The Good Thief

by Hannah Tinti

  “What are we going to do with him?” Ren whispered.

  “Tom took his share straight to the bar. He’ll be on a bender for the next few weeks.” Benjamin sat down on the other bed and began to unbutton his coat. “We’ll need an extra set of hands.”

  “Then we’re keeping him?”

  “If we can.”

  “I think he’s a killer,” said Ren.

  “That could be helpful.” Benjamin leaned back into the pillows. “As long as he doesn’t kill us.”

  When Ren woke again, the sun was bright through the curtains. He could not be sure if it had been days or hours that had passed. Beside him on the bed he could feel the heat of Benjamin’s body. In his hand was the revolver. Benjamin had told him to keep an eye on Dolly, but Ren had fallen asleep. Now his neck felt stiff from leaning against the headboard and his fingers were full of pins and needles.

  The boy rolled over. Across the room the other mattress was still empty, and probably still full of bugs. Underneath it, on the floor, was a pile of blankets. Dolly was gone.

  Ren shoved the covers off. He checked the closet and looked out the window, throwing up the sash in a panic and leaning out over the street. He pulled open the door and hurried down the stairs. He stopped when he heard a small scraping sound coming from the kitchen. There was also a rumbling. A series of muffled knocks.

  The boy slowly peered around the corner. Dolly was sitting on a chest near the fireplace, his jacket on, buttoned at the top, his stomach hanging out below. He was eating a bowl of porridge, the spoon a tiny instrument in his hand.

  “Are you looking for the woman?”

  Ren nodded.

  Dolly thumped the side of the chest.

  “Let her out!” Ren cried. He snatched the bowl away and pushed at Dolly to get him off the chest. “Mrs. Sands!” He pressed his mouth against the keyhole.

  Dolly stood and Ren lifted the lid. Mrs. Sands was inside with her shoes off, her knees bent. A sock stuffed in her mouth. Her skin looked pale but her eyes flashed, blinking against the sudden light as Ren pulled the damp wool free of her teeth.

  “WHO IS THIS?!” she shouted, her throat covered in blotches of red. Ren had never heard her so loud. Mrs. Sands pushed herself up in the box and crawled onto the floor. Then she began to cough. Deep, shaking coughs turning over something wet and heavy inside her chest. On her hands and knees she reached for the fireplace poker and began beating Dolly in the leg.

  The dead man blinked at her but did not move.

  “Don’t hit him like that!” Ren took hold of the iron and tried to pull it away, but Mrs. Sands kept on coughing and striking out at him. Dolly easily pinned her arms and covered her mouth, his hand reaching across her face from ear to ear.

  “That’s why I put her in the box.”

  Mrs. Sands swung her feet.

  “Let her go!”

  The boy tried to pry Dolly’s fingers off her mouth, but just as he got a thumb loose, Benjamin came rushing into the room, holding the King James Bible from their room. He thrust the book at Dolly, who dropped Mrs. Sands in surprise.

  “That’s our landlady,” said Benjamin. “You don’t touch the landlady.” Then he began to scold the dead man as if he were a child.

  Dolly backed up against the fireplace. “I was just trying to eat,” he said.

  Ren helped Mrs. Sands onto the bench, her body thin in his arms. When she finally caught her breath she broke into another series of coughs. Benjamin went to fetch some water, then stood by with a look of concern.

  “THAT MURDERER PUT ME IN THE BOX!”

  “My dear Mrs. Sands,” said Benjamin. “There’s a perfectly good reason why he put you in there.”

  They all turned to hear this explanation. Dolly clutched the book. Ren bit his lip, and the landlady stared as if Benjamin had lost his mind.

  “This man’s our cousin and a traveling preacher,” said Benjamin. “He heard about my sister’s death and came looking for us.”

  Mrs. Sands sniffed once at the purple suit, then waved her hand in front of her face. “HE SMELLS LIKE MANURE.”

  “It’s interesting that you should say that,” said Benjamin. “Because he has passed through every kind of manure, animal and human, carrying this Bible across the country while converting the heathens of the forest. And it was in that very forest that he met an Indian princess, named Happy Feather, who became his Christian wife. But Happy Feather didn’t take to Jesus, and while our cousin was preaching God’s word, she ran away with a witch doctor from another tribe.”

