“You went into the empty building? Alone?” Ari asked. “You must have good nerves.”
“I’m training to be a fireman,” Tomi announced.
“You must be a good friend, too,” Ari went on.
The two boys were sitting side by side at the table. At Ari’s observation, they turned to look at one another. Neither of them spoke. They were, however, in perfect agreement: Adults didn’t understand the way things went at schools, among kids; they didn’t remember what friendships were like, and who you were never friends with however interesting you might find him.
“I’ve been hearing things about a Mister Max,” Tomi said in a teasing, hinting, questioning voice.
That reminded Max. “Did you know about the protection racket? About these three …?” But he couldn’t think of the right word for Kip and Colly and Blister. Not boys, certainly, but in two cases not really criminals, in his opinion. “I thought you might know something. I wanted to ask you about that but then they—got me.”
Grammie reached out to put her hand over his wrist, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to say anything. Max knew what she meant.
Tomi answered thoughtfully. “I know about Kip, so I’ve seen Blister. Colly used to be in school with us, don’t you remember? A class above? Maybe two classes? He left school when—you must remember that, the woman who killed her husband. Do you remember it, Mrs. Nives?”
“I’d like to forget it, but yes. And she was hanged for it. A sad story.”
“I’ve only seen Colly a few times, since,” Tomi said. “He works in Sterne’s ink manufactory; he’s been there a long time. What did they want with you?” he asked Max. “Kip’s … He’s always been a bad one and he’s getting worse. If Blister wasn’t such a cringer—and if you didn’t have to take on Kip to get ahold of him—somebody would have taken him in. But he’s such a sad sack, and sort of disgusting, nobody—”
“But didn’t Kip save Blister’s life? That’s what he said. He can’t be all bad if he did that.”
“Kip pulled a box out of the water and the kid was in it,” Tomi told him. “Besides, does one good deed make up for sixteen years of … He steals things, especially from weaker people. He was always terrorizing the smaller kids at school, before they expelled him. They say he’ll use his knife with no provocation and … He was drowning a dog when he pulled Blister’s box out. Or a cat, it might have been a cat, but it wasn’t his own, either. The poor kid who owned it was right there, trying to … Kip’s really mean, Max. He’s worse than mean—he’s dangerous.”
“I know.” Max had the bruises to prove it. “But not for Blister. Not entirely,” he said, seeing Tomi’s expression. “He’s an arsonist, and a vandal, too. Those three are—”
“So you’ve found out for sure that that’s what’s been going on?” Tomi asked. “Everybody suspected there was something, we all wondered at the firehouse … There was too much of it for a coincidence, but nobody would say anything; there was … You knew there was some secret, and you thought you could guess what it was, but nobody was talking about it. If you’ve proved it, we should go to the police.” Tomi was already half up out of his seat.
Max raised the hand that wasn’t holding a mug of tea. “Wait, Tomi. Wait, I have to think. We need to make a plan.”
“No,” Tomi said eagerly. “The police will arrest the three of them, they’ll tell the Mayor, and he’ll make sure the trial is quick, and public. That way, everybody in the old city will know they don’t have to be afraid. You don’t know what it’s been like, Max, with people trying to pretend nothing is going on. Everybody is frightened. Nobody trusts anybody.”
“But I do know,” Max said. “The Mayor already knows, too, just not who—” He was going to have to explain everything to Tomi, or the boy would go dashing off to ruin the Mayor’s hopes, meaning to help but not helping one bit. The opposite, in fact. “Listen,” he said, and he told the story—well, some of it, the relevant part of it. He started almost at the very beginning, with missing the boat and the entrance of Mister Max onto the stage.
“I should have known,” Tomi said. “Or at least guessed.”
“Why would you?” Max wondered, but went on before Tomi could answer.
