Minders

by Michele Jaffe

  “Too small,” Ford said, shaking his head. “I say manager’s office or bar.”

  “Loser buys lunch,” Nix said. “On your marks, get set—”

  For the next hour all sound and thought was blotted out of Ford’s mind by the noise of the sledgehammer smashing through plaster and brick as they skinned the building’s carcass. The two of them worked opposite sides of the room, their hammers settling into a call and response, where one of them would do a set of strokes, and the other would match it and add one.

  Ford working, Sadie discovered, was much calmer than Ford doing anything else. She was making a mental note about the importance of jobs to self-esteem when he stopped and dropped the hammer.

  “Did I win?” Nix asked over his shoulder.

  “Maybe,” Ford said. “It’s a dumbwaiter. It would have gone from here to the kitchens. And it works!” As he spoke he tugged a faded cord, bringing up a dusty wooden box that arrived with a clatter of clinking plates and cutlery. They were filthy and stacked haphazardly, apparently forgotten decades earlier by the last person to use the room. That is very cool, Sadie thought, and Ford gave a whooooop of joy. He was nearly dancing with happiness, shifting from one foot to the other and pointing. “Do you see that?” he asked Nix. “Someone’s last supper.”

  Ford carefully stacked the dishes on the floor, surreptitiously pocketing a tiny crystal saltshaker, and poked his head into the dumbwaiter’s shaft. “One of the gears is stamped 1932,” he called to Nix.

  “And one of your time cards is going to be stamped FIRED,” the foreman’s voice said. Ford pulled himself out of the wall.

  “Harding, you’ve got to look at this,” Ford said, gesturing the foreman over. “It’s the entire mechanism, intact, from 19—”

  The foreman shook his head. “Yeah, I heard. Your job is to smash it.”

  “But it’s perfect. If we take it out I bet some decorator—”

  “Smash, smash, smash.” The foreman pointed to the sledgehammer Ford had dropped to the floor. “Go on, show me you know how to use it.”

  “It will be easy to get it out,” Ford kept on. “I swear to you if you tell whatever jackass we’re working for about it, they’ll thank you. It could be worth something.”

  “You’re right,” the foreman agreed. “Could be worth your job. Now smash—”

  “I’m the jackass.” The tall red-headed guy from the front steps walked into the room. He held out his hand to Ford again. “Mason Bligh.”

  This time Ford took it. “Ford Winter.”

  “What did you find?” Mason asked.

  Ford, suddenly taciturn—You’re shy! Sadie realized, feeling a tiny bit of kinship with him—just pointed his finger up into the shaft. “Dumbwaiter.”

  “For the dumb worker,” the foreman said, laughing at his own joke.

  Mason gave him a forced smile and looked at Ford. “How would you get it out?”

  “Saw around it. Shouldn’t take long, maybe an hour.”

  “I’d like to see that,” Mason said. “Let’s do it.” He turned to the foreman. “Do I need to sign anything, Mr. Harding? Pay you more money? Why don’t you draw up contracts for this spot project, and I’ll pay you today.”

  “Whatever you like, Mr. Bligh,” the foreman said pleasantly.

  Phony, Ford thought, perching himself on the edge of the opening and leaning in. Sadie watched his mind tracing a map of the mechanics of the dumbwaiter the way it had produced the street map earlier. He turned to Mason and asked, “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Nothing yet. But it’s too neat to destroy. Have you got a use for it?”

  Ford poked his head out of the hole to look at the guy Sadie heard him describe in his head as a twenty-three-year-old bajillionaire nerd. He couldn’t figure Mason out. He said, “I might.”

  “Great, you take it. And you find anything else like that, tell me. You’re right, I want to know.” Mason was heading for the door when Ford’s voice called him back.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Ford said, his voice sounding young and unsure.

  Mason turned. “Yep?”

  “I took this.” Ford held out the crystal saltshaker. “I didn’t think anyone would care, but obviously it’s yours. I—I just wanted it for my sister.”

  Right, Sadie thought. Because all eleven-year-olds really want a saltshaker.

  Mason shook his head. “All yours.”

