Throwback, page 18
“Butcher of men?” Corey repeated. “Seriously?”
Quinn gulped. “What if you’re younger than men?”
“Aaah, we ain’t afraid, are we?” Oscar lifted a sharp, jagged stone from the ground. “One solid smack on the back of his rodent head with this, and it’s lights out! Hee-hee!”
“Um, that’s a great plan, but we thought of one that might not involve homicide,” Corey said. “All you have to do is lure him into the darkness, Oscar. Quinn and I will take care of the rest.”
A distant sound of whistling made Corey whirl around. His eyes widened at the sight of a silhouette approaching two blocks away.
Oscar dropped the rock and began waddling back into the black lot. “Have it your way, fellas. Come. Now.”
Corey and Quinn scurried after him. The whistling grew louder. In the dim light of Oscar’s lamp, the lot was a fluid moonscape of broken bottles, trash, branches, broken planks, scattered newspapers, and the swift movement of small animals. As Oscar flicked off the lantern, the area sank back into blackness. “You ready?” Oscar whispered.
Corey’s eyes were adjusting to the dark. Enough light was entering from the door of Grumney’s to outline the trash-strewn surface below. Corey looked at Quinn, who gave him a confident wink and a nod.
“Ready,” Corey said.
As he and Quinn began walking deeper into the lot, Oscar began to count. “Five . . . four . . . three . . .”
The whistling was close now. It matched the tune from the piano inside Grumney’s.
“Two . . . one . . .”
Corey felt his knees shaking. He turned to see Quinn unhooking the lasso from her shoulder.
“Now.”
Oscar struck a match, lit his lamp, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. “We-e-e-ll, if it ain’t my good friend Ratboy! What happened to your ugly face?”
“Scheino the wino!” came a hoarse, growly voice. “I got cut up in a fight.”
“What a surprise. Well, anything would be an improvement,” Oscar said. “Say, I have a little something for you. Something that’ll . . . shall we say, lift your spirits? Hee-hee! If your appointment book ain’t too full, let me invite you into my humble chapeau!”
As Oscar turned and began walking into the lot, Corey and Quinn shrank back into the shadows.
“Ain’t it humble château?” Ratboy grunted, following the old man. Corey couldn’t see his features, but there was something familiar about the rail-thin body and the hunched posture.
“What say?” Oscar replied.
“Château,” Ratboy said. “That means ‘house.’ Chapeau is ‘hat.’ You just invited me into your hat.”
“Did I?” The two men were past the broken wall now. They were completely in the lot, hidden from the street, their footsteps crunching against the debris below. About halfway in, Oscar turned to Ratboy and held up the lamp. “I thought you came off the boat from Finland, old boy. When, pray tell, did you learn French?”
“I got me an education, fat man. I’m gonna be in business someday, buying and selling in some fancy skyscraper while you’re passed out in your own piss.”
Corey’s breath caught in his throat. Of course the silhouette was familiar. He knew exactly who Ratboy was. He had last seen him lying in a pool of blood near the Gash.
“It’s the plank guy,” Corey murmured.
Ratboy’s head snapped toward Corey. A bandage covered the entire right side of his face. “Who’s that?”
“You’re an ooga-ooga boy,” Corey said. “The one Quinn knifed.”
“Come into the light!” Ratboy demanded. He was stomping diagonally across the lot, his one good eye stretched wide open. “I recognize you. ’Smatter, your pal too chicken to face me? I can play his game.” With his right hand, he reached into the belt of his pants and pulled out a knife of his own.
Out of the darkness came Quinn’s voice: “Round and round she goes, and where she stops . . .”
Ratboy’s movements were quick, jerky. He whirled around like a tap dancer as a lasso spun overhead, like the outline of a cloud. It dropped over his torso before he had a chance to jump away.
“Everybody knows!”
“What the—?” Quinn yanked the rope tight, and Ratboy slipped. He fell to the ground, banging his bandaged head on a discarded chair. “Yeeeaaaghh!”
“Oops, sorry about that,” Quinn said.
Oscar stood over the skinny guy and let out a cackle. “So, tell me, fella, is ooga-ooga Finnish for ‘Look at me, I’m a sucker’?”
