‘Blackie!’ She beams, despite the disarray, and comes forward as if to lift me. Neat as a dancer, I slip by her, perching instead on the back of the sofa. This is what she had been moving – or righting, perhaps – the cushions I once shredded now look far worse used, the cotton batting leaking out like the innards of a beast.
‘Bushwick’s people gave this place a good going over, didn’t they?’ She kneels before me and I see what she has been after. The papers she did not remove are scattered now across the floor, muddied with the prints of boots and other marks. ‘I don’t know what they were after, though. I doubt those oafs could even read.’
She gathers up the pages, bouncing them on the floor to straighten them and returns them to the desk. That piece, I see, has also been moved, and its drawers lie now on the floor.
‘I told him I had the ledger.’ She looks around and blinks, lost in her thoughts. ‘I’d think this was a message, only he did come here seeking something, before …’ She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know what it is.’
Food is not the answer, but I don’t refuse when she fishes a last piece of that cheese out of a corner, cutting off a slice. She sniffs the bread carefully when she finds it on the floor, but she eats that too, knowing better than to offer me such poor stuff. She has propped the door shut with the desk chair and relaxes now, lying back on the couch. There is no hearth here, no fire, but it is shelter of a sort. Her breathing settles into an easy rhythm, and my own eyes begin to close when we hear it: a scraping too big to be a mouse. A rattle of a knob. The door.
She is on her feet in a moment, her eyes darting from the door over to the window. I am on the ledge but I cannot see her take this route, this high and the perch so narrow. Panic passes over her face – the realization that she is trapped – and then she grabs the board that once framed the door in one hand and, in the other, the small knife she has used on the cheese.
The door rattles and the chair scrapes inward. She raises the board as a hand reaches in. And drops it. ‘Tick!’ She pulls the door open to embrace the boy who is, I am relieved to see, alone. ‘Thank God.’
I do not know if her relief is because the intruder is this boy or because the boy is safe. I keep my distance as she embraces the dirty child and pulls him over to the sofa. The bread is gone, but she hands him the cheese and a jar with some kind of paste. As she does, he reaches into his thin jacket and pulls out a cloth-wrapped package that he presents with both hands, as he would a prize.
‘The book.’ She looks up, his impromptu meal forgotten as she takes it and then embraces him once more.
‘I thought, well, if you want to take it to AD …’
‘No, no, I don’t.’ She sits back, unwrapping the ledger and opening it. ‘Thank you, Tick.’
‘I was thinking.’ The boy studies her, ignoring the food. ‘If you give it to him, maybe he’ll forgive you, Care. Maybe he’ll let you come back.’
‘I’m not going back, Tick.’ She speaks casually. Concentrating on the ledger, she does not see the distress her words cause. ‘I meant what I said. I’m going to take over the old man’s business. I can stay here. We can stay here, Tick. The old man paid the rent in advance, by mail. I just have to make this one case and we can keep this place. A place of our own, Tick. And a job – a real job.’
She turns a page, shaking her head slowly, squinting in the fading light. ‘If only I could figure this out,’ she says. But then she closes it, looking up, at last, at the boy. ‘It doesn’t matter. I have enough. I’m going to Diamond Jim in the morning, Tick. I can tell him who stole his necklace – and then got rid of Fat Peter to hide his trail. He’ll take care of the rest and we won’t have to worry anymore.’
She turns back to the book, too distracted to notice that the boy does not share her enthusiasm. That his head hangs down and he doesn’t eat. That his hands play nervously in his pocket as we sit in the growing dark.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The boy doesn’t want to go. That much is clear by the way he fusses, curling up in his makeshift nest – those slashed pillows – as Care tries to rouse him in the morning.
‘Please, Care …’ His words are muffled as he rolls over, pulling the old quilt above his head. She had found that quilt in the wreckage last night, its lining torn open, and given it to the boy. Although I bristled at this, in truth she didn’t need it. I slept by her, stretched out by her side on what remained of the sofa’s frame, both to lend her my warmth and as a safeguard, should that boy – or any other – make threatening moves in the night.
‘Let me stay here.’
‘Tick, I need you.’ She shakes the boy, more gently than I would have advised. ‘Get up.’
He’s still grumbling as she reaches for his clothes, shed overnight.
‘What’s this?’ She lifts his trousers, more patch than whole cloth at this point. She reaches into a pocket and pulls out the brass weight.
‘I found it, when I went back for the book.’ The boy sits up and rubs his eyes. ‘You threw it.’