Poison Most Vial (7 page)

Down they went, down the abandoned freight elevator at the back of the Terraces, down to the ground in about twenty seconds. Across the courtyard, through the lobby, over the front stairs so quickly that one of the Woods brothers half stood in surprise, fumbling his cell phone. “Dammit, Raoul, watch yourself!” (The Woods brothers called everyone Raoul, for some reason.)

Lydia was still visible, barely. Ruby saw her lean figure just turn off the street, heading north, a half block past the wig shops. The only thing over that way was the James Davenport Towers, which most residents approached from the other side.

“She's taking the back way to the Davenport, looks like,” Ruby said, jogging with Rex just behind her.

Though plainly visible from the Terraces, the Davenport was a foreign land. No one wandered over there, Ruby knew. No reason to, and plenty of reason to stay clear. The young men who sat out on the steps of the Davenport were wiry and hard, tattoo-covered chain-smokers every one, who whispered to one another in some unknown dialect.

“OK, we just crossed Elinor,” Rex said.

“Who?” Ruby said.

“Elinor Street. The border. We're in barbarian country now, not healthy for us civilized tribes.”

Ruby knew what he meant: She might wander in Davenport country unnoticed for a while, but Rex, dark as he was, could not. She begged him to go back.

“No, uh-uh, no way you're coming in here alone,” he said.

The pair kept their distance, staying about a block behind Lydia, who marched, head down, without looking around. All concentration and forward motion, she slipped in the back of Davenport Towers, into the courtyard area.

“OK, you stay here, out of sight. We'll meet right by this tree,” Ruby said, turning to cross the street.

“Don't you worry about me,” said Rex. “And you better don't spend too much time in there, or I'm coming in.”

At the back entrance, the guardians of Davenport were nowhere to be seen. Still, Ruby sensed that someone was watching, and she moved quickly through the narrow
pathway between the towers and into the courtyard. Same as the Terraces: paved, picnic tables, graffiti; a few high school–aged kids were draped over one of the tables, smoking.

Ruby slid by, doing the Davenport walk: hands in pockets and head down. She ducked through the nearest tower door before stopping for air, three normal breaths and one deep one.

The place appeared identical to the Terraces on the inside, too, only dirtier. Empty soda cans huddled in one doorway; coffee cups full of cigarette ashes lined the hall between candy wrappers and pizza crusts. Mossy yellow light bled through the windows, and for a moment Ruby thought about the early evening summer light in Spring Valley; how she and Lillian, after a day playing in the fields, would head toward home at dusk, racing the darkness.

From the fields of Arkansas to the wilds of Davenport. How on Earth was she going to find Lydia in here?

A low mumble of voices and daytime TV filled the hallway. One voice seemed to rise above the rest, and Ruby moved toward it. Loud, angry. An argument down the hall. Her ears strained to hear. The angry voice seemed somehow familiar. She moved toward it, and the voice became louder, then fainter, then louder. Ruby stood in front of each door that she encountered, listening. The voice always seemed to be coming from the next apartment.

Upstairs maybe? She knew that at the Terraces, sound from one apartment sometimes traveled back and forth in the hallways below. She had to risk it. She slipped into the stairwell at the end of the hall and, as Rex would have, put a hand on the steel frame of the stairs to feel for activity on the landing. All clear.

Up on the second floor she heard the voices again, this time more distinctly. Again the sound rose and fell, seemed to travel. And then, just like that, the voices went silent.

Ruby moved against the wall. She could not keep listening at people's doorways much longer. Had she been heard already? Was that possible?

No. The argument was back in the air, and after passing a half-dozen doors, Ruby stopped at apartment 247. She put her ear to the door. Now she recognized the voice: Lydia, barking away in Russian or whatever it was. The other voice was a man's. Who could Lydia possibly know in Davenport Towers?

Ruby was about to peer through the peephole when the stairwell door clanged open and a flashbulb shot of sunlight swept the hallway. A dark figure moved through the glare toward her, and Ruby turned to run. Nothing happened. She couldn't feel her legs for some reason.

“Um, hello,” she said.

