Poison Most Vial

by Benedict Carey

  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.”

  “Mister who?”

  “Roman. The day janitor. Didn’t you hear those Davenport kids warning us away from him?” Ruby told Rex about the argument she’d overheard. “That was Roman in the apartment arguing with Lydia, I’m sure of it. They’re up to something. You know what’s next, right?”

  “A milkshake for me. Best thing on this planet for mental stress, of which I have a modest case right now.”

  “A malt for me. Then we’re gonna go swipe ourselves a password.”

  “To what?”

  “To get into the Toxin Archive.”

  It might even be easy, she thought. Wade probably wrote his password down on the cover of his forensics textbook. Lydia was always borrowing other students’ logins; she probably had a half dozen of them written all over her stuff.

  The problem was, none of them was in the library that week, at least not during the period that Ruby and Rex had free.

  “Forget it,” Ruby said, counting steps along College Avenue on the way to school on Friday. “We’re running out of time. I’m just—I’m going down and just grabbing that stupid record book off the archive cabinet.”

  “Good luck. That lab is crawling with police,” Rex said. He circled an old car, gaping like it was an alien spacecraft. “Dodge Dart Swinger is what we got right here,” he said. “Says Swinger right on the side, too—that just kills me, I’m sorry.”

  Ruby snorted. Old cars. Wig jokes. Fake eyes. She needed one girl conversation, and Lillian sure didn’t seem to want to talk anymore. “Would you for once— Rex, watch out!”

  A passing car slowed just enough for the kid in the passenger seat to yell out, “Hey, it’s Fat Boy and Poison Rosey—the twisted twins!”

  Rex chased them for three steps and stopped. He stood there for a while, staring, breathing hard. “Why do I miss my ninja pole right about now?”

  “I’ll tell you what: If today’s class is about ‘Who is a criminal?’ I’m going to go get the ninja pole.”

  “Money,” Mrs. Patterson said, once the class was settled. “I want you to think about what this author is saying about money as we read. You are all familiar with this story now. Paris, why don’t you start?”

  Silence. Paris, tall with long red hair and pinprick eyes, never said a word. Everyone in class kept their distance. Mrs. Patterson almost always called on him first, maybe on the off chance he would make a sound.

  “He’s gonna go off and firebomb the school, you watch,” Rex said. “Only question is when.”

  “All right, Paris, we’ll come back to you,” Mrs. Patterson said. “Bruce, please begin.”

  Ruby gave a silent scream. Bruce, worst out-loud reader on the continent, was breathing heavily as he began: “My mother—taught me—never to speak about—money—when there was—a shirtful—what’s a shirtful, Mrs. Patterson?”

  “What do you think it means, Bruce?”

  More silence. A rubber band flew by Bruce’s head.

  “A lot,” said a deep voice. Simon. Suddenly, he was Mr. Participation. “Don’t talk about money when you got a lot; it doesn’t look good. Reveals your true greedy nature. Much better to be smug about it.”

  “High Honors smug?” Ruby said.

  Simon actually smiled at that, and now Sharon had her hand up.

  “What’s wrong with having money?” she said. “You know you’d all rather have it than not.”

  “Why, so we can buy eighteen pairs of boots?” someone yelled.

  “You wouldn’t know how,” said Sharon.

  “Now, now, everyone take a breath,” Mrs. Patterson said. “The point of this story—and I want everyone to think about this—is how attitudes about money can drive almost anyone to commit a crime.”

  “Anyone?”

  “Almost anyone,” she said.

  • • •

  It was near lunchtime before the class got a break and Ruby and Rex could slip away to the library.

  “Oh no,” said Ruby when she saw from across the room that there was no one sitting back in the forensics corner. “Where are they?”

  Rex walked over to look more closely and whispered, “Uh, Ruby? Come look at this.”

  An abandoned campsite: backpacks on the floor, books stacked in the cubicles, papers everywhere. Even a couple of security ID cards, draped over chairs. The grad students were here, all right, either taking a break together or meeting somewhere else.

  “But where?” Ruby said under her breath. “You keep a lookout; I think I know where they are.”

  Ruby took her sketchbook and turned into the stacks, threading her way toward the far wall of the library where there was a bank of conference rooms. Sure enough, the light was on in the first one, and Victor’s profile was unmistakable through the frosted glass door. She heard voices raised and moved in closer to see if she could hear anything.

  Not much; the door was too heavy. Scraps of conversation, but that was all. She scampered back, motioning Rex into the stacks to watch the conference room. Time to get some real evidence, Ruby said to herself. Should’ve done this a long time ago.

  Where to start?

  Wade’s cubicle was neat, the books stacked by size, notebooks labeled. Victor’s had his boxes of exotic tea, his packs of gum, his index cards full of tiny scrawl.

  Take something.

  Grace’s books and notebooks were busy with doodles, her pens chewed. Lydia’s space was by far the messiest, with empty diet soda cans, candy wrappers. Among the debris she found little except two exams stuffed into a textbook, both marked Unsatisfactory. One of the exams had a note in green pen—Rama’s writing—that said, Please come see me.

  Ruby noted all this in her sketchbook, feeling like she was sneak
ing around someone’s home.

  Lydia’s backpack was lying there, practically asking to be unzipped. Ruby reached for it, stopped herself, looked up. She saw Rex circling a finger in the air. “Like now,” he whispered. “Hurry up, they’re almost done in there.”

  She had thirty seconds, maybe twenty. Her heart was doing cartwheels. This was it, surely her last chance at these unattended backpacks and books.

  She collected anything with numbers on it: a sheet of Grace’s doodles, the numbers from two ID cards (she wrote them down), several Post-its; Rex mumbled, “Time’s up,” and Ruby’s hand reflexively reached out and grabbed one more thing before she darted into the stacks.

  She found Rex on all fours, peering through the books at the grad students’ legs now headed toward the cubicle area.

  “That was too close. Here they are,” he said. “I hope you got something good.”

  Ruby peered through the books back at the cubicles. “You know, I got pretty much nothing. The problem is—aaaagh!”

  A face pushed through the space between the books: Lydia!

  Ruby fell backward, hitting her head against the shelves behind her, and Lydia’s big face now loomed above her. “What you doing in here?” asked the older girl. Lydia shot a disgusted glance at Rex, who was still struggling to his knees, and looked back at Ruby. “Answer to me. I saw you near to the desks. I’m asking you now.”

  “OK, right,” said Ruby, light-headed, reaching for her backpack to retrieve the things she’d pilfered. “It wasn’t hardly anything.”

  Rex stood and moved between the two girls, his face close to Lydia’s. “We’re in the library. This is our library, too—what are you doing here?” he asked.

  “This is the forensics section,” Lydia said. “This is for the graduate forensics students—”

  “So you’re the owner?” Rex said, his shoulders rising and falling, and now Ruby had a hand on his shoulder, talking in his ear: “Rex, Rex, Rex . . . ” She had to calm him, or he’d end up sitting on Lydia and bringing down a pile of books. That would be the end of their library privileges.