Flood

35

EITHER THE DRIVER really worked a gypsy cab as a regular job or he was a hell of an actor. Even with my eyes closed I could feel the lurch of the miserably-maintained hunk of metal every time we floundered around a corner. Normal potholes put my head against the ceiling, and each genuine home-grown South Bronx edition almost knocked me unconscious. He had the radio tuned to some Spanish-language station at a volume that reminded me of the holding tank at Riker’s Island-and for an added touch of authenticity he screamed “Maricon!” and waved his fist out the open window at another driver who had the audacity to attempt to share the road with us.

We turned a sharp corner; the driver doused the radio. He switched to a smooth cruising mode and spoke distinctly without taking his eyes from the windshield. “At the next corner, I stop the cab. You get out. You walk in the same direction as I drive for half a block. You see a bunch of lobos in front of a burn-out. You walk right up to them and they let you through. You go into the burn-out and someone meet you there.”

I said nothing-he obviously wasn’t going to answer questions. Lobo may mean wolf in Spanish, but I understood he was describing a street gang that would be in front of an abandoned building.

The cab stopped at the corner and got moving again as I was swinging the rear door closed. I looked at the cab as it moved away-it sure looked like a gypsy cab, but someone must have stolen the rear license plate. I marched the half block until I spotted about a dozen kids-some sitting on the steps of the abandoned building, some standing. Only about half of them were looking in my direction.

The lobos came fully equipped-they all wore denim cut-offs with a winged and bloody-taloned bird of prey on the back-the birds had human skulls instead of heads. I spotted bicycle chains, car antennas, and baseball bats-one kid had a machete in a sheath. No firearms on display, but two of them were sitting next to a long flat cardboard box.

As I got closer I could see they weren’t kids at all-none of them looked under twenty years old. They wouldn’t fool a beat patrolman too easily either-no radios playing, no wisecracking among themselves, just quietly watching the street.

I glanced up and saw a gleam of metal at one of the windows-there wouldn’t be any winos sleeping in that building tonight. A car turned into the block from the other end and came toward me. The lobos moved off the steps and I stepped back in the shadows. The car was a year-old white Caddy-it never slowed down but I glimpsed three people in the front seat-two girls and a driver with a plantation hat. Some pimp was on his way to the Hunts Point Market, and suddenly I knew just about where I was in the South Bronx.

When I got within fifty feet of the building I saw hands go into pockets but I kept on coming. It wasn’t bravery-there was no place else to go. When the hands came out of the pockets with mirror-lensed sunglasses I figured I was going to be all right. Nobody needs a disguise to take your life.

I approached the gang. They looked briefly at me then past me to see if I had come alone. I kept walking up the broken steps, heard movements behind me, didn’t turn around. I went through the door into a black pit-and stopped. A voice said: “Burke. Don’t move, okay? Just stay where you are.”

I didn’t. I felt a hand on my arm. I didn’t jump-it was expected. The hand groped, found mine, and a heavily knotted rope was pushed into my palm. I grabbed one of the knots and felt a gentle tug. I got the message and followed along in the direction I was pulled. I couldn’t see a damned thing-the guy leading me must have been using sonar or something.

The same voice finally said, “In here,” and I stepped through a door covered with dark blankets. Now I could see a dim light ahead and I followed the back of the man leading me down a long flight of stairs until we came to another blanket-covered door at the bottom. My guide felt his way through the blankets until he found a bare spot, knocked three times, waited patiently, heard two raps from the other side, rapped once in response, waited, rapped one more time. He gently pushed against my chest to indicate that we should stand back, and then from the other side of the wall bolts sliding, metal scraping, something heavy being moved. I wanted a cigarette but I didn’t want to move my hands. After a couple of minutes the door slid open and a large man parted the blankets and stepped out. I couldn’t see him too well but there was enough light to catch the highlights bouncing off the Uzi submachine gun he held in one hand. He stood there covering us both for what seemed like a long minute, saying nothing.

Then I felt a breeze on the back of my neck and heard Pablo’s voice behind me saying, “This way, Burke,” and I turned and entered the door behind me, my back now to the man with the Uzi. By the time anyone broke down the blanketed door and confronted the guard, the people in the room I was stepping into would have been long gone.

The big room was as anonymous as a cell block-a round table in the center, several couches and old stuffed chairs scattered around, concrete floor, plasterboard walls. A light fixture dangled from someplace in the blacked-out ceiling, hanging so low it was almost touching the table-no windows that I could see. There was a large TV set in one corner on a metal stand with a videotape deck hooked up below it. The rest of the room was in shadow. The chairs and the couches were occupied but I couldn’t see anything except shapes.

I didn’t need anyone to tell me where I was to sit. As I approached the table I noticed a large ashtray on top and a green plastic garbage bag sitting underneath. When we all left this room, it would be as if nobody had ever been there. Fine with me.

