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It was never simple. She knew that, after so many years in the business. But when the fresh-faced youngster in the striped T-shirt said he could make her an easy getaway— well, she almost believed his barber-pole ass.
What they were doing, though, didn't strike her as simple. It struck her as stupid, in the way that only a fresh-faced youngster could be.
"Explain it to me again, before I go through with this. Why do you think that just by being near you, nobody will notice me?"
"Look, you're just going to have to trust me. I'm like a celebrity."
She pulled her hat a little further down over her face. "I've never heard of you. And I know a lot."
"I said like, didn't I? It's not that anyone really knows who I am. It's just—" he broke off.
"It's just what?"
"Look, I'll show you." He grabbed her arm, a little more roughly than anyone who knew her reputation would have, and pulled her over to the window. "Just keep watching. I'll be back."
Now this? This was the dumbest thing ever. Someone the police were looking for as hard as they were looking for her should not be standing in a window, with her trademark red hat blowing in the breeze. She should be...
She suddenly found her vision inexplicably drawn all over the ground. She felt like she was looking for something. She struggled, but despite her best efforts all she could do was pan up and down every column and across every row of people. Finally, she found her gaze settling— on him? Why was that? But once she was looking at him, everything seemed fine. She was alright.
He moved back and forth, looking up at the window occasionally with the shit-eatingest grin she'd ever seen. He knew what he was doing to her, and– she checked the crowd's reactions again, just to be sure– to everybody else in the world. They were all either looking for him or looking at him.
Her eyes followed him into the tenement, and soon enough he darted back into the room. "Believe me now?"
"I don't know what to believe."
"Believe that my abilities can be useful to someone in your position. That's all I'm asking of you for now."
"I can't believe I'm going along with this." She mixed herself another black russian. "Do you have a plan to go along with your superpowers? It seems pretty obvious that walking around with you would be a fantastic way for me to get caught."
"Plan, schman." The smug look on his face couldn't have been more annoying if it had insulted her by name. "The way I figure it, all you need to do is keep about five or six feet away from me at all times. That way, anyone who tries to look for you ends up looking for me."
It wasn't a bad plan. It certainly beat the pants off its predecessor, the old "ditch the hat and run for the train" approach. Still, it just felt like cheating.
He giggled.
And, of course, there was the issue of having to remain so close to the little shit. She just wasn't sure whether she'd be able to keep from strangling him, even if he kept silent. If he talked, she didn't have a chance.
"Can you keep quiet? If people are looking at you and see you talking to me..." There, that put it on less insulting grounds.
"Don't worry. I'm sneaky, like a badger." The grin never left his face. She decided that, at some point, she'd have to wipe it off. After she'd taken full advantage of him, of course— but she made a note of it on her mental to-do list.
"Badgers aren't particularly sneaky."
"Well, then I'm sneaky like something that's actually sneaky. That good?"
"Seriously, though. You probably shouldn't talk to me."
"Man, am I really that annoying? Fine, I'll shut up in public. Think of it as your reward for letting me help you." Hm. That was a level of self-awareness she hadn't expected from a guy who grabs criminals off the street to help them escape. About the right level of stupidity, though.
She bit her lip, a nasty habit that she thought she'd gotten rid of years ago. "I don't get this. Why are you doing this for me? Why are you helping me? Do you just pick up every girl you see the police chasing? What if I'd been something worse than a thief?"
"Like what? I've heard a song about a false-hearted lover, but—"
"Shut up."
"Fine, fine." He pulled at the hair on the back of his head. It made him look nervous and stupid at the same time.
"I'm not letting this go." She let out a frustrated sigh. "Why me? And don't give me some shit about honor, or right, or justice. Because that's what the guys chasing me have on their side."
She probably should have been less surprised than she was when he put on what he clearly thought was a masculine voice and said "Well, you are a very pretty lady. That had to count for something."
"So you're helping me out of the country because you want to get in my pants?"
He laughed, and for the first time it wasn't that boyish giggle that he'd seemed so fond of. It was a harsh, dismissive laugh that seemed to belong to a much older face than his. "I think I'd settle for getting below that coat."
