The Good Thief (20 page)

“Here,” she said, and Ren paid her. She put the beer on the bar, then lifted her skirt and began to pick a scab off her knee.

“Thank you,” said Ren.

The girl gave him a closer look. “What happened to your hand?”

Ren tried to think of something interesting to say, but the small blond hairs on the girl’s thigh made his mind go temporarily blank. “A lion ate it,” he said at last, trying out one of Benjamin’s stories. “He was from the circus. And his name was Pierre.” The words sounded wrong in his mouth.

The girl stopped scratching at the scab on her leg. “You’re not very good at lying.”

Behind her came a rush of daylight as the door to the bar pushed open. Three men in black walked through and over to where Ren was standing. He was sure that they had found Dolly outside and had come to arrest them, but instead the men stopped beside the bartender. The shortest reached across the counter, touched the bartender’s eyelid, and lifted it. The iris underneath looked hard and shiny as a marble.

“They don’t last long in this place, do they?” the man said. He reached into his pocket and took out a small bag, which he quickly slipped over the bartender’s head and tightened with a knot at the neck. “Where’s the boss?” he said to the girl.

She pointed to the back room, as if this kind of thing happened at the bar every day.

“I’ll leave you to it,” the man said to the others, and he tipped his hat, then went through the swinging door.

The undertakers tried to straighten the body, but it was too stiff, so they simply rolled it to the floor, the bartender still holding his spoon. One of the men grabbed under the knees and the other hooked beneath the arms and across the chest. Everyone shuffled their chairs aside, and the undertakers made clumsily for the door, taking small steps. The bartender’s arm swung out over heads as he passed. The patrons hid their faces, eyes keen on cards or the dissolving foam in their glasses of beer.

As the undertakers maneuvered around a table, one of them stumbled, and the bartender’s soup spoon, still firmly gripped in his fingers, knocked off a hat. The brim was wide like a minister’s, with a blood-red band. It spun as if caught in a wind, and landed near the bar rail in the sawdust, quite knocked out of shape.

The owner of the hat stood up from his chair like a shadow stretching across a wall. His eyes were too far apart. Ren saw this first before anything else. There was so much space between them that his face looked pushed in—an open plain of blankness. His skin was pale, his hair long and plastered to the sides of his chin. His coat was made of leather and he wore red gloves—the same red that was in the band of the hat.

The undertakers stopped in their tracks. As the man in the red gloves approached, they dropped the bartender to the floor. “It wasn’t intentional,” one of them said. The other backed away. Patrons at the tables nearby picked up and moved to the other side of the room. The man in the red gloves didn’t say a word. But as they all watched, he removed a large knife from his belt, put it against the bartender’s wrist, and sawed off the dead man’s hand.

The green girl took hold of Ren’s sleeve and hid her face against it. He could feel her breath, hot and blowing through the cloth against his skin. The bartender’s arm shook as the man made his way through the bone. When he finished, the man in the red gloves reached over and picked up his hat from the floor. He dusted it off, shaped it with his fingers, and placed it on his head. Then he took the hand of the bartender, still holding the spoon, and brought it back to his table. He pointed at the green girl. “Bring me some stew.”

The girl rushed into the kitchen while the drinkers kicked sawdust over the blood and settled back in their seats. The undertakers seemed relieved. They scurried around the body, heaved it between them, and rushed out the door. The latch closed and the daylight crawled away into the corners and the hurricane lamps sent out their glow, and all of the men—all of them—suddenly began talking, as if they had been holding their breath until the body was gone.

The green girl came back holding a bowl of stew. Ren watched her maneuver her way through the crowd. He closed his eyes, but it didn’t change anything. He could still see the back-and-forth motion of the knife, the fleshy end of the bartender’s arm. It was as if the blade was cutting into his own body. He pressed tightly against his scar. He dug his nails in.