I sat down. Pablo sat directly opposite me. He gave me the two-handed handshake he always uses. He made no motion that I could see, but the shadows moved closer as he spoke, especially those behind me. “I’m going to say some things in Spanish to my people now. After I finish I’ll talk with you in English, okay?”

“Good.”

Pablo launched into rapid-fire Spanish, only some of which I understood. I caught “amigo mio,” not “amigo de nostros.” He was saying this man is a friend of mine, not a friend of ours. He would be vouching for my character, not my politics. Most of the rest got past me but I caught compadre more than once and couldn’t tell if he was referring to me or someone else in the room. When he’d finished he looked around. Someone asked a soft-voiced question-Pablo appeared to be giving the matter some thought, then said “No!” in a flat voice. No more questions. Pablo turned to face me, and the shadows moved even closer.

“I told them it would not be necessary to search you, that you were not of the federales. I told them you were not with the police, and that you would be here for your own reasons. I told them that you have helped me in the past and that you would help me again in the future. And I told them that we would help you if it did not conflict with our purpose. Okay?”

“Sure. Okay to smoke?”

Pablo nodded and I slowly, carefully took out the cigarettes, left the pack on the table, reached for the wooden matches, and lit up. I heard one of the watchers in the shadows mutter something and I reached out for the cigarette pack, tore it open and laid out the smokes one by one. I tore the wrapping paper into small bits and put the whole mess into the garbage bag. I heard “Bueno” from one of them, a short laugh from another. Pablo took it up. “My friend, you said that it was necessary for us to meet. So?”

I picked my words and the pace of my speech carefully, trying for a show of dignity they would respect and that would show my respect for them. You have to talk a lot of different ways in my business. You don’t throw in a lot of references to Allah when you’re talking to a Black Muslim, but you don’t offer him a ham sandwich either.

“There is a man named Goldor”-the room went dead quiet so suddenly that my voice sounded like it was echoing-“that I need to speak with. He knows something I need to know. I understand that he is a person with whom you have a dispute. He is not the target of my inquiries, but he is not my friend and I would not protect him. I come here for two reasons. First, I must talk to him and I do not want you to believe that this talk means we are doing business-I would not do business with someone you dislike. Second, if you dislike him you must have good reason. If you have good reason, you have good information-and if you have good information, you can perhaps assist me in getting an audience with him. That’s all.”

No one spoke, but the tension level had tripled since I said Goldor’s name. It stayed quiet until Pablo spoke again. “How do you know we dislike Goldor?”

“This is something I heard from a good source.”

“A source you trust?”

“As to reliability of information, yes. That is all.”

“So your source is in law enforcement?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been told if Goldor has any protection?”

“I have been told that he does not take street rumors seriously, and that he does not believe himself to be in any danger.”

Pablo smiled. “Good. Do your inquiries about Goldor involve a woman?” Nothing showed in my face, but it felt like a punch to the heart-did that goddamned Flood ever stop making trouble? “In some ways, yes,” I told him, “but I am not looking for a woman. I am looking for a man, and Goldor may know where he is.”

“This man is a friend of Goldor?”

“Possibly. It is also possible that he may be an enemy.”

“An informant, then?”

“He may be.”

“If you find this man, will it help Goldor?”

“No.”

“Will it hurt him?”

“Most likely not.”

Pablo paused for a moment, looking at me. Then he got up from the table, disappeared back into the shadows-they blended around him until I was alone in a pool of light. I couldn’t make out a single word of what they said this time, but it didn’t sound like an argument. After few minutes Pablo came back to the table and the shadows followed him again. “For me to tell you what we know about Goldor it is necessary to tell you some other things, some things that otherwise you would not know. But first I tell you this, and I tell you out of friendship only. Goldor is dead. His body is still moving above the ground but his death is certain. If you go and speak with him it may be that later el porko will want to speak with you, understand? You must be able to say another reason to have spoken with him. Agreed?”

“Yes.”

Pablo took another deep breath, reached over and took the cigarette from my hand, put it to his lips, took a deep drag. “Goldor is not a human being. You have no word for him in English, nor do we in Spanish. The closest we could come is gusaniento, you comprende?”

“Like rotten-full of maggots?”

“Something like that, yes. He is the head of an industry which sells the bodies of human beings for the pleasure of others. But not like a whoremaster or a common pimp. No, Goldor is special-he sells children in bondage. If you buy a boy or a girl from Goldor’s people, that child is yours to keep-to torture, to kill, whatever you want. Goldor is above the street. He is like a broker of degeneracy-you tell him what you want and he finds it and delivers it to you. Goldor is not human, as I told you. He is a demon, a thing who worships el dolor, the pain of others. He believes in pain, my friend. Where he finds women who share his beliefs we do not know, but we do know that many of his victims are volunteers. The police know of him but he cannot be touched. To the authorities, his hands are not dirty.”

