"Good fucking luck getting Ellis's pet to share anything." Jennett snorted and turned away.
With a good-natured chuckle, Ackermann waved dismissively at Jennett's back.
"Yes, yes," Ackermann said. "But where is he now? For what did the Captain need him?"
He wouldn't stop, Vincent realized. Ackermann would keep asking questions until he heard what he wanted to hear—or until Vincent shut him up.
Vincent eased himself up to his full height. He stared into Ackermann's sparkling blue eyes and made sure he had the man's full and serious attention before he spoke, and when he spoke he made his voice as deadly serious as he could manage.
"What makes you think," Vincent said, "that you need to know?"
They went quiet, all of them. Even the rustle of clothing being pulled on and cots being made up stopped. Ackermann's perpetually cheery expression hung like a falsely bright curtain across a darkened window.
"When Captain Ellis wants you to know something," Vincent said, and the words rang in his head like nails being hammered into a coffin, "then Captain Ellis will tell you."
Jennett snorted again. The rest of them turned away, one and two at a time. Langston cast a confused glance between Ackermann and Vincent before retreating toward his cot.
"Is my mistake," Ackermann said. Then he turned away, too.
Vincent let himself breathe again—slowly, cautiously. Completely in control.
All right, then. If there'd been any doubt about Vincent not truly being one of the boys, he'd blasted it away now.
Vincent resisted the urge to scrub his hands across his face and turned toward his bed—moving slowly, with a calm confidence he didn't feel. Behind him, the big double doors of the barn turned barracks rolled open, and the scalding aroma of coffee stung his nostrils. Mr. Lockton unloaded the coffee urn onto the plank table. Mrs. Lockton and Mrs. Epler wouldn't be far behind with the rest of breakfast.
Vincent shrugged out of his coat, kicked out of his boots, and fell into bed. He didn't feel much like eating—that weird, hot stink of blood still lingered in his nose. But he sure as hell was going to sleep hard.
Chapter 26
Hell Town was everything its name suggested. It felt dark all the time, even at midday. Greasy-looking pubs and taverns leaned against ramshackle hostels. Houses squeezed together, wall pressed against wall, although enough space remained between them that Ger glimpsed a prostitute and her sailor customer putting it to profitable use. The air along the wharves was never pure, but it seemed thicker and more rank in this part of town. Ger imagined he could even see the stink, a filthy brown miasma that urged him to hold his breath.
Ger breathed anyhow and kept going.
He'd somehow thought that once he'd decided to storm off and bring Ripley to justice, Ripley would show his face and Ger could accuse him of Alvie Fox's murder. And then, however terrifying that thought was, however horribly it turned out, it would at least be done.
It hadn't worked out like that at all, of course.
Ger had taken his suspicions to the constable. The constable had listened with a suitably grave expression and thanked Ger for his information. But really, all it came to was that one dock worker had killed another in some dispute over whatever it was the impoverished came into dispute over. Should this Burke Ripley fellow show up, the constable would be glad to ask him some questions. But what can you do about a murderer if no one has seen him, and you don't even know whether he's still in town? Which was pretty much what Kellen had said. And very much what Ger both wanted to believe and wanted not to.
He'd kept looking for Ripley. He had to. Just like doing the right thing wasn't always safe, it wasn't always convenient or easy, either. That didn't let Ger off the hook.
In the meantime, he'd also had to eat every once in a while. He kept telling himself he ought to find other work, but the wharves were familiar. Who knew, maybe Ripley would even turn up there eventually. Ger shaped up at the lower wharf. Ripley had used to shape up there, too.
Kellen never did, and that was as good a reason as the other.
If nothing else, the wharves had given Ger the chance to work alongside men who'd known Alvie and knew Ripley. He'd hoped that maybe by some twist of fortune one of them would someday say something useful. Eventually, what he'd heard was that no one had seen Ripley lately and damn hadn't that bastard gotten ill-tempered after the strumpets at the Painted Lady had tossed him out and he'd taken to holing up in that shack up around Vine?
