by Clea Simon
‘Blackie!’ She is rushing across the open space, heedless of the men who turn and stare. ‘There you are. I was so worried.’ She catches me up in her arms, pressing me against her warm body. ‘I found you.’
I push back. Now is not the time to be treated as a pet. To be restrained, even by sentiment. Not when such a suspect character may yet be tailed and found.
‘I was scared.’ Her voice is soft, her breath on my neck, as she bends her face into my ruff. And then I feel the tears, the warmth, for their slight dampness does not penetrate my fur, and I relent. That man, the client, is gone, but Care is here, and holding me. If I can give her comfort, with my presence, then I shall. Besides, her embrace is warm. I begin to purr.
It is with some surprise, therefore, that I sense her, moments later, tense and tighten her grip. In response, I push back, pressing my paws against flesh that is no longer so soft or yielding.
‘What?’ The question is more an intake of breath, barely voiced. Beneath the leather of my pads, I feel her heart accelerate.
I look up, the better to gauge what has provoked such a response. To take in, as well, the waterfront crowd that may have provided such a threat. But no, the men who had been milling about before the truck arrived remain, still unoccupied by anything more than their stories and their dreams. They have even ceased to wonder at the girl, her drab attire hiding her incipient beauty where others broadcast more easily accessible wares. The truck is gone. The stone structure as silent as before. But the girl’s breathing has not resumed its deep and steady flow. Her pulse races, and I pick up fear in her scent, as well as a new paleness in her skin.
I would understand, but she does not look at me. Instead, she peers over the low wall at the water’s edge. With a twist and one more push, I free myself, dropping to the ground beside the barrier. The girl does not protest. She barely seems to notice and instead falls to her knees and leans forward, to peer over the rotting wood, over the crumbled place where access may be had. And so I join her, disciplining myself to ignore the rich sweetness of the creatures burrowing within, the juicy plumpness of their grubs. The rot that billows forth. This log does not interest her, but something does. The piers, perhaps, or the water below.
Only the tide is out. The rich and ever ripening fetor should have told me that, had I disciplined myself to recall the cycles of water and of sand. The drop below is steep, and access will be difficult, despite the fall of earth and rock that have made their way through this broken area. A path may be made, albeit a precipitous one, down to the strand below. For what lies down there seems solid, if not dry. The tide has gone, revealing a slick grey surface – river silt and sand – that now reflects the noonday sun back at us, wavering and pale. A crab breaks that reflection. It scuttles sideways across the damp, as if it would eclipse the white face with its black body. The trail it leaves is pocked and crooked, even as it makes its way and joins its fellows, converging trails serving to stripe the sun further. Cloud across the surface. Stripes laid on the moon. Only the girl is not looking at the reflection, the brightness that ripples as water overlaps it. She is following the passage of that crab, those crabs, to where they have begun to feast on the body of AD, broken and still, lying on the wet below.
EIGHT
She doesn’t scream. The girl is not so callous as to be inured to violent death, I have felt her start and heard her sudden intake of breath, but that is all. She has grown much over the last few years and has learned to control her responses. To hold herself in check. To be quiet and still.
These are the reflexes of a prey animal. A creature anticipating violence, and in response I flick my ears, surveying the scene for threats. Behind us, the rough conversation continues apace, voices broken only by bursts of loud laughter, which fades as quickly as it erupts. There is a forced quality to their merriment, a strain that undermines the illusion of mirth. But it is only desperation that I hear in that affected cheer, no immediate danger. Not to the girl. These men are scared, and while such may lash out in their fear, may seek power in the oppression of others, their focus is on each other. They bolster themselves with volume, not action, and will not move on until a stronger provocation is presented.
