Soon we are walking down a broken road, its pavement crumbling. And then I know where we are. To my left, as the pavement falls away, lies a culvert. Here is where I first met that choleric savage. Here, where I nearly died.
They are talking, laughing as they walk, seemingly oblivious to their nearness to this small and squalid stream. I cannot be. Perhaps their senses have been dulled by habit. By the drink and drugs that they consume. Perhaps they simply do not care, the rivulet one more feature of the crumbling cityscape that they call home.
I cannot be so blasé. I smell the water, low now and poisoned with waste. Smell, too, the rats and other living things that use this unclean source. Scavengers, all. Had I been slightly less strong – had the girl not ventured in – I would have made a meal for such as them.
These men, too, are scavengers. Having witnessed AD with that woman, I perceive the same instincts driving him that I would in a rat. The weak, the young – I remember the girl’s cohort in the abandoned building – are fodder in his desperate battle for survival, nothing more. He is no mastermind, but rather the tool of someone. Someone like Bushwick? Care thinks so, I know that, but I remember the stink of fear on him and I wonder. As I follow, making my way from the shadow of one pile of rubbish to the next, I bide my time. I will wait and watch before I make up my mind.
‘What’s that?’ I freeze. AD is not as impaired as he might seem, not as drunk as his red-faced colleague, and I have been distracted by my thoughts.
‘What’s what?’ His bearish companion spins around, his booted feet sending fragments of asphalt bouncing down into the shallow stream.
‘I thought I saw something.’ AD cranes around, tall and looming. I flatten, slowly and, I hope, imperceptibly, willing his human-dull gaze to skim over my midnight fur. ‘Like, someone following us.’
‘You’re drunk.’ The big ruffian claps a hand to his companion’s back, but AD waves him off then steps forward, toward the culvert. ‘It’s nothing. Maybe a rat.’
AD holds up his hand for silence and looks around. I see his eyes, reflecting light from some distant building, the grime rimming his broken nails. I press my belly into the cold dirt. I know he cannot smell me. He lacks the senses, lacks the skills. But still the fur along my spine begins to rise. I consider where I will bolt if he makes a move.
‘Come on, AD.’ The big one’s voice has taken on a whiny quality despite its depth. He shifts from one foot to another, cold or bored. ‘It’s all in your head. Or maybe it’s one of those brats you use as runners.’
‘No.’ AD shakes his head, scans the road back toward the bar and then the empty street ahead. ‘I told them to all get lost until tomorrow. That I wouldn’t need them until then.’
‘Maybe it’s a ghost then.’ With a shrug, the big man kicks the dirt. Pebbles roll by me, splashing into the oily water. ‘There’s got to be some of them around here, for sure.’
‘Maybe.’ AD doesn’t seem convinced and turns toward his colleague. Back up the deserted road. ‘Wouldn’t that be just my luck? The old man haunting me the night before the big deal?’
‘Ha,’ his companion barks. ‘If he were that smart he’d still be alive, wouldn’t he?’
‘Maybe.’ One last craning, checking to the right and left, and AD starts walking again. The fur along my spine settles. They are heading toward the buildings, empty shells whose windows look blacker even than the pockmarked road. I give them a good head start before I follow, darting sideways to a pile of rubbish and then to a dislodged curbstone. AD is on high alert, I gather, no matter what his extracurricular pleasures may be.
I consider the implications of this, of his comments about a deal, as they turn a corner ahead. I had known the old man’s death had taken place down by the water. The girl had said as much. It should not surprise that her onetime leader, AD, would have some knowledge of – if not involvement in – his murder. To have this brought home, though, so close to where I nearly met my end, is chilling. I do not consider myself an imaginative type. I trade in facts, as all beasts do. We eat, we mate, we live. But for a moment, I find myself wondering about Care’s previous companion, the mentor to whom she feels such loyalty.
Did he recognize the moment of his death as it came upon him? Did he see the perpetrators who were cutting his time short? It is fruitless musing, of course, as all such thoughts are, but it distracts me for a moment as I let the two men move ahead. And then I look, and they are gone.