The Outlaws of Sherwood Street: Giving to the Poor (5 page)

8

T
he wind was picking up, icy and cold, coming from the direction of the river. Pendleton was afraid of the wind, meaning the walk would not be long. He would quickly do what he had to do in order to get back inside the house. Mom would scoop it up, drop it in a plastic bag, and then deposit the bag in the first trash bin she came to. Would I end up searching all the trash bins in the neighborhood? I glanced around, saw nothing but trash bins, like I was in some kind of nightmare. I had to beat Pendleton to the punch, if that was how to put it.

Which way to go? Uphill led to Monsieur Señor's, Local, and other places with windows that were fun to gaze into, something my mom liked to do. Downhill meant residential brownstones all the way to Vincero, a fancy restaurant we'd been to once, but never again, on account of my dad not liking the table we were given. Pendleton preferred downhill, which meant uphill going home, but he never seemed to factor that in. I ran downhill, darting once into the street to get by two young moms pushing their gigantic strollers side by side.

I came to the first corner, glanced down the side street, and yes! Mom and Pendleton, halfway along the block and coming my way. Best news of all: my mom still had the plastic bag sticking out of her coat pocket. I was on time, Pendleton dillydallying, and he was capable of dillydallying when you'd least expect it. Mom turned to him and said something, most likely, “Hurry up, for God's sake—I'm freezing,” my mom being one of those people who really felt the cold.

I caught up to them. “Hey, Mom!”

She turned to me. “Robbie? Is something wrong?”

Well, yes, but of course she didn't know that. I felt bad for my mom: she was—what was the word?—vulnerable. She was vulnerable from getting fired and maybe expected any news to be not good.

“Oh, no, Mom, everything's fine. I just thought I'd maybe relieve you, on account of the cold, and all.” She gazed at me like things weren't adding up, so I threw in another reason. “Besides, I was feeling kind of energetic.” And why not one more? “And I was thinking of swinging by Ashanti's.”

“Inside? With Pendleton?”

“Maybe better if Ashanti comes down to the street.”

“I think so.” My mom handed me the leash, the pooper-scooper, the plastic bag. Her cheeks were red from the cold, the look in her eyes deep and preoccupied. “Thanks, Robbie.”

“No problem,” I said.

She walked off, headed for our street, bent forward against the wind.

“We're going the other way,” I told Pendleton, and after not too long, I had convinced him it was a good idea, or at least an idea he could live with. Two blocks down on this side street was a narrow alley, one of Pendleton's preferred spots, as I knew from experience, and totally suitable for what I had to do.

We walked toward the alley, Pendleton being Pendleton, meaning more dillydallying, plus an episode of—I wouldn't want to say cowardice, so how about untoughness?—yes, an untough episode where a dog walker approached with three tiny dogs on tiny leashes, the dogs no more than mouse-size furballs. As soon as he spotted them, Pendleton tugged me toward the nearest building, and sheltered behind the stoop. The furballs yapped at him; the dog walker herself, earbuds in her ears and dark shades over her eyes, didn't appear to notice anything.

“Sometimes, Pendleton,” I began, and then stopped. I felt—actually felt through the leash—some change taking place in Pendleton. He barked, a single bark, much lower than his normal bark, and stood very straight, head up, tail up, highly alert, and even . . . intelligent.

“Pendleton?” I said. “What's with you?”

He farted. Nothing new there. Pendleton's farts were notorious in the small circle of people who'd gotten to know him. Although there was something a bit different about this one: did I detect a faint odor of oyster? I couldn't be sure. The cold wind swept the whole invisible but nasty cloud away.

I looked into his eyes. He looked into mine. Pendleton's eyes were dusty brown, the expression in them usually peaceful and kind of vague. But not now. Now his eyes were the eyes of someone on the ball and very capable. It was almost as though another being was inside his plump and furry body, a body suddenly not so plump, which was impossible.

“Pendleton?”

He raised his snout and sniffed the air, his nostrils expanding and contracting real fast. Then he growled—growls weren't at all a Pendleton thing—and began pulling me down the street.

“Whoa. Pendleton. Easy.”

He didn't seem to hear me or to feel my resistance on the leash, and I was resisting pretty much to the max. We blew right past the narrow alley where I'd planned on getting the whole doing-his-business thing done, took a right at the next street and came to Hotel P.O.V. We didn't have a whole lot of hotels in Brooklyn—not like in Manhattan—but there'd been a few built in the last year or so, and P.O.V. was the newest, and also the coolest and most expensive, according to Ashanti's mom, who'd been invited there to a fashion magazine party, which she'd left early on account of one of her headaches, but that wasn't the point. The point was that here we were in front of P.O.V., me and Pendleton, and he was headed to the front door, with me dragging along behind him.

