a bag of dog chow.” She blew off Rake’s concern and kept her focus on the teeny thief. “Knock it off, kid, you’re going nowhere ’til we’re done.”
“Fermalo! Lasciami andare, bitch!”
“Yeah, yeah, tell me something I’ve never heard.” Far from being pissed, Delaney looked—well, it was hard to say. Her expression was a little strange. Not mad, but not happy. Not resigned, but not anxious.
Lillith, meanwhile, chose that moment to speak up. “Don’t be scared,” she told the wriggling child. “She’s nice.”
Delaney stepped to the side, bringing the boy with her, and Rake and Lillith followed. He watched her slide her fingers up under her shirt, deeply, deeply envied those fingers, then stared when she unzipped her hideous belly pack
(“Hot-pink, Delaney? Really?”
“Shut up, please.”
“I saw it the other night but was too polite to laugh and laugh and laugh at it.”
“Shut up.”)
and extracted a twenty-euro note, stuck it in her teeth, tore it, and handed half to the kid, who was so surprised, he stopped trying to flee. Zipped up the belly pack again, pulled down her shirt. Easy-peasy, and the whole thing took maybe three seconds.
And what was her expression? It was starting to make him a little nuts.
“Rake, my Italian is shit. Will you translate?”
“Sure.” This should be good. Delaney made things interesting almost as often as Rake himself did, and usually for better reasons. And her Italian was hardly shit; she spoke it about as well as someone who’d studied it for a couple of years. If she lived here, she’d be fluent in about a year. But she didn’t have a year, and whatever she was going to tell the kid, she wanted to be very, very clear.
Lillith said something else to the kid, speaking in such a low voice that Rake couldn’t catch it.
“You can have the other half in less than two minutes,” she told the kid. She loosened her grip but didn’t let go, then squatted so she could look him in the face. “How long have you been pulling?”
The boy maybe wasn’t fluent, but he understood enough English to follow her question; Rake chalked up the quick answer to the boy’s surprise. He’d either never been caught before, had been caught but was always able to get free before, or the person who caught him had zero interest in talking to him, just wanted to dump him on a cop.
“Due anni, signora.”
“Two years,” Rake told her. And wasn’t that just fucking sad? The boy was maybe nine. Ten at the most, and all elbows and eyes and unkempt hair and astonished expression. He was dressed pretty well considering his day job—the jeans and orange-and-red long-sleeved T-shirt were worn but not tattered; his hands and face were clean; his shoes looked worn but “This is how the cool kids do it” worn. He was a cutie, too, with long dark hair to his shoulders and almond-shaped dark eyes.
“You pulling for anybody special?” Delaney asked. “Or pooling?”
Rake translated the rapid-fire answer: “His older sister. She’s head of the group. Parents are dead.”
“Uh-huh. How’s business today?”
“Great … two cruise ships so far.” Rake laughed. “Lots of stupid—” He started to say “Americans” but changed it to “tourists.”
Delaney grinned. “You didn’t have to rephrase. We’re the worst.”
Rake started to translate, only to be interrupted by the boy. “What’s wrong with you? I understand English.”
“Some English. And you’re pretty mouthy for a crook who weighs less than a bag of Purina,” he snapped.
“Both of you shush,” she said, exasperated. Then, to the kid: “Okay, so. I won’t ask your name, or call the police, or try to take you to them. I won’t try to take you anywhere. I’m not being nice to trick you and I’m not giving you money to make you do something you don’t want to do. I’m not a cop and I’m not CPS. I’m not a mandated reporter, d’you understand?”
Christ. She’s nailing all the reasons someone might grab him, a Good Samaritan or a scumbag pimp. And it’s working! He’d probably follow her anywhere, but not to rob her.
“Okay, signorina. I know this now.”
“But what story do you tell?” Lillith put in.
“Che cosa?”
“Lillith, I can handle this.” He turned to the kid. “When you get caught. When a cop busts you, or a well-meaning tourist tries to turn you in. What do you tell them?”
What followed in a terrible flood of words were some of the worst things Rake had ever heard out of a child’s mouth. And it wasn’t just