled back and said, “Not all Chinese ways so good.”

The soup was rich and clean at the same time. I felt my nasal passages opening up just putting it near my face. Mama’s eyes swept the room, better than any electronic device. She lived in fear of being discovered by tourists and having enough diners in her joint to ruin her business. I was there the night she got an advance tip that the restaurant critic from
New York
magazine was coming. They gave the guy and his date some stuff that was damn close to rancid dogmeat served in embalming-fluid sauce. But she was still scared the clown would like the ambiance of her dump and tell all the Now and Today jerkoffs to come around, so I made a gross pass at the critic’s date while he was in the men’s room fending off one of Mama’s boys, who was acting like he was drunk and needed to throw up—preferably on a human being. Mama was still screaming at me in Mandarin for being so obnoxious to the guy’s date when he returned to the table, so I called him a faggot and attempted to belt him. I missed, and fell right across the table instead. We all watched the reviews carefully for weeks, and were relieved to see no mention of Mama’s establishment.

I separated a hundred from my courthouse earnings and handed it to Mama. “Mama, please hold this for me. If I call tomorrow, please have Max carry this over to Maurice, okay? If for some reason I don’t call,” (she started to smile sadly), “hang on to it for me.”

Max is one of her relatives. At least I think he is. Max can’t hear or speak, but he communicates okay. He wasn’t programmed for fear—whoever rolled the genetic dice left that out too. If Mama asked Max to deliver a package to the Devil, Max would go straight to Hell. Unlike others of my acquaintance who had made that particular trip, I had complete confidence that Max would come back. Max the Silent is one tough boy. In fact, he’s so infamous that one time over in night court when he was being arraigned for attempted murder, nobody even laughed when the judge told him that he had the right to remain silent. They all knew that Max never
attempted
to murder anyone.

Mama pulled a scrap of paper from her dress. “This man James call you again, Burke. He leave a number, but he say you only call him tomorrow evening between six and six-thirty. He say he very busy and be out of his office except for then, okay?”

I looked at the number she gave me. I’d have to check it against my list, but the odds were a hundred to one it was a pay phone.

“Maybe you not call him, okay, Burke? He sound on the phone like I tell you. Bad man, okay?”

“We’ll see, Mama. I have to work for a living, right? Business hasn’t been so good lately. You got a marrow bone for my puppy?”

“Must be big puppy, Burke.” Mama laughed. She hadn’t met Pansy but she knew my Doberman pretty well.

“Yeah, she’s pretty big.”

“Burke, if this man who called you has a dog, I know what kind of dog he has.”

“What are you talking about, Mama?”

“Burke, I tell you. This man have the dog with the dark color back, you know?”

“No, I don’t. How could you know what kind of dog he’d have?”

“I don’t say he has dog, but if he has dog, it will be this kind.”

I took the marrow bone for Pansy and said good-bye to Mama. With the car back in the garage, I went upstairs and let Pansy out to the roof again. The marrow bone went into a pot of boiling water to make it okay for her to eat.

Sure enough, when I checked the list of numbers I got from the phone company through an indirect route, James’s number turned out to be a coinbox over on Sixth Avenue, near Thirty-fourth Street. If I remembered correctly, it was right across from the Metro Hotel.

Pansy and I watched television while we waited for the marrow bone to boil out perfectly. When it did, I cleaned it off, gave it to her, and waited for the first satisfying
crack
before I sacked out on the couch.

6

THE SOUND OF distant thunder woke me—it was Pansy slamming her paw against the back door to tell me she wanted to go to the roof. I got up, opened the door, and went next door to fix breakfast from the food I took home from Mama’s.

When everything was on the hotplate, I threw on a jacket and went downstairs for the
News.
My watch said it was about eleven in the morning, so even the thief who runs the corner store would have the four-star edition by now. He does make good egg creams, and I thought I’d treat myself with some of last night’s legal fees, so I sat down at the counter and waited for the proprietor. Since I was going to buy the
News,
I took the
Post
off the rack to read through it.

