Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [116]
I had time to open the door to the shed, check the dust to satisfy myself that nobody had been around since the last time, and light a cigarette.
And then Pablo called. I grabbed it on the first ring, reminding myself that the whole conversation had to be under thirty seconds. “It’s me, okay?” I said.
“I hear you.”
“The legal research I told you I’d be doing? The stuff you said you might be interested in yourself? Forget it. It’s a dead issue.”
“That is too bad, hermano. You are certain?”
“Dead certain.”
“Adios.”
It would be hours before I could get a paper, and even then I couldn’t count on coverage of Goldor’s death, so I’d have to be especially careful not to talk to people. Fortunately, that comes easily to me—practice makes habit.
I gave Pablo about ten seconds to clear the line, reached under the phone, and pulled out the little gadget that looked like a rubber-edged cup with push buttons numbered one to ten on its face. I placed this over the mouthpiece to the phone, checked to see the seal was tight, and punched in the number of the candy store—the same Mr. Black number Pablo would have written down someplace. When it answered I was connected to the dead line next to the first pay phone. They wouldn’t answer that phone in the store—it had a permanent Out of Order sign on the booth. This hooked me into the diverter’s code box, and I used the push buttons to signal electronically and set the diverter to forward all future calls made to the Mr. Black number over to a pay phone next to a gas station in Jersey City. That broke the circuit. Even if the federales had a pen register on whatever phone Pablo had used, they’d never work it back to this shed. When I had some time, maybe in a few months, I’d go over to Brooklyn and uproot the diverter and install it someplace else. I’d notify Pablo too when I got the chance. For now, I was more interested in burning bridges than in building them.
I walked slowly back to the warehouse, expecting to see Flood’s blonde hair shining through the windshield, but there was nothing behind the glass. I glanced up at the balcony, couldn’t see a thing—I still didn’t know if Max was on the set. Then I heard a low moaning sound, flowing deep, ending with a grunt. Over and over, like someone working up the strength to do something ugly and then finally getting down to it. Flood—in the semidarkness off to the side where I’d parked the Plymouth. Flood—in one of those elaborate katas I’d seen her do in the studio, flowing between the hood of the car and the side wall, whirling, spinning, thrusting. Her body flashed white in the murky haze of the warehouse. I looked around without moving and saw the bottle-green pants and the jersey top on the floor where she had thrown them, and I knew she’d never walk in disguise again.
It was like no kata I’d ever seen. Flood backed away from the car in tiny, ankle-hooking steps and turned completely, moving her hands like she was sculpting a statue from smoke with her fingers. She flicked a leg toward the sky, rocked back on her heel, and clapped her hands against the upraised foot, like a child playing in the sun. She rolled her body toward the car’s hood and leaned her back against it, pushed her hands down and raised herself until she was parallel with the ground, her legs straight out in front of her. She slowly lowered herself to the ground on her knees, then leaped to her feet and turned so she was facing the car again. She leaned forward, bent at the waist, wiggled her hips like a prizefighter rolls his shoulders, and the leg with the fire-scar lashed out—again and again like a pumping piston gone mad. And then she stopped and I heard the jet-stream of her