The Outlaws of Sherwood Street: Giving to the Poor (14 page)

“Hey, thanks,” I said, hurrying to the door.

“Wait! What about the museum? That sounded inter—”

19

S
now now, for sure, but not the soft puffy kind. This snow came angling down on my face in hard and icy pellets. They didn't seem to bother Mr. Kolnikov, striding along half a block in front of me. He was Russian, right? Maybe Russians got so used to snow it stopped affecting them. Kolnikov was the only pedestrian around not bending into the wind, but bearing himself straight and tall, the snow starting to coat his broad shoulders. He turned right at the first corner, disappearing from view. I ran to the corner, reaching it just in time to see him ducking into a restaurant. The sign hanging over the sidewalk read
HAPPY'S PLACE
.

I slowed down as I went by, glancing through the streaky window. Happy's Place was pretty dark inside, seemed long and narrow with two rows of booths stretching into the gloom. There were a few shadowy customers, but all that stood out was Kolnikov's blond head. He was sitting with his back to the door, not too far from the rear of the restaurant. By the time I'd absorbed all that, I was a few steps beyond Happy's Place. I found myself coming to a halt, then moving, as though not really under my own control, back toward the door. This seemed to be a day for irresistible brainwaves, and besides, the charm was—but no. It had cooled back down, like it hardly had the strength to come alive for more than a minute or two. No time to puzzle that out. I entered the restaurant.

No one gave me a glance. I took in the scene: an old couple sitting silently in a booth to the left, a woman doing a crossword puzzle to the right, some empty booths and then Kolnikov alone in a booth, phone to his ear. At the very back was a swinging door to the kitchen, weak light entering through its small round window. Without any sort of plan in mind, I slipped into the booth right in front of Kolnikov's. The top of his head was just visible over the leather-covered barrier between the booths. And then I thought,
No in here has seen me. It's like I'm not even here! So why not keep slipping on down, Robbie?
Finding no reason not to, that was what I did, easing myself down into a sitting position on the floor. It was nice and dark under the table, although kind of sticky. A half-eaten french fry on the floor glistened dully with ketchup. I realized I was hungry and fought off a crazy urge to eat it. It hit me for the first time that maybe I had something in common with Pendleton, a completely whacked-out thought.

“Hey, Alexei,” said Kolnikov, speaking quietly in his phone. And then came a whole lot of talk in Russian. You heard Russian in Brooklyn from time to time—say, if you went down to Brighton Beach for a swim in the summertime—but you had to be prepared for the fact that Russian men and American men have very different ideas on the proper size for a bathing suit. The American way is better; let's leave it at that.

I heard the squeak of the kitchen door opening, and then came footsteps. From where I sat, I could see only the feet and lower legs of the waitress: she wore paint-stained sneakers and black leggings.

“Care to see the lunch menu?” she said.

“I am on phone,” said Kolnikov.

A slight pause, and then the waitress said, “I'll just leave it with you, then.” And she put the menu on the table; pretty much slapping it down, actually—I heard the sound distinctly. Kolnikov went back to talking in Russian, with a word or two in English sometimes popping up: “money,” “tower,” “kids.”

Whoa. Kids? What was that all about? I strained to listen but no more English words went by. Soon I heard footsteps again, this time coming from the front of the restaurant. Another pair of legs appeared, a man's legs. His shoes were black leather, rich and gleaming, with a pattern of tiny round holes in the toe caps; I smelled the shoe polish. His pants were deep navy in color, with a faint pinstripe pattern, the fabric dense and almost like something alive.

Kolnikov quickly said something that sounded like “Poka,” and clicked off. His seat squeaked, maybe because he'd turned to look up at the newcomer. “Good morning,” he said.

The newcomer stepped out of my view, turning to sit opposite Kolnikov in his booth. “What say we skip the pleasantries?” he said in a low voice. “What the hell is going on?” A voice I knew well and would never forget: the voice of Sheldon Gunn.

“To business, then,” Kolnikov said, not sounding at all put off by Gunn's rudeness. “The American way. In Russia, we too have our ways.”

“I'm aware of that,” said Sheldon Gunn. “I'm starting to think they're superior.”