There is activity, still, back along the warehouses that may explain much – that may, in fact, include the man I spied. But that is farther from us, and besides, I am out of time. The girl has straddled the barrier and stares down at the body below – arms akimbo, head at an unnatural angle. One eye stares upward, no longer darting with suspicion or anger, its gloss fading in the sun. With an effort that is obvious to me at least, she turns away. Studies the slippage descending from the rotted place. The harbor wall is less clear cut here, its steep side giving way to crumbled rock fall. For one such as I, sure-footed and small, the path would be manageable, assuming I did not mind the dampness that oozes forth. For the girl, it is treacherous, despite her agility and slim build. I cannot see where her feet may rest or her hands gain purchase, and already the tide has begun to return.
Her visage, however, reveals her determination, her brow knit as she takes in the fall of pebbles and grit that angle their way down. It is a dangerous path, leading to an unstable floor. A floor, I see, as the crabs scatter and gather again, which is rapidly becoming subsumed by the incoming tide.
She points one foot down and digs her toe in the rock fall. A spray of sand streams out, and some of the stones follow. She adjusts, and tries again, finding a more solid perch. I feel my hackles rising in alarm. The dampness of the wall is already darkening the leg of her jeans. But it is not simply the rising waterline, the damp reek of which brings back too many memories of my own near demise. It is that crumble and her reach. Even were she to descend safely to the body below, her return will be more difficult, and she will not have the luxury of time.
She shifts her weight. She seeks another toehold, determined to descend, while still gripping the barrier. I mount the wooden tie beside her as I struggle to communicate my alarm. She will be trapped. She will succumb, and I, who know such death intimately, will be unable to pull her forth, as she once did for me.
‘What?’ She turns, her concentration broken.
I am unaware of having spoken, although my tail lashes in alarm.
‘You don’t have to follow me.’ She smiles, the girl, despite the dire descent she is about to attempt. No, I realize, the horror growing in me, she smiles because she has mistaken my alarm. She sees in me only the natural abhorrence of a furred beast for water. Of a cat, afraid to get wet.
I hiss. It is instinctive. Immediate and unbidden. And it is, I realize immediately, the wrong move. Hearing the fury, the spit of sibilance, accompanied, I am ashamed to say, by the automatic arching of my back, she draws back in alarm. The part of the barrier to which she clings must have seemed solid, although its breach had allowed her easy access to the fall beyond. It is not, and as she jerks back I can hear and, hard on that, smell its rot give way. A foul sweetness, more profound than even what I have scented before, is released as the wood beneath her crumbles. I see her turn in panic, widening eyes taking in the dark fragments as they fall to the wet sand below, more crumb-like than splinters. And just as quickly, her own weight shifts. She braces, leaning on that toehold in the wall, and I – I would reach for her. I would pull her back to safety. Back to me.
Only I am not as I once was, a man. A mentor. I am a black cat, feral and puffed with fear. And by instinct older than recall, she reacts – recoiling from my outstretched claw. It is too much. The wood gives way, breaking free. And although she grabs for the edge that still remains, she is overset. Her own weight will drag her down.
I cannot breathe. I stare. But she is smart, this girl. Agile, quick – with instincts near as sharp as mine. Nimbly as a possum’s, her fingers grasp the wall. Balancing on her one foothold, she feels about and finds another, close below. I see her momentarily close her eyes. She takes a breath, and shifts, her weight carrying her down to the next hold, and the ne
xt. It is an awkward descent, precipitous and rough, but she arrives at the bottom intact, except for some scraping on her palms, which she rubs against her thighs.
The sand beneath her changes color, sighs out its moisture and lightens as she steps. It sucks at her shoes as she walks carefully, away from the wall and toward the body that lies close by. The crabs scurry, moving from her as she approaches. They bob in the water that now laps at AD’s legs, clamping onto his ragged clothing for purchase. The girl, however, seems indifferent, even as her own shoes grow dark and sodden.
I stare down in alarm. The sand is clearly saturated. The water rising. The man she now kneels by is beyond any saving, even if he merited the risk she has taken on his behalf.
