The Brokenhearted

by Amelia Kahaney

  The metalwork of the bridge whizzes by like I’m seeing it from a train window, a blurred black streak. Here and there a car drives past me, but for the most part the streets are quiet in this part of town, and evidence of the Syndicate is less pronounced than elsewhere in the south. Brick row houses and austere apartment buildings line the blocks, their bald hedges neatly trimmed, for the most part. I see a few TVs still on in living rooms, a few people staying up late, but mostly it’s quiet, and the air smells like burnt leaves. I stop on a silent street corner and pull out my phone again, then slow to a jog as the map in my phone tells me I’m closing in on the location Serge sent me.

  I come to a cul-de-sac, which makes me nervous because there’s only one way out. At the end of it sits a wide, squat elementary school. Jackson Jones Elementary. I think back to tenth-grade history and my oral report on Jackson Jones. He was mayor when the Hope was cleaning up the city—until the Hope vanished and the mayor was killed by a Molotov cocktail thrown through his office window. That was the last time anyone got close to the mayor’s office without a full body scan, the last time police were encouraged not to use excessive force. The Jackson Jones laws gave the police a lot more leeway in dealing with crime. When I gave the oral report, I was pretty enthusiastic about the Jackson Jones laws. But now I wonder, What have they actually done? The crime ring in Bedlam is larger than ever.

  I huff the cold air and walk past a naked flagpole toward the school, where the lights are dimmed but not off. There are no cars in the parking lot in front, so I skirt the edge of the building, ducking low under the bottoms of the windows, and peer around the wide building to the back.

  Jackpot. I don’t know how he did it, but Serge came through. In front of me is the yellow LandPusher.

  I dive into a clump of bushes and wait, keeping my eyes trained on the car. Nobody’s inside it. The only movement is a rat scurrying alongside the edge of the building. After a few minutes spent crouched in the bushes, I find the courage to try the double doors of the school, pressing on the door’s handle and slowly inching my way inside, biting the sides of my cheeks so that my teeth won’t chatter. Inside, it’s an ordinary elementary school hallway—dimmed for the evening, kind of run-down, linoleum floors, bulletin boards outside each classroom displaying the work of students. I’m looking at a cluster of sea life collages when I hear glass shattering and a male voice yell, “That’s a hundred bucks you just lost us!”

  My heart thrums with fear, but I move forward, my head tilted toward the sound. At the end of the hall, bright light spills from an open door. I keep close to the wall, knowing that if the kidnappers choose this moment to step out of the classroom, the shadows will probably not be enough to hide me. My arms are tensed, my body ready to run at any moment.

  When I reach the open classroom door, I smell formaldehyde. It reminds me of Hades, of the wall in the coffee shop offering a menu of kidneys and colons. I can hear voices, both male, and I’m certain one of them is Smitty—his dopey slur is unmistakable. It’s like he keeps rocks in his mouth. “We taking all of it?” Smitty asks.

  “Whatever they got,” another guy says. From the volume of their voices, I’m pretty sure they’re in the back of the room. I don’t dare breathe as I peek inside.

  There are several rows of long black lab tables surrounded by stools. A pull-down periodic table flapping in the front of the room. A skeleton standing at attention in one corner. A table against the wall contains metal pans with something gray and slimy in them. Above it hangs a sign—DO NOT DISTURB—DISSECTIONS IN PROGRESS—with a little smiley face beneath the words.

  On the front-most table are large beakers, Bunsen burners heaped in a pile, plastic bottles of different-colored solutions, and a few jars filled with powders, one a light blue, the other a light green shade. And a door marked EQUIPMENT, half-open.

  I slip inside the room and duck behind one of the lab tables, but before I’m all the way down, one of them has seen me. This one’s young, short and stocky with thick black hair, possibly one of the original masked kidnapping crew.

