The Outlaws of Sherwood Street: Giving to the Poor (15 page)

“Please,” said Ashanti's dad and his . . . girlfriend? Was that the right word? “Anything you'd recommend?”

How polite he was being, especially compared to Gunn and Kolnikov. I hated him anyway.

But his approach softened up the waitress. “The Provençal omelet is great,” she said. “The chef sprinkles on a truffle infusion.”

“Sounds perfect,” Ashanti's dad said.

“Same for me,” said the girlfriend. “Plus a two percent double-shot vanilla latte.”

Something about that made Ashanti's dad laugh.

“Stop,” the girlfriend said. “Just stop.”

The waitress went away.

“You're funny, that's all,” said Ashanti's dad.

“Funny good or bad?”

“Good. The best.”

They were quiet until the food came. From what I could see of their body positions, I got the idea they were holding hands across the table. I supposed that this was one of the those comfortable silences you hear about; but horribly uncomfortable for me, physically—all scrunched up under the table—and mentally.

They ate. They talked about truffles. Ashanti's dad mentioned an idea for a car commercial he was editing. The girlfriend told him it was brilliant. He told her the inspiration was something she'd said the other night.

“Oh, go on,” she said.

He laughed. She joined in. Then he sighed. “I just wish—”

“No,” she said, maybe placing her finger across his lips. “No thinking about the future. No worries.”

No thinking about the future? No worries? Was she nuts?

Days went by. Maybe weeks. Finally they paid the bill, he took his foot off hers, and they left. I counted silently to sixty and inched out to where I had a view of the surrounding booths. Coast clear. I scrambled up and hurried toward the door. Behind me, I heard the door to the kitchen opening. The waitress called out, “Hey!”

I didn't look back, just ran out of Happy's Place and kept going.

20

N
o sign of Sheldon Gunn or Kolnikov outside. What did they know about us, the Outlaws? I'd been about to find out when things took a horrible turn; maybe more accurate to say when already horrible things took a horrible turn. But one thing I knew for sure: there was nothing accidental about the death of Mr. Wilders. Did I have any facts? Maybe not actual provable facts. What I had was maybe even more than that, although vaguer at the same time:
And now I come to troublesome professor, handled in the Moscow way.
I didn't have a doubt in my mind. What I had was fear. Were they planning to handle us in the Moscow way too?

I got lost in all these dark thoughts, and the next thing I knew, I was back home in our building, trudging up the stairs to our apartment. I unlocked the door and went inside. Mom was at the laptop in the kitchen, typing real fast.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, and suddenly was right on the point of letting tons of stuff come spilling out.

“Hi, Robbie,” she said, not looking up. “Still raining outside?”

All she had to do was glance out the window. But actually I didn't know either—that was how out of it I'd been—so I had to glance out the window myself.

“More like snow now,” I told her.

“Uh-huh,” she said.

Tap tap, tap tap
—her fingers were practically a blur. Maybe it was bad of me, but I wanted them to stop.

“What are you writing?” I said.

Her fingers, nails bitten right down—when had that happened?—went still, hovering over the keyboard. My mom looked up. “A sort of proposal,” she said. “I'm applying for an in-house job.”

I'd heard of in-house jobs: a way for lawyers to still make good money without having to be the fastest rat in the race.

“What does it pay?” I said, the question just blurting itself out.

My mom's eyebrows rose. “Cutting to the chase, huh?” she said.

“Sorry,” I said. “But will we be able to buy the building? Mitch is thinking of selling.”

“Probably not enough,” my mom said. “And how did you know? Did you see the real estate agent on your way up?”

“Real estate agent?”

“I think they've got a potential buyer downstairs at this very moment.”

“Already?”

She rested her hands on the table. “But it's nothing for us to worry about,” my mom said. “Tenants have lots of rights in this city, and if at some point we have to move, there'd be plenty of time to find a place we liked.”

“Okay. Thanks, Mom.”

Her fingers hooked themselves in a purposeful way and returned to the keyboard. I went upstairs with no plan, and stood in my room kind of paralyzed, staring out the window. This wasn't the kind of paralysis where you didn't know what to do. This was the kind where you knew but couldn't face doing it. I had to tell Ashanti what I'd seen and heard. And it had to be in person. In person was the hardest of all the possible communication methods, but I just sort of knew that if you were communicating something hard, then the method had to be hard, too.

