He stretched, and as his right leg straightened out, his foot touched the sleeping form of the crazy guy who lived there. The man rolled over and one of his arms flopped over Jeff.
As Jagger watched, he moved closer to Jeff, snuggling up against him just like-
Jagger cut the thought off. But he couldn't take his eyes off the man, and a moment later, when he thought he saw the guy pull Jeff even closer to him, he felt the first flashes of anger.
The guy was trying to take Jeff away from him!
But that wasn't going to happen.
His hand went to the heavy railroad spike nestled in the big pocket of his coat.
As the man seemed to squirm up against Jeff, Jagger's hand tightened on the spike.
After that, Jagger wasn't sure what happened. All he knew was that Jeff was suddenly awake, and the other guy was moaning and bleeding.
Bleeding from a big hole in his back.
Jeff was staring at him like he'd done something terrible.
"He was going to hurt you," Jagger said. "I couldn't let him hurt you, could I?"
"Jesus," Jeff breathed, "He wasn't- He-"
A spasm seized the man and blood spewed out of his mouth. Then the fit subsided, and a moment later he fell still.
Utterly still.
Jeff reached out, hesitated, then put his fingers on the artery in the man's neck.
Nothing.
He looked up at Jagger. "He's dead."
Jagger's eyes widened. He hadn't meant to kill the guy- he was almost sure of it. "He was gonna do something to you-" he began, but Jeff was already standing up.
"Let's just get out of here," he said quietly. Quickly, they picked up their things and started out of the room, but just before they passed through the door, Jeff turned and looked back. The man's open eyes seemed to be staring at him, glowing in the reflected firelight.
CHAPTER 25
"You better get to gittin‘ or you're gonna be late for school."
Robby, carefully leaning forward so he wouldn't spill anything on his new shirt-a real new shirt, instead of a used one from the thrift shops-finished his bowl of cereal and eyed the chipped coffee mug in front of Tillie.
"Don't even think about it," Tillie said, not even bothering to look up from the two-day-old newspaper she was reading. "You want to stunt your growth?"
"Come on, Tillie," Robby begged. "Lots of the kids drink coffee. They bring it in thermoses and-"
"And you're not lots of kids," Tillie broke in, trying to fix Robby with a glare, but unable to resist winking at him instead. "Tell you what-one sip, and no more arguments? You go right off to school?"
Robby's eyes widened with disbelief. "Really?" he breathed.
Robby gazed at the mug reverently, almost certain someone would either snatch it away from him at the last second or hit him.
Or both.
Tillie could recall the night Jinx had first brought him to the co-op. He'd been so frightened that she stayed up all night, sitting next to his bed, holding his hand. For a long time, certain that he was going to find himself abandoned on the streets again, Robby had refused to go anywhere, and when anyone went near him, he flinched as though anticipating a beating. Tillie began to suspect that his parents had actually done him a favor by abandoning him. When school had started, at first he refused to go. The only way Tillie could convince him to take the risk was by promising that someone from the co-op-someone he knew-would always be on the sidewalk right outside the school. Half a dozen people had taken turns that day, and finally the school called the police to complain about the number of homeless people hanging around. But Robby had survived the day, and gotten safely back to the co-op, and soon it was enough if someone walked him to within a block of the school and met him at the same place afterward. Everyone in the co-op knew they risked her wrath if Robby was left alone, even for a minute.
Slowly, very slowly, Robby was starting to trust people again. Now, as he gazed warily at the steaming mug of coffee, Tillie pushed it a little closer. "It's okay-it won't bite you. But it's hot, and you might not like it."
Robby picked up the mug and held it to his lips. As the liquid touched his tongue, his eyes snapped open and he put the mug down so fast he almost slopped it down his front. " Yuck! Who could drink that?"
"I guess not you," Tillie observed, retrieving the mug. "Now get along with you-you're gonna be late. Jinx, do something with the boy."
But Jinx, who was sitting across from Robby, wasn't listening. Her eyes were fastened on the torn and stained newspaper that was only partially flattened out on the table in front of Tillie. Her eyes were focused, in particular, on a picture that had a moment ago been covered by Tillie's mug.
It was a picture of Jeff Converse.
"Can I see that?" she asked, pulling the paper toward her before Tillie could answer.
"May I see that," Tillie corrected, but Jinx hardly heard her as she quickly scanned the article:
… DIED WHEN A STOLEN CAR RAMMED THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION VEHICLE IN WHICH HE WAS BEING TRANSPORTED…
… SENTENCED YESTERDAY AFTER BEING CONVICTED OF ATTEMPTED RAPE AND MURDER…
… THE VICTIM, CYNTHIA ALLEN, CONFINED TO A WHEELCHAIR SINCE MR. CONVERSE'S ATTACK ON HER, HAD NO COMMENT…
… APPREHENDED IN THE 110TH STREET MTA STATION…
The memory of the woman she'd seen last night suddenly came back to Jinx.
The woman in a wheelchair.
The woman Bobby Gomez had been mugging when she'd seen someone running toward them.
It had happened in the 110th Street station!
"This isn't right," she said, not realizing she was speaking out loud. "He didn't do it…"
"What do you mean, he didn't do it?" Tillie countered. " ‘Course he did it! If he didn't do it, how'd he get convicted?"
"But I was there," Jinx protested. "It was Bobby Gomez!" She told Tillie what she could remember about that night, but when she was done, Tillie shook her head.
"Just because Bobby Gomez tried to mug someone don't mean this guy didn't do nothin‘," she insisted, tapping Jeff's picture with her finger. "Folks get mugged in the subway all the time-I've seen it happen a dozen times."
"But it's 110th Street," Jinx insisted. "And last night I saw the woman Bobby beat on-she was in a wheelchair!"
Tillie's expression hardened. "Now you listen to me, young lady. You're only fifteen years old, and even if you were right-which you're not-I still wouldn't let you have nothin‘ to do with that man." Ignoring the storm brewing in Jinx's eyes, Tillie plunged ahead. "He's gonna be dead by this time tomorrow, and there's nothin' you can do to stop it. Once the hunters are on to someone, that's it! You want to be there when they find him? Now just get on with taking Robby to school, and forget about that guy-I never should've let him in here at all."
Knowing it was useless to argue with Tillie, Jinx shoved the paper back at her. But half an hour later, as she watched Robby walk down the tree-lined block on Seventy-eighth Street toward RS. 87, she was still thinking about what she'd seen in the paper, and by the time Robby disappeared into the building, she knew what she was going to do.
Jeff couldn't get the image of the dead man out of his mind. Dead, vacant eyes staring at him.
What had happened back there in that tiny room buried deep in the tunnels? What had the man done that made Jagger attack him while he slept?
When Jeff woke up, the room had been illuminated only by the faint orange glow of the dying fire in the barrel, but his eyes-now more accustomed to the darkness beneath the city than the light of the surface-had fixed immediately on Jagger, who was staring down at him with such hatred that his first instinct had been to try to scuttle away. But even as he pressed back into the hard concrete of the wall, he realized that it was the other man-the man who hadn't even told them his name-upon whom Jagger's gaze was fixed.