‘Hey! You!’ A man’s voice close at hand. Care looks up and I turn to see her client – Peter – by my side. He cranes over the blackened timbers of the wharfside, his lined face bright with alarm. ‘Miss Care!’
She stands, her knees dark from the water. ‘Can you help me?’ She gestures to the body in the sand.
‘Let’s get you up.’ He calls then turns and stands. More yelling and some gestures, and two men come, a knotted rope coiled over the leader’s shoulder. Laborers – the rope is borrowed at a cost. ‘It’s not safe down there.’
Care doesn’t respond. The statement so anodyne as to be meaningless. But when one man – the larger – descends and makes to grasp her around the waist, she draws back, stepping into the shallow water.
‘No, I can climb,’ she says, and gestures to the body. ‘It’s him – AD – you’ve got to take him up.’
‘He’s past helping, Miss.’ The man shakes his head slowly, his voice sad. ‘But the tide comes in fast here.’
‘I have to see—’ She steps toward the body. Kneels again and reaches for his shoulder. She will turn him over. She is looking for a wound. A knife cut or the piercing of a grappling hook, I think. Only the man moves closer to stand by the body’s upper torso.
‘Miss, please.’ More yelling up above. ‘Yo!’ My fur bristles as others crowd too close. ‘Come on, girly!’
‘Wait.’ She checks his pockets, her hands coming out empty.
‘Miss!’ A little wave – a boat’s wake, perhaps – overtops the body. The man shifts his stance, water puddling when he lifts his feet. ‘He’s just – this guy, he wasn’t in good shape. Please.’
Another wave over the body. AD’s outstretched arm begins to float, one hand moving as if to beckon. His head begins to turn. Care stands and stumbles back, and the large man has her. ‘Please, Miss.’
She nods and swallows. At last, the danger – or the horror – hitting home. ‘I need to see—’
She’d pull away to carry on in her investigation, but one more wave sweeps in, catching her and wetting them both up to their knees.
‘Go!’ He pushes her to the rope and she begins to climb. She is halfway up when she stops and turns. The water washes over the body; the tide has begun to move it toward the piers. The limbs float free, gesturing.
‘Here you go.’ Her client, Peter, extends his arm and almost out of courtesy, Care responds, taking his outstretched hand and letting herself be pulled onto the wharf. The men cheer, and cheer again as her would-be rescuer follows, to drag himself over the top. He is soaked, from head to toe. The sand below already obscured by water, deep enough to be dark. Rough, too.
‘Could we get a boat?’ Care turns toward the water. AD is still visible, the hump of his scarred back breaking the surface as he spins, caught on some outcropping of the pier.
‘What do you want to do that for?’ a dark-haired man, weathered as those timbers, asks. ‘He’ll be gone before the rozzers can get here. Let him go. He was just a scat head.’ He is dry and scowls in disapproval, though whether at the fuss or the appropriation of the men – or the rope – I cannot tell. The four-pronged hook that hangs at his belt marks him as a master here.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I knew him.’
The man eyes her, suspicion on his face.
‘I know he cooked – that he was a scat dealer.’ Indeed, that drug, which they so quaintly name, was what kept their small gang together. ‘But he didn’t use.’
‘You seen him lately?’ A tilt of the head toward the water below. ‘Skinny as a rail.’
‘It’s true.’ The speaker nods, lisping through his missing teeth. ‘I heard him, yelling for it. “The scat, the scat,” like he was mad.’
‘And you saw him fall?’
A shrug. The toothless man looks at his colleague. Despite the hook at his own belt, he chooses not to commit.
‘Nothing you can do now, Miss Care.’ The client – Peter – has found a rag, which he hands to Care, and she wipes her lower face. Her eyes she keeps on the body as it makes its way to the deep. She doesn’t argue anymore, and the men begin to disperse. She has no evidence – no proof to refute what they’ve said, and in truth, the fall is high enough that a step, badly chosen, could result in a neck as neatly snapped as a rat’s, were I to grab and shake it.
