When the Thrill Is Gone

22

“I have to ask you a question, Fatima,” I said to the head child.

She looked at me, hardly shuddering when the heavy object hit the door a second time.

“Do you want me to take you and your brothers and sisters out of here?”

She cocked her head and squinted as if trying to decipher a new slang.

“I’ll take you out of here if you want to go, if you want to come with me.”

She nodded and the children huddled closer around her.

The door to their unit was the fireproof kind; plated with thin but durable metal and, most probably, reinforced on the inside. I propped a chair up against the doorknob. The heavy object shook the barricade hard enough for me to see the hinges move.

With Fatima’s help I herded the kids to a fire escape that I’d located the moment I walked in. One little girl grabbed her favorite doll, and her brother, who was no more than ten months her senior, picked up a ray gun. I didn’t try to stop them. Getting in the way of a child’s imagination will almost always take more time than it’s worth.

Fatima’s toddler brother was crying. She handed him into my arms while urging her siblings through the window. The door shook again, causing the unfamiliar sensation of fear to blossom in my lungs.

The little boy stopped crying as soon as he could hide his face against my chest. We were the last two out on the fire escape. The others were scampering down, led by their courageous sister. She released the ladders and went from floor to floor, making sure that we were all safe. The second-floor landing was bolted and her hands weren’t strong enough to throw the latch. I was about to bend down when she kicked the iron rod and the trapdoor fell through, allowing my newfound brood to clamber down to the sidewalk.

“Hey, you!” a voice shouted from above.

I didn’t look up. Why would I? I knew that they’d be after us. Sometimes you just have to make the best of what you find.

I’m not superstitious as a rule, but when I saw the yellow cab trawling D for a fare I hoped that I hadn’t used up my taxi-karma on the guy I forced to drive to Brooklyn.

“Cab!” I shouted in a voice I hadn’t used in a long time.

He pulled to a stop.

“Get ’em all in,” I said to Fatima.

A chorus of complaint roared out from the window and fire escape above.

“Goodbye!” I yelled up at our pursuers as Fatima hurried the kids along. “We’ll see you when we get back from the zoo!”

I jumped in, gave the driver an address I knew well, and prayed for green lights.

In the car, with the toddler on my lap, I sighed. The fear I felt had nothing to do with my personal safety but with the jeopardy my actions may have placed the children in. I was pretty sure that my client was dead, and that the children were in greater danger in the fortress than they would be with me — but still...

I inhaled the various odors that cling to children. We were a few blocks away from the escape and I doubted that anyone would catch up to us.

If they did that would be their bad luck.

“Fatima,” I said.

The child looked up at me. She was holding the hands of the four- and the five-year-old that separated her and her brother.

“Was your mother hurt?”

She nodded. The tears were behind her. I felt that she had swallowed the pain for all her brothers and sisters, that this child had already seen more hardship than I’d accrued in all my brutal fifty-five years.

“Was she scared about anything before that?”

“Mama was always scared about somethin’,” she told me. “She said that there was a robber behind every door, even in the big house.”

“The big house?”

“That’s where Ivan lived with us all.”

“Was Ivan your mom’s boyfriend?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did he hurt her?”

“Uh-uh. It was the man who climbed out the window.”

“I’m going to take you to the house of a really nice lady and her daughter,” I said, wanting to veer away from the underlying pain of loss.

“We want to go stay with our Aunt Chris,” Fatima said.

“Yeah,” one of her little sisters agreed.

“As soon as I find her I’ll be happy to take you to her,” I said. “But I have to get you someplace safe before that.”

“What if we don’t like it there?” the elder child asked.

“If you don’t, then you don’t have to stay.”

She nodded once, and I had to remind myself that she was a child and not the woman she seemed to be.

Aura Ullman owned a very large top-floor apartment on Gramercy Park West. Her living room window looked down on the private square of green.

Aura’s seventeen-year-old daughter buzzed us through the ground-floor entrance and opened the door once we’d climbed our way to the top. Theda was five ten, weighing no more than a hundred and five pounds with blue-black skin, gray eyes, and wavy brown hair that marked her complicated heritage.

“Hi, Uncle L,” she said, smiling. “Who’re your friends?”

She lowered to her haunches and Fatima’s hard heart melted. The two hugged each other and the rest of the brood surged forward to get in on the action.

“Is your mother here?” I asked.

“You know she’s at work,” the teenager replied. And then she asked the kids, “Are you guys hungry?”

They had tomato soup, frosted flakes, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, orange juice, milk, and three Cokes. Fatima made sure that all her brothers and sisters sat neatly around the kitchen table while she carried the youngest, Uriah, on her hip.

“Sure they can, Uncle L,” Theda was saying to me. “Mama won’t care if I say okay.”

We had tried to call Aura but she wasn’t answering any of her phones.

Because of her position in real estate, Aura was able to procure her ideal condo. I knew she had the space and the compassion to protect the kids. I would have taken them to my place if it wasn’t for Gordo dying there.

“Tell her it’s only until I find their aunt,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” Theda assured me. “Mom likes kids.”

I needed information but it was better to leave the brood under Fatima’s care for a while before asking more questions.

I took out my phone, where I found a text from Mardi saying K io. Wfu. Kitteridge in office waiting for you.