The Ninth Life

by Clea Simon

  ‘Damn,’ she says in a breathy voice and reaches for the wall. Leaning forward, she vomits, her head hanging low. It’s anyone’s guess at this point whether she will fall or right herself, but something other than sickness is driving her, and with an effort she pulls herself upright, staggers back a few steps and then stops. She wipes her mouth and pulls down a top that does little to shield her from the night chill. Then she, too, opens the door.

  ‘Well, look who’s back—’ Again, the words are cut off as she slips inside. The last thing I hear is laughter.

  Curious about AD and the transaction I have just witnessed, I retrace her steps down the alley. It is a blighted place, littered with refuse and waste. This close to the water, much of the garbage is organic – the carcass of a gull, gnawed to the bone, briefly takes my interest. The droppings of the river rats, glossy with fish, and a moldering pile of vegetable peelings – the bar must have a kitchen – make the pavement slick, and I chose my path with care.

  What draws me are not these leavings, however. Nor the traces of blood and sex left by the wall. No, as distasteful as I find it, I follow the trail of that caustic stench, that strange burning, to its source. It is easy to find, still warm from that flame. A glass tube, a vial or pipe of some sort, its odor most intense at its open end from which the foul smoke must have emanated. I sniff it gingerly and draw back with a start. It is sharp, like the jagged edges of its fellow vials, several of which lie scattered around, and bitter, with a bite that makes me lick my poor nose for relief. A horrible substance, yes, and instantly recognizable, at least to one such as I. This is what AD offered Care that day when I accompanied her to their lair. This is what I have smelled on the boy. Suddenly, the marks on his hands – burn marks – make sense, as does the girl’s concern. I have seen the whore stumbling out of the alley. Have seen her sickness and her craving for more. This is not a life I would wish for any living thing. In this light the girl’s desire for independence – for a life separate from that room full of AD’s acolytes – becomes distressingly clear.

  Such insight does not, however, answer the more pressing questions on my mind. And so, taking a moment for the burnt scent to clear my passages, I contemplate my next move. A ‘deal,’ the scarecrow Jonah had said. Quite possibly the same deal that the old man had been inquiring about when he met his end. Unlike a human I do not jump at conclusions, finding them as elusive as a centipede in the dirt. I seek patterns, that is all, and from them I trace and track and hunt.

  A burst of laughter – the bar-room door has opened again, expelling two more men – interrupts my thoughts. And as I step back, more careful now, into the shadows, and they pass, I detect a familiar odor. Looking up, I find myself surprised for the first time this night. It is the brute, Brian, the one who has pursued Care. The one from my dream. Although his red face is now more the product of drink than of my brief mauling, I would know him anywhere. His companion, though, is not his fellow thug – the one with a face like a rat. He is walking with AD and they are heading toward the buildings.

  I am momentarily torn. I came here with the intent of studying the docks. That is where this deal would supposedly happen. It is also where Care’s friend and mentor met his end. But I am intrigued by this odd pairing and, with an instinct that I hope is informed by experience, I decide to follow.

  Soon we are walking down a broken road, its pavement crumbling. And then I know where we are. To my left, as the pavement falls away, lies a culvert. Here is where I first met that choleric savage. Here, where I nearly died.

  They are talking, laughing as they walk, seemingly oblivious to their nearness to this small and squalid stream. I cannot be. Perhaps their senses have been dulled by habit. By the drink and drugs that they consume. Perhaps they simply do not care, the rivulet one more feature of the crumbling cityscape that they call home.

  I cannot be so blasé. I smell the water, low now and poisoned with waste. Smell, too, the rats and other living things that use this unclean source. Scavengers, all. Had I been slightly less strong – had the girl not ventured in – I would have made a meal for such as them.

  These men, too, are scavengers. Having witnessed AD with that woman, I perceive the same instincts driving him that I would in a rat. The weak, the young – I remember the girl’s cohort in the abandoned building – are fodder in his desperate battle for survival, nothing more. He is no mastermind, but rather the tool of someone. Someone like Bushwick? Care thinks so, I know that, but I remember the stink of fear on him and I wonder. As I follow, making my way from the shadow of one pile of rubbish to the next, I bide my time. I will wait and watch before I make up my mind.