  Dolly studied the book Benjamin had given him, turning it this way and that. Ren watched Mrs. Sands, wondering when she’d realize that Dolly had her own King James Bible and was reading it upside down. The landlady was rummaging about on the floor for her shoes, but her head was tilted toward Benjamin’s face, watching the words, her face a mixture of anger and impatience.

  “Since then our cousin’s been searching for her, half-crazy, living hand to mouth and mouth to hand. And then this morning he saw you, and you looked so beautiful, just like Happy Feather, and he lost his mind for a moment. He was afraid that his wife would run away again. So he locked you in the chest. He did it out of love.” With one hand Benjamin straightened Dolly’s coat, and with the other brushed some porridge from his chest. “Have some pity, Mrs. Sands.”

  “GIVE ME THAT,” said the landlady. She snatched the Bible away from Dolly. She eyed the pages, which were edged with gold, worn away in the corners. The letters were tiny blocks of script and she frowned over them, then back at Dolly. She put down the Bible. Then she picked up her broom and began to beat them all. She smacked Benjamin once across the face and Dolly on his shoulders. Ren ducked and she got him in the legs with the handle. “YOU’RE ALL THE WORST OF ANY KIND!”

  The group retreated quickly, Ren scrambling ahead and a bewildered Dolly catching the rear. They made for the door and stumbled into the street, Mrs. Sands lurching after them with the broom in hand. “I WON’T BE BOXED!” she cried. With that she slammed the door so hard that the knocker knocked itself.

  The three of them stood outside in the gutter. Ren rubbed his legs. Dolly flexed his giant fingers. Benjamin pulled a few straws from his hair.

  “Well,” he said. “That was quite a beginning.” He held out his hand and introduced himself to Dolly. “Welcome back to the world.”

  His hand disappeared up to the wrist. When Dolly finally let go Benjamin bent his fingers, trying to get the blood back. The late-afternoon sun was bright, and Dolly squinted against it. He seemed disoriented at the people going by, the bustle of the carriages in the street. He hunched his shoulders and shuffled closer to Ren.

  “He seems to like you,” Benjamin said, raising an eyebrow.

  Ren was embarrassed. “I suppose so.”

  Benjamin dusted off his coat as if it were all the same to him. He picked one last piece of straw from his collar. “It’s time we fetched Tom from the bar.”

  The market was about to close, the grocers rearranging their fruits and vegetables to hide the rotted parts, the baker cutting dried-out bread into toast, the butcher on the corner boiling leftover bones.

  “I’m hungry,” said Dolly.

  “You just ate,” said Ren.

  “Yes,” said Benjamin. “And we’ve had nothing.”

  Dolly took a seat on the sidewalk, his head in his hands. People began to stare, and Ren suddenly saw how out of place he was. An old woman in rags held her nose as she passed. A boy leaned from a moving carriage and pointed at the purple suit. On the street corner ahead, a small group of soldiers were smoking. One of them paused as he lit his cigar. He lifted his chin toward them. Then he dropped the match.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Benjamin.

  “I’m not moving,” said Dolly.

  “You have to,” said Benjamin. He kept his face turned from the soldiers. Ren saw that he was moving, sliding one foot and then the other along the sidewalk. In a moment he would abandon
them both.

  “Please,” cried Ren. “Please, Dolly.” He took hold of the purple jacket, then threw his arms around the man’s shoulder. Ren buried his face into the soggy velvet until he felt a pat on his back.

  “All right now,” said Dolly. “Don’t fret.”

  They cleaned Dolly off behind an abandoned church, showered him with rain buckets, and dumped his suit in the garbage. Dolly did not protest. He gave the purple velvet one sad glance, and then offered his face to be shaved. Benjamin took the bear knife from Ren and went to work, barely nicking the skin. With the whiskers gone, in his long breeches, Dolly looked much better than before—his cheeks rosy, his bald head shining. It was as if he had never been dead.

