Dead Water Zone - Kenneth Oppel [5]
He reached into his back pocket and his stomach plunged. His wallet was gone. He hurriedly patted all his other pockets, but it was no use. Now this, on top of everything else. His ID, the rest of his money, the photograph—gone. What a hell of a day.
“Pickpockets,” Monica said sympathetically. “The place is overrun with them.”
“Those little kids,” he said, suddenly remembering. “They pressed up close—”
“They didn’t pickpocket you,” Monica said easily. “I did.” She held out his wallet.
Paul was too surprised to feel any anger.
“Just making sure you’re who you say you are. Nothing personal.”
“Yeah. Right.” He was at a complete loss for words. “So, you’re a pickpocket.”
“It’s a job,” she replied. “At least it’s a skilled trade.”
“She’s very good,” Armitage said.
“I didn’t feel a thing,” said Paul. His eyes rested on her slender hands, half expecting them to dart back into his pockets at any moment. “Is it a good living?”
“That’s such a suburban question,” Monica snorted. “It’s not bad. And I know the next question you want to ask. The answer’s no, I don’t feel guilty.”
Paul could only stare.
“I mostly go into the City,” she went on. “They can afford it. I try to stick to the suits. Anyone else is a waste of time really. I never do credit cards. That’s sleazy. All I take is the cash. If they’re carrying hard currency around, they can afford to lose it. It might be a little upsetting to them at first, but they get over it.”
Paul turned helplessly to Armitage. “So, what about you?”
Grinning, Armitage jerked his head at the activity behind him.
“Right, right,” Paul mumbled. “I guess neither of you go to school, huh?”
“No time,” said Monica. “Too much work to be done.” She dangled his watch between her fingers.
“All right,” said Paul, snatching it back. “I get the point.”
“This is the last,” called out one of the boys, hefting a crate onto a tall stack.
It looked like hard work and these guys were all so skinny and pale. Shouldn’t they have been tanned, with all the sunlight off the water? Maybe it was too much night work, Paul thought wryly.
“Good work, guys,” said Armitage. “Let’s lock it up.”
Outside, Monica and Armitage guided him along the pier to a ramshackle stilt house set back from the edge of the pier. Its bottom floor began well above Paul’s head. Two small boats were tethered among the web of stilts and scaffolding.
Armitage started up a frail ladder. When he reached the top, he fiddled with a padlock, pushed open the door, and disappeared inside. Lights flickered on behind the windows.
“You better let me take the knapsack,” Monica said.
“It’s okay, I can manage.”
“You don’t get it,” she said. “I don’t want you busting the ladder.”
Before he could object, she’d slipped the knapsack off his shoulder and danced up the wooden rungs.
As Paul took his first step, the whole ladder seemed to go rigid with stress. Not meant for big people, he thought. Just as well she’d taken the knapsack. He glanced down and saw the dark water, waiting for him. He decided not to look down again and soon scuttled gratefully inside.
He’d expected squalor. Instead there were rugs everywhere, not only on the floor but on the walls, too. Ornate tapestries had somehow been fastened overhead—staples, nails?—and billowed down slightly in the middle, so the whole ceiling was an enormous pillowy quilt of red and gold. There were so many intricate designs in the room that Paul felt dizzy.
“Beats staring at boards,” said Monica, letting her body slide, with feline grace, into a tattered armchair. She made, Paul noticed, only the slightest of depressions in the cushion.
As he walked into the center of the room, the floor creaked ominously beneath his feet, and he had a sudden vision of the stilt house as a dilapidated wooden shell, sagging in on itself. But it didn’t change the bizarre grandeur of the place.
“You live here all alone?” he asked, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Monica’s face hardened, and he could see the mocking glint in Armitage’s eyes.
“What you mean is, where’s Mom and Dad?”
Paul faltered.