This story was written for the Faith*in*Fiction Conversion Short Story contest.

The Thief’s Story

By Mirta Ana Schultz

Last thing I need after a snatch is some fanatic pitching me his god. Gods run cheap these days, cheaper than a cheese sandwich and a cup of brew. Would-be saviors hack my inbox, promising everything if I lay down my soul and a couple of creds. Only I ain’t got creds to spare, for anyone.  And whose got a soul in this city? Now, if this geezer keeps a stash of juiced batties that’ll fit my flasher, I’ll let him preach all he wants.

I bang the fritzing flasher against the brick wall. Nothing. I’m stuck in the dark for the duration. With the churcher.

“What’s so special about your dead guy?” I say low enough so only he can hear me.

Might as well make talk while I wait. The geezer could know ways out of here I can’t pick out in low light. I scope the alley both ways again, not hundred percent sure I shook off the law. I’d bet on eighty-five, tops. Bad for me, but not too bad. I’ve shimmied out of worse.

“He didn’t stay dead,” the geezer says.

 “I step over dead guys every morning, grandpa. None of them’s done me any good yet. Most I can say is they ain’t done me any bad, neither. But I ain’t seen a corpse get up and walk.”

Geezer looks like he lives in this alley. Smells like it, too. In the pitiful yellow haze oozing down from dirty windows, I can see his face. It hangs like something’s yanking on his skin. The fat’s missing. If his bony wrists and ankles tell the story straight, his belly’s been churning on empty air—or near to it—for weeks. Why he drops that dope smile on me, I can’t figure. Maybe death’s your buddy when you’re down to nothing. Or maybe he’s jacked on dreamers.

Nah. Old guy’s eyeballs don’t glow coppery like a chronic sleeper’s. I lean toward perks. They keep my eyes wide open. I shift deeper into the shadows next to a heap of trash, watching.

“Who are you running from, girl?” he asks me. “Besides the law.”

“Who don’t I run from? Not that it’s your biz, old man.”

A gal has a right to crank after a tough snatching. The Mongolian better have my creds all stacked for these rocks in my pocket, or I’ll crank on him like a chopper-cop shy of his perp quota. This grab ought to keep me sweet for six weeks, if I go easy on the perks. Easy ain’t something I do well, though. Like I said, it’s smarter to skip shut-eye. So, scratch the math and let’s say I’ll be good for a month.

What’s the geezer yapping about now?

Oh, man, not the dead guy again.

It’s 2044. No one synching with the times believes that plop anymore. Have to admit, though, the guy’s got a smooth way with words. He doesn’t look brain dead, either, just body worn.  I guess it’s okay for me to feel bad about him sinking down the system. Doesn’t make me a sucker. Not everybody knows how to play.

“Trash that God story, grandpa,” I say by way of advice. “You can’t get listed for a metro subsidy long as you rattle religion. You wanna turn to purple ice in this alley or you want a room with your name on it?”

He shakes his head and a patch of gray hair falls out and down his dark shirt. “I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to die uselessly. But I need truth. I won’t give that up.”

“Like it better than a roof and a proper john?”

“Better than anything,” he answers. “Truth feeds my spirit.”

“Yeah, and that’s all it’s feeding.”

Guy’s cooked. I think I’ll stick to this side of the alley. Too many catch-ems ain’t got a cure, and the geezer’s carrying something nasty that’s munching holes in his brain. One sneeze is all it takes, sometimes, and snap, you’re chomping your own toes for lunch.

“Alone, broke and street-stuck. Lies can’t be worse than that.” I almost add starving to the list, but that’s just mean. No point rubbing his face in it. “Some lies are handy.”

“Lies always kill you in the end. And I’m not alone. I never have been.”

I scope around again, and up--always got to check overhead—making sure I’m not cross-haired. “You got friends here, grandpa?”

“I have a friend who is always with me,” he says, and off he goes again about the dead preacher that didn’t stay dead. That’s got to be who his bosom pal is, cause there ain’t no one else in the alley far as I or my scanner can tell.

“Unless some medic way back when zapped him up from flatline, your guy stayed down,” I say, cranking after that false alarm. “I know that much. Death don’t lose.”

“Death lost a long time ago. Spare a few minutes. I’ll tell you about it.”

I got two hours before I meet with the Mongolian. I hear the immune system revs up when you do something for somebody else. Read that on the med-center wall last time I got stabbed. Article of the month.  Probably explains why so many of us are sick to dying round this city. Nice is out of style. So, I let the geezer rap. Might help with the bruises.

He takes the cue and yaps on and on about folk from times so far behind that most of the names ring queer and the places sound made up. Some things don’t change, though. The dead guy had trouble with the law, same as me and half the city. I ask the geezer why? Did he steal something? I like stories with thieves--thieves who get clear with the snatch best of all.

“He told people who they were and what they needed. He told the truth,” the geezer says. “Truth robs people of the comfort their lies provide. That causes trouble, especially from those who have the power to make their lies seem real. Truth is dangerous that way.”

He spreads his hands as if saying, See the trouble it got me?

“I hear that,” I say, and circle my finger to tell him to keep the story moving. If I ever coughed up the truth, I’d land on Penal Isle for thirty long ones.

Talk about your complicated stories. I lose track of everyone except the guy whose name’s been turned into a curse—use it myself often enough—and the women, cause all of them got the same name. Funny thing that. I’ve got questions now. I got to know what happens to the J-man and those thieves, snatchers like me, only I ain’t caught and hung.