Some kids in the back were hanging around the ancient jukebox, imitating the latest
Godfather
movie. At least they weren’t trying to imitate Bruce Lee, like the kids a few blocks east of here. Their conversation drifted over.

“She’s got some beautiful body, you know, but her face’s ugly as shit.”

“Man, you don’t fuck her
face.”

The third one added his sage comment. “Hey, where are you from, lame? Kansas?”

Even if I woke up some morning as totally disoriented as the hippies who live downstairs from me, I’d still only have to stagger as far as the corner to know I was in New York. I put back the
Post,
paid for the
News,
collected a sour glance from the owner of the dump, and went back upstairs. My Chinese food was just about ready. I’m a real gourmet—I know you have to burn pork to make it safe to eat.

Usually when I’m here in the mornings I read the race results to Pansy so I can explain why my horse didn’t do as well as expected. So today I called her over and fed her some extra pork scraps while I checked last night’s charts. I never read my horse’s race first—I start with the first race and work my way down. The seventh was the feature at Yonkers, and my horse won. The goddamned horse won, and the sonofabitch paid $21.40 to do it. I checked the horse’s name, checked his position and . . . yeah, it was number three for certain. I was over a grand to the good—damn! I wanted to sit back and read the charts again and again, to retrace my horse’s path to victory as slowly as I could. But I knew it was too good to be true—something had to be wrong.

So I bit the bullet and called Maurice, using the hippies’ phone. When he told me some reason why my horse wasn’t the one that won, I was just going to tell him I’d have Max deliver his money later that day. I’m a good loser—practice makes perfect.

“Maurice, this is Burke.”

“Burke, I thought you died—I figured you’d be on the fucking phone as soon as I opened this morning. You got someone else picking ’em for you now?” And I knew I really had won.

“Oh, yeah,” I said casually, as though my last big winner was last week instead of three years ago. “Look, Maurice, can you hold on to it for me until later this afternoon?”

“What’d you think, dummy, I’m gonna leave town with this big score?”

“No, I just—”

“I’ll be here,” says Maurice, and hangs up. What a charmer.

I went back and sat down at the table and read the charts to Pansy until she was bored to tears. My horse just wired the field—he left from the three-hole, got to the top with a 28.4 quarter, kept the pressure on to a 59.3 half, coasted the third quarter in 1.31 flat, and got home handily by a length and a half in 200.4. His best race ever, a lifetime mark—his father would have been proud. It was like the Flood broad had never taken her money back.

For some reason, it took me a long time to get dressed that morning. I put on a suit, got out my overcoat with all the extra pockets in it, and put in my little tape recorder and the clip-on thing for my shirt pocket that looks like the top of a ballpoint pen—when you flick it to the side, about six feet of car antenna comes out like a steel whip. It’s only good for people who like to work with knives, and the people I was going to see only worked with guns, but I didn’t think it would be a straight path to them. Anyway, I planned to be on the street when I called this Mr. James.

I fixed Pansy up with extra water and left her some dry food in the washtub she uses for a dinner bowl. Then I went down to the garage, got the gun out of its usual place, emptied it, and replaced the slugs with some hollow points that an associate had thoughtfully filled with mercury. Next I dug out the long-barreled Ruger .22 automatic. It holds nine shots, counting the chamber—I put in four filled with birdshot, two mini-flares, and two teargas capsules. Perfect for a roomful of people and no good for much else. The .22 went inside the door panel on the driver’s side and the .38 went back where it belonged. I pulled out. The gas gauge said I had half a tank, which meant more than twenty gallons. The garage is always heated so I don’t worry about it not starting when it gets low. I’d fill up later when I got my money from Maurice.

