Call Down Thunder (17 page)

Baz and Demi were waiting for them at the next stop. ‘They got no tram where you come from, country?’ Demi asked. ‘How you get ’bout a place ’less you can hop a
tram? You two so slow seem like you walk backwards all the time.’

Baz told him to mind his manners, but he just wiggled his fingers under her nose and said, ‘I got magic fingers. I don’t need nothing ’bout manners,’ and he sped off
again.

They did catch a tram, but at a stop this time, and Reve paid the fare for all of them: four to Agua, and they sat and watched the city stream by. It was only a few stops and Demi told them that
what they were seeing was the river side of the city. All the smart and shiny shops were up near the city centre, but they weren’t allowed up there, he said. They needed to practise their
skills more. They had a teacher, he said, and this was the person he wanted to take them to. Their teacher told them where to work. The market was good for them, Demi said, because they were so
small. He said this with pride, as if being small was something he had designed himself.

After about ten minutes the tram swung into a huge square. There was a fountain with a big pool round it; the stone was grey but the water splashed and looked like silver in
the sunlight. The whole square was drab, with tall narrow houses on one side, with some of the windows boarded up, gaps in the tiles and a thread of tiny alleys leading away into whatever lay
behind. There were a few shops, but they didn’t seem to sell much that anyone would want, and there was a street market at one corner and a few bars near where the trams and buses pulled up;
but the fountain was something special – neither Mi nor Reve had ever seen anything like that, water pouring up into the air in the middle of all this hot, dry, hard stone city.

The children jumped down ahead of them and ran to the fountain and splashed their faces and each other. ‘You can drink it,’ said Demi. ‘It’s a’right –
don’t make you sick or nothing and you don’t pay for it. ’Bout the only thing that don’t cost.’

They cupped their hands and drank; it tasted of metal but it was cool, and both he and Mi were so tired and hot and hungry that it was good to run that water over their wrists and splash their
faces. But Reve was cautious all the time, and he saw that Mi was too. He liked these two children; you couldn’t help but like them, but he didn’t trust them. Not really. He kept his
bundle close and he eyed the end of the square with the bars. That was where they had to go next.

‘You sure that man goin see us?’ Mi said, brushing down her ruckled skirt and then giving her knee a good scratch. ‘I don’t think he even goin recall who you are,
Reve.’

‘Most people not like you, Mi; they got memory for things. Come on. You ready?’

‘Wait.’ She kicked off her sandals and dipped her feet one at a time into the cool water, then made a business of drying them off with a strip of yellow cotton she unwrapped from
round her waist.

‘You ready yet?’ he asked again.

‘A’right,’ she said.

The two children had their heads together. ‘You still sure you want to go there? We don’t like that place too much. He come where we live, give people hard time unless they pay him
money.’

‘Call it rent,’ said Baz. ‘They call it rent, Demi. It happen all over.’

‘Don’t matter what they call it; still him taking money an’ . . . other thing too. You got any place you can sleep? We can show you place you can sleep won’t cost you
much dollar. You got anywhere?’

Reve looked up at the sky; it was well past midday. ‘We don’t need to think about that yet,’ he said. ‘We go meet the man now. You don’t have to come with us.
It’s that one there, isn’t it?’ He pointed to a bar where he could just pick out the sloping letters of the name ‘Slow Bar’.

‘You got seein eyes, country.’

There were two lizard-like men leaning up against the wall by the entrance. One was chewing on a toothpick and the other’s face was a mask behind a pair of dark glasses.
They both wore black and the one on the right with the toothpick had a whirling pattern of tattoos etched into his shaven head and down both arms, purple lines against his dark skin.

‘We lookin for Señor Moro,’ Reve said. He tried to make his voice sound sure and steady, like he would speak to Theon. ‘He in there?’

They didn’t even look at him.

‘What you want, Demi?’ said the man with the toothpick, chewing it over to the edge of his mouth before speaking. ‘I don’t see your Barrio Mama holdin your
hand.’

Demi stuck out his chest. ‘I here on business; delivering these people.’

‘Oh,’ drawled toothpick man, ‘deliverin, that right? That not your usual business. She do the deliverin most times.’

‘Not what you think,’ said Demi, a little less confidently this time. ‘We just helping. They come see Señor Moro.’

