Newford Stories (17 page)

"I'm Joey Bennett," he said, shaking the
offered hand. They might have gone through an amazing experience
together, but old habits were hard to shake. Joey Bennett was the
name that went with the I.D. he was carrying tonight; Hank Walker
didn't exist on paper. Not anymore. "You need a lift
somewhere?"

Her gaze traveled to the corpse. "We should
call the police."

She was taking this well. He reached up and
touched his shoulder. Though he wasn't exactly stressing out over
it either. Those girls had done more than take away her bruises and
the hole in his shoulder.

"You can call them," he said, "but I'm not
sticking around."

When she gave him a surprised look, he
nodded toward the Chev. "Gypsy cab."

"I don't get it."

"Unlicensed."

Now she understood.

"Then we can call it in from a phone booth
somewhere," she said.

"Whatever."

Hank just wanted away from here. He'd
sampled some hallucinogens when he was a kid and the feeling he had
now was a lot like coming down from an acid high. Everything
slightly askew, illogical things that somehow made sense,
everything too sharp and clear when you looked at it, but fading
fast in your peripheral vision, blurred, like it didn't really
exist. He could still taste the girl's tongue on his lip, the
earthy scent she'd left behind. It was a wild bouquet, like
something you'd smell in a forest, deep under the trees. He started
to reach for his shoulder again, still not quite able to believe
the wound was gone, then thought better of it.

"We should go," he told her.

She didn't move. "You've been hurt," she
said.

He looked down at his bloody shirt and gave
a slow nod. "But they … those girls … just took it away. I caught a
bullet in the shoulder and now it's like it never happened. …"

She touched her cheek. There wasn't a mark
on it now.

"What's happened to us?" she said. "I feel
completely distanced from what just happened. Not just physically,
but …"

She let her hand drop.

"I don't know," he said. "I guess it's just
the way we're dealing with the stress."

She nodded, but neither of them believed it.
It was something the girls had done to them.

He led her to the passenger's side of the
cab and opened the door for her. Walking around back, he stopped at
the trunk and popped it open. Between the coolers of beer and
liquor on ice, he kept a gym bag with spare clothes. Taking off his
shirt, he put on a relatively clean T-shirt and closed the lid of
the trunk. He paused for a moment as he came around to the driver's
side of the car, startled by the body lying there. He kept fading
on it, like it didn't really exist, like what had happened, hadn't.
Not really. He remembered the girl's lips again, the taste of them,
the faint wild musk in the air around her. Her breath, he thought
suddenly, had been sweet—like apples.

His attention returned to the corpse.
Frowning, he nudged a limp arm with the toe of his boot, moving it
away from the Chev's tire. Last thing he felt like doing was
running over the thing. He picked up the baseball bat from where it
had fallen and tossed it onto the backseat.

"Where to?" he asked when he joined Lily in
the front of the cab.

She gave him an address in Lower Crowsea.
Yuppie territory. He'd figured right.

She was quiet until they pulled out onto a
main street and headed west. When she spoke, he started, almost
having forgotten she was there.

"How come you don't get a license?" she
wanted to know.

Hank shrugged. He turned the cassette over
and stuck it back in, volume turned way down now.

"This isn't that kind of a cab," he
said.

He put an inflection in the way he spoke
that he hoped would let her know this wasn't something he felt like
discussing. She took the hint. "Who's that playing trumpet?" she
asked.

"Miles Davis."

"I thought so. And Wayne Shorter on sax,
right? I love that stuff they were doing in the mid-sixties."

Hank gave her a quick look before returning
his attention to his driving. "You like jazz?" he asked, pleasantly
surprised.

"I like all kinds of music—anything that's
got heart."

"That's a good way to put it. Miles sure had
heart. I thought a piece of me died when he did."