An acceptable reason. In pleasanter times, he might have even had a chance at his goal. He wasn't unattractive, even if his eyes betrayed imbecilic notions of love and eternity that would be doomed to despair at the end of the one night stand they could've shared. But that was half a world away, and right now she just needed to get out of here with her backpack.
"Alright." Shit, that really wasn't what she'd meant to say yes to. "You can help me out."
"It would be my pleasure, fine lady. What convinced you?"
"I like honesty. And I don't like that grin you're suddenly sporting. What's so funny?" She felt herself getting angry. Slow breaths, that was the key. It was always harder to keep your cool after the job than during. That was how greenhorns got caught. And she was nothing if not red.
He was back into his giggle. "It's just, you're a thief. I didn't expect honesty to be one of your turn-ons."
"I'm a cat burglar, not a thief. And the two are unrelated. What I do with other people's property is a profession."
"A profession?" God, she wanted to smack that grin off his face. If only he hadn't proven his usefulness so quickly, she could incapacitate him and leave.
"Or a hobby. Call it what you will, it doesn't make me dishonest. I even send notice ahead."
"How's that working out for you?"
"I haven't been caught yet."
"Can you always count on a handsome stranger coming to you aid?" He had his head at the perfect angle. She could deliver a resounding slap right to the cheek he was practically extending to her. She'd do it, too, except he'd probably like it. And she didn't want to risk getting whatever that power of his was all over her.
"A handsome stranger? There hasn't been one yet."
"Oh? I didn't realize we were already friends before today."
God, he was giving her a headache. "Do you have any asprin?" Anything to get him out of the room.
"Here you go. It always pays to be prepared." She just had no luck today. He had them in his pocket, the stupid boy scout.
She washed the pills down with another cocktail, leaving most of the Kaluha out of this one. Straight vodka was what she really needed right now.
"We'd probably better get going. It's no good having people look for me if they can find me too easily. Focusing on me won't make much of a difference if they can see both of us at the same time, so we'll want to travel while there are lots of crowds to keep them distracted."
She doesn't need this. She is a criminal mastermind. She does the planning, she calls the shots, and she certainly is the one who decides when things happen. She grits her teeth, and just sits there. Can't do anything that would make it look like she's accepting his orders. He's probably never committed a crime in his life. Bet he never even jaywalks. If he did, the cops would just notice, and then– so he'd think– he'd go to prison, where strong men would—
"Are you alright?" His voice startles her out of her malice aforethought.
"I'm fine." She says it too quickly, and he knows it's a lie.
"You're fine?"
"Yes." She refuses to look at him, to dignify his pretensions with a look.
Because she has to admit, she's not altogether certain the look would be so disparaging as it ought to be.
"If you're fine, why are you clawing at your knees?"
She looks down. Well, technically she was already looking down, but now she actually looks instead of just casting her head away from her. She's actually managed to draw quite a bit of blood. At least it wouldn't show up on her clothing. There were plenty of good reasons for a career criminal to choose red.
He was still waiting for an answer.
She wasn't giving one.
"Well? What have your knees done to offend you?"
"If you must know, it's a disguise." That worked pretty well. Made it clear to him that this was not his world, and didn't make her look like the rookie she felt like. Except—
"A disguise that won't be visible once you put your coat on?" Damn. "Don't lie to me. You're nervous about something."
I am not nervous, she almost shouted and only held herself back by remembering how stupid it would sound. Silence seemed like the best option.
"Are you nervous about me?"
"If we're going to do this, you're going to need to answer some questions about how this–" she struggled for the least complimentary word possible. "How this oddity of yours works. Hell, for all I know your neighborhood could just be running a scam on me."
"Except that you felt it too." The kid was nothing if not persistent.
"What do you mean? How do you know?"
"Walk around as me as long as I have, and you'll start noticing every pair of eyes. And yours were glued to me."
"Just because I knew you'd gone outside. Because you told me to look out the window." That was much more desperate than she'd intended.
"Look." He sighed. As if she were some kind of two year old, who needed a lesson. For that matter, maybe she did. She certainly wasn't her usual self. "We both know that's not the case."
"We do?" They did.
"We do." They did.
