Call Down Thunder Page 14

  ‘Did I?’ Moro looked amused. ‘And what kind of a favour would a boy from a nowhere fishing village and his pretty girlfriend want? You looking for a job maybe. I could find a job for someone like you, Reve.’

  Reve took out Theon’s card with the number on it. ‘I got to give you this. Theon give it me to pass on. Whoever call up the coastguard the night we got the boats runnin in use this cellphone.’

  Moro took the card. ‘So,’ he said, ‘Theon give you this?’ He laughed quietly. ‘I love these small places. Everybody scratch to make a living, scratch out anyone who step in your way,’ he said, more to himself than to Reve. He put the card down on the table in front of him and then looked up at Reve. ‘No hurry, Zav, eh. We find Calde’s squeal-pig in our time. No one go anywhere from that place, except this little bull and his pretty friend. So why you come here, boy?’

  ‘We come lookin for our mother.’ Reve tried to make that sound matter-of-fact not like they were lost or a pair of babies.

  Moro exhaled and a heavy pool of cigar smoke hung over the table at which he and his companion were sitting. Moro raised an eyebrow. ‘And?’

  ‘She go off with a policeman. Eight year ago.’

  Moro leaned back and let a stream of creamy grey smoke filter out of his mouth. ‘Yes, I remember Calde telling me ’bout that now. That’s a long time, eight years. I don’t have all this business eight years ago. Eight years is a long road, almost a lifetime in the city. Maybe in eight years you could be sitting here, boy, in my place!’ He laughed. ‘You thirsty? She thirsty.’ He snapped his fingers and the barman came down to them. ‘Beer? Something stronger?’

  Mi shook her head.

  Reve hesitated. ‘Water,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  Moro nodded. ‘Careful and respectful. I like that. Very good. Now, this lost mother – how you think I can help you with this? Sometimes I make people go missing; I don’t go looking for them.’

  Zavvy gave an oddly high-pitched laugh and Moro smiled as if he had said something witty.

  ‘And your father? What happen to him?’

  Reve hesitated. ‘He got killed.’

  ‘Oh? By your mother, maybe?’

  It wasn’t true, not really; Moro was playing games. Reve didn’t respond, but he felt Mi tense up beside him. Zavvy laughed again.

  ‘Or maybe that policeman . . .’ Moro pulled a face. ‘Bad things happen,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He didn’t sound particularly sincere. ‘And losing a mother is a bad thing all right . . . whatever she done. But –’ he shrugged – ‘one policeman. One woman. Is this all you can tell me?

  ‘The policeman carry the name Dolucca,’ said Reve. ‘Maybe important man now.’

  Moro leaned forward, suddenly fully engaged. ‘Oh! Captain Dolucca. You are right; he is important. A big man in the city. I make business with him, but . . . he is not a man you can trust. Who can trust a policeman who has power, eh, Zavvy? But if we know that man is carrying secrets, well then maybe we’re the ones who can make him dance the way we want.’ Moro slapped his hand on the table and laughed – ‘Captain Dolucca, well, well. This is good – very good!’

  ‘It would be useful for you,’ murmured Zavvy, leaning a little towards Moro, ‘to have knowledge about the Captain. Hmm?’

  Moro laughed again. ‘Of course.’ He tipped the ash of his cigar into the palm of his right hand, looked at it for a moment and then dropped it on to the floor. ‘And the woman, your mother, she stay with her policeman?’

  Reve shook his head. ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘You goin to tell us her name?’

  ‘Her birth name’s Felice.’

  Moro pulled a face.‘That don’t mean nothing to me. No one get call Felice in this city – that’s country name. She ever get call anything else?’

  Reve looked at Mi. ‘Santa Fe,’ he said, remembering what Arella had told him, how she’d always wanted to go north, look for dollars.

  Moro gave a grunt, or maybe it was a laugh; Reve couldn’t tell. ‘Santa Fe, not many saint in the city.’ He paused, letting smoke curl up from the corner of his mouth. ‘But I know someone carry half that name. She nothing to Dolucca, not now, but maybe there’s history there.’ He looked at Mi, standing there, her head bowed, staring at her toes. ‘Lift your head, girl,’ he said. ‘Let me see your face.’

