Emily Kimelman - Sydney Rye 04 - Strings of Glass (10 page)

“Except
you believe in God and miracles, I don’t.”

“But
we are both here. Might it not be our fate? God’s
plan?”

“I’m
here because I brought myself here. Will,” I said,
“not
fate.” I smiled. “But if you want to think of me as God, I’m cool
with that.”

He
laughed deeply. “Sydney,” he said, closing
the space between us and placing his hand on my shoulder,
“you
don’t have to believe in God for Him to lead you. Nor do you have to believe in
miracles to perform them.”

The
front door opened, a beam of sunlight shot down the aisle and filled the space
between us. Then it faded as the woman who’d entered shut the door behind her.
Chloe and Dan came back and Agapito squeezed my shoulder before turning to the
exit.

He held
the door for us. “Thank you,” he said, “I
will see you again soon.”

W
hen
Anita opened the door for us, she peeked out and
checked the alley. There was no one there. Anita
hurried us into the kitchen, saying she had bad news. “My source at Shah’s
place just got in touch. They were supposed to release some kids tonight.”

“We
know,” Dan said.

“How?”

“A
very interesting priest told us,” I said.

Anita
frowned. “What?”

“He
runs a school for homeless and abused children with the organization we went to
today. I think that someone in Shah’s house is a Catholic and goes to
confession,” I said.

Blue
barked and I looked over to where he sat in front of the sink. He looked at the
sink, then back at me. I picked up his bowl and crossed to the terra cotta pot
filled with fresh water that sat on the sink’s edge. Dan said,  “He also
told us the boys they are releasing are at an age where they would no longer
accept help from an organization like theirs.”
Using a ladle I spooned fresh water into Blue’s bowl. He pranced in front of
me, his nails clicking on the floor with excitement.

Anita
shook her head. “That doesn’t matter because he isn’t going to release
them. They are going to be killed. Tonight.”

“We
can’t let that happen,” Dan said.

I paused
as I lowered Blue’s bowl to the ground. “What made them targets?” I
asked. Blue whined at me.

Anita’s
eyes filled with tears. “I think it’s my fault. My source says they’re
tightening security since I escaped. Kalpesh isn’t worried but the head of his
protection team thinks it’s best and so he’s going along.”

“Does
your
source have any influence over Kalpesh? Could
he convince him otherwise?” I asked, placing the water dish on the ground.
Blue lapped at it and I realized how dry my own throat was.

“No,”
Anita said, her voice breaking. She turned away from me and slid into a chair
at the table.

“Do
you know what the plan is?” I asked, ignoring my thirst.

Anita
looked up at me. “The
people bringing in the new shipment, the kids I followed in Goa, they are going
to take the older boys away and,” she swallowed, “dispose of
them.” I sat down across from her. “Can we help them?” she asked,
her hands reaching out toward me.

“Do
we know where they are getting picked up, anything, how we can intercept
them?”

“I
know where they’ve been held in the past, but I’m not sure if it’s the same
place.”

“Can
your source confirm?”

“I
asked but he was not sure.”

“Where
is it?”

Dan
placed a glass of water in front of me and I drank from it quickly, feeling the
luke warm liquid wet my insides.

“I
can show you,” Anita said, drying her eyes. She led
us up the stairs to our room. Walking over to one of the windows she pulled
aside the curtain and, banging on the frame a couple of times, pushed the
window up. Anita hooked a leg over and climbed out onto the slanted roof. I
followed her, my head spinning ever so slightly when I glanced at the edge.

Blue
whined as Dan climbed out. He jumped up on the ledge ready to follow when I
told him to stay. Blue dropped back down to the ground with a grunt of
dissatisfaction. “This way,” Anita said,
stepping nimbly across the roof. Reaching the edge she sat, swinging her legs
over and slipped off. I felt a shudder before realizing that it was a short
drop onto another roof below, this one
flat.

Dan and
I followed Anita who was already striding across the tar surface. The sun had
set, leaving the sky a soft pink. Anita turned left, disappearing behind a
wall. When we caught up to her, I saw that she was shuffling along a narrow
ledge. Dan went first, his feet looking dangerously large on the thin ridge.
Anita climbed onto an old wooden balcony that looked rotten and then ducked
inside a building. We followed, feeling the creak of the balcony under our
weight.

