The Good Thief (28 page)

Ren looked at Benjamin, who had gone as white as the notice in Pilot’s hand. McGinty pulled open a drawer in the desk and removed a gun. He placed it on the table. Everyone in the room watched as he poured a few bullets from a box into his hand and began to load the pistol.

“Tell me, Mistah Nab, ah yah a religious man?”

Benjamin shook his head.

McGinty snapped the gun closed, then held it out. “Take a look at tha inscription.”

Benjamin hesitated.

“Go on,” McGinty said. “Read what it says on tha barrel.”

Benjamin leaned over. “‘The souls of the just are in the hand of God.’”

“Have yah evah felt tha hand a God?” McGinty cleaned the inscription with his handkerchief, as if Benjamin had left a smudge just by looking at it.

Everyone waited for Benjamin to answer. Ichy’s stomach growled. Tom shifted and groaned by the door. There was a clock on the wall. Ren had not heard it before, but it clicked back and forth now over their heads, sounding off the seconds.

“I can shoot yah fah what yah done. Or I can turn yah in fah tha rewahd, and given that fine list, yah’ll hang.” McGinty finished wiping the gun. He spun the barrel. Once. Twice. Then he nodded at Tom. “He’s going ta ruin that rug.”

The twins looked up at McGinty, terrified. They were still holding each other’s hands and Tom’s as well, so that they formed a closed circle. Now they dropped Tom’s fingers, as if he had suddenly become contaminated.

Ren waited for Benjamin to tell a better story, a story that would get them out of this place. But Benjamin only stood there, looking defeated, his face seeming to swell more by the minute. If anything was going to be done, Ren understood that he would have to do it. He stepped forward, and in a moment he had his coat off and spread on the rug. He tried to use it to clean up the blood, scrubbing back and forth at the carpet, and then felt the silence in the room, and turned to see everyone looking at him.

McGinty was standing behind the desk, the gun loose in his hand. His eyes darted from Ren’s sleeve to the boy’s face and back again.

“Who’s that?”

“No one,” Benjamin said.

McGinty raised his eyebrows. He motioned with the pistol and Pilot put a gun to the back of Benjamin’s head. The room became even more quiet then, as if they’d all stopped breathing, all but Benjamin, who began to choke as if he were underwater. The Top Hat grabbed Ren by his collar and pulled him toward the desk.

Up close McGinty smelled like peppermints. Ren could see that his freckles not only covered his face but also went over his neck, even his hands. Underneath his arms two sweat stains had started, ovals radiating down the side of his starched shirt. He took hold of Ren, pushed up the boy’s sleeve, and stared at the stump. Ren tried to pull away, but McGinty’s grip tightened. He groped at the scar with his fingers, then cupped the whole thing with his palm and pushed against the bone until it hurt.

“Wheahya from?”

Ren was too frightened to lie. “Saint Anthony’s.”

“Yaran orphan?”

“Yes.”

“Lucky boy.” McGinty was panting now. He let go of the scar and pinched Ren’s cheek.

“He’s just a kid,” Benjamin said quietly, the gun still pressed to the back of his head. “He’s not worth anything.”

McGinty let go of Ren, pulled out a gold pocket watch, and opened the cover. He looked at the boy and he looked at the watch. Then he crossed his arms, and fell into thought, and appeared uninterested in speaking with any of them for a time. Benjamin closed his eyes. The rest of the group waited, feeling the heat in the room.

Ren watched Benjamin, expecting some kind of sign, but Benjamin’s face was tight with fear. Ren swallowed hard. He thought back to his days in Father John’s study, waiting out his punishment, the silence worse than the beating. He slowly began to back away, and it seemed to break the spell. McGinty nodded at Pilot, and the man removed the gun from Benjamin’s head.

Benjamin’s head fell back, as if the barrel of the gun had been supporting it. He opened his eyes. “I’ll pay you more than they’ll give you.”

“I don’t wancha money,” said McGinty.

Benjamin glanced at the door. Pilot was there, cleaning his knife, and his eyes did not move from Benjamin, not for an instant. “I don’t understand.”

