02 Seekers (22 page)

I took my first bite of donut and saw that everyone was listening in. Eli’s face was full of jealousy, while the others were simply shocked that I was actually talking to Twitch as if he spoke words. Spider pushed Sprint playfully and made a joke to hide the fact they’d all been eavesdropping. She pushed him back, and he retaliated by stealing what was left of her donut. It was then I saw how she had earned her name. Spider hopped over chairs and ran up the length of the theater to try and escape her, holding her donut as hostage. Sprint’s lanky legs stretched out in full stride as she ran to intercept him – she caught up with him in a matter of seconds. Her tackle was not gentle. They slammed into the ground, fighting over the donut. Cora ran to help Sprint get her food back, while Ethan took another donut when no one was watching.

Alex sat down on Twitch’s other side to watch the action, and, without thinking about it, she brushed a speck of dirt from his face. He didn’t seem to mind the maternal action; he smiled and went back to picking his donut into pieces before eating them. His thoughts soothed even further, and we all sat in happy peace, watching the friendly chaos of the fight we were watching.

After Spider had paid his penance for stealing Sprint’s donut, and the food was all gone,

everyone left to do some constructive thieving and begging. The day flew by. I focused on the gullible and the generous, my story changing slightly with every person, though I avoided lies.

Around my careful half-truths, I found that I enjoyed the game and the payoff of its rewards. It was fun and interesting; more to the point, it kept me entirely distracted.

Alex collected information on different clubs we could break into and by noon had a long list.

When I was certain I had enough money for the day, we found a bench we could talk on without being noticed. Alex gave me the lowdown on the clubs as we sat, happy to have a plan again.

“I think we should start with the ones near the waterfront and work our way inwards. That way we can be sure we won’t miss anything. I also think we need to case the places out some, and make certain they don’t have video cameras and stuff. We can do that tonight…”

“Once we know where the cameras are, I think Spider and I can disable them,” I said. “I think you should focus on linking the information we find.”

“Okay.” Alex paused thoughtfully. “I tried to call Beatrice again today. She didn’t pick up. I got a really strange message, though.”

“What?”

“It said: The fox is out of the den, and the dove has taken to the morning.”

“Weird. What do you think it means?” I asked.

“That the fox is out and the dove likes to fly in the morning,” Alex said.

I frowned. “It sounds like a message.”

“To who?”

“Whom,” I corrected.

“Now is not the time to correct my grammar, Clare.”

“Sorry. I don’t know who it could be directed at. Daniel didn’t tell me anything about coded messages…”

“Great….another mystery.”

“Tell me about it.”

Putting the message off as something we couldn’t solve, she leaned forward and started making plans and plans in case our plans failed. I wasn’t sure if the plans would help anything, but they made Alex feel better, and that was worth everything.

At dusk, we went to the theater, still talking, hoping we were on the right track. Inside, we found the others already waiting for us. We repeated the giving of funds earned to the collective pile.

This time, no one held back and the pile grew respectively large. Like the previous night, Eli’s arrival wasn’t long after the division of funds. He had more food with him and even less to say.

He hunkered in the corner, away from us, only talking to the kids when they talked to him first, which they did only to tease him or get him to settle a dispute for the group.

After dinner Spider led us out into the dark. “Where first?” he asked.

“We’re going to start with the clubs closest to the water, then work our way out,” Alex said.

“Sounds good,” Spider replied.

“Tonight, we’re going to find out what kind of security these places have and start breaking in tomorrow,” I said.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve broken into a building,” Spider said.

“It’s a first for us,” Alex said.

“Don’t worry, doll, I’ll show you the ropes.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. I punched him on the shoulder to get him to stop, and he grinned wickedly.

“Here’s club number one,” Alex said, coming to a stop on the sidewalk.

There were a few people hanging around outside the metal doors of the club, but it was too early in the evening for it to be truly busy. Spider leaned against a wall across from the club to watch the place in unobtrusive silence; he blended in seamlessly with the dark. Alex and I looked more out of place but we managed to not get noticed.