  They decided that Dolly needed a disguise, at least while he was in North Umbrage. Benjamin lifted Ren through an open window of the church to look for some new clothes. Inside the pews had been removed, the stained glass pulled down, but the lectern was still there, as well as a pile of prayer books. The boy began to forage through a closet behind the altar. Inside a trunk he found the makings of a nativity scene: the dusty head of a donkey, a baby doll with a wire halo attached to its head, and a coarse brown shepherd’s robe that fell across the floor.

  “A preacher’s collar would’ve been better,” said Benjamin, once they had Dolly dressed.

  “He’s not a preacher,” Ren said, “he’s a monk.” And somehow it seemed right. The boy remembered a group of Capuchins who had passed by and stayed until morning at Saint Anthony’s. They were strange, rugged men. They did not eat. And they slept outside on the stone courtyard, without any blankets. Ren had watched them from the window of the small boys’ room. Their bodies were curled, their robes spread across the ground. They had looked like fallen angels in the moonlight.

  Ren tried his best to explain the difference between God and the Holy Spirit, Our Father and the Glory Be. They had no rosary to work on, but Benjamin produced a necklace made of paste, and it was on this trinket that Ren taught Dolly how to say a Hail Mary, how to make his way through a decade of the rosary, and how to observe the mysteries: the joyful, the sorrowful, and the glorious.

  Dolly held a bead between his enormous fingers. He turned to Ren, his face blank. “I won’t remember.”

  “Never mind,” said Benjamin. “Just do this.” He motioned in the air with two fingers, drawing an invisible cross. “Then you don’t have to say anything.”

  Dolly signed the cross.

  “Good,” said Benjamin.

  He did it again.

  “That’s right!” Ren shouted.

  With this encouragement, Dolly continued to sign the cross, drawing it lightly, then fiercely, over and over, until Ren was certain that he had used his fingers to express every possible emotion.

  “It’s a good thing we came along when we did,” said Benjamin, cleaning the bear knife with the corner of his jacket. “Or you’d still be underground.”

  Dolly paused, his finger in the air, and appraised Benjamin coolly. His hands dropped to his sides and began to open and close, open and close. “You want something for it?”

  “Oh, no,” said Benjamin, carefully stepping out of reach. “But I do believe you owe us a debt of some kind. Not that I’m the kind of person who collects debts.” He cleared his throat. “All the same, I think it’s time we talked business.”

  “You want somebody murdered?” Dolly asked.

  Benjamin seemed taken aback. “Not at all.”

  “Then I can’t help you.”

  The church window sent a rainbow of color across the alley. Benjamin gritted his teeth and rubbed his hands together, the way he always did when he was preparing to persuade someone to go against their better instincts. “What we need is another man,” he said. “Someone to lend a hand with the digging.”

  “I work alone.”

  “There’s money in it. More than you’ll probably see in a year.”

  Dolly considered this, rubbing the sleeve of his robe back and forth underneath his chin.

  Benjamin handed the knife to Ren. “Let me buy you a drink,” he said, and his smile appeared, bright and beaming and beautiful. Ren watched as Dolly was slowly disarmed by it, until the man gave a crooked grin of his own in return. Benjamin reached forward and shook Dolly’s stubby fingers. “I know just the place.”

  He escorted them through the central common, one arm pushing Ren ahead and the other hanging on Dolly’s massive shoulders. They passed a bandstand that was falling apart and a pond that was overrun with weeds. Benjamin pointed across the way. On the street facing the common sat a busy tavern. But when they started for it, Dolly held back.

  “Those people,” said Dolly. “I know them.”

  Standing outside the tavern, smoking their pipes, were two young men. One wore a black porkpie hat, the other a disagreeable expression and a pair of spats buttoned up to his knees.

  “Who are they?” Benjamin asked.

  “Hat boys,” said Dolly.

  “Are they dangerous?”

  “If they see me, there’ll be trouble.”

  Benjamin sucked his teeth. “Then they won’t.” He pulled the hood of the robe over Dolly’s face and led him behind a giant oak tree. “Stay here,” he said. “Stay out of sight.” Then he took hold of Ren, and walked past the hat boys, straight into O’Sullivan’s bar.

