Flood

A.B. in a blue circle-wears contact lenses.”

Flood stared at the mug shot like she was going to climb inside the paper. I broke her concentration when I turned the paper over. She read it slowly and carefully, moving her lips, memorizing.

“Him?”

“It’s him, Flood.”

And her face became a sunburst and her eyes sparkled and I’ll never see a more radiant smile-it turned the whole room warm. Flood held the mug shot and chuckled to herself, smiling that smile. She threw off the robe, turned around, and bent over, looking back over her shoulder at me.

“You want to try that trick of yours again?”

“Do I look stupid?”

“It won’t be the same. Promise.”

“How come?” I was suspicious.

“Ancient Japanese technique.”

So I gave her a half-hearted smack and she was right. It was like patting soft, bouncy female flesh-the best there is.

“See?”

“You know any other Japanese techniques?”

Flood looked back over her shoulder with that same wonderful smile and said, “Oh yes.” It turned out she was right.

29

WHEN I WOKE up it was early morning, still dark outside. I reached for Flood but she wasn’t next to me on the mat. Some things I guess you never learn. I got up and made enough noise moving around so I wouldn’t surprise her. Not a sound from Flood’s room.

I found her back in a corner sitting in the lotus position, staring at a tiny table completely covered with a white silk cloth that reached to the floor. On the tabletop was a small picture in a plain black frame of a young woman holding a little girl on her lap. The woman was smiling into the camera and the little girl looked very serious, like kids do sometimes. Next to the picture was the mug shot of Wilson. Flood had something propped up behind it, so the two pictures faced each other.

Hearing me behind her, Flood turned and said, “Soon, okay?” I went back to the mat. In a minute or two she came out and sat down next to me.

“It was wrong of me to go through the ceremony alone-I just didn’t want to wait any longer. You have the right to watch if you want.” She held out her hand and pulled me to my feet.

I followed her back inside to the corner where she’d set everything up. She motioned to me to sit down a few feet away from her and flowed into the lotus position again. Soon she began to say something in Japanese. It wasn’t repetitious and didn’t sound like a prayer, but when she finished she bowed to the tiny table. Then she got to her feet, took off the robe she’d been wearing, and put on a long red robe with dragons on both sleeves. From a dark-red lacquered box she took a piece of red silk and what looked like a six-inch metal spike with a dark wood handle. The spike went between the two pictures and the red silk was placed over the picture of Sadie and Flower. Then Flood said something in Japanese again, pulled the red silk from the photograph, and carefully wrapped it around the spike. Taking the covered spike in one hand and her friend’s picture in the other, she held them both in front of her face for a minute, knelt and placed them in the lacquered box.

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 I do it?”

“You’d never find the place, never get through the mountains. You’d never get in the door if you did.”

“It’s not my place, right?”

“I’m an American.”

“This isn’t America out there, you dummy. This is a running sore loaded with dangerous maggots. And you don’t have a passport, don’t speak the language, don’t know the customs. You’re a permanent foreigner in the world Wilson lives in. You couldn’t find a cop, much less a freak like Wilson. And you probably couldn’t tell the difference if you did.”