At least, as I gazed out my window, I knew it for a little while. Then I began to backtrack, thinking, for example, what if things were reversed and I was in Ashanti's place? Wouldn't I want to know? At first, I was sure I would, but then I started asking myself why. Knowing would be a terrible burden, the unbundling of which would lead to awful scenes and almost certainly the breakup of the family. So maybe some things were better not to know. But I already knew! Why did that have to happen? Didn't we have enough going on? I started feeling a little sorry for myself. Feeling sorry for yourself can actually feel kind of good, in a way, sort of like a low-grade fever, just enough to stay home from school and lie in bed, the mind having weirder than usual thoughts but not too weird.

I heard voices down below. There's a garden behind the building, a small space with a brick patio and a dirt patch where Mitch had tried planting tomatoes, eggplant, and quinoa, all unsuccessfully. I looked down and saw a real estate agent, tablet and clipboard in hand, talking to someone out of sight, most likely standing just inside Mitch's sliding door to the garden. You see lots of real estate agents in Brooklyn. Most are women, always well-dressed and well-groomed, often wearing makeup that softened faces that could use a little softening. I put my ear close to the glass.

“. . . and eighty square feet,” the real estate agent was saying. “Up above,” she went on, tilting back her head and starting to point my way—I quickly withdrew a step or so—“we have those two fire-escape-type balconies, which I'm sure could be expanded, although you'd have to go through a permitting process.”

A man spoke. “I like it,” he said.

“You like the balcony idea?” said the real estate agent.

I moved back to the window, couldn't help myself. There was something so familiar about the man's voice. “I like house,” he said, still out of sight. “Will buy.”

“Uh,” said the agent, her lips turning up in smile formation, “you want to submit an offer?”

“Full price,” the man said.

“Good idea,” the agent said. “It really is a gem. Why don't we go out to the car, and I'll write up the—”

“Full offer plus ten percent,” the man said.

The agent blinked.

“Ten percent extra for present owner leaving at once.”

“At once?”

“Twenty percent is possible.”

More blinking. “I'm sorry?”

“Perhaps for negotiation point,” the man said. “Keep under hat. Agreed?”

“Um, yes, yes, of course,” said the agent. “Agreed. So we write up an offer for the full price plus ten percent, contingent on immediate occupancy?”

“Is correct. Cash offer.”

“Very good. Let's go to the car and write up—”

“You write. I sign now.”

“Certainly.” The agent flipped through pages on her clipboard. “Just sign here.”

The man stepped into view, pen in hand. A blond man; his shoulders and chest seemed even more immense from this up-above angle. It was Kolnikov. I got lightheaded from the merest sight of him, actually started swaying, my legs were so weak. When I looked again half a minute or so later—having gotten a grip, even wished for a flowerpot—they were both gone.

Immediate occupancy? What did that mean? The Moscow way. Kolnikov was coming after me, about to invade my home. He could own my apartment today. He could be moving in, actually living right down below us, maybe moving around in the night while me and my family slept right above. Movements I might even hear, due to this strange quirky thing about my closet—a trick of the pipes, my dad said—when sometimes I could hear Mitch quite clearly. I opened my closet door, and yes, it was happening right now.

Mitch's voice rose from below, sounding not like he was two floors down in his own place, but in the next room. “Ten percent over asking? What's that all about?”

“An incentive to move things along,” the agent said. “A little quicker than normal.”

“How much quicker?”

“Like yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“I exaggerate, but only a little.”

“Give me twenty minutes to think it over,” Mitch said.

“I'll be in my car,” said the agent. “It's a fabulous offer, as I'm sure you realize, so please try to be quick—the client's waiting for my call.”

• • •

I knocked on Mitch's door. From inside, he called, “Hey! It's nowhere near twenty minutes yet.” I knocked harder. The door opened, and Mitch looked out, pen and paper in hand. “Oh, it's you,” he said. “Uh, Robbie. I was expecting someone else.”

“Like who?” I said. Uh-oh. Where had that come from?

“Huh? What business is it of yours?” Mitch said. “I can't believe I heard that.”

Off to a bad start. I wanted to run. But why be afraid of Mitch—unshaven, breath not too good, pimple on the side of his nose? I spoke to the pimple.

“Don't sign that offer,” I said.

Mitch rocked back. “Offer? How do you know about any offer?”

Good question. The truth was not going to help. Something juicier was needed, and fast. “I can't tell you—it's too dangerous.”

“Huh?”

“The point is—sign that offer, and you'll end up in jail.”

“Jail?”

