Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [144]
Simba stuck his wolfish face into the shed where the Mole was working, checked me out briefly, and strolled over to a red metal box in one corner. The beast sat before the box, then slapped his right paw twice on the top, waited a few seconds, then slapped it twice with his left. The top of the box popped open and he stuffed his evil-looking snout inside and emerged holding a fat T-bone with pieces of meat still sticking to it. He looked up at the Mole, who nodded, then trotted out the door with his prize. I couldn’t train Pansy to do that in ten years.
“Hey, Mole—how does the box know the dog’s supposed to use first his right paw and then his left?”
“The box knows nothing. I know,” said the Mole, directing my eyes to a pneumatic tube running the length of the shed’s floor and then to a fat bulb near his foot. When the Mole was satisfied I’d made the connection he stepped on the bulb and the top of the red box popped open again. “I put the bone in there myself,” he said.
“And Simba doesn’t know, right?”
“Simba doesn’t care,” said the Mole, going back to his work.
While I was waiting for the car to be finished we talked about the Cobra-trap. When you talk politics with the Mole you have to speak in generalities. He knows there was this black guy in Africa who built a statue of Hitler and he has some vague idea that South Africa is one of Israel’s biggest supporters, so it’s narrow, tricky ground. I asked him once why he didn’t just go to Israel where he could live in peace, and he told me that there was no sacred ground, that it was all a myth. The Mole said that the Jewish tribe was destined to roam the earth, not to settle down in any one spot. “Not in a concentration camp, not in a country,” was the way he put it. In a way it made sense—it’s tougher to hit a moving target.
As soon as the car was ready I headed back for the city and Flood’s street, from which I phoned that I was coming. She was waiting downstairs. When we got into her studio she started to pace like a caged beast. Like the polar bears in the Bronx Zoo—they don’t want to get out, they want to get you in there with them.
“Flood, sit down, okay? I got a lot to tell you.”
“What?”
I handed her the copy of the newspaper, then quickly realized it was folded open to the evening’s racing entries. Flood slapped the paper out of my hand. “Burke!” It was a wail, like she was a little lost kid and I’d let her down. Flood wasn’t too keen on strategy. Combat was her style and she wanted to get on the battlefield—fuck the travel arrangements.
“Come here, babe. Listen to me. We’ve set the trap, all right? The freak may walk into it today, maybe tomorrow. I don’t know. But soon. If he doesn’t, he’s either gone to ground or he’s gone south, you understand?”
“Yes. You mean it’s almost over for this place, one way or another?”
“Right. Now listen, we’ve got to play this like its going to work—assume it’s going to come off, yes?”
“Why?”
“Because if it does and we’re not ready, it’s all for nothing.”
“I just want—”
“Hey, Flood. Fuck—I know what you want. I don’t have to hear it a thousand goddamned times. Just get your stuff, okay? You’re coming with me.”
“My stuff?”
“Whatever you need if you meet up with him.” Flood nodded and started putting some things in a blue-and-white vinyl duffel bag. When she got it all together she threw it over her shoulder.
“Burke . . . tell me it’s really going to happen. Please?”
“It’s going to happen, Flood.”
And the sunburst smile came out on the face of this plump little blonde