Loot

by Jude Watson

  The paper bag sat in his lap. In it was the cheese sandwich they were going to split for breakfast, back at the flat. March thought of the many things his father loved and would never eat again. Pommes frites and herring sandwiches and American potato chips and licorice. Things he said they’d do together: see a Yankees game, spend a month in New Zealand, go to a museum without playing the “what would you steal and how” game.

  March tossed the bag aside, hating the sandwich because Alfie would never eat it.

  The stone tumbled out, aglow in the moonlight.

  It was the last thing his father had given him. Maybe it was worth something? Or else why had Alfie thrown it, knowing March would catch it, because his son had never let him down?

  Just yesterday, he’d said it.

  You’ve never let me down, March.

  March gripped the stone hard. Don’t let him down, then. Keep moving.

  It took only a block before he knew he was being followed.

  It wasn’t as easy as footfalls behind him. No. Someone was following him, but someone was very, very good at it.

  You couldn’t be the son of a master thief if you didn’t grow a sixth sense.

  Panic shimmered through his body, tiny hammers hitting glass. He could shatter, he felt, in a moment, and he gulped air, trying to calm himself.

  The guy waited to turn corners until March did. As March crossed a canal and started down the other side, he stayed as close as he could between the boats and the parked cars on the side of the canal.

  With water to amplify the echoes, March heard the footsteps clearly. He walked faster. The pace behind him increased.

  Police? He didn’t think so.

  He still didn’t know where he was, but that didn’t matter now. He had to lose whoever it was before he headed to the apartment. But why was someone following him? It didn’t make sense. Unless he was imagining it.

  He knew he wasn’t.

  Down one more block, around a corner, loop back, and cross the canal again. Still the footsteps followed. He turned a corner around an apartment building and stopped to peer around it.

  Across the misty water, a figure strolled along the brick pathway. March couldn’t see a face underneath the black cap. Hands in pockets of a loose raincoat.

  Just a person, out for a late-night walk? Coming home from a party?

  The figure followed the curve of the canal and disappeared around a bend. March waited another minute, suddenly nervous about moving. Which direction should he head?

  Then he heard the footsteps again, tapping along the brick pathway. This time his pursuer was on his side of the canal. Panic was now a frantic drumbeat inside him. He pushed off the building and sprinted down the side of the canal.

  March dodged in between cars parked at the edge of the canal and slid into one of the boats tied up alongside. He edged under a tarp that had been tossed next to the cabin.

  The footsteps continued toward him, down the side of the canal where he had just been.

  Tap, tap, tap …

  The person stopped near the boat.

  He held his breath.

  Long seconds passed. March’s fingers shook as he held the tarp over his head.

  All sound left the world. The lapping of the water against the hull of the boat, the faint sound of a tram rattling down a street blocks away, his own skittering pulse … He heard nothing now as he strained to hear something — a rustle of a coat, the tapping of the footsteps heading away.

  Instead he heard, faintly, the sound of … whistling. A tune March didn’t recognize, something eerie that caught on moonlight and curled along the mist. One long note, one short, then a simple melody.

  The person stopped whistling abruptly. If March had moved, the person would have heard the rustle. Was that the reason for the abrupt stop … to trap him into revealing himself?

  A quiet footfall, heading closer.

  The person was standing right next to the boat. The whistling began again. Two long notes … Then the melody.

  March raised the edge of the tarp a tiny fraction. The person was pulling on black leather gloves. Why? It wasn’t cold.

  No fingerprints. He jerked in terror, kicking something that clanged softly.

  The whistling stopped.

  A light turned on in the cabin below him. He felt, through the wood of the deck, two feet hitting the floor. Someone called out in Dutch, something angry. The door flew open and a man came out on deck, shirtless and barefoot. He tripped over the tarp and kicked it in frustration.

  His bare foot met March’s leg.

  With a roar, he threw the tarp back.

