Clockwork Redux

Untitled Part 6

They stomp through the door the second the lock clicks open. They crowd around him, arching their necks and snorting hard through their noses at him the way horses do.

Grouchy takes him by the collar and talks to him in a soothing, steely tone. This is not unfriendly, he explains. They're not mad; they're just concerned. They don't think the heist will go well. At all. The best-case scenario, he tells him, is a ten-year jail sentence apiece.

So, he goes on, they have added a clause to the makeshift oral contact they've got laid out. If-which will more likely be a when-they get caught, they'll probably be offered a plea deal: rat out the ringleader for early parole. Maybe even a pass on prison-house arrest instead, maybe. All they ask is permission to roll on him, if and when the time should come.

The hand on his collar clutches his neck and squeezes. He grunts, feeling his eyeballs begin to pulse. "Please," he manages. "Please."

They crowd around him to watch him choke. He scrabbles at the fingers, drags his nails along the ironwrought knuckles. One of them breaks, leaving a bloody little dagger stuck in Grouchy's whitening flesh.

"STOP IT."

Grouchy's fingers slacken a fraction. He can't turn his head, but he knows it's her. Taylor's thin scream pierces the air for two seconds, and is hushed by Mama.

"They're hurting him, they're hurting our friend-!"

She hoists Taylor up a little higher and takes two long steps towards them. TAK. TAK. Grouchy pushes him down before the third TAK and backs away. The others spring out of her warpath, save for Bozo.

"Hold on a second. Wait." He turns his hand into a stop sign and narrows his eyes at her. "Are you....okay, forgive me if I'm wrong here, but aren't you called Jacqui?"

She rears back and shows him her teeth. "Maybe," she admits, forcing it out between her ruddy gums. "What's it to you?" To Grouchy, she says, "You leave him alone, boy, or I'll slice off your dick with cheese wire." To Joker, she extends a hand to where he's gasping on the floor. He takes it. Her fingers are so cold and red. Her veins run in rivers between the ranged mountains of bones.

"I thought you were dead!" Bozo prates on, looking not at Jacqui's face but at the outline of her drooping breasts. "It's cool that you're not, real cool. Can I ask for a price on choking?"

All the blue blood tributaries on Jacqui's face stand out. She smoothes back Taylor's hair, pushes her into Joker's arms, and punches Bozo right in his pocky little face.

Bozo stumbles and presses his sleeve to his mouth. It comes away stained dark and wet. He glances back at Jacqui, and Joker sees the very moment of his making the decision to kill her.

"Fuckin' whore," he hisses through his broken teeth, and throws himself at her.

It takes the combined strength of the entire team to hold him back. Taylor blinks at the boil of limbs and curses and chews on her lip. Jacqui catches Joker's blood-mottled eyes and mouthes, Make them leave.

They do it without encouragement, dragging Bozo's raging carcass out behind him. Their heavy-duty boots clunk down the stairs, making the building tremble, as though the very bricks are frightened.

----

"They wanna kill me," he confesses, days or maybe half an hour later, "because I'm supposedta be in charge and I don't even know how the fuckin' bank is laid out. I can't even find my way around town."

"So, you're new to Gotham?" Jacqui inquires, not looking at him. She's cooking something on the hob in a greased-up skillet and she won't take her eyes off it. "Where ya from?"

"Uhh....Belvedere. I spent a while in the army after high school. Had some sort of a breakdown. Came here 'bout a month ago."

The spatula poking the mess pauses for a fraction of a second. "Belvedere?" It resumes its tired prodding. "Say, I'm from there."

He wills her to pry, to put her nose where it doesn't belong. He has her name: Jacqueline Borden, known as Jacqui to all the guys. He can half-remember some sort of rhyme, or maybe a portmanteau.

She knows his name. She has to tell him, and soon.

After they've eaten-Taylor pops up from underneat the table, wolfs down the yellowy-grey eggs, and vanishes-Jacqui turns to him with a slick smile slit up her lips and taps her plate with her fork.

"You wanted me to help you out with this bank heist bullshit? she asks him.

"It's not-okay, fine, I guess it is. Do you really think you could help?"

"I know the layout of Gotham Lending and Holdings pretty well," she replies, looking straight through his head. "I, uh, did something with somebody in one of the offices this one time. I could go and, I dunno....what do you need exactly?"

"A rough map would be great. And the number of security guards on duty at ten at a quarter to three in the afternoon-could you manage that?"

"When?"

"Tomorrow."

A scuffling sound distracts Jacqui-Taylor, playing in silence at her feet, wants to be picked up. Jacqui bends down and hooks her long, bony hands underneath her child's raised arms. With a grunt, she heaves her up into her lap. Taylor snuggles up against her breast and stares at him from beneath her eyelids; a tiny lion cub sizing up a kill it can't make.

"I'll do it," Jacqui says at last. She caresses Taylor's narrow face and doesn't look at him.

(The clown makeup is starting to feel nasty.)

----

When Jacqui's getting ready to leave for the bank, he calls Taylor to him. She comes running, and he scoops her up into his arms and makes for the closet.

"What the motherfuck are you doing?" Jacqui demands, leaping in front of him and wresting the kid away.

"I was gonna put her into the closet, 'cos you're going out. She likes the closet."

Jacqui makes her eyes narrow and mean, and stares down at her child like she's missing a body part. "You went into the closet, baby?"

"When you was away last week. Katey never come to look after me."

"Well, Mama didn't get to ring her 'n let her know," Jacqui tells her. When she next looks at him, there are tears glittering in her eyes, as bright and hot as stars.

"I have to bring her with me," she mutters, dashing the stars away with one angry yellow fist, and he knows better than to argue.

When they're gone-the door swings shut behind them with a creak and a bang-he knocks around the apartment for a while. Jacqui doesn't have any pictures of anyone but Taylor-as a newborn, the focus amateurish and blurry; as a six-month-old, in a snapshot taken by some nurse at the hospital, the polyester-swaddled infant all that Jacqui saw; as a two-year-old, her hair visibly sticky, grinning as she hugged a giant pumpkin at some sort of fair.

He looks at her-hair as black as a horse's, teeth baby-white, face much fatter than it is now-and he understands that the others will kill him on the day of the heist. He's a skinny little homeless guy with crazy eyes and no name. To them, he's nothing more than a failed meal ticket. A fortnight ago, he'd have agreed with that assessment.

But this Jacqui lady thinks he saved her life. Her insane spawn looks at him as though he's a suspiciously benign bogeyman-a creature she's be terrified of in a different context. A monster dormant.

He knows what to do.