Every time I get a little ahead I always buy some clothes, give Mama some money to hold as credit for Maurice and other emergencies, and give the car whatever it needs at the time. A couple of weeks ago I had to go into my stash at Mama’s because there was an epidemic of a lethal dog disease called Parvo virus going around. The vaccine was in short supply and I had to go for seventy-five bucks just for two ready-to-inject needles from this vet I know. I always give Pansy her shots myself—the needles don’t bother her, but strangers do.

I drove down by the Hudson on West Street near the docks, under what would be the West Side Highway if construction ever got down this far. I cruised over to one of the piers, backed the car in so I was facing the street, and waited. The Plymouth looked enough like the law to keep the locals away for a while, but it wouldn’t last. I just sat there, playing the radio softly and smoking. You can’t be in a hurry working down here—you have to settle in. One of them finally approached, slowly. She was of medium height and had ridiculously high spike heels topped by black pencil-leg pants, a wide belt to emphasize the narrow waist, a quasi-silk blouse and a shoulder-length red wig. Skinny and pale, even though she worked out here in the sun. A veteran, she walked carefully through the rubble without once tripping on the high heels. She approached the Plymouth. “Hi. Looking for a party?”

“No, I’m waiting for a friend.”

“Anybody I know, baby?”

“I hope so. I’m looking for Michelle.”

“I don’t know any Michelle, sweetheart. But whatever she can do, I can do.”

“I’m sure that’s true—but it’s Michelle I need to talk to.”

“Let me see your badge first, baby.”

“I’m not the heat. I’m a friend of Michelle’s.”

“Baby, Michelle don’t work anymore.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I’d love to stand around talking to you, baby. But if you don’t want to party, I’ve got to run along, okay?”

“Whatever you say. But tell Michelle that Burke’s looking for her—tell her I’m right here.”

She turned and wiggled away to show me what I’d missed by opting for Michelle’s brand of party, but at least she wasn’t aggressive about it.

I sat and waited. Two men walked by, one guy’s hand on the neck of the other, and ducked into one of the abandoned buildings on the pier. I’d gone into one of those once, at night, looking for a runaway kid. I didn’t find him. I wouldn’t go back in there again without Pansy.

About an hour later, I saw her starting to walk over this way again. I eased the .22 out of the door pocket and held it down against the floor with my left hand. She took her time about getting over to me. I didn’t move, didn’t turn the radio down. I wanted a smoke, but didn’t reach for one.

“Remember me, baby?”

“Yes.”

“I heard Michelle was going to be down on Pier Forty in a few minutes. Now I don’t know if this is straight or not, you know. But I just heard it, you understand?”

“Thank you. I appreciate you coming over to give me the message.”

“It’s not a message, baby. It’s just something I heard, okay?”

“Whatever you say.”

She just stood there by the car. I slowly reached out to the dashboard for my cigarettes. Held out the pack to her. She took one and moved closer for me to light it for her. “I heard something else, baby.”

“And what’s that?”

“I heard that sometimes, if a working girl had troubles with her man, that you’d talk to her man for her.”

“You hear that from Michelle?”

“Michelle don’t have no man. You know that.”

“Yes, I know. So?”

“I do.”

“Yeah?”

“And I just heard that sometimes you’d talk to a girl’s man if there was a problem.”

“You’ve got to be more specific.”

“My man’s black.”

Not a muscle shifted in my face as she studied it carefully. “So?”

“That doesn’t mean anything to you?”

“Should it?”

“There’s pressure on now. There’s some people moving into things. People who hate niggers.”

“Moving into what?”

“Into the Square. With kiddie stuff—pictures, films, like that.”

“And?”

“I already said enough—maybe it wouldn’t work anyway, it’s just stuff I heard. Look, I just did you a favor, right?”

“If Michelle’s on Forty, you did.”

“She’ll be there, baby. I just did you a favor. If I needed one back, could I call you?”

I looked at her, trying to see the face behind the makeup, trying to see the skull behind the face. The sun was in her eyes, bouncing off the dark glasses she wore. I couldn’t see anything. Her hands were shaking some.

