Part 4 (1/2)

I looked him right in the eyes. I'd learned to do that. ”You can believe what you want, Chief.”

Chief Coolidge's gaze turned hard. ”It's a free world, eh?”

”You can even believe that if you like.”

When they'd lowered me down, them years ago, I'd done as my mam told me. I lay real still, even though I wanted to scream out, to beg them to pull me up even if I still had all my sin attached. It were as terrifying as the grave under the river. But I were a good girl, a true Believer, and so I made my full confession in my mind, and I waited - waited for the One G.o.d to show me a small glimpse of my future.

It started as the tiniest ticking sound. It grew louder and louder, till I thought I might go mad. But that weren't as bad as what followed. My vision come up over me in a wave, and I felt the weight of it all around me.

Darkness. That were all I saw. Just a vast nothing forever and ever.

There were hands pulling me up then, singing, ”Hallelujah!” and pointing to the shape of my sins in the Pitch. But I knew better. I knew they'd never left me.

I slipped into John Barks's duster and headed out into the dry, red morning. On my wrist, the Enigma Apparatus shone. The Pinkertons was fellas. They'd never thought to question a lady's jewelry. I'd given Chief Coolidge a bucket full of bolts what might make a nice hat rack, but nothing that would bend time to his will.

The storekeepers swept their front walks in hopes of a day's good business. The johns stumbled out of the Red Cat ahead of the town's judging eyes. The seeding s.h.i.+ps was out, piercing the clouds. Farther on, the Believers packed up their tents. They was done with visions and covenants for another year.

I reached into my pocket, letting my fingers rest for just a second on that Poppy brick before finding the coin in the corner. Forward or back, forward or back. John Barks told me once I had a choice, and I guess it come down to heads or tails.

I flicked the coin with my thumb and watched it spiral into the sudden rain.

Monty Goldfarb walked into Saint Agatha's like he owned the place, a superior look on the half of his face that was still intact, a spring in his step despite his steel left leg. And it wasn't long before he did own the place, had taken it over by simple murder and cunning artifice. It wasn't long before he was my best friend and my master, too, and the master of all Saint Agatha's, and didn't he preside over a golden era in the history of that miserable place?

I've lived at Saint Agatha's for six years, since I was eleven years old, when a reciprocating gear in the Muddy York Hall of Computing took off my right arm at the elbow. My da had sent me off to Muddy York when Ma died of the consumption. He'd sold me into service of the Computers and I'd thrived in the big city, hadn't cried, not even once, not even when Master Saunders beat me for playing kick the can with the other boys when I was meant to be polis.h.i.+ng the bra.s.s. I didn't cry when I lost my arm, nor when the barber-surgeon clamped me off and burned my stump with his medicinal tar.

I've seen every kind of boy and girl come to Saint Aggie's - swaggering, scared, tough, meek. The burned ones are often the hardest to read, inscrutable beneath their scars. Old Grinder don't care, though, not one bit. Angry or scared, burned and hobbling, or swaggering and full of beans, the first thing he does when new meat turns up on his doorstep is tenderize it a little. That means a good long session with the belt - and Grinder doesn't care where the strap lands, whole skin or fresh scars, it's all the same to him - and then a night or two down the hole, where there's no light and no warmth and nothing for company except for the big hairy Muddy York rats who'll come and nibble at whatever's left of you, if you manage to fall asleep. It's the blood, see, it draws them out.

So there we all was, that first night when Monty Goldfarb turned up, dropped off by a pair of sour-faced sisters in white capes who turned their noses up at the smell of the horse droppings as they stepped out of their coal-fired banger and handed Monty over to Grinder, who smiled and dry-washed his hairy hands and promised, ”Oh, aye, Sisters, I shall look after this poor crippled birdie like he was my own get. We'll be great friends, won't we, Monty?” Monty actually laughed when Grinder said that, like he'd already winkled it out.

As soon as the boiler on the sisters' car had its head of steam up and they were clanking away, Grinder took Monty inside, leading him past the parlor where we all sat, quiet as mice, eyeless or armless, shy a leg or half a face, or even a scalp (as was little Gertie s.h.i.+ne-Pate, whose hair got caught in the mighty rollers of one of the pressing engines down at the logic mill in Cabbagetown).