The shadowy figure came closer and closer, until Ruby's
eyes adjusted to the changing light and settled on a hunched older woman, who gave Ruby a toothless grin and a pat on the shoulder before limping slowly by.

From the apartment, the sounds of the argument returned, softer now. The conversation on the other side of the door, whatever it was about, seemed to be winding down.

So was her time. News of an unknown girl in the hallway would spread as fast here as in the Terraces, and sounds came from the courtyard below; something was stirring there.
Time to bail
, Ruby told herself. She headed back the way she came, praying that the landing was still empty. It was, and in seconds she was down, into the basement stairs (identical to the Terraces'), through the laundry room, and out a basement door.

In the open air, a floating sensation crept up her neck as she trotted across the street to meet Rex. Ruby's vision was off, too narrow, like somehow she was peering through holes in her head. What was happening?

Rex wasn't there. She looked behind one tree, and another, and another. She weaved in and around parked cars. He would not have left her here. Ruby swung her head around to see as much as possible.

“Rex,” she called out softly. “Rex, where'd you go?” She circled the big tree where they had agreed to meet and sat against the trunk, staring at the broken pavement for a
few moments. Even that looked foreign to her, dry and pockmarked, not sticky like College Avenue.

Ruby's hand moved to her back pocket for the sketch pad. Still there. She needed to move. She needed to hide. She needed to get back to the Gardens, and fast.

But where was Rex?

A rustling of leaves made her stifle a scream—and there he was, barely visible, behind a hedge in a small front yard a few parked cars away. “Ruby,” he whispered. “We need to go.
Now
. Those Davenport boys are out round here, and they saw me.”

The first shouts seemed far away. Not loud, not too crazy, nobody in sight. Like chatter from a distant basketball game. The sound of sneakers squeaking over pavement was different: This was no game. Rex motioned Ruby to come toward him and stay low.

The two crawled along the hedge back alongside the apartment house. A window lifted open somewhere above; in the distance an elevated train rumbled and screeched. Rex was in a low crouch, running, Ruby behind, into a small backyard.

Not a good move. A shoulder-high chain-link fence, no gate, an old skeleton of a man sitting like a statue on the back stairs outside. The man hissed something and Rex threw a garbage can against the fence, jumped on top, and was over the fence, Ruby right behind.

A howl went up and every dog in the neighborhood seemed to start barking. Ruby glanced back and saw the Davenport kids breaking for the yard.

“Rex, they're one yard away!”

Rex cut to the right in the alley behind the fence, past one garage and another, left through a gate, Ruby still behind. Across another yard, Rex wove to dodge a dog on a chain, the pair barging through a hedge. Out to another street, people watching now, Rex cut to the left, fast as he'd ever moved, between parked cars.

A horn. Someone was blasting a horn. The street was unfamiliar, strange—they could be anywhere, Ruby thought.

Into another yard now and Rex ripped a plank out of a wood fence and ran into another alley. Nowhere left to go. Bags of garbage. A huge mound of leaves. A stack of long, rusted metal poles. High fences in front, footsteps coming right, left, and center.

No time now—“Ruby, follow me!”—and Rex dove into the leaf pile, Ruby, too. And there they sat, side by side under the big pile of leaves against a cinder-block wall. Longing for air but breathing through their mouths silently, barely.

Quiet for a second, maybe more, even the barking faded. But the alley was filling up. Shoes on gravel, heavy breathing, someone kicked a pop can. And that smell, the tang of stale cigarette smoke. No running now.

“Come out, come on out. Where you are, little children?” one boy said.

He said it again.

Another voice, angrier. “You still around here? You stay away Mr. Rome. Understand?”

Ruby took a tiny breath. Leaves in her mouth, that sweet dirt smell. Mr. Rome?

“Come out to here! Where you are? We like to talk to you.”

“They not in here, Ronny.” A girl's voice. “Why don't you leave it alone?”

“Yeah, we scare them enough.” A boy. Maybe there was some hope. Some of these kids sounded OK.

“Shut up, you. They are here. Close. I feel this.”

More mumbling. Somebody swore. Chuckling. A clinking of metal. Quiet again.

What now?

A grunt, a whisper of leaves, and a clang, metal on stone—a small explosion right next to Ruby's shoulder. Was it a bullet? They had a gun? Now another grunt and a hiss: a grinding thud, neck high, between Rex and Ruby.