The room narrowed and pulled away, until Ren felt as if he were leaning over the well at Saint Anthony’s and hearing the echo of the water. Somewhere in that echo was a terror Ren had felt before; he was remembering now, almost touching it, the voices of the men in the bar mumbling in his ear, until the green girl grabbed his elbow and said, “You’re going to spill it.”

The glass of ale in his hand was tipping. Ren didn’t remember picking it up from the bar. He caught it now and set it straight. He thanked the girl, who gave him a halfhearted smile before going back to work. Ren made his way unsteadily back to the table. Benjamin and Tom were watching the man in the red gloves, who was now eating stew with the bartender’s hand.

“We need to leave this place,” Tom said.

“You’re drunk,” said Benjamin.

“Yes,” said Tom. “But I mean it.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” said Benjamin. “Not yet.”

Tom poured himself another glass. “I’ve been in this bar for two days, and I’ve heard more than I care to.” He looked over at the surrounding tables, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. “The mousetrap man, McGinty, he’s running a market for smuggled things here. Opium, French novels, postcards, gold teeth, whiskey, whale oil, pistols, ivory bracelets, and lip rouge. Anything and everything that anyone could want. He controls it all from his factory, taking a cut of every bit of action. And when he doesn’t get his cut, his men do some cutting of their own.”

Tom nodded at the man in red gloves, then made a gesture of apology toward Ren. “I’m attached to my hands. I don’t intend to lose them.”

Benjamin didn’t respond. He was too busy studying the man in the red gloves eating, as if this act was teaching him something important, something he’d been trying to learn for years. Benjamin’s face changed each time the man lifted the bartender’s hand, until he looked angrier than Ren had ever seen before. He shoved away from the table. He started buttoning up his coat.

“Where are you going?” Tom asked.

“We’ll do one more run,” Benjamin said. “One more, and then we’ll go.” He seemed suddenly in a rush. He handed Ren the key to their room. “Go beg your way back with Mrs. Sands.”

“What about Dolly?”

Benjamin stopped for a moment. He tapped Ren on the chin. “Just make sure he doesn’t kill anyone yet.” With that he turned the collar up on his coat, and in two steps he had slipped into the crowd.

Ren fingered the key in his hand. Tom poured a sandy liquid into two glasses, and pushed one over. “Here,” he said. “I’m tired of drinking alone.”

“I have to take care of Dolly.”

“One drink.”

Ren lifted the glass. He took a tentative sip and swallowed. The alcohol felt like flames in his mouth.

“What were your fellows’ names again?” Tom asked.

“Brom and Ichy,” said Ren.

“Mine was Christian.”

“I remember.”

Tom blew out a stream of air. “It’s a shame to lose your fellows.”

Ren stuck his tongue into the whiskey again. He waited to see how long he could hold it in his mouth before swallowing. A warm, pleasant glow started up the back of his throat. “Isn’t Benjamin your fellow?”

Tom poured another drink. His words started to slur, one sliding into the next. Ren had to lean forward and concentrate to understand him.

“When I met Benji, he was on the run for deserting. And wasn’t I struck by him? And didn’t I take him in and show him every kindness, a roof over his head and something to eat and how to find his way in and out of trouble? I taught him how to play cards, and how to be sure a woman wasn’t making a fool out of him. And now our paths are so twisted together that they’ll hang us from the same rope.”

“He was in the army?”

“He was sold into it,” said Tom. “His uncle turned him in to cover a gambling debt. The army sent him out west, and he saw men shot to pieces, trying to put their stomachs back inside themselves.” Tom lowered his head onto the table and groaned. “He was only a boy when it happened. Just a few years older than you.”

Ren set his glass down. Then he lifted it back up. The bottom left a damp ring on the wooden table. A thin, unbroken line. He thought of Sebastian, whispering through the gate. I should have used it. I should have wished on it as soon as it came to me.