They were on Stanton Street now, the sky
disappearing overhead as they entered the tunnel of oaks where the
street narrowed and the big estates began. A few more blocks west,
the houses got smaller and closer to the road. Most of these had
been turned into apartments over the years, but they were still out
of Hank's price range. Everything was pretty much out of his price
range. He took a right on Lee Street, then another on McKennitt and
pulled up to the curb in front of the address Lily had given
him.

"Nice place," he said.

Her building was a three-story brick house
with a tall pine and a sugar maple vying for dominance in the front
yard. Hank looked at the long front porch and imagined being able
to sit out on it in the evening, drink in hand, looking out at the
street. A pang of jealousy woke in him, but he let it go as quickly
as it came. Only citizens had that kind of a life.

"I don't own it," Lily said. "I'm renting a
second-floor apartment."

"But still … it's a nice place, in a good
neighborhood. Safe."

She gave him a slow nod. He put the Chev in
neutral, engaged the hand brake, and turned to look at her.

"So who was the guy?" he asked.

"I don't know." She hesitated for a long
heartbeat, then added, "I was out looking for animal people when I
ran into him."

She had to be putting him on. It was that,
or he hadn't heard her properly.

"Animal people?" he asked.

"I know what you're thinking. I know how
crazy it sounds."

"It doesn't sound like anything to me yet,"
Hank said.

"The only reason I brought it up is I
thought maybe you'd know what I was talking about. They're supposed
to live on the edges of society—sort of a society unto
themselves."

"Outsiders."

She nodded. "Like you. No offense, but you
know, with this cab and everything."

"No offense taken," Hank assured her. "I've
been an outsider all my life. I guess I was just born that
way."

It wasn't entirely a lie. When you didn't
get nurturing from day one, you learned pretty quick to depend on
yourself.

"I thought you might know about them," Lily
went on. "Or maybe know where I can find them."

He'd heard of them, but not as anything
real. They were only stories.

"Animal people," Hank repeated.

He was thinking now might be a real good
time to get her out of the cab and put all of this behind him. It
was getting close to six, when he had to pick up Eddie anyway, so
he had an excuse, but he couldn't let it go. The whole thing was
too intriguing. A good-looking, straight citizen like this, out
walking the streets of the Combat Zone looking for animal people
like Jack was always talking about. He knew what Moth would say,
what he'd do, but he wasn't Moth. Moth wouldn't have stopped in the
first place—not unless he'd known her. Then Moth would have given
his life for her, just as he almost had.

"What exactly are they supposed to be?" he
asked.

"The first people—the ones that were there
when the world began. They were animals, but people, too."

"When the world began."

This was way too familiar, he thought as she
nodded. At least Jack knew they were only stories.

"That'd be a long time ago," Hank said,
humoring her.

"I know. Lots of us have their blood in
us—that's what gives us our animal traits."

"Like the Chinese calendar?"

"I suppose," she said. "The thing is,
there's been so much intermarrying between species—you know, us and
real animals—not to mention us killing them off when they're in
their animal shapes, that there aren't many pure animal people
left. But there
are
some, living on the edges of the way we
see the world, the way we divide it up. They're like spiritual
forces. Totems."

Hank didn't know what to say.

She sighed and looked out the windshield. "I
told you. I know how crazy it sounds."

Hank knew crazy and this wasn't it. Crazy
was Hazel standing out in front of the Williamson Street Mall,
trying to tell anybody who'd listen about the video games going on
inside her head, how right now, Mario the Plumber was walking
around inside her stomach. Or No Hands Luke who was convinced that
aliens had stolen his hands and would only pick things up with his
wrists held together. But he thought he knew where she'd picked up
this business with the animal people.

"Do you know a man named Jack Daw?" Hank
asked.

She turned so that she was facing him. "Do
you know him, too?"

