The Good Thief (36 page)

McGinty walked behind the desk. He opened a drawer, took out a pistol, and set it on the table. It was the same gun as before, with the inscription on the barrel. He took out the box of bullets and began sliding them, one by one, into the chamber. When it was full his face fell; he almost seemed disappointed.

“Margaret,” Benjamin began.

“Don’t say hah name.”

“I didn’t know about the baby. Not until after she died.”

“Yahra liar.”

Benjamin squeezed Ren’s hand, and the boy understood that he had already claimed him as a son, long before Ren had claimed him as a father. All the time Ren had been locked in the closet, even when he was laid out on the table, McGinty had already known what he was going to say.

The room began to stink of sweat. McGinty nodded and the hat boys stepped forward. The Top Hat pushed Ren out of the way, and the Bowler wrapped a thin cord around Benjamin’s neck. It happened so quickly that Benjamin didn’t even take a breath. His hands went up to the cord and clawed at it; his face turned desperate. His legs kicked out, banging against the giant desk.

“Enough,” said McGinty.

The Bowler slipped the cord off and Benjamin fell to his knees. He pressed his face against the rug, coughing and sputtering for air. In his right hand he held the blue bandage that had been around his forehead. McGinty watched it all from across the desk.

“That’s fah wasting my time.”

Benjamin shuffled to his feet. Around his neck was a thin red line. He opened his mouth and his voice came croaking out. “I want to write a will.”

“Yah got something ta leave?”

“My body,” said Benjamin. “The boy can sell it.”

McGinty thought this over for a few moments. He pulled some paper from one of the drawers and slid the gold pen across the desk.

Benjamin leaned on the table, resting his injured arm. With his left he opened the inkwell and dipped the point of the pen. Then he started to write. He put the words down quickly, as if he had been thinking of them a long time, memorized how they should be phrased and in what order of consequence. When he was finished he dipped the pen once more and handed it to McGinty. “It needs to be witnessed.”

McGinty snatched the paper and quickly wrote his signature at the bottom. Then he threw the pen on the floor. “Done,” he said.

“Done,” said Benjamin. He sat back down on the ground and ran the blue bandage through his fingers.

McGinty took up the gun. “Now we’ll have some ansahring.”

Ren held on to the edge of the desk. The desk that took up a room. The wood had recently been oiled, and the oil came off now, on his fingertips, leaving his prints behind on the finish. At his feet lay the scrap of collar with his name. It had been tossed when the boy’s pockets were rifled, and now the three letters stared up at him like a sign. Ren reached forward and picked the cloth up, staining the material with the oil, right below the N that was an M .

McGinty glared as the boy pushed the tattered collar at him. Then something changed in his face and McGinty came closer and felt the linen with his thumb and forefinger. He traced each letter. He traced them again. “Wheah’d yah get this?”

“It was left with me at the orphanage.”

“This doesn’t prove a thing.”

“It proves she loved us. It proves she meant to take his name.”

McGinty put the collar down. He ran his tongue across his teeth. “All it proves is that she was a lousy sewah.” He picked up the collar again. He opened a desk drawer and threw it inside. Ren watched his name disappear. Now there was nothing left. It was over.

A strange look came over McGinty’s face. He reached into the drawer again and removed a small glass jar. He lifted it up to the light, curious, and put it down on the table. “What tha hell is this?” It was filled with a strikingly yellow liquid. Ren stared at the jar, puzzled, until he realized. It was Ichy’s pee.

The Bowler and the Top Hat looked frightened. If there was ever a time to play innocent, Ren knew that it was now. Meanwhile Benjamin had crawled over to the factory window and was holding the blue bandage in the air like a flag, as if he was trying to signal to someone below.

McGinty unscrewed the lid and sniffed the contents of the jar. As he inhaled, his face began to shift, from red to a darker shade of crimson, and he turned it directly toward Ren. He lunged for the boy’s jacket, then dragged him across the table; papers and pens went flying off the edge. The lamp got knocked over and smashed as McGinty pressed his full weight down.

“Yah filthy little bastad.”

“It wasn’t me!”

“Nobody else was in heah. Nobody else had tha chance!”

McGinty grabbed for the revolver and shoved it underneath the boy’s chin, leaning hard, until Ren gasped for breath. Ren swung his arm, trying to find something to hold on to. His fingertips touched the edge of the jar. And then he had it in his hand. And he threw the contents into McGinty’s face.

The man let go of Ren, sputtering. He backed against the window overlooking the factory. The front of his suit was soaked. Yellow on yellow. The smell of urine filled the air. The hat boys came forward and pulled Ren from the table. And there was Benjamin on his knees, wildly waving the blue bandage over his head, like it was going to save their very lives.

A huge boom sounded and the glass shattered, splinters spraying in every direction. The Bowler and the Top Hat fell to the floor, covering their faces. Ren rolled under the desk. There was grit on his skin and as he moved his arm he felt a hundred little cuts and scratches. He peered out into the room, now covered in dust and shards, a gaping hole letting in a sudden breeze.

McGinty stood before the broken window. He swayed on his feet. He sighed, and then he coughed, and across his chest there came a blooming of red.

The Bowler crawled across the room, grabbed hold of McGinty and helped him to the floor. The Top Hat rushed to the window, drawing his gun. He pointed the pistol at the factory floor, swept it back and forth across the mousetrap girls. The Top Hat screamed, “Who fired?”

Down below, the girls stood at their stations, their hands at their work, the machines humming around them. None of them looked up. The glue girls slapped the glue in place. The spring girls fed the wires. The saw girls held on to the wood before them and placed and cut, placed and cut. And there, standing at her station, her cheeks flushed, was the Harelip, her head bent over her trap.

