The Good Thief Read online

  This was better than histories or psalms, better even than The Lives of the Saints. At times Ren felt like he was reading fragments of his own dreams, reassembled into words that pulled at his heart, as if there were a string tied somewhere inside his chest that ran down into the book and attached itself to the characters, drawing him through the pages. The boy read and read and read and read, until his eyes burned and the candle went out, and even then, in the darkness, he could still see Deerslayer, pushing his way through the thick leaves, sighting his mark, raising his long thin rifle to his shoulder and firing.

  The men returned just before dawn. Ren lifted his head from the table as they came down the stairs, the glow from Tom’s lantern lighting the way. They were filthy, their pants and shoes covered with muck. Ren expected to smell fish, but the only scent in the room was that of damp earth. Tom set the lamp down, and Benjamin began emptying his pockets onto the table.

  He took out a necklace made of seed pearls. And then one made of coral, turquoise, and colored glass. He removed a pocket watch, listening to it for a moment before setting it down. Then he took out three pairs of earrings, a belt buckle, several thin gold chains, a bracelet covered with tiny charms, a set of cameo pins, two pairs of leather gloves, and half a dozen rings.

  Tom opened the bottle on the table. “It’s been a good night, boy!” He took a drink, swirling the whiskey in his mouth before swallowing it down. “We deserve our own Pontic triumph. Veni, vidi, vici.”

  The jewelry was covered with dust and dirt, bits of earth caked in where the beads were attached and along the creases of the buckle. The cameos were smudged, the pocket watch lined with black. Only the rings seemed fairly clean. They were, for the most part, simple gold bands. Wedding rings. A few had engravings on the inside. Initials. Or maybe something else. A poem. A promise.

  “It looks like you dug them up from the ground,” said Ren.

  “We did,” said Tom. He began rummaging around in his pockets, set the bottle down, rummaged some more, and finally pulled out a handkerchief tied in knots. He shook the handkerchief back and forth in the air until it rattled, then threw it on the table toward the boy. “Take a look,” Tom said.

  The handkerchief was full of teeth. Ren poured them out on the table beside the necklaces and rings. There must have been several dozen in various stages of decay, some the size of peas and others fully formed, nearly as large as acorns, with pointed roots twisted together. The teeth looked like tiny headless porcelain dolls, with bits of pink still clinging to the sides, as if they had been feasting on human flesh.

  Ren yanked his fingers away and understood.

  The wedding rings, the limp sets of gloves, the teeth laid out across the table: Everything had been taken from the dead. Ren felt as if the floor itself were moving, and a jolt of fear shot through him as he imagined what kind of punishment God would send down for this sin. In his mind he pictured his companions digging in a cemetery, lifting the lids of coffins. Their hands rifling through the pockets of corpses, their faces greedy and hideous. And then Benjamin yawned. And Tom scratched his beard, and they seemed just the same as before.

  “It’s too much work taking them out,” said Benjamin.

  “Not when you see how much I can sell them for,” said Tom. “I know a man who said a good set will go for ten dollars.” He opened the drawer underneath the table and began to go through it. He took out a small brush. “Move aside,” he said to Ren, and settled himself into a chair, pouring a tiny amount of whiskey into a glass. He dipped the brush into it, then set to work on the teeth, scrubbing away at the soft parts.

  “I studied Latin with a man who had no teeth at all,” said Tom. “He always smelled like lavender soap, but he was a smart old codger.”

  “How’d you pay for that?” Benjamin asked.

  “My mother cleaned his house,” said Tom. “She paid for all my lessons that way.”

  “Too bad she isn’t here,” said Benjamin.

  Tom stopped scrubbing. His mouth set in a line. Then he put the tooth down and reached for the bottle.

  Benjamin called Ren over. He held up a bracelet and a watch.

  “Which do you think is worth more?”

  The watch was gold, with a tree carved into the face. The bracelet was made of silver and consisted of tiny charms in the shape of musical instruments. Ren fingered a tiny piano. He thought of the lifeless arm that it had adorned.

