Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [157]
“Put some clothes on first.”
“Who’s to see up here?”
“Just do what I tell you. I can’t explain every little thing to you.”
She saw the look on my face and sweetly went back for a towel while Pansy waited patiently. Good—I didn’t feel like telling her about the kind of people who watch. I was listening to one of those radio psychologists on a talk show late one night on a stakeout: she was saying how people who like to watch are really harmless: repressed, sad perverts, more annoying than dangerous. Once when I was being held waiting for trial the guy in the next cell told me he watched women to see if they had a message for him. Something about the way they dressed themselves before they went out—it sounded like the guy belonged in Bellevue instead of the House of Detention, but it wasn’t my problem. They took him off the tier later that night. One of the guards who knew me from the last time stopped by my cell and slipped me a pack of smokes through the gate. I figured he just wanted to talk—the nights get lonely for them too.
“You hear about Ferguson?”
“Who?”
“The guy next door, the one they took out before.”
“He never told me his name.”
“He tell you anything at all?”
I handed him his pack of cigarettes back through the bars. “You know better than that. You trying to hurt my name?”
“Hey, I didn’t mean nothing, Burke. The cops don’t need any fucking info on that guy. Don’t you know who he is? Fucking Ferguson—he killed seven women. Cut ’em to fucking pieces, man. They found all the stuff in his apartment. And listen to this . . . he told the D.A. that they all asked him to kill them, that they gave him a fucking message to do it. Can you believe it?”
“How long you been working here?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. But every time I think I’ve heard it all . . .”
“What’s in the paper?” Flood wanted to know.
“I thought it all sounded like body-counts to you.”
“Today’s different. I feel so good . . . like I want to dance.”
“As long as you don’t sing.”
“Why?” she asked in a threatening tone.
“Oh, it’s not on my account. It’s Pansy—she has real sensitive ears.”
“Is that right?”
“Honest to God. I’m sure if she heard you sing like you did in the shower this morning she’d be strange for a week.”
Flood felt too good to care about my musical critique. I was just glancing through the paper before going up on the roof when the headline jumped off the page at me: “TERRORIST BOMB KILLS TWO IN MERCENARY RECRUITING OFFICE.” The story went on to explain how the back window of a Fifth Avenue office had blown out “yesterday afternoon in a blaze of red fire. Police arriving on the scene found the mangled bodies of two white males, neither as yet identified, and most of the office still smoldering in flames.” No fewer than four separate phone calls had been made to the media claiming responsibility for the bombing, ranging from a known black liberation group to some folks who claimed the recruiters were endangering the African environment with their proposed jungle warfare. The story said the investigation was continuing—good luck to them, I thought. Well, so much for my big plans about making a rich score from Gunther and James.
I’d never know the true story, and I wasn’t about to burn my fingers prying into it. No way the investigators would be able to trace the phony gunrunners back to their fleabag hotel—they’d probably moved as soon as they scored the front money from me anyway. And if they did, all they could find to connect to me would be a name and a phone number. So what? The Prof had promised to check out their hotel room and pick it clean, working in his hall-porter costume, and it was a long twisted trail back to me no matter what. And I had my usual alibi.
I tossed the paper aside, looked over at Flood. “I’ve got a debt to pay to someone who helped me with the business we just finished. It’s a one-acter, won’t take long. You up to it?”
“Sure”—she smiled—