Flood

war. The column was all we could have wanted. I had to believe it-if the Cobra read the paper, he’d be coming around.

52

I LIT ANOTHER smoke and reread the column just to make sure there was nothing in it to spook our target. It stood up just fine-including the right amount of liberal outrage at the recruiting effort.

Michelle poked at my shoulder to get my attention. “Am I going to be here much longer, baby?”

“Not too much, I don’t think. Why?”

“Well, I’m not staying here another day without some cleaning supplies. Honey, this place is a dump. I am accustomed to better. I don’t need much-just some spray cleaner and some paper towels, maybe a dust mop. And some plastic bags for garbage. Actually a vacuum cleaner would be just the-”

“Would you forget that? Another day or so won’t make any difference.”

“Burke, I’m telling you-I don’t like being in dirty places-not when I have to live in them. You know what kind of woman I am,” she said, her eyes snapping.

“Just another day or so. I have to go out and dig up the Mole. He’s going to stay up here with you for a while, set up some things for me.”

“Does he play Scrabble?”

“I don’t think so. Ask him to build you a ray gun or something. I’ll call you by early this afternoon, see how things are going. If the freak doesn’t bite in a day or so, we close this down, okay?”

“Okay, baby. Listen, I meant to tell you before. I saw Margot and she asked me to ask you if anything was happening on her case. She said you’d know what she meant.”

“Yeah, I know. This comes first, then I’ll see-”

“And I should tell her…?”

“Tell her that you saw me and I was working.”

I drove the Plymouth to the Bronx, found the Mole, and made arrangements for some work to be done on the car-remove all the paint and coat it with dull primer. If the cops ask you about the primer you just tell them you’re doing the repainting yourself and the primer was as far as you got. You can see cars like that all over the city. But they’re a bitch to see at night-the dull primer just eats artificial lighting. The Mole had some kind of paint-remover that worked in a flash. Every once in a while I try to get him to patent some of his stuff but he never wants to discuss it. Money doesn’t race his motor. I told the Mole I wanted him to stay with Michelle until I called off the Cobra-trap-he just kept working on the car like he hadn’t heard but I knew he’d do it.

Simba stuck his wolfish face into the shed where the Mole was working, checked me out briefly, and strolled over to a red metal box in one corner. The beast sat before the box, then slapped his right paw twice on the top, waited a few seconds, then slapped it twice with his left. The top of the box popped open and he stuffed his evil- looking snout inside and emerged holding a fat T-bone with pieces of meat still sticking to it. He looked up at the Mole, who nodded, then trotted out the door with his prize. I couldn’t train Pansy to do that in ten years.

“Hey, Mole-how does the box know the dog’s supposed to use first his right paw and then his left?”

“The box knows nothing. I know,” said the Mole, directing my eyes to a pneumatic tube running the length of the shed’s floor and then to a fat bulb near his foot. When the Mole was satisfied I’d made the connection he stepped on the bulb and the top of the red box popped open again. “I put the bone in there myself,” he said.

“And Simba doesn’t know, right?”

“Simba doesn’t care,” said the Mole, going back to his work.

While I was waiting for the car to be finished we talked about the Cobra-trap. When you talk politics with the Mole you have to speak in generalities. He knows there was this black guy in Africa who built a statue of Hitler and he has some vague idea that South Africa is one of Israel’s biggest supporters, so it’s narrow, tricky ground. I asked him once why he didn’t just go to Israel where he could live in peace, and he told me that there was no sacred ground, that it was all a myth. The Mole said that the Jewish tribe was destined to roam the earth, not to settle down in any one spot. “Not in a concentration camp, not in a country,” was the way he put it. In a way it made sense-it’s tougher to hit a moving target.

As soon as the car was ready I headed back for the city and Flood’s street, from which I phoned that I was coming. She was waiting downstairs. When we got into her studio she started to pace like a caged beast. Like the polar bears in the Bronx Zoo-they don’t want to get out, they want to get you in there with them.

“Flood, sit down, okay? I got a lot to tell you.”

“What?”

I handed her the copy of the newspaper, then quickly realized it was folded open to the evening’s racing entries. Flood slapped the paper out of my hand. “Burke!” It was a wail, like she was a little lost kid and I’d let her down. Flood wasn’t too keen on strategy. Combat was her style and she wanted to get on the battlefield-fuck the travel arrangements.

“Come here, babe. Listen to me. We’ve set the trap, all right? The freak may walk into it today, maybe tomorrow. I don’t know. But soon. If he doesn’t, he’s either gone to ground or he’s gone south, you understand?”

“Yes. You mean it’s almost over for this place, one way or another?”

“Right. Now listen, we’ve got to play this like its going to work-assume it’s going to come off, yes?”

“Why?”

“Because if it does and we’re not ready, it’s all for nothing.”

“I just want-”

“Hey, Flood. Fuck-I know what you want. I don’t have to hear it a thousand goddamned times. Just get your stuff, okay? You’re coming with me.”

“My stuff?”

“Whatever you need if you meet up with him.” Flood nodded and started putting some things in a blue-and- white vinyl duffel bag. When she got it all together she threw it over her shoulder.

“Burke… tell me it’s really going to happen. Please?”

“It’s going to happen, Flood.”

And the sunburst smile came out on the face of this plump little blonde girl who was hoping, finally, to get her chance to fight to the death.

We drove to the warehouse-slowly, carefully, no need to attract any attention right now. As the Plymouth hummed and I felt Flood’s warmth beside me, I was thinking how fine it would be for me to be taking her to the racetrack instead. Or the zoo. I get enough pain in my life from other people-I don’t need to put any on myself, so I stopped thinking like a fucking citizen.

I pulled the car right into the warehouse, all the way up to the back wall. The door closed behind us before I turned off the engine, and I knew that Mama had reached Max.

“Come on, Flood,” I said, extending my hand for her to take. She held out her hand as trustingly as a child. A soft, slightly damp chubby little palm-and on its other side, two enlarged knuckles with a faint bluish tinge. Would her hands be like Max’s someday, when she finished her training? I pushed that thought into the part of my mind that dealt with questions like that, questions like my father’s name.

Flood followed me into the back room. I motioned her to sit down on the desktop, lit a cigarette, and waited for Max. She opened her mouth to ask me something and I told her to be quiet.

Max the Silent materialized in the doorway wearing a black silk gi, a duplicate of the one he’d given Flood. Flood came off the desktop without moving her hands, flowed to her feet, opened her hands to Max, bowed. Max bowed in return, deeper than Flood.

I told Flood, “This is Max the Silent-my brother. He knows what you want and he has agreed to allow his temple to be used for your ceremony.”

Flood spoke without taking her eyes off Max. “Tell him thank you, Burke.”

“Tell him yourself, Flood.” And Flood brought her two hands together in front of her face, bowed over her hands, saying thank you as clearly as any speech.

Max pointed at Flood, curled his pointing finger into a fist, tapped his head. Flood nodded yes. They were of the