The doorman, dressed in black, was on the street, helping someone into a taxi. Pendleton reached the door, a beautiful glass door with etched-in grapes and flowers.

“Pendleton!” I said in a sort of whispered shout that of course had no effect. He stood in front of the door, sniffing the air. After a moment or two, an old woman in a fur coat appeared in the lobby, walking a fancy dog of some tall, lean breed I didn't know. They came through the door.

“My goodness,” she said, “what a ferocious-looking dog!”

Huh? “Oh, no,” I told her, “he's actually a softie, like, completely,” but by that time, he'd drawn me inside. I ruled out the idea that Pendleton had detected a whiff of fancy-dog scent in the air and set off to track it down: otherwise he'd have reacted to that high-bred dog. So what Pendleton was up to remained a mystery.

Meanwhile I was in the lobby of Hotel P.O.V., tucking the scooper under my jacket, out of sight. I've hardly ever stayed in a hotel, but I've been in lots of hotel lobbies, some of the fanciest in Manhattan. Back when I was a kid—meaning a younger kid than I am now—my mom and I would often cross the river on a Saturday or Sunday and go for an explore. I loved those explores, except that sometimes you had to pee, and if there are any public bathrooms in Manhattan, I never saw one. But my mom told me that all you had to do was waltz into any hotel, pass the main desk and the concierge, and soon you'd spot a brass restroom sign on the wall. There was only one trick and that was to look like you belonged.

I crossed the lobby of P.O.V., looking like I belonged. Pendleton—this new, upright, alert Pendleton, as though someone else was at the controls inside—looked like he, too, belonged. Past the concierge desk, Pendleton cut left and we entered the bar.

I hung back: no way I could look like I belonged in a bar, not without a parent. The bar at P.O.V. was a very hip, cool bar, with lots of black marble, mirrors, shiny glasses and bottles, and deep silvery shadows created by some sort of hidden light source. Pendleton sniffed the air, started pulling me toward an isolated table at the back, a table standing in one of the deepest silvery shadows. I skidded along, sort of like a water-skier. Two men dressed in dark suits sat at that table, facing each other, and both in profile to me. They were drinking colorless drinks from thick crystal glasses. One of the men, about my dad's age, had very light blond hair and a broad face that might have been handsome if it had revealed the least bit of gentleness. The other man was older, with swept-back silvery hair and a face that was handsome, kind of like the face of one of those top-hatted actors in old black-and-white movies. And this face did seem to have some gentleness in it, although I knew that was a lie. The older man was Sheldon Gunn.

Sheldon Gunn: just about the last person on earth I wanted to see. He knew nothing about my role in what had gone down on his yacht,
Boffo,
hadn't seen me on board, although I'd caught a glimpse of him: all that is too complicated to explain now. But we'd actually met once before that, when I'd been walking with my mom and we'd run into one of the Jaggers and Tulkinghorn partners, out on some sort of strategy trip with Sheldon Gunn. What were the chances he'd remember me? Maybe not great, except that Pendleton had been with me that time, too.

As for Pendleton, this strange new Pendleton, he had no fear about meeting Sheldon Gunn again, actually seemed very eager for it. And not in a good way. He started growling—a low, hostile growl that threatened to grow much louder—and relentlessly pulled me directly toward Sheldon Gunn, sitting maybe twenty feet away, tops. With that extra strength desperation gives you—and just as Sheldon Gunn's head started turning in our direction—I yanked Pendleton into a little alcove cut in the wall.

I stood motionless and silent, holding Pendleton on the shortest possible leash. He showed no inclination toward silence himself, keeping up that low growling, deep in his throat. But over the growling, maybe because of some weird acoustical thing going on in the bar, I could hear Sheldon Gunn quite clearly. His voice was hard to forget: smooth and educated, like a lot of voices heard in some parts of the city, but with an added overtone that made it clear he was better than you.

“You can't imagine how these things work in America,” he said.

“Explain, please,” said the other man. Only two words, but enough for me to know he spoke with a Russian accent, as anyone who'd explored around Brooklyn a bit could have told you.

“This researcher, for example,” Gunn said. “If he can establish certain things, he could make a lot of trouble for us.”

“But those are ancient things!” said the Russian man.

“Makes them all the more potent, if anything,” Gunn said.