  “Freeze,” he says, his gun already out. In the hand not holding the gun, he’s got a large beaker and a canister of light blue powder tucked under his arm. Move, I tell myself. You’re faster than he is. In a microsecond I’ve reached the dissection station, where formaldehyde frogs’ bulging eyes seem to stare up at me. And as I’d hoped, a few scalpels have been left in their pans. There’s no time to think. He’s yelling, but all I hear is a drumbeat of adrenaline. I turn around just as he cocks the gun, the bullet falling into its chamber with a click, loud enough to reach me. I flick my eyes from the short one to Smitty, who has lumbered out, and then a puff of air escapes my nostrils as I flick my wrist, releasing the scalpel into the air.

  Time seems to slow down as the scalpel cartwheels through the room. It makes contact with the short guy’s wrist, and his gun fires before he drops it and it clatters to the floor. For a moment I have no idea what’s going on except that Smitty is bent over, howling.

  I grab a microscope off the dissection table with both hands and charge toward them. The short one clutches his hand, bright red blood pouring from it, smeared all over the linoleum floor, and Smitty, dumb ox that he is, is whimpering and holding his foot. I hesitate for a half-second, then, as if putting a half-dead bird out of its misery, I shut my eyes and slam the heavy base of the microscope down on the short one’s head.

  He’s out cold but breathing. I find Smitty’s gun beneath a roll of fat around his belt and pull it free, placing it carefully on the far table. His foot is bleeding all over the place. There’s a bullet hole in the tip of his leather boot. Smitty whimpers like a dog as I stand over him. “Don’t,” he says. “Please don’t kill me.”

  I race to the supply closet and spot a length of rope. Then I remain silent as I tie them both to the radiator. I stand over Smitty.

  “Sorry he shot you,” I say.

  Smitty looks up at me, then away. “Yeah, I bet you are,” he mutters.

  “Drugs or organs?” I ask, kicking him a little in his ample thigh when he doesn’t answer. His head lolls on his chest, swiveling from right to left as he moans and clutches his foot. “Answer me, Macoumb!”

  “We got a guy we sell them to,” he manages. “We don’t ask any questions.”

  Small-timers, I realize. Smitty and this other goon are low on the food chain, a minuscule part of the organism that is the Syndicate. I don’t know how high up Rosie is, but I intend to find out.

  “Is that Karl Small?”

  He nods.

  “Where is she?” I ask next.

  “She moves around.” He waves his flabby arm. “She don’t tell me when she goes to take a piss or nothing.”

  A hysterical, onion-scented moan erupts from his huge head. “You gotta move on from this,” he says, his eyes meeting mine. “You’re gonna get yourself killed. Nobody wants to kill a little girl like you, but you’re giving us no choice.”

  “You killed me already,” I say, my voice thick. “This is just my ghost.”

  “It’s not her you want. She’s just doing what the Boss told her to.”

  I stare down at him dumbly. “What boss?”

  “The Boss . . .” he trails off, the rest of his sentence unintelligible, his eyes unfocused. I need to call him an ambulance.

  I check the restraints, making sure the rope is looped around the radiator enough times and that there’s no chance he’ll be able to cut or bite through it before the police come. On my way out, I use the hem of my shirt to wipe every surface I think I may have touched, including the scalpel and both of the guns. Then I use a lab apron to put both guns on the table with the chemicals, gently depositing the scalpel inside a thin glass beaker, like a single bloom in a vase.

  When I’m outside and breathing the night air again, I force my shaking hands to punch the numbers on my phone, to call the number advertised on every billboard in Bedlam. KEEP BEDLAM LAWFUL: 999-TIPS.

  �
��I’d like to report a robbery in progress at Jackson Jones Elementary,” I say, my voice shaking. Just before I hang up, Serge pulls up in the Seraph. I run toward him, my whole body flooded with relief. “Go,” I say. “We need to disappear fast.”

  Serge nods. “Buckle up. I thought you might need assistance.” Then the car lurches forward faster than I knew it could.

  By the time the wail of sirens pierces the silent net of the black sky, we’re already twenty blocks away, approaching the bridge.

  I am a phantom who was never there.