  ‘What’s that?’ I freeze. AD is not as impaired as he might seem, not as drunk as his red-faced colleague, and I have been distracted by my thoughts.

  ‘What’s what?’ His bearish companion spins around, his booted feet sending fragments of asphalt bouncing down into the shallow stream.

  ‘I thought I saw something.’ AD cranes around, tall and looming. I flatten, slowly and, I hope, imperceptibly, willing his human-dull gaze to skim over my midnight fur. ‘Like, someone following us.’

  ‘You’re drunk.’ The big ruffian claps a hand to his companion’s back, but AD waves him off then steps forward, toward the culvert. ‘It’s nothing. Maybe a rat.’

  AD holds up his hand for silence and looks around. I see his eyes, reflecting light from some distant building, the grime rimming his broken nails. I press my belly into the cold dirt. I know he cannot smell me. He lacks the senses, lacks the skills. But still the fur along my spine begins to rise. I consider where I will bolt if he makes a move.

  ‘Come on, AD.’ The big one’s voice has taken on a whiny quality despite its depth. He shifts from one foot to another, cold or bored. ‘It’s all in your head. Or maybe it’s one of those brats you use as runners.’

  ‘No.’ AD shakes his head, scans the road back toward the bar and then the empty street ahead. ‘I told them to all get lost until tomorrow. That I wouldn’t need them until then.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a ghost then.’ With a shrug, the big man kicks the dirt. Pebbles roll by me, splashing into the oily water. ‘There’s got to be some of them around here, for sure.’

  ‘Maybe.’ AD doesn’t seem convinced and turns toward his colleague. Back up the deserted road. ‘Wouldn’t that be just my luck? The old man haunting me the night before the big deal?’

  ‘Ha,’ his companion barks. ‘If he were that smart he’d still be alive, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Maybe.’ One last craning, checking to the right and left, and AD starts walking again. The fur along my spine settles. They are heading toward the buildings, empty shells whose windows look blacker even than the pockmarked road. I give them a good head start before I follow, darting sideways to a pile of rubbish and then to a dislodged curbstone. AD is on high alert, I gather, no matter what his extracurricular pleasures may be.

  I consider the implications of this, of his comments about a deal, as they turn a corner ahead. I had known the old man’s death had taken place down by the water. The girl had said as much. It should not surprise that her onetime leader, AD, would have some knowledge of – if not involvement in – his murder. To have this brought home, though, so close to where I nearly met my end, is chilling. I do not consider myself an imaginative type. I trade in facts, as all beasts do. We eat, we mate, we live. But for a moment, I find myself wondering about Care’s previous companion, the mentor to whom she feels such loyalty.

  Did he recognize the moment of his death as it came upon him? Did he see the perpetrators who were cutting his time short? It is fruitless musing, of course, as all such thoughts are, but it distracts me for a moment as I let the two men move ahead. And then I look, and they are gone.

  I freeze. I stand in the lee of a rusted-out car, its tires, doors and anything else removable long since stripped from its metal hull. The wreck obscures my vision, but as a cat I prefer my other senses. My guard hairs,
erect, pick up the breeze and vibrations of the street. My whiskers tingle at movement around the way. My ears – yes, I hear them. No longer talking, but their breathing, the big man’s congested and loud. While I was distracted they turned inward toward a sunken doorway. Its stairs are obscured by rubbish of a more organic kind.

  Slowly, as if I were stalking prey, I approach. The two men disappear inside but a broken window provides access and prime viewing. It’s the building where the girl had been sheltering, where she had found the boy. Only now the group that had called it home – the six or seven youths who had laughed at her – has dispersed. Something else is different as well. The smell of burning has not dissipated. I suspect it will not be gone from this place until the last of the brick has crumbled into mud and the wooden laths of the exposed wall have burnt to ash. But it is much diminished. These two changes are enough to make the place seem both larger and colder.

  The big thug senses it too. ‘Lonely, ain’t it?’ He shoves his hands in his pockets as he looks around. ‘Hey, if none of your brats are here …’

  He looks toward AD. In the light from the street I can see a yearning, hungry look on his fat face.