The second man tilted his head a little, the better to study Reve and Mi, though Reve sensed his eyes were just on Mi, in her little patchwork skirt. He didn’t like the way these men
looked them over like they were meat or something, but he said nothing.

‘You takin over business from the old lady?’

‘She not old,’ said Baz firmly, speaking for the first time.

The second man laughed. ‘Hear her speak. Didn’t think that little spike had words.’

Reve had had enough. ‘You goin let us through?’

Tattoo stood to one side. ‘Free country,’ he said in his mocking drawl, ‘free entry. Maybe cost you to come out, specially your girlfriend, unless she happy to give a little
favour here,’ and he patted his cheek.

Mi stalked past him and entered the bar and Reve quickly followed. He just heard Demi cheeking the man as he was goin in: ‘You think any right mind person want to catch disease from you,
you got less brain than you got hair and that not sayin too much.’

Reve glanced over his shoulder before the door swung shut behind him and saw Demi and Baz dancing backwards with the tattoo man making a dash for them but giving up after only a few paces
– with legs half the length of his, the children were too quick. Reve wondered if he and Mi were going to have to learn to be as fast as them.

The room was gloomy, the lights gauzed in something blue that made what light there was seem cool, a little like being underwater. There was a man at the bar leaning on the counter, smoking,
eyeing them and two women in skirts so tight Reve didn’t see how they would be able to move from the stools they were perched on. Down at the end of the room, in a corner, were two figures;
he couldn’t make out their faces. Their heads were close together, like they were praying, or planning something too secret for the barman to hear maybe. There was the thumbprint glow of a
cigar being sucked on.

Reve felt his chest go tight and he hoped that when he spoke his voice wouldn’t shake. It didn’t usually even when he got angry, or had to face down Hevez. But this was all
different.

Mi moved a little closer to him. ‘You talk to the man, Reve,’ she whispered. ‘You can do that. You know what to say in a place like this.’ He couldn’t think why she
said that; it wasn’t as if he’d ever been in any bar in his life, other than Theon’s cantina, and that was as different to this as shark to jackfish.

‘We don’t give nothing to children in this place,’ the barman said.

Reve believed him, but he hoped that maybe ‘nothing’ didn’t include a bit of information about the policeman who took their mother. ‘Is that Señor Moro down
there?’

The barman looked at him a moment. ‘It is.’

‘He told us call by here,’ Reve said, which wasn’t strictly true, but he didn’t want this man taking it into his head to throw them out before they even got a chance to
speak with Moro. Mi was standing so close her shoulder touched his.

‘Wait.’ The man slapped up the hatch in the counter and walked through and down the room.

The figure with the cigar looked their way and the barman beckoned them down.

‘Who this then?’ The voice was an ugly growl like he was trying to be some old dog, though Moro didn’t seem that old to Reve. His face was smooth and he smelt of sweet soap and
cigar smoke and he was dressed just as he had been down on the pier, a shiny expensive-looking suit over a working man’s vest. It was as if he wanted to show he had money but he didn’t
care too much about it. His eyes were keen and he looked at the pair in front of him without saying anything for a moment. Then he smiled. ‘You the boy!’ he exclaimed and smacked his
hand down on the table. ‘Zavvy, this boy look a little skinny but he got the
cojones
of a bull, I tell you. What’s your name, boy? I forget. And who this you got with you? Come
here, girl! Let me see you what you like.’ He leaned back and switched on a side light. Mi didn’t move.

The man he had been talking to, Zavvy, had a narrow face and oily black hair slicked back into a ponytail that tipped the collar of his jacket. He looked at Mi and Reve but said nothing. He had
a fat ring on his left little finger, and Reve wondered why a man would wear a ring. There was something about him that unsettled Reve; he had a strong feeling that this was someone who scuttled in
the shadows, not in daylight; you wouldn’t see him in normal time, doing ordinary things, like hauling a skiff. Whatever business Moro did with this man, it wasn’t anything that Reve
wanted to know about.

‘My name is Reve,’ said Reve, knowing that Mi wouldn’t do anything this man said. It was up to him to do the talking and find out what they needed. But somehow, because Zavvy
looked so sinister, Reve found himself speaking to Moro with greater confidence. ‘You said I could call on you for favour, Señor Moro.’

‘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?’