  EIGHTEEN

  There was no sign to speak of, just the name—Dennis O’Sullivan—and the date carved into a ledge of granite above the entryway. Beyond the front door, lanterns hung from hooks along the walls and from two long chains above the bar. An orange glow spread across the faces of the men, leaving shadows, especially in the corners, where the lamps had long ago been blown out and never refilled. The tables were rough maple softened by beer and a century of card playing. A head resting on the wood could smell it all—thousands of dirty, greasy hands and the rank scent of hops in the fibers. Below, the uneven floor held the shaky legs of chairs. Heavy benches were crosshatched with the markings of knives. The seats permanently fashioned to the worn-down ends of men.

  The pub was full. The customers barely glanced as Benjamin and Ren maneuvered through the crowd. There was little conversation in the room. These were quiet men, men who had been at O’Sullivan’s since sometime the day before, and perhaps the day before that.

  Benjamin and Ren found Tom in the back of the bar, surrounded by empty glasses and attempting to pour himself another. He seemed years older. The bags under his eyes were dark and there were lines on his face—ridges spreading across his cheeks. Ren slid into the other side of the booth, and Benjamin took the chair on the end.

  “We’ve got a new man.”

  Tom sat up in alarm. “You can’t keep him.”

  Benjamin put his foot on the bench. “You said yourself that we needed help.”

  “Somebody murdered him,” said Tom. “Don’t you think they’ll notice that he’s up and about?”

  “He already killed the men who killed him,” said Benjamin.

  Tom turned to the boy. “Is that right?”

  Ren felt somehow guilty for answering. “He told me that he kicked their faces in.”

  Tom stared into his empty glass. “I don’t want to get mixed up with a murderer.”

  “With his help we could clear twice as much.” Benjamin passed Ren a coin. “Get me some ale and bitters.”

  Ren wanted to stay, but when Benjamin shot him a second look he maneuvered out of the booth and made his way across the floor. He knew it would take some time before Tom was convinced, and it worried him to keep Dolly waiting.

  He found the bartender asleep. The man’s body was slumped against a stool, his face resting on the bar next to a bowl of soup. The contents had spilled across the wood and down the front of his already stained and dirty apron; his head was surrounded by an army of pint glasses. Ren looked around to get some idea of how to wake him, but no one would meet his eye.

  A girl walked past, carrying a tray full of drinks. She wa
s no more than twelve years old, and walked carefully and deliberately among the customers. Her ears were pierced with small hoops, and she had skin that was slightly green and sallow. She gave the beer to a table of men playing cards, then came over to the bar and began filling her tray with empty glasses. Ren gave her Benjamin’s order.

  The girl nodded. Her hair was in a yellow braid straight down her back, and Ren thought about the girl who’d put the penny in his mouth, the curls on her head like crow’s wings. This girl was not nearly as pretty, but her eyes were hazel-colored, and Ren had never seen a girl with hazel eyes before. He watched her as she slipped through a swinging door. It was only a few moments before she came back with the drink.

  “Here,” she said, and Ren paid her. She put the beer on the bar, then lifted her skirt and began to pick a scab off her knee.

  “Thank you,” said Ren.

  The girl gave him a closer look. “What happened to your hand?”

  Ren tried to think of something interesting to say, but the small blond hairs on the girl’s thigh made his mind go temporarily blank. “A lion ate it,” he said at last, trying out one of Benjamin’s stories. “He was from the circus. And his name was Pierre.” The words sounded wrong in his mouth.

  The girl stopped scratching at the scab on her leg. “You’re not very good at lying.”

  Behind her came a rush of daylight as the door to the bar pushed open. Three men in black walked through and over to where Ren was standing. He was sure that they had found Dolly outside and had come to arrest them, but instead the men stopped beside the bartender. The shortest reached across the counter, touched the bartender’s eyelid, and lifted it. The iris underneath looked hard and shiny as a marble.

  “They don’t last long in this place, do they?” the man said. He reached into his pocket and took out a small bag, which he quickly slipped over the bartender’s head and tightened with a knot at the neck. “Where’s the boss?” he said to the girl.

  She pointed to the back room, as if this kind of thing happened at the bar every day.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” the man said to the others, and he tipped his hat, then went through the swinging door.