Outside the glass doors of a two-story bar, the furtive character I had followed into Old Town's lanes jittered in a hipster shuffle as he explained something to a chunky blond woman wearing a half-unbuttoned denim jacket. She was Cassie Little, Clark Rutledge's beloved, and the rodent was named Frenchy La Chapelle. I had seen both of them in St. Ann's ICU.speedway lounge blared in pink neon above the doors.
A hand closed on my left elbow, and a well-rubbed voice whispered, "Buddy, I don't know about brains, but you do got balls."
The disheveled old man beside me grinned up at my surprise. Dingy gray curls escaping from a flat cap; concave cheeks shiny with gray stubble; layers of unclean clothes; a clear, pervasive smell of alcohol. "Piney Woods," he said. "Remember me?"
• 38
• “I wasn't here on Thursday night," I said. "But I heard about you from my Uncle Clark."
"Unless you don't happen to be here now, either, you better slide back into Turnip." He pointed at four men with rocky faces and shirts open over T-shirted guts who were assembling in front of the Speedway. They had the look of small-town roughnecks who had changed in no essential way since the age of sixteen. Cassie Little had disappeared inside the bar, and the rodent had exercised his talent for evaporation. Three of the men carried baseball bats. I let Piney pull me back into the lane.
"My old poker buddies, I suppose," I said.
"Staggers and them." Piney moved to block me from view. "They got some ornery mothers over in Mountry."
I looked over his shoulder. "Which one is Staggers?"
"Him in the fatigue pants."
Him in the fatigue pants had the spoiled, seamed face of a man who had never recovered from the disappointment of learning that he did not rule the world, after all. He was smacking his hands together and growling orders and, despite his belly, looked as though he spent his work day pulverizing boulders with a sledgehammer.
"Seems like the boys are getting ready to break up again, take one last look around."
“I heard someone following me," I told him.
"Like I said, you're lucky. You want to stay that way, you should get out of Hatchtown, pronto."
I hurried back into Veal Yard. On its other side and to the left of Wax, Pitch Lane wound deeper into Hatchtown. I ran down it, hoping that it would lead me to the vicinity of Lanyard Street and Toby Kraft's pawnshop.
Pitch joined Treacle for the length of a listing ruin exhaling the odors of ammonia and rotting apples. I heard again the click of approaching footsteps. On the other side of the ruin, I dodged into the continuation of Pitch and jogged down dark twists and turns. The pursuing footsteps rang with a deliberation more frightening than haste. Midden intersected Pitch, but . . . forget Midden. Use your imagination. When I came to Lavender, I looked to my left. Two ragged boys who appeared to have sprung unaltered from a slum photograph ofNew York in the 1890s regarded me from the door of an abandoned building. To my right, high-pitched female laughter came through the window of a shoebox called No Regrets. From beyond it, heavy footsteps plodded forward. Whoever the first man might be, this was one of Joe Staggers's friends.
My two would-be assailants drew nearer, one approaching from behind, the other from my right on Lavender. One of the boys jerked his thumb toward his shoulder and stepped back, and I jumped through the opening into lavender-scented darkness.
Broken bands of light streamed through chinks in the front of the building. Against the rear wall a huddle of boys slept beneath tangled blankets. I prowled down the wall, looking for a gap wide enough to see through. My savior followed me.
"After ya?"
"Thanks for your help."
"Wheere's a bit o' money, den?"
I pulled a bill from my pocket, held it before a glimmering quarter-inch crack to expose George Washington's secretive face, and gave the dollar to the boy.
"Wanna hurt ya?"
I squatted on my heels and put my eye to the crack.
"You kin speeranudder dollar."
I gave him a second hill.
From the back of the warehouse, someone whispered,"Shove 'im in the Knacker, Nolly."
The lane before me was still empty, but I could hear the approach of heavy footfalls. From further away came a lightertap tap tap. The boy lay down and pressed his eye to another crack.
"The Knacker for 'im."
A T-shirted paunch and a thick arm holding a baseball bat heaved into view. The man came to a halt and looked behind him, at the building across the lane, then at the old lavender warehouse. He ticked the bat against a cobble.
"See a guy come down this way?"
The boy in the doorway said, "Seen a couple."
"A tourist."
"Ran down there," the boy said. "Puffin' hard."
The gut swung around. "How long ago?"
"Just passed by."
The man with the bat moved away, and soon my rescuer and I slipped back through the door. I asked if they lived in the old building.
"We sleeps here when it's hot."
"Sometimes we gets fetchin' money," said the smaller boy.
"For instance," Nolly said, “If you needed a certain thing, we maybe could find that thing for you."
"Can you help me find my way out of here?"
They glanced at each other.
"For a buck," I said.
Nolly extended a grubby hand, and I surrendered another dollar. So quickly that I scarcely saw him go, he set off down Lavender in the direction opposite to that taken by my pursuer. I followed him through passages called Shoelace, Musk, and Pineapple.
"Where do we come out?"
I would see when we got there.
We turned off Pineapple into Honey, a six-foot passage with a lamp burning at its far end. Plodding footsteps reached us from an adjoining lane. Nolly hesitated. A second later came the overlapping sound of leather soles ticking against stone cobbles. Nolly darted down the length of Honey. I ran after him, all too aware that the men could hear me as well as I heard them. We came out into a pocket court called White Mouse Yard, and Nolly pointed across to a dim opening. "Take Silk," he said. "Co Silk, Class, Beer, and you're out." He raced into an adjacent lane.
The approaching footsteps grew louder.
I ran into Silk. The heavy steps came toward me, and I stopped and looked back. The sound swung around through the narrow lane and appeared to come from before me. I moved ahead and heard the lighter, ticking footfalls from somewhere on either side. At the bottom of the lane I turned blindly into what I hoped was Glass, jogged toward the lamp at the next crossing of the lanes, and realized that the only steps I heard were my own. Cursing, I wrenched off my loafers.
In front of me, a broad figure shifted around the corner and filled the center of the lane beneath the lamp. The figure raised a baseball bat and charged.
At that moment, someone grabbed my collar, spun me aside, and pushed me onto the cobbles. When I raised my head, I saw himpounce— stride forward and leap like a tiger upon the man in front of me. I groped for my shoes. The baseball bat scraped against the side of the passage, flashed upward, and swung down. I heard a squashy, battered-watermelon noise. The bat landed with a heavier, softer impact. I moved back from the carnage, and the bat skittered toward me over the cobbles.
Overhead, a man leaned through a bright square of window. In the faint light, a ponderous corpse sprawled over the cobblestones. A slim figure in a blue suit sauntered to the far end of Glass and paused. A dreamlike terror made half of anticipation arose in me.