The poles. The steel poles.

Rex was stirring. Ruby felt it. And after more laughing in the alley, another pole flew in; and another, which caromed off the ground and grazed the bottom of Ruby's shoe. The
leaf pile must look like a giant pincushion from the outside. How on earth were they missing?

“Nobody in there, I told you,” came one voice.

“They are lost,” said another.

“Lost us. They've lost us,” said someone else, the girl again. “Learn the language.”

“You are the lost one,” said the first voice, and they were all joking now in Davenport-ese. Only—could it be?—there was that clinking sound again. Another pole was coming.

Rex lost his mind.

He roared and grabbed the pole between them and raged out of the leaves, swinging wildly. The sound made Ruby jump and scramble.

The light was suddenly different, darker, and the sight of Rex was terrible even from behind, holding that pole in the center and whirling like some crashing helicopter. The skinny tattoo kids scattered, some fell, and Rex and Ruby flew down the alley.

Out into the middle of the street now, left between cars and right, everything streaming by fast—but was it fast enough? She allowed herself a swivel to check: not good. Davenport kids pouring between the parked cars just behind them. Ruby cried out. Stumbled down onto the pavement, rolled herself into a ball, and waited.

Waited.

Eyes closed, she heard breathing again, heavy, the voices of the gang. That's all. Nothing happened.

Ruby opened her eyes. There was Rex, leaning on a car, a tiny smile on his face. She pushed up to her knees and saw that the Davenports—six or seven kids, a couple of them girls—had stopped and were glaring at something behind her.

She turned to see the three Woods brothers. The ministers, big and fat, sideburns, half-asleep-looking, in those big jackets with the hoods. The Prime Minister himself was there.

Elinor Street! The border between College Gardens and Davenport.

How Rex had managed to get them across, Ruby had no idea. But they were back on the Gardens side now. Not a chance the Davenports would take on the Woods brothers, not here.

Ruby leaned down and touched her cheek to the ground. Safe.

“You got an issue here, Raoul?” Woods #2, Eddie (the Minister of Defense) was saying, arms crossed, staring at the Davenport group. Woods #1, Earl, was leaning on a car, clipping his nails. The Prime Minister never said much of anything, as far as Ruby could tell.

“Why not to come over here talking to me?” said one
of their pursuers, maybe Ronny. But the boy's heart was not in it.

“How about you take an English class first, Raoul? America's full. Go back home,” said Jimmy Woods.

The Davenport boy spat on the ground, a wad fat and juicy as a slug, and flicked a hand in dismissal. His friends took the cue, peeled off, turning to shoot a death stare once or twice, and were gone.

Eddie turned to Rex, now on his feet, brushing off his pants, and said, “That you who broke out the primal rage with that pole?” The three brothers chuckled. “T. Rex and all. You got some skill set. You come see us when you're ready to talk about a career, little big man.”

“Nah, I'm all good,” said Rex. “Glad to run into the extended Woods brotherhood right about now. Eddie. Jimmy. Earl. You know Ruby, right?”

“What, you don't think we read the papers?” Woods #1 said, still clipping his nails. He stopped and looked up. “Pass on regards to your dad, understand?”

“Uh, OK,” Ruby said, surprised at how soft his voice was and sure she would never pass on anything from the Woodses to her dad. “Thanks.”

Ruby and Rex turned and headed back down College Avenue toward the Terraces. Ruby kept her eyes on the
ground, that sweet sticky urban pavement. “How?” she asked. “How do people keep living in this lunatic gangster place?”

“You want to go back down on the farm, huh?”

Ruby lifted her head. “Uh, yeah.”

“Take me with you, then,” said Rex. “I'm good with the chickens.”

That image made Ruby nearly stumble. “They'd peck your fingernails off if you ever got close enough,” she said. “You know, I think you made that one boy swallow his cigarette, he was so scared.”

Rex smiled so big that his eyes glistened. “Just expressing my ninja side. I owe so much to them ninjas, their traditions and all.”

“Thank them for me. We now got two more prime suspects, don't you think? Lydia and Mr. Rome.”