Gardener's lips parted in a small, dry smile. 'Take him back to his room,' he said.
3
Just another week in the Sunlight Home, can you say amen, brothers and sisters. Just another long, long week.
Jack lingered in the kitchen after the others had taken in their breakfast dishes and left. He knew perfectly well that he was risking another beating, more harassment . . . but by this time, that seemed a minor consideration. Only three hours before, Sunlight Gardener had come within an ace of burning his lips off. He had seen it in the man's crazy eyes, and felt it in the man's crazy heart. After something like that, the risk of a beating seemed a very minor consideration indeed.
Rudolph's cook's whites were as gray as the lowering November sky outside. When Jack spoke his name in a near-whisper, Rudolph turned a bloodshot, cynical gaze on him. Cheap whiskey was strong on his breath.
'You better get outta here, new fish. They're keepin an eye on you pretty good.'
Tell me something I don't know.
Jack glanced nervously toward the antique dishwasher, which thumped and hissed and gasped its steamy dragon's breath at the boys loading it. They seemed not to be looking at Jack and Rudolph, but Jack knew that seemed was really the operant word. Tales would be carried. Oh yes. At the Sunlight Home they took away your dough, and carried tales became a kind of replacement currency.
'I need to get out of here,' Jack said. 'Me and my big friend. How much would you take to look the other way while we went out that back door?'
'More than you could pay me even if you could get your hands on what they took from you when they ho'd you in here, buddy-roo,' Rudolph said. His words were hard but he looked at Jack with a bleary sort of kindness.
Yes, of course - it was all gone, everything. The guitar-pick, the silver dollar, the big croaker marble, his six dollars . . . all gone. Sealed in an envelope and held somewhere, probably in Gardener's office downstairs. But -
'Look, I'd give you an IOU.'
Rudolph grinned. 'Comin from someone in this den of thieves and dope-addicts, that's almost funny,' he said. 'Piss on your f**kin IOU, old hoss.'
Jack turned all the new force that was in him upon Rudolph. There was a way to hide that force, that new beauty - to a degree, at least - but now he let it all come out, and saw Rudolph step back from it, his face momentarily confused and amazed.
'My IOU would be good and I think you know it,' Jack said quietly. 'Give me an address and I'll mail you the cash. How much? Ferd Janklow said that for two bucks you'd mail a letter for someone. Would ten be enough to look the other way just long enough for us to take a walk?'
'Not ten, not twenty, not a hundred,' Rudolph said quietly. He now looked at the boy with a sadness that scared Jack badly. It was that look as much as anything else - maybe more - that told him just how badly he and Wolf were caught. 'Yeah, I've done it before. Sometimes for five bucks. Sometimes, believe it or not, for free. I would have done it free for Ferdie Janklow. He was a good kid. These f**kers - ' Rudolph raised one water- and detergent-reddened fist and shook it toward the green-tiled wall. He saw Morton, the accused pud-puller, looking at him, and Rudolph glared horribly at him. Morton looked away in a hurry.
'Then why not?' Jack asked desperately.
'Because I'm scared, hoss,' Rudolph said.
'What do you mean? The night I came here, when Sonny started to give you some trouble - '
'Singer!' Rudolph flapped one hand contemptuously. 'I ain't scared of Singer, and I ain't scared of Bast, no matter how big he is. It's him I'm afraid of.'
'Gardener?'
'He's a devil from hell,' Rudolph said. He hesitated and then added, 'I'll tell you something I never told nobody else. One week he was late givin me my pay envelope and I went downstairs to his office. Most times I don't, I don't like to go down there, but this time I had to . . . well, I had to see a man. I needed my money in a hurry, you know what I mean? And I seen him go down the hall and into his office, so I knew he was there. I went down and knocked on the door, and it swung open when I did, because it hadn't completely latched. And you know what, kid? He wasn't there.'
Rudolph's voice had lowered steadily as he told this story, until Jack could barely hear the cook over the thump and wheeze of the dishwasher. At the same time, his eyes had widened like the eyes of a child reliving a scary dream.
'I thought maybe he was in that recordin-studio thing they got, but he wasn't. And he hadn't gone into the chapel because there's no direct connectin door. There's a door to the outside from his office, but it was locked and bolted on the inside. So where did he go, buddy-roo? Where did he go?'
Jack, who knew, could only look at Rudolph numbly.