The Good Thief

by Hannah Tinti

  Ren watched Benjamin, expecting some kind of sign, but Benjamin’s face was tight with fear. Ren swallowed hard. He thought back to his days in Father John’s study, waiting out his punishment, the silence worse than the beating. He slowly began to back away, and it seemed to break the spell. McGinty nodded at Pilot, and the man removed the gun from Benjamin’s head.

  Benjamin’s head fell back, as if the barrel of the gun had been supporting it. He opened his eyes. “I’ll pay you more than they’ll give you.”

  “I don’t wancha money,” said McGinty.

  Benjamin glanced at the door. Pilot was there, cleaning his knife, and his eyes did not move from Benjamin, not for an instant. “I don’t understand.”

  “Yoah going ta leave this town tanight,” said McGinty. “I’m not going ta see yah again. I’m not going ta heah yoah name. I’m not going ta know anothah thing aboutcha.”

  Pilot opened the door. He pointed to the rug. The Top Hat and the Straw Hat crouched down on either side of Tom and began to roll him up inside. They did this without a word, as if they’d done it many times before. Brom and Ichy moved over and they all watched Tom disappear into the folds of the carpet. Then the hat boys grabbed either end and pulled the rug out into the hall, the twins following behind.

  Benjamin took Ren’s hand. One of his nails had been torn away. Ren could see the bruise folded over his knuckles, a small dark spot as they turned to leave. Pilot stepped in front of the door, blocking their way. He took the notice that he’d read from his pocket. He folded the paper in half. Then he folded it in half again.

  McGinty leaned back in his chair. “Tha boy stays.”

  Benjamin hesitated. His fingers let go of Ren’s and floated to the place on his head where Pilot had pressed the gun. Ren watched, his heart beating so loudly it drummed in his ears.

  “Say good-bye,” said McGinty.

  Ren waited for Benjamin to speak. To hear some kind of explanation. Why this was a mistake. Why they couldn’t possibly be parted. But Benjamin barely looked at him.

  “Good-bye,” he said.

  In the next moment Ren was dragged out of the room, the green carpet a blur beneath his knees. Pilot pitched him down the stairs and past the rows of mousetrap girls. The workers continued on, pretending not to notice, but Ren could see a few stopped and stared. The Harelip was still in her place, and for a moment they looked at each other before Pilot pulled him through another door, down a corridor, and finally threw him into a storage room, piled high with papers and boxes.

  “You are lucky,” Pilot said. Then he closed the door and locked it behind him.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The closet had no windows. Piled up against the walls and strewn about the floor were a number of wooden crates. Two filing cabinets sat in the corner, along with a small writing table and a stool. On the table sat an inkwell and a set of gold pens identical to the ones that were in McGinty’s office. There was also a potbellied stove with a small flue attached to the wall. Ren opened the grate and saw that it was full of ashes.

  He sat on the stool and put his head down on the table. He tried to feel the wood pressing into his cheek. His body was heavy, as if there were ropes from below pulling him to the ground. He had never been so miserable and alone.

  There was a part of him that wanted to believe this was a plan of some kind, that in an hour or two the door would be unlocked, and outside waiting for him would be Tom and the twins and Benjamin with his smile, in a new cart with a new horse, several hundred dollars richer. But as the morning passed and his stomach ached with hunger, Ren began to sink into despair, and ruminated on all the ways Benjamin had failed him. It was hard to believe. And then it wasn’t.

  The more Ren blamed Benjamin, the more he realized that he had done the same to Dolly. He had left him behind. He had saved himself. Dolly was probably awake by now, wandering the road, calling his name, stumbling across the body of the mare. Ren thought of Pilot putting the shotgun to the horse’s head, the same place where the farmer used to kiss her good-bye.

  He wished that he were back in Mrs. Sands’s kitchen. He knew that she would never have given him up. Ren imagined her bursting into the mousetrap factory with her broom, beating the hat boys senseless, and then lifting Ren into her arms. It would be just like one of Benjamin’s stories. He could see the glint of her crooked teeth, the sound of the broom as it broke across Pilot’s shoulders, the way she wrestled McGinty to the ground. He listened for her footsteps in the hallway. He added more details, then he listened again.