“You can call me at this number, anytime between ten in the morning and midnight,” I said, telling her Mama’s pay phone. She didn’t say a word, just moved her lips several times memorizing the number. Then she walked away again, without the exagerated wiggle this time. I started the engine, let it idle a minute, tossed the smoke out the window (you can’t use the ashtrays in this car), and took off for Pier Forty.

I spotted Michelle as soon as I pulled up. She was wearing a big floppy white hat, like you’d see in a plantation movie. It should have looked stupid with the blue jeans and a sweat shirt with some jerko designer’s name on it, but it didn’t. Before I turned off the engine she was already walking over to me. She jumped in on the passenger side, slammed the door behind her, leaned over to whip a quick kiss on my cheek, and draped herself back against the door. “Hi, Burke.”

“What’s happening, Michelle?”

“The usual, darling. The bloody usual. It’s getting harder and harder for an honest person to make a living in this town.”

“I’ve heard that. Listen, Michelle, I need some information about a guy who’s holed up somewhere near here. A stone freak, maybe a baby raper.”

Michelle looked over at me, giggled, said, “I’m your man,” and giggled some more. She’s not too concerned anymore about being what she is, says even the truckdrivers who pay her for some fast work with her mouth know she’s not a woman. She says they like it better that way—who knows?

“All I know about this guy is his name, Martin Howard Wilson. He calls himself the Cobra.”

Michelle cracked up. “The Cobra! Jesus have mercy—he’s not a snake-fucker, is he?”

“I don’t know, what’s a snake-fucker?”

“You know, Burke, the kind of guy who’d fuck a bush if he thought there might be a snake in it.”

“No, that’s not our boy. I don’t really know too much about him—no description, just the name and the nickname. But I thought you might have heard the name yourself—maybe have something for me.”

“Darling, I have never heard of this particular freak, believe me—but that doesn’t mean I won’t. But I’d have to hear it long distance, you know? The cesspool is even more slimy than usual, if you can believe that. It’s no place for a sweet young thing like me, honey. There’s people working the place now that make even the freaks look good.”

“I just heard something like that from your friend.”

“You mean Margot? She’s a trip, all right. Comes out here every day and turns down tricks. Can you believe it? Her man’s elevator must not go to the top floor. She’s smart, though—went to college and all. She’s one of the few girls out here I consider my intellectual equal, honey.”

“Does she know what she’s talking about?”

“If you mean about some new scum moving into Times Square, she sure does, baby.”

“Any idea why?”

“Yes, darling. There are people who are into sordid things who are not just businessmen—people who just don’t know how to act, if you catch my drift.”

“Margot said they hate niggers.”

“That’s part of it, I guess. There’s only a few of them now, and they’re Americans. But they all play like they’re foreigners.”

“From where?”

“Think of a country even more vicious to people like me than this one, baby. Think of a country where half the freaks in
this
country dream of going someday.”

“Michelle, come on. Geography isn’t my strong point.”

“Maybe crime is your strong point—think of a country where they use capital punishment like we use fucking probation.”

“South Africa?”

“Give the man a gold star or a quick blowjob, whichever you’d prefer,” and Michelle went back to giggling.

“How do you know it’s South Africa?”

“Baby, I don’t know. It may be Rhodesia, or whatever they’re calling it today, or something like that. But it’s white men, with this African-soldier rap.”

And I thought of Mama Wong, and the dog with the dark colored spine—a Rhodesian Ridgeback, the kind they breed for tracking down runaway slaves. They can even climb trees. Not supposed to be good pets, but some folks are crazy about them. Michelle saw I was trying to catch the tip of a thought and run it down. She kept quiet, smoking. I thought about all the conversations in the yard when I was inside. The guys with the short bits dreamed about parole—the guys with the telephone-number sentences only thought about escape. And the warrior whites, the neo-Nazis, the cons with race war on their minds at all times . . . they always talked about Rhodesia like it was the Promised Land. Where they could be themselves.

“Michelle, what do they want?”