Flood (6 page)

The spokesman for the pack stopped trying to be polite. “Fuckin’ bitch. We take that purse and we take you in the back and we stick a broomstick up your fat ass. You like that, you cunt?” Flood’s lips pulled back from her teeth and a hissing sound came out of her. She faked a move forward, spun and lashed out with her left foot at the kid without a weapon, kept spinning and shoved her purse behind her with the same move, then whipped her arms back across her chest down to her sides, and they were back in the same positions as when I first came on the scene.

They all stood frozen—maybe a minute, maybe more. Then the one with the knife tried to circle Flood on her right, moving so that his back was to me. I held the .38 tightly in my right hand, moved in close behind him, and punched him in the kidneys with the barrel. He went down with a nasty grunt. They all turned in my direction. I kicked the kid who was down in the back of the head with my steel-toed dress shoes, stepped around him holding the piece way out in front of me for the others to see. They backed toward the alley wall where I motioned for them to stand together. I cocked the gun so they could see that too and put it about a foot in front of the afro’s face. “You know what this is?”

He was quiet now, but his pal knew when to speak. “Yeah, man, we know what it is. We didn’t mean nothing.” Sure. I backed away to give them room to move.

“Get back in there,” I said, motioning toward the open door. They didn’t move. Frozen, they were looking past me. I turned slightly and saw Flood had picked up the knife. She was kneeling over the kid on the ground, one fist full of his genitals and the other holding the blade poised to slice.

“Do it,” she said, and they both ran to the open door.

I was right behind them. “Turn around and put your hands on top of your heads,” I said. “Now!” They did. Flood dragged the knifeman over and flung him inside like he was a light sack of garbage. I told the other two to get inside, and the silent one moved into the doorway. The afro froze. My nose told me he had wet himself. I just touched him with the piece and he followed his friend. I went next, with Flood right behind me.

We were in a cellar room with a cot in one corner, a radio playing—it was too dark to see anything else. “Get on the floor,” I told the two who could still move. The other one lay where Flood had thrown him. With the .38 in my left hand, I pulled the .22 from my coat and aimed it at all three of them lying there. It wouldn’t kill anyone, but they didn’t know that. Neither did Flood. Then I started pulling the trigger as fast as I could.

One of them was screaming even before I emptied the piece. Between the bird shot and the flares and the teargas, the room turned into the hell they permanently deserved—for a few minutes anyway. I slammed the door on my way out and charged down the alley, Flood at my side. The .22 didn’t make much noise, especially with those special loads, and it was all inside, but the kid on the milk crate must have known something was wrong. As we came down the mouth of the alley he was carefully putting down his radio before he went to investigate. Flood’s flying dropkick caught him in the ribs—I could actually hear the crack. He slammed into the wall, Flood hit the ground, rolled in one motion, and came to her feet. We ran across the street together. There was some crowd noise behind us where the radioman had fallen, but it was probably someone trying to steal the radio and fighting someone else for the privilege. We turned the corner and headed for the car. I wanted to ditch the guns, but they’d be hard to replace. Besides, every window had a watcher—to see if one of the fish in this cesspool went belly-up.

I was out of breath, a stabbing pain in my chest and cramps in my legs—two more blocks to go. Flood wasn’t even breathing deeply.

The black kid with the T-shirt was sitting on the hood of my car. I took out my half of the twenty and held it out with my left hand. He looked at me, looked at the twenty, looked at Flood. “Seems like I should be getting a bit more, somehow.” He smiled at me. I was running on empty by then, reached for the .38, and cocked it in his face, my hand shaking. “You want some more?” He held up his hands like a robbery victim and started to back away. I watched him for a second, glanced over at the car, and he broke into a run. I opened the driver’s door and Flood jumped in ahead of me, sliding over to her side. I had the car rolling into a fast, quiet U-turn before I had the door closed. I headed back toward the river. Checked the mirror—no pursuit. We rolled north, heading for Harlem on the West Side Drive, exited at Ninety-sixth Street, hooked Riverside south to Seventy-ninth, then went crosstown to the FDR. I didn’t relax until we got deep downtown, heading for the Brooklyn Bridge.