Inside
was dark, the pink light left from the sun not strong enough to penetrate the
dusty air. “This way,” Anita said. She pulled open a set of doors and
passed through them. Another wooden balcony, its railings soft to the touch.
Anita climbed over and onto a mantel that carried us out to another open roof.
We had to climb up a couple of feet to get on it. The tiles were still warm
from the day’s heat.

At the
opposite edge Anita pointed down into an alley. “That door,” she
said. I saw a metal door set into one of the thick walls. All the other doors
on the block were wooden, most with chipping paint like Anita’s.

“You
saw the kids in there?” Dan asked.

“Yes.”

“What
is it?” I asked.

Anita
shrugged. “One of Kalpesh’s buildings. He owns most of this neighborhood.”

I sat
down,
calming the vertigo that was fucking with me as I stared down at the door.
“All right,” I said. “If this is what we’ve got, I’ll stay here
and watch. We need vehicles. Scooters would be best. And what kind of weapons
can we get?” I felt for the lead pipe in the folds of my leather jacket.
Touching it brought a sense of relief.

“I’m
not sure,” Anita said.

“What
about scooters?”

“My
parents have one that we could borrow. Their place is about a twenty minute cab
ride.”

Anita
was chewing on her lip staring, down at the door. The sky slowly turned a deep
purple. “You two go now,” I said. “Get your parents’ scooter and
another if you can and get back here.”

“What
will you do if they come?” Anita asked, looking
over at me.

“Play
it by ear,” I said.

“Keep
your phone on you,” Dan said. “I can trace you through it.”

I smiled
up at him. “Creepy.”

Dan
nodded. “That’s the kind of man I am.”

I
laughed. “All right, move it you two.”

They
both nodded and started across the roof, when Dan stopped and looked back at
me. “Be careful,” he said.

“You,
too.”

After
they left I laid down flat, feeling the warmth of the tiles run the length of
my body. With the sun gone the air was turning cold, and I felt a shiver run
through me as I thought about what was happening behind that metal door. A man
on a scooter turned down the alley and drove past,
stopping at the far end. He got off and a door opened, yellow, warm light
pouring out. A woman in a pink sari stood there with a baby in her arms. The
man embraced her and kissed the child who rewarded him with a grin and a
giggle. They went inside, closing the door, leaving the street in darkness.

I
checked my phone, twenty minutes had passed. The tiles were chilled and I sat
up, pulling my collar close. The city’s light
pollution only let the brightest of stars shine through. The moon, fuller than
when it smiled down at me the night I saved Anita, hung low in the sky. The
rumble of a van engine brought my attention back to the street.

I
watched it roll slowly down the narrow lane, splashing through dirty puddles
and sending rats scurrying for the shadows as its headlights illuminated the
broken pavement. My heart beat faster and when the van stopped right in front
of the door, I had to squeeze my metal pipe to avoid standing
up and pacing. Instead, I flattened myself to the roof, scooting as close to
the edge as I dared.

The
engine died and the headlights faded. The driver got out and, walking around
the front of the van, went and knocked on the metal door. Seconds passed as the
driver scanned the alleyway. When the door opened, fluorescent
blue light spilled into the dark night. A giant of a man stood in the doorway.
He and the driver exchanged a few words before a third man climbed out of the
passenger seat and opened the van’s sliding door.

He waved
for the occupants to exit. The first was an impossibly small figure, stick-thin
arms, black hair on a big head. Another one followed, this kid slightly larger
but slower, earning him a smack that hurried him inside. A third child climbed
out, still baby plump. My breath caught in my throat and anger flushed my
cheeks. I ground my teeth, breathing in through my nose. I squeezed my eyes
shut, unable to watch the boy, still unsteady in his steps, pass by the giant.

When I opened
them again, a much taller boy was exiting the building, his head hung on a
loose neck, his shoulders slumped in what seemed a perpetual state of
protection. He climbed into the van and was quickly joined by two boys of
similar size. All three looked young, but not
as small as the three that had entered.

I
couldn’t let this happen, I thought. Belly crawling away from the edge I rose
into a squat and ran across the rooftop, my vertigo forgotten as adrenaline
coursed through my system, letting me pick my way between the tiles without
making a sound. Reaching the end of the block I looked back at the van; its
headlights glowed back to life and its engine growled.

No time
to waste, I took a chance on a drainage pipe, using it to climb down the side
of the building. It creaked in protest and loosened under my grip, plaster dust
preceding me down to the ground. Safely on earth I pressed myself against the
wall and waited to see the van pull out of the alley and turn left. I had about
thirty
seconds to follow before they’d disappear. Rushing back down the street I
jumped onto the scooter left by the young father and using my pen knife cracked
open the wheel base with skill my high school
sweetheart would have been proud of. With steady hands I pulled the wires,
stripped the black power cord to the metal and touched it to the white. The
scooter rumbled to life. Wrapping the third wire around the other two I hit the
accelerator and raced out onto the street.