He skipped most of the middle of the story and anything involving his parents, then concluded with the Mayor’s desire to keep this particular problem a secret from the royal family, which meant from popular knowledge, which meant—especially—from the newspapers. “We don’t want the kind of hullabaloo that they whipped up over the whole Miss Koala business. That’s why they hired me, to figure out a way to stop the extortion and let people know it’s over and do it quickly. Eventually—in the fall—they’ll bring the gang to justice. But you know,” he admitted, as that word, Justice, rang in his ears like a bell, “I feel sorry for Blister—”
“He certainly sounds like a miserable little fellow. A wretch,” Ari agreed. “Do you think somebody tried to drown him? Like unwanted puppies or kittens? Or maybe his people were on a boat that sank. Or he could have just fallen overboard. But then, what was he doing in a box? Was it a wooden box?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knew anything about him. Nobody came looking for him that I ever heard of,” Tomi said. “But how can you stop them and let people know it’s safe again and at the same time keep it a secret, Max?” He looked at Max with interest; he wasn’t laughing now. “Have you really been earning a living as a detective?”
“Solutioneer,” Max corrected, flushing with pleasure at the boy’s tone.
“Living by yourself?”
“If you don’t count a tenant—that is, me—or that his grandmother’s only a garden away,” Ari said.
Tomi looked at the three of them, and then again at Max. “So what’s the plan here?” he asked, grinning with pleasure and excitement. “What do we do next?”
“I’m afraid we have to call in the police,” Grammie said.
“And send Blister to prison?” Max asked. “I don’t want to do that. Hasn’t his life been hard enough already? He never had a chance.”
“He’s still an accomplice,” Grammie pointed out. “He was there, even if he’s little more than a whipped dog.”
Max didn’t have to say anything. He just let Grammie listen to her own words.
It was Tomi who clinched it. “She only pushed him down the stairs,” he said. At the blank expressions that greeted this statement, he explained. “Colly’s mum. Well, actually, she whacked him with a wooden chair and he was at the top of the stairs … They lived on the fourth floor,” he said. “He liked to gamble, Colly’s dad. He gambled everything and he wouldn’t stop, and when he didn’t have wages of his own to bet with, he took what she earned. Washing sheets, and ironing them, to earn enough for food and rent for the three of them. She didn’t mean to kill him,” Tomi said. “She confessed right away and she was sorry, and she said she deserved to be hanged and the parents—his parents? They told the judge he was the prop of their old age and without him they were lost.” Tomi turned to Grammie. “Don’t you remember, Mrs. Nives?”
“I remember,” Grammie said, now thoughtful. “I thought she was spineless. I suppose she must have loved him, but still … She didn’t protect her child. Or herself, but a child … They never said in the newspapers that it was an accident.”
Tomi shrugged. “Newspapers,” he said. “They like to stir people up. Stirred-up people buy more newspapers.”
“Why was she hanged, then?”
Tomi shrugged. “She’d threatened him before, apparently. The neighbors testified that they’d heard them fighting, on many occasions. She admitted to doing it and his parents wanted revenge for their son’s life. Popular opinion turned him into a model citizen, just a little weak about gambling, and people were afraid of what might happen if wives started thinking they could kill their husbands. Everyone said she didn’t care about anything anymore. Not even about Colly. She just—nobody spoke for her, she had given up, and—”
He was silent for a few seconds before he said, “The grandparents took Colly in and people said they were good and generous, but they took him out of school. As soon as they could. Colly was smart,” Tomi said. “It was all so—It wasn’t right,” he concluded.
By then, Grammie was nodding.
Then Tomi’s voice changed. “Kip, however—Kip’s another story, an entirely different one. It would be right for Kip to go to prison. Except,” he added morosely, “that when he comes out he’ll probably be worse than before.”
“Is there any way to punish Kip without punishing the other two?” Max asked, and he looked around the table.
Nobody could think of any.
“It’s hard to learn how to be brave,” Grammie said slowly, “when someone is always there to take advantage of how powerless, and weak, you are.” She looked at Max first, then Tomi, then Ari. “I always admire the courage of little children, even if”—and she smiled at some memory—“a lot of the time it’s pretty foolhardy.”
