34

At 10:45 p.m. on Bank Street in 1917, there were more rats than people. Most of the gas lamps were shattered. The only two working ones cast small, pallid pools of light onto the cobblestones. At the end of the block, on Washington, an open door cast a third splotch of light. Raucous honky-tonk piano music and laughter blasted from within. “I’m guessing that’s Grumney’s,” Corey whispered.

“Yup,” Quinn whispered back.

“Do you see Oscar?” Corey continued whispering.

“No,” Quinn said. “Do you?”

“No.”

“So why are we whispering?”

“I don’t know.”

Quinn began walking in rhythm to the music, the clop of her cowboy boots echoing against the cobblestones. “Okay, let’s repeat the plan,” she said.

“Why?” Corey asked.

“Because I’m nervous,” Quinn said. “And when I’m nervous, I forget things.”

“Me, too.” Corey took a deep breath. “Okay, so we know that Oscar knows this guy, Batboy.”

“Ratboy.”

“Right. We wait in the lot for Oscar to lure Ratboy in. You and I stick to the shadows. I distract him—”

“And then . . .” Quinn pantomimed whirling the lasso over her head. “We show him that crime does not pay!”

Corey nodded nervously. “Right. You rope him, and I get back all my stuff.”

“Providing he has it,” Quinn reminded him. “Which he might not. In which case, we say excuse me and run.”

As they approached the end of the block, Corey could see an expanse of blackness the width of a brownstone, right next to the bar. “There’s our empty lot,” Quinn said.

It looked like once upon a time a wooden wall had been built across the lot to keep people out, but it was now a few cockeyed splintered panels like a gap-toothed grin. A rusted metal Keep Out sign lay on the ground, but it didn’t seem necessary.

Beyond the wall was sheer blackness.

“We didn’t bring a lantern,” Corey groaned.

“Oops,” Quinn said.

From behind the wall, Corey heard a shhhick sound, and a light flickered in the darkness. “That you, boys?” came a croaky voice.

Corey and Quinn stepped forward. “Oscar?” Corey said.

The light moved forward, through one of the panels. It revealed the face of Oscar Schein, who was holding out a kerosene lamp. Lit from below, his fleshy, friendly face seemed almost sinister, the crags deep and shadowy. “Bless you, boys,” he said. “I been crying all night. With gratitude for my good fortune. From this day on, Oscar Schein turns over a new leaf, you mark my words! I got no use for these lowlifes and sinful honky-tonks no more. Tonight, for you, I deliver Ratboy.”

“Have you seen him?” Corey asked.

“Not yet, but don’t worry.” Oscar looked up and down Bank Street. “For a corrupt, evil butcher of men, he’s usually pretty reliable.”

“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.”