I regret now my hesitation, as the opportunity to examine the corpse is swallowed by the tide. My superior faculties could have discerned much about his death, both in terms of timing and the cause. But even before the water took him, I caught no whiff of the acrid smoke that the drug produces. Nor was there any sign of intoxication in the man as he made his way here not long before. No, I am unable to share any of this with the girl, but as I look up into her solemn face, I believe the evidence has taken her to the same conclusion I have reached. This body was not supposed to be discovered, left here as the tide flows in. This man, AD, was murdered.
NINE
I see her store these thoughts away, her face as closed as a trap. She wipes it, again. Pushes her damp-darkened hair back from her face and stands.
‘Nothing to see!’ The man Peter turns to his colleagues, away from Care. ‘Girl got spooked and fell, that’s all. It’s all over.’
Arms upraised, as if he would shoo them off, he stands with his back to her. It’s a protective stance, and despite his size – smaller than his colleagues, lame – he acts as if he were guarding her. Or claiming her, I consider, as I slip by to press myself against her leg. Silent, she faces the water still. A dark shape can still be seen, drifting.
‘Go on now.’ Muttering, the men disperse, and, as if with effort, the girl turns to her aspiring guardian.
‘I wasn’t spooked,’ she tells him. It seems an odd time to explain her motive. A show of frailty may be dangerous, but this man has already displayed a willingness to protect her, not to mention that he requires her services. ‘I knew him.’
He glances back and then looks away again, a little too quickly. He cannot have heard what she told the larger man who joined her, down on the harbor floor. His ears are nowhere near as keen as mine. But the rapidity of his response implies something. He knows this – or something like.
‘His name was AD.’ Care continues, studying his face. She is looking for a reaction, I believe. ‘He used to live around here. He’s been in prison, or on a work gang. I’m not sure. But he wasn’t – he didn’t use.’
Peter nods, his mouth set in a tight line. He doesn’t ask how the dead man came to this place – came back. This is not enough to raise the girl’s concern. The inquisitive do not fare well in this world. But as he reaches an arm around her, she starts and pulls away.
‘We should leave here,’ he says, as his arm falls back by his side. ‘He was right about the rozzers, but still … if they come asking. It’s not a good place.’
She turns to him as if finally seeing him. The body has finally disappeared. ‘Peter,’ she says. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Me?’ His eyebrows shoot up. It’s too much, and I feel her tense. She knows he is hiding something. ‘I work down here. I told you – with Rafe.’
She nods, but the way she bites her lower lip lets me know she is considering his words. His truthfulness, and it occurs to me. She has not questioned how AD came t
o be down on the sand. How he came to die.
She had only moments to examine the body, and she lacks my sense of smell. Still, she must have seen that he lay intact, with none of the bleeding one might expect from the mouth or of the nose had he died of the impact. From the fall. The tide was coming quickly, as if a willing collaborator in the concealment, but it was those men who rushed her from the scene, their charity possibly hiding their complicity with the act. Once again, I reproach myself for not joining her on the silty bar, for in close proximity to the dead man’s body, I may have been able to discern much more.
The opportunity is lost, but I would have her question the figure now before her further. He stands waiting, as if expecting such, or, perhaps, a reprimand.
‘So you did,’ she says. ‘But you also said that without Rafe, you couldn’t get hired.’
He nods, again a shade too quickly. ‘Yes, but I was hoping. I thought maybe I could get picked up as a single hand. An extra.’
She cocks her head. She must hear the same false note as I. ‘It’s after noon,’ she says, her voice reasonable and soft. ‘The hiring is done.’
A shrug. ‘Not like I have any place else to go,’ he says. He’s looking away. Past her, but not – I note – at the low stone building. ‘No place better. And word is, there’s a ship due soon. A big one. With those, sometimes there are extra shifts, and the bosses less picky about hiring.’
‘You don’t need the money.’ Her voice is quiet but clear. ‘You have cash.’