  Mi looked up at him and then quickly away as if his eyes scorched her.

  ‘Maybe this girl’s not your sweetheart, eh?’ he said to Reve. ‘Maybe she your sister.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Reve.

  Moro suddenly became more businesslike. He pushed the stub of his cigar into an espresso-sized cup and let it sizzle and die. ‘We can do business. This woman with the half-name, maybe she your missing mother. I help you find her and we see!’ He patted Zavvy on the shoulder. ‘If you stay at the centre, my friend, all things come to you . . . a beautiful woman, a murdered husband, a young policeman . . .’ He pushed the cup with the stubbed-out cigar a few inches across the table, then moved a glass up beside it on one side and a coin on the other. ‘When you put pieces together like that, you get a picture. And a picture always tell you something.’ He laughed and then he said, ‘I think I bring all these pieces together.’ He nudged the glass against the cup. ‘Make a family: the Captain, your lost mother and you. How ’bout that?’

  Moro raised an eyebrow when Reve didn’t answer. Then he shrugged and turned to his companion. ‘Did I tell you, Zavvy, about this boy? When we have that business with the coastguards, he was like a little bull. And then he walk right in my door! Very good. I like that. And,’ he said, switching his attention to Mi, ‘Reve’s sister. You look like this woman, I think. He doesn’t, but you do. Maybe you are like her. Hmm?’

  Mi looked at him. ‘Where is she?’ she said. Her face was completely without expression.

  Moro smiled. ‘She is close by. Leave this with me. I will make a meeting.’ He pushed the table away and stood up. ‘Come, I will show you something Reve-from-the-villageof-Rinconda, and I will show you too,’ he said to Mi.

  ‘All right,’ said Reve, taking Mi’s arm, feeling her initial resistance. Then she allowed him to lead her and they followed Moro out through a door at the back of the bar and up first one and then a second and then a third flight of stairs. This man was not so hard to deal with. Reve could ask about Pelo, find out for Ciele.

  Eventually they came out on to a flat roof space. They were high enough to see the city stretched around them. Higher buildings, some of them domino blocks of glittering glass and steel, crowded in behind them, cutting their view of the centre; before them was Agua, with its fountain now diminished, the size of a bottletop in Mi’s crazy sand garden, and beyond that the ragged-looking older mansions that faced the eastern side of the square. ‘Behind them,’ said Moro, ‘is the Barrio. You see?’

  They saw a tangled patchwork of crumbling buildings cramped around by an unsteady sea of tiny roofs tilting in every direction and little thread veins wriggling into the distance; alleys maybe wide enough for two people to pass by each other, Reve guessed. Not so different to Rinconda, but bigger and with all the air squeezed out of it. At the edge of this sprawl was a wide brown river. It was hard to see if the river was running or whether that colour was from mud. The Barrio looked like a trap, a place you would get lost in.

  ‘All that you see down there don’t look so much, eh. What you think?’ asked Moro.

  Reve didn’t know what to say. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That place is my business. Where you got people, you got dollar. That’s a lot of people down there; a lot of dollar. And I tell you something else – this woman you looking for is there.’

  Their mother, in that place! His heart sank. To live in there you would have to be a crab, scuttling from one hole to the next. She never found her gold, her Santa Fe, that was for sure.

  ‘You know, for me,’ Moro said, ‘for me the Barrio is like a garden, a business garden.’ He paused and stood there silently for a moment, l
ooking down across the tangled ripple of roofs and alleys. ‘If you hungry enough I can give you more than anything you goin get in your noplace village.’ He placed a large hand on Reve’s shoulder. ‘I got no family, bull boy . . . What you think? You want to make good money? Easy money? I’m offering you something here.’

  Money. Yes. They would need money. If he had a job then perhaps they could find a place, not in the Barrio but some other place, and their mother would come to them . . .

  Before Reve could answer, Mi, who had been fidgeting beside him while Moro talked, suddenly erupted. ‘No!’

  Moro ignored her. ‘Think what I’m sayin.’

  ‘We got to go!’ Mi said, and started to pull Reve towards the doorway. ‘Reve, come!’

  Reve shook her off angrily. You got to think about offers. Theon always said business should come first. ‘I’m sorry, tha’s just the way she talk.’