“What if Colly gave back the money he’s taken?” Max suggested. “His share of it, I mean. He said he was saving it up so he could start a new life, and go to school to learn a trade to earn a living. It would be a real punishment for him to give it back.”
“And leave him there with those grandparents?” Tomi asked. “I wish we had room but we already have too many people and not enough beds. There’s food enough for us, but nothing left over, so I can’t offer. And you know? I agree with Mrs. Nives about—I sort of admire Colly for making a plan, to do something to change his life.”
“I don’t know that I said that,” Grammie objected. “I wasn’t saying I admire extortion and threatening people. And I was thinking about Blister, actually.”
“It’s a lot the same,” Tomi assured her, as if they were both grown-ups, with equal amounts of experience.
Grammie humphed.
The four of them looked from one to the other, trying to figure out the way through or around or even under this problem.
“I wish …,” Ari began, but did not finish the thought.
“I know,” Grammie said. “I know exactly. The law and something more, too.”
Max, for his part, was remembering how it felt to be a prisoner in that small room, with no way to get out. He remembered the odd shine of light on the high window, which made him think of the darkness when a bag had been tied over his head. It had stunk inside the bag, stunk of turpentine and something dry and acrid and flavorless. He thought: Colly’s future must look like that to him, like being locked in a tiny room with a stinking bag tied over his head, blinding him, choking him. He thought: Blister’s whole life has actually been like that. “There must be something we can do,” he said urgently. “There has to be some way to do this right.”
“I better make a fresh pot of tea, and would anybody like snickerdoodles?” Grammie asked, rising from the table, followed by a chorus of “Yes please.” Without turning around, she said, “I wish Pia were here.”
“Me too,” Max said. He remembered the knife Kip had pulled out, the sharp shine of its blade, and he imagined blood spurting out from his arm—or stomach? He shivered, and tried to drive that image from his mind by trying to imagine what Mr. Bendiff would have said if Max had gotten his daughter kidnapped, but the image kept returning.
“Who’s Pia?” Tomi asked curiously. “Do you have a girlfriend, Eyes? Or a sister? Because I never heard that you have a sister.”
But Max didn’t answer. He was beginning to have an idea.
The Mayor’s Job
• ACT III •
THE GRAND FINALE
Kip wasn’t a fool. He had a backup plan, which was: If he’d actually killed the stupid git last night, he’d see to it that Blister took the blame. He knew Colly wouldn’t buy it, but he also knew how badly Colly wanted to escape. Kip had already figured out that he was about to break ranks. For Colly, the vandalism had been difficult, the arson almost impossible, and this kidnapping was more than he could swallow. Originally, Kip had been looking forward to really scaring their prisoner, terrifying him. He imagined bringing the knife closer and still closer to his captive’s ear, maybe even taking a little nip off it, or maybe scarring his cheek before coming closer and still closer to that soft skin under the chin that hid the jugular vein—and watching him get more and more frightened, beg harder and harder, maybe weep and wet himself … before Kip sliced the rope and let him scarper down the hall. Now, he admitted to himself that Colly wouldn’t have permitted that.
The gang was about to break up, he knew. That little moneymaking business was about to fold. The only question was, if there was a dead body waiting for them in that bathroom, whether Colly would be interested enough in saving his own skin to turn a blind eye. Kip guessed that he would.
So Kip made sure they all met at the same time in the little square and slipped into the empty theater together. Then, when he had unlocked the door to the bathroom, he made sure with a quick shove that it was Blister who went in first.
Just in case.
Just in case there was a body lying on the floor. Blister would believe whatever Kip told him, and Kip would say that when Blister had stumbled into the room he’d knocked into their prisoner and caused him to crack his skull. Blister would believe it was all his fault, and when the police found the body—because dead bodies started to stink after a few days—Blister would confess. And how could anyone say that wasn’t what had happened, if Blister was confessing?