It
wasn’t hard to spot the van even though it was so far ahead. It was large in a
sea of smaller vehicles. I managed to catch up quickly but kept my distance,
letting the city hide me the way it’d hidden the devil behind that metal door
for far too long. My surroundings were just a blur, my
vision narrowed on that dark van as it maneuvered slowly through the city.

We
passed streets populated by families living under strung up pieces of cloth,
their entire lives on display. The women wore saris of vibrant oranges and
pinks with babies on their backs as they tended to food cooked over open fires.
Naked, dirty children stood, pigeon-toed,
staring out at the passing traffic. Soon the buildings were taller, the roads
wider. The van pulled off the main road onto a residential, dead end street,
shabbier than the rest of the neighborhood but still better than living on the
street.

The
building’s cement facades were blackened from the pollution. I’d have thought
they’d been through a fire if I hadn’t noticed the soot stains that covered the
city. The street was quiet, TVs flickered in windows and the smell of cooking
food floated on the breeze. I waited at the top of the street, cutting my
headlight. The van stopped in front of the only house with all its shades
closed.

I
couldn’t let them knock on that door. Right now I already had two, I was
assuming armed, men to deal with. The driver got out and I hit my accelerator,
racing down the street at him. He started around the side of the van but when I
was about ten feet away he turned back toward me, the sound of my engine
catching his attention.

I took a
deep breath and right as I pulled up even with him I pushed off the scooter’s
floor, my arms out and launched myself. He fell hard and we skittered a couple
of beats along the pavement. As we bounced I reached inside his open jacket and,
finding what I thought would be there, pulled
the man’s gun from his holster and pointed it into his face as we came to a
stop. But the guy was out cold.

I
dropped and rolled to the front of the van, staying
low. The guy in the passenger seat had a couple of options. Get out and have
his feet shot or call for backup. Which meant I needed to go in there and get
him. I steadied my breathing, thinking hard. The driver stirred and sat up,
a look of  incomprehension on his face. I aimed his gun at him from where I sat
crouched in front of the van, the headlights backlighting me and making him
squint.

Blood
seeped from the man’s hair, trickling past sunken brown eyes set in deep dark
circles. He noticed me and stared blankly. “Hands up,” I said. He did
as he was told, revealing forearms pulverized by road rash.

The door
of the building opened and I heard a woman gasp and cry out softly. Looking
under the van, I saw her bare feet step into the street. Her toes were painted
pink and there were bruises circling her ankles. The ligature marks made me
mad. A man’s dark dress shoes and burgundy cuffed pants followed closely behind
the woman. I heard the van’s window roll down and the passenger said something
in Gujarati I couldn’t understand. The man behind the bruised woman answered
him and then laughed.

The
driver yelled something then. I assumed something along the lines of “she
has my gun and is pointing it at me.”
The man at the door yelled something back and then laughed again. I had a
feeling he wasn’t taking me seriously. Another example of sexism getting
someone killed, I thought to myself, then rolled under the van until I was even
with the laughing man, laying on my back. The driver yelled but I pushed off,
propelling myself out from under the van between the woman’s legs, then the man’s. Then
I shot his fucking balls off.

His
scream came two beats after the loud crack of the gun piercing the night. The
woman screeched and looked down at me with wide, black eyes. The man was
looking down at his crotch. He dropped the gun he’d been holding and grabbed
for his manhood then crumpled to the ground, his face white with anguish and
shock. I somersaulted backwards out of his way and into the doorway, raising to
my full height with the woman still between me and the passenger. Her back was
splattered with blood as was my face and chest. I grabbed her by the neck and
shoved her to the ground, shooting through the open
window at the passenger before he got off a single round. He fell into the
driver’s side, his gun still in his hand.

The
woman was sobbing on the street, her long black hair covering her downturned
face. I looked into the house and saw steps leading up. At the top several
young women, none of them wearing more than a
small robe, looked back at me with huge, terrified eyes. There must be more men
in there, I thought. Ducking back into the street I checked on the kids in the
back of the van. One of them was crying and clung to another. The third looked
out at me defiantly. There wasn’t anything I could do to this boy that hadn’t
been done, his eyes told me.