  Mi made an exasperated sigh while Moro smiled. The sun was dipping below the tall buildings behind them, throwing long shadows across the roof. ‘You have somewhere in the city you can stay?’ Moro asked.

  Reve shook his head. He never got the address from Theon.

  ‘No? I can give you a room right here.’

  Mi gave Reve’s arm a pinch that made him suck in his breath. ‘We got friends,’ she said and started to hum, little staccato bursts, like dots across the air.

  Moro laughed. ‘Tha’s good,’ he said. ‘All right, you go to your friends. But remember, Reve, you got a friend here. All you got to do is sign on the line . . . that’s just a manner of speaking. You make sure you come back. We goin wrap this up – the great Captain Dolucca and your Santa Fe. I can fix all this tomorrow. But don’t you go in the Barrio on your own, trust me. Come back tomorrow. Any time. I get someone take you in there, find this woman.’

  Reve felt Mi shudder beside him.

  ‘All right, but we got to go,’ Reve said apologetically. ‘She get unwell. It happen when she go stressin.’

  Mi jerked at his arm again.

  ‘But we come back, señor.’

  Moments later they were down the stairs, and with Mi all the time leading the way, still humming and loudly now. She could be so annoying, fuzzed up his thinking; he hadn’t asked the señor half what he wanted to. ‘I didn’t say nothing ’bout LoJo’s father. Could have done that, Mi. That man can do thing for us,’ he said, clattering down the stairs after her.

  ‘Wha’s the matter with her?’ said the barman. ‘She soundin like a fire alarm.’ Zavvy was still at the table, staring at them as they ran down the bar, Mi leading.

  They burst out through the door, running past the lounging lizard-like men and into the square. They didn’t stop until they had reached the fountain, where they stood breathing heavily. Reve was facing Mi, his hand gripping the sweaty bundle with his money in it; she was looking away from him, hands at her side but clenched into fists.

  ‘You embarrass me,’ said Reve. ‘You know that? I never been embarrassed before, but I know what it is now! And you done it, Mi.’

  The humming was gone, but her eyes kept flicking away from him and back to the entrance to the Slow Bar, as if she were expecting those men to come running right after them. She pulled a face and squeezed her eyes shut, like she was trying to push something out of her mind maybe. Then she puffed out her cheeks and exhaled. ‘And you don’t know who you been talking to?’ she said. ‘You telling me you don’t know him?’

  ‘Who is he then, Mi?’

  ‘Devil is who.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A siren wailed, a thin, twisty sound that seemed to come snaking their way.

  ‘Devil?’ exclaimed Reve. ‘The devil don’t help; he get in the way. He strut like Calde, swagger like Hevez. You make no sense!’ Then he looked away from her, angry at himself and her. What were they doing? Running from Rinconda, running to this place!

  ‘You think that man, that man in there, just want to do us favour?’ she said, still agitated, still looking back across the square to the glinting pale blue light of the Slow Bar, as if she somehow was expecting a long arm to come snaking out of the door and snatch them back.

  Two hundred metres away, the two lizard-like men still lounged against the door. Señor Moro had no intention of chasing him and Mi.

  ‘No. I don’t know. Maybe.’ He twisted the neck of his bundle. ‘But even if you right, Mi, ’less we get help, we goin nowhere.’

  She turned and looked down towards the opposite side of the square to the tired old houses that fronted the Barrio. ‘We goin there.’

  The sun was low, the square almost empty; an old lady in black threw breadcrumbs down for pigeons. A couple hurried by, heading for the tram stop, each of them pulling a suitcase on wheels.

  ‘We step in there and all we goin do is get lost. You got to let me do the leading.’

  ‘No! That man playin. He got a devil in him, Reve, I swear. I hear it in his voice. He want to pull us in, like fish on a line, Reve, you know. We keep away from him, and I tell you all we got to do is go looking for our mother in that place. People goin to know her. She got hair like mine, look like me. We can, Reve, we can find her . . .’

  He suddenly realized he was exhausted, and hungry, and Mi probably was too . . . and Theon had warned them.

