Free A Cool Breeze on the Underground by Don Winslow Page A

toilet-bowl cleaner, and a package of bright yellow rubber gloves.
    “I like things to be neat and clean,” Graham explained, “at work, and at home.”
    They cleaned. They crammed months of accumulated trash into plastic garbage bags and carried it downstairs. Then they swept—like your mother never did. (“The broom’s not going to get everything, you see, so you have to get down on your hands and knees with this brush, and use the dustpan.”) Then they mopped, with Graham showing Neal not only the correct ratio of cleanser to water but also the proper way to swing the mop “so you’re not just shoving the dirt around.” This was followed by scrubbing, waxing, polishing, disinfecting, and scraping until Neal Carey was tired, irritable, aching, sore, and living in an immaculate apartment.
    “And how long you think it’s gonna stay this way once my mother gets home?” Neal demanded.
    “You keep it this way. Another thing, you eat like shit.”
    “I eat okay.”
    “Candy bars, Sugar Pops—”
    “I like candy bars and Sugar Pops.”
    “There’s another bag in the hall. Get it.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Neal returned with the bag and asked, “What is all this stuff?”
    Graham removed the contents. “A frying pan, a pot, a pot holder, two plates, two forks, two spoons, two knives, one can opener—”
    “I got a can opener.”
    “A spatula, eggs, bread, butter, Dinty Moore beef stew, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of grape jelly, some spaghetti … these things are called vegetables, you will learn to like them—”
    “No way.”
    “Or I will break your face. I will bring more next week. Every Thursday, we are going to have a cooking lesson.”
    “You’re talking ‘we,’ you better bring a friend.”
    “Or you’re fired. You think you’re the only underage, undersized sneak thief in New York?”
    “Not the only, just the best.”
    “Then you had better get yourself some pride, kid. Because you live like an animal. Your mother doesn’t take care of you, so you’d better learn to take care of yourself. Or you can’t work for me.”
    He worked. And learned. Easy stuff at first, like tailing someone from a distance; how to keep an eye on the guy without looking as if he was looking.
    “First thing you look at are the shoes, Neal, the shoes,” Graham told him during one of the many sidewalk lectures. “Two reasons. One, you can always spot him in a crowd. Two, the guy turns around and spots you, you’re looking down, not right into his baby blues.”
    They practiced that for a week, Neal following Graham down Broadway, on the subway, on the bus, down crowded streets, down nearly empty ones. One day tailing Graham east on Fifty-seventh, Neal was concentrating so hard on Graham’s shoes, he bumped right into his back.
    “Now, why did that happen?” Graham asked him.
    “I dunno.”
    “Good answer. Exactly. You don’t know. The pace, Neal, you have to watch the pace. Everybody has a different stride—long, short, slow, fast…. I shortened my steps. I kept walking just as fast, but I shortened my stride. I took smaller steps. I made you bump into me. The first block or so you’re tailing, measure the guy’s step against the cracks in the sidewalk. What is it? Step, step and a half to each crack? Count it off. Is it slow or fast? It’s like music, so sing to yourself if you have to. Keep time.
    “Another good reason to match his step is he can’t hear you so easy. A guy who knows how to shake a tail is going to listen as well as look. He’ll hear the difference in walking sounds, and if he hears one sound too long, he’ll know he’s pulling a caboose. So it’s like you imagine he’s got paint on his shoes, and you walk in his footprints.”
    So they spent a week with Neal following Graham and matching his pace and his stride. Graham would take the kid along crowded streets and then suddenly down empty ones, where the boy’s every footfall would echo in his own ears.
    “You’re