  CHAPTER 31

  The next day, I’m up early enough to grab the Daily Dilemma before my father does. Smith Macoumb and Karl Small are front-page news. I read about them with shaking hands, suddenly sure they’ll reveal who caught them and tied them up.

  The two are each wanted on several counts of conspiracy, theft, assault, drug trafficking, and larceny.

  Police Chief Bullett said in a statement, “Whoever gift-wrapped these two criminals after catching them in the act of stealing from the elementary school, please make yourself known so we can thank you.”

  I look up from the paper and stare at the fleur-de-lis pattern on the wall opposite me in the hallway. They didn’t mention anything about me or what I look like. Maybe they don’t want the police to know about me because they hope to retaliate.

  I fold up the paper and leave it on the ground in front of the apartment door exactly as I found it, so my father won’t notice anything out of the ordinary. I have to be more careful. And I have to go after the others before they come after me.

  I head to my room, where I send Serge a text:

  I have a few more names. Can you help me track them down?

  Then I take out my list from a metal lockbox under my bed and cross off the first two names.

  Smith Macoumb

  Karl Small

  At midnight, I take the service elevator down to the parking garage and get into Serge’s Motoko.

  I sneak a look at him, but his profile is as calm and unflappable as always. “Did you see the paper?”

  He nods, a trace of a smile tugging at his mouth.

  “What if one of them tells the police who I am? The whole group of them must know I’m the one who turned in Smitty and Karl Small.”

  “They won’t. The Syndicate has a code. They tell the police nothing. And in your case, if they tell the police, you’ll implicate them in the murder of the boy. That crime is far worse than what they are wanted for.”

  I nod, mulling it over as Serge drives the Motoko over the Crime Line on the Bridge of Peace.

  We drive for close to an hour through the South Side until we get to the PharmConn plant out on factory row. Factory row is a string of hulking buildings, black with soot, ringing the southern edge of the South Side. Several of them are still operational: the electricity plant, the waste conversion center, the scrap metal yard, the Buzz Beer distillery. Above them looms the nuclear power plant, two round domes with red lights on top. I’ve been looking at these buildings, their smokestacks belching blue-white steam or yellow smoke, from my bedroom window since I was little.

  We pull up alongside the giant PharmConn complex, wrapped in a twelve-foot-high, impenetrable-looking white brick wall. Every few minutes, the deafening thwunk-thwunk-thwunk of PharmConn’s security helicopter fills the air as it makes its rounds, aiming its searchlight in a circular pattern around the streets. Serge pulls the Motoko up across the street from a door in the white PharmConn security wall. “Every week, Maximillian and Augustus Luz are dispatched here to buy pills from a few of the security guards who steal them during their shifts. They then sell them on the black market.”

  “How do you know this, Serge?” I duck low in the passenger seat as the PharmConn security searchlight swoops over the car and recedes.

  “Contacts,” Serge says. “Acquaintances. Friends in low places.” He leaves it at that, and I don’t push him further. I get out of the Motoko and shut the door as softly as I can, walking back toward the shadows across the street from the gate.

  Sure enough, at 1:00 A.M., two people dressed like medics slip out of the side gate carrying duffel bags that say BEDLAM GENERAL. I recognize their slight builds and matching faces as Max and August Luz. I wait until the PharmConn spotlight does another sweep across the block. I know that when the sweep is done, I have about three minutes before it sweeps here again.

  I get a running start and scale the wall with two grand jetés, landing lightly on one foot. They don’t see me coming.

  By the time they’re aware of me, one of them is on the ground and I’m tying his hands to his ankles behind his back. The other one—his identical twin, it turns out—charges at me, but thanks to the left hook combination Ford taught me, it takes me less than thirty seconds to land enough blows so that he’s flat out on the ground, curled up, grunting, “Enough, enough!”

  I tie him to his brother and leave the duffel bag like a gift right next to them, knowing that the sweep is coming again in less than a minute.

  “Where is she?” I ask.

  “Who?” they ask simultaneously.

  “Rose Thorne.”

  “Why should we tell you?” one says.

