VERITY'S MURDER
I'm Paul. This here attic is St Paul's bell tower. Get comfortable. Yeah, that boat cushion's great for sitting. Paula's in the corner. No behind you.
She hates me bringing folks to our hideout. Very careful is Paula, especially for a nine year old. But I say, no sense talking in a rainstorm, on the open street where this goober, stopped me. You're the goober, yeah.
Thunder echoes nice, doesn't it? Gabriel's bowling 300. Our St Paul's isn't nice like the one up Fifth, but we got atmosphere. Atmosphere and stories.
You swapped Edwin food for his story. I seen you. You ordered McDonald supersize every-mother-loving-thing. Paula and I prefer cash. Green is good. Shit, three pizzas Paula's sweet ass. Did I mention she's behind you? Fifty. Am I talking to your editor? No, fifty. Open your wallet. A pinch-faced Jefferson. Ah, an ATM card limited only by my imagination. 20 now, 30 at the machine. I knew you were very reasonable. No lies in St Paul's.
First ground rules. The fall and decline of the Kid Thieves' Assembly, total off-limit topic. Same for Bossman. Don't no one describe Bossman, get it?
How about I describe the night the GAP owner puked? One from a 100 stories, a story for each assembly member. I'll tell Verity's murder.
Verity burned. She was so hot she raised blisters. Claimed she learned tightrope walking from her circus freak mother. Fast as lighting, few! few! Cartwheeled over ceilings, leapt from balconies and firescapes. World's greatest pre-teen burglar. Verity loved her black CATS T-shirt, wore it every damn day. She petted every stray cat she met. Resembled a panther, I always thought, with her dark eyes and hair, those white scar stripes down both arms. Chin like a hunting dog. It pointed, get it?
Anyway, Verity spreed an outlet string, the one beside Southern's railroad tracks. I mean two stores a night for two weeks. This tall girl and her velvet eyes terrorize a converted warehouse turned glitzy shopping mall. The owners hired extra guards and dogs and all that commando bull. Clearly in need of refrigeration time, weren't they, Paula?
Verity stole quality. She delivered four Raiders jackets into Bossman's arms, then did a double-backflip and yelled, tada! Man, she scorched. She was so hot, so fly, fresh very you-fill-in-the-smart-words.
What? Sure, everyone brought Bossman their haul. Everyone still breathing.
Verity got half the hawk price for the coats. She bought a Discman and Laffy Taffy for us little kids. For three days, Thieves Assembly is happily ever after-o-rama. Then it's the weekend.
We always shared meals. We dropped chicken buckets, chinese, whatever, onto some metal cardtables. We lived in an old Victorian house, so the ceilings and walls felt a million miles away. Verity was eating Bossman's corndogs, and Bossman tripped. Screamed she wasn't carrying her load. Screamed Verity chose too many babies from the wild ones, that he couldn't train every stray kid she dragged inside the safehouse.
Bossman pulled a ketchup knife and stomped toward her. Cut her palm when she guarded her face. I stood behind the futon couch thinking, if he treats his girl all savage and shit, what'll he do to skinny me if I try and stop him?
Anyway, Verity rolled beneath the card table. The table divided them. "OK, Bossy," she yelled, "I snatch tomorrow."
Bossman lowered his head, rested palms on the table. He exhaled slow, real dramatic. Like a train engine steaming up. He dug his boots into the wood planks and shoved until the table trapped Verity against the wall. The metal edge squeezed right in her middle. Rough.
"Tonight," Verity gasped. I crouched behind the futon, so I couldn't see her face when she said, "Tonight, two stores. Leggo, Bossman, please."
I looked around an armrest. He loosened up. Verity skirted the edge until she stood dead center in the open room. She accepted Bossman's hand, his pat on her cheek. Coffee and cream. Together they made a zebra. Isn't that what I always said, Paula? Maybe a panda gone Cujo or a torn Almond Joy.
Verity gathered her supplies. Suction cups, a carbonate-tipped rod, wooden prop for windows. Strange metal twists. Even a few plastic bags for the get-away. Put all the tools into her black nylon backpack. Her eyes absorbed Bossman as he chewed bread around his dog before the first giant, meaty bite. Her eyes soaked him into her brain.