  Ford worked with steady concentration after that, barely pausing to eat, but Sadie sensed an increasing jumpiness in him. Anticipation? Anxiety? By the time he scanned out at the end of the day she was certain he was about to do something illegal, and she was torn between excitement and wariness as he steered his bike in the opposite direction of his apartment.

  He rode from the mostly deserted neighborhood around the job site through two traffic-gnarled intersections into an area of wide, silent streets lined with the crumbling hulks of commercial buildings. His bike bounced over a portion of downed chain-link fence and up a cracked asphalt driveway to the front entrance of a large brick factory. It had what looked like a chimney on one side and appeared to be about seven stories tall, but peering through the open door Sadie saw it was empty inside from the floor to the roof except for rusted machine parts, some decaying wood pallets, and broken bottles. The sign propped next to the door read DETROIT WIRE CO.

  Ford left his bike and walked around the building to a set of fire escape stairs along the far wall. He climbed them all the way to the top and stepped off onto the roof.

  It seemed like they could see for miles all around. The river was a ribbon glittering between buildings in one direction, the traffic on the highway looked like the links in a metal watchband in another, and beyond that the suburbs extended like a rolling green carpet. That’s where I live, she thought to herself.

  Suddenly she was flooded with panic. All at once she realized how high up they were, how close to the edge. Her throat got tight, making it hard to breathe, and her heart raced. The edge is right there. She squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn’t escape the voice in her head, her voice, cool, logical. One step and you could be over, one step and it would all be over, so easy, just one—

  Ford tipped his head back, spread his arms, and gave a loud Tarzan-of-the-apes call. It echoed through the empty landscape back to him, reverberating through him, through her.

  You’re safe, she breathed. Safe, here with Ford.

  And then he turned and headed across the roof directly toward the little shed with the DANGER DO NOT ENTER! sign.

  CHAPTER 8

  Sadie was relieved to see that whoever had put up the danger sign also had the foresight to attach a big padlock to the door. So unless Ford had a key or super-strength to wrench the door from the building—

  Ford walked up to the door and pressed his palm gently against the side with the hinges. There was a click, like a latch being released, and it swung open from there. Camouflage, Sadie registered. The lock and the knob were fake, to fool casual visitors.

  I’m impressed, Ford Winter.

  Inside he had set up a little workshop with a desk, a chair, an old-fashioned beat box, and an odd assortment of objects she imagined he’d gathered from different construction sites. An easel with a map of Detroit, embellished with drawings and annotations that looked like the ones in Ford’s head, stood on one side, but Sadie only caught a glance at it before he stepped to the wall and pushed a button. There was a grinding noise, and the entire space began to move down.

  Maybe the DANGER sign wasn’t a fake.

  The “office” cleared the ceiling and stopped, leaving them suspended about sixty feet in the air over the floor of the abandoned factory.

  His office was actually the top of the freight elevator, Sadie realized. Wide metal grids formed the four walls, but the view was still unobstructed and, Sadie had to admit, pretty cool. He hit PLAY on the beat box and sat down at the desk.

  Sadie braced for some AltCor Trance or Heavy Trip, but it wa
s Louis Armstrong, the jazz trumpeter, and she again found herself thinking, I’m impressed.

  The music seemed to fill Ford in a way nothing else had, not just covering up his thoughts and emotions but weaving into them, so that they all harmonized, like his whole mind was, for once, working together. He pulled a multicolored round medallion about the size of his palm toward him, and Sadie saw that it was a small stained-glass window of a dog. His mind vibrated with pleasure when he looked at it, and a rainbow of dots came together into Lulu waking up and seeing it installed in her dollhouse, her dolls Bless and Noshe rendered speechless. There were a few pieces missing, and following the quick succession of images and drawings that were now tripping along Ford’s mind in every direction, Sadie realized that he planned to use the curved bumpy exterior of the crystal saltshaker for the dog’s belly.

  Sadie felt confused and like she owed him an apology. Was this really the same guy who hung his clothes on the floor and worked to make people mad at him?

  He pulled a brush from one carefully organized drawer and opened the other and froze. There was a manila envelope in it that Sadie could tell he’d never seen before.

