Senka had realised he was the one in charge here, he had the power, although he didn’t have a clue why. He could see Death wanted something from Pokrovka Street very, very badly.
He snapped back:
‘No, you can give me a twenty-five note, and I still won’t go. But if you whisper in the Prince’s ear, I’ll be there and back in a flash.’
She pressed her hands to her temples and twisted up her face. It was the first time Senka had ever seen a dame wrinkle herself up like that and still look beautiful.
‘Damn you. Do what I tell you then we’ll see.’
And she told him what she wanted.
‘Go to Lobkovsky Lane, the Kazan boarding house. There’s a cripple with no legs at the gate. Whisper this special word to him, “sufoeno”. And don’t you forget it, or you’ll be in big trouble. Go into the boarding house and let them take you to a man, his name’s Deadeye. Tell him quietly, so no one else hears: “Death’s waiting, she’s desperate”. Take what he gives you and get back here quick. Do you remember all that? Repeat it.’
‘I’m no parrot.’
Senka stuck his cap on his head and dashed out into the street.
And he set off down the boulevard so fast, he even overtook two cabs.
HOW SENKA CAUGHT DESTINY
BY THE TAIL
It was a good thing Senka knew where that Kazan lodging house was, or there was no way in hell he could have found it. There was no sign, nothing. The gates were locked tight shut, with only the little wicket gate slightly open, but you couldn’t walk straight in, just like that. Right in front of the iron bars there was a crippled beggar perched on his dolly, with empty trousers folded up where his legs ought to be. He had big broad shoulders, though, and a red face like tanned leather, and the arms sticking out of the sleeves of his sailor’s vest were covered in coarse red hairs. He might be a cripple, but a smack from that mallet he used to push his dolly about would knock the life clean out of you.
Senka didn’t go up to the man with no legs straight off, he took a good look at him first.
The man wasn’t just sitting there doing nothing, he was selling bamboo whistles. Shouting his wares lazily in a hoarse bass voice: ‘Roll up now, if you’ve any brains in your heads, bambood whistels, only three kopecks a time.’ There were little kids jostling round the cripple, sampling his goods by blowing into the smooth yellow sticks. Some of them bought one.
One boy pointed to the little brass pipe hanging round the invalid’s thick neck and said: ‘Let me try that whistle, mister.’ The cripple flicked the boy’s forehead: ‘That ain’t no toy whistle, that’s a bosun’s pipe, it ain’t meant for snot-nosed kids like you to blow.’
That told Senka everything he needed to know. This sailor was only plying his trade for show, of course, he was really a lookout. It was a smart set-up: any sign of trouble, and he’d blow on that brass whistle of his – it must make a loud piercing sound – and that was the signal for the others to look sharp and clear out. And the magic word that Death had told him, ‘sufoeno’, that was ‘one of us’, only back to front, like. Since olden times the bandits and thieves in Moscow had always mangled the language, so outsiders wouldn’t understand: they added bits onto words or swapped them around, or thought up other tricks.
He walked up to the lookout, leaned right down to his ear and whispered the word he’d been told to say. The sailor gave him a sharp glance from under bushy eyebrows, twitched his big ginger moustache and didn’t say a word, just shifted his dolly away from the gate a bit.
Senka went into the empty yard and stopped. Was this really the place where the Prince and his gang had their hideout?
He pulled his shirt down and brushed one sleeve across his boots to make them shiny. He took off his cap, then put it back on. At the door of the building he crossed himself and muttered a little prayer –a special one about granting wishes that a certain good person had taught him a long time ago: ‘Look down, O Lord, in Thy mercy, heed the prayers of the humble and meek and reward me not according to my deserts,