Flood just sat there, watching me, holding the white boots in one hand. I grabbed her other hand and dragged her to the front door, still wiping off surfaces we could have touched or brushed against. I opened the door and looked out into silent darkness. The floodlights were dead-the Mole had done his work. I could hear the crackle of the flames behind us. We were out of time.

I slipped out with Flood right behind me and quietly opened the doors to the Volvo, whispering to Flood to throw her boots inside and help me push the car from behind her door. I did the same with mine, holding onto the steering wheel with my right hand. The Volvo rolled smoothly down the paved driveway and into the street, and I hopped in when it was moving too fast for me to keep up. Flood did the same a second or so after me. I slipped the stick into second gear, popped the clutch and it fired right up.

I crawled around the corner, took another turn, and flicked on the headlights, then drove out of the area heading north, piloting the Volvo like it belonged there, I hoped.

We passed other cars, but no cops. Route 95 was right where we’d left it. Flood started crying when we crossed into New Rochelle, looking straight ahead out the windshield with tears rolling down her face like she didn’t know they were there. I kept to the exact change lanes through New Rochelle, hooked the Hutchinson River Parkway and exited toward the Triboro. I didn’t say anything to Flood, letting her cry quietly in peace. It was too late for talking.

We were supposed to come away from this trip to the suburbs with an address for the Cobra. Instead we had netted one dead sadist, one homicide investigation, one possible arson rap, and a cold dead trail. By the time we neared Flood’s place I knew I was starting to recover from Goldor’s Taser attack-I could tell by the taste of blood in my mouth.

I FLICKED THE Volvo’s shift lever to pull it out of gear and let it coast toward a parking space across from Flood’s door. She didn’t make a move to get out. I had to move fast, there were a lot of things to do before the sun came up on what was left of Goldor.

“Flood. Flood, listen to me. Look, you’re home now. Come on.” Flood looked over at her building but still didn’t move.

“This is not my home,” she said in a dead, blue voice.

“Flood, we don’t have time for you to be fucking mystical. I’ll talk with you later, okay? Just get out. I’ve got to do some work.”

She still didn’t budge, so I tried something else. “Flood, you want to come with me? Want to help me?”

“Help you?”

“Yeah, I need some help. I need a friend, okay?”

The tears were still coming but she had control of her mouth. A first step. She said, “Okay,” and patted my hand like I was the one walking on the ragged edge.

I pulled the Volvo out and found a decent spot near where the Mole had left it the first time. I slipped into the parking garage like a burglar, but nobody was around-no problems. I found the Plymouth, fired it up, and rolled it down the ramps to the checkout point. I paid the toll and split. If the cops came around someday they’d have to get a subpoena and search the records. Even if they got lucky, all they would ever find is that I was checking into the garage about the same time Goldor was checking out. Okay so far.

Flood was standing in the shadows where I’d left her, but she was still too stiff as she walked over to the car door. She slid into the passenger seat, staying over against her door-not crying now, her breathing pretty good, but still a long way from being in control. I found a pay phone near the drive and called Pablo’s clinic-I knew it would be open until at least midnight. I left a message for him to call Mr. Black at eleven that night. Then we got back into the Plymouth, heading for the phone I’d told him to call. I gave myself about a half hour-if Pablo called and I didn’t answer it would take another couple of days for me to reach him. Me not answering was the signal that the wheels had come off someplace. He should connect that with Goldor, but I didn’t want to chance it.

The pay phone for Mr. Black was in a converted storage shed near the back of Max’s warehouse. The message from Mr. Black meant that we were in an emergency situation, so I had to be sure that the phone we used was absolutely reliable. The only way to do that was to make sure it wasn’t used most of the time. I didn’t want to bring Flood into that neighborhood but she was shredding all my choices with her behavior-all I needed was for her to run amok someplace and bring the cops back to talk to me.

Flood could do time, do it standing on her head. There’s not too many guns in jail and without one even the toughest diesel-dyke couldn’t make Flood blink. She’d go deep into herself and make it last for the whole term. I could survive in there too, but so what? By the time I got out all I had built up out here would be just so much garbage and I’d have to start all over again-I was getting too old for all that and I could feel the fear coming in closer and I didn’t have the time to deal with it the way I was supposed to-so I pointed the Plymouth toward the warehouse and concentrated on driving.

We made it into the front entrance with a good ten minutes to spare. I told Flood to just sit there, stay where she was, and slapped my palm twice on the hood of the car as I got out in a see-you-later gesture, to let Max know there was someone else in the car if he was watching. If Max was there, Max was watching.

The number Pablo had for Mr. Black would ring in a pay phone in a candy store in Brooklyn, one of four in that joint. It was hooked up to a call-diverter which would bounce the signal over to the phone we never used in the storage shed. The diverter was a mechanical thing and not really all that reliable, but if it didn’t bounce the call and Pablo heard any voice but my own he’d hang up and know the Mr. Black signal was for real. Maybe he’d put it together and understand about Goldor and maybe he wouldn’t-this was as close to him as I was willing to get until the crime lab people picked the carcass clean and the grand jury made its secret decisions.

I had time to open the door to the shed, check the dust to satisfy myself that nobody had been around since the last time, and light a cigarette.

And then Pablo called. I grabbed it on the first ring, reminding myself that the whole conversation had to be under thirty seconds. “It’s me, okay?” I said.

“I hear you.”

“The legal research I told you I’d be doing? The stuff you said you might be interested in yourself? Forget it. It’s a dead issue.”

“That is too bad, hermano. You are certain?”

“Dead certain.”

“Adios.”

It would be hours before I could get a paper, and even then I couldn’t count on coverage of Goldor’s death, so I’d have to be especially careful not to talk to people. Fortunately, that comes easily to me-practice makes habit.

I gave Pablo about ten seconds to clear the line, reached under the phone, and pulled out the little gadget that looked like a rubber-edged cup with push buttons numbered one to ten on its face. I placed this over the mouthpiece to the phone, checked to see the seal was tight, and punched in the number of the candy store-the same Mr. Black number Pablo would have written down someplace. When it answered I was connected to the dead line next to the first pay phone. They wouldn’t answer that phone in the store-it had a permanent Out of Order sign on the booth. This hooked me into the diverter’s code box, and I used the push buttons to signal electronically and set the diverter to forward all future calls made to the Mr. Black number over to a pay phone next to a gas station in Jersey City. That broke the circuit. Even if the federales had a pen register on whatever phone Pablo had used, they’d never work it back to this shed. When I had some time, maybe in a few months, I’d go over to Brooklyn and uproot the diverter and install it someplace else. I’d notify Pablo too when I got the chance. For now, I was more interested in burning bridges than in building them.