“It’s . . . English . . . for ‘You’re gonna die for this, old man’!” Ratboy jerked his body from side to side, sending a sharp kick upward to Oscar’s underside.
Oscar staggered away with a high-pitched scream. Ratboy somersaulted in Quinn’s direction, the force of his movement yanking the lasso from Quinn’s hands.
With a high-pitched yell like a trapped raccoon, Ratboy shook his body from side to side against the slackened rope, lifting his arms from the elbow. He raised the knife, angled it toward himself, and slid it under the rope. One good outward push sliced completely through the lasso, which flopped uselessly to the ground in pieces.
“Quinn, careful!” Corey shouted.
Ratboy’s half face broke into a half grin. Spinning around, he pointed his knife into the darkness at Quinn. “You didn’t take a big enough piece of me? You wanted to come back for more?”
“Wait, wait, time out, this is my fault, RB,” Oscar said, lumbering toward Ratboy with a worried smile. “The kids don’t mean you no harm. This is getting way out of hand. Stop it. Leave them alone. All they want to do is get back the money you took from the boy. Corey.”
“I take money from a lot of—” Ratboy eyed Corey carefully. “Say, I know you. You’re the kid with the weird-looking counterfeit bills, dated a hundred years in the future! You rotten chiseler. There I am, innocently using that cash to buy me a shirt, and you turn me into a criminal!”
Corey shook his head. “Wait. But if you stole them, you already were a crimin—”
“Everybody’s getting their jollies off old Ratboy, are they?” Ratboy reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out a fistful of papers and small objects. “You want your useless junk? Here it is.”
As he flung it outward, paper bills and coins scattered over the rocks and piles of trash. “No-o-o-o!” Corey screamed.
“Why so sad?” Ratboy hissed. “You can’t take it where you’re going. Hands in the air! All of you!”
Oscar and Corey obeyed, but Quinn stood with her hands on her hips defiantly, her back to the wall.
“Quinn!” Corey warned.
Yawning, Quinn raised her right hand.
“We’ll do this one victim at a time,” Ratboy said, raising his knife toward Quinn. “Eeny . . .”
He swung to Oscar. “Meeny . . .”
Then to Corey. “Miny . . .”
With a big grin, he crept toward Quinn, pulling back his knife arm.
“Moe.”
35
Sometimes, Corey knew, thinking was overrated.
Like now.
Digging his feet into the rocks, he ran toward Ratboy and hurtled himself forward. He hit the skinny guy around the waist, knocking him off his feet. The two tumbled to the ground. Ratboy’s knife flew away into the darkness. Corey heard it clank against a rock.
“Where did the shank go?” Oscar yelled.
Corey didn’t have time to answer. He and Ratboy were rolling in the rubble. Corey felt a rock from below jab into his back, ripping through his shirt. He pushed the heel of his hand into Ratboy’s bandage. As the man cried out in pain, Corey rolled him over and straddled him. Ratboy’s white bandage had sprouted a deep red circle of blood that was growing larger. He reached for Corey’s neck, but Corey swatted away his arms and dug his elbow into the guy’s chest.
Ratboy groaned, breaking into a fit of coughing.
“I’ll take care of him!” Quinn shouted, reaching down to grab Ratboy’s shirt collar. “You find your artifact!”
As she brought the coughing ooga-ooga boy to his feet, Oscar handed the lantern to Corey. “I know how much you need your possessions, buddy boy. Take this, while I tidy up some personal business.”
Oscar turned. With a windup like a retired minor-league pitcher, he landed a solid punch to Ratboy’s good eye.
Quinn let out a whoop. “A shiner by Schein!”
Corey turned and dropped to his knees, lantern in hand. The floor of debris became a field of reflected light. He didn’t care about the bills. All he needed was something metallic from the twenty-first century, a coin or the subway token. The lantern illuminated a galaxy of glinting—the quartz of broken stones, the edges of discarded metal utensils. Paper was everywhere, decaying piles of wrapped newspapers, discarded bags, magazines. Fallen branches and shattered wood reached skyward like begging arms. Corey could see a few dollar bills and a leather wallet, which must have belonged to Ratboy, or to someone Ratboy had robbed. The wallet felt like it had some coins in it so he stuffed it into his pocket. In the distance he saw the glint of Ratboy’s knife. The hilt was jammed into the rocks, the point sticking at an angle into the air.