“He’s not alone in this.”

“Compadre, you come right to the point. Why would we want to deal with such a man when there are so many others like him? I will tell you. On the Lower East Side you know we have a community. It is a bad place to live but survival is possible-you know about survival. We have many operations down there, as we do in the Bronx. We hear many stories about young Puerto Rican boys who just disappear, but with no complaints to the police. So we look for ourselves. We see that some of those boys are in foster care-but not foster care like with the city. Some kind of informal arrangement, we are told. Some of the mothers believe that their children will have a better way of life, more opportunities-at least they say so to us. But some-and we know this for certain-they have just sold their children. We look, we ask questions, we spend some money until we are sure. It is Goldor doing this. Not personally, but it is him.

“We have a meeting about what is to be done-by then we know much about this Goldor. One of our people, a brave jibaro not too long in this country, she volunteers to get with Goldor to learn the whereabouts of the children he has taken. Her name was Luz; we all called her Lucecita, which means Little Light. Lucecita was not a child, Burke. She knew that she would have to have sex with the demon, but it was a price she was willing to pay. We are a disciplined people, not like the newspapers think. Her man is sitting right in this room. He fought with her in front of all of us. He wanted to kill Goldor, not to send Luz to him. But we as a group decided that killing him would not find the children-it would not kill the thing he does. Lucecita got a job in a restaurant where Goldor eats, and it was arranged that they would meet. She was invited to his home, and she went. We never heard from her again.”

“Did you-?”

“Wait, Burke. Please. The next day Goldor left on a plane for California. We have people there, he was followed. Some of us went to his house in Westchester but we found no sign of Luz. We thought she perhaps had been taken for sale too, but we knew he only sold children-so we assumed she was dead. Then our people in California told us that some of Goldor’s people were dealing in films-videotapes. Sex films, torture films. We arranged to buy all of the films, one of each, and they were sent here. When we viewed the films we were looking for clues to where they might have been made, thinking we might find a way to locate Lucecita. We found the answers and we swore by our blood that Goldor would die. There are some things one cannot say in any language. Some things you must see yourself.”

Pablo gestured to the shadows to bring the videotape monitor close to the table. I heard the sounds of a cassette being inserted, heard a switch flip, and the screen began to flicker. The overhead light went out. Sitting in the darkness, I saw:

A starkly lit room, all in black and white, with a shot of a longhaired woman seated on a straight chair in the center. The camera zoomed in and I saw the woman was held to the chair with a thick band around the waist and two more thinner ones crossing over her exposed breasts like bandoliers. She was naked except for a dark ribbon tied around her neck. The woman was saying something-biting off the words. There was no sound except for the hum of the machine and a slight tape hiss.

Suddenly she lunged forward, but the chair didn’t move. The camera panned down to the chair legs and you could see they were bolted to the floor, held down by metal brackets.

A man entered the frame, wearing a black executioner’s mask that extended down almost to his chest. He had a dog’s collar in one hand and a short three-lash whip in the other. The woman’s hands were free, and the man extended the dog collar to her. She spat on the extended hand, and the whip cut down across her exposed thighs. The woman leaped in the chair, bucking against her bonds, her soundless mouth wrenched open in pain.

The man approached again, holding out the dog collar. The woman flashed out her nails at him but he was too quick. He put down the collar and the whip and came closer, almost within striking distance. He was talking to her, using his hands in a be-reasonable gesture. The woman appeared to calm down, her eyes dropped to her waist.

The man came back to her with the dog collar. She shook her head no. He put it on the floor, shaking his head, then picked up the whip and came to her again. Another slash across her thighs, again she bucked and silently screamed. He tossed the whip aside and walked away from her, turning his back.

The screen flickered and I wondered if parts had been edited out. Then I saw the man close in on the woman until he was just beyond her reach. He crouched in front of her, like he was negotiating with a stubborn child, then gestured that he would set her free, pointing to something out of the camera’s view. The camera followed his hand to a leather-covered sawhorse, like carpenters use. He came over to the woman, unsnapped the bindings, and set her free. Again the sweeping gesture with his hand toward the sawhorse, like a headwaiter showing you to your table. The woman started in that direction, shaking her head to clear it-then suddenly the camera blurred as she tried to run. The man grabbed her by the hair and slammed her to the ground, driving a knee into her back-he punched her repeatedly with one black-gloved fist while holding her down with the other.