The Russian man snorted. “In Moscow this would all be over very quick.”

“I'm aware of that,” Gunn said. “Why do you imagine you're on the payroll?”

“Sorry, boss.”

“I'll be in touch,” Gunn said. A chair scraped. Meaning Gunn was on the move, about to go right by the alcove? What if he looked my way? I glanced wildly around, saw that the alcove led to the bathrooms, women's to the right. I darted through the door—Pendleton coming willingly, for some reason—and locked it behind us. Pendleton, quickly solving the mystery of this mood change for me, went over to the toilet and started slurping from the bowl, suddenly thirsty. I'd caught a break.

When he'd finished drinking, he headed right for the door.

“No way.” I told him, trying for fierceness and quiet in the same breath. I held him back with all my strength. “Sit.” He refused to sit. “Treat. A whole box of treats.” But he knew I had no treats on me. He tugged at the leash, tugged and growled, then without warning stopped all that and went back to sniffing the air. After that, he made an unhappy, high-pitched little noise and sat.

“Pendleton? He's gone? Is that it? What's with your sense of smell all of a sudden? Sense of smell never being one of your strong points.”

Pendleton began to scratch himself behind the ear. Much more like him. I gave him a little tug, then stepped back into the alcove and peeked around the corner.

The broad-faced blond man was still at his table, bent over his phone, but there was no sign of Sheldon Gunn. Coast clear. I turned the other way, all set to zip on out of that bar, out of P.O.V., and onto the safety of the street, when I saw, coming my way, the actual very last person on earth I wanted to see: rat-faced Harry Henkel, the arsonist, freshly out on bail.

I ducked back into the alcove, heart pounding. Harry Henkel didn't know my name or who I was, but he sure knew my face, and also, unlike Sheldon Gunn, knew we were enemies. Was
enemy
too strong a word? I couldn't think of a better one.

He went right past us, almost within touching distance, walking fast and raising his hand, as though greeting somebody. I heard him say, “Mr. Kolnikov?”

“Henkel?” said the Russian man.

Over at the bar, a woman rose and started walking my way, headed for the bathroom. I glanced around the corner again. Mr. Kolnikov, the Russian, was still in his seat. Henkel had joined him, sitting with his back to us. Break number two, and how could I count on another? We split, me and Pendleton, not looking back.

9

W
e walked fast, side by side, Pendleton back to radiating so many un-Pendleton things: strength, purpose, intelligence, swagger. The charm had worked on Pendleton once before, making him uncharacteristically fierce, but not doing this complete upgrade. But then the charm hadn't been inside him, and now it was.

As for me, I felt scared and confused. Sheldon Gunn had had some sort of meeting with this Mr. Kolnikov guy and then Mr. Kolnikov had met with Harry Henkel. Why? What was going on? And did the fact that those little sit-downs had taken place within a fifteen-minute walk from where I lived mean anything?

“What's going on, Pendleton?” I said, first time I'd ever actually consulted him on anything, a completely whacked-out thing to do. He regarded me without turning his head much, the way dogs can do, and again I caught this strange expression—like he was possessed, and not only that, but possessed by someone or something that actually could have answered my question, if only Pendleton were capable of speech.

We came to the narrow alley. Normally I'd have told him, “Pendleton, go on in there, get it done,” but now all I said was, “Pendleton?” What did he want to do? What was on his mind?

He turned into the alley. I bent and unclipped the leash. Pendleton preferred a bit of space for this sort of thing, and I didn't blame him.

He moved toward a grate in the pavement, sniffed at it.

“Not there,” I said. “Please.”

He kept going, almost as though he understood, even followed my reasoning, had no wish to see me descending into the sewers of Brooklyn.

“Robbie,” I said, to myself but aloud, “get a grip.” Pendleton, not stopping, gave me a backward glance as though out of concern for me talking to myself; totally impossible. He came to a small Dumpster and disappeared behind it. I started moving in that direction, not quickly, giving him time. I got there just as he was reappearing, out from behind the Dumpster.

“Success?” I said. “All done?”

Pendleton yawned, a very big, wide-mouth yawn, and then looked around. Kind of blankly? I thought so. He gave himself a good shake and looked around again. Yes, definitely blank. Plus he was standing in an unathletic sort of way, one paw turned out, no longer giving off strong, capable vibes, even seeming not quite all there. Pendleton was back to normal.