“Careful of that blade—it’s near you!” he cried out. But he couldn’t see the others. They’d disappeared into a dark corner, where he could hear scuffling and shouts. He rose to his feet and called out, “Everything okay? You guys need help?”
“Come join the fun!” Quinn replied.
As Corey ran forward, his foot caught on a thick old branch, wedged in the rocks. With a cry of pain, he dropped to his knees in a pile of rubble. His hand shot down instinctively.
About a foot beyond it, barely distinguishable in the dim light, was a thin yellow card with a black stripe. Corey froze. No one in 1917 would know what it was. No one in 1917 had ever seen a black magnetic strip. Or a New York City MetroCard.
His MetroCard. Which meant his other stuff must be nearby. Where this was, there had to be more. Something metallic.
Quickly he shoved the card into his shirt pocket. He dug into the rocks and came up with handfuls of wrappers, dust, glass fragments, bits of fabric, shredded paper. Nothing at all from the stuff that was stolen, until he spotted the edge of his great-great-great-grandfather’s passport. He dusted that off and pocketed it, too. Nice to have, but it wasn’t going to help him. He found a quarter and a penny, but they were dated 1915 and 1916. They couldn’t have been his. His coins must have fallen in different places. Or more likely, they were spent. Shopkeepers were less likely to look at the date of a coin than a bill.
As he shone the lantern over a wider area, he caught bits of color—magazine pages, a small New York Mets logo, a broken bit of a vase, a red ribbon. . . .
New York Mets. Corey crept closer, smiling. The Mets didn’t exist until 1962.
And Mets-logo-themed cell phone cases didn’t exist before cell phones.
“Got it . . . ,” he said, barely above a whisper. He grabbed his iPhone off the ground and turned it over. The screen’s plastic protective cover was scratched, but the screen was not cracked. Quickly he pressed the on/off button, and the startup logo began to glow. “Quinn, I got it!”
His answer was a loud scream.
Quinn’s.
He jammed the phone into his pocket. Holding out the lantern, he ran toward the voices.
Quinn was crouched near the corner of the lot, breathing hard. Beside her, Oscar lay flat on the ground, groaning. “More . . . light . . .”
Corey swallowed hard. He knew he’d been away from them too long. Ratboy had taken advantage of the dark. He was a brawler, a gang member. He thrived off the darkness of New York City.
“Well, well, what is this?” Ratboy said, stepping into the light with a small leather book open in his hand. His bandage was completely red now, parts of it in tatters. With a grin, he began reading from the pages with his good eye: “‘Dear Diary, First time writing since that odd night in the hotel. Shall I tell Corey today how I feel about him? He already knows my secret. Yes, Diary, it’s true! And he doesn’t care. He doesn’t judge me or laugh at me or tell me I should wear a dress like a real girl or any of the things people tell me back home, and, oh, if I could only convince him to stay. . . .’ Hoooooo-hooo-hahahaha! Oh, this’ll be worth at least a couple of rounds of drinks at old Grumney’s, while the boys mix tar and feathers for the midnight show! Hahahaha, the tough old West Side cowboy is a sissy girl!”
“Give that back,” Corey said, stepping toward him. He was seeing red. He hated every movement of every muscle on the man’s face.
“Corey, don’t,” Quinn warned.
“I said give that back!” Ignoring Quinn’s plea, he ran for Ratboy, swinging the lantern at his face.
With a giggle, Ratboy ducked easily out of the way. He dug his shoulders into Corey’s abdomen, lifting him into the air and slamming him back down on the ground. With a quick swipe, Ratboy grabbed the lantern in one hand and scooped up the end of Quinn’s lasso with the other.
Ratboy slammed the lantern against the brick wall, shattering the glass. The flames billowed outward, dancing freely in the night air. Holding the tip of the rope over the fire, he set it ablaze. “Plenty of kerosene in here,” he taunted. “The better to anoint you all with, my dear. And, oh, what a flexible and flammable rope! The better to set you on fire! Who goes first? Old Oscar? Quinnie Two-Shoes?” He turned to Corey with a grin. “Or you, lover boy?”
“Me,” Corey said.
