Chapter 5: Outside

As the Innocent's eyes slowly adjusted, and he took his hand off from over them and stopped seeing white afterglow, he saw that they were in a large, open concrete space, with a fence separating the tent from an even larger gravel space which seemed to be mostly empty except for one of two parked cars. He could see tall buildings beyond, on all sides. They were in a city. He could vaguely hear cars rushing by, and the air smelled sweet and mechanical, different from the rich, slightly gunpowdery smell of Kooza.

He turned to look at the tent they had just come out of. It had a pointed roof with a little flag at the top, and was colored yellow and red in a swirling barber-pole pattern - like the Trickster's jacket. Exactly like the Trickster's jacket, in fact.

Innocent looked over at Christian, who was watching him with his head on one side. "Interesting, no? But come on."

He led Innocent over to the fence, which was chain-link and about ten feet high. Innocent regarded it bemusedly. He had a feeling he wasn't going to like what came next.

Christian knelt down and locked his fingers together, offering the Innocent a step up. Innocent put his foot in cautiously. He was not used to climbing fences.

It took a lot of wriggling and a bit of panicking before he made it to the top of the fence - luckily it was the kind which was topped by a round metal bar, not by jagged ends of chain link. He straddled it and watched while Christian stuck the toe of his shoe in a chainlink hole and legged himself up and over the fence to drop onto the parking lot on the other side. He made it look ridiculously easy.

"Come on, my friend!" he called up at Innocent, who was thinking that ten feet seemed rather more from up here than it had from the ground. "Hang onto the bar and drop."

Innocent was hanging onto the bar all right. He swung his leg cautiously over and eased himself off the fence, closing his eyes and letting himself drop. The ground was a lot closer than he'd expected.

"Well, we will work on that," Christian sighed. "Now, my bee-yoo-tiful car is over here..."

It was one of the two cars in the parking lot, a low, dark blue, mostly shiny convertible thing.* Christian hopped into the driver's seat over the door, and motioned for Innocent to get in the passenger's side before pulling four different sets of car keys and a comb out of his pocket. He regarded the comb and stuck it back into his pocket, then tried one key after another in the ignition. The engine started with a rumble on the fourth set. "It's always the last one that you want, isn't it," he sighed, replacing the rest of the keys in his pockets. He swerved the car out of the parking lot and pulled onto the main road, dodging around other cars like he was on a go-cart. Innocent gripped the side of the car, white-knucled and wide-eyed, as they zoomed along like contestants in some kind of odd urban racecar race. Christian was grinning like a maniac.

When they finally screeched to a half outside a large stone building, the Innocent was all too glad to stumble out of the car and feel the ground not going anywhere under his feet. Christian hopped out the other side and leaned back against the hood of the car. "That was fun, wasn't it?"

Innocent shook his head. Christian grinned and whacked him hard on the back. "Don't worry, my friend, I am licensed to be a little bit crazy. I will try not to kill you." He headed up the steps of the building, and Innocent followed him.

A sign over the door advertised the place as a Public Library. Christian insinuated himself inside with Innocent dragging awkwardly behind, winked at the librarian behind the front desk, who was staring at the two of them rather oddly, and went straight over to the bank of computers along the wall by the young adults' room, where he plunked down in one of the wooden chairs. "You know why they don't use laptops here?" he whispered to Innocent. "It's because you can't walk out with a desktop computer in your suitcase. I've tried. They don't fit."

He turned his attention to the screen, typed something in, took a piece of paper out of his pocket - he seemed to have very large pockets - and explained to Innocent, "License number." He typed some more things in, stuffed the piece of paper away again, and drummed his fingers on the desk as he waited. Innocent took a seat next to him and tried to look over his shoulder, with only moderate success.

The screen changed. Christian stared at it.

"Tia Rapez," he said under his breath. "Tia Rapez..." His fingers kept doing their drumming thing. He looked up sharply at Innocent. "Have you heard that name before?" Innocent shook his head.

"Me neither." Christian's fingers were still drumming, on the keyboard now. "Ah well." He typed more things in. Innocent had no idea what he was doing, only that it was probably illegal and appeared to be generating results. The Pickpocket smiled that very sharklike smile of his and write down some things on a piece of paper from the briefcase next to him, then swiveled around in his chair. "Okay, I have her name and address. She's in an apartment near the center of town. If we-"

"Are you with the circus?"

Innocent and Christian turned to look. There was a very small girl with pigtails and a green dress standing a few feet away from them, regarding them curiously. As they looked at her, she stuck her thumb back in her mouth with a pop.

"Ah... yes?" Christian said.

The thumb suctioned out again. The girl nodded at Innocent. "Can he make balloon aminals?"

"No," said Christian. "But I can."

"Make me one."

"Okay." Christian produced two balloons from his briefcase, which he inflated and deftly twisted into the shape of something resembling a poodle inside a heart. "Now get your father to give me two hundred dollars for this. Very cheap."

