The monte gestured at Taziar with both hands, encouraging him to try again.
Taziar examined the youth more closely. His pants pockets bulged with money. He wore an open dress shirt over a white undershirt. His breast pocket contained a partially crushed box of white paper sticks, and the remainder of the deck of cards. He asked Taziar an uninterpretable question.
Taziar shrugged. “I don’t understand your language,” he said in the tongue of Cullinsberg’s barony.
The wiry Hispanic gang member moved in. He leaned past Taziar, talking with the monte in low tones. As close as the youth stood, Taziar could scarcely hear him. Yet, coincidentally, he chose words Larson had taught Taziar. “The little guy’s a foreigner.”
The monte’s reply emerged equally comprehensible and pitched too softly for the crowd to hear. “Who fucking cares? The ratty little dirtball’s got money.”
Taziar made no pretext of understanding. As the game ground to a halt, bystanders drifted away. The deck of cards in the Hispanic’s pocket hovered, temptingly close to Taziar’s reach. I saw the rest of the leader’s cards in his pocket. That can only mean this man carries an unrelated deck of his own. Grasping the opportunity, Taziar calmly edged the cards from the teen’s pocket and stashed them in his own.
A moment later, the gang member sidestepped, returning to his position. The monte spun the queen, face up, on the table. His speech became loud, slow, and broken, addressed directly at Taziar. “You play?” He made grand gestures at the table. “You find the lady?”
Taziar drew the folded stack of bills from his pocket again. He glanced thoughtfully from the money to the cards.
The banter grew more urgent, the motions more beckoning. “Come on. It’s fun. You’ll ...” The rest of his sentence was unfamiliar. “... find the lady.” He tapped a fingertip on the red card and shouted something obviously for the benefit of the crowd, a showman to the core.
Apparently lured by high stakes, a new crowd formed. The youngsters Taziar had identified as gang members merged into the new group, and the pickpocket returned as well.
Taziar nodded to indicate interest. Then he looked deep into the crowd, as if at someone. Raising a finger to indicate that he would return, he wove into the masses. Once beyond sight, he ducked into an alleyway. Behind him, he heard the din of conversation, pierced by the monte’s charismatic baritone. Taziar heard something about a winner, knowing it had to be a member of the gang pretending to win in order to draw the attention of players who believed that if one person beat the odds, so could they.
Taziar flashed through the deck, studying the cards in the hazy light filtering into the alley. Plucking the queen of diamonds and a black six from the deck, he folded them into tents that matched the cards on the table. Shoving the remainder of the deck back into his pocket, he palmed the queen in his left hand, clutching the money in his right.
As Taziar worked his way back to the gaming table, the monte smiled in welcome. Unable to communicate with Taziar, he addressed the crowd in warm, congenial tones, turning the cards to reveal every face. The monte waited until Taziar stared at the cards. “Ready?” the black man said.
Taziar nodded.
The monte jumbled cards, talking the entire time.
Taziar ignored even those words he understood, following the double substitution as easily as he had the previous single exchanges. When the monte finished moving cards, Taziar knew the queen sat at the rightmost end of the table with the sixes central and to the left. Still clutching his own queen, Taziar opened the stack of bills and peeled from the middle, placing three hundreds in front of the center card. He let the fourth hundred slip from his fingers. It floated to the sidewalk.
Every eye followed the fluttering bill.
Taziar knelt to retrieve the fallen hundred dollar bill, dropping his left hand to the table as if to steady himself. With smooth and practiced dexterity, he replaced the central six with his queen. Now palming a six, he placed the last hundred with the others.
The monte grinned broadly. He tossed over the middle card, revealing Taziar’s queen. “Sorry, sir....” His smile wilted to a shocked grimace, and his words trailed into oblivion. The attention of every gang member riveted on the card, the diversion so engrossing that Taziar might as well have had a year to switch the monte’s queen with the palmed six.
Gasps startled through the crowd, followed by a smattering of applause that strengthened and rose to cheers.