He stood up-legs spread, standing over her. His stomach moved in and out rapidly like he was breathing hard through the mask. He half-lugged, half-carried the woman back to the chair, positioned her in it like she was before and refastened the bindings. He stepped out of the picture, the camera zoomed in to the woman’s face. There was blood in the corner of her mouth, her eyes were scars. The man came back into the picture, again holding the dog collar and the whip. This time the woman didn’t move as he approached. He put the collar around her neck, and she sat there, slumped forward. Broken.

He said something to her and the whip flashed down again. The woman reached her hands up to her neck and buckled the collar, the masked man stepped forward and attached a bright metal chain to the collar. He stepped back, hands on hips. Taking the chain in one hand, he jerked the woman’s head, first in one direction, then another. He was showing the camera he could move her head with just a flick of his wrist.

Again he approached and knelt to unfasten the bindings again, all the time talking to the woman. But then he appeared to change his mind and got to his feet. He stepped out of camera range, and the camera came in to a close-up on her face again. Her eyes were dull.

When he stepped back into the camera’s view, he was naked from the waist down, standing out erect. His legs were muscular and altogether hairless. His feet were bare.

The camera went from the woman’s mouth to the man’s groin several times, panning slowly so the viewer couldn’t possibly miss the point. The man held the dog leash in one hand and the whip in the other as he walked closer to the woman. He jerked the leash so her head was yanked toward him, holding the whip ready in the other hand-she was being given a choice. She made her decision-her mouth opened and her nails flashed out and the camera blurred again.

The next shot showed the woman with her fingers still extended, breasts heaving. The screen also showed the man holding his testicles with both hands, bent at the waist. Then it went dark.

I reached my hand toward my cigarettes and was trying to get my breathing straight when the screen flickered into life again and the man approached, this time with only the whip in his hands. It came down, again and again, right through the woman’s upraised hands. Then the man threw down the whip and walked slowly out of the room, leaving her body running with blood.

The masked man returned, erect again. Two minutes later? A half hour? No way to know. But this time he was holding a black Luger in one gloved hand. Again he approached. Cautiously. Slowly.

The gun was leveled at the woman’s face. He must have said something because she appeared to reply. The camera moved in close so all we could see was the woman’s face with the shadow of the pistol across one cheek. The gun pulled back and the camera pulled back with it, and then we just saw the woman tied to the chair, looking straight ahead, her lips pressed tight together. There was a bruise showing in one corner of her mouth. Suddenly she was slammed back against the chair, bounced forward, and lay still. Her head dropped against her chest. Her body jerked spastically, once, twice.

The man in the executioner’s mask entered the picture again-he walked over to the woman’s side and jerked the leash, pulling her head back so it was facing the camera again. Her mouth was open, so were her eyes-there was a starburst hole in her forehead. The screen filled with her face so the viewers would know they had paid for the real thing. And then it went black.

I reached for a cigarette as they pushed the videotape monitor back into the shadows, but my hands wouldn’t work. Pablo came back to the table, looked across at me.

“Lucecita?” I asked.

“Si, hermano. Comprende?”

“He sells this?”

“He sells this, and more like it. We are told he has some in color and some even with sound.”

“How does he get people to film this? It’s a cold-blooded homicide, not some sex rap.”

“He does it himself, compadre-that was Goldor in the mask,”

“Then he’s bought himself a life sentence.”

“How? We cannot prove a thing. We can prove that it was our Lucecita who died, but how to prove that it was Goldor himself? Besides, a life sentence is insufficient.”

“So is a death sentence.”

“I agree, we all agree. We have discussed this and there was debate. But we will not imitate our oppressors. We are Puerto Ricans, not Iranians.”

“I understand. You’ll tell me where to find Goldor?”

“Oh, yes-and we will do better than that. We have a dossier, complete. It will be handed to you when you get out of the cab later on. And then there is no more from us, you understand?”

“Yes.”

“We are not in a race, Burke. We will not interfere with your work. But you must move quickly-we are almost ready.”

“Understood.”

“In return you will tell us anything you may learn. That is all we ask.”

“Agreed.”

There was nothing more to say. We shook hands, the overhead light went off, and I followed Pablo out the door into the corridor. Another man took me up the stairs to the front door where the lobos still prowled. I started to walk through them as I had done before, and found myself held in place. I didn’t resist, just stayed within the group until I heard a car come down the block. The gypsy cab again.

The pack parted and I climbed in the back. The driver didn’t ask me where I was going and I didn’t say anything. I didn’t open my eyes until I felt the cab crossing the Third Avenue Bridge into Manhattan. The driver took the East Side Drive to Twenty-third Street, turned over to Park Avenue South, spotted an all-night cab stand, and pulled over to the curb. As I got out, he handed me a legal-sized envelope and drove off.

I walked over to the cab stand, checked the first cab. I gave him an address within half a dozen blocks of Flood’s studio.

I tried to close my eyes during the ride, but the videotape kept replaying inside my eyelids.