I opened
the passenger door and pulled the dead man out, flopping him onto the pavement.
The woman on the ground screamed anew and scuttled away from him on her hands
and knees. Picking up his gun I shoved it into the back of my pants. I looked
down at the woman and wondered what to do. She crawled away from me, speaking
in a language I didn’t understand. I started toward her and she put her hands
up to block her face. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said. She didn’t
put her arms down.

The
single headlight of a scooter turned into the street and I crouched behind the
van using it as a shield. The scooter stopped and I heard Dan,
“Sydney?”

“Are you
Ok?” Anita called.

“Stay
behind the van,” I yelled to them seeing a man, his shirt unbuttoned
exposing a broad chest covered in tight black curls, push through the crowd of
women at the top of the stairs. He was holding a big ass gun. I fired off a
round hitting him in the knee; he fell,
reaching out with his free hand and clutched the banister at the same time
raising his gun at me. I leapt out of his line of fire. The van shook with the
impact of the bullets. The blue paint dimpled, leaving silver  holes on the
passenger door.

Pressing
against the side of the building next to the entrance I waited for him to
finish. When the bullets stopped, the only sound was the inconsolable
sobbing of the woman with the bruised ankles at my feet. She’d pulled herself
into the fetal position. I strained to hear what the guy inside was doing.

Over her
cries I heard shuffling steps as he made his way down to the doorway. Would he
really just walk out and let me shoot him? No such luck,
I realized, as his gun, an automatic, boxy, fast killing
machine curled out the door toward me. Using my free hand I grabbed it and
pushed his arm toward the sky stepping forward in one motion. This pulled him
toward me and our bodies pressed close. He pulled the trigger,
rattling both of our arms as bullets exploded into the sky. Screaming seemed to
fill the air. I pushed my gun against his bare chest and pressed the trigger.
The impact jerked us apart but I managed to hold onto his gun arm as, even in
death, he continued to depress the trigger. The man’s weight pulled us to the
ground and I struggled to keep the machine gun clenched in the corpse’s hand
under control until all thirty rounds were gone.

When the
last kick came I waited a beat and then releasing him, stumbled away. Now there
were three dead men in front of me. Blood covered my chest, arms, neck,
and face. Unzipping my leather jacket I used my T-shirt
to wipe at my eyes. Anita came around the side of the van and looked at me then
down at the bodies. Her jaw opened and
closed but nothing came out.

“Tell
her I’m not going to hurt her,” I said, using
my gun to point at the terrified woman still in the fetal position. Anita
didn’t move.  I walked around to the driver’s side, noticing that the former
driver was still sitting there with his hands up. Smart man. Dan, who’d been on
the far side of the van, touched my elbow.

“You
OK?”

“Yeah,
it’s not my blood,” I answered. “We’re taking them all with us.
You’re driving.” I opened the driver’s door. “Get the engine started.
I’m going to have Anita  help get them in the van.”

“What
are we going to do with them?” Dan asked.

I looked
over at the door where one of the women, small enough to be a child, was
stepping through the blood to get a better look at what was going on.
“Free them,” I said.

Dan
didn’t ask any more questions. He just climbed into the van and started up the
engine. I went back around to where Anita was speaking softly to the woman on
the ground. “Tell them they can come with us and they’ll be safe,” I
said,
pointing at the women with my gun. They all threw their arms up.
“Shit,” I said, lowering it quickly.

“It
might help them trust you if you’d stop swinging that thing around,” Anita
said.

“If
I didn’t know how to ‘swing’ this thing around I wouldn’t be able to help them,
would I?” I said, anger edging my voice.

Anita
stood up and brushed past me. Her face paled when she stepped over the machine
gun-wielding
man’s body. I followed her in and listened as she quickly explained—in Gujarati
and then in Hindi—that they could come with us. Several ran down the stairs
and scurried over the bodies of their captors to the van but four waited at the
top of the stairs, unsure of what to do. One of
them came down and spoke with Anita. The others kept looking upstairs.

“Ask
her how many more there are,” I said.

Anita
held a hand up to quiet me as the girl spoke quickly, her eyes filling with
tears. I went and patted down the dead men looking for extra bullets and found
a clip on the passenger. I handed my almost-empty
gun to Dan through the passenger window. “Don’t let him get away,” I
said,
tilting my head toward the driver still sitting in the beam of the headlights.
Dan nodded, his jaw clenched. I pulled out the gun I’d stashed in my jeans,
slipping the extra clip into my back pocket. I felt for my lead pipe again and
gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“Sydney?”
Anita said. I nodded. “This is Esha. She says her sister is upstairs.
There is a room where they,” Anita swallowed, her face growing even paler,
“prepare them.”

