“I noticed that he seems fascinated by a certain number, perhaps you’re aware of that.”
“Yes,” I said. “Three hundred and fifty-four. What about it?”
“I wanted to show you something. I live just over there. I go to school, when I deem it absolutely necessary to do so, right here.”
He hesitated and I knew what was going on. It’s a silence I’ve come to recognize, a silence that means that someone has just realized they’re trying to get a blind person to look at something, and has become deeply embarrassed as a result. Sometimes that embarrassment makes them angry, as if it’s my fault, but not this time. Mr Michael Walker knew how to operate.
“I’m so sorry. The details of these two things are irrelevant. What is important, and what concerns us, is my school. Maybe Benjamin can read the sign to you, so you know I’m not fabricating anything. Benjamin?”
“It’s dark, I can’t … Oh, yes, wait. Hey! That’s funny.”
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Michael’s school. It’s called Public School 354. That’s Dad’s number again!”
“Yes, you see, that’s what I found so peculiar,” said Michael and he began to explain again about finding the book, and emailing me.
It was the Hound again, on our heels.
“There’s something else,” Michael said. “I remembered something else about when I found the notebook.”
“You did?” I asked. “What?”
“There was a train passing at the time.”
“So?”
“Well the book might have come from the train. The place I go to is under the railroad track, in some trees by the bridge on Baisley. I searched my memory with great scrutiny and now that I have, there was a train passing overhead at the time.”
“The book came from the train?” I said.
Did that mean Dad had been on the train? Or just his book? It raised a whole new set of questions and I was feeling slightly mad that Michael hadn’t mentioned it before, but right then, things went seriously bad.
I heard footsteps approaching.
They stopped, and Michael stopped midsentence.
Then I heard Benjamin say, “Oh, wow, that looks just like a real knife.”
I heard a voice I didn’t know.
“Get lost. Yes, you. I don’t want your kind sticking your filthy nose in our little business here. I said get out of here!”
I heard Michael make a funny noise in his throat and then I heard him scurry away.
I smelled the smell of smoke. Stale smoke, rancid and old, like an ashtray breathing all over me, and I knew we’d been followed.
THE WRONG IDEA
“Love you.”
As we stood in the street in Queens, facing a stranger with a knife, I remembered the very last thing Dad had said to me the final time I saw him. As I’d got out of the car that Sunday night, as I’d hurried away, he’d told me he loved me. And I hadn’t replied.
All I could think was Please, let me get to tell him. Please, please, please.
Most of the time, despite the saying, fiction is stranger than fact. But then, every once in a while, real life gets spectacularly messed up.
Dad was right. There really was a secret about coincidences, and there really was a cult of violent men spread across the world whose job it was to protect that secret. To kill, and to make the deaths appear as suicides.
And one of those men was standing in front of us, with a knife.
Or so it seemed.
Then, just when I thought I had understood that, it got even more confusing, because the smoky man started to talk to us.
“Good. That’s better, right? We don’t want his kind interfering with our business, right?”
His voice was lower than before, and he was acting as though we were friends, but I knew it was an act. I pulled Benjamin into my side, and he clung to me like a limpet. I felt Stan squashed up against me.
“Listen—”
“No, you listen. You listen up, and let me do the talking, right?”
I heard fumbling noises, a match striking, and he sucked on a cigarette.
“Goddammit,” he said. “That’s better. Can’t smoke anywhere in this damn city now. Can’t smoke in the deli, can’t smoke in the yellow cab…”
“Are you okay?” I whispered to Benjamin, who was frozen to my side, and I knew he knew it was a real knife.
“He’s good,” said the Smoke. “Real good. So. You two are famous, right? There we were wondering what to do next, when you walked into the deli, which was very helpful, right?”
“What do you want?” I managed to get out.
“Shut up,” he said, and now his voice was the nasty one he’d used with Michael. “I’ll tell you what I want. I want the number to the safe.”
“The safe…?” I said, feeling the latest in a long line of weird things start to creep up the back of my beck.
“Don’t play smart,” he said. “You wanna go home, right? Well, you can, see? And all you gotta do is tell me the number to the safe.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I will. But I don’t know which safe you’re talking about.”
“I said don’t play smart!”
Then Benjamin squealed, and I guessed the Smoke waved the knife at him.
“We know which room you’re in now. We spent the whole goddamn day sitting in that Eyetie deli watching the third floor, ’cos I knew you weren’t on the second. Just wanted to know which room your old man was in, and then you guys show up in the deli. Seen you earlier, right? Through the window, right? And then there you are. On the television. Little lost Brits, famous old man. The girl is blind … So we know which room, and don’t play smart anymore.”
I felt anything but smart.
“We’re in room 354,” I said. “You’re right.”
“Laureth!” cried Benjamin.
“Shh,” I said. I just wanted to tell the man something, something that would make it look as though I were helping, something that would calm him down, because every now and then his voice went dark and I could only think about that knife, and Benjamin, and me.
