Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [138]
Michelle sat there for a long time, tapping her long fingernails on the cover of her compact. I lit a cigarette, smoked in silence. A tear gathered in the corner of her eye and rolled down her face, leaving its track against the soft skin. I lit another cigarette, handed it to her. She took it, held it absently for a minute, gave me a half-smile and pulled in a deep drag. She exhaled, shook herself. “I’m going to fix my face,” she said, and went into the bathroom.
It was another couple of smokes before she walked out—fresh, new, and hard again.
“Let’s go to work, baby,” she said, and sat down in front of the bank of phones.
I called the preppie reporter, told him I had located the mercenary recruiting outfit but my info was that they would only be there for another day or so and he said he’d move on it that afternoon. He thanked me for the tip, said he would make it up to me.
Then I called the ATF—that’s Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, with heavy emphasis on the last—and told them I couldn’t give my name but a guy answering Wilson’s description was making the rounds of the after-hours joints offering a half-dozen .45-caliber machine guns, complete with silencers, for immediate sale. When I said “silencers” I could just feel the excitement build on the line—a silencer bust to the ATF boys is like ten pounds of pure heroin to the narcotics cops. They kept pressuring me until I finally told them, “Look, I said all I’m going to. This is a bad fucking guy, he’s nobody to play with. You know who he is—the Cobra, right? He said he’s dealt with you all before.”
I broke the connection and headed to the restaurant, where I found Mama in the kitchen.
“Max here twice already. He come back soon, okay?”
“Okay, Mama. Thanks.”
“You want some soup?” came the inevitable question.
“Sure.”
I sat down, the waiter came and Mama and I had some soup and hard noodles, eating in silence, thinking our thoughts.
Max floated in from the back before we were finished. He bowed to Mama, who bowed back. Mama offered him some soup. Max shook his head no—Mama insisted, grabbed his shoulder, and pushed him into the booth. A faint smile twitched over Max’s face as he submitted.
Max showed me the racing form and I shook my head to tell him I was under pressure. I made the sign of squeezing a wound—gritted my teeth to show I was putting on all the pressure I could, clenched my fist. Max understood.
I showed him my watch, moved my fingers to indicate seven o’clock, then showed him the Cobra’s picture, shaded my eyes like I was looking into the sun, twisting my head from side to side. I made a want-to-come-along? gesture.
Max reached his hand behind his back, slapped himself hard—he wasn’t interested in hunting the freak, but he would come along to watch my back. Okay. I tapped my heart to thank him—he did the same to say we were brothers and it was expected of him, no big deal.
I said I would pick him up later at the warehouse, but for now I needed some sleep. In the movies tough guys never sleep. Maybe Flood was right, I wasn’t so tough.
50
BACK AT THE office I took care of Pansy by opening the back door and she took care of her business topside. The phone was still open and I called Flood. Told her nothing would be happening until tomorrow and I wouldn’t be able to see her until then. Then I called Michelle, saying I’d stop by much later to bring her some food and spell her at the phones.
“Burke,” she said, “the cub reporter made his move downstairs.”
“Sound like he knew what he was doing?”
“Not hardly.”
“That’s my man. I’ll call in later on, okay?”
“Okay, baby. Not to worry, everything’s fine here.”
I couldn’t get to sleep, so I deliberately overloaded my brain, knowing I could force it to kick out and spin into overdrive that way. I loaded it with names, places, pictures, faces, schemes, plans, tricks, hoaxes. I used to try this in prison but it never worked there. In prison the world is narrow and you can hold all the information you need to survive in a small part of your brain. Out