“How
many?”

She
turned to the girl, who told her there were two men with her sister, one was
the big dead man at our feet and the other was still up there. “Show
me,” I said.

Anita
translated and the girl pointed up the stairs. I gestured with my chin for her
to go ahead of me, then started after her. Anita stood at the bottom of the
steps. “You’re coming,” I said.

She
shook her head, fear chattering her teeth. “I can’t.”

“I
need you to translate. Stay behind me.” She didn’t move. “Grow a set
of balls,
Anita.” Her eyes flashed. “That’s it. Get angry. You should be. This
is beyond fucked up. Now here is your chance to do something about it.” I
turned back to the young creature in the tattered white robe whose sister was
upstairs and nodded at her. She started up the steps again and I heard Anita
following.

The
three girls at the top of the steps let us pass. The whole house reeked of food
and sex. We passed small, dingy rooms with bare mattresses on the floor. At the
end of the hall one of the doors was closed. I noticed there was a deadbolt on
the outside though it was not locked. I stopped. “Is there a john
in there?” I asked. Anita translated. The girl shrugged and said something
in Hindi.

“She
doesn’t know. She was in her room when everything started. That girl did not
come out. It could just be that she is hiding.”

“Call
to her,” I said. “Tell her she can come out. It’s safe.”

Esha
yelled through the door. Shuffling came from the other side and then the door
creaked open. A giant pair of deep brown eyes looked out at us from under elegant
brows. Esha whispered to her and the girl shook her head. “She is not
alone,” Anita told me.

“Get
behind me,” I said. Anita took Esha’s arm and moved her back down the
hall. I made eye contact with the girl on the other side of the door and tried
to make her understand that I was her friend. She nodded at me and stepped
back. I kicked the door open, gun cocked, looking for my target.

A
diminutive man with thin gray hair sat on the bed in boxers and a white T-shirt,
his hands above his head. The girl whose room it was spoke quickly. Anita came
in and translated that the girl was saying he was a nice man and did not
deserve to die. “He is always very nice to her,” Anita said.

I nodded
my head. “Fine, tell her to get what she wants and get in the van.”

Anita
translated and the girl grabbed a few scraps of clothing out of a pile by the
door and hurried down the hall. I closed the door and pushed the deadbolt into
place, locking the gentle john inside.

Esha
encouraged me to keep going upstairs. I followed her past another floor of
rooms, all the doors open, the former occupants safe in the van, I hoped. The
fourth floor was an attic-like space with curved walls and
low ceilings. The last door at the end of the hall was closed and Esha pointed
to it. “Yell to him that if he lets her go, we won’t harm him,” I
said.

Anita
called down the hall with my peace offering. A man’s voice answered, it sounded
scared to me. “He wants to know who we are.”

“Why?”
I asked. “Never mind. Tell him that his friends are dead and I’m going to
count to ten. If the girl isn’t out by then I will come and get her.”

Anita
relayed my message. When we didn’t get a response I started counting down.
“10, 9, 8…” I flashed back on my brother
counting, playing hide and seek when we were kids. Shaking the memory from my
mind I continued. “7, 6…” The door creaked
open. We crouched lower into the staircase out of range of anyone standing in
the hall.

A shell
of a woman stepped into the hall. Bloody, raw wounds circled her ankles and
wrists.
Long black hair hung in filthy strands around her naked shoulders. Her body,
completely bare, was a study in bruising: hand
prints on her hips; blossoms of discoloration
across her abdomen; her
breasts showed a pattern of cigarette burns. When she shuffled close enough for
me to see her face, I winced at the swelling and
redness that surrounded her eyes and mouth.

The door
closed again and the girl stumbled into her sister’s arms. Esha caught her and
without a word started dragging her down the stairs, Anita helping with the
girl’s weight. I stood there for a moment staring at the closed door. Then,
hearing the whine of sirens in the distance, ran
down the steps. When I got outside Anita was helping the girls into the van.
Dan, white knuckles on the wheel, said,
“Come on, we’ve got to go.”

“I’ll
take the scooter,” I said.

“Where
are we going?” Anita asked.

“Better
Indian Children’s Fun.”

“Will
they be open?”

“Yes,”
I said,
confident for no other reason than it was
how it needed to be.