  March bolted. He had time to register the flash of anger and surprise on the burly man’s face, creased with sleep. He felt rather than saw his pursuer standing still and watchful on the pavement. He jumped up on a deck chair, then onto the roof of the cabin, leaped onto the bow, then onto the stern of the next boat, scrambled up on the cabin, vaulted down into the open boat in front, and, with a combination of leap and stumble and scramble, his heart bursting, ran from boat to boat until he was able to leap up to the railing of the bridge, pull himself up and onto it, and look back.

  The man on the boat stood bare chested and furious, shaking a fist and shouting in Dutch. A light came on in a house to his left.

  The hem of a raincoat flapped as his pursuer hurried around a corner and disappeared.

  It took him three tries to lock the door of the apartment. He slid down until he was on the floor, back against the door, legs splayed out in front of him.

  He tucked his hands in his armpits and ordered the caterwaul of panic to slow.

  It didn’t mean someone was following him, he told himself.

  Someone could have been walking, strolling home. Who wouldn’t have run like that when a man started yelling at a crazy kid who ran over boats to get away?

  He had to stare down this terror.

  He had to focus on what to do now.

  Whether to hide or whether to run.

  * * *

  It wasn’t like Alfie was the best father in the world. Not exactly a role model. There had been times over the years when he had pulled off a big job — two whole years living in the south of France, sweet! — but mostly he and March had bounced around Europe, with a couple of six-month stints in New York City and a very pleasant year in Spokane, Washington. March spent six months at a Swiss boarding school. They were both miserable. He still remembered the day he came out of class and saw Alfie leaning against a red convertible.

  “Want to go for a spin?” he’d asked.

  They’d driven to Spain.

  So mostly March had been homeschooled, if you could call it that. His education was spotty. He knew the population of Istanbul and how to get around Reykjavík and the names of Beethoven’s symphonies and could tell a Picasso from a Braque, but March couldn’t multiply a fraction. He could calculate odds at a racetrack, though.

  They were together, a team, and there were plenty more good times than bad.

  March didn’t know how to keep going without Alfie.

  He remained on the floor, back against the door. He was used to being alone, but when alone has the promise of company at the end of it, it isn’t quite as lonely. This was as lonesome as the moon. The deep kind of lonesome that held hands with fear.

  All his life he’d felt as though something was missing. It would expand and contract inside him, like air inside a balloon. There were times he’d feel the space was so full that he’d turn to say something, and be surprised to find there was no one there.

  Weird stuff.

  As he got older he’d figured that the missing space was his mother. She’d died when he was two, so maybe some part of his brain remembered her.

  But maybe all along he knew this feeling was coming for him.

  This much empty filling him up.

  The light was getting grayer outside. Soon the day would begin. The news would come on, the papers would hit the coffeehouses
and cafés. People would open their laptops. The landlady on the first floor would turn on the radio.

  Alfred McQuin, world-famous jewel thief, on Interpol’s most wanted list, was dead. There would be a photograph, the most recent one they had, and the landlady would know that Alfie McQuin was Dan Sherwood in room 12, and she would call the police. She would say, “He has a son.”

  And then the knock at the door would come, and he’d be in the system. There would be paperwork and social workers and People Who Know Best. March would land back in the States, no doubt about that, because he had an American passport. Well. He had many passports, but only one real one, and that was American.

  He had no relatives at all. Alfie’s parents were dead, and he and March’s mom had both been only children. Alfie thought she had family somewhere — Texas or Canada, he’d say, as if the two places were the same — but he’d never met them. So that meant foster care.

  March knew how to navigate airports and train stations. How to pack light. How to move through a city without being noticed. How to order street food in Shanghai and steak au poivre in Paris. How to find a cheap apartment. He knew where to go to buy a fake passport in five European capitals and he knew how much it cost.

  Things he didn’t know how to do: Sit in a classroom. Obey authority. Follow rules.

  Never look back, kid.

