Angel Of The City (5 page)

She doesn
’t have to explain her question. I’m a thief. I work at night, after curfew and when everyone else is locked in their homes. We never speak of it, but such are the facts of life for a shade.

“
It’s a special job.”

I avoid her gaze, but the tone of my voice gives me away.

“For Devon.”

There
’s no use in lying. “Yes.”

She looks angry, or may
be disappointed. “He’s going to get you killed one day. I don’t understand why you let him use you like he does.”

Of course she doesn
’t understand. I’ve never told her about my past. To her I’m a simple thief and a shade. What would she think, I wonder, if she ever learned the truth? Her father was taken away by Counselors when she was a child. Her mother wasn’t able to support her and was forced to send her off. Most everyone in the city has at least one story like that. Counselors are universally despised, a deep visceral hatred made worse by the feeling of total impotence to do anything against them.

I shrug.
“He’s a big player and I’m small time. I just try and stay on his good side.”

“
He doesn’t have one.”

I stand to leave and try and kiss her goodbye, but she turns her head. It
’s all right. Whatever she thinks of me for working with Devon, it isn’t as bad as the truth. Nothing is as bad as the truth.

I
trudge through a thin layer of dirty snow as I make my way back to the seventy-first precinct. Specks of black soot stain the ground and swirl in the air about me, carried by the wind from factories in the Eastside. Ironworks, heavy machinery, textiles: the eastern out district is crammed with enormous, sprawling factories belching out black smoke day and night. The work is dangerous and backbreaking; few convicts outlive their sentences. Life in the Westside isn’t easy by any means—toiling under a hot sun from sun up to sun down—but unlike the East, it’s rarely a death sentence.

At the entr
y to the nest, I check the grounds but nothing looks disturbed. I don’t think Pen has left. I reach the door and realize she couldn’t have. In my haste to leave, I didn’t disengage the outer latch. I open the door cautiously, half expecting something to come flying out at me. The room is so dark it might as well be a hole and I pull out my flashlight and swing it around. The beam falls on Pen sitting up on the mattress with all the blankets wrapped around her. It’s freezing. The propane must have run out.

“
The door,” I say, “I forgot…”

She glares
at me. Her eyes are swollen and her face is flushed. “There’s no bathroom in here.”

“
I know. I’m sorry.” A whiff of urine reaches my nose. I pretend it doesn’t. “I met with Devon, then went to check the One Twenty Seven.”

“
Did you see her? Did you see Abby?” And suddenly nothing else matters to her but her sister. I have an urge to pull the light from her face. There’s too much hope in her eyes.

“
No, not yet. I need to ask you some questions.”

She stands, keeping the blankets around her. She
’s still shivering but doesn’t complain. “What do you want to know?”

“
Not here. Let’s go some place warm where you can clean up. Are you hungry?”

She shakes her head.
“I ate what you had in the box.” She lowers her gaze. “And the apples I found too. I’m sorry; I haven’t had apples in a long time.”

They were in a warehouse I broke into last week. They were wrinkled and over-ripe eve
n then. “I told you the food was yours.”

I lead her out the door and through side streets and alleys; past crumbling
, high-rise tenement houses; buildings so close to one another they blot out the sun and you could almost touch hands with someone on the opposite balcony.

Above us, women in ragged clothes hang wet laundry on lines strung between them, as suspicious eyes peer out at us from shadows and nooks, unemployed men playing cat-and-mouse with the Blueshirts as they scrounge the neighborhood for a few coins to feed their families, or the next hit of coal dust to feed their addiction.

We pass an
alley where a family of three huddles around a low burning fire, a freshly killed animal turning slowly on the spit above. Pen stares openly and I whisper for her to look away; just keep walking. The man turns and glares, his face shamed, but defiant. Even in a place where hunger is common, eating dog still carries a stigma.

Further on, a man stands in
the darkened corner of a tenement courtyard. His thick, calloused hand rests on the shoulder of a girl younger than Pen, her expression flat, her eyes downcast. When he sees me, he smiles and waves, gesturing to the girl. I ignore him.

A
few blocks up from the nest, we stop at a four-story, dilapidated building.

“
What is this place?” Pen asks.

“
A motel.”

She
touches her forearm, frowning. “A motel? But I don’t...”

Children are given permanent ID tattoos on the
right forearm at birth. You can’t engage in any transactions, including renting a room, without one. I open the door for her. “Don’t worry.”

Tam is my age but looks older and so thin he
could be nothing more than freckled skin pulled tight over a bone frame. His head is long and narrow with sharp angles in odd places that give him a starving, bird-like appearance. Disease or birth trauma, it’s hard to say. Both are common enough in the city.

He nods when he sees me.
“Room?”

“
Yeah, something on the first floor. Just for a few hours.”

He looks at Pen
and grins, revealing a few scattered teeth, broken and discolored. “Pretty girl. Bet she’s your niece or something, huh?”

“
The room, Tam.”

“
Sure, sure. I can let you have the whole day for twenty.”

“
Just a few hours.”

“
Still cost you ten.” He reaches under the desk and brings out a small vial, shaking out two yellow pills. “Two for five. That’s a good deal,” he says.

I recognize the pills as Pan, a powerful and
illegal aphrodisiac. More interesting, I can see in Pen’s eyes that she knows what they are as well. “We won’t be needing them,” I tell him.

His grin widens.
“With her I guess not.”

I lay ten on the desk and we lock eyes. His smile fades.
“Just being friendly. I don’t mean nothing by it, you know that.” He slides a key to me.

“
Yeah, I know that. Towels?”

“
Two in the room.” His smile returns. “Think you’ll need more?”

“
Two is fine.”

