Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [115]
41
I FLICKED THE Volvo’s shift lever to pull it out of gear and let it coast toward a parking space across from Flood’s door. She didn’t make a move to get out. I had to move fast, there were a lot of things to do before the sun came up on what was left of Goldor.
“Flood. Flood, listen to me. Look, you’re home now. Come on.” Flood looked over at her building but still didn’t move.
“This is not my home,” she said in a dead, blue voice.
“Flood, we don’t have time for you to be fucking mystical. I’ll talk with you later, okay? Just get out. I’ve got to do some work.”
She still didn’t budge, so I tried something else. “Flood, you want to come with me? Want to help me?”
“Help you?”
“Yeah, I need some help. I need a friend, okay?”
The tears were still coming but she had control of her mouth. A first step. She said, “Okay,” and patted my hand like I was the one walking on the ragged edge.
I pulled the Volvo out and found a decent spot near where the Mole had left it the first time. I slipped into the parking garage like a burglar, but nobody was around—no problems. I found the Plymouth, fired it up, and rolled it down the ramps to the checkout point. I paid the toll and split. If the cops came around someday they’d have to get a subpoena and search the records. Even if they got lucky, all they would ever find is that I was checking into the garage about the same time Goldor was checking out. Okay so far.
Flood was standing in the shadows where I’d left her, but she was still too stiff as she walked over to the car door. She slid into the passenger seat, staying over against her door—not crying now, her breathing pretty good, but still a long way from being in control. I found a pay phone near the drive and called Pablo’s clinic—I knew it would be open until at least midnight. I left a message for him to call Mr. Black at eleven that night. Then we got back into the Plymouth, heading for the phone I’d told him to call. I gave myself about a half hour—if Pablo called and I didn’t answer it would take another couple of days for me to reach him. Me not answering was the signal that the wheels had come off someplace. He should connect that with Goldor, but I didn’t want to chance it.
The pay phone for Mr. Black was in a converted storage shed near the back of Max’s warehouse. The message from Mr. Black meant that we were in an emergency situation, so I had to be sure that the phone we used was absolutely reliable. The only way to do that was to make sure it wasn’t used most of the time. I didn’t want to bring Flood into that neighborhood but she was shredding all my choices with her behavior—all I needed was for her to run amok someplace and bring the cops back to talk to me.
Flood could do time, do it standing on her head. There’s not too many guns in jail and without one even the toughest diesel-dyke couldn’t make Flood blink. She’d go deep into herself and make it last for the whole term. I could survive in there too, but so what? By the time I got out all I had built up out here would be just so much garbage and I’d have to start all over again—I was getting too old for all that and I could feel the fear coming in closer and I didn’t have the time to deal with it the way I was supposed to—so I pointed the Plymouth toward the warehouse and concentrated on driving.
We made it into the front entrance with a good ten minutes to spare. I told Flood to just sit there, stay where she was, and slapped my palm twice on the hood of the car as I got out in a see-you-later gesture, to let Max know there was someone else in the car if he was watching. If Max was there, Max was watching.
The number Pablo had for Mr. Black would ring in a pay phone in a candy store in Brooklyn, one of four in that joint. It was hooked up to a call-diverter which would bounce the signal over to the phone we never used in the storage shed. The diverter was a mechanical