"Alright. We know it." There came the smug little grin, like from the right side of the law the other side just made sense, and the poor short-sighted criminals couldn't see what they really represented. Like crime was something that a good man could dip his fingers into, and come out unscathed. Like this getaway was just a vacation for him.
And it would be, too. That was the unfair bit. So long as she was the criminal and he was just helping, he'd be right about what crime was. He could feel cool for a moment, like he was a sweet cat or however he thought criminals talked, and then he could go on with his life.
The phone rang. He picked up the handset, looked at the number, and winced.
"Sorry, I've got to take this."
The police, no doubt. No, that would be stupid. The police don't call, they knock down doors. Especially around here. "Go ahead." She still didn't release the grip of her pistol.
He ducked into the other room. "Hello?"
"Oh, that's great!" His voice rang with the kind of enthusiasm she'd only been able to fake since longer ago than she could remember. "Can you put her on?"
Her? Who was this? If that was a girlfriend on the line, he had colder blood than she'd given him credit for. The silence grew louder by the second, especially when she realized she was searching the room for the corner of his shirt that was visible through the doorway.
"Hey, how's it going? Who's a good girl?" That was not a girlfriend.
"That's right! You're a good girl." He was talking to a cat over the phone.
"That's right, daddy misses you. Tell the kids I say 'arf'." A dog, then.
He hung up the receiver. "Woof just had puppies. I had to leave her with an old flame when I moved out of Kiev, but I do like hearing from her now and then."
"My congratulations to the happy dog. I'm afraid I'm all out of champagne."
"Shall we head out and get some, then? If we leave now we can buy some on the train."
Silence.
"I said, shall we go?"
Well, worst case? She rots in a communist prison for the rest of her life.
"Fine. Let's go."
***
The trains in Budapest were never on time. She knew it, she'd known it forever, but it still always felt like there was an inspection on, like her train in particular was the late one. She was stupid.
She was stupid in more ways than that. Take the piece of luggage sleeping beside her on the platform. She'd been high from the crime when she'd picked him up, or when he'd picked her up, or whatever. And he did have his utility, she couldn't deny that. It was nice to be able to walk in plain sight. But he just wasn't—
A getaway was supposed to be a calm time, a time to come down from the crime, and bask in the afterglow of a job well done. The boy didn't understand that. He couldn't be expected to: the getaway was the first time he'd been a criminal, the first time he'd had the thrill of wrongdoing. These past five weeks had probably been the most terrifying time of his life. She couldn't blame him— it was just his upbringing.
Still, it wouldn't kill him to be less thrilled.
He stirred under his sweater, long ago converted to a blanket by holes and finally by scissors, and he grunted. It was the grunt that signified a vague question, the one that meant he wanted to know something but hadn't figured out yet what it was.
"What is it?" Her voice was a little unpleasant from the previous thoughts, but it wasn't as though he'd notice.
He made a little "hmm" sound. "Train here yet?"
"No." This was the kind of thing that made him a pain. Not the question, anyone would have been anxious about that. The inability to just wake up and go. He was too much of a civilian to be able to move himself where he needed to be moved, and moving him herself was a singularly bad idea if she didn't want the eyes of the police on her.
The same "hmm" again, or maybe it was a different one this time. At any rate, he seemed comfortable under his makeshift blanket.
A little too comfortable, especially around the region of her thighs. She shook him awake. "Why are you doing that?"
"Why are you?" Aha. Not the question she'd meant to ask. Still, she had to answer now. Why was hers a life of crime? She laughed in what she was pretty sure was a pleasant and dismissive way.
"I just don't have anything else to do." One of her favorite answers to that question. It left enough mystery, but captured the heart of the matter.
"Neither do I. I also don't have anything else." Now wasn't that cute? He wanted to play the disillusioned career criminal game. She smiled, at him this time.
"You had that place back in Pyongyang." And for some reason he looked sad. Probably missed his home, his dog, his two parakeets or whatever.
"So did you." His eyes were flashing now, through his glasses. Narrowed enough that it felt like he was trying not to look at her. Probably didn't want to see the disdain that he knew would be written on face at the suggestion of such a life of happy domesticity. She almost— hell, she did feel sorry for him. The life he kept trying to bring with him had been all there was to his life.