Flood was breathing deeply through her nose, sucking the air in and holding it for a long count like I do when I’m trying to relax. With her, it was like watching a battery recharge.

8

I DIDN’T LIKE the way my hands felt on the wheel, so I got off the FDR at the Manhattan Bridge exit, took a sidestreet and parked the Plymouth on Water Street just off Pike Slip. No law-enforcement types come to that neighborhood. I shut off the engine, rolled down my window, and reached in my pocket for a smoke—but my damned hand wouldn’t fit in the pocket. After a couple of tries, I just put both hands on the wheel to stop their trembling and stared straight ahead. Flood had both feet on the floor, hands clasped in her lap, head slightly back. She was dead calm. Putting her hand on mine where I had grabbed the wheel, she said, “Want me to light one for you?” I nodded. She reached into my shirt pocket, pulled out the pack, knocked a butt free, put it in her mouth, reached for the push-in lighter on the dash.

I had enough presence of mind to bark
“No!”
at her, and she pulled her hand back so quickly I could almost see the vapor trail. I wanted a cigarette, not the damn taillights to start spelling out “SOS” over and over again. This was one of the kid’s brilliant inventions for the super-cab—in case someone was sticking him up, he could just hit the lighter and anyone behind the car would see something was wrong. Supposedly that would bring the cops on the double. I don’t know if it would work or not (I kind of doubted it), but it was a bad time to experiment.

Flood didn’t seem surprised. She just sat back with the cigarette in her mouth. “Do you have a lighter that lights cigarettes?” There wasn’t a hint of a smile on her mouth but her eyes crinkled slightly at the corners. I felt better already, and got out my transparent sixty-nine-cent butane special. I’ve got a few just like it back at the office that are full of napalm, and look so much like this one that they scare me to death. The lunatic who sold them to me swore you could use them just like regular lighters if you wanted, even demonstrated one for me. I never believed him.

Flood fired the lighter, sucked in smoke, blasted it out her nose like a little blonde dragon, and handed it to me. She didn’t smoke now, I guessed, but it wasn’t as if she never had. I smoked and looked out the car window. I could feel Flood next to me, but she didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally she asked, “You just happened along, huh?”

I looked her right in the eyes. I can lie to anyone—when I finally get to Hell, I’m going to convince the Devil he got a wrong shipment. But it didn’t seem worth it to lie right then. “I was looking for you. I decided that I’d take the case even without the information.”

The smile around her eyes dropped to her broad mouth for just a second. “That’s funny. I was going to look you up and give you the information you wanted.”

I was feeling better. “You still got the grand?”

That brought a happy little laugh and, “Yes, Mr. Burke. My own investigations were quite inexpensive.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I could see that.”

She lit another cigarette for me. I could have done if for myself by then, but what the hell. We had to get moving—the Plymouth was as anonymous a car as you could want, but Flood and I hadn’t made any friends in the last few hours and you never know. “Where to?” I asked her.

“I think you should come with me,” she said, “I have the information you want, but I can only show it to you where I live.” I nodded and she gave me directions. She knew the city better than I expected.

It was an old factory building on Tenth Avenue, south of Twenty-third. The sign over the entrance said
Lofts Available for Any Commercial Purpose. Raw Space. No Living,
and gave the name of some broker to contact. The directory board showed a variety of businesses, most of them the kind that cater to the twits who eat wine and cheese for breakfast and brag about getting the latest in venereal diseases.

Flood had a key and we took the freight elevator to the fourth floor. A small hand-lettered sign proclaimed this the Yoga Plateau, and Flood produced another key. Inside was a huge empty room, gym mats on the floor, plain white walls, stereo set in one corner, and speakers all over the place. One whole wall was industrial windows. A sprinkler system hung down from the ceiling, pipes all painted white. There was a tiny white plastic desk and white push-button phone. Even the bulletin boards were white. In the middle of the linoleum floor was a large square marked off with wide black industrial tape. Flood walked toward the square, then veered off to the side. I stepped into the square, and was stepping back out of it even as Flood shook her head no. She headed toward a door against the side wall away from the windows. She had the key for that one too. I followed her inside.

