Timothy Hallinan - A Nail Through the Heart

He calls the boy's name again. Knowing it will do no good, knowing the boy will not answer. Knowing he has to get out of the garage. He turns to see more than a dozen of them, all small, between him and the door. Individually they would be harmless. He starts toward them, thinking he can break through the line, and they charge.

They swarm over him, a storm of hands and feet, knees and elbows, climbing him, hitting him high and low, taking him to his knees. A small hand comes up with a stone in it and slams it down across his cheekbone with an impact that ignites a sudden flare of red light, blossoming and vanishing like a pound of flash paper. For a blind moment, he sees nothing, feels the hands tearing at him, feels the bright radiating pain of a bite on his upper arm, and then something hammers his shoulder, high up, where the muscle is still sore from the fight in the soi, and he manages somehow to get a leg under him. Nails rake his face, aiming for the eyes. Kicks rain on his ankles and shins. He tries with all his strength to shake the children off, a bear besieged by a pack of dogs, and the back of a hand swipes his mouth and skids off wet skin. He is bleeding.

Fierce gasps as they jockey for position, the smell of dirt and sweat, kicks and blows drumming on his back and thighs, a hand grabbing at his hair. Another stone, in the small of the back this time, just missing the spine, and Rafferty strikes out for the first time with all the force he can command and connects with something solid, hears the high cry of a child, and his assailants retreat just enough to give him room. He gets his numbed hand down to his waist and brings it up with the automatic in it. He knows he cannot use it, and he hopes they don't know it, too.

He is on his knees. The children take a step away, ringing him, two deep. He can hear their panting, smell their breath. Their eyes are on the gun, but he cannot cover them all at once even if he could bring himself to fire, and again something slams into his back, savagely enough to knock the breath out of him. Then again, in a different place, but still only inches from the spine.

A shouted word, and the blows stop. He turns slowly, keeping the gun close and low, and sees Superman emerging from between two cars. The boy walks toward them deliberately, his eyes narrow, fixed on Rafferty's. Rafferty tries to say something and fails.

The children part to let Superman through. He looks down at Rafferty, who is still kneeling, and extends a hand. There is only one thing Rafferty can do to demonstrate faith.

He hands the boy the gun.

Superman hefts it, as though considering its weight.

"Let me explain," Rafferty says. A rock grazes his ear, and then there are children climbing his back, beating at him, and he goes down beneath them. The world is a concrete floor and a crowd of dirty shoes. Pain ignites along his spine.

The shot almost blows out his eardrums.

The children back off, and Rafferty looks up to see Superman brandishing the gun, aiming it in the general direction of the kids. "Leave him alone," the boy says.

The gun clatters to the floor in front of Rafferty's face. The clip lands next to it.

"You can have it back now," Superman says with contempt, and the children turn and walk away. Sauntering, not running. At the door to the garage, the boy turns to look at him. "I'll be back," he says. "For Miaow." Then they are gone.

Rafferty is still for a long while. Getting to his feet requires a set of careful stages, moving one thing at a time. It seems to take an eternity to limp blinking into the bright day. The children are gone. He mops the blood from his face and flags a taxi, bleeding, stinking with fear, and aching in every joint. He ignores the driver's eyes in the mirror. When the elevator doors open on his floor, he has to lean against the hallway wall for another long moment before he can force himself to cross the hall and open the door of his apartment, where he finds himself looking into the bottomless eyes of Madame Wing.

Toadface and Skeletor flank her wheelchair like a pair of mismatched tutelary figures guarding a throne. Madame Wing raises her chin.

"You stink," Madame Wing says.

"Yeah, but I can take a shower," Rafferty replies shakily. "What are your options?"

She perches in the chair, more batlike than ever, sharp knees drawn up to her chest. The inevitable blanket covers her legs, but her feet protrude from the bottom edge. She has prehensile feet-long, thin toes with narrow, yellowish nails that extend far enough to curl downward, long enough to break if she had to walk. They are the ugliest feet Rafferty has ever seen. It gives him a cold twinge of comfort that she has had to live with such hideous feet.

Skeletor-Nick-leaves her side to circle him, keeping his distance, and shuts the door. He positions himself with his back to it.

Rafferty leans against the wall, his joints too loose and his bones too heavy, his body too big and bulky to move. Pain radiates out from a dozen places where he was hit. "This isn't exactly what I had in mind," he says.

"Change of plans," says Toadface.

"So I see." Rafferty draws a deep breath and blows it out. "How you doing, you merciless old bitch?" he asks Madame Wing.

She knocks the insult away with a knot of knuckles. "Where is the man who took my money?"

"You'll never know." He can't tell the truth. He knows she can reach Chouk in jail, as easily as stretching out a hand and slapping him.

"Oh," she says comfortably, "I think I will."

"Yeah? What's the plan? You going to kiss me?"

She almost smiles. "We're going to wait," she says.

"For what?"

Madame Wing slips a hand beneath the blanket and comes out with a piece of paper. He can see the bright colors through the back of the sheet even before she turns it around to face him. It is one of Miaow's new drawings, a family group of four: Rafferty, Rose, Superman, and herself. It seems to him to have been months since she drew it. "Until the children come home," she says.

There is a hot pressure in Rafferty's chest that he recognizes as terror. "They won't come home," he says.

"Really." She is undisturbed. "And why not?"

"The boy's gone," he says. "Miaow won't leave school until I go get her."

"The school called," she says. "About three minutes ago, because you hadn't shown up. And one of these gentlemen told them to put her in a taxi and send her here. And they will. The Thais are not careful people. They put too much faith in the future."

"It's too late for you," he says.

"Is it?" There is not a trace of interest in her face.

"The pictures. They're already at the Bangkok Post. They'll be on the Internet by this time tomorrow."

"I'm sure they'll be popular." She drops Miaow's drawing to the floor. It lands right side up near the wheel of her chair, the bright, cheerful picture facing Rafferty. "The Post won't publish them. The laws of libel are almost the only laws the Thais enforce. What do they show? A young woman. She could be anyone."

"You underestimate your ugliness."

Her whole head snaps forward, quick as a cobra. "You have no idea what I've survived," she says. "Do you honestly think you can make an end of me? You, with your cheap apartment, your sad little life. I am as far beyond you as the stars."

"Those whom the gods would destroy," Rafferty says, "they first give weak dialogue."

She does not even pause. "You will disappear so completely that no one will even bother to look. Who would miss you? Especially since the child will be gone, too." She rests the terrible hands on her knees, a bundle of brown twigs, the nest of some predatory bird.

"You guys really on board for this?" Rafferty asks. "You going to hurt a kid?"