Everybody on the street, or who worked it,
knew Jack. The only thing that surprised Hank was that a citizen
would know him. Jack didn't exactly fit into the cocktail
hour/espresso bar set. He lived in an abandoned school bus up on
the edge of the Tombs near Moth's junkyard, had the place all fixed
up inside and out: potbellied cast-iron woodstove, bed, table and
chairs to eat at, big old sofa outside where he'd sit in the summer
when he wasn't out and about, cadging coins and telling stories.
There were always crows hanging around that old bus feeding off the
scraps he fed them. He called them his cousins.

"How'd a woman like you meet someone like
Jack?" Hank asked.

The smile she gave him transformed her
features, taking them from attractive to heart-stopping. Easy,
Hank, he told himself. She's way out of your league.

"So what kind of woman am I?" she wanted to
know.

Hank shrugged. "Uptown."

"Are you always so quick to label
people?"

"You've got to be—in my business."

"And you're never wrong?"

Hank thought about the man that right now
was lying dead in an alley back in the Combat Zone. If things had
played out like he'd expected, the guy would have taken off and
still be running.

"Once or twice," he said.

She nodded. "Well, I meet a lot of different
kinds of people in my business. I'll take a man like Jack over
politicians and the moneymen any day."

Hank studied her for a long moment.

"I guess you're okay," he said finally.

She gave him that smile of hers again, lots
of wattage, but genuine. "That's what Jack said, too."

"So how'd you meet him?"

"The way I usually meet interesting people:
I was working on a story."

"You said you were a photographer. Doesn't
somebody else write the stories?"

"It all depends. Sometimes I sell a story,
sometimes just the pictures, sometimes both. It really depends on
whether I've got an assignment, or come up with the idea for the
piece myself."

"And this one you came up with."

"It wasn't about Jack, but I ran into him
and … he's really interesting."

That he was, Hank thought. He'd listened to
more than one of Jack's stories himself, late at night, fire
burning in one of the junkyard oil drums, the sky so big and clear
up above that you'd never think you were in the middle of the city.
The things he talked about sounded almost plausible and stuck with
you—at least until you thought about them in the daylight.

"Jack tells those stories to everybody," he
said. "That's what he does. Mo—" He caught himself. "A friend of
mine says it's Jack's way of explaining the world to himself. You
can't take what he says literally."

"No. Of course not. It's just …" Her gaze
went away again, not simply out the windshield, but to someplace
Hank couldn't see. "I need to believe in something like animal
people right now."

Hank didn't ask her why. He just gave her
the same advice he'd been given by an older kid in juvie hall.

"Believe in yourself," he said.

"I do," she said, her voice soft, as though
she were sharing a secret. "But it doesn't always help."

Before Hank could think of a reply, she
shook her head, clearing it, and turned to look at him. Wherever
she'd gone, she was back now. She reached into her pocket and
pressed a business card into his hand.

"Call me sometime," she said.

Hank smiled. He'd been right about the card,
too.

"Sure," he lied.

He glanced at the card before he dropped it
on the dash. She played it safe. The card had her name on it, phone
number and email address, and one of those "suite" addresses that
people used when they didn't want to make it look like they had a
P.O. box.

"Are you still calling the cops?" he
asked.

She shook her head. "I wouldn't know what to
say. Two girls came out of nowhere and killed an armed man and all
they had were pocketknives? Besides, I think maybe he got what he
deserved. He was going to kill you."

Not to mention beating on her, Hank thought.
But it was hard to get worked up about it anymore. They should both
still be in shock, dead or on their way to the hospital at the very
least, but the whole thing seemed surreal now, as though it had
happened to someone else, or a long time ago. He could see she felt
the same way.

"I think those girls were animal people,"
she added.

Hank flashed on the afterimage of wings he
thought he'd seen when the first girl had landed on the roof of the
cab. He touched his shoulder, feeling the wound that was only a
scar.

"They weren't like anything I've ever seen
before," he said.

She nodded. "Thanks again—for everything.
Most people wouldn't have stopped to help."

"Yeah, well …"

"And call me."

"Sure," he said, just as he had the last
time, only this time he thought maybe he might.