And that was how Ger had come to be walking up Water Street north of Vine, right in the heart of Hell Town.
Water Street was more a mud path than anything resembling a real street in this part of the city. If there had ever been paving stones, they'd been long buried in muck. A maze of alleys and courtyards cut across and along the path, bordered by the river to the east and a bluff to the west. That bluff was the original river embankment, and dozens of caves had been dug into it by the settlers who first came across the ocean, before Philadelphia was more than a couple of creeks spilling into the river.
More recently, the caves had served as gambling dens and brothels and unlicensed taverns. The city fathers had shut most of those down, more than once, and many had either been filled in or become basements for actual buildings—as if having real walls and a door had changed the nature of the business being conducted in most of them. A handful of the caves remained almost as they had been, with a few planks tossed together to cover them. Dank as they had to be, Ger figured they must be better than the streets.
Ger waited for the sailor to come stumbling out from between the houses and then for the prostitute to come out after him. Then Ger called out to her.
"What's your pleasure?" she asked, flashing a tempting glimpse of cleavage—and then some. Even in the murky brown light, Ger could easily see the dark rounds of her nipples.
But she didn't look like she'd bathed since the day she was born, and as she drew closer, she didn't smell like she had, either. He wasn't all that tempted.
She fixed Delft blue eyes on Ger and gave him a sharp looking-over. Her face was young, but those eyes, they seemed ancient. Ger had seen Kellen look tired and old for her age, but never quite like that. He understood, suddenly, exactly why Kellen worked the docks.
"I don't work free." The prostitute pulled up a little more than an arms-length from Ger and eyed him with the wary look of a cat trying to decide whether to hiss or purr.
Ger forced himself to smile "I'm looking for Burke Ripley."
She gave him another sharp looking-over and then shrugged. "Your funeral. Two up and back against the bluff. Don't expect him to be there, though. Haven't actually seen him for a bit."
Then she tucked her wares back into her dress front and turned away. Ger followed her directions to the second alley up the street and then down that alley until he reached the bluff and the even narrower alley that followed its line.
The house she meant wasn't hard to find. Of wood instead of brick, it leaned against the bluff at a tottery angle that to Ger indicated it had been built over one of the caves dug at an angle back and down into the cliff, not quite a cellar but not quite upright enough to be a dwelling in itself. One window was oiled paper, more difficult to see through than glass, but the other was missing altogether. Ger sucked up his anxiety, sidled up to the house, and looked inside.
The house was only one room at the front, with a door at the back that Ger guessed led into the cave cellar. A mattress lay curled up against one wall, half turned in on itself as if someone had hurled it into that corner. A low table held a crust of bread, crawled over with mold. Ger was surprised the rats hadn't had it yet—maybe it was too far gone even for them. The prostitute was right. No one was home, and it didn't look like anyone had been for a while now—maybe not in as many days as it had been since Alvie Fox was cut open and hung up to bleed.
Unless someone was in the back room, in the part that was really a dirt cave dug back into the old embankment.
It seemed appropriate that Ripley might be living in a cave, holed up in a den like the beast he was. There was something about the ill-fitted, haphazardly-built door that made it easy to believe Ripley might come bursting out through it. A sense of danger lived in the air outside that shack, creeping at the edge of Ger's vision and jittering along the back of his neck.
He thought about going in. He thought about braving the rats that were without a doubt lurking in the shadows of that single room, tip-toeing across the rotting floor, and cracking open that door to see if Ripley was behind it. But even if Ripley was hiding in the cellar, what then? Pointing at Ripley and shouting, "Hide and go seek, you're it!" hardly seemed wise.
Waiting and watching still seemed like the most viable solution. At least now he had a concrete idea on where to wait and what to watch—maybe. The way things were going, this would turn into yet another dead end.
As he walked away, Ger told himself he didn't want it to be a dead end. He wanted this over, one way or another.