Verity said, "I'm gone then." She blew a kiss to the Assembly before she slid open the handcarved doors. She crawled into a crackling winter dusk, shards of air in her lungs. I forgot about dinner, just watched the city take her. I felt cold and pus-sie.
Verity goofed. She included Stumpy Codi, SC, the one thumb wonderboy.
SC's dad was...Iranian? Egyptian, Paula? Some desert tribe. A tribe with a dumbass rule that a thief lose his hand. Stumpy jerked his hand mostly out of the cleaver's way. Threw bleach in his dad's face and escaped Columbus forever.
Maybe Verity hinted SC might become her new favorite. Maybe SC could carry, maybe he was her burgalry student. Who knows with women?
So outlet security was beefed, patrol times switched. This was '84, '86, way before cheap motion detecting lights. SC and Verity crouched, ran hunched across railroad tracks to the long, two-storey brick warehouse. Shops filled only the first floor. They slid past Anne Taylor, Ambercrombie, Laura Ashley, Tommy Helfinger. Past all the important people.
At Izod, Verity and SC rested beside a blue post office drop box. Their breath clouds rained into sidewalk cracks. Last stop, The Gap. Firescapes wore new steel locks, clenched against the building like iron fists. Two o'clock rang the bells of St Paul. At the complex's farthest point, a green industrial dumpster filled the space between the warehouse and street.
Picture the set. SC lookout, Verity a shadow climbing a mountain. Her fingers will handholds in the stubborn bricks. SC watches for all of ten minutes, then it's shut-eye. Or maybe cold stiffen his ear drums, and they can't vibrate with approaching steps.
All Verity knows, as she eases open a window, is how sharp February stars poke her eyes, how dark her silhouette dances over the uneven bricks. A storage room occupies the second floor, a tomb for stagnant merchandise. With her head over the window sill, Verity knows someone inside holds his breath. Like a raygun blast, she knows a man presses his back against the interior wall, his right arm raised over her head.
She never screams. She scratches and claws at his fist wrapped around her hat and hair. Chokes as a forearm snakes around her throat and cuts off her oxygen. Verity's a spacewalker in a twinkling, bad adrenaline minute, her mission scratched. The guard drags her upper body over the windowsill. A second man, in a London Fog coat, throws the light switch. The coated man leads SC into the storage room. Akido-style, he twists SC's stumpy hand over the boy's back. SC cries.
Verity bites the guard's leg. When he jerks away, she braces both arms to either sie of the window. She pushes backward toward the night where the rest of her body hangs.
Verity's wrestler simply lets go.
"One's enough."
SC swore those were his torturer's words. After Juvie placed SC with fosters, he ditched the bleeding hearts and rejoined Thieves Assembly. When SC reported, he cried like a girl, all sniffling and snot, red-faced.
"Verity tried to drop and roll," SC insisted. "A black ball. She hit the dumpster shoulders first. That's how come she got beheaded. The rim lopped her head off like a cleaver, and her body slapped out onto the pavement, and blood steamed like a drain..." SC blubbered a long wet stream of sorries and wishes.
The Gap owner arrived in a police car. Short dark guy, real Castro looking with a bona fide mustache. After a cop shows him what was left of Verity, the owner hurled into a garment bag for ten minutes. Hurled, tossed his cookies, yawned in technicolor, blew chunks, spewed, upchucked.
From that night on, the owner lost his grip.
On his stuff, not his head. He'd walk past Miller Park, hangout for homeless, clanless kids. This guy with a gold earring lost his grip on $5 bills. Went nuts, right? Paula called him Senor Jumping Bean, on account of his brown orthopedic shoes. They squished when he walked. He dropped money, and he sure worked those aching feet, pronto. He covered every park trail. Never looked into anyone's eyes. Odd guy.
If all that happened, just so, then you tell Paul and Paula the answer to a tickle, a riddle.
How does SC see anything outside the room? He was strong-armed by London Fog, beside the light switch. Just two men, him and Verity. All inside.
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