Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [63]
I knew one thing, though: in the joint, the major child molesters and the neo-Nazis had one thing in common: they all wanted to be part of “law enforcement.” One of them—he had been running a school “for disturbed kids” with sodomy as therapy—told the Prof that he was working for the FBI. When the Prof played him along, he said he had a code name and everything—that the lawyer who came to see him regularly was really a Bureau agent. He told the Prof that he was gathering information about rival kiddie-porn dealers and passing it along. Just a good citizen. I didn’t think anything about it—it was just good information to have. But when I saw this creep buddy-up with a guy who called himself Major Klaus, I knew they had to have something in common. One of the mistakes I make sometimes is to lump all freaks together in my mind—like there are brand names for certain kinds of humans. I should know better. My survival instincts told me to keep James and Gunther on the hook, but a connection to the Cobra wouldn’t come to the front of my thinking. It was just lurking somewhere in the back. I didn’t press it. Whatever instincts, intuitions I had had kept me alive so far. From experience, I figured when it was time for the connection it would come to me.
While I was trying to dope out how they came to connect me with African work (and giving it up as a bad job because a lot of people knew something about that craziness—diamonds that weren’t there and starving kids that were), Max rolled back. He gestured that the two losers had been picked up in a cab about ten blocks from our base. He didn’t bother to find out where they went since it wouldn’t mean anything to us. I could see Max was still up for battle, pumping fire inside but handling it well. If you didn’t know what to look for, you wouldn’t see anything, but I did—this hadn’t been the first time. He followed the cab back to the taxi garage in the Plymouth. I turned in the hack, picked up my four hundred bucks from the half-a-grand deposit with the dispatcher (he returns all but a yard as the rental fee), and we headed home.
I could see Max wasn’t down to normal operating temperature yet, so I started telling him about this Cobra freak and Flood and what I wanted to do. The more we talked about how we’d pull it off, the calmer he got. Except when I told him how it all started, with me hitting that horse at Yonkers for a grand from Maurice. That he simply refused to believe, so I told him to go to Maurice’s and pick up the money himself and hold it for me. I wouldn’t even have to call Maurice and let him know Max was authorized to make the pickup—Max the Silent has a better reputation for honesty than the Orthodox Jews in the diamond industry. Max is often used as a courier for that reason, plus the fact that ripping him off would be past the capabilities of your average SWAT team. Max only moves money or things like money—jewels, paper, computer printouts. He won’t move dope, and people know better than to ask him anymore. He’s not bonded, so all you get for your money is his word. To a warrior like Max, that means you get your stuff or his life. Uptown when they want stuff delivered, they have guys in fancy uniforms who have passed polygraphs, given their fingerprints and all that—down here we have Max the Silent.
I told Max that finding the Cobra would be the real problem, and he made the sign of maggots under a rock again, then shook his head, held his hands toward the sky, and snapped his fingers like a magician pulling things from thin air. I got it. Maggots don’t come from outer space, they’re on the earth for a reason. They only move in the direction of decay—they help it along, eventually make it disappear and then they move on again. Like an old-time burglar told me once, explaining