"I did? What would I do in North Korea with the police after me? I couldn't very well spend my whole happily married– is that what you were thinking?– my whole life of domestic bliss avoiding the eyes of the cops in the street."
He looked as if she'd hit him. He stopped still for a moment, then he stood up. He wasn't the tallest man in the world, but combined with the expression on his face his height made him seem like a prison tower built only over her.
She stood up, and started to speak.
"Wa—"
"Don't give me that. You know damn well that you'd be invisible the second you took off that coat and hat. Some of us don't have that luxury. Having people look for you, that's just something you want. I can't figure out why you want it, and I don't think it's any of my business. I think it means you're fucked up in some serious way, and that's good for you. For me, it's who I am. People just look for me." She shivered. "I never got a choice. I was born with the life you chose. So don't give me your shit about how I have another life, a life I can go back to, a life that I was trying to drag you into. You invented that life of mine. This life, the one we're living together, is the life I was born into."
She kept her eyes away from him.
"Why do you think I wear this hideous shirt?" She pulled her hat further down over her face, and to her horror she found her head tilting up to find him.
"Answer me!" If there'd been anyone else on the platform, he would have been making a scene, and she would have killed him for it. As it was, she was just afraid. "Why am I wearing this shirt?"
His hands were on her shoulders now, and she was viscerally aware of the wall behind her, the wall that despite her best instincts she was backing up into.
He pushed her against the wall, and kissed her roughly.
"I wear this shirt," he said in a low voice, "because it's repulsive. Nobody can bear to look at it for long, just the way they can't stand not looking at me. This shirt keeps the eyes away, at least for a little bit."
His hands were still against her shoulders, and her shoulders were still against the wall. His mouth– the grin was back on it, the same grin even if now it looked more desperate than smug– went back to hers, and she felt his teeth on the outside of her lips, even while his tongue was finding its way under hers. This was wrong. She should be in charge.
She tried to push him away, just enough to take some command of the situation, but he caught her hands and held them by her sides while he kissed the breath out of her.
She got her mouth away from his for a quick second. "Why are you doing this?"
He gave the most mirthless grin yet. "I don't have anyone else to do."
He was still sleeping on her chest when the train to Marseille arrived, and she had to drag him half the way up to their compartment.
***
Crowds were great. Small groups of people made you stand out, but a real crowd, a city crowd, gives you a kind of freedom and safety you can't imagine if you've never felt the weight of solitude, of having to hide things from the guy who might come around the corner while you're talking.
That's why she loves midtown. There, she can talk openly and for all the New Yorkers know she's just running lines from her latest script, or talking about what she would've thought if she'd been so and so when such and such happened. Nobody's going to pay attention to her long enough to notice she's actually having an extended conversation about her next heist.
Which, conveniently enough, is going to be up Central Park West and 77th. Couldn't be more convenient, really. Just one slight inconvenience.
"What's my job?"
He'd been helpful in the journey. He'd been a lot of fun in the sack. But now it was time to go, and he couldn't seem to understand that.
"Well?" He certainly hadn't developed much patience while they were traveling, but it wasn't as though New York was a patient town.
"Your job," she smiles. "Your job is to stand here and look pretty."
He looks sullen. "I meant my job for..." he breaks off.
"For what?" She gets a certain kind of pleasure, she'd be the first to admit that it was petty, out of making him bring up the criminal elements.
He doesn't enjoy it the way she does, but he answers anyway. "The heist. What's my part in the heist?"
She snorts in just the right way. "I'm don't know. What do you think you'd be able to do for me now that I'm back on my own territory?"
"I thought I could—" He breaks off. Maybe he understands. At any rate, she takes advantage.
"You thought you could what? Attract the guards during my next heist? The last thing I need is the guards noticing anything at all, especially someone who's been seen in my company."
"They never saw us together!" He could be right, for all she knows. "If they did, there's no reason that I was apart from you all the time we were traveling."
He's close now, and she can feel the heat of his breath on her lips. The newspaper kiosk behind her is cutting into her back, and for the first time since she met him that discomfort seems more important than what she could be doing with her mouth and hands.