He gave us a jaunty wave as Grinder led him away, and I'm ashamed to say that none of us had the stuff to wave back at him, or even to shout a warning. Grinder had done his work on us, too true, and turned us from kids into cowards.

Presently, we heard the whistle and slap of the strap, but instead of screams of agony, we heard howls of defiance, and, yes, even laughter!

”Is that the best you have, you greasy old sack of suet? Put some arm into it!”

And then: ”Oh, deary me, you must be tiring of your work. See how the sweat runs down your face, how your tongue doth protrude from your stinking gob. Oh, please, dear master, tell me your pathetic old ticker isn't about to pack it in. I don't know what I'd do if you dropped dead here on the floor before me!”

And then: ”Your chest heaves like a bellows. Is this what pa.s.ses for a beating round here? Oh, when I get the strap, old man, I will show you how we beat a man in Montreal - you may count on it, my sweet.”

They way he carried on, you'd think he was enjoying the beating, and I had a picture of him leaping to and fro, avoiding the strap with the curious skipping jump of a one-legged boy, but when Grinder led him past the parlor again, he looked half dead. The good side of his face was a pulpy mess, and his one eye was near swollen shut, and he walked with even more of a limp than he'd had coming in. But he grinned at us again and spat a tooth on the threadbare rug that we were made to sweep three times a day, a tooth that left a trail of blood behind it on the splintery floor.

We heard the thud as Monty was tossed down onto the hole's dirt floor, and then the labored breathing as Grinder locked him in, and then the singing, loud and distinct, from under the floorboards: ”Come gather, ye good children, good news to you I'll tell, 'bout how the Grinder b.a.s.t.a.r.d will roast and rot in h.e.l.l -” There was more, apparently improvised (later, I'd hear Monty improvise many and many a song, using some hymn or popular song for a tune beneath his bawdy and obscene lyrics), and we all strove to keep the smiles from our faces as Grinder stamped back into his rooms, shooting us dagger looks as he pa.s.sed by the open door.

And that was the day that Monty came to Saint Agatha's Home for the Rehabilitation of Crippled Children.

I remember my first night in the hole, a time that seemed to stretch into infinity, a darkness so deep I thought that perhaps I'd gone blind. And most of all, I remember the sound of the cellar door loosening, the bar being s.h.i.+fted, the ancient hinges squeaking, the blinding light stabbing into me from above, and the silhouette of old Grinder, holding out one of his hairy, long-fingered hands for me to catch hold of, like an angel come to rescue me from the pits of Hades. Grinder pulled me out of the hole like a man pulling up a carrot, with a gesture practiced on many other children over the years, and I near wept from grat.i.tude. I'd soiled my trousers, and I couldn't hardly see, nor speak from my dry throat, and every sound and sight was magnified a thousandfold, and I put my face in his greatcoat, there in the horrible smell of the man and the muscle beneath like a side of beef, and I cried like he was my old mam come to get me out of a fever bed.

I remember this, and I ain't proud of it, and I never spoke of it to any of the other Saint Aggie's children, nor did they speak of it to me. I was broken then, and I was old Grinder's boy, and when he turned me out later that day with a begging bowl, sent me down to the distillery and off to the ports to approach the navvies and the lobster backs for a ha'penny or a groat or a tuppence, I went out like a grateful doggy, and never once thought of putting any of Grinder's money by in a secret place for my own spending.

Of course, over time I did get less doggy and more wolf about the Grinder, dreamed of tearing out his throat with my teeth, and Grinder always seemed to know when the doggy was going, because, bung, you'd be back in the hole before you had a chance to cheat old Grinder. A day or two downstairs would bring the doggy back out, especially if Grinder tenderized you some with his strap before he heaved you down the stairs. I'd seen big boys and rough girls come to Saint Aggie's as hard as boots, and they come out of Grinder's hole so good doggy that they practically licked his boots for him. Grinder understood children - I give you that. Give us a mean, hard father of a man, a man who doles out punishment and protection like old Jehovah from the sisters' hymnals, and we line up to take his orders.

But Grinder didn't understand Monty Goldfarb.