  As the day passed, Ren grew weary and restless, and he began to look through the boxes stacked around the room. He even prayed to Saint Anthony for help, to find him a knife or a length of rope—anything that would aid him in escaping—but the crates were only full of springs and wood shavings and paper. One held broken mousetraps, similar to the one he’d seen in Mrs. Sands’s kitchen. He took one and poked the tiny metal door, then felt it snap shut as he drew his finger back.

  He rummaged through the desk and pulled out a stack of old notebooks. Inside the pages he found illustrations of mousetraps. Drawing after drawing of intricate, tiny killing machines. There was a rough sketch of a mouse toppling from a baited slide into water. There was another, where the ceiling of the container crushed the mouse with the turn of an enormous screw.

  The next was a complicated labyrinth, the passages growing smaller and thinner, until it was impossible for the mouse to turn around or turn back.

  The drawings were patents, or ideas of patents. Every possible way to rid the world of something unwanted.

  Ren began to pace the room. Each time he reached the wall he circled back, until he was practically spinning, and nearly missed the sound of a key fitting into the lock. The door opened and McGinty came in, holding a paper sack the size and shape of a human head. He was dressed for business, his yellow jacket buttoned, the ribbons on his sleeves tucked in and tied. He set the bag down on the table.

  “Heah,” he said.

  Ren stared at the bag.

  “It’s fah you,” said McGinty. “Open it.”

  The boy reached out and touched the crinkled paper. He slowly pulled apart the folded edges of the top, his fingers shaking. All the while he could feel McGinty standing behind him.

  The bag was full of candy. Peppermint sticks and lollipops and pieces of fudge, saltwater taffy, sour balls, bars of chocolate, lemon bites, peanut brittle, butterscotch, maple sugar leaves, sponge candy, caramel chews, flavored wax, and all-day suckers. Ren had heard of such things and seen them in the windows of stores, but he had never tasted them. The smell of sugar drifted across his face in a cloud, making him feel dizzy and ravenous all at once.

  McGinty poured the bag out, and the sweets tumbled across the table in a swirl of color, covering the notebooks and spilling onto the floor. “Gowan,” he said. “Eat it.”

  Ren wondered if the candy was poisoned.

  “These ah my favorite,” McGinty said, and took one of the peppermint sticks. He snapped it into pieces. He spent a few minutes sucking and moving the candy around in his mouth, then crunching it apart with his teeth. He picked up another and gave it to Ren. “Try it.”

  The boy thought of Mister Bowers, slipping his dentures out like a secret. This is what happens to boys who eat jam. He shook his head.

  “Try something, fah Gawd’s sake!” McGinty roared.

  Ren snatched the candy and shoved the whole thing into his mouth. The sweetness nearly blinded him; his mouth filled with saliva, and suddenly he didn’t care whether it was poisoned or not.

  “That’s bettah,” said McGinty.

  Ren unwrapped a bar of chocolate and ate it in three bites, his tongue covered with melted goodness. He crunched the rock candy until it splintered against his teeth; he pulled the taffy, stretching it inches from his face. He sucked the juice from the flavored wax, and stuffed a piece of Turkish delight into the side of his cheek, where it stuck to his teeth and slowly disintegrated. />
  “Didja look at those?” McGinty pointed to the book of mousetrap sketches.

  Ren wiped his mouth. “Yes.”

  McGinty chose one of the notebooks and opened it. He turned a page and then another and showed Ren a drawing of a box that hid a miniature guillotine. The mouse touched a lever as it went after the cheese, and its tiny head rolled out the other side.

  “I stahted as a ratcatchah,” said McGinty. “Black rats, brown rats, and red rats. Tha black ones come up through tha drains, tha brown ones live in tha walls a yar house, and tha red ones go aftah tha livestock. They’ll eat a dog, or a baby, if yah give ’em tha chance.”

  McGinty flipped a few more pages, then showed Ren another drawing, of a team of rats trying to fit a child through a hole in the wall. Some pushing, some pulling, some gnawing the places in between.