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll put your brother in the hospital.” To make him think I mean it, I grab his brother by the collar of his coat and lift, raising both of them, tied together as they are, a foot off the ground.

  The one I’m holding up whimpers, his eyes saucers full of fear. I’ve already given him a bloody nose and a fat lip tonight.

  “There’s a place called Double X. Off Bergamot,” he says.

  Just then the searchlight starts to travel back toward us. I drop them both to the ground and take off, and in an instant, I’m back in Serge’s car, dialing 999-TIPS. I pull my list from my pocket and grab a pen from Serge’s dashboard to cross off two more names.

  Maximillian Luz

  Augustus Luz

  We get to the Double X in fifteen minutes. It’s an almost pitch-black bar filled with Syndicate women. I don’t see any men the entire hour and a half I’m there nursing a Sparkle cola.

  I keep my eyes trained on the door, but Rosie never makes an appearance.

  I’m about to leave when I spot the tall, thin woman with the long purple hair. Jessa Scorpio. She stands near a curtain in the back of the room, wearing five-inch platform boots, a skirt the size of a napkin, and a black lace tank top with an exaggerated collar. On her head is a velvet top hat. A crowd of women quickly gathers around her, and she passes out small neon-pink glass vials of powder to them all. They each hand her a wad of bills and move away, unscrewing their vials and rubbing the pink powder on their gums.

  Then she ducks back behind the curtain.

  I slide off my barstool and walk across the barroom, my stomach fizzing with the fight I know is coming.

  I lift the curtain to find a dark hallway. At the end of it, I spot her using a key card to get into a back office. She’s way down the hall, but I’m there in a heartbeat. Silently, I follow her into the office and close the door behind us.

  “Hello, Jessa.”

  She turns around. When she sees me, she snorts, incredulous. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  I look around the room, noting several stacks of hundreds stacked up on the shelves above a big safe. Jessa lunges across the messy desk and reaches into a pile of papers, but I get there first.

  Beneath the papers, my fingers wrap the handle of a switchblade.

  I unfold it and point it at her chest, and for a moment I imagine what it would feel like to push the blade into her.

  I get control of myself and carefully fold it up. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I say to her. “Just tell me where Rosie is.”

  She snorts in response. “I wasn’t worried. You’re so pure.”

  I take a second to notice the walls. Lined with pictures of girls, women, starting from about age thirteen and going up to around age forty. Then I notice a metal po
le off to one side, attached to the ceiling and floor in a corner of the room. “What is this place?”

  “Are you that thick?” she says. Then she points to a binder open on the desk. It’s full of pictures of girls in sparkly, skimpy clothes. “Those girls out there are all companions,” she says.

  I look at her blankly.

  “The kind you pay by the hour?”

  Oh. I swallow, feeling naïve.

  “Where is Rosie?” I ask again, shutting the binder as if this can make the fact of what Jessa does for money go away.

  “How am I supposed to know? Honey, just forget her. Forget him, too,” she says. “You know, you’d make a great companion.” Her long fingers wind around a lock of my hair.

  I think of all the young girls on the wall forced to sell their bodies for money. Static fills my ears, and I shove her hard in the direction of the metal pole. She hits the wall, and I don’t think about it before I slam both hands into the pole and push in her direction. Hoping to . . . I don’t know what. Surely I don’t think I can actually bend the pole?

  But the metal yields immediately, as if it’s liquid.

  The top of the pole disconnects with the ceiling, and with both my hands, I push the metal pole toward her, pinning her against the wall, the pole curving around her slim torso, tight enough that she can’t get out. “What in Bedlam’s balls?” She shrieks, terrified. She squirms against it, but she can’t move. The metal is too tight against her narrow waist.

  She stares at me, speechless now. Visibly trembling. Her top hat fallen to the floor.

  I shrug, regaining my composure. “You should reconsider your line of work,” I say before I leave. “It’ll make you cynical.”

  I don’t like the look on her face as she’s figuring out what I am. It’s a mix of fear and pity, and I don’t want to be pitied. I leave, shutting the door behind me, and as I walk down the darkened hallway I call the tip line.