~
On the way home, Ger skimmed close to the warehouse fronts as he walked, keeping an eye out for Ripley—as always. The sun had started staying later in the day, so the shadows didn't stretch all the way from waterfront onto the river yet. The air was warm enough to be pleasant, and men shouted back and forth as they headed for home. Laughter wove a counterpoint to the rhythm of footsteps stomping along the docks.
A familiar voice rose and fell in the midst of all those others. Ger stopped without really meaning to, and a second later heard an equally familiar rumble of laughter.
Finch was hard to hide, all broad shoulders and flashing teeth. Ger had no trouble spotting him. Beside Finch, Em's golden head caught the sunlight. They stood near the dock's edge, just past the pay lines. Em had a copy of the Gazette tucked under his arm, and Ger smiled. Despite all his considerable enthusiasm, Em hadn't even managed all his letters during the time Ger had tried to teach him to read. That didn't stop Em from buying the paper and carrying it around like some badge of would-be honor.
The sudden pang of missing his friends was so sharp that Ger's breath caught. It would be the easiest thing in the world to step out of the shadows and weave through the crowd and join them. They could shoot the breeze for a few minutes, have a few laughs. Hell, Ger would even be glad to listen to Em rambling about ghosts in the water.
He could ask after Kellen. Make sure she was doing all right. What could it hurt?
Then Finch stepped to one side, and Em turned his head, and Kellen stepped up between the two of them.
That pang was even sharper. Ger couldn't see Kellen's face clearly, but he remembered it well enough—the stubborn set of her chin, the almost-crooked line of her nose, the flecks of pale gold in her gray eyes.
I walked away for a reason, Ger reminded himself. He could miss Kellen, miss all three of them as much as he wanted, but it didn't change a damned thing.
Ger watched them a second longer anyhow. As he turned to go, a faint sound like a whisper or maybe like water rushing in the distance tickled at Ger's ears. Ger stopped again, stood still and listened and tried to decide what the sound had been or even just where it had come from.
It didn't come again. Ger snorted a short laugh.
Damn Em and his ghost stories.
~
Kellen wasn't really listening to Em. He was background noise, like the creak of hulls or the screams of seabirds or the whispering gurgle of water around the pilings. She stood between Em and Finch and pretended she wasn't watching Ger as he watched them from the shadows of the warehouse across the way.
Come home, she wanted to say. But he wouldn't have heard, and even if he had, it was for the best if she didn't say it. She'd counted on other people to look out for her too much already. Time to stand on her own.
Ger finally looked away, and a second later he walked away—again. Kellen could have gone after him, but she didn't. She wouldn't.
"And I don't care what anybody says," Em was saying. "I heard them. I bet if I came down here at night, I'd even see them. They'd be all dancing on the water and glowing and romantic and stuff."
Em spread his arms wide and wiggled his hips. Kellen assumed that was supposed to be the dancing part. Kellen had to duck to one side to avoid being hit by that damned newspaper Em couldn't read but insisted on hauling around everywhere anyhow.
Finch chuckled. If Kellen hadn't been so bone tired and heart weary, she might have. But come down here at night? Kellen frowned.
"Don't be dumb, Em," she said.
Em's goofy smile crashed into a wounded frown. "I am not dumb, Kellen," Em said.
Before Kellen could say anything more, Finch turned a rare frown on Kellen. "You know, our Emmy might not be the brightest of minds," Finch started.
"My ma says I'm bright," Em said. "The brightest light in her life. Maybe that's just because I'm all she has, but I don't think so. I think she really means it."
Em nodded. Finch smiled and put his hand on Em's shoulder, but his eyes stayed trained on Kellen.
"But I don't see much use in treating him cruel," Finch finished.
Kellen's face heated. "I wasn't trying to be cruel. I was trying to be realistic. It's not my fault he's too dumb for his own good."
Finch leveled a long, hard look at Kellen, so intense it made her want to turn around and walk away. When he spoke next, his words were slow and carefully measured.
"Do you know," he said, "that Michael Finch ain't my true-given name? Back when I was just a boy, my owner said I couldn't use the one my father gave me no more, and he gave me this one."