The monte flipped the rightmost card, revealing the replaced six. He stared. Then, regaining his composure, he huffed out a strained laugh. Plucking bills from his pocket, he flicked fifties and twenties onto Taziar’s stack, the crowd loudly counting each bill with him.
As the monte tallied, he glanced meaningfully at the thickly-muscled gang member who had, so far, remained quiet and still. The large man’s hand slid into his pocket. There was no mistaking the gesture. Taziar guessed that if he left without losing all the cash he had won, he would meet with a horrible accident in some alley.
As the last bill landed on the stack, Taziar reached for it;
The monte’s hand touched his, pressing the money to the table. “Play some more?”
Taziar shook his head.
The monte’s hand retreated, and Taziar put the bills in his pocket.
The monte asked another question, this one unfamiliar.
Again, Taziar shook his head, followed by a shrug to convey ignorance. He knew he was acting foolishly. He had no need for money. He could not even understand its relative value. But he cared little for the methods of this particular gang and felt certain he could find a more worthy cause.
Taziar also realized he would need a distraction if he wanted to leave the area alive. As long as I stay in the crowd, I’m safe. If they threaten me here, I’m not only their last winner, I become their last player ever. He put the extra queen into his pocket, retrieving the folded six from the purloined deck.
The largest gang member shifted his weight, causally watching Taziar.
Taziar remained near the table, feigning engrossment in the next player. His huge win had brought a surge of people who pressed eagerly toward the makeshift table, certain they could match the feats of an ignorant, little foreigner who could not even understand English. Each hoped to win large sums of money with minimal effort, and Taziar realized human nature would refill the gang’s coffers, with overflow. In that respect, I actually aided their scam.
The monte returned to his pitch. He turned over the cards, mixing them, his usual prattle sounding like a thin, shaken whisper after his previous, strident bellows. As the last card fell, a heavyset man slapped down a fifty with such enthusiasm that he sent the cards scuttling. As the monte straightened them, Taziar seized the moment to replace the queen with his six, leaving three black cards on the table and no red. Pocketing the second queen, Taziar turned, squeezing into the stream of sidewalk traffic. A casual glance over his shoulder revealed that the muscled hoodlum was following him. The wiry Hispanic teenager also disengaged from the crowd.
Taziar broke into a trot. A quick look backward showed him that his pursuer had quickened his pace as well.
Unaccustomed to the volume of traffic that filled New York City’s streets, Taziar misjudged. The moment he took to check the hoodlum’s position sent him careening into a slender redhead dressed in a multihued T-shirt, jeans nearly as tattered as Taziar’s britches, and a string of beads. She fell with a gasp, flailing so wildly she took a nearby black businessman down with her. The man’s foot crashed into Taziar’s shin, sprawling him. A dive and twist saved Taziar from landing on the woman, but he hit the pavement instead. The passersby parted around the collision.
Taziar scrambled to his feet. The brawny hoodlum had almost closed the gap. The Hispanic youth was nowhere Taziar could see.
The familiar excitement of the chase made Taziar giddy. Suddenly, the strangeness of the city seemed to fade to insignificance. He might have been back in Cullinsberg, dodging th
rough alleyways and scaling buildings with the guard force at his heels. The exotic city and its streets only added to the challenge. His grief disappeared, forgotten beneath more urgent need, and its release freed him to think logically. He felt joyful and unfettered for the first time in weeks, though he realized the youth might carry a gun or other unguessable technology that would enable him to quickly end Taziar’s life.
Taziar wove into a clustered knot of citizens on the edge of the sidewalk closest to the buildings. As they passed an alleyway, he glided inside, hoping to decoy the gang member into following the masses. Pigeons much like the ones in Cullinsberg fluttered skyward, their wing beats slapping echoes between the buildings; their cooing filled the alley. Metal ash cans and plastic bags lined the walls of the buildings.
Unfooled, the hoodlum whipped around the corner, now only a few arm’s lengths behind Taziar. He growled a command, from which Taziar deciphered only the terminating swear word. A patterned sequence of whistles followed.
