'Maybe you'll make an exception.'
The pawnbroker considers the kid, considers the bracelet, then looks at the door to make sure no one else is coming in. 'I'm listening.'
'Here's what I want. Five hundred dollars, cash. Now. Then I leave like we never met, and you can keep the bracelet.'
The pawnbroker puts on his well-practiced poker face. 'Are you kidding me? This piece of junk? Gold plate, zircons instead of diamonds, poor workmanship—I'll give you a hundred bucks, not a penny more.'
The kid never breaks eye contact. 'You're lying.'
Of course the pawnbroker is lying, but he resents the accusation. 'How about if I turn you in to the Juvey- cops right now?
The kid reaches down and takes the bracelet from the table. 'You could,' he says. 'But then you won't get this—the police will.'
The pawnbroker strokes his beard. Maybe this kid isn't as naive as he looks.
'If it were a piece of junk,' the kid says, 'you wouldn't have offered me a hundred. I'll bet you wouldn't have offered me anything.' He looks at the bracelet dangling from his fingers. 'I really don't know what something like this is worth, but I'll bet it's worth thousands. All I'm asking is five hundred, which means, whatever it's worth, you're getting a great deal.'
The pawnbroker's poker face is gone. He can't stop staring at the bracelet—it's all he can do not to drool over it. He knows what it's really worth, or at least he can guess. He knows where he can fence it himself for five times what the kid is asking. That would be a nice bit of change. Enough to take his wife on that long vacation she's always wanted.
'Two hundred fifty. That's my final offer.'
'Five hundred. You have three seconds, and then I leave. One . . . two . . .'
'Deal.' The pawnbroker sighs as if he's been beaten. 'You drive a hard bargain, kid.' That's the way these things are played. Make the kid think that he won, when all the while he's the one who's truly being robbed! The pawnbroker reaches for the bracelet, but the kid holds it out of reach.
'First the money.'
'The safe's in the back room—I'll be back in a second.'
'I'll come with you.'
The pawnbroker doesn't argue. It's understandable that the kid doesn't trust him. If he trusted people, he'd have been unwound by now. In the back room, the pawnbroker positions himself with the kid behind him, so the kid can't see the combination of the safe. He pulls open the door, and the second he does, he feels something hard and heavy connecting with his head. His thoughts are instantly scrambled. He loses consciousness before he hits the ground.
The pawnbroker comes to sometime later, with a headache and a faint memory that something had gone wrong. It takes a few seconds for him to pull himself together and realize exactly what happened. That little monster conned him! He got him to open the safe, and the moment he did, he knocked him out and cleaned out the safe.
Sure enough, the safe is open wide—but it's not entirely empty. Inside is the bracelet, its gold and diamonds looking even brighter against the ugly gray steel of the empty safe. How much money had been in the safe? Fifteen hundred, tops.
This bracelet is worth at least three times that. Still a deal—and the kid knew it.
The pawnbroker rubs the painful knot on his head, furious at the kid for what he did and yet admiring him for the strangely honorable nature of the crime. If he himself had been this clever, this honorable, and had found this kind of nerve when he was a kid, perhaps he'd be more than just a pawnbroker.
27. Connor
The morning after the bathroom incident, they are rousted awake by the Fatigues before dawn. 'Everybody up! Now! Move it! Move it!' They're loud, they're on edge, and the first thing Connor notices is that the safeties on their weapons are oft. Still bleary from sleep, he rises and looks for Risa. He sees her already being herded by two Fatigues toward a huge double door that has always been padlocked. Now the padlock is off.
'Leave your things! Go! Move it! Move it!'
To his right, a cranky kid pushes a Fatigue for tearing away his blanket. The Fatigue hits him on the shoulder with the butt of his rifle—not enough to seriously wound him, but enough to make it clear to the kid, and everyone else, that they mean business. The kid goes down on his knees, gripping his shoulder and cursing, and the Fatigue goes about the business of herding the others. Even in his pain, the kid looks ready for a fight. As Connor passes him, Connor grabs him by the arm and helps him up.
'Take it easy,' Connor says. 'Don't make it worse.'
The kid pulls out of Connor's grip. 'Get off me! I don't need your stinkin' help.' The kid storms away. Connor shakes his head. Was he ever that belligerent?
Up ahead, the huge double doors are slid open to reveal another room of the warehouse that the Unwinds have never seen. This one is filled with crates—old airline packing crates, designed, both in shape and durability, to transport goods by air freight. Connor immediately realizes what they're for—and why he and the others have been warehoused so close to an airport. Wherever they're going, they're going as air cargo.
'Girls to the left, boys to the right. Move it! Move it!'
There's grumbling, but no direct defiance. Connor wonders how many kids get what's going on.
'Four to a crate! Boys with boys, girls with girls. Move it! Move it!'
Now everyone begins to scramble around, trying to team up with their preferred travel companions, but the Fatigues have neither patience nor time for it. They randomly create groups of four and push them toward the crates.
That's when Connor notices how dangerously close he is to Roland—and it's no accident. Roland moved close to him on purpose. Connor can just imagine it.
Pitch black and close quarters. If he's in a crate with Roland, then he'll be dead before takeoff.
Connor tries to move away, but a Fatigue grabs Roland, Connor, and two of Roland's known collaborators. 'You four. That crate over there!'
Connor tries not to let his panic show; he doesn't want Roland to see. He should have prepared his own weapon, like the one Roland certainly has concealed on him now. He should have prepared for the inevitability of a life-ordeath confrontation, but he hadn't, and now his options are limited.
No time for thinking this through, so he lets impulse take over and gives in to his fighting instincts. He turns to one of Roland's henchmen and punches him in the face hard enough to draw blood, maybe even break his nose. The force of the punch spins the kid around, but before he can come back for a counterassault, a Fatigue grabs Connor and smashes him back against the concrete wall. The Fatigue doesn't know it, but this is
'You picked the wrong day to do that, kid!' says the Fatigue, holding him against the wall with his rifle.
'What are you gonna do, kill me? I thought you were trying to save us.'
That gives the Fatigue a moment's pause.
'Hey!' yells another Fatigue. 'Forget him! We gotta load them up.' Then he grabs another kid to complete the foursome with Roland and his henchmen, sending them toward a crate. They don't even care about the one kid's bleeding nose.
The Fatigue holding Connor against the wall sneers at him. 'The sooner you're in a box, the sooner you're somebody else's problem.'
'Nice socks,' says Connor.
They put Connor in a four-by-eight crate that already has three kids waiting to complete their quartet. The crate is scaled even before he can see who's inside with him, but as long as it's not Roland, it will do.