“Yoah going ta leave this town tanight,” said McGinty. “I’m not going ta see yah again. I’m not going ta heah yoah name. I’m not going ta know anothah thing aboutcha.”

Pilot opened the door. He pointed to the rug. The Top Hat and the Straw Hat crouched down on either side of Tom and began to roll him up inside. They did this without a word, as if they’d done it many times before. Brom and Ichy moved over and they all watched Tom disappear into the folds of the carpet. Then the hat boys grabbed either end and pulled the rug out into the hall, the twins following behind.

Benjamin took Ren’s hand. One of his nails had been torn away. Ren could see the bruise folded over his knuckles, a small dark spot as they turned to leave. Pilot stepped in front of the door, blocking their way. He took the notice that he’d read from his pocket. He folded the paper in half. Then he folded it in half again.

McGinty leaned back in his chair. “Tha boy stays.”

Benjamin hesitated. His fingers let go of Ren’s and floated to the place on his head where Pilot had pressed the gun. Ren watched, his heart beating so loudly it drummed in his ears.

“Say good-bye,” said McGinty.

Ren waited for Benjamin to speak. To hear some kind of explanation. Why this was a mistake. Why they couldn’t possibly be parted. But Benjamin barely looked at him.

“Good-bye,” he said.

In the next moment Ren was dragged out of the room, the green carpet a blur beneath his knees. Pilot pitched him down the stairs and past the rows of mousetrap girls. The workers continued on, pretending not to notice, but Ren could see a few stopped and stared. The Harelip was still in her place, and for a moment they looked at each other before Pilot pulled him through another door, down a corridor, and finally threw him into a storage room, piled high with papers and boxes.

“You are lucky,” Pilot said. Then he closed the door and locked it behind him.

T
he closet had no windows. Piled up against the walls and strewn about the floor were a number of wooden crates. Two filing cabinets sat in the corner, along with a small writing table and a stool. On the table sat an inkwell and a set of gold pens identical to the ones that were in McGinty’s office. There was also a potbellied stove with a small flue attached to the wall. Ren opened the grate and saw that it was full of ashes.

He sat on the stool and put his head down on the table. He tried to feel the wood pressing into his cheek. His body was heavy, as if there were ropes from below pulling him to the ground. He had never been so miserable and alone.

There was a part of him that wanted to believe this was a plan of some kind, that in an hour or two the door would be unlocked, and outside waiting for him would be Tom and the twins and Benjamin with his smile, in a new cart with a new horse, several hundred dollars richer. But as the morning passed and his stomach ached with hunger, Ren began to sink into despair, and ruminated on all the ways Benjamin had failed him. It was hard to believe. And then it wasn’t.

The more Ren blamed Benjamin, the more he realized that he had done the same to Dolly. He had left him behind. He had saved himself. Dolly was probably awake by now, wandering the road, calling his name, stumbling across the body of the mare. Ren thought of Pilot putting the shotgun to the horse’s head, the same place where the farmer used to kiss her good-bye.

He wished that he were back in Mrs. Sands’s kitchen. He knew that she would never have given him up. Ren imagined her bursting into the mousetrap factory with her broom, beating the hat boys senseless, and then lifting Ren into her arms. It would be just like one of Benjamin’s stories. He could see the glint of her crooked teeth, the sound of the broom as it broke across Pilot’s shoulders, the way she wrestled McGinty to the ground. He listened for her footsteps in the hallway. He added more details, then he listened again.

As the day passed, Ren grew weary and restless, and he began to look through the boxes stacked around the room. He even prayed to Saint Anthony for help, to find him a knife or a length of rope—anything that would aid him in escaping—but the crates were only full of springs and wood shavings and paper. One held broken mousetraps, similar to the one he’d seen in Mrs. Sands’s kitchen. He took one and poked the tiny metal door, then felt it snap shut as he drew his finger back.

He rummaged through the desk and pulled out a stack of old notebooks. Inside the pages he found illustrations of mousetraps. Drawing after drawing of intricate, tiny killing machines. There was a rough sketch of a mouse toppling from a baited slide into water. There was another, where the ceiling of the container crushed the mouse with the turn of an enormous screw. The next was a complicated labyrinth, the passages growing smaller and thinner, until it was impossible for the mouse to turn around or turn back.