“Do what your sister tells you, right?” he said, and Benjamin pushed himself even further into my side. “So we picks your old man up on the Providence train. Heard him mouthing off about the fortune he’s got stashed in his safe. So we got him, the phone, wallet, right? And we got his room card, so we know the hotel, only it don’t have the room number on it. So we don’t know the number. Not till you showed up. So just tell me the freaking code to the freaking safe and you can run along home. Minus your money and your phone. Right?”
I heard the man suck on his cigarette and blow out a long breath.
Then he screamed.
“Now!”
“I don’t know,” I shouted, desperately. I was shaking physically. I started to cry and Benjamin squeezed even further into my side. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. But Dad hasn’t got a fortune anyway. He’s not rich.”
“I said don’t play—”
He stopped.
Another voice cut in. There were footsteps, more than one set. The voice said, “Well, bro, you goin’ to cut us all?”
“Hey, now,” said the Smoke.
“You hurt anyone here,” said another voice, “and you don’t walk out.”
Benjamin was pulling my hand.
“It’s Michael!” he whispered. “It’s Michael. He’s got some friends with him!”
I could tell that.
“Hey, I was just having a little—”
“Shut your mouth,” said another voice. “Michael here said you was rude to him. He said you don’t like our kind. Is that right?”
“No, no,” said the Smoke, and now he was scared. “Now, fellas…”
“Put the knife down,” said the third voice. “Put the knife down and your wallet and your phone, and then you can walk outta here. Let me tell you something. I don’t like people who are mean to my kid brother.”
I felt som
eone take my hand.
“It’s me, Laureth,” Michael said. “Come away.”
“Michael! Who are you with?”
“My brother. His friends. I went to find them.”
I let Michael guide me away from the Smoke and the others.
“That’s it,” said Michael’s brother, “on the floor it goes. Now then, my friend…”
I heard a soft thud and the sound of air coming out of someone all at once.
“You take your damn filthy tongue outta here, right?”
There was another thud and I heard the Smoke scream.
“What’s happening?” I shouted. “Don’t! Stop it!”
“Girl, he pulled a knife on you. Hell, he pulled a knife on Michael! And my little brother might be weird, but he’s still my brother, right? So this hater is gonna—”
“No!” I cried. “Please don’t! This is all bad anyway. Please don’t do anything to him. Please.”
“Laureth,” said Michael. “I don’t think we ought to interfere…”
“No!” I said. “No. I don’t want you to hurt him.”
“We ain’t gonna kill him. Just make him think twice.”
“Please!” I said. “Please. I want to ask him something.”
“You what?”
“Please?”
Michael’s brother paused, then said, “Go right ahead.”
“You,” I called out. “You. Did you hurt my dad? Is he okay?”
There was silence and then another thump.
“Answer her!” said someone, and then he did.
“He’s okay. He’ll be walking back from Providence for a while, but we didn’t touch him.”
“I don’t like this,” said one of Michael’s friends.
“Look,” I said, “please don’t do anything bad. What’s in his wallet? Is there some ID? We can report him.”
There was a long pause, and the only thing I could hear was the Smoke groaning, lying on the ground somewhere.
“Aw…” said Michael’s brother. “Aw, hell, okay. But we’re taking his stuff, or he’s not going anywhere.”
I thought about that. I had to admit it seemed a good idea. I wanted to get back to our room as soon as possible, but I didn’t want this guy on the loose, coming after us.
“Hey, you can’t take all my stuff. How’m I gonna get home?”
“You shoulda thought of that,” said Michael’s brother. He sounded pretty tough.
“Come on. Give me something. Ten dollars or something.”
“Is he kidding?” said someone else. “He’s kidding, right?”
“I tell you what,” I said. “They’re going to keep your wallet and your money. But you can have your phone back.”
“What?” cried Michael’s brother. “You crazy?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Benjamin, pick the man’s phone up and give it back to him. When you’re ready, Benjamin. Yes? Trust me.”
Trust me. I could have thought of something better to say, but Benjamin only took a moment to understand. He left my side, and I heard a click as he scraped the phone off the tarmac.
“Right, Benjamin?”
“Right, Laureth.”
Benjamin came back to my side, and gave me a squeeze.
“The Benjamin Effect is in operation,” he whispered.
“I still say we don’t let him walk outta here,” someone said, but then it didn’t matter what we thought, because there was the sound of a police siren, and someone else yelled, “Someone’s called it in. Come on…”
“What about him?”
“Tie the sucker to the school gates with his belt. He can explain what he’s doing there.”
Michael grabbed my wrist.
“You don’t want an interview with the police department just now, do you?” he said.
“No,” I said, “I want to get back to the hotel. I want to find Dad before they arrest us and send us home. And I want to know what’s in his safe.”
“So come along,” said Michael, and he, Benjamin, Stan and I hurried away down some small alleyway he knew, heading for the main street, just as the police car wailed up to the gates of P.S. 354.