I'd just come down to lay the long tables for breakfast - it was my turn that day - when I heard Grinder shoot the lock to his door and then the sound of his calluses rasping on the polished bra.s.s k.n.o.b. As his door swung open, I heard the music box playing its tune, Grinder's favorite, a Scottish hymn that the music box sung in Gaelic, its weird horse-gut voice box making the auld words even weirder, like the eldritch crooning of some crone in a street play.

Grinder's heavy tramp receded down the hall to the cellar door. The door creaked open and I felt a s.h.i.+ver down in my stomach, and down below that, in my stones, as I remembered my times in the pit. There was the thunder of his heavy boots on the steps, then his cruel laughter as he beheld Monty.

”Oh, my darling, is this how they take their punishment in Montreal? 'Tis no wonder the Frenchies lost their wars to the Upper Canadians, with such weak little mice as you to fight for them.”

They came back up the stairs: Grinder's jaunty tromp, Monty's dragging, beaten limp. Down the hall they came, and I heard poor Monty reaching out to steady himself, brus.h.i.+ng the framed drawings of Grinder's horrible ancestors as he went, and I flinched with each squeak of a picture knocked askew, for disturbing Grinder's forebears was a beating offense at Saint Aggie's. But Grinder must have been feeling charitable, for he did not pause to whip beaten Monty that morning.

And so they came into the dining hall, and I did not raise my head but beheld them from the corners of my eyes, taking cutlery from the basket hung over the hook at my right elbow and laying it down neat and precise on the splintery tables.

Each table had three hard loaves on it, charity bread donated from Muddy York's bakeries to us poor crippled kiddies, day old and more than a day old, and as tough as stone. Before each loaf was a knife as sharp as a butcher's, and as long as a man's forearm, and the head child at each table was responsible for slicing the bread using that knife each day (children who were shy an arm or two were exempted from this duty, for which I was thankful, since the head children were always accused of favoring some child with a thicker slice, and fights were common).

Monty was leaning heavily on Grinder, his head down and his steps like those of an old, old man, first a click of his steel foot, then a dragging from his remaining leg. But as they pa.s.sed the head of the farthest table, Monty sprang from Grinder's side, took up the knife, and with a sure, steady hand - a movement so spry that I knew he'd been shamming from the moment Grinder opened up the cellar door - he plunged the knife into Grinder's barrel chest, just over his heart, and shoved it home, giving it a hard twist.

He stepped back to consider his handiwork. Grinder was standing perfectly still, his face pale beneath his whiskers, and his mouth was working, and I could almost hear the words he was trying to get out, words I'd heard so many times before: Oh, my lovely, you are a naughty one, but Grinder will beat the devil out of you, purify you with rod and fire, have no fear.

But no sound escaped Grinder's furious lips. Monty put his hands on his hips and watched him with the critical eye of a bricklayer or a machinist surveying his work. Then, calmly, he put his good right hand on Grinder's chest, just to one side of the knife handle. He said, ”Oh, no, Mr. Grindersworth, this is how we take our punishment in Montreal.” Then he gave the smallest of pushes, and Grinder went over like a chimney that's been hit by a wrecking ball.

He turned then and regarded me full on, the good side of his face alive with mischief, the mess on the other side a wreck of burned skin. He winked his good eye at me and said, ”Now, he was a proper pile of filth and muck, wasn't he? World's a better place now, I daresay.” He wiped his hand on his filthy trousers - grimed with the brown dirt of the cellar - and held it out to me. ”Montague Goldfarb, machinist's boy and prentice artificer, late of old Montreal. Montreal Monty, if you please,” he said.

I tried to say something - anything - and realized that I'd bitten the inside of my cheek so hard I could taste the blood. I was so dis...o...b..bulated that I held out my abbreviated right arm to him, hook and cutlery basket and all, something I hadn't done since I'd first lost the limb. Truth told, I was a little tender and shy about my mutilation and didn't like to think about it, and I especially couldn't bear to see whole people shying back from me as though I were some kind of monster. But Monty just reached out, calm as you like, and took my hook with his cunning fingers - fingers so long they seemed to have an extra joint - and shook my hook as though it were a whole hand.