"They didn't." He's repeating himself.
"Bullshit." Not as though he needs to know the truth. "The police in Pyongyang, the Mongolian border guards— these people have their connections. I hate to ruin all your favorite heist movies, but there's no perfect crime. Everyone knows everything these days. The only trick we have is not going where they've seen us too recently." It's even mostly true. Just not the parts that matter for them right now. But it's not as though he'd have any way of finding out. Better to leave him in New York. A man of his talents could always find work as a beggar. Or a male stripper.
"What about what we shared? Wasn't that special?" Jesus. The clichés are flying.
"It was just sex." It was just sex. It really was. Never mind that he was probably talking more about the journey. "Hell, in the eyes of the law, you raped me. Repeatedly, even. In the eyes of the law, I'm just an innocent little girl who got tricked by a mysterious man of the east into smuggling his stolen goods." When dealing with clingy men, it was always best to stick to the practical.
His eyes flashed behind his glasses. "I'm not interested in the eyes of the law, and neither are you. I want to know about your eyes, the eyes that have been following me for longer than anyone else has managed."
"It helped that you took off the shirt."
He tears it off and throws it on the ground. People had been looking already– looking at him, looking at the fight, looking at the word sex– but now they're really looking. A crowd is gathering around them. In the middle of Times Square. Right now, it's just confusion– "what kind of argument do you settle by getting rid of your clothing?"– but pretty soon it'll be a report to the police, and it'll be proceedings in which their belongings– her belongings– are tagged as evidence.
He still commands her attention. "Well, it's off. What do you see?"
Her eyes dart around his well-defined muscles, where not long ago her head was resting. They go from nipple to nipple, admiring them in the cold New York wind. They follow the curves of his abs, heading down to— she forces them up to his shoulders. Finally, they come to rest on his face, the only face she's really seen for the last two weeks. Maybe the only face she's ever really seen.
"I see the idiot who followed me around the world, and thought I was following him." All the spite she can manage still isn't enough to make it sound convincing, but the whirl on her heel seems to do the trick. She pushes through the crowd, and makes it onto 43rd. She has a safe house over past Ninth, and the security there can take care of her baggage, human and otherwise.
"Wait!" His shout is hoarse and meaningful, but she doesn't listen. It doesn't matter. The sound of him doesn't have the same effect as the sight, and if she can just pull ahead—
Her bag feels light. Her feet nearly get tangled in her luggage while she opens it and checks, but he actually did it. He took the loot.
"If you won't stop for me, stop for this." She know what she's going to see when— if she turns around. A half-naked man, with her property held aloft, gleaming in the light of a thousand signs.
She turns. "Give. It. Back."
He laughs as if he can't imagine anything less funny. "Give it back? Give it back where? I'm not planning on returning to Korea anytime soon. I bet the Met would give me a handsome sum for it, though."
She feels the tears on her face before she realizes she's crying. "Give it back!" The words do nothing, and they come out in someone else's voice.
"No." The grin is gone, replaced by a sneer. That sneer was hers, too. The one she'd worn when she first met him on the streets of Pyongyang.
He'd even stolen that.
She can tell she's saying something, but the noises don't make sense to her and she's too far gone to know what she means. Whatever she says, it only makes his sneer grow thinner.
Sirens, and the crowd was parting to let the police through. They'd see her with him, with his stolen property, and it would go back to the Koreans, and she was going to prison. Forever.
This is the least she can do.
She reaches into her bag, clumsily with her eyes fixed on him, and gets a good grip on her pistol. As the police are aiming for her, she takes off the safety.
As they tell her to put her hands up, she pulls out the gun, points it right where she was looking, right at his horrible face, the face she can't take her eyes off, and pulls the trigger.
She can't hear anymore, but as the NYPD bullets go through the chest that he might have loved, she can still see clearly enough to know— she missed.
She gives what would have been a sigh of relief if she'd still had working lungs.
And as she lies on the ground in her blood, she hears the police ask their last question.
"What happened?"
And the last answer, in a voice that could only belong to Waldo: "You can arrest me. It's me who killed her." And then, a scream: "I killed my beloved Carmen!"