Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [4]
If I was a detective, I would have spent the next few hours productively trying to deduce what kind of case this was. I never read Sherlock Holmes but I saw all the movies, so I did the intelligent thing and totally analyzed her character from her clothes. I came up with a flat zero. When I checked it out with Pansy, she confirmed my diagnosis.
I picked up the telephone gently to see if the trust-fund hippies downstairs were discussing one of their major marijuana deals again. It’s their phone—I simply had an associate hook me up an extension so I could make calls without the inconvenience of monthly bills. But I don’t abuse the setup—I have a good supply of slugs for the pay phone downstairs when I have to go long distance. The line was clear, which it usually it is until the late afternoon when the hippies get up—it must be nice not to have to work for a living. Thinking about it, I was sure that the lady would be back soon, and I’m not a man to leave money lying around uninvested. So I put in a quick call to my broker, Maurice.
“Yeah?” came the friendly greeting.
“Maurice, this is Burke. Give me a yard to win on the three-horse in the seventh tonight at Yonkers.”
“Three-horse, race number seven, at Yonkers—that right?”
“Perfect,” I told him.
“I doubt it,” says Maurice and he hangs up.
2
I PUT IN a quick call to Mama Wong at the Poontang Gardens (she had serviced the military at Fort Bragg during the Korean War) to see if I had any messages. I do her favors occasionally and she answers the pay phone in her kitchen with “Mr. Burke’s office” anytime it rings. I don’t get a lot of messages, and her favors aren’t any too tough either.
“Mama, this is Burke. Any calls?”
“You have one call, from a Mr. James. I tell him you would be back later, but he wouldn’t leave a number. He say he call back, okay?”
“Sure. When he calls back, tell him I’m out on assignment and if he can’t leave a number, I won’t be able to talk to him for another week or so.”
“Burke, you not call him back, okay? This is a bad man.”
“How can you tell from his voice, for chrissakes?”
“I know. I hear his kind of voice years ago from a man who say he is a soldier but is really something else, okay?”
“Okay, Mama. But if he wants to find me bad enough he will, right? So take the number and let me call him.”
“Not good idea, Burke. But I do it if you say, okay?”
“Okay, Mama. I’ll call you later.”
I got a small piece of steak out of the fridge and called Pansy over. As soon as she saw the steak, she started drooling quarts and came over to sit next to me, watching carefully. I draped the steak over her massive snout and she sat there looking miserable but not moving. After a couple of minutes I looked at her and said “Speak!” and she snatched the steak so fast I hardly saw her jaws move. Pansy won’t eat anything unless she hears me say the magic word. It’s not a party trick—no weasel is going to poison my dog. I don’t use the usual poison-proofing words the dog trainers favor, like “good food” or “kosher”, because I don’t figure any freak who wants to take her out of the play will ask her to speak when he hands over the food. And if you try to feed her without saying the word, you get to be the food.
Pansy looked pleadingly at me. “I told you a thousand times, chew the goddamned food. If you swallow it whole, you don’t get the benefit from it. Now try and chew it this time, dummy.” And I tossed her another slab of steak, saying “Speak!” while it was still in the air. Pansy snarfed that one down too, realized that was all, and rolled back to her place on the rug.
I sat down in front of the mirror and began my breathing