The girl stared at him wide-eyed, her lip trembling. Christian sighed, handed her the balloon, and patted her on her head. "Now go away."

The girl trotted off, satisfied. Christian and the Innocent looked at each other.

"I think, my friend, that next time we go out in public I will have to disguise you," Christian said, shutting his briefcase with a snap. "People don't notice me, but they do when I'm with you. For God's sake let's get out of here before someone else starts questioning us and won't stop at a balloon." He saw Innocent's look at that and sighed again. "It is a job skill. I thought I'd better learn it for Kooza. It's better for people to remember you as the balloon seller than as the Pickpocket, you know? I always end up giving the balloons away, though. Always give the guy his pockets back, too. Well... mostly. I'm just here to have fun, my friend." He winked at Innocent. Innocent smiled shyly back, and Christian looked away, his face changing the subject. "Okay. Let's go see Miss Rapez."

The ride this time was slightly saner than last time, but not by much. Innocent kept his eyes shut this time, in the theory that it might help, but mostly all it did was help him fantasize about what they were going to run into next. He only opened them when his head banged into the seat back and Christian sang cheerfully, "We are here, my friend! You can open your eyes now!"

They were outside a three-story brick building, with a bit of landscaping in the front and a black door - a completely generic lower-middle-class apartment building with nothing whatsoever to recommend or distinguish it. Christian grasped his briefcase and sauntered in the front door, with Innocent again dragging timidly along behind him. "She's on the second floor, apartment 2C."

When they knocked on Miss Rapez's door, nobody answered. Christian knocked again, then opened his briefcase and pulled out a set of what looked like odd metal sticks on a string. "Okay, my friend, if anyone asks I am the handyman, okay?" He fiddled with the lock a bit, and the door opened gently. The thief winked at Innocent, and together they stepped into Tia Rapez's apartment.

It was more or less neat, and felt, well, like a place in which someone could and did live. There were a few carpets on the floor, trying their best to conceal the linoleum, and a light blue suede couch and chairs arranged in the living room. It looked like Miss Rapez was trying to make the place look like she had more money than she actually did, with not-altogether-unpleasing results. There were a few Indian prints hanging on the walls, and the place smelled like a mixture of lemon, mint, and incense, sharp and assertive and just a little exotic.

Innocent stood in the middle of the living room and looked around, his mouth open slightly. This felt too much like he was eavesdropping on someone else's life, which he supposed he was. It was different from visiting someone's home while they were there, in a way he couldn't quite define but could definitely feel on his skin. It felt wrong.

Christian, however, had no such compunctions. "Okay, I will be looking around for suspicious things," he told Innocent. "If you'd like to help, that would be excellent, but if no, okay." He evaporated down the hallway. Innocent wandered into the kitchen and looked through some cupboards halfheartedly, trying not to disturb anything. The dishes were glass, and he really didn't want to break anything.

He was peering into a salad bowl to see if it was concealing any suspicious substances when he heard Christian calling him from down the hall. "My friend, come here and look at this!"

Innocent followed his voice to Miss Rapez's bedroom, a red-themed, carpeted, incense-scented place - it seemed that this was where the faint sandalwood smell in the rest of the apartment was coming from. Christian was on his knees looking through her closet. He looked around as he heard Innocent come in, and beckoned. Innocent came over, and couldn't see what the man had been looking at - there were clothes folded on shelves, boots on the floor, a couple of the strange metal things devoid of any apparent purpose which show up in every closet sooner or later, but nothing illegal that he could see. He pulled a puzzled face.

Christian picked up one of the metal things, a pipe about three feet long with knobs on the ends and the middle bar wrapped in fabric tape, up off the floor. "Do you know what this is, my friend?" Innocent shook his head. It looked like a metal bar to him - you could maybe hit someone over the head with it, but that was a bit of a leap to be making in his opinion.

"It's a trapeze," Christian said. Innocent gaped at him. He held the bar up horizontally. "Trapeze, you know, you swing from it and do stupid tricks. They're not easy to find, you cannot just pick one up at a yard sale or something."

He replaced the trapeze of the floor and turned to face Innocent, hands on his knees. "So our friend here is connected with a Cirque," he said quietly - he pronounced 'Cirque' as 'Sir-quay'. "The flying trapeze, no less. Interesting, no? Now we just need to figure out who it is and hat the hell they have to do with this Miss Rapez, and..." He stopped suddenly, and smiled. "Hmm. And we will be all set. Yes?"

Innocent shrugged. Christian looked at him closely. "But you are still worried about the Trickster, aren't you. All right, let's go back to Kooza and see how he is doing. And then we can talk with the other clowns..." He flashed Innocent his shark-toothed smile. "Do not worry, my friend. I have a plan."

A/N:

*Of course the Pickpocket has a sports car. What else?