  “Don’t get distracted,” Benjamin said. He pulled a knife from his boot, slipped it into the back of the watch, and popped it open. There were hundreds of gears inside, all turning together. “You should look at every part of something before you choose.” He fit the piece back into place and snapped it shut. “Then, always take the watch.”

  The rings and necklaces were spread out and inspected. The cameos were polished, the pictures delicately wrought, with images of fairies and profiles of beautiful young women. A set of earrings sparkled as Benjamin rubbed away the grime, and the pearls shone like new skin in the lamplight.

  “This will keep us until spring,” said Tom.

  Benjamin nodded. “We’ll have to sell them a few towns over so they won’t be recognized.” He finished cleaning the earrings and set them aside. Then he began to arrange the rest of the jewelry into piles, estimating the worth of each and calculating the numbers on his fingers. He moved a pair of gloves and noticed the copy of The Deerslayer on the table.

  Tom stopped his scrubbing. “Did you get that tonight?”

  The Indian on the cover looked out impassively as the spine of the book was read and turned over. Benjamin ran his finger across the necklace of bear claws, tracing each point.

  “I believe this was borrowed from Mister Jefferson.” Benjamin narrowed his eyes at Ren, and the boy felt his stomach drop. He’d stolen many things at Saint Anthony’s over the years, but this was the first time he’d ever been caught.

  Tom glanced back and forth between them, then turned to Ren with a grin. “And to think I wanted to send you back.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t notice.” Benjamin was smiling now. “Show me how you did it. Take something else.”

  Ren paused for a moment, tensed and ready; then he brought his fist from behind his back, opened his fingers, and showed the ring he had already stolen from the table. It was etched in gold with a fine pattern of leaves. There was a date carved inside, 1831, and the words Forget Me Not. Tom and Benjamin moved forward to see, then leaned back and roared with laughter.

  Benjamin pulled his collar up and began fussing over the book with a rag, in a surprisingly accurate imitation of Mister Jefferson. Then he chased Ren around the table, shouting, “STOP, THIEF!,” the boy scrambling under the chairs, darting this way and that, until Tom was wiping tears and Ren was laughing too, and it was as if something had been released inside the basement room, their voices flying high into the corners and each of them gasping for breath.

  Benjamin collapsed in a chair and threw his legs out before him. He rubbed his nose and kept his blue eyes set on Ren, as if the boy were capable of taking the world.

  “This one doesn’t need any training at all,” said Tom.

  “No,” Benjamin said. “He’s already one of us.”

  TEN

  In the boatyard all kinds of ships were hauled out from the water. Carpenters scuttled underneath the braces, wool scarves tied around their necks and fingerless gloves over their hands. The men scraped the hulls from a season’s worth of voyages, cleaning away the seaweed and replacing the wood that was rotten, tapping in caulk between the boards. Ren saw one boat being built, the empty ribs stretching up to the sky like an open mouth, at least seventy feet long. On another schooner the builders were in the middle of setting the mast, a giant tree trunk planed of branches and covered with grease, slowly hauled into place with ropes, and sliding down through the heart of the ship.

  Next to the boatyard was a line of shops selling tackle and nets and ropes, brass fittings and sails and anchors,
salt and ice and oars and oil and buckets and harpoons. The place smelled of commerce—wood shavings and polish. Tom led them around the corner to a rickety staircase. A faded sign was nailed to the side of the building, with the words MISTER BOWERS, DENTISTRY AND TOOTH WORK written in red paint. Underneath, a hand was etched into the wood, pointing up the steep spiral stairs.

  Tom and Benjamin looked at each other, then gave Ren a small shove, and the boy started up the stairs, with the men behind him. The railing shook and the steps seemed ready to fall apart underneath his feet. Before Ren reached the top, a man’s head popped over the edge and looked down at them.

  He had hollow cheeks, covered in a gray stubble, and an ancient white wig of tight curls that covered only half of his balding head. There was a napkin tucked into his collar. As they climbed higher, Ren saw that he also had a painful-looking black eye. Swollen, purple, and nearly closed shut.