“Federal prison. Or state. Or possibly both. The buyer is a criminal—an international criminal with plans to lure you into a dangerous conspiracy.”

Mitch's eyebrows—thick and kind of wild—rose into two sharp and hairy upside-down Vs. “How do you know?”

“I already told you—it's too dangerous.” His eyes narrowed. Was he buying it? Maybe not. “I have connections. Let's leave it like that.”

“Connections? From Thatcher? Is that what you're saying?”

“All I can tell you is that it's the kind of place where the DA sends her kid.” Which happened to be true, although the DA's kid was a junior who probably didn't even know I existed.

Mitch thought for a moment, then sighed. “The way of the world—it's always the same.”

Which I didn't exactly get; all I knew was that my approach was working like . . . like a charm. “Do yourself a favor and rip up that offer.”

Mitch gazed down unhappily at the paper. “I sure could use that money.”

“Can't spend it in lockup. And the Feds will take it all anyway.”

“In penalties?”

“The harshest.”

“Then there's no choice.”

“None.”

Mitch tore the paper to shreds. I picked up the scraps and handed them to him. “Go give this to the agent and tell her she's all done.”

“Are you saying she's in on the conspiracy, too?”

“You never know. That's the whole point of conspiracies.”

Yes, like a charm. But from the actual charm, nothing. As Mitch headed outside to the agent's car, I felt it hanging cold and unhelpful around my neck.

21

M
y mom was still on her laptop when I let myself back into our apartment.

“Where were you?” she said. “I didn't even hear you leave.”

“Just stepped out for . . . for a breath of air.”

My mom gave me a look. Why was it so hard to put things past her?

“On account of it's so nasty out there,” I added quickly, an addition that made zero sense, absolutely pitiful.

Her face changed, got a lot warmer. “You're bored, aren't you?”

“Oh, no, Mom, not at all.”

“Of course you are. Not much of a vacation for you, is it? But—fingers crossed—next year will be better. I promise. Did you know Chas wrote ten pages yesterday?”

“About the one-armed detective?”

My mom nodded. “The most he's ever done in a day, by far. And even better, he e-mailed the pages to George Gentry, and Gentry loved them.”

“Wow. That's great. What did Dad say?”

“To Gentry? He was actually sort of gruff, I thought.”

“Uh-oh.”

“It won't matter. Writers are allowed to be difficult.”

“Then that's what I'll be when I grow up.”

“Seriously?”

“No.”

My mom laughed, then got back to work. I went upstairs, heard my dad tapping at his keyboard, peeked into the office.

“Hey, Dad, congrats. I hear the guy loved what you did.”

My dad turned to me. Normally when he worked he looked terrible, all tense and exhausted, but now he seemed fresh and rested. “Thanks,” he said. “It looks like I've got the instinct for writing the exact right level of crap.”

“Um, uh.”

“Can't teach that, Robbie. You have it or you don't.”

So it was a joke? He was happy doing this job? Yes? No? I took a chance and laughed. My dad looked like he was about to laugh, too, and although he didn't, I still left with the impression that he was doing all right. As I went back to my own room—Pendleton still asleep on the bed—it hit me that I liked my parents. I loved them—went without saying—but now I realized I also liked them. Kind of a whacked-out thought, and then came another: there was more free choice in liking than loving. One more thing about my parents, a weird thought for their own kid to be having, but they were kind of innocent in some ways. That made me all the more relieved that I'd foiled Kolnikov, at least for now, and he wouldn't be threatening us from inside the building.

At least for
now.

Pendleton opened his eyes, seemed to take in my presence, yawned, and returned to dreamland.

• • •

At least for now.
I couldn't get rid of those four words. We had enemies, and our enemies had plans. What were those plans? Detonation was part of it. What had Kolnikov said?
Deep down under. Speciality of my company, in fact, but all inclusive in price.
And there was more, what Kolnikov had called
potentiality issue number two—the snooping wretches: these kids.

Those were the facts, huge and looming. I gazed at my phone, working up the nerve to call Ashanti and arrange a face-to-face, get that part over with. My nerve resisted being worked up, and my mind got busy with all sorts of avoidance schemes, in which I was tangled when the phone rang: Ashanti.

Like a—yes, wretch, a wretched coward—I hesitated for five whole rings before my better nature stepped up to the plate.

“Hi, Ashanti,” I said.

“Let me guess,” she said. “You were in the shower.”

“Um, ah,” I said. “Pendleton.”