”Sorry, mate, I didn't catch your name.”

I tried to speak again, and this time I found my voice. ”Sian O'Leary,” I said. ”Antrim Town, then Hamilton, and then here.” I wondered what else to say. ”Third-grade computerman's boy, once upon a time.”

”Oh, that's fine,” he said. ”Skilled tradesmen's helpers are what we want around here. You know the lads and la.s.ses round here, Sian. Are there more like you? Children who can make things, should they be called upon?”

I nodded. It was queer to be holding this calm conversation over the cooling body of Grinder, who now smelled of the ordure his slack bowels had loosed into his fine trousers. But it was also natural, somehow, caught in the burning gaze of Monty Goldfarb, who had the att.i.tude of a master in his shop, running the place with utter confidence.

”Capital.” He nudged Grinder with his toe. ”That meat'll spoil soon enough, but before he does, let's have some fun, shall we? Give us a hand.” He bent and lifted Grinder under one arm. He nodded his head at the remaining arm. ”Come on,” he said, and I took it, and we lifted the limp corpse of Zophar Grindersworth, the Grinder of Saint Aggie's, and propped him up at the head of the middle table, knife handle protruding from his chest amid a spreading red stain over his blue brocade waistcoat. Monty shook his head. ”That won't do,” he said, and plucked up a tea towel from a pile by the kitchen door and tied it around Grinder's throat, like a bib, fussing with it until it more or less disguised the grisly wound. Then Monty picked up one of the loaves from the end of the table and tore a hunk off the end.

He chewed at it for a time like a cow at her cud, never taking his eyes off me. Then he swallowed and said, ”Hungry work,” and laughed with a spray of crumbs.

He paced the room, picking up the cutlery I'd laid down and inspecting it, gnawing thoughtfully at the loaf's end in his hand. ”A pretty poor setup,” he said. ”But I'm sure that wicked old lizard had a pretty soft nest for himself, didn't he?”

I nodded and pointed down the hall to Grinder's door. ”The key's on his belt,” I said.

Monty fingered the key ring chained to Grinder's thick leather belt, then shrugged. ”All one-cylinder jobs,” he said, and picked a fork out of the basket that was still hanging from my hook. ”Nothing to them. Faster than fussing with his belt.” He walked purposefully down the hall, his metal foot thumping off the polished wood, leaving dents in it. He dropped to one knee at the lock, then put the fork under his steel foot and used it as a lever to bend back all but one of the soft pot-metal tines, so that now the fork just had one long thin spike. He slid it into the lock, felt for a moment, then gave a sharp and precise flick of his wrist and twisted the k.n.o.b. The door opened smoothly at his touch. ”Nothing to it,” he said, and got back to his feet, dusting off his knees.

Now, I'd been in Grinder's rooms many times, when I'd brought in the boiling water for his bath, or run the rug sweeper over his thick Turkish rugs, or dusted the framed medals and certificates and the cunning machines he kept in his apartment. But this was different, because this time I was coming in with Monty, and Monty made you ask yourself, ”Why isn't this all mine? Why shouldn't I just take it?” And I didn't have a good answer, apart from fear. And fear was giving way to excitement.

Monty went straight to the humidor by Grinder's deep, plush chair and brought out a fistful of cigars. He handed one to me, and we both bit off the tips and spat them on the fine rug, then lit the cigars with the polished bra.s.s lighter in the shape of a beautiful woman that stood on the other side of the chair. Monty clamped his cheroot between his teeth and continued to paw through Grinder's sacred possessions, all the fine goods that the children of Saint Aggie's weren't even allowed to look too closely upon. Soon he was swilling Grinder's best brandy from a lead-crystal decanter, wearing Grinder's red velvet housecoat, topped with Grinder's fine beaver-skin bowler hat.

And it was thus attired that he stumped back into the dining room, where the corpse of Grinder still slumped at table's end, and took up a stance by the old s.h.i.+p's bell that the morning child used for calling the rest of the kids to breakfast, and he began to ring the bell like Saint Aggie's was afire, and he called out as he did so, a wordless, birdlike call, something like a rooster's crowing, such a noise as had never been heard in Saint Aggie's before.