The story Tom had told was breaking up, and the boy knew that if he waited long enough the words would leave the room, threading through the tables and out the door and it would be as if he had never said them. Tom seemed to be asleep now, his head in his arms. Ren slid out of his chair, but before he could leave, the schoolteacher lifted his face.

“Brom and Ichy.”

“That’s right,” said Ren.

“They’re nice names.” Tom lowered his head once more. “Hold on to them.”

D
olly was asleep underneath a maple tree, and Ren thought he looked almost peaceful. His head was resting against the rough bark, his hood pulled over his face. It was a warm night. The trees on the common were set in a line like pawns across a board.

Ren shouted in his ear. He held his nose and slapped his cheek, but Dolly did not respond. Ren sat on the grass and watched the sun go down. Every once in a while he would lift Dolly’s collar to make sure that his chest was still rising and falling. Ren counted seventeen links on the tattooed chain. He tried to imagine what it might be like to have that many ghosts behind him.

It was nearly an hour before Dolly finally opened his eyes.

“How long have I been sleeping?”

“About a hundred years,” said Ren.

Dolly felt his face for whiskers. He gave his broken grin. “Then how come I’m not old?”

“You are,” said Ren. “It just doesn’t show.”

The streets were dark as they made their way home. Dolly followed in a daze, stumbling over bricks in the sidewalk. Ren steered him down an alley and past another group of soldiers, smoking on the corner. Their uniforms were dirty, their guns hung casually from their shoulders. When Ren turned to look, one of the men nodded, showing the gaps in his brown teeth, and Dolly made the sign of the cross in return.

By the time they approached the boardinghouse it was early evening. The windows were shuttered as they came along the sidewalk. Ren tried the door and found it unlocked. The fire in the kitchen was cold. The knife and pie-makings were still on the counter, the rolling pin covered with flour, but Mrs. Sands was nowhere to be found. Dolly stood by while Ren opened cupboards and closets, turned over the potato basket, pushed the cloaks hanging by the door aside, then thundered up the stairs.

“Mrs. Sands?”

Ren checked their beds, then went to the landing above. He pushed his way into the mousetrap girls’ room. The space was large enough to hold four single cots. Shards of mirror hung on the walls. In the closet were their Sunday clothes—their heavy boots and navy dresses missing. He knocked over a box of rouge. He stumbled up another flight of stairs to the attic.

When no one answered his banging, he went inside. The room was narrow, with a pitched ceiling and two skylights. Underneath these openings was an old rope bed, and flung across it, still in her kitchen clothes, was Mrs. Sands.

Her face was flushed, the top of her collar torn loose. Her hands were pasted with flour. Ren touched her shoulder. “Mrs. Sands,” he whispered. She began to shake, lightly at first in response and then harder, so much that she nearly fell to the floor.

Ren reached for the blanket, pulled it across her body, and held her down, leaning all his weight onto the mattress.

“YOU’RE
MURDERING
ME.”

“I’m trying to help.”

Mrs. Sands focused for a moment on Ren’s face. She reached out and grabbed hold of him. “IT’S
THE
DROWNED
BOY
.” The landlady shook her head. She tore at the sheets. “I’VE
NEVER
SEEN
ANYONE
SO
HUNGRY
.”

“What’s the matter with you?” Ren asked.

“I WON’T
TAKE
THE
BOWL
AWAY
, I
PROMISE
.” She clutched his arm and tried to stand up. “I
HAVE
TO
MAKE
SUPPER
.” She got out of the bed and began to cough, her body folding in half. She bent over the ground, pressed her hands to her ribs, and began to sob. A small trickle of blood fell from her mouth onto the rug.

“Dolly!” Ren screamed. He bolted to the stairs. “Dolly!”

The staircase pounded, as if each flight were collapsing beneath the man as he ascended. Dolly burst into the room, his hands groping out before him like a blind man’s.

“There’s blood in her mouth.”

Dolly crouched on the floor in his monk’s robe. He looked the landlady up and down, then touched her stomach. Mrs. Sands groaned.