“That was my second guess.”

I laughed. Ashanti joined in. Was just after laughing the time for dropping the bomb? Before I could even start wrestling with that one, Ashanti had gone on.

“Things are better now,” she said.

“Huh? What things?”

“With my mom. The doctor came. He thinks she was dehydrated.”

“Oh.”

“So my dad filled the fridge with all these hydrating drinks from Finland.”

“Finland?”

“He found out they're the best.”

“Oh.”

“But that's not why I called.”

“No?”

“What's with you?” Ashanti said. “You've gone all one-wordy on me, girl.”

“Me?”

“Ha-ha. You're not funny.”

“I'm just, um, distracted right now.”

“By what?”

“All these developments.”

“Like what?”

Development one was her own cheating dad. I skipped that one—had to be done in person, right?—and went right to Tut-Tut and how they'd moved him to a new lockup and then to getting chased by Kolnikov and Henkel, which took me to what I'd heard at Happy's Place.

Ashanti cut in. “Kolnikov was talking about us?”

“But I didn't catch that part,” I said. “This other—these people came and sat down right at the table I was under.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Yeah.”

“What did you do?”

“Just sort of scrunched up.”

“How many of them were there?”

“Two.”

One more question—just one—and it was all going to come spilling out.

“You know what I think we should do?” Ashanti said.

Okay. Maybe not that question.

“What?”

“Talk to Dina DeNunzio.”

“About what?”

“Everything,” Ashanti said.

“Everything?”

“Well, maybe not everything, if you're talking about you know what, but she clearly has doubts about how they're saying Mr. Wilders died, and now we know this whole Moscow way thing.”

Dina, like Kolnikov, had made an attempt to invade my home. Maybe not as menacing, but actually more successful. “Can we trust her?” I said.

“Probably not. But have you got a better idea?”

“Nope.”

• • •

“Just hanging with Ashanti for a while,” I called over my shoulder as I headed downstairs. Through Mitch's door in the hall came saxophone sounds, some morose tune, which I took to mean that Mitch was back to spinning his wheels.

Outside the snow had turned back to rain and the wind was rising. Ashanti was already on the sidewalk, walking toward me under a big black umbrella.

“Quick,” she said. “Get under.”

So there we were, close together in a small dry space, person to person, the proper setup for delivering bad news. I shot her a quick sideways glance. She looked happy, her skin glowing, energy just radiating off her. Why? Because her mom was doing better? Because we were about to get help from Dina DeNunzio, an adult with real power? I didn't know, and it didn't matter. I was about to shatter her mood, real fast and maybe for a long time to come.

“Ashanti?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Um.”

And just as I was about to plunge ahead with no real plan and my heart beating faster and faster, a voice called out, “Hey! You guys!”

We turned and saw Silas hurrying toward us across the street. He wore a bright orange poncho over his Michelin-Man jacket, which made him seem very wide, and also had on a fisherman's rain hat that was way too big for him, the ear flaps sticking out straight sideways for some reason, rain running off them and onto his shoulders. He stepped right into the gutter, making an enormous splash, but on account of knee-length green rubber boots, didn't get his feet wet.

“Hey! You guys!” He ran up to us, shedding water like a storm all his own. “Wait up.”

“Hi,” Ashanti said, her voice as gentle as I'd ever heard it. “What's up?”

Silas stood before us, huffing and puffing. When he'd caught his breath, he said, “Hi.” He opened his mouth, seemed about to say more, but did not.

“Hi,” Ashanti said again.

“Hi,” I said. “Something on your mind?”

Silas nodded.

“Like what?” I said.

He shrugged. Silas at a loss for words? That wasn't him at all.

“You want us to guess?” I said.

He smiled a tiny smile, there and gone. “Yeah, maybe I do. The thing is . . .” He looked down, shuffled his feet. “It turns out, um, I had a father after all. What if he'd lived? You never know.”

Meaning he and Silas might have ended up with a good relationship? “Yeah,” I said.

Ashanti laid a hand on Silas's shoulder. “Which is a pretty good reason for us to find out what happened to him.”

“And make them sorry,” I said.

“Them?” Silas said.

I told him about the Moscow way. A strange thing happened to his face while I was explaining. It seemed to get thinner and older, like we were getting a glimpse of how he'd look grown up—actually kind of strong and handsome.

“We need a plan,” he said.

• • •

We sat at a back table at Monsieur Señor's, the coffee place where my dad and other writers went when they cracked under the pressure of piling up the words all on their lonesomes.

