“How about a Con Ed Total?”
A Con Ed Total is when the Mole shuts down the utilities for an entire community, but it wouldn’t play here. I just wanted Goldor disarmed from calling help, not the whole neighborhood alerted that something was going down.
“No,” I told him, “just this one house. And not the lights either, just the special communications systems and especially the phone lines. Can you do it?”
The Mole refused to acknowledge such a stupid question. He came closer and I knelt in the dirt and began to draw the plans of Goldor’s place that I had gotten from Pablo and his people. I gave the Mole the exact address and he nodded like he already knew it-maybe he did. He asked an occasional question, and we finally settled on nine o’clock that night. I would have to take a chance on catching Goldor at home, and alone, because once the Mole was programmed to act there was no way to stop him.
We walked through the junkyard until we found a steel-gray Volvo sedan, somewhat battered around the edges but apparently quite serviceable. The Mole said he had good papers for it, but it was actually a cannibal job of several cars and impossible to trace even if I had to leave it on the street when I was done. We kept walking until we found two current license plates, which the Mole sliced up with his cutting torch. He then welded the halves together to make a single license plate with nonexistent numbers. If somebody did manage to read the plates while I was working, the computer wouldn’t help them.
The Mole gave me a set of keys to the car, kept one for himself, and said he could drop it off by late afternoon near the Twenty-third Street parking garage I use for alibi operations. I gave the Mole five hundred bucks and we had a contract. I was as sure of the car being there and Goldor’s communications system not being there as I was of anything in this world.
The Mole went back underground or wherever he goes and Simba-witz walked me back to my car. In twenty minutes I was climbing over the Triboro to the East Side heading for my office to give Pansy the good news.
39
AS SOON AS I got back in the office I checked for hippies and dialed Flood. I told her to be ready to move out at around four that afternoon and hung up on her questions. When Pansy came down from the roof I told her I didn’t have a lot of time to screw around just then, but I had lined up a date with the famous Simba-witz for her, to take place on his suburban estate sometime later in the year. She gave me a lot of crap about blind dates but she finally said it was okay so long as I didn’t plan to leave her there.
The four corners of time were coming in hard, cramming me into a narrow box. I needed space to think it all out-how to approach Goldor, what it would take to pry his information loose, how dangerous he was, would Flood distract him? If I waited too long Pablo’s people could roll up on him and then he wouldn’t be talking to anyone. Or this Wilson, the Cobra, could actually turn up something for the D.A. and they would haul him in. A guy like Goldor had to have some major enemies. I couldn’t bring Max in on this, and I would have to keep the gunrunners on hold because there was just the ghost of a chance that they could lead me to buried treasure if they were better at scamming other people than they were me.
I finally decided-just a straight frontal approach, offer the maggot some serious money or maybe if that didn’t work let it leak that I could square the snuff-film beef with the
I didn’t have much time, so I used it trying to add another layer of protection-but a quick run down to the docks came up empty, and the Prophet wasn’t in any of his usual spots. You can’t always find a Prophet in New York. I drove over to Mama’s, had something to eat, and got the first part of my alibi established. I sat down at my table and wrote out everything I knew about Goldor to leave for Max, just in case. Besides survival I don’t believe in much, but I have a soft spot in my heart for revenge.
Mama knew something was up, but she just took the paper I left for Max and put it someplace safe. If things went wrong, Max would go to the office, put Pansy in the Plymouth and deliver her to Simba-witz-he would keep the car. I hadn’t bothered to tell him where I stashed any of the emergency money he didn’t already know about, and I knew he would strip the office without me telling him. Not much of a will, but then I don’t have much of an estate to worry about.
As I turned the key in the ignition in Mama’s back alley I got hit with a fear attack. I get them sometimes- everything starts to break up inside of me and I want to find a hole to crawl into. I never get one when I’m in a situation, just sometimes before and sometimes after. I knew what to do, so I let the fear wash through me and fly around my nerve endings until it finally went out my fingertips. I held my hands in front of my face and I could almost see the fear-bolts jump from my fingers. You have to breathe very shallow, no movement. The fear would never really go away, but sooner or later it would move to someplace where I was more comfortable with it. As always, when it finally moved out my brain felt like it was washed clean and sensory perceptions flooded in-the texture of the leather cover on the Plymouth’s steering wheel, the tiny imperfections in the windshield glass, the muted sounds of a Chinese argument several doors down from me. When I finally turned the key I could feel the bicep muscles send a message to my wrist, and I actually heard the exact moment of ignition before the Plymouth rumbled into life. I pulled out of the alley with less concern than usual for the narrow opening-even my depth perception was enhanced. My brain started to flicker in and out and around the edges of ideas-warming-up exercises before it was to be tested in combat. I kept it flickering, not wanting to focus until I hit something solid. I just let it flit around in the open spaces until it hit on something-no pressure, no suggestions from my so-called intellect to screw things up.
Max once told me that there is a martial arts style of fighting that closely resembles my way of dealing with fear. It’s called the Drunken Monkey, and the object is to have the fighter so completely dehumanized that he operates purely on instinct. Max told me this style is not the best for doing damage to an opponent-it’s not efficient. But it’s almost impossible to defend against because it’s completely unpredictable-you can’t telegraph what you don’t know. Once my brain goes into full fear-response mode it’s a lot like the Drunken Monkey, I guess. I may not come up with any good ideas, but if you tried to read my mind all you’d get would be vertigo.
When I pulled the Plymouth around Flood’s corner I caught a flash of white near her door and then she was moving toward me. The white was a pair of vinyl boots, skin-tight, calf-length with about four-inch heels. The bottle-green stretch pants flowed out of the boots, topped by a V-neck jersey in some sort of lemon-lime color. Flood’s pale blonde hair was in two thick braids, tied with green ribbons near the ends. I slowed the car, letting her walk to me. I watched all that fine female flesh bounce around and a thought raced across my mind, something about the Prophet and a goat staked out to catch a lion, and then I heard the screech of brakes and I snapped out of it-some poor chump had wrecked his car watching those bottle-green stretch pants swish down the block.
I rolled the Plymouth over to Flood, shoved open the door, and got moving before she attracted any more attention. I didn’t turn to look at her until I was moving out of a U-turn to get crosstown to where the Mole would have left the car for me. Even the Plymouth’s gentle movement was making Flood bounce around inside the jersey top, but at least she’d left the Eau de Whorehouse at home-she smelled like soap.
Flood looked about eighteen with her hair pulled back like it was, and her face glistened like she’d just stepped out of the shower. We stopped at a long light and my eyes traveled from the tips of the white boots up the length of the stretch pants, across the expanse of her jersey, and stopped dead at her throat-she had a dark green velvet ribbon around her neck. I looked again, just to make sure my mind wasn’t still dancing on me. “Flood, could I ask you a question?” I said sweetly.
“Sure.” She smiled.
“Are you
“Why?”
“What’s the ribbon for? I told you about the videotape and you put on a fucking
“I know what I’m doing.”
