A World of Thieves

photography lamps set up around a red sofa and a camera on a tripod.

I expected rubberneckers out of every room, but the only door to open was down at 312. The door guy stepped out and looked at us. Buck brought out the .45 and the guy ducked inside and slammed the door. We backed up along the hallway, watching the doors, Buck repeatedly clearing his throat hard and rubbing his neck.

The girl was half-crouched next to the elevator shaft, her knees together and her arms over her breasts. Her eyes were on us but she seemed to be having trouble focusing. Buck gave her the once-over as he stuck the .45 in his pants. The face was a battered fright but the body was something to see. And she was a real blonde. I was still feeling the way she’d flung herself on me. The way she’d held on when the guy tried pulling her back.

“Drunk as a skunk, ain’t you, darling?” Buck said.

I didn’t think she was. She was looped, all right, but what I’d smelled on her breath wasn’t booze.

“They might’ve called downstairs,” Buck said. “Let’s skip any surprises.”

He raised the fire escape window with a rusty screech. By the hallway’s weak light we could make out the bricked wall of a neighboring building not ten feet away.

“Come on,” he said, and ducked out under the sash and started clunking down the iron stairs into the greater darkness.

I thought of the camera and told myself she had it coming. For a bare moment her eyes fixed on mine, then slipped out of focus again. I almost said “Good luck” before the stupidity of it struck me. I had one foot out the window when she grabbed me from behind, hugging to me and crying, trembling like a mistreated dog.

I didn’t think about it, I just did it. I took off my coat and helped her get her arms in the sleeves and she drew it close around her. The sleeves hung past her fingertips. I went out on the landing and helped her through the window. She hit her head on the sash but hardly seemed aware of it. The alley below us was dark as a grave. Unsteady as she was, I had to hold her close to me as we descended the creaky stairway into a deepening stink. At the second landing the stairs reversed direction and we went down the last flight.

“What the hell’s this?” Buck’s harsh whisper came up from the blackness.

As we came off the stairway she lost her footing and gasped but I caught her before she fell.

“What’re you doing, Sonny?”

“We can’t leave her up there,” I said.

“Goddammit, kid, are you…shit. Come on.”

I followed his vague form in the dark, pulling the girl along by the coat, catching her up each time she stumbled. We went past two alleyway intersections and around the corner of the next one, where Buck drew up so short I bumped into him. We stood still, listening hard, but didn’t hear anything except our own heavy breath and the scurrying of rats in the garbage. Nobody coming behind us. No police sirens on the air.

“What’s the big idea?” he whispered.

“No big idea,” I said. “It’s just…we don’t have to leave her to those guys to beat up some more.”

I couldn’t see his face in the gloom but I could feel his eyes. “Hey kid, the world’s full of punching bags and for all we know that’s her husband we kicked the shit out of.”

“If he is, I hope we busted his skull,” I said.

Like Daddy, I never could abide a womanbeater, and like him I thought guys who hit their wives were the worst of the bunch. The neighbor across the courtyard used to smack his wife around, but one night when he had her crying really loud Daddy went over there and thumped on the door and when the guy opened up Daddy knocked him on his ass. Told him if he hit her again he’d break his neck. They didn’t have any children and I figured this time the woman would finally leave him. But when Daddy came back out I saw her sitting on the sofa with the bastard and tending to his busted mouth. I thought she was a fool for staying with him, but my mother said we shouldn’t be to hard on her. “‘Love thieves the will to be free,’” she said, quoting some line I’d never heard. That was my mother, always the poetic soul, fond of Byron and Poe and Yeats, all those versifying fools of the heart. “Well, her love for that sonofabitch,” Daddy said, “is gonna thieve her of her dumb-ass life one of these nights.”

Buck struck up a match to illuminate the girl’s beatup face. She turned away. “What’s your name, Toots?”

She gripped my arm more tightly.

“Rat got your tongue?” Buck said. The match burned out and the dark swallowed us again. “Some breath on her. It ain’t hooch, either. She’s doped.”

“More reason to get her away from those bastards,” I said.

“She’ll just fall in with some other bastards. It’s how these bimbos are.”

“Well, we can’t leave her here.” She pulled away from me and we heard her being sick.

“Listen to that,” Buck said in disgust. “Christ’s sake, Sonny, this business ain’t got a lot of room in it for taking pity. It’s you and your partners and fuck the rest. Or go sell shoes for a living.”

“I know that, dammit.” And I did. She drew up against me again. I could smell the sick on her breath. “But this isn’t business right now and she’s already here and we can at least take her someplace else. That’s all I’m saying.”

“That’s all you’re saying, my ass. She’s built like a brick shithouse and you’d like the chance to climb all over her. Hell, kid, I don’t blame you—me too. But goddammit…”

That wasn’t the whole reason—I didn’t know the whole reason—but I couldn’t deny it was part of it.

He blew out a long breath. Then said, “Goddammit, Sonny, the minute…the minute she’s in the way…or even just a pain in the ass—”

“She’s gone,” I said.

“You goddam right she is.”

And that was it. He turned and headed off. I held the girl close to me and followed him to the end of the alley, where it abutted a street that wasn’t brightly lighted or heavily trafficked.

“Wait here out of the light,” he said. Then left. The girl kept her hold on me and pressed her face into my chest.

Fifteen minutes later the car pulled up in front of the alley. Russell stuck his head out the window and said, “Where you at? What’s this surprise you got?”

I steered the girl out of the shadows and over to the car and Russell said, “What the hell…?”—smiling kind of crooked, like he thought it might be a joke.

The rear door swung open and Charlie reached out and beckoned impatiently. “Get her in here, Sonny.”

I helped her duck into the door and Charlie drew her in. “Good Lord, girl,” she said, “what happened to you?”

I started to get in the back too but Charlie wouldn’t have it. She made me sit up front with Buck and Russell so the girl could lie on the seat with her head on Charlie’s lap.

“Smells like somebody been using her for a…hey now,” Russell said. I don’t think he’d noticed till then that all she had on was the coat.

“You hush up, Russell LaSalle,” Charlie said. “And turn around—all of you. It’s not a coochie show back here.” She unfurled her motor court blanket and spread it over the girl.

Russell got the Ford rolling. Buck drained the last drops of the flask, then got the bottle from under the seat. He uncorked it and took a slug and then handed it to me. I turned it up and swallowed deep and felt the heat of it in my eyes and nose, the flooding warmth in my belly.

Buck said it might be wise to make a beeline out of San Antonio and look for a motor court somewhere down the road. Nobody argued the point.

“You poor thing,” Charlie crooned. She was stroking the girl’s hair. “You poor…Sonny, what’s her name?”

“Beats me,” I said.

“Belle.” Faintly spoken but clear enough.

And then she was asleep.