Kolnikov laughed. “This remark I will pass on to my principals in Moscow.” He stopped laughing, lowered his voice. “And now I come to troublesome professor, handled in the Moscow way.”

“No need for me to the know the details, Kolnikov,” Gunn said. “As long as your work leaves no traces.”

Kolnikov was silent for a moment.

“You're hesitating?” Gunn said.

“Traces are always possible in a world of more than one being,” Kolnikov.

“Skip the philosophy,” Gunn said. “Are you telling me we have a problem?”

“Skip philosophy is not Russian thought,” Kolnikov said. “But no, no problem, exactly. We now have ruling death by accident.”

“That's better. Clumsy fellow lost his footing?”

“
Da,
” said Kolnikov. “But we still have potentiality of issue.”

“What issue?”

“Is complex,” Kolnikov said. “First is research of professor into subject of—”

He broke off. The paint-spattered sneakers and black leggings—all I could see of the waitress—reappeared.

“Hi,” she said, her body turned toward Gunn. “A menu?”

“Coffee,” Gunn said.

“Dark roast, medium Guatemalan, Ugandan fair trade mountain light, Vienna—?” she began.

“Coffee,” Gunn said. “Fresh. Hot.”

“For me, espresso,” said Kolnikov. “Double.”

The waitress spun on her heel and went away; an angry kind of spin. The restaurant experience from down on the floor was a whole new thing.

“Go on,” Gunn said.

“Indian research is first issue,” Kolnikov said. “Your professor friend—”

“He was no friend of mine.”

“Slight joke,” Kolnikov said. “Americans are big fans of humor, no?”

“Not this American,” said Gunn. “Get back to the research.”

Kolnikov was silent for a moment. I was starting to learn that there are many different silences: this was the annoyed kind. Kolnikov cleared his throat, maybe getting rid of the feelings he was holding in.

“The professor was making research into former burial grounds,” he said. “Sacred burial grounds, if you understand my meaning.”

Gunn banged his fist on the table. “What a totally bogus reason for stopping a project of this magnitude! All these idiot causes end up doing is raising the cost—passed onto the end user, of course.”

“Of course.”

“So—is there anything to his research?” Gunn said. “Did he have the goods?”

“This is potentiality issue. I do not believe he had goods, but is not sure thing. I am guessing he was in process of searching for goods when I—when unfortunate accident happened.”

“I don't believe in guesswork.”

“Same with me,” Kolnikov said. “We are peas in pod in that respect.”

“I wouldn't—” Gunn began, cutting himself off when the waitress reappeared.

She set the drinks on table and said, “Anything else?”

“No,” said Gunn.

Not no thank you; just no. Kolnikov made no reply at all. I decided right then that waitressing would be a career path I'd try to avoid. She ripped the check off her pad. It entered my field of view as she laid it, harder than necessary, on the table.

After she'd gone, Gunn said, “I can't depend on guesswork. You're saying it's possible some sort of deal-breaking remnants are buried down there?”

“Is possible.”

“Then we have to do something,” Gunn said. “Something definitive.”

“Definitive is meaning?”

“Settling things once and for all.”

Another silence, the thoughtful kind. “Detonation, perhaps?” Kolnikov said after a while.

“Detonation?”

“Deep down under. Speciality of my company, in fact, but all inclusive in price.”

“Hmmm,” Gunn said. “Deep down under—I like the sound of that.”

“No sound,” said Kolnikov. “Is beauty of it.”

Gunn laughed. I'd never heard him laugh before, wasn't sure at first it was laughter I was hearing now, so harsh and grating. “You are a funny guy,” Gunn said.

“Is mutual,” Kolnikov told him.

Gunn stopped laughing. “No witnesses,” he said. “That's crucial.”

“Bringing us to potentiality issue number two,” said Kolnikov. “The snooping wretches.”

“What snooping wretches are you talking about?”

“These kids.”

I went cold.

“Kids?” Gunn said. “What kids?”

I leaned closer, straining my hardest to listen, not to miss a word, a syllable. But Kolnikov said nothing. Why not? The explanation quickly arrived: more footsteps came pattering in from the front door. A man and woman appeared, or rather, the lower halves of them, the man wearing clogs and jeans, the woman in thigh-high leather boots. They stopped at my table and the woman said, “How about here?”

