Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [69]
I used the key to open the first door on the second floor, and Margot and I went inside. Large, barely furnished suite of rooms, two bathrooms, convertible couch, empty refrigerator. If you wanted it, you had to bring it. I found an ashtray and lit up. Margot let out what sounded like a groan and sat down on the couch. I looked over at her. “So?”
“I’ve got a job for you.”
“I don’t need a job, Margot. I need to talk to Michelle.”
“I already talked to her. I’ve got a message for you.”
“Which is?”
“First I want to talk about the job.”
“Hey, what is this crap? Just tell me what Michelle said.”
She took off her glasses again, gave me a dead smile to go with her eyes. “Don’t be tough, Burke—don’t be a hard guy. Don’t threaten me. I’ve had everything that can be done to a person done to me except killing and I don’t care about that. Don’t threaten me, just listen to me, okay?”
I said nothing, smoking. Margot lit one of her own.
“Something has to be done about Dandy.”
“Your pimp?”
“My pimp.”
“I don’t know him, never heard of him.”
“He’s from Boston. He just came down here.”
“What has to be done?”
“Murder.”
“You’re talking to the wrong man. That’s not me.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“Then you heard wrong.”
“How much?”
“Forget it. You’re a fucking dummy—you don’t want this creep, get on a bus and split.”
“I can’t leave.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit—first he has to die.”
“Don’t even tell me about it.”
“Would five thousand do the job?”
I got up from the couch and walked over to the window. Layers of filth made it impossible to look through, even in the daylight. I still needed that message from Michelle, so I gave Margot some free advice. She listened like it was worth what I was charging. “Look, dummy. You pay a man five G’s to knock off some halfass pimp and he takes your money and says thank you and never does it. Then what the fuck do you do?”
“I earn some more money and now I have a list of two people.”
“At that rate you’ll be on social security before you find someone who’s for real, and he’ll want a million dollars for your whole list.”
“I can make a million dollars if I have to—I got my money-maker right here,” Margot said, slapping herself on the rump and smiling her dead smile. We were getting nowhere.
“Look, I don’t do that kind of work. Just leave him and be done with it.”
“He has to be dead first.”
“Because he’ll come after you or what?”
“The first.”
“If I could—and I’m not saying I can—arrange it so he never comes near you again in life, would that do it?”
“You don’t know him.”
“Yes I do.”
“I thought you said you’d never heard of him.”
I blew an attempt at a smoke ring at the ceiling, went back over to the couch and motioned her to come over and sit next to me. Margot hesitated, biting her swollen lower lip. “What the fuck’s the matter with you?” I asked her. “You come into a strange place with a strange man, you ask him to kill someone, and now you’re afraid of a couch?”
It didn’t even get a smile out of her, but she did walk over and sit next to me. And listened.
“Look, let’s say a man works in a maggot factory. You know, where they dig up maggots from under rocks and put them into little containers for people who need maggots, like fishermen and scientists and abstract artists or whatever. Okay, he works in this factory for twenty years, right? He watches maggots work, he watches them play, he watches them breed. He sees them individually and in groups. He observes their every fucking characteristic, all right? Now you find a man like this