  March gathered his nerve. He knew the drill; he’d watched Alfie do it a few times when they came a little too close to getting caught.

  March went around the small apartment, gathering up toothpaste and brushes and T-shirts and magazines and tossing them in the garbage bags Alfie always kept. He threw away clothes and shoes. They didn’t have much; when they worked on a job, they packed a suitcase. Still, even the suitcase would be too much to carry.

  He leaned over to twist the last bag shut. One of Alfie’s shoes was at the top, and for a moment March couldn’t see straight. The shoe was just as much his father as a face or a smile, and closing up the bag was like shutting a coffin.

  He stuffed it down out of sight.

  He walked quietly out of the flat and three blocks down and five blocks over to a construction site. Alfie always picked an apartment that was near major construction, just in case they needed to throw evidence away. He tossed the garbage bag in the Dumpster.

  Back at the apartment, he went to the closet and took out Alfie’s jacket. Navy flannel, custom tailored, purchased in London on Jermyn Street. March was tall for an almost thirteen-year-old, but the sleeves were too long and he rolled them up. He stuck his hand in a pocket and just came up with a piece of licorice.

  He felt along the side of the lining. There was a snap there that concealed a hidden pocket. He put the moonstone inside.

  Then he reached for the getaway packs.

  Every thief keeps a getaway pack. It’s a simple duffel or backpack with enough to get out of town. Just one bag with the right items, in case the police are knocking at the front door and you have to leave by the window.

  Alfie had a small nylon duffel, and March had a backpack. He knew what was in his — a change of clothes, a fake passport, about two hundred euros, a disposable cell phone. A toothbrush.

  March dumped out the contents of Alfie’s duffel on the bed. Fake passport, prepaid cell phone. He grabbed the kit containing toothpaste and soap. He unzipped the top, searched behind the lining, and slid out some bills. American dollars and euros. Total: five thousand dollars.

  That couldn’t buy him a new life, but it could take him pretty far. Thanks, Pop.

  There were also items he hadn’t expected. A paperback book? Alfie wasn’t much of a reader. A pack of playing cards. A key attached to a touristy New York City key chain. Maybe Alfie had a lease on their next apartment somewhere. New York City? Maybe, or maybe he just had a stray key chain. He never told March where they were going until they were in the train station or at the airport.

  March used to think that was fun.

  Alfie never planned too far ahead. Maybe if he’d been more of a planner, he would have left his son with more than a getaway pack to start over. But Alfie never thought he’d get caught. He’d had a backup plan for every job. Just not the job of father.

  March picked up the paperback: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, some guy who had been dead for over a hundred years. That was weird. Alfie read newspapers for news, and magazines and websites for tips on what jewels celebrities owned. It was amazing, the information his dad could glean from those fancy home-design magazines, the ones that showed rooms full of furniture but also windows, doors, and room layouts of the rich and famous.

  March riffled through the book and a sheet of paper fell out. It was a list in Alfie’s handwriting.

  Imaginary band names? March took out his mystified anger on the paper, folding it in quarters and creasing it sharply with a fingernail. He tucked it into the pocket of his jeans. He tossed the book back on the bed. A bookmark fell out. It was a business card. Printed on the front was

  THE STICK AND RAG PLAYERS

  GUERILLA SPECTACULAR

  COMING TO AN ABANDONED SPACE NEAR YOU

  Stick, rag, Alfie’d said.

  That was what he meant?

  Seemed funny that his father would tell him about some group of oddball performers with his last breath.

  Talk to me, Pop. What is all this crazy stuff? Getaway packs are supposed to have just enough to get out. Are you trying to tell me something?

  No answer, just the faint sounds of a sleeping city coming to life outside his window.

  Scrawled on the back of the business card was a street address in Amsterdam, a date, and a time: 10:00 p.m. The date was tomorrow.

  March looked out the window at the pink blush on the gray clouds. No. Today.