Taziar picked his way swiftly and carefully through the garbage. Recognizing the high-pitched noises as a signal, he suddenly wished he knew the exact location of the muscled teen’s Hispanic companion. As Taziar moved, he eye-balled the walls on either side. Though well-mortared, the perfect bricks composing the walls would supply regular, if tiny, handholds.
The rumble of the crowds faded. A click reverberated through the alley, and a blade appeared, glinting in the gang member’s hand. A new set of footsteps pattered from in front of Taziar. That answers the question of where his friend went. Taziar eased his back against the wall, fingers groping the brick for handholds, finding more than enough‘ for a climb. Some distance directly above him, a metallic platform jutted from the building. Steps rose from it, zigzagging to several similar decks, each set a story higher than the previous one.
Now Taziar could see both youths, closing in on him from either side. Whirling, he fitted his fingers into miniscule ledges and clambered to the platform. Catching hold of the metal, he ducked through a space in the railing, landing lightly on the deck.
Beneath Taziar, the two gang members hesitated. The larger one swore, his tone mingling frustration and surprise. The Hispanic leapt to a trash can, using the height it gained him to catch the lowest rung of the fire escape. Carefully drawing himself up, he charged after Taziar. His companion followed, rattling the entire structure with his footfalls.
Taziar sprang back to the railing, aware a climb up the bricks, though taxing, would give him a more direct route to the rooftop. As the hoodlums charged toward him, he flattened to the side of the building and scrambled easily upward.
“Shit,” the brawnier gang youth said, awe clearly evident in the expletive. He continued to pound up the stairways.
“Look at the little son-of-a-bitch go.” His sinewy companion seemed equally impressed. “How... ?”
The rest of the question blurred to nonsense in Taziar’s ears. Still, their amazement made one thing clear. Apparently, despite the contrived regularity of handholds, climbing buildings was as unusual here as in his own time and city.
Catching the ledge, Taziar flung himself to the rooftop. Pigeons scattered, some taking to wing, others strutting beyond his reach, their heads bobbing crazily. A grimy metal box sat in a central position, spinning blades visible through its grates. To his left, a shack rose from the floor, latched by a rusted padlock.
Having gained several moments from his straighter climb, Taziar scuttled to the opposite side of the roof. As he passed the shack, a grinding, whirring noise erupted so suddenly that Taziar instinctively dodged.
His pursuers heaved to the rooftop behind him, panting, red-faced, and obviously annoyed.
Taziar gauged the distance to the neighboring buildings, and realized the strangeness and unusual height of the structures had caused him to miscalculate distances. The alley between this storefront and the next gaped like an open wound, too wide to jump even with a running start. Taziar looked down, measuring the distance to the alley below. His elevated position gave him a wide view of the street, including the location where the monte game had taken place. There, he could see a fight had broken out, presumably over the missing queen. People surged, a mad chaos of bodies. “Look!” Taziar said in accented English. He pointed.
The hoodlums closed, hunched and with wary deliberation. Taziar’s effortless climb made it clear he was no normal immigrant. Either they worried that Taziar might have more unexpected tricks to use against them or, he hoped, they just wanted their money back without sending their victim tumbling to his death.
“Look!” Taziar said again, jabbing his finger toward the crowd. Having spent many of his early years in a gang, he understood the need for loyalty. That card shuffler could be the only family these men have. Desperate to communicate, he struggled with the language. “Summa bitch! Ex-kyuse-me.” Running out of relevant expressions, he chose at random, trying to get his message across with wild gestures and a dire tone. “Buick. Follow that car!”
Apparently impressed by Taziar’s urgency, if not his words, the robust youth took a careful glance over the edge. He remained partially twisted toward Taziar, as if concerned the Shadow Climber might rush him.
Taziar inched backward, away from the teenagers and the building’s edge.
“Fuck!” the heavier hoodlum shouted. Ignoring Taziar, he charged back toward the fire escape, calling something sharply to his companion as he ran.
The wiry Hispanic studied Taziar for a moment. He pointed, addressing Taziar in a threatening manner before whirling to follow his friend.