“Monsieur Señor's?” said Silas, removing layer after layer of clothing and dampening everything in sight. “That's humor, right?” he went on, starting to sound more like himself. “I like it. You could also do it the other way—Señor Monsieur's—but all in all I think—”

He stopped talking and sniffed the air. I noticed for the first time how sort of mobile Silas's nose was and guessed he had an off-the-charts sense of smell. “Let's get our order in,” he said.

Hugh, the barista, who was in the middle of having all his tattoos removed—the snake wrapped around his neck couldn't disappear fast enough for me—arrived with three steaming mugs of hot chocolate. “Enjoy.”

Silas tasted his hot chocolate. “Wow. This is the best I've ever tasted.” Hugh laughed and went away. Silas lowered his voice. “Was that a hipster kind of laugh?”

“Huh?” I said.

“He's a hipster, right?” Silas said. “Isn't this a hipster kind of place?”

Which was one of those Silas-type tangents that often made Ashanti impatient, but now she smiled a teasing sort of smile and said, “Figuring on being a hipster when you grow up?”

Silas shook his head. “When I grow up, I want to be an engineer for an asteroid mining company.”

I just gazed at him. Silas was amazing in his own way. Then I got even more amazed when Ashanti said, “Good idea.”

“Hey, thanks,” said Silas.

“No problem,” Ashanti said. Then she rapped her knuckles on the table. “To business.”

“Ashanti wants to bring in Dina DeNunzio,” I said. “And I think it's a good idea.”

“Are you going to tell her about the”—he lowered his voice to a sort of stage whisper that actually carried very well, so well that Hugh, over by the coffee machines, turned his head our way—“you know what?”

“Not unless we have to,” said Ashanti.

“She won't believe it,” Silas said. “And she'll think we're nuts.”

“Maybe it'll do something to convince her,” I said. I glanced around. Hugh had gone back to foaming and frothing, and no one else was interested in us. I took off the charm and laid it on the table. We stared at it.

“Do something,” Silas commanded.

But the charm just sat there, looking like a small metal heart, kind of cheap and not even well-shaped for a heart, being too wide at the bottom and rounded instead of pointed. I put my finger on one edge. The others did the same, so we were all in contact with the charm. It did nothing, refusing to heat up or cooperate in the slightest way.

“Let's vote,” I said. “All in favor of calling Dina?”

Ashanti took her finger off the charm and raised her hand. So did I. Silas alone was still touching the charm.

“Does it have to be unanimous?” he said.

“What do you think?” said Ashanti.

“What do I think?” Silas answered. “I'm not so sure about democracy, for starters. There's a lot to be said for dictatorship, the benevolent kind, to say nothing of—”

“Silas!” Ashanti and I said together.

“She'll think we're nuts,” he repeated. “And there are lots of other risks as well.” He glanced around. “Do you want me to go into them?” Silence. “I suppose not. But I will anyway. For example, all of a sudden we're cool with trusting adults?”

Ashanti stared hard at the wall, almost like she was trying to see right through it. “I go back and forth on that,” she said.

Uh-oh. The Ashanti problem was with me all the time, even when I'd succeeded in burying it.

“It's not so much about trusting adults,” I said, “as this particular adult. She's no friend of Sheldon Gunn.”

I turned to Silas, waited for him to demolish my argument. Silas surprised me. Slowly and reluctantly, like it weighed a thousand pounds, he raised his hand.

“All opposed?” I said, not to be funny, but because of a sudden hunch that the charm might want a say at this point. But it remained inert. “Three yesses, no noes.”

“What about Tut-Tut?” Silas said.

“We'll have to vote for him,” I replied. “For now.”

“Can't you just see him raising his hand?” said Ashanti.

I could, and easily. “That makes four,” I said. “We call Dina. Who wants to do it?”

No one wanted to do it.

“I nominate you,” Silas said.

“Second,” said Ashanti.

The vote was two to one in favor of me making the call, with only me opposed. I called Dina at the TV station. They transferred the call, and she answered while the first ring was still ringing.

“DeNunzio,” she said, quick, crisp, strictly business. Being a reporter would be cool for sure; I put that thought aside for later.

“Um, hi,” I said. “It's Robbie. Robbie Forester.” There was a pause, and for a moment, I wondered if I'd gotten everything wrong. “We met a couple of—”

“I know who you are,” Dina said. “What's up?”

“We, uh, want to talk to you.”