Andrew H. Vachss - Flood

Contents

For

Victor Chapin

Yale Lee Mandel

Iberus Hacker (a.ka. Dan Marcum)

Wesley Everest

very different actors

who all left this junkyard of a planet

to work a better room

ACCLAIM FOR Andrew Vachss

Its lower-depths/big-city ambience is as authentic as the lawyer/author who makes it his own... but it has humor and humanity all its own.

Nick Pileggi

Real class... Vachss shows a richly convincing familiarity with the detectives trade.... Wonderfully impressive.

Kirkus

Among writers of suspense, Andrew Vachsss work stands out for its substance, integrity, and absorbing readability.

Richard North Patterson

Andrew Vachss bursts forth with more of the slashing prose that has earned him a reputation as one who gives no quarter in his exposure of the evils of the human mind. The man knows whereof he speaks.

Newsday

A steamy, fetid world delivered with convincing authenticity.... Astonishing.

Publishers Weekly

Andrew Vachsss work is all about horror, outrage, moral indignation and the blood of commitment. Vachss is the voice of righteousness confronting a powerful and cowardly evil.

James Ellroy

Theres no way to put a [Vachss book] down once youve begun.... The plot hooks are engaging and the one-liners pierce like bullets.

Detroit Free Press

Outside the herd of self-serving, navel-magnifying American novelists, one man walks tall and almost alone: Andrew Vachss.... You can read him for razor edged entertainment, or you can read him for help in understanding the monsters who stalk Americas streets.

James Grady, author of Six Days of the Condor

Vachss seems bottomlessly knowledgeable about the depth and variety of human twistedness.

The New York Times

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The ultimate poverty is to fail to acknowledge your debts. For the material in this book and in others to come, I am indebted to many people, some as close as my blood, some forever to be my enemies. I will never forget any of them.

INTRODUCTION
TO THE VINTAGE EDITION

Flood was not my first published book. The first effort was nonfiction: a textbook on juvenile violence and proposed solutions which arose from my stint running a maximum-security prison for youthful offenders. That first book was a critical success, but it never reached outside the profession. An itinerant preacher with a then-unacceptable brand of gospel that we make our own monsters and build our own beasts, that pervasive abuse and neglect of children is a greater danger to our species than cocaine and Communism combined, I longed for a bigger congregation. So I turned to fiction, essentially adding plot, characters (keeping the characteristics) and (I hoped) sufficient narrative force to get the reader engrossed sufficiently to present my case.

But I couldnt get anyone to publish Flood, despite the best efforts of a wonderful, dedicated agent (Victor Chapin, to whom this book is dedicated) who maintained his belief in me despite reams of rejection letters which looked like photocopies: all saying what a wonderful writer I was, what a great ear for dialogue I had, what a powerful narrative voice, but... the material was just impossible. At that time (the early 1980s), the material that drives all my work was dismissed as horror stories or grotesque exaggeration.

We know better now. If I had one wish, it would be that the material from which I draw my novels was fictional. Once journalism discovered child abuse, it quickly became apparent that I was not inventing or imagining anything.... I was simply reporting from Ground Zero. Where I have worked for three ugly decades.

Critical reaction to my books has varied (widely) ever since. But criticism on authenticity grounds has vanished with the tidal wave of headlines. The truth is inescapable. All that remains are the solutions, and the will to implement them.

Victor didnt live to see Flood published. I wish he had. And I wish that this reprint was now dated. It is not. The beast still walks among us. I see myself not as a writer, but as a soldier in the only Holy War worthy of the name. This was the first shot I fired.

Andrew Vachss

November, 1997

FLOOD

I GOT TO the office early that morningI think it was about ten oclock. As soon as the dog saw it was me, she walked over to the back door and I let her out. I went outside with her as far as the fire escape and watched her climb the metal stairs to the roof where she would deposit her daily load. Someday Im going to go up there and clean it all up, but in the meantime it keeps the winos from using my roof as a sleeping porchtoo many of them smoke in bed.

The dog is a hell of a lot better than a burglar alarm. The cops wouldnt rush into this neighborhood in the middle of the night anyway, and with Pansy on the job the burglar would still be there when anyone showed up. Shes a Neapolitan mastiffabout 140 pounds of concentrated hatred for all humanity except me. My last dog was a Doberman named Devil. She bit some clown and I got hit with a $100,000 lawsuit, so she had to run away from home. She never had a license and Im about as judgment-proof as a man can get, but this lawyer I refer cases to sometimes told me that I should give my next dog a name that wouldnt sound so negative. I thought of naming her the Neapolitan Homicide and calling her Homo for short, but the lawyer told me you never know who is going to be on a jury, especially in New Yorkso I compromised and called her Pansy. A lot of my clients dont like the dog, but that doesnt amount to a whole hell of a lot of people.

When Pansy came back downstairs, I shut the back door and got out her food. I only feed her the dry stuff, but she still slobbers like a politician near money. Thats why I have the floor covered in Astroturfit handles anything, you just wash it off. A lot of my clients think thats low-class too, but, like I said, there arent enough of them to make a difference.

I told the dog to stay where she was and went to check the other office. Actually, its just the next room, but theres no connecting door and the outer door was sealed shut years ago. I just use it when people I dont want to see knock on my dooronce I stayed there for three days. It has a private john, a fridge, a hotplate, and even a TV with earphones. Not badbut the only ventilation is the little window that opens off the fire escape where I climb in so I dont use it too much.

I dont make a lot of money at what I do, but the overhead is no problemI have my own form of rent control. By accident, I once found out that the landlords son did something to some people and theyve been looking for him ever since. I found the kid too, but his own mother wouldnt recognize him. The landlord bought him a new face, got him started in business, and the kid was goldenexcept that I knew about him and I told the landlord I did. I havent paid rent in about four years. Theres no ethics problemnobody ever hired me to find the little weasel.

I checked the mail firsta letter from American Express addressed to one of my other names demanding immediate payment of $3,504.25 or else they would wreck my credit rating for openers, a package on the latest FM transceiver bands from the U.S. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration addressed to the Crime Prevention Foundation, and a check for $771.25 from the Social Security Administration addressed to Mrs. Sophie Petrowski (the unfortunate Mr. Petrowskis only survivor), proving to me that despite a lengthy sojourn in the federal joint the Mouse was continuing his one successful scam. There were also four handwritten letters containing the requisite ten-dollar money order in response to my ad promising information about mercenary opportunities in foreign lands for qualified adventurers.