Kip shoved Blister into the room and shouldered Colly aside, keeping Colly behind him. He heard Blister stumble, and fall heavily. Kip was so busy maneuvering Colly that it took him a second or two to grasp what Blister was saying, and register what he himself was seeing.
Blister was asking, puzzled, “Where’d you put him, Kip?” He turned on his knees to raise bloodstained palms toward Kip.
There was a wide puddle of blood on the floor. What was a puddle of blood doing on the floor?
“Kip?” Colly had wormed his way past Kip, and when Kip looked at his partner in crime, he saw both shock and fury. “What did you do to him? What have you done with him? Is he dead?”
Kip didn’t know what he was hearing, or seeing. How could he, when the scene before him—red blood pooled on the wooden floor between toilet and sink, the bowl of the sink smeared with blood—bore no resemblance to the scene he had left behind him last night, the unconscious body, legs splayed, eyes closed.
“I didn’t—” he muttered, and then he figured out what had happened. He turned on Colly, blind with rage, fists drawn back. But before he hammered that sneaking traitor into a pulp, he made sure Colly knew he’d figured it out. “You’ve set me up, you’re your mother’s son, you—you’re not going to get away with—” And he let fly with his right fist.
The only reason Colly could duck the blow was because Kip was distracted by the sight, in the corner of his vision, of a man, who stepped forward into the center of the small room, one hand on the hilt of the long sword that waited in its scabbard at his side. Kip wheeled to face him.
The man was young, and tall, red-haired. He looked like one of the elegant, handsome fops Kip had seen on the streets of the New Town, going into restaurants, riding by on high-stepping horses, wrapped around in fur-lined coats, but his eyes were cold and the smile on his lips was not friendly, not kindly, not amused. “You’ll be Kip,” he announced.
At the look in his eye and the tone of his voice, a cold hand reached up from Kip’s stomach and he said nothing.
Blister didn’t speak, either, but Colly wouldn’t stop talking. “Where is he, Kip? If there’s any chance he’s alive, every minute counts—I should have known better than to believe you—” Colly stopped, swallowed. His face was pale. The summer-corn yellow of his hair could not warm the fury of his blue eyes. “You better tell me,” Colly warned, and tensed his muscles to throw himself on Kip, and beat it out of him.
Kip could have laughed at Colly, and he would have except
that his mouth was frozen. The stranger drew his gleaming blade to lay it flat across Colly’s chest and force him back against the sink, saying in a voice that sounded amused, “I’ll take care of this, youngster”—all without taking his eyes off Kip.
The man could see the fear in Kip’s face, and Kip could see how that pleased him.
“I never—” he started to say.
“Shut it,” the stranger ordered.
Kip shut it.
Colly did not. “You don’t understand,” he said desperately. “There was a boy here, he was—we—but Kip must have—he has a knife and I don’t know, he maybe even killed him and we have to find him, in case he’s still alive.”
“I never!” Kip cried.
“This wasn’t what was supposed to—” Colly insisted. “There’s no time to—you have to tell me, Kip.”
“I said, shut it!” the stranger repeated, and this time he speared Colly with one of his looks.
In the silence that followed, Blister murmured, “There’s a lot of blood.” He was still crouching on the floor. “Where did all this blood come from?” He looked up, bewildered, and then Kip saw it cross the simpleton’s face, the idea that Kip had done this, with the knife Blister had so often seen flash in front of his own eyes. “You shouldn’t have,” Blister blubbered.
“Oh, I don’t know,” the stranger said.
Kip turned his full attention onto this man, ignoring Colly’s muffled groan.
“It might even be that I should be grateful to Kip,” the stranger said. He saw their confusion and he was enjoying it. “Not that he would have known that. Not that anyone will ever know it. Not that the world will see me as anything but a brokenhearted cousin applying his handkerchief over the coffin while his grieving and now childless uncle meets with the lawyer to rewrite his will.” And he laughed, a quick, cruel, happy laugh. “Kip’s done me a favor and I’d do him one in return by sending him off to the French Foreign Legion, except for one thing.”