  “Mister Bowers?” Tom asked.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Our boy has a toothache,” said Benjamin, gesturing to Ren.

  “I don’t usually get customers so early,” said Bowers. He seemed uncertain, but once they reached the top of the stairs he was quite anxious that they shouldn’t leave. His breath smelled of coffee with too much sugar. His hands were damp as he shook theirs. “Come in, come in.”

  The shop was nothing more than a room, with a faded rug over a stained wood floor and newspaper advertisements for wallpaper. A padded chair stood in the center, along with a footstool, a table, and a tall cabinet with glass doors. On top of the table was a washbasin, full of pink water, as well as an open box containing instruments—small hammers, pliers, drills, and files. Ren looked at the tools with horror and hoped they would not get anywhere near his mouth.

  Beside the box rested the remains of Mister Bowers’s breakfast: a piece of dark bread with jam and a mug of coffee. Bowers pulled the napkin from his collar and began to cover the plate with it. Then he paused.

  “Do you like jam?” he asked Ren.

  “Yes,” said Ren, hoping the man would offer some.

  Bowers stuck out his lower lip and looked at Ren as if he were across a great distance. Then he reached inside his mouth and pulled out his teeth, top and bottom. They were connected with wire—a complete set of dentures. He held them, wet and glistening, in the palm of his hand. His mouth was shrunken without them, the skin around his chin loose.

  “This is what happens to people who eat jam.” Bowers gave a grin, or as much of one as he could manage with his empty mouth. Then he pushed his teeth back inside his face. When he finished adjusting his dentures, he tugged on the front of his coat, straightened his wig, and said, “Have a seat.”

  Ren was still staring at Bowers’s teeth. Benjamin had to give the boy a nudge before he climbed up onto the padded chair.

  “Let’s take a gander,” said Bowers. Ren opened his mouth and the man leaned close and peered inside. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “My teeth are loose,” said Ren.

  “Is that so?” said Bowers. He prodded Ren’s gums, first the bottom, then the top, running a fingernail along the tongue, wiggling a tooth here and there. He stopped where Ren had knocked out a molar years before and fondled the hole. His fingers were salty.

  “We’ve been collecting them,” said Tom. And he put the handkerchief full of teeth on the table, near the dentist’s elbow.

  “Ah,” said Bowers, glancing at the handkerchief. “That changes things.” He took his hands from Ren’s mouth and immersed them in the basin of pink water, then dried them on his coat. Ren scrambled down from the chair, relieved that his part in the performance was over, the taste of the dentist’s fingers lingering in his mouth.

  Bowers walked over to the window, drew the curtains, then closed the shop door, his hand against the wood, before turning the lock. He untied the knot in the handkerchief and spread the teeth out along the table. From the instrument box he took out a small pair of tongs and a magnifying glass. “These are fresh.” Bowers inspected a molar. “From a young woman. Twenty-three or twenty-four. Cause of death,” he said, leveling the magnifying glass over the tooth, “probably childbirth. A little grinding here—you can see the scratches.”

  “How much are they worth?” Tom asked.

  “It’s hard to say.” Bowers turned his back to the group and held an incisor up to the light coming through the window. “You see there? That crack? That means it’s decayed inside.” He picked up another from the table. “This one too. Gum disease. Rots from the root.”

  Tom took up one of the discarded teeth and examined it, rolling it back and forth in his palm. “You’re just trying to bring down the price.”

  “I know what I’m talking about,” said Bowers. “I have a degree. A diploma from the American Society of Dental Surgeons.”

  “I don’t give a damn about your degree,” said Tom.

  Bowers swept one tooth into his hand, selected a hammer from his instrument box, and cracked it open with one tap, revealing the black inside.

  Tom looked it over carefully, then snatched the rest of the teeth from the counter, cursing, and threw the whole lot into the corner of the room. “All that work for nothing.”

  “I told you,” said Benjamin.

