Neverwhere(22)

Mr. Croup put his left hand against a wall, fingers spread. He took five razor blades in his right hand, took careful aim, and threw them at the wall. Each blade stuck into the wall, between Mr. Croup’s fingers; it was like a top knife-thrower’s act in miniature. Mr. Croup took his hand away, leaving the blades in the wall, outlining the place his fingers had been, and he turned to his partner for approval.

Mr. Vandemar was unimpressed. “What’s so clever about that, then?” he asked. “You didn’t even hit one finger.”

Mr. Croup sighed. “I didn’t?” he said. “Well, slit my gullet, you’re right. How could I have been such a ninny?” He pulled the razor blades out of the wall, one by one, and dropped them onto the wooden table. “Why don’t you show me how it should have been done?”

Mr. Vandemar nodded. He put his centipede back into its empty marmalade jar. Then he put his left hand against the wall. He raised his right arm: his knife, wicked and sharp and perfectly weighted, was in his right hand. He narrowed his eyes, and he threw. The knife flew through the air and thudded into the damp plaster wall blade-first, the blade having first hit and penetrated the back of Mr. Vandemar’s hand on its way.

A telephone began to ring.

Mr. Vandemar looked around at Croup, satisfied, his hand still pinned to the wall. “That’s how it’s done,” he said.

There was an old telephone in the corner of the room, an antique, two-part telephone, unused in the hospital since the 1920s, made of wood and Bakelite. Mr, Croup picked up the earpiece, which was on a long, cloth-wrapped cord, and spoke into the mouthpiece, which was attached to the base. “Croup and Vandemar,” he said, smoothly, “the Old Firm. Obstacles obliterated, nuisances eradicated, bothersome limbs removed and tutelary dentistry.”

The person at the other end of the phone said something. Mr. Croup cringed. Mr. Vandemar tugged at his left hand. It wasn’t coming free.

“Oh. Yes, sir. Yes, indeed. And might I say how your telephonic confabulation brightens up and cheers our otherwise dreary and uneventful day?” Another pause. “Of course I’ll stop toadying and crawling. Delighted to. An honor, and—what do we know? We know that—” An interruption; he picked his nose, reflectively, patiently, then: “No, we don’t know where she is at this precise moment. But we don’t have to. She’ll be at the market tonight and—” His mouth tightened, and, “We have no intention of violating their market truce. More of waiting till she has left the market and scrobbling her . . . ” He was silent then, and listened, nodding from time to time.

Mr. Vandemar tried to pull the knife out of the wall with his free hand, but the knife was stuck quite fast.

“That might be arranged, yes,” said Mr. Croup, into the mouthpiece. “I mean it will be arranged. Of course. Yes. I realize that. And, sir, perhaps we could talk about—” But the caller had hung up. Mr. Croup stared at the earpiece for a moment, then put it back on its hook. “You think you’re so damned clever,” he whispered. Then he noticed Mr. Vandemar’s predicament and said, “Stop that.” He leaned over, pulled the knife out of the wall and out of the back of Mr. Vandemar’s hand, and put it down on the table.

Mr. Vandemar shook his left hand and flexed the fingers, then wiped the fragments of damp plaster from his knife-blade. “Who was that?”

“Our employer,” said Mr. Croup. “It seems the other one isn’t going to work out. Not old enough. It’s going to have to be the Door female.”

“So we aren’t allowed to kill her any more?”

“That, Mister Vandemar, would be about the short and the long of it, yes. Now, it seems that Little Miss Door has announced that she shall be hiring a bodyguard. At the market. Tonight.”

“So?” Mr. Vandemar spat on the back of his hand, where the knife had gone in, and on the palm of his hand, where the knife had come out. He rubbed at the spit with a massive thumb. The flesh closed, knitted, was whole again.

Mr. Croup picked up his old coat, heavy, black, and shiny with age, from the floor. He put it on. “So, Mister Vandemar,” he said, “shall we not also hire ourselves a bodyguard?”

Mr. Vandemar slid his knife back into the holster in his sleeve. He put his coat on as well, pushed his hands deep into the pockets, and was pleasantly surprised to find an almost untouched mouse in one pocket. Good. He was hungry. Then he pondered Mr. Croup’s last statement with the intensity of an anatomist dissecting his one true love, and, realizing the flaw in his partner’s logic, Mr. Vandemar said, “We don’t need a bodyguard, Mister Croup. We hurt people. We don’t get hurt.”