MAX WENT everywhere I went. Behind me, not with me. Guarding my back. Protecting me from a ghost. His warrior s soul screaming for combat to make it right. Too late for the battle.
We were on a pier near the Yacht Basin, waiting for a buyer to show up. The buyer had advertised over an electronic bulletin board, using the modem on his personal computer. He wanted a little girl. No older than ten. White. Someone he could love. He'd have ten grand with him. To prove his love.
Max took a restaurant napkin out of his pocket, a felt-tip pen from mine. Drew a rising sun, touched his heart gently. Pointed at me, turned the finger around to include himself. We could go to Japan. Find Flood. Bring her home.
I shook my head. She was home. So was I.
The headlights of the buyer's car flashed. Once, twice. Max merged into the shadow next to my Plymouth. I walked over to the buyer's car, a beige Taurus station wagon. The driver's window whispered down, air-conditioned breeze on my face. It didn't make sense for that time of the year until I saw the fat man inside. Ice-cream suit, straw hat, sweating.
"Mr. Smith?" he asked in a pulpy voice.
"That's me," I assured him.
"She's with you?"
"In the car," I said, tilting my head to show him the direction.
I stepped aside to let him out. The light went on inside the station wagon when the door opened. Empty. He took a black attaché case off the seat next to him.
"She's still a little dopey," I said, walking beside him.
"No problem."
I lit a cigarette, the cheap lighter flaring a signal to Max.
"She's inside," I told the fat man, patting the Plymouth 's trunk.
"Let's see."
"Let's see the money."
He popped open the briefcase on the trunk lid. Clean-looking bills, nicely banded. And a small plastic bottle with a spray top, some white handkerchiefs, plastic wristbands- the kind they give you in the hospital.
"Got everything you need, huh?"
"Hey, look, pal. This kid isn't for me, okay? I'm a businessman, just like you. In fact, you got any more where this kid came from, you just let me know. I got customers waiting."
His fat body slammed into the back of the Plymouth as Max took him from behind- a paralyzing shot just below the ribs, a lightning chop to the exposed neck as he went down. Vomit sprayed onto the Plymouth.
I ripped open his shirt. No wire. Pulled his wallet from an inside pocket, stripped off his watch, passed up the rings, snatched the brief-case. And left him where he was.
It didn't make the morning papers.