  “If you please,” said Bowers, going after the teeth. He scrambled about on the floor, reaching underneath the cabinet and plucking the tiny white pieces from the rug. Benjamin and Tom began to walk out and the dentist followed them, crawling on his knees. He took hold of Ren’s arm and tried to force the rotten teeth on him. The teeth clattered across the floor and Bowers looked surprised, and then amused, as he saw that Ren had no hand for them to fall into.

  “My God.” He took hold of Ren’s sleeve and peered down into it. “Don’t you need a hook?”

  Benjamin stopped, his hand on the door. A small vein pulsed just beneath the skin of his temple. Ren thought for a moment that he might lose his temper, but instead a cool smile slid across his face. “You’re a comedian.”

  “It’s interesting you should say that,” said Bowers. “I am known for my sense of humor, particularly among members of the American Society of Dental Surgeons.”

  “Is that how you got that shiner?” Tom asked.

  Bowers’s hand reached up and touched the swollen edge of his black eye. He seemed surprised that it was still there. “Oh, no,” he said. “That was simply a misunderstanding.”

  “A misunderstanding of what?”

  “Of a bicuspid and an incisor,” said Bowers. He waited for the men to laugh. Benjamin shot Tom a look, and they did their best. Ren tried to laugh too, but it came out sounding more like a cough. All the same, the dentist seemed to appreciate the effort and looked at them with a much more generous countenance than before.

  “In this case, however, I’m being quite serious,” said Bowers. “The sailors here, they fashion all kinds of tools for their missing limbs. There’s a place on the wharf that makes wooden hands, quite lifelike. Wooden legs, too. I know the man that carves them—he’s done some teeth for me.”

  Bowers walked over to the glass cabinet and opened it. Inside were rows and rows of dentures—some ivory, some porcelain, some made from animal bones, some carved and painted wood. Each pair was held together with wire, bonded to a piece of thin metal, with a set of springs on the end to allow them to open and close. Bowers took out a set that looked like a small wooden trap. Ren could see where the paint had dried across the perfectly straight and flattened teeth. They seemed much too large to fit inside anyone’s mouth.

  “That’s nice work,” said Benjamin.

  Bowers nodded, then reached inside the cabinet again and took out another set of dentures. It was clear, in an instant, that this set was made from real teeth. The color and shape were uneven, but the effect was much more natural-looking. “Beautiful, aren’t they? I have an arrangement with a man at a teaching hospital near North Umbrage.”

  “North Umbrage.” Benjamin said the na
me as if he had been kicked in the chest. Ren knew at once that something was wrong. Bowers continued to chatter even as Benjamin stepped away, his face dimming.

  “He sends me what’s left when they’re through with the dissections. Of course, these are much more expensive.”

  Tom gave Benjamin a glance. “Why is that?”

  “The doctor has to pay the resurrection men. I believe the going rate is a hundred dollars a corpse.”

  “A hundred dollars!” cried Tom.

  “It’s risky work.” Bowers put the dentures back in the case and shut the door. “But you look like the kind that wouldn’t mind a little danger.”

  “For the right price,” said Tom.

  Benjamin shook his head. “That kind of job’s not worth the trouble.”

  “It’s a lot of money, Benji,” said Tom.

  “Not enough.”

  Tom seemed bewildered. “What are you afraid of?”

  Benjamin glanced at Ren. He pressed his fingers against the tip of his nose, as if he were holding in a sneeze.

  “The doctor needs someone reliable,” said Bowers. “Someone who will make good choices and check the teeth first. A good body is always reflected in the teeth.”

  Tom pulled Benjamin aside and began whispering furiously in his ear, but Benjamin paid no attention. He turned to the window and the sky outside—steel gray, threatening rain. He scratched the side of his face and Ren could read the hidden emotion there, something unfixed and undone.

  Bowers was busy collecting the teeth again. He tied them up in the handkerchief and held them out in the air. Ren waited, and when no one else came forward, he snatched them from the dentist’s hand.