  His mind flipped back and forth like a just-caught fish, his thoughts saying Bucky is the only one who knows about this place while his memory repeated the image of the wild-eyed boy getting on a bus out of town.

  Sadie wanted to shake him. You’re right, the best thing to do is sit here debating with yourself. Do not, under any circumstances, open the envelope and see if the answer is inside.

  Finally he tipped its contents onto the desk. It was the Serenity Services file on the death of James Winter. He sat and stared at it for a moment, and Sadie sensed his excitement, but also fear. What is he afraid of seeing? she wondered.

  Hands shaking, he flipped it open.

  FILE# 8874-9

  VICTIM: JAMES WINTER

  STATUS OF VICTIM: DEAD

  STATUS OF CASE: CLOSED

  SUMMARY:

  The body of James Winter was found on February 17 at 6:23 A.M. in Playground K just off Happy Alley by two men (occupation unknown, address unknown) who relieved him of his coat, shoes, overalls, and watch but left his underwear.

  The victim was shot twice in the head with a small-caliber gun, not found at the scene.

  ACTION:

  Due to crime’s location in City Center drug corridor, the report from the coroner that “the victim had a very high level of the recreational drug R22 in his system,” and a ballistics match to a gun used in at least two similar crimes, the incident has been classified as Drug Based Altercation.

  Family claims no knowledge of drug use by deceased, but statements from close friends are more ambiguous.

  Lincoln Liu: “James and I had a falling-out and had not been spending time together, but I did see him at a nightclub in January at a table well stocked with drugs.”

  Wilson Moore: “I was with him earlier in the day and he seemed just great. Normal. Probably went to Happy because his girl kept him supplied and she was out of town. But that’s just speculativeness.”

  The girlfriend remains unidentified but wanted for questioning.

  UPDATE, MARCH 1

  CrimeMatch 2300X data analysis predicts 95.2% probability that victim JAMES WINTER was killed by Offender 00834, identity outstanding.

  CASE CLOSED

  So James had been a habitual drug user and was shot and killed in a drug deal gone bad. Sadie couldn’t see anything for Ford to object to, except maybe that the killer had been identified by his profile but not yet named or arrested.

  But that wasn’t what bothered Ford. He turned to the coroner’s report and waded through all of its technical jargon to the conclusion, which stated that James had been a regular drug user for some months before he died.

  “Liar,” Ford shouted aloud, startling them both.

  He balled his hand into a fist and with three strokes smashed the window he’d been making for Lulu to pieces, bam bam bam. Grabbing his hammer, he went to work on the rest of the workshop, smashing the jars where he’d separated tiny pieces of lumber by size, crushing a box of marbles. His eyes weren’t focused; he swung at random, holding on for the sound of the crack and the feel of something giving way under his strength.

  Stop, Ford, Sadie cried. You’re destroying things you love. You’re only hurting yourself.

  Smash smash smash. A pitcher. A jar of seashells. The crystal saltshaker.

  He had his hammer up, ready to destroy the old beat box, when the storm of his anger ended. It dried up all at once, replaced by a cooler, more temperate mood. Dropping the hammer, he sank into the desk chair and put his head in his hands.

  Hurting yourself, Sadie repeated and realized that was the point. He was mad at himself. But why?

  He texted Cali on his way home, not the apology Sadie recommended but with “ALL FORGIVEN,” which was better than his first draft, “WHATEVER.”

  For dinner that night he made something called Spaghetti-n-Meatballz that came in a can and made Sadie glad her taste buds weren’t yet in sync with his. And after Lulu went to bed he pulled out a dusty box filled with maps of Detroit.

  There were at least twenty, each labeled with a sticker in handwriting that ranged from that of a ten- or eleven-year-old to that of an adult, but all of it, Sadie thought, Ford’s. He flipped past the maps with intriguing names like TREASURE HUNT 3: UNDER DOG and TREASURE HUNT 5: MOTOR SKILLS until he found one labeled BUCKY.