  Then the sun was down, and though Agua had a scattering of street lights the darkness suddenly thickened around them. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘we find somewhere for tonight, go looking tomorrow. Can’t stay here like a pair of fat pigeon for anyone to knock down.’

  ‘I’m not pigeon,’ grumbled Mi but she agreed they couldn’t stay there or go wandering in the Barrio, not in the dark, so they bedded down in a doorway of one of the empty buildings, on the Barrio side of the square. Reve used his bundle as a pillow and leaned up against the side of the doorway. Mi sat beside him, her arms clasped round her knees, her back straight, and though Reve couldn’t see her face, he knew her eyes were open, like his.

  On the far side of the square, the blue lights of the Slow Bar rippled in the darkness and made Reve think of the sea.

  There was traffic: trucks and coaches rumbled by, cars too, but not so many. The tram ran till late; all those people, faces staring out and not seeing them, rolling on with their lives.

  It must have been late in the night when it fell quiet, as quiet as a city can get. There was always that rumbling in the distance, sometimes a voice shouting out, or a car door slamming. Hardly anything drove by their side of the square, except for a police van which rolled slowly past about every thirty minutes or so, a torch beam playing along the pavement, poking carelessly at windows and doorways. But though the light once woke Reve as it slipped over his face, the van never stopped.

  Reve woke, his neck aching and his arm stiff from the weight of Mi leaning on him. However, it wasn’t that that made him open his eyes but someone easing his bundle out from where his shoulder was pressing it against the wall. His eyes were gummy with grit and tiredness and blindly he tried to grab at the thief.

  The someone skipped back a pace and, as Reve struggled to sit up, shove Mi off him and focus, a small boy grinned at him. Demi!

  ‘Jus’ testing you, country,’ he said, his eyes wide with pretend seriousness. ‘I bet you got something fat an’ easy for pickin in here.’ He jigged up and down on his toes and shook Reve’s bundle by his ear. The girl was there behind him like his shadow. ‘They’s caterpillars, all wriggled up like that,’ he said to her, and his face flashed a grin.

  Were they serious? Robbing him and then just standing there to mock!

  ‘What you know about caterpillar? You only know about dippin yo’ hand and talking bigger ’n you are,’ she said. ‘Give it back.’ She was very still, so different to him. It was as if he wanted to be noticed while she would prefer to be invisible.

  ‘Give it back, Demi.’

  Demi danced off down the pavement and then stood there about fifteen paces away from them, like he was wanting them to give chase.r />
  ‘What’s he playin?’ said Mi grumpily. Her hair was squashed all over one side, her legs were scuffed and dirty and her skirt crumpled.

  ‘He can’t help it,’ said Baz.

  ‘Someone goin teach him, then,’ said Reve. He wasn’t going to have some half-pint thief steal a whisper from him. Not this second time. No. Reve didn’t get cross, not really, but in the city everything seemed set to spike him up.

  He didn’t reckon he would have too much trouble catching Demi, even if he was fast on his feet.

  He was wrong.

  The thief gave a yip of delight and sprinted along the edge of the square with Reve after him and gaining, so Reve thought. Then Demi glanced over his shoulder, saw Reve on his tail and he gave another yip and spun like a top, dancing off down a slit of an alley. The change in direction was so swift and sudden that Reve, pelting after him, skidded past the entrance and had to turn back on himself. He saw Mi starting after him, but the girl was holding on to her arm, slowing her down. He couldn’t wait and started down the alley, surprised how dark it was, and how narrow, and it twisted too. Run a little crooked, he thought, and he would scrape his elbows against the wall. He couldn’t see his thief, but that just spurred him to run faster.

  The alley spilt into another, a little wider this time. There was wire mesh overhead and sunlight filtering down through rubbish and plastic caught up on the wire. He blinked, paused to catch his breath and make up his mind which way to go. The light was strange, the way it came through the wire, dappled, flickering in his eyes, like being underwater, and the air was heavy too, and thick in his lungs. He wiped his face and looked right and left and realized he was already inside the Barrio. People lived here all pinched together; there were doors ajar and he glimpsed faces looking out. There was the smell of cooking, and the sick sweet smell of waste.

  ‘You seen a boy runnin?’ he asked a skinny stick of a man with his white hair tied back with a bootlace.