Eagle Day - Robert Muchamore Page 0,18
relatives, so he approached cautiously and used what his father had taught him on surveying a joint before a robbery.
He walked purposefully down both sides of the street, checking that nobody was sitting in any cars, then vaulted a wire fence and used the back fire stairs up to the third floor. A couple of kids stood on the landing, sharing a bag of monkey nuts and flicking shells over the side.
Number eighteen was the fifth apartment down the hallway. PT checked the rim of the door and when he saw light shining through listened out for a few seconds before knocking. It was a rough neighbourhood, so his Aunt Mae put a chain on the door before opening up.
Her jaw hung, but much to PT’s relief her expression quickly warmed and she ushered him into a living room that was even warmer.
‘Darling,’ she said, looking suspiciously up and down the hallway before slamming the door. ‘My god, the state of you!’
Mae couldn’t have kids and her substitute was a cage stuffed with chirping canaries against the back wall. Their noise and the smell of seed cake brought back memories of his first ever visit: six years old with his mother and Jeannot just a baby. Mae had bought him a die-cast fire engine with ladders that came off along the sides.
‘You let someone in?’ Uncle Thierry said, leaning curiously out of the kitchen.
Thierry had worked the docks his whole life and always wore a sweat-stained, white vest, showing off the dragons and sea serpents tattooed up his arms. His reaction to PT couldn’t have been more different.
‘Well, well, well,’ Thierry said, giving a mean shake of the head that turned PT’s stomach. ‘Look what sprang out of the gutter.’
‘Would you like something to eat?’ Mae asked. ‘I’ve got stew.’
PT nodded eagerly, and found himself across the table from Thierry as his aunt ladled out a stew thick with potatoes and stringy lamb and bread sliced from a fat loaf.
‘Where you been?’ Thierry grunted.
‘Around,’ PT said. ‘Garage over in Brooklyn. Ducking and diving, you know?’
‘Can’t say as I do,’ Thierry said. ‘Never shot no cop myself. Never been on the run.’
PT felt small. Twenty years labouring the docks had turned Uncle Thierry into a side of beef, and PT got the feeling that not only could his uncle rip him in half with his bare hands, but that he was actively considering the idea as they spoke.
‘Had the cops here giving me the third degree Sunday afternoon,’ Thierry said. ‘You seen the paper? That poor widow, with three kids under seven. Who did the shooting, your father?’
PT’s hand trembled as he raised a spoon to his mouth. ‘Leon, I think.’
‘Federal Reserve too. I always said your father was a dumb bastard.’
‘There’s no call for that language, Thierry,’ Mae said sharply. ‘He’s your sister’s boy and he’s thirteen years old. His father brought him up to this life. You can’t blame PT for what Miles led those boys into.’
‘I did everything for that man when your mother died,’ Thierry said, eyeballing PT as he crammed a fat slice of bread between his teeth. ‘Called in a dozen favours to land him easy work loading the mail on the transatlantic ships. Do you know how many men shovel coal in the docks for twenty years and still don’t get a job like that? And then the asshole doesn’t even last two months and leaves me looking the fool.’
PT couldn’t answer for his father’s sins and turned to his aunt. ‘Have you seen Jeannot?’
‘They let me visit this morning,’ Mae said, nodding. ‘He’s real sad, but the police are done with him and they’ve moved him to a children’s home. I’m going to try bringing him to live here, but there’s a procedure. I’ve got to petition the court and apparently it could take a month or more.’
‘We’re his next of kin,’ Thierry explained. ‘And he’s young enough not to have too many of his father’s bloody stupid ideas in his head.’
‘I’ve got some money,’ PT said. ‘Maybe I can help you out.’
Thierry interrupted with a huge laugh. ‘You think I’m gonna lay a hand on that dead-cop money? If I start showing cash around the cops’ll have me locked up faster than a longshoreman drinks his wages.’
‘Do you still have influence in the docks, with the union and that?’ PT asked, although he already knew the answer. For all the complaints about his brother-in-law being a criminal, Thierry was a well-paid representative