We were in a tiny private apartment. The stove had a large wok covering the only two burners; the waist-high refrigerator had a white wood cabinet on top; and there was a chest of drawers with an armoire standing next to it, both painted white. Through an open door, I saw a stall shower, sink, and toilet. The room next to the little kitchen had rattan mats on the floor, probably for sleeping. There was no other furniture.

Flood left the door open behind us. She tossed her purse on top of the chest, shrugged out of her jacket, spread her hand to indicate I should sit on the floor. I looked carefully around the little room—no ashtrays. She caught my eye, took a small red-glazed bowl from next to the sink and handed it to me. “Use this.”

I sat and smoked through a couple of cigarettes while Flood busied herself around the place. She asked me if I wanted tea, and seemed unsurprised when I said no. Finally, she came over to me and sat across from me in the lotus position.

“Mr. Burke, I have to explain some things to you. And I have to show you some things so you’ll understand why I have to find this person who calls himself the Cobra. Let me just tell you in my own way and when I’m finished you can ask any questions that you like.” I nodded okay, and Flood rose to her feet without using her hands, like mist coming off the ground. Standing about five feet from me, she reached down and took off her shoes, one at a time. She was wearing slacks of some kind of dark silky material—the legs were wide and loose, but tightly fitted from her upper thighs to her waist. A dark jersey top was so snug it had to be a bodysuit. She had the traditional hourglass shape, all right, but hers was so densely packed that she looked powerful and beautiful all at the same time.

She did something at her waist, and the silky pants floated to the floor. I was right—it was a bodysuit underneath. She stepped away from the shiny puddle at her feet, bent in half at the waist and I heard the snaps pop on the bodysuit. She pulled the suit over her head in one motion and tossed it gently on top of her pants. Her bra and panties were of some smooth material that matched; the combination looked more like a fairly modest bathing suit than underwear. She hooked her thumbs inside the waistband of the pants and slid them down and off, one leg at a time. I just sat there watching, not smoking now. She stood there for a moment, hands on hips, staring down at me. She looked like a lot of things to me then, but vulnerable wasn’t any of them. She turned slowly to her right, half her back on the left side coming into view. Even her rump looked like muscle covered with pale skin. I heard my own breathing.

She kept turning until she was facing completely away from me, and then I saw it—halfway down the right cheek and partway down her thigh was a dark red stain—the skin under the stain was raised and rough. I knew what it was instantly—fire scars. She bent forward slightly as if to show me the whole thing, then turned back until she was facing me again. She walked over until she was right in front of my face and turned again. The scar was ragged and uneven as though she had sat down in a fireplace—not a surgeon’s work. Maybe skin grafts would have worked years ago, but it clearly was too late now. When she turned again to look at me, I nodded to show I understood what it was. She walked away from me toward the bathroom. The scars didn’t affect the muscles underneath. She walked with that independent, up-and-down movement of her cheeks that even most strippers never get right. I sat there looking at the puddle of her discarded clothes and heard the hiss of spray. She didn’t sing in the shower.

She came out in a few minutes wearing a yellow terrycloth robe, gathered the pile of clothes from the floor and threw them in a large wicker basket near the dresser. Then she came over and sat down next to me. It was dark in her place, but the white walls from the studio bounced enough light inside for me to see her face. I lit another cigarette and she began to talk.

“I don’t remember much about my mother, but I know I was taken away from her when I was just a little kid. I lived in foster homes at first, but then they put me in an institution when the family that had me moved out of the state. When I was fourteen, they found another foster home for me, and they let me out to go live there. The man in that home raped me. I told the social workers and they asked him about it. He said that we had sex, but that I had come on to him and he couldn’t help himself. He went into therapy, I went into a home for girls. I ran away and they caught me. I kept running away. I always got caught after a while, and they’d put me in an empty room with nothing in it, not even a book to read. The social workers told me it was all right to be sad, but not to be angry. It wasn’t healthy.”

