Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [80]
Only the mug shot remained on the little table. She stood facing it and smiled—if Wilson could have seen that smile he would have found a painless way to kill himself. Flood bowed deeply toward the table, spun around, and flowed out of the room. I followed her to the mat and sat down. She brought me an ashtray and I lit a smoke. She waited until I stubbed it out before speaking.
“Do you understand?”
“A sacred weapon that you just blessed?”
“That is how he will die.”
“Flood, listen to me, okay? I’m already in this too deep. I see he has to die but that’s really no punishment. Prison is worse, believe me—I know. If you have to kill somebody, then that’s what you have to do. You start worrying about how you’re going to do it, start putting restrictions on yourself, then you get caught. What’s the difference if you blow up his apartment building or drop him with a rifle at a hundred yards or poison his coffee? He’ll still be just as dead.”
“Did you ever kill anyone?”
“I never killed anyone who wasn’t trying to hurt me like you want to do to him.”
“He already hurt me.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
“So he’s innocent?”
“No, he’s a maggot, Flood. He can’t be rehabilitated or reformed or even contained, okay? But you’re taking a job and making it personal. That’s bad enough—but with all this religious stuff you’re going to lead the law right to you when it’s over.”
“And to you, right?”
“Right.”
“You think I’d ever talk, ever tell anyone about you?”
“Never in a thousand years. If I ever met a person in my life who’d stand up, it’s you.”
“So?”
“So listen to me, you crazy bimbo. I’m not saying I’m not going to help you. I’m just not going for all this religious nonsense so we can get ourselves caught. I’ll help you find him, even help you cancel his fucking ticket, okay? But if we have to drop him some other way, that’s the way we’re going to do it, understand?”
“Go find yourself an alibi, Burke. Get out of here and find yourself a good alibi for the next couple of months,” she said, turning away from me.
I got to my feet. “Give me the picture, Flood,” I said in a calm voice, knowing what was coming. “Not a chance,” she said. I started toward the corner where she’d set up the table. Flood spun into a fighting stance, the robe swirling around her. “Don’t,” she said, no emotion in her voice. I sat down again, lit another cigarette.
“Flood, come here and sit down. I’m going to leave, okay? I’m not going to try and take the picture from you. But you owe me something so you’re going to come over here and listen to me talk. When I’m finished I’ll disappear. But first you listen.”
Flood approached warily. The little mace canister in my pocket might have taken her out of action long enough for me to get the mug shot—or it might not. Anyway, she knew where I could be found and she’d never quit. “You can’t find him, Flood. You know what he looks like so you think you’ve found him. But he’s still just another maggot in a big slime pit. You couldn’t find him in a hundred years. You understand combat, that’s all—you don’t know anything else. I can find him. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have that picture. Right?”
“I know what you’re saying.”
“And I know what you’re thinking—now that you’ve got the mug shot you can track him down with some jerkoff private eye. All they’ll do is take your money. Or your body, if you want to trade that.”
“I can find him.”
“Flood, let’s say I wanted to get to someone who was living in your temple in Japan. Could