After the geezer’s done telling me why that preacher couldn’t stay dead, I realize I lost my time sense. A whole hour and a chunk of another are gone. I’ll go soon, too, hoping my scent’s too faint to trail. Chopper-cops got the sleekest tech. I make do with older gear.

“It’s a good story,” I say.

“I was waiting here to tell it to you.”

“Sure you were, grandpa.”

He stares at me like he’s my long-gone Pop, if my Pop had ever grown a sweet bone in his body and looked at me like I’d hoped.

“Do you believe it?” he asks.

“Couldn’t happen,” I say.  “No one dies for a thief.”

“He did. He died for every thief that ever lived.”

The way he says it, I know the geezer means me in particular. I should crank at that, but I reach in my pocket, instead.  I’ll be swimming in creds after my meet with the Mongolian. A good story’s worth something. I throw the card across the alley. My aim’s killer. It lands in the geezer’s lap.

“That’ll buy you food for two months and a roof for one.”

He picks it up and turns it over, shakes his head.

“It’s not dry,” I say. “I loaded it up three days ago and it’s still juiced.”

“I never doubted you,” he says, and places the card on the ground, his fingers tapping on it. “Thank you. I hope you’ll accept the gift in my story. It doesn’t run dry the way these things do.”

I’m itching in places I can’t scratch. Why am I stalling here in this stinking dark with a crazy churcher? I should be halfway to the Mongolian’s.

“I never got a gift before,” I say, and feel stupid about it. It’s that itch. I want to confess something. “Wouldn’t know where to start.”

“You just ask,” the geezer says. “He’s pretty generous.”

“I don’t see the proof,” I say, thinking the J-man’s been stingy with the geezer.

“I’m a very wealthy man, you know. He keeps my treasures safe.  Here, someone would steal them from me.”

I laugh and say, “That’s a fact.”

“But up there,” he says, “It’s all untouched until I come home to claim it.”

“Why doesn’t he give you something now, this invisible buddy of yours?”

“He does. All the priceless things you can’t see, I have them. Hope and peace. A great sense of expectation. Joy, even in this alley. The honor of telling you his story. No one can rob me of those.”

“If the price was right, I might give it a go.”

“Would you?”

I can’t answer. I don’t want to say, No, not you. Why should I care about a half-dead bum? It’s not like me to throw away good cred on a stranger.

“What you do to me, old man?” I ask, afraid some germie of his floated  over to nosh on my brain. “What’s your whammy?”

“Stories are powerful. His story changes things. What is your name?”

I don’t tell my name unless I have to, by law or at the point of a blade. So, why do I want him to know?

“Lane.”

“I’ll put in a good word for you, Lane.”

He lowers his head and doesn’t move, not even when the ice-blue beam of the chopper-cop’s headlight spots right on ankles and sharp-boned shins left bare where his pants rode up. If the lights on you, law says, you stand clear, you show you ain’t holding. You surrender.

I dig deep into the trash, hiding, gagging on the smell of something dead.

The geezer stands and hobbles close to where I’m drowning in rot. He says, low but clear enough, “I’m going to fall. Pass me what you’ve stolen.”

I can’t give myself up.  Penal Isle’s worse than snuffling rot. My Pop ended up there and his Pop before him. The geezer stumbles and goes down hard. His moan covers the soft plop of the packet that lands next to his hand. He takes it, gets up, and walks toward the blue light.

I can’t see him any more. I cover my mouth and wait. The chopper-cops yell at the geezer. He says something too soft for me to make out. I hear batons beat on skinny bones and the crack as bones give way.

I’m ready to get up and tell them it was me—I swear I am—but it’s like there’s a hand that pushes me down and keeps me there until the blue light’s gone. I stay buried, listening and trying not to scream. It’s dark and quiet in the alley, just me, shaking under garbage, and the rats, eating.  In my head, I hear the geezer’s voice. He’s telling me his story again, and again, until the words crack me like a seed. Broken, I send out shoots, looking for a way out of the dark.

Are you there? Can you help me? For his sake?

A different question comes without any words, but I hear it. I answer back, without words. I give it up, all of it, until I’m empty. And then, I start to fill up again with something different than what got sucked out. Even though the rot shoves against my lips, my mouth burns with the taste of wine.

I know it’s safe to go now.

I crawl out and shake off the garbage. I bang my flasher against my palm until it hurts and bleeds. The flasher blinks on. Red light streams down on the plastic card where the geezer left it. I pocket it. I’ll need it now to find him.

Takes me two days to knock through my connections and get news on the geezer. He’s dead. Died that night I told him my name. His was Ben Shepherd. My best contact tells me the official word is death from natural causes. I know better. The chopper-cops had orders. What I stole wasn’t supposed to be in the chief’s safe. The chief wouldn’t want witnesses.

Ben died in my place.

Stupid old man. I’m not worth it.

I won’t feel too bad about it, though. He told me none of us are worth a good man’s death, and he told me the truth. If a bad man’s gonna live—or a rotten woman, like me—then a good man’s got to die. Lucky for the geezer, and for me, too, a good man did just that. Doesn’t matter how long ago, two-thousand years or two days, that’s how it’s got to be.

Ben’s rich now. My pockets got nothing inside except street dust. But Ben left me something valuable. I’m not alone anymore. That feels better than I ever figured. I wouldn’t have believed it three days ago.

There’s one thing left to do before I can sleep. I’ve got to explain to the Mongolian about the rocks and the alley. I’ve got to tell him a story.

©Mirta Ana Schultz 2005

Send comments to: Silhouetted@aol.com