Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [40]
I didn’t want to brace a character like that without Max for backup, but I didn’t know where he was and there was no time to find him. I told Michelle to pack up the place and make herself scarce. If Wilson was still there, he might be on his way out the door right this minute.
It was only a couple of miles to the address the VA gave me, but that was a couple of miles through the city and it was nearly one in the afternoon. Michelle would call Mama and tell her to have Max come to the Thirty-seventh Street address, but I didn’t know when she’d make contact. Max can do a lot of things, but he can’t use a phone.
The big Plymouth hummed along, eating up the streets, moving through the packed traffic like a good pickpocket at work. Maybe Wilson was there all along—sitting in some furnished room surrounded by kiddie-porn magazines and take-out food containers and thinking he was safe. Or maybe the address was never any good—maybe he had the brains to use an accommodation drop or he had a forwarding address permanently in place. Or maybe he was packing his bags even as I was heading over to him. Too many maybes, and no time to sort them out. I’d have to hit alone—no Max, no Pansy. It’d have to do.
The Plymouth wheeled crosstown onto Eleventh Avenue and past the giant construction site where another multimillionaire was building another building for his brothers and sisters. I found Thirty-seventh Street and nosed down the block looking for a place to park—I might have to get out of there quickly. Nothing. Back to Thirty-eighth, the parallel block, where I finally found an empty spot.
I put the car into reverse and started to back in when I heard a horn blasting at me—some miserable piece of garbage wanted the spot for himself. I ignored him, but the scumbag shoved the nose of his Eldorado into the spot ahead of me. Stalemate—he couldn’t fit all the way in but it was enough to keep me out. Ram him out of the way or talk? I jumped out of the Plymouth like I was mad enough to waste him, grabbed the gold shield from my jacket pocket, and fingered the .38 with the other hand. I charged the Eldorado—the driver pushed the power window button and sat there in his pimp hat smiling, showing me a gold tooth with a diamond set in its center.
“Police! Move that fucking car! Now!”
And then I caught a break as the pimp raised his hands in a calm-down gesture and backed out without another word. Bad move on my part—maybe I called too much attention to the Plymouth, but it looked close enough to the unmarked cars the Man used in Midtown South. I put the Plymouth into the space and hit all the switches in case the pimp decided to return and act stupid. It would be a bad idea—I had his license number.
I hit the street. The block was dead at that hour—the working people were gone, the thieves were still asleep, and the welfare cases were watching television. Number 609 was on the corner, just where Flood said it was. Six-story tenement, brick front. Two glass-paneled wood doors, unlocked, a row of mailboxes inside, most of them with no names—no buzzer either. The inside door was locked. One bell was marked Super so I pushed it. Waiting for an answer, I was thinking how to play this next part. If it was a more middle-class joint I’d be tempted to come on as Detective Burke of NYPD. I looked enough like it, I was dressed right for a middle-class mind, and I could talk that talk. But any citizen of this neighborhood would see right through it.
Detectives never work