The drawings were patents, or ideas of patents. Every possible way to rid the world of something unwanted.

Ren began to pace the room. Each time he reached the wall he circled back, until he was practically spinning, and nearly missed the sound of a key fitting into the lock. The door opened and McGinty came in, holding a paper sack the size and shape of a human head. He was dressed for business, his yellow jacket buttoned, the ribbons on his sleeves tucked in and tied. He set the bag down on the table.

“Heah,” he said.

Ren stared at the bag.

“It’s fah you,” said McGinty. “Open it.”

The boy reached out and touched the crinkled paper. He slowly pulled apart the folded edges of the top, his fingers shaking. All the while he could feel McGinty standing behind him.

The bag was full of candy. Peppermint sticks and lollipops and pieces of fudge, saltwater taffy, sour balls, bars of chocolate, lemon bites, peanut brittle, butterscotch, maple sugar leaves, sponge candy, caramel chews, flavored wax, and all-day suckers. Ren had heard of such things and seen them in the windows of stores, but he had never tasted them. The smell of sugar drifted across his face in a cloud, making him feel dizzy and ravenous all at once.

McGinty poured the bag out, and the sweets tumbled across the table in a swirl of color, covering the notebooks and spilling onto the floor. “Gowan,” he said. “Eat it.”

Ren wondered if the candy was poisoned.

“These ah my favorite,” McGinty said, and took one of the peppermint sticks. He snapped it into pieces. He spent a few minutes sucking and moving the candy around in his mouth, then crunching it apart with his teeth. He picked up another and gave it to Ren. “Try it.”

The boy thought of Mister Bowers, slipping his dentures out like a secret. This is what happens to boys who eat jam. He shook his head.

“Try something, fah Gawd’s sake!” McGinty roared.

Ren snatched the candy and shoved the whole thing into his mouth. The sweetness nearly blinded him; his mouth filled with saliva, and suddenly he didn’t care whether it was poisoned or not.

“That’s bettah,” said McGinty.

Ren unwrapped a bar of chocolate and ate it in three bites, his tongue covered with melted goodness. He crunched the rock candy until it splintered against his teeth; he pulled the taffy, stretching it inches from his face. He sucked the juice from the flavored wax, and stuffed a piece of Turkish delight into the side of his cheek, where it stuck to his teeth and slowly disintegrated.

“Didja look at those?” McGinty pointed to the book of mousetrap sketches.

Ren wiped his mouth. “Yes.”

McGinty chose one of the notebooks and opened it. He turned a page and then another and showed Ren a drawing of a box that hid a miniature guillotine. The mouse touched a lever as it went after the cheese, and its tiny head rolled out the other side.

“I stahted as a ratcatchah,” said McGinty. “Black rats, brown rats, and red rats. Tha black ones come up through tha drains, tha brown ones live in tha walls a yar house, and tha red ones go aftah tha livestock. They’ll eat a dog, or a baby, if yah give ’em tha chance.”

McGinty flipped a few more pages, then showed Ren another drawing, of a team of rats trying to fit a child through a hole in the wall. Some pushing, some pulling, some gnawing the places in between.

“Mice ahn’t as smaht as rats. But they breed fastah. When I stahted making mousetraps, they sold as soon as I could put ’em togethah. But aftah a while they stopped working. Tha mice would figure ’em out. They pass tha infahmation down tha line, from one mouse ta tha next. So I designed anothah, and stahted catching ’em again. And when that stopped working I designed anothah. Tha trick is ta keep changing tha traps, so they forget what kills ’em.”

McGinty snapped the book shut. He slipped another piece of candy into his mouth. “Yah weran ugly baby.”

Ren was still holding on to a piece of flavored wax. He could feel it begin to soften now, as his palm grew slick with alarm, the swirl of his fingerprints leaving an impression across the surface.

“Yah don’t look like hah, though. Yah don’t look like harat all.”