  ‘I’m out.’ AD doesn’t even look up. He’s gone over to the corner where he fiddles with a cabinet – could it be a safe? – and withdraws an object, wrapped in rags.

  ‘You gave the last of it to that skank?’ The big man steps up to him. Stops and steps back. ‘Whoa, sorry, man. I was out of line.’

  ‘Yeah, you were.’ AD turns, a gun in his hand. ‘You know better, man. Just wait until the deal goes down. We’ll have everything we need. Everything you could ever want.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Brian licks his lips. ‘So, everything’s set?’

  ‘Uh huh.’ AD holds the gun up. Turns it over. In the weak light, it reflects blue. ‘We’ve got to get the marker back, and that’s it. But I have a good idea where it is. Where she is, I should say.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  There comes a time to acknowledge one’s limitations. Deficits of strength or wit, perhaps. At times, even of will. This is not one of them. Although I, as a furred creature, lack many abilities – the most frustrating at this point in time being my inability to either confront these criminals directly or, at the very least, specifically and clearly warn the girl – I do have other capabilities which more than make up for their lack.

  In brief, I turn. I am faster and stealthier than these men. I can find Care and will figure out a way of warning her. In addition to my small size and dark color, I have another advantage: I now know what they seek.

  Quick as a water bug across a kitchen counter, I slip out of the building and up to the street. The moon is gone, the sky not yet hazy with the mottled dawn. But it’s not the darkness that holds me up. No. I pause for thought. I am quicker and, I dare say, smarter than these lumbering men with their cruel ways. But I do not have much slack for error here. I will have difficulty enough once I find her.

  Diamond Jim. He and that necklace are at the center of her quest. He was the one who hired her mentor, and yet he is the one who seems to have no further interest in recovering the materials that were apparently lost. However, she has already attempted to pry information out of the stout, self-satisfied businessman and failed. That he is part of this I have no doubt. My acute sense of smell has already alerted me that the class distinctions among humans are thinner and more malleable than they would let on.

  I cannot see her returning to Bushwick’s, and for that small mercy I am grateful. That leaves – no …

  I stop so quickly my paws cannot take hold and I slide to the lip of a puddle. Coming up the street, I see an unmistakable silhouette: the girl, and this time she has Tick in tow.

  Mrow! With a howl like a beast possessed, I throw myself in front of them, puffing my fur up for emphasis.

  ‘Blackie?’ She stops. I hiss.

  The boy steps back. ‘I told you,’ he says. ‘That cat’s nuts.’

  ‘No.’ She extends one hand, motioning him back. The other is clasped beneath her coat, holding something. The ledger. ‘Something’s spooked him. What is it, Blackie?’

  She steps forward and I stare up at her eyes. She is trying, her brow knitted as she concentrates, and I am reminded of another time. Those same eyes, filled with tears and sadness. Green with flecks of gold, brighter than in daylight. Brighter, despite the storm, despite my own fading. I could not cry out, then. I could only stare as they receded. As I receded. Only, she saved me.

  ‘Care, it’s really late.’ The boy’s whine breaks into my reverie and the image is gone. In this dim light, the gemstone colors of her eyes are as murky as a roadside puddle. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Yeah, me too.’ She’s whispering. They both are. This part of town is quiet for a city. But it’s more than that. What had AD said about ghosts? There are too many memories here. Too many people have died.

  ‘You coming?’ She looks over at me and I realize my fur has flattened. My back settled down. My warning has gone unheeded and I have no other tool to deploy. I brush against her to signal my assent.

  ‘It’s the ditch, isn’t it?’ She reaches down to pet me; her hand is cool on my back. The boy turns to her but she ignores him. This is private, between us, and my purr, faint though it may be, acknowledges this.

  Without another word, the three of us walk on – back to AD’s lair, where he and that savage wait. As we make our way, I formulate a plan. I cannot tell her, not precisely, what she faces. I can, however, give her warning.

