Flood

crap is this?”

“Well, sir, I can’t speak for the police, but you know as well as I do that they’d rather have you go with the Legal Aid so they have a better chance of convicting your son.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Are there any private lawyers right here?”

“Well, Mr. Blumberg himself is here, on that case I told you about. If it doesn’t go forward, I’m sure he could accommodate you.”

“Is he expensive?”

“Well, sir, the best costs the most, as you know. But I also know that Mr. Blumberg is especially interested in young people, and what with you working and all, I’m sure something could be worked out. Of course, you’d have to have a retainer to pay him immediately so he could file a Notice of Appearance on your son’s behalf.”

Now the lady got back into the act. “How much would that be, mister?”

“Well, it generally runs about five hundred dollars, but Mr. Blumberg doesn’t expect people to walk around with that kind of money, the way crime in the streets is today.”

“Do you know how much he would take?”

“Well, I know he never takes less than two hundred, no matter what. But sometimes he’s lucky and the whole case can be disposed of in a single evening.”

Momma says, “Oh God, that would be wonderful. They been holding my boy in that jail ever since yesterday afternoon and-”

“Well, let me go and find Mr. Blumberg and I’ll get back to you, all right?”

“Thank you, yes.”

I was glad to accommodate them-they seemed like nice folks. Odds were that their kid would get held for the Grand Jury, and Blumberg would be filing his notice For Arraignment Only, but at least they’d have a private lawyer for their two bills. And it just might work out-who knew? This part of my work isn’t really a scam-the people are getting what they paid for. Besides, when it comes to making a quick deal, Blumberg can hang in there with the best of them. He pleads so many cases that he knows what they’re really worth, and he’s not going to let a kid cop to some outrageous nonsense. Sam doesn’t sit in on the games too long anymore, but he can still play a decent hand while he’s there. Anything’s better than some Legal Aid hippie who’ll make some halfass speech about racism or “the system” while the judge doubles the bail.

I quickly found Sam, told him the deal, closed it, brought the good people to him, watched the money change hands, and went along with him to file his notice. I braced him in the hallway, took my fifty bucks, and went back to work.

I told the black couple they should wait inside the courtroom for their kid to be brought up because it would look good to the judge to see them so concerned, and I split. I’m not pleading good Samaritan, but it was an honest dodge. They’d get a fair shake from the fat man.

Business was great that evening. A bullshit burglary charge that even Sam could get tossed was good for a yard and a half, fifty bucks from some character who kept mumbling about wanting a private lawyer so it wouldn’t be like the “last time” and a great score of three hundred from a Puerto Rican whose brother had been held for four days on an attempted murder charge. Sam was in heaven, and I cleared $183. I told him to keep the breakage on the last third (the three-hundred score) and that gave him orgasms.

A couple of hours of intense work and I had Maurice covered plus a good piece of change for the next couple of days. As I walked up to my Plymouth, I saw a couple of uniformed cops leaning against it. They checked my clothes, nodded at the car. “You on the job?”

I smiled at them. “No, private,” and they walked off in disgust. Nice guys.

4

I PUT THE key into the door, turned it twice right and once left to deactivate the alarm, and climbed inside. I just sat there for a minute; sometimes I go down to the garage and just sit in it, too. The car is a 1970 Plymouth that cost forty thousand dollars. It was supposed to be the ultimate New York City taxicab. It has independent rear suspension so even the West Side Highway doesn’t shake it up; a forty-gallon gas tank, fuel injection so it doesn’t stumble in traffic, a monster radiator with connecting tubes to cool the oil and transmission fluid so it can’t overheat, never-fade disc brakes all around, bulletproof Lexan instead of glass in all the windows, and bumpers that would turn a charging rhino. It weighs about two and a half tons, so it doesn’t get real good mileage, but when it was built that wasn’t a consideration. The kid who put it together told me this was the seventh version-he just kept doing it until he got it right. The super-cab was going to make him rich-rich enough so that wife of his could have everything she ever wanted. In the meantime, they went without everything-the cab was hungrier than a dope addict. All the kid did was drive a fleet cab and work on his prototype.

I got into the car when the kid hired me to watch his wife. He had the idea she was seeing someone else, and he got my name from Mama Wong, where he used to eat during his late shift. He told me there probably wasn’t anything to it, but he just wanted to be sure, you know. It didn’t take me long to find out what his wife was doing. She had a girlfriend in the same apartment house. I watched and listened for a few days, but I didn’t want to just go back and tell the kid his wife was making it with a woman-I figured there was more to the story.

I approached the wife one night while the kid was at work. I knew she always waited a couple of hours before she went upstairs to her girlfriend, so I just knocked on the door.

“Yes, who is it?”

“My name is Burke, ma’am. I’m here about your husband.”

She flung open the door, quick as a shot. She was wearing an old bathrobe, but her face was all made up.

“What is it? What’s happened? Is he…?”

“Your husband’s okay, Mrs. Jefko. I’ve been doing some work for him and I have to talk to you about it.”

“Look, if it’s about that damn car, you’ll have to see him. I don’t-”

“It’s not actually about the car, ma’am. May I please come in for a minute?”

She looked me over carefully, shrugged, turned her back, and started walking toward the living room. I followed her but I walked past the entrance to the living room and sat down at the kitchen table. She fumbled for her cigarettes on top of the refrigerator and sat down facing me.

“Mrs. Jefko, I’m a private investigator. Your husband hired me to…”

“To fucking check on me, right? I knew he would. Marie said he would sooner or later.”

“Not to check on you, ma’am. He knew you were unhappy, and he thought that maybe something was wrong with you, something medical maybe, that you weren’t telling him about. He was concerned about you, that’s all.”

She started to laugh but she was out of practice. “Concerned about me. What a beautiful word- concerned. All he cares about is that fucking car and the millions and millions of dollars he’s going to make with it someday.”

“You know why he wants all that money, Mrs. Jefko?”

“No. I know why he says he wants the money. For me, right? What bullshit-he don’t care about me any more than I care about that car. He never talks to me, never looks at what I wear, doesn’t want to do nothing with me anymore. Marie says-”

“I know what Marie says.”

“How could you know? You got the phone tapped or something?”

“No, but I know what a recruiting pitch sounds like.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Marie understands you, right? Marie knows you’re really a very sensitive person, with lots of undeveloped talent, right? Marie knows that you were meant for better things than sitting around this miserable apartment waiting for some grease monkey to come home. Marie knows your husband has all the sensitivity of a pig, right? He doesn’t even know how to make love, right? Just fuck.”

She just sat and looked at me. “Maybe all those things are true.”

I looked back at her. “Maybe they are, I don’t know. But I know that your husband loves you, that’s for sure. I know he could be something, and that he wants you to be too. But he don’t have a fighting chance against Marie,