228
Ed Gorman
“No, and in fact, when I brought it up, he started crying and ran off.”
“So what you want me to steal is—”
“—is the piece of paper that Mr. O’Brien took from poor little Robert the other night.”
“Great,” I said. “Now I have two clients.”
“You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you, Mr. Hammett?” Elena said. “About it being ‘great’ that you have two clients?”
“Of course he’s being sarcastic, Elena. Pinkertons are always sarcastic.”
“Don’t you want to help poor little Robert, Mr. Hammett? Don’t you?” Elena said.
And exactly what Was I going to say to that?
FOOL’S PARADISE
229
It took me the rest of the day to find Robert and then I found him only coincidentally, following the trail to the huge stone mushroom where he stood staring at the River.
I moved over to him as carefully as I could. I didn’t want to spook him. But when he sensed me, he turned around, saw me, frowned, and then took off running.
He followed a path along the River. The rain made running risky. Several times in escaping, he slipped. Several times in pursuing, I slipped.
I knew that he’d elude me completely if I didn’t resort to something unpleasant. I stopped, stooped, and picked up a stone. I threw it with pleasing accuracy and caught him just below the back of the knee. The shock and pain
were enough to bring him down, and just as he reached the mud, I pounced.
When I jerked him to his feet and slammed him against a tree trunk, he was completely covered with mud. He looked as if he were doing a turn in blackface.
He was out of breath and so was I, and so we stood there, his mud washing away in the slanting silver rain, exhaling ragged and sour breath at each other.
“O’Brien took a piece of paper from you the other night,” I said. “I want to know what the paper said.”
“None of your business.”
“Kid, I could break your arm.”
“Go ahead. I don’t give a shit.”
“Somebody’s trying to kill Arda. Don’t you give a shit about that?”
“I love Arda.”
He said it in a way most boys wouldn’t. Most boys would be too inhibited and shy to say it out mat way. But there was so much need and so much pain in his quick urchin words that I sensed he needed to say them out loud, and often.
“She likes you too. She told me.”
His eyes scanned the muddy path we’d just come down. “That’s the problem.”
“What is?”
“I love her, but she only likes me.”
I got cute in the way adults usually get cute with youngsters who talk about romantic love. “You don’t think she’s a little old for you?”
“She may be a little old for me, but then, she’s too young for Poe.”
“I guess you’ve got a point there.”
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230
Ed Gorman
He looked sad then, and I wished I hadn’t gotten cute and I wished I knew the right thing to say.
“You like it here on Riverworld?”
He shrugged. “It’s not any worse than where I lived in Baltimore. At least it doesn’t have rats.” He raised his eyes to me and spoke in a voice far too weary for his age. “I never loved anybody before.”
“It can be pretty painful.”
“I get sick to my stomach, it’s so painful. She shouldn’t love him, she should love me.”
I had to keep reminding myself that he was only ten years old.
I said, “Have you ever hated her?”
He looked baffled. “Hated her? No. I said I love her. And I do.”
“Well, sometimes when you love somebody very intensely you can also hate them intensely because they have so much power over you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It may not make sense, but it’s true.”
He smiled. “When I hear things like that, I wonder if I ever want to be an adult.”
I laughed. “I think that’s a myth.”
“What is?”
“That there’s any such thing as adults. We’re just bigger versions of kids. Anyway, being a so-called adult is the shits. It really is.”