  The writing on that label wasn’t quite adult, so Sadie guessed it was from when Ford was about fifteen. He shook it, and a card fell out with “Bucky’s Rules” handwritten across the top, and below it:

  1. Camouflage. Best is Open Secret Variety

  2. Secret exit

  3. Explosives

  4. Safety rope

  5. Back-up plans make you weak

  I’m not sure I can endorse all of those, Sadie thought.

  Ford replaced the card in the box with the other maps and returned it to its high shelf in the closet but put the BUCKY map in the bag he took to work. If Bucky had left the file, Sadie heard him decide, then Bucky must know something and must be nearby. He’d revisit their old hideouts and find him.

  On Tuesday after work Ford went to an old boat that he entered from a secret tunnel beneath a picnic bench, and a fort made out of a decaying camper entirely engulfed by bushes. On Wednesday he rode to a completely deserted tree-lined residential block in the middle of the city, where he stopped at an abandoned house with a secret room through the fireplace. There was no sign of Bucky.

  By Thursday he was a tinderbox ready to explode. He was on his way home from work when his phone buzzed with a text. It said, “I HEAR YOU’VE BEEN ASKING ABOUT ME. I’LL BE AT THE CANDY FACTORY TONIGHT AFTER 10:30. YOUR NAME IS WITH THE VIP HOST. PLUM.”

  Boom! thought Sadie.

  CHAPTER 9

  His mother was sitting at the kitchen table when Ford walked in the door that night. She was wearing a faded blue sweater, jeans, and a gold locket. Sadie hadn’t seen her dressed and out of bed before, and although she still looked frail, she seemed more substantial. More real.

  She marked her place in her word jumble with a pencil, folded her hands over it, and looked at him with a smile. “We had a visit from our Roque Community Health Evaluator today.” Her tone made Sadie think of Jell-O, artificially bright and sweet. “It went very well.”

  “Oh, good,” Ford said, matching her artificial cheer. He pulled the two cans of Spaghetti-n-Meatballz he’d bought on his way home from his bag.

  “They offered to send someone over to help Lulu feel more comfortable leaving the house again. We just need to set up a time.”

  “Can they also bring James back to life? Because I actually think that’s what it would take.” Stop it, Sadie wanted to tell him. Why can’t you just listen to your mother instead of having to remind her constantly that James is gone?

  Her brightness dimmed a little. “Why do you always have to be
so negative?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes you are,” Lulu said stepping into the room. She was wearing a pair of purple corduroy pants that were three inches too short and a gray men’s Henley shirt.

  “That’s my shirt,” Ford said. “Who said you could borrow it?”

  “The fairies that live on the floor of my room, where I found it.”

  “Copernicus must have put it there.” Ford looked sternly at him and said, “Bad dog.”

  Lulu said, “It’s not his fault you failed Drawers in school.” She stood on her tiptoes to peer into the pot and made a face. “Spaghetti-n-Meatballz again?”

  Ford said, “There’s also nothing. We’ve got plenty of that.”

  Lulu rolled her eyes. “Why is it spelled with a z?”

  “It stands for zee good stuff,” Ford explained solemnly. “It’s Italian.”

  For the first time since Sadie had been in Ford’s head, the three of them had dinner together. That meant that Lulu and Ford ate like savages while Mrs. Winter pushed her food around on her plate. “I’d hoped you would be here when the Evaluator came,” she said, arranging her Ballz into a pyramid.

  “This new one is nice,” Lulu put in. “She knows fun games.”

  “It’s the fifth visit you’ve missed,” his mother went on. “But she’ll be back Tuesday.”

  Sadie felt the muscles in Ford’s back tense. He kept his eyes on his plate, concentrating on holding back his rising anger. “I’m sure you kept the Roaches entertained.”

  His mother knocked over her pyramid. “Please don’t call them that. They’ve been very helpful to our family.”

  “Have they?” Ford looked up, like he was interested, but Sadie knew it was only sarcasm. “As far as I can tell, they come and spy on us—”

  “Check on us,” Mrs. Winter corrected.

  “—to make sure we’re not doing drugs, just because one member of our family, who’s not even here anymore, did drugs. I’m not sure how much I trust people who think drug addiction is a communicable disease.”