I walked around to the other side of the Dumpster, and there found indisputable evidence of Pendleton's performance. What I didn't see—and what I'd been hoping to see out in the open, without any further effort required from me—was the tiny silver heart. What if it wasn't there? Or still inside Pendleton? Or he'd concealed it in his mouth and spat it out somewhere, which was his MO with every pill the vet ever prescribed for him?

I checked around, spotted one those sticks for stirring paint. Perfect. I picked it up, knelt down, got to work, carefully poking around. And yes! There it was! I scooped the silver heart into the scooper, mixed in some crusty snow from the snowbank against the nearest building wall, got it nice and clean. Then I took off my glove and picked up my charm—very carefully, ready in case it started in on one of its tricks, like heating up, or giving me a jolt, or making me see perfectly without my glasses. But the charm did none of those things, just lay inert on my palm, a normal silver charm you'd hang on a bracelet. One thing I remembered about it was how it had felt surprisingly heavy. Ashanti had thought it might be platinum, but Silas said more likely palladium or rhodium, which I'd never even heard of, and had wanted to run some tests. But now it didn't feel surprisingly heavy at all; if anything, it felt lighter than it should.

What was going on? Had the charm lost its magic? Or was the magic still around, but now absorbed somehow by Pendleton? I glanced at him, at the moment doing two things at once, namely licking his muzzle and gazing at the sky—not looking the least bit magical—and then pocketed the silver heart.

• • •

We sat around the desk in the abandoned warehouse on Sherwood Street, our HQ—me, Ashanti, Silas. On the desk lay the silver heart. For about the zillionth time, Silas gave it a little poke.

“Nada,” he said. “Zip, zilch, zero, reaction-wise.”

“Tell us something we don't know,” Ashanti said.

“Sure,” said Silas. “You can't determine both the exact position and the exact speed of a particle at the same instant.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Ashanti said.

“Admit you didn't know that,” Silas said.

“Don't know what?” When Ashanti starts getting mad, her chin tilts up and her eyes narrow in a way that would make anyone with half a brain back off.

But Silas, with his brain and a half, always seemed to miss the signal. “What I just said. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. You didn't know it. Ergo I told you something you didn't know.”

“Silas?” I said. “Please don't ever say ergo again.”

“Why not? It's a perfectly good—”

Ashanti raised her hand, raised it pretty much in the form of a fist.

“But there are plenty of synonyms,” Silas said, “so no biggie.”

We all gazed at the charm.

“Go over the whole oyster thing again,” Ashanti said.

I went over the oyster thing again. When I finished, Silas said, “Anybody got any gum?”

“How come you never do?” Ashanti said, handing him a stick.

“I had some,” Silas said. “My brother took it.”

“Thaddeus is around?” Ashanti said. Thaddeus was Silas's genius older brother; I'd never met him.

“Got out of rehab,” Silas said.

“How's he doing?” I said.

“Doesn't say much,” Silas said. “Eats a lot of peanut butter, the chunky kind. Right out of the jar. My mom hates that, but she doesn't say anything.”

Even though Silas was such a pain, I felt bad for him at that moment. He never saw his father—his parents had been divorced for a long time, and he never talked about his dad.

Here was something I was learning about Ashanti and me: our minds often seemed to be heading in the same direction. The big difference showed up when our minds got there. For example, Ashanti now leaned forward and said, “What's the deal with your father?” Which was something I'd never have dared to ask.

Silas, right in the middle of cracking his gum, went still. “My father?”

“Yeah.”

“My parents are divorced—you know that.”

Ashanti nodded. “How come?”

“How come my parents got divorced?” Silas said. He flushed from his neck up to the top of his forehead, all his freckles turning white at the same time. “What's it to you?” I had some notion about that, but of course there was no way Silas could have known about the text message Ashanti had seen and what was really on her mind.

Ashanti shrugged. “Nothing. Don't be so touchy.”

“Touchy?” He turned to me. “Robbie? Was I being touchy?”

“Let's just cool it,” I said. “We've got bigger problems.” I gestured at the charm. And then there was Tut-Tut, problem two. Tied for first, actually. Or maybe number one all by himself.

Ashanti and Silas glared at each other for another second or two, then both turned to the charm.

“How do we know it's the same one?” Silas said.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Where's the power?” Silas said. He poked the silver heart. “That head-zapping thing? Gonzo.” The head zap happened when the power entered you, an instant ice cream headache that faded fast. After that, the power expressed itself in different ways—mental telepathy when it came to Silas.

“Think something, Silas,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, “I'm thinking about the dark side of the moon.”

“Not out loud,” I said. “And touch the charm while you're thinking.”