She took a deep breath. “I had a friend, my best and greatest friend ever. Her name was Sadie. Her mother was Jewish and her father was black. She was so smart. She told me she wouldn’t have ever been put in the institution except that she wasn’t fashionable. I never understood that, at first. But she was my friend. We did everything together. We always shared. Everything. We fought the bull dykes together and the matrons too. I didn’t know how to fight then, but I was strong and I was always angry. Sadie couldn’t fight at all but she always tried. Once they put us in the Quiet Room for two weeks together and it only made us closer—better than sisters, because
we
decided. We ran away together once, to New York. We wanted to go to the Village. Sadie met this guy on a motorcycle who said he had a crash pad where kids could stay. I didn’t trust him—I didn’t trust anyone. But Sadie had charm. She said even if he was a bad guy, he wouldn’t have to be bad to us. I never had charm.”

An expression I couldn’t read flashed across her face and she went on, “We went with him and he was nice at first. But that same night, he brought in some other men from his pack. They told us to take off our clothes and dance for them. We wouldn’t. I could have gotten away, but I fought them with Sadie. I broke a bottle and cut one of them in the face. They beat us, badly. When I woke up, there was an old man there with a suitcase. He was arguing with the pack. He said something about how he couldn’t do it—we were too young. One of the pack came over to us and said he was sorry for what the others had done. He said the man was a doctor and he’d fix us up. He gave us each something to drink. I don’t remember anything except reaching for Sadie before I passed out.

“When I came to, I saw Sadie lying next to me. We still had no clothes on and Sadie was bleeding between her legs. I checked, but I wasn’t. My whole face was swollen so bad I could hardly talk. I think it was another day or so before we both really woke up. There was a dirty bandage on my hip, one on Sadie’s too. I thought it was maybe where the doctor gave us a shot, but it was a big bandage. I crawled out into the hall. The pack was all asleep in the next room. It was like a cave of devils—filthy and smelly. Sadie and I found some clothes and we made it down the stairs. A policeman found us, and took us to a place for runaways because Sadie told him we were sisters from Ohio. She was smart—I couldn’t think of anything to say. When they took the bandages off in the runaway place to give us showers, we saw what they had done, why they brought the old man up there. We each had a tattoo on our bottoms. Just the name of that pack, but a real tattoo. When I saw it on Sadie, I cried for the first time in years. She cried too. The nurse at the runaway place told us that they were permanent—they would never come off. When they left Sadie and me alone, we talked—and we decided what we had to do. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t care anymore after what they did to us.

“Sadie and I just walked out of the runaway place. They didn’t even try to stop us. Sadie panhandled in the Village until we got some money, then we bought four of those five-gallon cans and went to a gas station and filled them up. We just sat outside that building where the pack was until it was late at night and then we went upstairs. The pack was all zonked out on booze and dope. It was easy. Sadie and I knew what would happen to us, but it didn’t matter. We poured the gasoline all over the place—all over those sleeping devils. Then we each lit matches and threw them into the gas. We didn’t even run out of the building, just walked away. They screamed a lot—I wish I could have been there to see them. The papers said eleven people died. No people died. They weren’t people. It could have been eleven hundred for all we cared.

“Then Sadie and I went to this flophouse. We paid for the room with what was left of the panhandling money and walked right upstairs carrying one of the cans with a little gasoline left in it. In that room, we kept our promises to each other. We took off our clothes and we laid down on our stomachs and we poured gasoline over each other’s bottoms. We had the sheets all soaked in water, like a swamp. We said that we loved each other. We knew we couldn’t make any noise or it wouldn’t work. I kissed her. We were crying, but we did it. We put some of the wet sheets in our mouths, and we held hands and we lit the matches and put them on ourselves. We said we would count to ten before we rolled over onto the sheets. Sadie tried, but she pulled away before I got to three in my head. I held onto her like I promised—she fought me, but I held on. We rolled onto the sheets and spit the mess out of our mouths and it was okay to scream then. The cops got us when they came to the flophouse. They said we were too young to be tried as adults. We knew that before, but it wouldn’t have made any difference.

“The ambulance man was this big fat black guy. He looked so fierce, but he cried when he saw me and Sadie. After we got out of the hospital we went to some court and they put us away like they had before. I had a lawyer—some young kid. He asked me why we killed those devils and I told him, and he said if I pleaded insanity maybe they’d send me to a state hospital instead of the institution. I tried to get at him too, and they kept me handcuffed after that.