“Sure,” the man said.

They started squeezing into the booth: my booth. I was so caught up in avoiding their feet, shifting toward the wall as far as I could, making myself small, that I almost missed the fact that there was something familiar about the man's voice.

Or maybe not. I couldn't be sure. And what about Gunn and Kolnikov? That was the point. I was missing important stuff, almost certainly about me and the outlaws. I cocked my ear toward the next booth. They no longer seemed to be talking. Why not? Had I already missed Kolnikov's answer? What did he know? It must have been a lot—why else would he have chased me? Speak! But Kolnikov did not speak, at least not loudly enough for me to hear, and neither did Gunn. Instead I heard the scrape of their shoes on the floor, and the next thing I knew, they were on their feet and walking right past my booth. Not shoes in Kolnikov's case: he wore boots, and left muddy tracks, a strange very darkish mud unlike any I'd seen before—except for once.

No time to get into that now. They were leaving the restaurant! Somehow I had to follow them! But how could I get out from under the table without being seen by this couple, and in the resulting fuss Gunn and Kolnikov would turn and see me, and then . . . I didn't know what would happen then, didn't want to know. If I waited till the couple had done eating, Gunn and Kolnikov would be long gone. What about waiting only a minute or two, time enough for them to get outside? Would it matter by then if I drew attention to myself here in the restaurant, shooting out from under the table? What if the restaurant people thought I was some kind of thief? Yikes. It was actually sort of true. All these thoughts were zipping back and forth across my mind when the man sitting in my booth—just a foot or so away, his knee practically in my face—spoke.

“I'm so happy,” he said. “So miserably happy.”

The woman laughed, a low, warm sort of laugh. “I'm just plain happy. Do you realize this is our first real breakfast together? A real, proper breakfast in a restaurant?”

I missed whatever the man's answer was because of how hot I suddenly was, my face burning. Did I know the man's voice? Oh, yeah, for absolute sure. It was the voice of Ashanti's dad. As for the woman, her voice was entirely new to me and was absolutely not the voice of Ashanti's mom—as if their conversation would have even made sense in that case. I actually felt dizzy, first time in my life that had happened while I was sitting down. I took a deep breath, and as I did, the woman's booted foot moved, and started feeling around like . . . like she wanted to play footsie or something, which made me want to puke. Her toe bumped the metal center column that held up the table top, and maybe she decided that was his knee, because she gently lowered her foot. But it wasn't his knee, and therefore what she lowered her foot on was the heavy round base of the column, which happened to be where the discarded french fry lay. She stepped right on it, squishing the french fry flat, and sending a tiny spray of ketchup right onto my face.

“Ew,” she said.

“What?” said the man—not the man, but Ashanti's father. “Is something wrong?”

“I just stepped on something icky.”

Icky? A grown woman just said icky? But no time to reflect on that, because all of a sudden, she was shifting around in her seat and—was it possible? Yes! She was about to peer down under the table to see the exact nature of the ickiness she'd stepped on.

I shrank against the wall, getting as deep as I could into the shadows. The woman's face appeared; the face of the woman I'd seen Ashanti's dad kissing on the street. She was pretty—but nothing like the amazing beauty Ashanti's mom had been and still sort of was—and much younger than I'd thought, maybe under thirty, although the ages of adults were hard to guess. But the main point: she was a lot younger than Ashanti's father.

She peered under the table, shifted her foot to see under it. “French fry,” she said, her head then starting to turn in my direction—but at the same time rising up, out of sight. I resumed breathing, and was about to move back to a more comfortable position when Ashanti's father gently put his foot down on hers.

He sighed. “This is so nice,” he said. “I just wish—”

“Let's not talk about the future,” the woman said. “We should enjoy the time we've got right now.”

There was a pause. Then Ashanti's dad said, “I love you,” his voice thickening up.

“I love you, too,” she said.

My face heated up again, even hotter than before. I didn't want to hear another word, just wanted to be out of there and right away. But how?
Charm! Get me out of here!
No reaction from the charm. The waitress returned and said, “Menus?”