McGinty tried to turn himself. The glass stuck to his body, like a broken layer of skin. The Bowler held him still. He told him to wait. They’d get a doctor. McGinty shook his head.

“Get tha boy,” he said. The Top Hat and the Bowler looked at each other, then dragged Ren out from underneath the desk. The hole in McGinty’s chest was ragged and deep. Each breath he took sent another wave of blood over his yellow suit. He stared at Ren as if he expected something from him. Then he shut his eyes. “Mahgret,” he mumbled. “Open tha door.” And then he was dead.

T
he streets were wet from the rain that had come and gone. The air smelled fresh, the stink and soot of the town temporarily washed from the sky. Ren stumbled outside in his socks, his face covered with tiny cuts, his heart pounding and Benjamin clutching his hand.

They’d slipped away as the room tumbled into confusion. Shouts and screams echoed in the factory as the hat boys gathered around McGinty’s body. Some immediately began to rummage through the desk for money, while others started to roll up the rugs or grabbed paintings off the walls. Soon the men were all scrambling to take what they could, hurrying through the hallways. Benjamin held on to Ren and maneuvered down the stairs, wove in and out of the mousetrap girls on the factory floor, passed through the side door that the Harelip held open—her face anxious and smiling—then sauntered by the group of soldiers on the corner, who turned and looked at them curiously as they made their way down the street. Now they turned toward the boardinghouse, toward home, and started to run.

There were puddles on the sidewalk, and Ren’s socks grew wet and slippery. He glanced up at Benjamin. The man’s face was still swollen, but the bandage on his head had been tossed away. His arm no longer seemed broken. He stumbled a bit now and then but his legs matched Ren’s stride for stride.

“You’re not hurt.”

“I am,” said Benjamin. “Just not as bad as they thought.”

“But your teeth.”

His hand went to cover his mouth. “I’ll have to make a visit to Mister Bowers.”

Behind them, the bell at the mousetrap factory began to ring. Not once or twice as it did calling the girls to work, but over and over, until the vagrants lying in the street lifted their heads, and the doors and shutters of houses opened, and the widows leaned out, and the old men fishing by the river frowned and pulled in their lines.

At O’Sullivan’s bar, the patrons stumbled out the door to see what the clamoring was about. Two soldiers, their uniforms askew, watched Ren and Benjamin rush past. Then they heard the calls of their captain and began strapping on their guns. Benjamin pulled the boy into an alley crossed with clotheslines, the same place Ren had stood with the Harelip, and they both waited there, pressed against a garbage bin, catching their breath as the soldiers went by.

“I thought he let you go,” Ren said.

Benjamin shook his head. “He knew who I was. Right from the start.” He leaned against the bin, holding his fingers to his side. “I think he just wanted to hear you say it.”

“That you were my father?”

“Yes.”

Ren waited for this truth to fall away like the others. But it didn’t. It stayed in the air between them. As real as the clothes hanging from the line over their heads. Ren felt like he was in a fairy tale. As if all he had to do to make something happen was to say it out loud.

“Take this.” Benjamin reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out the paper McGinty had witnessed. “Give it to Tom. Don’t let anyone else touch it.”

The paper was fine between Ren’s fingers, the edges straight enough to cut. “Are you leaving?”

“They’re looking for me already. I’m going to have to disappear for a time.”

“But you didn’t kill him.” Ren could not stop his voice from cracking.

Benjamin patted him on the back. “Come on now, little man.”

It was too late. Ren was crying. He wiped at his nose, ashamed. “Can’t you take me with you?”

“I’m trying to do what’s right,” said Benjamin. “Don’t make it any harder.” He reached over their heads and plucked a shirt, some overalls, and a jacket from the line. Then he removed his own torn coat and put on the new clothes, hopping for a moment back and forth in his long johns. When he was finished he looked like a different man. A man with worries. A father.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Ren asked.

Benjamin looked serious for a moment, then poked the boy hard in the shoulder. “I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

Ren tried to laugh, but he was shivering. The wind was rushing through the alley, as if it wanted to send them on their way. Dust blew into the street, and the sheets snapped over their heads.

Benjamin took a sweater from the clothesline. He pulled it over Ren’s face, fit his arms one by one into the sleeves. The sweater was so long it hung to Ren’s kneecaps. But it was thick and it was warm, and the cold didn’t seem so bitter as before.

“Hold still,” said Benjamin. He reached forward and picked a piece of glass out of the boy’s cheek. Then he held it there, shining, on the tip of his finger, as if he were waiting for Ren to make a wish.

“What’s the thing you want most in the world?”

The boy closed his eyes and Benjamin slipped something into his hand. He could feel the square shape, the tiny indentations where the baby fingers were spread. A frozen greeting. The glass warmed in his palm, as if the tips were bending into his own. As if his hand had been simply waiting until they were together again, to close back into a fist.

The bell was still ringing when Ren stepped out of the alley. He could hear it tolling, like a call to prayer, marking each street as he ran down it. Five, then four, then three, then two. All of the words he’d given up came flooding back like an old way of breathing. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. Forgive us our trespasses. Pray for us sinners, now. Now. Now. And at the hour. He stopped himself. He started again.

He passed a few mousetrap girls clutching their shawls, and prostitutes, still in their dresses from the night before, peering at the factory from the street. Behind them the boardinghouse looked abandoned and lifeless. There was no smoke from the chimney. The shutters were closed. The doors were locked. Ren banged against the wood and shouted at the windows.

He could hear furniture being pulled away, a bolt being drawn back. The door opened and the twins stood in the entryway. Ren threw his arms around them both.

“Are you all right?” Brom asked.

Ren nodded. Ichy took hold of his elbow and brought him inside. The boardinghouse was worse than ever—holes in the walls, the furniture in pieces.

“We heard the fighting,” Ichy said.

“We woke Papa.”

“And he got his gun.”