  “Mice ahn’t as smaht as rats. But they breed fastah. When I stahted making mousetraps, they sold as soon as I could put ’em togethah. But aftah a while they stopped working. Tha mice would figure ’em out. They pass tha infahmation down tha line, from one mouse ta tha next. So I designed anothah, and stahted catching ’em again. And when that stopped working I designed anothah. Tha trick is ta keep changing tha traps, so they forget what kills ’em.”

  McGinty snapped the book shut. He slipped another piece of candy into his mouth. “Yah weran ugly baby.”

  Ren was still holding on to a piece of flavored wax. He could feel it begin to soften now, as his palm grew slick with alarm, the swirl of his fingerprints leaving an impression across the surface.

  “Yah don’t look like hah, though. Yah don’t look like harat all.”

  McGinty reached into his jacket and pulled out his pocket watch. He pressed the release and the top sprang open. One side held a hand-tooled watch, the other a miniature portrait of a young woman. She was beautiful, her hair the color of chestnuts, her skin so pale it glowed. Her lips pressed into a silky mouth and her eyes were dark blue, with a hint of sparkle to them, as if she were making fun of the artist as he captured her. McGinty closed the watch. He passed his thumb back and forth across the cover, then set it on the table between them.

  “That’s my sistah.” McGinty chose another piece of peppermint and snapped it apart with his teeth. Tiny shards of red and white sugar glistened across his tongue. “She told me yah died afta yah lost yah hand. I shouldha known that she was lying.”

  The flavored wax had melted. Ren’s hand had gone right through and now his fingers were sticky, the candy in two separate pieces on the floor. He stared at the watch. He wanted to see it open again. He could hear it working on the table, like a tiny metal heart.

  “You’ve made a mistake,” he said.

  McGinty stopped crunching the peppermint. “I don’t make mistakes.”

  Ren could sense all the candy stuck together at the base of his stomach, turning over, pressing its way back up his throat. He grabbed the end of the table, then turned and vomited into an open box of mousetraps. When he was finished he brushed his sleeve across his mouth. “I want to go home,” he cried. But as soon as the words came out, he felt the hollowness in them. He didn’t have a home.

  McGinty leaned against the desk. He picked up one of the gold pens and used it to clean the dirt out from underneath his nails.

  “Yah said yah weran orphan.”

  “Yes.” Ren leaned over the box of mousetraps, frightened and bewildered. If this man believed he was his uncle, then he was also the kind of uncle who kept his nephew locked in a closet.

  “Have some moah candy.”

  Ren took a piece of peppermint. The smell made his stomach clench. He stuck the peppermint in his mouth and held it with his teeth, trying to keep it from touching his tongue.

  McGinty nudged him with his foot. “No one evah came ta claim yah?”

  Ren shook his head.

  “Yah suah?”

  Ren nodded weakly.

  “Have anothah piece a candy.”

  “I don’t have a family!” Ren cried. “I don’t have anyone!”

  “Well,” said McGinty, pausing for a moment. “Now yah got me.” He tucked another piece of candy into the corner of his cheek and left it hanging there, a long, multicolored toothpick.

  Ren imagined, for a moment, what it would be like to live in the factory with McGinty. To watch the mousetrap girls come and go. To spend the rest of his days locked in this closet.

  McGinty was watching his face. “Yah don’t believe me.”

  “No.”

  The man’s lower jaw slid forward, until his expression transformed, like a shade slowly being pulled down a window. “I’ll show yah. I’ll prove it.”

  He grabbed the boy’s arm, and before Ren knew it, they were out of the room. Hat boys lined the corridor but stood and moved aside as they passed. One ran ahead to push open a door, and then they were making their way down a staircase. All the while McGinty kept a firm grip on the boy, only pausing once to take his overcoat from Pilot before they went through a side entrance and stepped into the street.

  It was late afternoon, the shops already closed, the fires lit, and the windows bright. Ren craned his neck around every corner as they passed, looking for Benjamin. He had hoped his friends would be waiting for him, but there were only more hat boys, traveling ahead, to the side, and behind, pushing the people on the street out of the way. McGinty snorted as he walked, his eyes flashing, his hand clamped over the boy’s arm.