“And don't think anything dorky,” Ashanti said.

“What's dorky about the dark side of the moon?” Silas shifted the space heater a little more his way.

“Close your eyes,” I said. “Think. Not about the moon.”

Silas closed his eyes. “Not about the moon at all, or just not the dark side?”

“I'm going to smack you,” Ashanti said.

Silas shrank back, closing his eyes even tighter. “No moon of any kind. No planets, no asteroids, no comets, no quasars, no—”

“Silas!”

“Okay, okay! All right. Here we go. Thought, coming up.”

He went still, and certainly appeared to be thinking, but no thought jumped the gap from him to me. My mind, wide open, remained blank.

“Ashanti?” I said. “Anything?”

“Nope.”

Silas opened his eyes. “You didn't get that?” he said.

We shook our heads.

“What was it?” I asked Silas.

“Do I have to tell?”

“What is it about you, Silas?” Ashanti said.

“Like in what way?”

“The way that makes me want to dangle you out the window by your ankles?”

Which was impossible, the single window here at HQ being boarded over, but Silas glanced nervously in that direction anyway.

“Let's try again,” I said, “this time with all of us touching the charm.”

Not easy, what with the size of the charm, but we all managed to get a fingertip on it. Silas's skin felt cold, Ashanti's hot.

“On three,” Silas said. We all closed our eyes. “Anda one, anda two, anda three!”

At first my mind was blank again. Then, all of a sudden, I thought about my mom losing her job, but not in Silas's voice—I hadn't even told him about it yet. Meanwhile, Ashanti was sounding angry. “Silas—were you thinking about my mom?”

“Huh?” said Silas. “How could I be thinking about your mom? I don't know her from Adam.”

We all opened our eyes.

“You thought about your mom?” I said to Ashanti.

She nodded.

“So did I,” I said. “I mean, I thought about my mom, not yours.” We both turned to Silas.

“I wasn't thinking about anybody's mom or moms in general.”

“What were you thinking of?” I said.

“Do I have to tell?” he said again. Silas could be very circular.

“Silas?”

“I was thinking about yo-yos,” he said quickly, “if you must know.”

“Yo-yos?”

“Giant yo-yos, actually,” he said. “Activated by tidal forces, they might be an efficient energy multiplier.”

We gazed at him. Yo-yos were circular; it was sort of uncanny.

“Just a thought,” he said. “But it didn't get through, huh?”

We withdrew our hands from the silver heart. It lay on the desk, looking totally everyday.

“Let's admit it,” Silas said. “This is not our charm.”

“But I told you,” I said, counting off the points on my fingers. “It sort of . . . got Pendleton to lead me to that hotel.”

“We don't know that,” Silas said. “Dogs have a great sense of smell. And what about all the for-sure things the charm used to do? Like the soaring, the laser thing, all that?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe it's been changed.”

“Changed?” said Ashanti.

“Even weakened,” I went on. “From a sort of ordeal—falling to the bottom of the ocean, getting swallowed by an oyster.”

“Or,” Silas said.

“Or what?” I said.

“Or maybe, you know,” Silas said, “you kind of imagined it.”

“Imagined what? I'm telling you, I—” At that moment, I felt Ashanti's eyes on me. I turned toward her. “You think that too? I imagined it?”

Ashanti met my gaze, didn't say anything.

“Oh, my God,” I said. “You don't even believe I found it in the oyster? You think I went out and bought it somewhere?”

“I didn't say that,” Ashanti said.

“But it is an interesting idea,” said Silas.

I rose. “So I'm lying?” I said. “What kind of friends are you?”

Silas started flushing again. Ashanti took my arm.

“Aw, come on,” she said. “I know you wouldn't lie. Not on purpose.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Forget I said it. You're not lying. Period.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

“Hey, Robbie, I'm sorry,” Ashanti said.

I took a deep breath, tried to calm down. “You don't need to say you're sorry.”

“Too late. Just sit back down. We have to think.”

We thought. All at once, Ashanti snapped her fingers. Unlike Silas, she was one of those real talented finger snappers—it sounded like a gunshot. “I've got it,” she said. “We'll invent a test for the charm. To see if it's really real.”

Silas rubbed his hands together. “Now we're cooking,” he said.

“What kind of test?”

“Standardized,” Silas said. “Big time.”

“Shut up,” Ashanti said. She poked the charm. “We know that the charm—the real charm—reacts to injustice, right?”

“So we have to find an injustice to expose it to?” Silas said.

We all thought of Tut-Tut at the exact same moment.