Lights. Voices. Below. People. On deck.
“He’s not in the apartment, lieutenant.”
“The bastard got away when he heard you coming.”
“Maybe, sir, but we had men at all the hatchways and stairs. And on the connections to the other ships. He must still be on board. His mother said he went to bed same time as everyone else.”
“We’ll find him. You got half the damned force to catch one kid. So catch him.”
“Yes, sir.”
Catch him. Catch who? Why, catch him, of course. He knew who the people were down there, police, and they wanted him. They had found him the way he knew they would. But he didn’t want to go with them. Not when he was feeling like this. Did the dirt make him feel like this? Wonderful dirt. He would have to get more dirt. He didn’t know a lot of things, he knew a lot of things, one thing he knew the cops didn’t have dirt or give you dirt. No dirt?
The handrail creaked and heavy feet clanged up the stair to the bridge. Billy climbed onto the steel table and out through the side window on the other side, reached up and grabbed and pulled himself up and out. It was easy. And it felt good too.
“What a stink,” a voice said, then louder out of the window below, “He’s not up here, lieutenant.”
“Keep looking. Cover the ship, he has to be here someplace.”
The night air was warm enough and when he ran it felt solid enough to hold him up and he thought of walking over to the next ship, then he came to the funnel and this looked better. Bolted-on, curved steel rods rose up the side of the funnel making a ladder, and he climbed them.
“Did you hear something up there?”
One last rod and there was the top and the shouting black oval mouth of the smokestack black against the blackness beyond. He could go no farther, except inside, and he waved his arm over the nothingness and his foot slipped and for an instant he tottered and began to swim down the long black tunnel, then his hand struck against a bar inside: rough, rusted, coated with crumbling greasy darkness. Up and over he climbed until he half crouched on the bar and held the edge of the metal that formed the smokestack and looked up at the stars. He could notice them now that the voices were only a murmur far away like waves, and he had never seen stars like these before. Were there new stars? They were all different colors, colors he couldn’t remember ever having seen before.
His legs were cramped and his fingers stiff where they held the metal and he could no longer hear voices. At first he could not stand and he thought he might drop down the endless dark tunnel below him, and now it didn’t seem as good an idea as it had seemed before. By forcing, he finally straightened his legs and crawled over the metal of the top and found the rungs that climbed the smoothness of the painted metal.
When you are born on the ships and live on the ships, they are as normal a world as streets, or any other. Billy knew that if you climbed out to the tip of the bow and hung and jumped you could land on the stern of the next ship along. And there were other ways of getting from ship to ship that avoided the gangways and walkways and he used them, even in the dark, without conscious thought, working his way toward shore. He was almost there when he became aware of the pain in his bare feet where he had walked along a rusted steel hawser and filled the soles with the sharp, rusty needles of wire ends. He sat and tried to get some of them out by touch. While he was sitting there, leaning against the rail, he began to shiver.
Memory was clear. He knew what he had heard and done, but only now was the true import beginning to penetrate. The police had found him and tracked him down, and it was only an accident that he had been topside and avoided them.
They were looking for him and they knew who he was!
The sky was gray behind the dark silhouette of the city when he reached the waterfront, far uptown toward the end of the row of ships. There seemed to be people near Twenty-third Street, but it was too dark to be sure.
He jumped to the dock and ran toward the row of sheds, a small soot-smeared figure, bare-footed and afraid. The shadows swallowed him up.
12
The heat wave had gripped the city for such a long time that it was not mentioned any more, just endured. When Andy rode up in the elevator the operator, a thin, tired-looking boy, leaned against the wall with his mouth open, sweating into his already sodden uniform. It was just a few minutes past seven in the morning when Andy opened the door of apartment 41-E. When the outer door had closed behind him he knocked on the inner one, then made an exaggerated bow in the direction of the TV pickup. The lock rattled open and Shirl stood in the doorway, her hair still tangled from the bed, wearing only a sheer peignoir.
“It’s been days—” she said and came willingly into his arms while he kissed her. He forgot the plastic bundle under his arm and it dropped to the floor. “What’s that?” she asked, drawing him inside.
“Raincoat, I have to take it on duty in an hour, it’s supposed to rain today.”
“You can’t stay now?”
“Don’t I wish I could!” He kissed her soundly again and groaned, only half in humor. “A lot has been happening since I saw you last.”
“I’ll make some kofee, that won’t take long. Come and tell me in the kitchen.”
Andy sat and looked out of the window while she put the water up. Dark clouds filled the sky from horizon to horizon, so heavy that they seemed to be just above the rooftops of the buildings. “You can’t feel it here in the apartment,” he said, “but it’s even worse out today. The humidity I guess, it must be up around ninety-nine.”
“Have you found the Chung boy?” she asked.
“No. He might be at the bottom of the river for all we know. It’s been over two weeks since he got away from us on the ship, and we haven’t found a trace of him since. We even got a paper priority and had indentikit pictures printed with his fingerprints and description, then sent them around to all the precincts. I brought copies to Chinatown and all the nearby ones myself, and talked to the detectives there. At first we had a stakeout on the kid’s apartment, but we pulled that off and instead have a couple of stoolies who live on the ship — they’ll keep their eyes open and let us know if he shows, they’re not paid unless they see him. That’s about all we can do now.”
“Do you think you’ll catch him?”
Andy shrugged and blew on the cup of kofee she handed him. “There’s no way to tell. If he can stay out of trouble, or get out of town, we’ll never see him again. It’ll just be a matter of luck now, one way or the other. I wish we could convince City Hall of that.”
“Then — you’re still on the case?”
“Half and half, worse luck. The pressure is still on to find the kid, but Grassy managed to convince them that I could do just as well part time, running down whatever leads there are, and they agreed. So I’m supposed to be half time on this case and half time on squad duty. Which, if you know Grassy, means I’m full time on squad duty and the rest of the time I’m looking for Billy Chung. I’m getting to hate that kid. I wish he had been drowned and I could prove it.”
Shirl sat down across from him and sipped her kofee. “So that’s where you have been the past days.”
“That’s where I’ve been. On duty and up at Kensico Reservoir for two days, with no time to stop by here or even send you a message. I’m on day duty now and have to sign in by eight, but I had to see you first. Today’s the thirtieth. What are you going to do, Shirl?”