  They came upon the town square and crossed the common. On the other side was a church, with a tall black railing surrounding the yard. McGinty’s face grew more determined as they pressed forward; his stomach pushed out before him, his yellow suit flapping in the wind. Ren glanced up at the church tower. The building seemed familiar, like something out of a dream. And then Ren realized—it was the place where Dolly had been buried. Where they’d first dug him up from the ground. McGinty was standing next to the lock that Benjamin had picked with a needle, and he was opening it with a key.

  The hat boys spread across the perimeter of the church and Pilot stepped into the yard, holding the gate. McGinty pulled Ren through by the shoulder and began shuffling past the rows of graves. Family names repeated themselves on either side: Beckford, Bartlett, Hale, Wood. Ren tripped over a row of tiny markers, a family of newborns, each one a year apart.

  At last they turned away from the church and toward a mausoleum, set in the back of the property. The building was the size of a carriage house, with a set of stone stairs leading up to a small portico, enclosed by another gate. On either side stood marble urns filled with pink and yellow roses. Above the portico was a turret, with a bell hanging in the center. Ren watched as McGinty removed another key from his pocket and unlocked the gate. The door behind it was carved with angels, and in the arch above was a window of multicolored glass, showing a fountain sprouting from the earth.

  McGinty thrust the boy in first. The floor was made of granite, the room cold and dark. Ren could see a large white table to the left, pushed against the wall. The corners were cluttered with dirt and dead leaves. The ceiling was low, the walls close. The only way out was blocked by McGinty.

  “Theah she is.”

  McGinty pointed to the table, and Ren saw that it wasn’t a table but a tomb. The boy drew near and read the words: Margaret Ann McGinty. The lettering was finely wrought, the inscription beneath carved in a firm hand: The Souls of the Just Are in the Hand of God. Ren reached down and touched the letters. The marble was polished smooth. He felt no scratches, only the sharp edges where the words cut deep into the stone.

  Ren thought of Margaret’s portrait, her look of sly amusement. He slid his hand into his pocket and felt McGinty’s watch. He’d stolen it from the table on their way out of the storeroom. The metal was warm; he could feel the clock ticking against his fingers.

  Colored light dappled across McGinty’s yellow suit. There was a cross on the wall, hanging over Margaret’s grave, but the man did not even glance at it. He sim
ply rubbed his hand back and forth over his face, as if he were trying to wipe off the emotion that had settled there. Then he pushed Ren toward the dark end of the tomb.

  “Gowan,” the man told him. “Look.”

  There was nothing in the room except for a smaller table, set against the back wall. Ren walked toward it, feeling uneasy. The slab was made of the same stone that covered Margaret, and as he drew closer he saw a name cut into the surface: Reginald Edward McGinty.

  “Now.” McGinty turned to the boy. “Let’s see if yoah in theah.”

  Pilot stepped into the building, along with four hat boys, all carrying long metal bars. They pushed Ren aside, fit the bars underneath the marble slab, and lifted. The scraping sound filled the room as they moved the weight. When they set the piece on the ground, a strange smell drifted from the coffin, a combination of mold and damp tea leaves.

  Ren leaned forward and peered inside. There was a small bundle, wrapped in a cloth sack, the size and shape of a baby.

  The bundle was covered with a soft gray powder. Spots here and there were eaten through by insects or worn away with time. Ren could see a bit of fabric underneath. It was the same thick linen that held the collar with his name. He coughed and tasted bile at the back of his throat. He knew there was no way he could be in the coffin, but still the hair on his arms began to rise.

  Pilot handed over his knife and McGinty cut the bag open, stabbing through the bottom and splitting the seam. When he finished, he stood back panting, and it was only the sound of his hard laugh that made the boy gather the courage to look. The cloth was ripped through the middle, and inside it was full of stones. They were different colors and shapes, some jagged and broken, some still dusty with the earth they had been taken from, some small enough to fit in the palm of Ren’s hand.

  As he leaned closer, Ren saw a pair of tiny stockings. Someone had taken the time to sew the rocks into a set of baby clothes. The ends of the sleeves were gathered, the hem attached together, the neck stitched shut. There was lace on the collar, and a matching bonnet, the brim pulled closed with a ribbon. McGinty had torn through it all, the rocks spilling onto the marble. Without thinking, the boy reached forward and lifted one from the pile. The stone was unremarkable. Gray and pockmarked. No boy at Saint Anthony’s would have saved it.