Ratboy swung the lantern, and a spray of kerosene shot forward. Corey jumped back. “Run!” he called out.
Quinn stepped toward him, but she was stopped by the outstretched right arm of Oscar Schein. The big guy was struggling to his feet, eyeing Ratboy. His breathing was heavy, his face bright red.
As Ratboy pulled back the flaming lantern again, Oscar jumped. He dug his shoulder into the ooga-ooga boy’s back. With a cry of surprise, Ratboy stumbled forward. He let go of the lantern and it crashed to the ground.
Ratboy lost his balance and dropped. Corey scrambled to his feet, the breath catching in his throat. Directly beneath the falling ooga-ooga boy, a triangle of metal glinted dully. It wasn’t until the body made contact that Corey realized what it was.
The blade of Ratboy’s own knife.
“No-o-o-o-o!” Corey cried out, as Ratboy landed on the blade with a sickening groan.
He lurched once and went still.
Corey flinched. As he turned to see his attacker’s lifeless body, Oscar and Quinn ran to his side. “The blade . . . I knew it was there . . . ,” Corey said. “I should have picked it up.”
“Are you crazy, kid?” Oscar replied. “He was the one who brought the knife here. He was going to use it on us. You didn’t do nothing wrong.”
The flaming rope lay on the ground beside Ratboy. As liquid began oozing out from underneath his body, Corey backed away. “Is that blood?”
“It’s kerosene!” Quinn shouted. “Get away from here. Now!”
“But what about him?” Corey said. “What if he’s alive?”
“We can’t do anything for him now, kiddo,” Oscar said. “Come on! This place is lousy with paper and old wood!”
The old man grabbed Corey by the wrist. As the three ran onto Bank Street, the lot began to glow like the dawn.
They ran past the bars and the alleyways. They crossed the dormant tracks and avoided the couples sneaking nighttime kisses against the buildings. They didn’t stop until they reached the dock.
Quinn and Corey got there first. “You smell like kerosene,” she said. “He got some on you. That was close, Corey. It could have been you.”
She took a red bandanna from her pocket, shook it loose, and began blotting stains on Corey’s shirt.
“Stop.” Corey took the cloth from her, shoved it into his back pocket, and headed for the railing that overlooked the river. His brain was short-circuiting. “We were the ones who lured him into the lot, Quinn. He wasn’t doing anything bad. And I—I—killed him.”
“No,” Quinn insisted. “That’s not true. You didn’t do a thing to him. He was coming for you. Corey, Ratboy stole your possessions. Think about what he and his buddies tried to do to us at the Gash.”
“I wasn’t supposed to change history,” Corey said. “That was a rule.”
“You told me the whole point of this trip was to save your grandmother!” Quinn replied. “That’s changing history.”
“I was breaking the rule for her. But not for this. Coming to 1917 was an accident, Quinn. I never was supposed to be here. And now someone is dead who wouldn’t have been.”
Oscar was lumbering toward them now, short of breath. “That lowlife had it coming. You know how many people that gang has wiped out—or robbed, or tormented for their own fun? If he lives, more people will die. Besides, I’m the one that lured him in. If anyone’s going to answer to the Almighty, it’s me, Oscar Schein. And I’ll be holding my head high, for the rest of my life and afterward. You gave that to me, Corey.”
“And you, Oscar . . . ,” Quinn said. “You gave Corey back his life.”
Corey nodded. He was drained and sad, and not at all sure he should ever have tried to be a hero.
He was also ready, finally. He had the means to hop back. Nothing was stopping him now. “Thanks, guys,” he said quietly. “I—I’ll never forget you.”
He looked at Quinn, but she glanced away, uptown toward the freight train depot a few blocks north. Her face was sunken and sad. “I guess I’ll be going to work alone tomorrow.”
Oscar looked curiously from Corey to Quinn. “The boy is leaving? Where’s he headed?”
Quinn was in no mood to lie. “To the future, Oscar. Corey is a time traveler from the twenty-first century.”
“Ah,” Oscar said with a nod. “I thought he looked foreign. Didn’t know you could do that sort of thing. But these days, with all the fancy new machines, pshew!” He gestured downtown, to where the Woolworth Building stood shiny and new, lit up by white lights and dwarfing every other building in the city. “If you can build something like that, you can do anything.”
