Free Close to the Wind by Jon Walter

back.’
    Papa walked quickly out of the door and down the stairs and Malik heard the creak of the hinges as the back door shut. He turned the coin over in his fingers, tried to palm it like Papa did, and watched the coin drop to the floor.

    Papa pushed at the bright red door of the Port Authority building. It opened the length of an arm before a man moved across the doorway.
    ‘You here for the ship?’ he asked Papa.
    ‘Yes. I wanted to speak –’
    ‘You should ask downstairs.’
    Papa leaned in toward the closing gap. ‘I know that. I wanted to speak with Nicholas Massa –’
    The door was closed before he had finished what he wanted to say. Papa stared at the glossy red paint, then knocked and waited, and when nothing happened he knocked again. The door opened wideenough to show an eye, a mouth and the rim of a dark brown hat. ‘Go away,’ said the man.
    Behind Papa’s back there were hollow voices in the tall brick hallway and feet coming up the stairs. Papa turned to see a group of four men, and in the middle of them was Nicholas Massa – Papa knew his face from photographs. He stepped forward to meet them, said ‘Excuse me, sir,’ but one of the other men reached him first and eased him away from the top of the stairs. Massa walked past, intending not to stop.
    Papa shouted out. ‘I’m a friend of Angelo Vex.’
    Massa stopped walking and turned to look at Papa. The skin on his face was tight and smooth except for a crow’s foot at the edge of each eye and it seemed he only smiled at cameras.
    ‘He spoke of you only last night,’ Papa added quickly.
    The party of men paused and Massa stepped through them and came closer. ‘You know Angelo Vex? I assume you want a ticket for the ship?’
    ‘I want two tickets.’
    ‘I bet you do. They’re not cheap.’
    Papa nodded. ‘Ten thousand each, I heard.’
    Massa shook his head. ‘Fifteen thousand. Paid incash.’ He made no apology for looking Papa up and down. ‘Do you have the money?’
    Papa kept his eyes steady. He didn’t want Massa to see anything but certainty. ‘There’s something else. My daughter, Maria. I need to find her.’
    Massa waved a hand as though there were flies about his head. ‘I cannot help you – that has nothing to do with me.’ He moved toward the door and the other men closed around him.
    ‘I could be of help to you.’ Papa walked quickly along beside them as they approached the red door. He had to walk on his tip-toes to see above the shoulders of the men. ‘I may have something that you want.’
    Nicholas Massa stopped at the bright red door. He turned to Papa, an eyebrow raised in disbelief. ‘And what could a man like you possibly have that I might want?’

    Malik took out his penknife and opened all the tools. He had a metal shape that opened bottle tops and a corkscrew. He had a file and a toothpick. He closed them again so that only the knife blade remained,then he picked up one of the apples, cut it in half and cut each half into thirds. He lined the apple segments up in a row along the floorboard at his feet, making sure to keep the bruised piece in the middle.
    The cat appeared cautiously at the door. Malik let it choose to come in and when it did, it walked over and put its nose to each of the apple pieces. ‘Eat them if you want to,’ Malik told it but the cat didn’t want to. Malik ate the pieces himself, and when he was finished he slid the plastic toothpick from its slot in the penknife and picked at the bits of apple that were stuck between his teeth.
    The cat pounced on the strip of red silk that lay on the floor, turning it up around its head and Malik held the other end and got the cat to jump around the room and hang onto it with its claws.
    The sound of an engine made Malik drop the silk. This was louder than before, a deep throb that shook the window in its frame. Something was coming down the street, and it was bigger than a car and there were boots running on the cobblestones. A man