Though unable to understand, Taziar guessed he had received a lecture on luck. He waited until both youngsters disappeared over the side before breaking into laughter. Moving back toward the edge, he tried to identify Al Larson in the milling crowds below him.
* * *
CHAPTER 11
Chaos at the Tower
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
—Edmund Burke Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents
Al Larson hated himself for an evil he saw no way to avoid. Crouched against the Jeffers’ wooden house, he watched flames of gold and red engulf the dwelling he had called home for more than fifteen years. Heat blackened white-painted shingles. Yellow trim disappeared beneath fire that crackled and capered like demons. And Al Larson lamented that, if the war had taught him nothing else, it had shown him how to build a successful pyre, to overcome the protestations of his conscience, and to destroy even those things he loved.
Timmy clutched his older brother’s waist, tears rolling down cherubic cheeks.
Though concerned for the child, Larson kept his eyes locked on the burning house. Soon, neighbors would mobilize. Someone would call the fire department, and Larson knew he and Timmy had best disappear long before that happened. Still, he waited, wanting to make certain his mother and sister escaped unharmed.
Timmy said nothing. He did not question Larson’s wisdom.
But Larson was questioning enough for both of them. What am I doing? What the hell am I doing? There has to be another way to protect Mom and Pam. Larson sighed, knowing the luxury of time might have given him a better strategy, but he had been unable to conjure one from the swirl of thoughts and emotions besieging him. Silme never met Mom or Pam, so she can’t enter their minds to find them. But she could use Timmy’s thoughts or mine to locate this house. I had no choice. I have to force the women to leave until this is settled, to move someplace without Timmy or me knowing where. The rationalization did not quiet his guilt. One more crisis. Just what Mom and Pam needed. First Dad’s death, then Timmy’s and my disappearance. And now I’m burning down my own goddamned house.
The wind shifted, funneling ash and smoke into Larson’s lungs. He coughed. I’ve waited long enough. Perhaps too long. Grabbing Timmy, he followed a line of trees toward the road.
A screen door slammed.
Someone screamed, and the village of Baychester awakened sluggishly to danger.
Larson broke into a run, hoping no one had spotted him. Please let Mom and Pam get out safely. Please, God, let them not be home. Larson had never thought much of religion; his jokingly forsaking Christianity for the warlike Norse pantheon just before his death in Vietnam had resulted in his being dragged into ancient history. But now he could not stop himself from appealing to a higher source.
Lawns and rows of closely-placed houses disappeared behind Larson and Timmy, replaced by streets. The wail of a siren floated over the village like an accusing scream. Every instinct told Larson to stay, to check on his mother’s and sister’s safety and keep looters from pillaging his family’s belongings, the familiar, beloved objects that were all that remained of Carl Larson and the house in Baychester. But Al Larson knew he could not afford to see his family; to give Silme even a distant glimpse of his mother’s current looks or plans would be folly. He believed the Dragonrank sorceress could glean some details from his or Timmy’s memories, but he hoped those would prove distant enough that they would only allow her to recognize the women if she found them by random chance. In a city this size. Think of the odds.
Now outside the village, Larson slowed, not wanting his haste to draw attention. To get hauled in by the police, even just for questioning, meant remaining in one place long enough for Silme to locate him. Sure suicide. It also brought the possibility of being forced to confront his mother. Releasing Timmy’s hand, Larson kept his pace brisk, trying for an air of casual disinterest with little success. He could only hope the oddities of New York City would keep Silme busy until he could devise a coherent strategy against her.
Larson’s walk brought him to the enormous tract of dirt that had once been Freedom Land and would soon become Co-op City. Bulldozers and cranes huffed over the single street, adding beams to a towering skeleton of steel that, when finished, would loom over the double-story dwellings in Baychester. Construction workers scurried around the machinery, their white undershirts dampened in wide, semicircular patches at the neck and armpits. One lounged near the marked perimeter of the hard hat area, munching an apple and sipping coffee from a styrofoam cup. A radio near his feet blasted the news through a wash of static.
Mickey Zucker Reichert - By Chaos Cursed Page 21