  He glanced at the getaway packs tossed on the bed. He knew that this random stuff had to mean something. It wasn’t like Alfie to overpack. He hadn’t left these things as a guide for his son. But somehow they would have to be.

  He could walk out the door right now. Amsterdam Centraal Station was only blocks away. He could pick a destination, hop on a train. Figure out his next step as the miles took him far away.

  Or he could find out what Alfie had been up to.

  At 9:30 p.m. in the late spring, it was still twilight in Amsterdam.

  As March got closer to the address, more people began to fill the streets. Young people streamed from tram stops, scooted around corners, walked in large groups, laughing. He joined the stream heading to the very end of the block, where a small crowd was gathered.

  He’d spent the day moving like a ghost. Gliding down backstreets, crossing a street if he felt a glance on his profile, turning a shoulder, hugging a shadow. To be in a crowd unnerved him. He couldn’t be sure that there wasn’t a figure in a raincoat and black gloves, threading through the people, keeping him in sight.

  This couldn’t be the address. The warehouse was abandoned, covered in graffiti. There were chains and a padlock on the doors. An old banner, tearing at the edges, was taped across the double doors. It read COMMAND-X.

  The sun slanted through the industrial buildings, flashing the bricks with copper. A pale moon hung in the darkening blue sky. He felt as though he were balanced on a hinge between day and night, the knife’s edge between one life and another.

  The crowd surged and receded. Young people dressed alike in a hodgepodge of circus and punk and old Hollywood glamour. Top hats with fluttering ribbons, fishnet stockings on arms and legs, ripped T-shirts. Girls in tutus over shredded tights, their shoulders and backs inked with dragons and stars and blue moons. Guys in tuxedos with colorful, striped vests. Hair the color of sunsets and Day-Glo posters.

  March heard someone speaking English and drifted closer to a trio in their twenties, a girl with electric cobalt-blue hair and two tall boys, one in a neon green cap that read NO LOGO.

  “I saw them in Berlin last fall,” the girl said.

  “Are you sure this is the place? It’s so … s
ketchy.”

  “This is the way it always is,” the girl said confidently.

  The window flashed red, and for a second, March thought the building was on fire. He took a step back, but the crowd pushed him forward.

  The doors burst open, the padlock falling to the ground with a crash.

  “It’s starting!” the cobalt-haired girl said.

  March was a part of the crowd now, helpless in the tide as everyone flowed through the open doors. He was pushed into a vast space. A platform had been set up toward the rear. Two huge blank video screens flanked it. Strings of white and blue lights were woven around metal scaffolding that reached up in the air.

  Two men were quickly climbing the metal towers, one on either side of the platform, up to the beam above. The crowd seemed to know what to expect, and it faced the front.

  Absolute silence fell as a woman entered from behind a linen curtain, carrying a ukulele. Then the room exploded into applause and cheers, reverberating against the metal and brick. She stood, her chin lifted, giving no sign that she heard.

  She was dressed all in midnight blue, in tights and a corset and an artfully frayed velvet frock coat. She wore a top hat that trailed long, tattered pieces of blue silk and net fabric that glittered with crystals.

  “It’s Blue!” the cobalt-haired girl cried. Her voice cracked with a sob of excitement.

  Blue’s skin was pale, with a painted blue word running down her cheek. Glancing at the close-up on the screen, March could make it out.

  T

  E

  A

  R

  Her eyebrows were drawn on her face in high, feathered arches. They gave her an eerily alert expression. Her lipstick was dark and her mouth was wide. Even from here March could see that her wide-set eyes were crystal blue. They glittered.

  She held up one hand and the crowd quieted immediately. “Command, control, option, shift,” she said. March was surprised to hear her American accent. “We are made of bits and bytes. On our ether pathways, do we grasp the cosmos?” She lifted her hand, and they followed the gesture. Directly above her head, framed in the skylight, was the moon. Just as though she’d summoned it.