“
Room number three, around back.”

I lead Pen out the door and through the alley to the back. The room is small, dusty and smells like mold, but it has a shower and clean towels.

“Go on, get cleaned up. You’ll feel better.”

She touches her shirt.
“I wish I could clean this.”

The rags she
’s wearing look like they would fall apart in a washer. “Go on, I’ll take care of it.”

When I hear the water running I stick my head out the door. Gangs of kids are working the trash piles across from the street and I get the attention of one, calling him over. He
’s thin and no taller than Pen with arms like sticks and brown eyes sunk deep into their sockets. I pull a bill from my pocket and wave it in front of his face.

“
I need clothes. A shirt and pants. Something to fit someone your size. Socks and underwear too, if you can get them, understand?”

He nods, never taking his eyes off the bill.

I tear it in half and give one-half to him. “You get the other half when you return with the clothes. If they’re clean and in good shape, I’ll pay you two.”

He sets off at a run.

I sit down in the one chair and close my eyes, listening to the sound of the water. I don’t think I’ve nodded off, but I might have. It seems only seconds have passed before there’s a knock on the door. The kid is panting. He has a bundle in his hands and is looking around the street nervously.

The clothes aren
’t bad. Cold from hanging outside, but clean and in decent shape. I hold up the other half of the bill along with a second. He snatches them both and disappears.

The shower stops and I knock on the door. Pen opens it just enough for me to hand her the clothes.
“But where did you…?” she starts, then stops. She knows the answer, so why ask the question? The door closes then opens. A pair of men’s underwear comes flying out at me. The door shuts again.

A few minutes later she comes out, hair wet.
“Thanks.”

“
Have a seat.”

She sits on the edge of the bed; hands on her legs; avoiding my gaze. Drops from her hair make tiny wet marks on her pants. She
’s nervous. Maybe a motel room isn’t the right place for this, but with her sister now a celebrity prisoner, I don’t want to risk her being seen in public.

“
Tell me about your sister.”

Her tone is wary.
“What do you want to know?”

“
Everything. Let’s start with how she got involved with the resistance.”

She shrugs, glancing at the floor.
“The Counselors made a mistake. She isn’t part of anything like that. I mean, she was a math major in college. Maybe she talked to some wrong people once or twice, but that doesn’t prove anything. She’s just a bookkeeper.”

Relationships are weaknesses. Use them to your advantage.

“Uh-huh. Pen, I’m not convinced your sister is still alive, but if she is, then she has a life expectancy you can measure in days, if not hours. Now, if you want to spend that time jacking me around...”

“
I’m not.”

“
Yes you are and it’s going to get her killed. So let’s start over. Your sister isn’t some bookkeeper; she’s the Angel of the City.”

She
looks unsure, as if debating what to say. No doubt she’s been warned never to admit this to anyone, probably by her sister. But her sister isn’t here. She lays her head in her hands and for now at least, I don’t push her. I need to know what I’m getting involved in and she’s the only one who can tell me, so I let her set the pace—up to a point.

“
Abby always hated that name,” she says, finally, lifting her head.

“
Then why use it?”

“
It wasn’t her idea; those people gave it to her.”

“
The resistance?”

A final moment of hesitation.
“Yes. But she isn’t the leader, no matter what people say,” she adds quickly. “They don’t even let her do much, except help redistribute food.”

“
That’s still against the law.”

“
I know.”

While it
’s true that food redistribution is a crime, it’s one of the most ignored laws on the books. If they wanted to, the government could arrest half the population at any given time for the same offense. It seems unlikely they would have made such a show just for that. “And you’re sure that’s all she did?”

She nods, and her eyes don
’t flinch from my gaze.

“
All right, so how did it start?”

“
I don’t know, really. Abby…I mean, she’s always been…”

“
Always been what?”

“
Critical,” she whispers.

“
Of the government?”

She nods.
“But she was never involved in any groups or anything. At least, not until they arrested my father.”

“
All right. Tell me about that.”

“
He is—I mean he was—a professor at the Polytechnic University.”

“
Polytechnic? In the Garden District? You and your sister lived in the G.D.?”

“
We were born there.”

The Garden District, the walled city-within-the-city that houses the Ministry and Council headquarters is off limits to everyone but those with the highest clearance. Even as a
Counselor, I was never inside its walls. Now I know why I couldn’t place the accent.

“
Go on.”

She takes a deep breath,
fighting back tears. She’s proving tougher then I would have expected from someone her age, especially coming from the Garden. “One day about a year ago, we heard a rumor that his office had been raided by Counselors. We called his office; we called everyone. No one would talk to us. He never came home. The next day our phone was cut off. That night Abby came running into our apartment. She said we had to leave; that there had been a purge in the Ministry and our dad had been arrested along with a bunch of others. They said he had ties to the resistance. We didn’t know who to trust.”

Her voice is wavering and she stops to compose herself. I can
’t blame her; I’m shaking a little myself.
The Garden District?
A purge in the Ministry? Just how deep does this rabbit hole go?

“
Was it true? Was your father involved with the resistance?”

She shakes her head vigorously.
“No, that’s crazy. My dad was loyal to the government.”

“
What about your mother?”

“
She died when I was little. I really don’t remember her.”

“
I see. And Abby? Just how critical of the government was she?”

A pause. “Abby has always been strong-willed. Sometimes she would say things that made my dad angry.”

“
Like?”

She
shakes her head and knits her brow, becoming irritated. “I don’t know. She just thought things could be better. She thought the Ministry was corrupt and that the Council was too strict; that they were the reason the quarters were always fighting each other.” She lowers her voice. “She said the city would be better off if there weren’t any Counselors.”