“This place is a joke. I could sneak in here blindfolded. Let’s move on to the next one, this place won’t bother us none,” Spider said finally.

“Okay,” I agreed.

Spider led us through back alleys to the next club, past rotting garbage and shadowy dealings. He was tensely aware of every danger, every law being broken, even as kept an outward appearance of cool indifference.

Before we could get to the next club, we were stopped. At the corner of a road bustling with traffic, two boys around fifteen were loitering. They had their hands jammed into their pockets and hoods pulled over their faces as they watched people pass them on the sidewalk. As we

rounded the corner, one of the boys caught sight of Spider. He perked up and nudged the other boy, pointing out Spider to the second boy. I immediately focused on them, hoping they weren’t more gang members come to hurt my new friend.

“Spider…hey, bro.” The boy who spoke had a voice full of nervous energy.

Spider’s face was immediately wary. “Hey, guys.”

“Man…can you spot me a couple bucks? I swear, I won’t ask you for anything again,” the same boy said.

“You already owe me for last week,” Spider said.

“Come on man, be a pal.”

“How much?” Spider asked.

“Ten bucks, man, just ten bucks.”

Spider sighed and pulled bill out of his pocket. “Last time, Chris.”

“Thanks, man.”

Chris took the bill and stuffed it into the pocket of his dirty hoodie. The two boys immediately walked away and met up with another figure down the street. This figure was less the giving sort, more the selling.

“What was that about?” Alex asked.

Spider watched the boys, friends from before he had met Eli, and didn’t reply.
That could have
been me. I shouldn’t have given them the dough…
A vision of the boy named Chris protecting Spider from an older kid circled in my thoughts, and I knew Spider felt indebted to him. It was the same way he felt indebted to me.

“Drugs,” I said quietly to Alex, so Spider couldn’t hear.

“Oh.”

We followed Spider, feeling sobered by the meeting. Spider, however, wasn’t eager to dwell on the moment. He talked a million miles a minute, doing his best to get in a friendly argument with me. Aware of the distraction he was searching for, I kept up our argument until we reached the second club. He didn’t mention the boys again, but around his bantering and sarcasm, I could sense his pain. It was difficult being indebted to someone who was so determined to ruin their own life. It was difficult for Spider to acknowledge how close to being like those boys he had been…before Eli had taken him in.

After the second club, we moved on, carefully cataloguing the security of each place we visited.

Spider was confident in his ability to break in to all of the buildings. Though it was mainly just standing around and watching the partiers do what they did best, I had a lot of fun scoping the places out. Alex’s quiet disapproval of the scene and Spider’s purposefully controversial

comments kept me entertained.

By the next night we all felt ready to do some constructive breaking and entering. Beads of sweat rolled off me in waves from the heat of the night and the nervous energy as we started a more hands-on approach to collecting information. Alex was keeping a look-out from across the street, while Spider picked a lock on a window in the shelter of an alley. Around the corner from us blaring techno music echoed out from the front of the club.

“Do you need help?” I asked Spider as he worked at the lock. In my nervous state I felt he was taking entirely too long.

“Would you ask Boggie if he needed help with a scene? Would you ask Cagney if he needed

help memorizing his lines?”

“Boggie?” I laughed.

“Humphrey Bogart,” Spider said.

“I know…” I said, surprised a street kid knew anything about classic movies.

He was more than willing to explain his favorite pastime even though I hadn’t asked. “I sneak into the theater sometimes. They play classic movies after midnight,” Spider said, opening the window with a nonchalant smile.

I whistled to Alex for her to join us and followed Spider into the dark room. The room was a low-key office with desks separated by chest high cubicles. Pictures of people’s families tried to make the cubicles more personal though ‘personal’ was difficult to achieve anytime cubicles were involved. The architecture was old and unique, proof the building had, at one time, served another purpose, perhaps as a family home. Our feet made the old wood floor creak and groan in protest, but I doubted anyone would hear over the music. Spider disappeared in the dark,

scouting the area. As I helped Alex through the window, I called to him.