  When we reach the building, I make my move. I wait until Care and the boy are on their way down the broken stairs and slip in through the window. AD and Brian are sitting on some makeshift bedding, the flickering gas flame of a small lantern glinting off the brown bottle they pass back and forth.

  ‘What’s this?’ AD calls out as the girl descends, blinking. The light isn’t much, but it stands in stark contrast to the dark outside. ‘Care?’

  The brute beside him lumbers to his feet. This is my moment. I jump.

  I am too far away to reach his face. Even his hands, scarred and calloused as they are, would be more vulnerable than his legs. But my purpose is not to disable him, merely to make the big man call out – to buy the girl a moment’s notice and deprive him of the element of surprise.

  ‘What?’ I have landed on his thigh and with all my claws extended manage to pierce the thick and greasy cloth to scratch the skin inside. ‘Get off!’

  I am pulled back, the hand closing on the looser skin of my neck. I release him and close my eyes, waiting for the final blow. The shock of pain. I am lucky. He merely throws me and I collide with the far wall, shaking loose the last of the plaster that sticks to these laths before I fall to the floor.

  The girl gasps. She turns to stare at me, and so I make myself stand despite a stabbing pain. My effort will have been in vain if it only distracts her further.

  ‘Hey, darling.’ AD is on his feet now, smiling. ‘Just the girl I was hoping to see.’ He steps toward her, the gun by his side.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ she says. She holds her ground, although I can hear the minute tremble in her voice. ‘I want to make a deal.’

  That stops him. His smile turns quizzical and he tilts his head. When the ruffian by his side starts to move, he puts his hand out to stop him. ‘A deal?’

  She nods. ‘You want the marker. I want some information.’ I am the one who is panting, but it is she who licks her lips before continuing. ‘Why did Diamond Jim hire the old man? Was it all a scam – insurance fraud or a payoff?’

  She’s offering too much. We all see it, and AD’s smile widens, the flickering light showing off his canine teeth. ‘Insurance fraud?’

  ‘Reporting something stolen that you’ve really given away.’ She swallows. ‘Or traded.’

  ‘Traded is right, darling. Only you have no idea how much insurance a pretty bauble like that can buy.’ He steps forward, holding the gun. His other hand outstretch
ed. ‘The marker?’

  She pulls out the ledger. ‘Here.’

  He doesn’t even take it. ‘I have no use for that.’

  ‘Here then.’ She hands the ticket to him.

  He takes it and, with a last glare, tucks the gun in the back of his pants so he can better examine the slip of paper, turning it over between his long fingers. Bent like this, his face is obscured. ‘This? But all it says is …’ He frowns, the dirt accentuating the wrinkles in his face. ‘No, my girl. Hand it over.’

  ‘I don’t …’ She pauses, shifts. Chin up and defiant. ‘Tell me why.’

  ‘You aren’t as smart as you think you are, darling.’ He shakes his head. ‘I already did. Now, give it here.’

  She shifts slightly, unsure of what is coming. But I am not surprised when the boy steps up and then steps past her, with sad eyes that are both apology and explanation for everything that has gone down.

  ‘Tick?’ AD once again extends his hand. He is waiting. ‘Give it here.’

  The boy reaches into his pocket, eyes downcast. When he pulls out the brass weight, Care starts forward as if she is going to say something. As if she is going to reach for him. Instead, she holds herself back. The boy hands the heavy trinket to AD and steps back, his hand returning to his pocket.

  ‘That’s the marker?’ Care’s eyes swivel from the boy to the men.

  ‘Didn’t know how to read this, did you, darling?’ AD examines the bottom of the weight with its incised markings. ‘Didn’t know what it signaled.’

  ‘Tick, did you know?’ She turns to the boy, breathless and confused.

  He shrugs.

  ‘Our little magpie doesn’t want to sing,’ AD growls. ‘No matter, it all worked out just fine once I realized what the boy had nicked. Once I groked its worth. He picks up everything. Don’t you, Tick? Even things you’re supposed to pass along. Some message boy you turned out to be.’

  A harsh intake of breath, almost a sob. ‘Fat Peter – you thought he’d gotten it, that he was holding out … The emeralds,’ Care gasps out the words. ‘Oh, Tick.’