Em's mouth dropped open a little, like it did every time he smelled a story coming. Kellen couldn't tell what Finch's words had to do with Em being a fool, but she wasn't about to interrupt. When Michael Finch had something to say, you let him say it.
"Me being just a boy, I didn't understand how important it was, that true name of mine. I let it slip right out of my head," Finch said. "It's a hard thing when you come to understand how you let something important get away from you because you didn't know 'til later just how important it was."
Kellen frowned. She still didn't know what Finch was talking about, but his story was starting to feel uncomfortably like it might have a point.
"It ain't Em's fault that Vincent left you, and it ain't his fault that you drove Ger off, neither," Finch said. "All that blame, it lays across your shoulders. Ain't no cause for taking it out on Em."
The breath flew straight out of Kellen. She couldn't think of anything to do but to gape at Finch. Her face felt like someone had splashed it with flame, it burned so hot.
Em squirmed, looking between Finch and Kellen. After a very long, all too silent moment, he put a hand on Kellen's shoulder, like Finch had done to him.
"Aw, it's all right," Em said. "Kellen's just scared. We all get scared sometimes."
He might as well have punched Kellen in the gut. She sucked in her breath and blinked her eyes, trying to keep the tears out of them.
No damn way was she going to cry like a girl. No.
Em's smile took over again, as bright as if Kellen's words hadn't cut him only moments before.
"Tell you what, Kellen," Em said. "I'll do just what I said. I'll find those ghosts. When I do, I can learn all about them. And then I can tell you all about them, and you won't have to be scared no more. You can't be scared of things anymore, once you know what they are. Right, Finch?"
Kellen shook her head fiercely, but it was Finch who answered Em.
"That's a kind thought, Emmy, but it ain't a good idea," Finch said. "No good at all. You can't be roaming the streets at night. You haul yourself into bed at night, and then you stay there."
Em's face crumpled into disappointment.
"Finch is right," Kellen said. "This world, it's not a good place, Em. You have to look out for yourself. Nobody will do it for you. So you keep your head down and don't go poking around in places you shouldn't be."
Kellen
could feel Finch's gaze. Em, for his part, looked between Kellen and Finch a couple more times. Then he sighed and shrugged.
"You two, you worry too much," Em said. "But I guess you're all right, anyhow. Aren't we all right, Finch?"
Finch caught Kellen's eye and lifted his brows. Kellen responded with a faint smile.
"Good as gold, Emmy," Finch rumbled. "Right as rain."
Em nodded amiably and started off ahead of them, pointed in the direction of the Broken Barrel.
"Em," Kellen said, before he could get too far ahead.
Em stopped and turned back, and his expression was as wide open and full of innocence as ever.
"I'm sorry I called you dumb," Kellen said.
Em grinned. Then he turned and ambled ahead of Kellen and Finch, just as if all was perfectly right with the world.
Chapter 27
When Rawle walked down the hill to the barracks again, he was beside and a half step behind Ellis, like a dog at its master's heel. Still, he walked all on his own which, considering the last time Vincent had seen him, wasn't a bad thing.
The barracks doors still stood open to the fading sky as the men finished the cold cuts left from noon dinner that had served as their evening meal. The breeze from outside smelled like sunshine and approaching rain. There hadn't been much talk among the men, at least not within earshot of Vincent. He sensed there may have been plenty said during the day, while they were off choring and Vincent had slept, but that evening he'd heard mostly just the chirps and flutters of birds fighting over roosting territory in the trees that lined the gardens.
Ellis came through those trees first, and Rawle after him. Even from a distance, the dark lines etched across Rawle's face and trailing down into his coat collar were visible.
"Well, I'll be damned," Goodson murmured.
"Shit." Langston spoke, as usual, louder than really necessary. "What the hell did they do to him?"
The other men gradually left the benches along the plank table and went to stand in the double doorway. Vincent stood, too, but stayed where he was.
A Stillness of the Sun (Crowmakers: Book 1): A Science Fiction Western Adventure Page 19