THE NOISY CITY
And then, just as Michael found a taxi for us, I suddenly wanted to ask him something.
“Michael,” I said. “What did he mean?”
“I’m sorry, Laureth,” he said, in that way of his. “I don’t understand.”
“The man. The man with the knife. What did he mean, when he said ‘your kind’?”
I heard a car glide up to the kerb.
“Your taxi’s here,” Michael said. “What did he mean? Laureth, he meant because I’m black.”
“You’re black?” I said, stupidly.
“Yes,” he said. “Does that matter to you?”
“I couldn’t care less if you were green with pink spots. Why would it matter to me? I don’t even know what color is.”
He thought about that.
“Listen, this gentleman surely won’t wait for ever,” he said. “But I wonder … Did you assume I was white?”
“Michael, I didn’t assume you were anything. Try to understand, I don’t see the world. I don’t see colors, so I don’t think about it that way at all.”
“It’s most fascinating,” said Michael. “It’s a very different way of…”
He hesitated.
“Of what? Of seeing things? It’s okay, you can say that, it doesn’t offend me. I say it all the time. Yes, it’s a different way of seeing things.”
“But what must your world be like?” he asked. “What do you make of this city, how do you understand it?”
The taxi driver honked his horn, but I ignored him.
I stepped over to Michael, and put my hands over his eyes.
“Like this,” I said. “Just listen. What do you hear?”
“The traffic,” he said.
“Yes. There’s the traffic, but you can hear sounds in it, can’t you? There’s that big truck rumbling down there, and someone’s impatient with someone over there, a little honk on the horn. And there’s a loose manhole right near us. And there’s more sirens in the distance, though the one for our man has stopped now. And there’s a helicopter overhead, and a plane even higher than that. There’s a guy selling bottles of water for a dollar down the street, and someone’s just walked by with a dog, a small dog. And I haven’t even started on the smells yet.”
I felt his cheeks lift into a smile under my hands.
“And now we really had better go,” I said.
“Laureth!” he said. “Email me? Please?”
I smiled.
“I will!”
* * *
Benjamin and I scrambled into the taxi, heading toward what?
Another gate to be passed? I was desperate for Dad to be on the other side.
“What did we go there for?” Benjamin asked. “Was that man really going to hurt us?”
“No,” I said, quickly. “Of course not. He just wanted to scare us.”
“How do you know that?”
“I … I don’t. I’m guessing. But listen, Benjamin. He said he hadn’t hurt Dad! Dad’s okay. But he’s lost somewhere.”
“Providence,” said Benjamin.
“What?”
“That’s what the man said. He said Providence. Is that a place?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think it might be.”
“Are we going to go to Providink and find him?”
“Providink? You’re silly. Yes,” I said. “We’re going to do that. Tomorrow.”
“But—”
“It’s too late tonight. We need sleep. And I want to open that safe.”
I wanted, I needed, to open it, because I was now convinced Dad had put something in there that’d got him into trouble.
“But how will we open it without a key?”
“They don’t have keys, they have code numbers.”
“But we don’t know the code number.”
“I think we probably do,” I said, and I heard Benjamin chuckle.
“Oh, yes,” he said.
* * *
The taxi pulled up and we hurried inside.
“If you see a woman who looks like she’s called Margery then keep us away from her,” I said, squeezing Benjamin’s hand.
The noise in the lobby was louder than ever. There was dance music playing and it sounded more like a nightclub than anything else now.
“Right,” shouted Benjamin. “How will I know?”
“You just will. In fact, get us to the lift as fast as you can.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “No one’s going to see us in this lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s really busy. And dark. The whole place is packed.”
The lift doors slid closed and the noise lessened.
“Maybe Margery Lundberg will have forgotten about us,” I said. “We can put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and maybe she’ll leave us alone.”
* * *
We headed down the corridor and I fished out our room key, and felt glad that Michael’s brother had taken the Smoke’s stuff, and with it, presumably, Dad’s copy of the room key. Or so I assumed. Which was why I was about to get another lesson with the help of Mum’s theory, the one about learning things the hard way. I was about to learn how dangerous assumptions can be.
We went into the bedroom and Benjamin sighed.
“I’m going to bed,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “Where’s the safe?”
He rummaged around the room for a while, and then I heard a cupboard door slide open.
“It’s here. On the floor in the cupboard.”
“Okay,” I said. I knelt in front of the safe. I found the keypad. The center number always has a little bump on it, and that’s the five.
I typed 354. Nothing.
Benjamin was standing next to me.
“That can’t be it,” he said. “It wants four numbers.”
“Four?” I said. “But … but we don’t know a four-digit number.”
How do you get from three to four? I thought, feeling as tired as poor Benjamin sounded.
In Dad’s case, you got from 3 to 4 by putting a 5 in the middle. 354. But I still didn’t see how to make a four-digit number out of the three-digit one that I had and still keep its value.
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