“Sh!” he chided me. “You two take the filing cabinets. I’ll sort through the computers.”

A dull blue light illuminated his face as he turned one of the many computers on. Alex and I started shifting through the papers at his command. It was obvious pretty quickly that the club owner had his hands in a lot of questionable businesses, and an obsessive compulsive habit of leaving those dealings on paper, but nothing that mattered to our search. We had all agreed to not take longer than five minutes, figuring our time for getting caught doubled after then, but we didn’t need five minutes to know this wasn’t our place. It was just too human; illegal in nature, but human. We sneaked back out, leaving everything as it was.

“I could make a fortune over what that guy puts on his computer,” Spider said. “I can’t

understand why anyone would put those sorts of things into a place so easily hacked.”

“Probably because he’s human and humans like to feel organized,” I said.

“It’s stupid,” he disagreed.

“Yep,” I agreed.

“You know, you dolls aren’t half bad at this. You got a natural talent for the larcenous arts,”

Spider complemented us.

“Oh, geez, you do know how to make a girl blush,” I said.

“You’re not blushing,” he pointed out.

“No, no I’m not.”

Spider made a face at me and led the way to the next club on our list. Behind us, the techno music continued its assault on the streets of New Orleans oblivious to the fact that we had paid the building a visit.

The night passed in repetitive excitement. We broke into three buildings after our first. None of them provided us with any sort of hint to the nest here, but I had a lot of fun. To me, the adrenaline rush was well worth the climbing and sorting through piles of papers in search of something that probably wasn’t where we were looking. It helped, too, that I finally felt useful –

my mind reading ability usually gave us plenty of warning before someone could catch us, even by accident. It was hard to hide my exhilaration from Alex, who, while happy to help, was not happy about the idea of getting caught.

It took us a week of long nights to find a clue. The long hours hadn’t affected me nearly as much they had Alex and Spider, and Alex seemed the most affected by the lack of sleep. She took to using a good portion of her food money on buying coffee to stay awake during our midnight

adventures and shadows developed under her eyes, but she refused to stay at the theater when I suggested it. Spider was able to manage on a lot less sleep. I wasn’t sure if he napped during the day someplace no one would find him, or if it was the advantage of his upbringing, but he was always ready for a break in and was always in the bantering frame of mind. I knew he was

having a lot of fun.

“Get your hands off my ass!” I hissed at Spider as he helped me through another club’s window exactly a week after our first break in. We were on a metal stairway to the side of a brick building. Spider was helping me through the window, which was at an odd angle in relation to the stairway. Even with my height I was having trouble getting through.

“It’s the only part of you you’re currently offering me!” he hissed back.

“Shut it, you two! You’re going to get us found!” Alex said from the base of the stairs.

I grunted in agreement as I pulled and Spider pushed. With another grunt I fell hard on to the tile floor. I rolled to my feet, surveying the room for dangers, and moved back to the window to help Spider and Alex up.

“This place looks promising,” Spider said when I had helped him in.

“You said that about the others,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, but this place is fancy,” he pointed out.

“Well, it’s settled, then,” Alex said. “Solved. We can all go home.”

“Hey, look! An old-fashioned French telephone,” Spider said. He picked up the receiver and listened. “It works, too.” His fingers itched with the impulse to take it apart and see how it worked.

“Fascinating,” I said. “Can you pick this?” I jiggled a filing cabinet drawer, its locked state intriguing me.

“Ouch, doll. It hurts you even have to ask,” Spider said, setting the phone down.

“I told you not to call me ‘doll’,” I said as he moved to the cabinet.

“Yeah, yeah…” he replied. He took out his lock picking tools and started on the lock.

I looked through the books along the wall as he worked. I shifted a couple, curious about the titles. They were all in French. Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus – authors I had heard about but had never read. The music from the club below shifted into a different hard hitting beat as I looked. It pulsed through my body, cancelling out the other sounds from the club I had been having trouble keeping out.