The Child Thief

NICK DARTED INTO the warehouse entryway, pressed himself flat
against the steel door, his breath coming hard and fast. He leaned his cheek

---

against the cold metal and squeezed his eyes shut. “Fuck,” he said. “I’m
screwed. So screwed.”
At fourteen, Nick was slender and a bit small for his age. Dark, choppy
bangs spilled across his narrow face, emphasizing his pallid complexion.
He needed a haircut, but of late his hair was the last thing on his mind.
Nick dropped his pack to the ground, pushed his bangs from his eyes,
and carefully rolled up one sleeve of his black denim jacket. He glanced at
the burns running along the inside of his forearm and winced. The angry red
marks crisscrossing his flesh crudely formed the letter N.
He tried to put the nightmare out of his mind, but it came back to him in
heated flashes: the men pinning him to the floor—the floor of his own
kitchen. The sour, rancid taste of the dish sponge being crammed into his
mouth. Marko, big, thick-necked Marko, with his beastly grin, smirking
while he heated the coat hanger against the burner. The wire smoking then
turning red then…the pain…red-hot searing pain. God, the smell, but
worse, the sound, he’d never forget the sound of his own flesh sizzling.
Trying to scream, only to gag and choke on that gritty, soggy sponge while
they laughed. Marko right in his face, Marko with his long, straggly chin
hairs and bulging, bloodshot eyes. “Wanna know what the N stands for?”
he’d spat. “Huh, do you fuckhole? It’s for Narc. You ever say anything to
anybody again and I’m gonna burn the whole fucking word into your
tongue. You got that you little prick?”
Nick opened his eyes. “Need to keep moving.” He snatched up his pack
and unzipped the top. Inside the pack were some chips, bread, a jar of
peanut butter, a pocket knife, two cans of soda, a blue rabbit’s foot on a
leather cord, and about thirty thousand dollars’ worth of
methamphetamines.
He dug through the hundreds of small clear plastic bags until he found
the blue rabbit’s foot. The rabbit’s foot had been a gift from his dad, the
only thing Nick had left of him now. He kissed it, then slipped it around his
neck. He needed all the luck he could come by today.
He leaned out from the entryway, glancing quickly up and down the
busy avenue, keeping an eye out for a beat-up green van. He’d hoped for
some congestion to slow the traffic down, help him make it to the subway
alive, but currently the traffic chugged steadily along. The day waned and
soon the van would be just one more pair of gleaming headlights in the
night.

---

Nick slung the pack over his shoulder and ducked out onto the
sidewalk, weaving his way between the thin trail of pedestrians as he
jogged rapidly up the block. There was a bite to the wind and people had
their collars up and their eyes down. Nick pulled up his own collar, skirted
around a cluster of elderly men and women lined up in front of an Italian
restaurant, and tried to lose himself among the thin stream of returning
commuters.
You fucked up Nicky boy, he thought. Fucked up big. Yet part of him
was glad, would do about anything to see the faces of those sons-of-bitches
when they found their stash gone. It would be a long time before Marko
was back in business.
A horn blew behind him. Nick jumped and spun—heart in his throat.
But there was no green van, just someone double-parked. He caught sight
of the trees and felt a flood of relief. Prospect Park was just a block away.
He’d be hard to spot in the trees. He could cut across the park and come out
at the subway station. Nick took off in a run.