Finders Keepers, page 6
"Todos ellos quieren ser como rú." They all wish to be you.
"¿Lo crees?" You think?
"Si."
In English, James Richard asked, "You don't think the money will change me, do you? I heard money changes people."
"I guess sometimes it does," said Miss Spanier. "You're a pretty smart guy though. I don't think it'll change you. At least I hope it won't. I like you just the way you are."
Miss Spanier's words both startled James Richard and ignited a small fire in his belly that warmed him all over. He felt it spread to his face and he turned away, afraid she would see him blush.
"Gracias," he said and left her classroom.
***
Something happened to James Richard on the basketball court that he could not explain. Everything that had happened to him over the past twenty-four hours, all thoughts of money and murdered drug dealers, faded to black. There was only him and the ball and his teammates.
Johnny Barczak couldn't help but notice it. James Richard ran practice drills like he invented them. His passes were crisp and always on target. During the fifteen minute scrimmage, he blocked three shots from three separate opponents; all of them taller than he was including Tommy Glaser. He scored twelve points. In fifteen minutes! His shooting was amazing. He simply could not miss.
"They call it being in a zone," Barczak told him later. "You were in a zone."
"I never felt like that before," James Richard admitted. "It was like I wasn't even playing. It was like I was watching someone else play who looked like me."
"Neat feeling, huh?"
James Richard nodded, a broad grin on his face. "You think that's the way LeBron James feels sometimes, when he's putting up those fifty-point games?"
"Exactly like that," Barczak told him.
"That is so cool."
"How 'bout your grades?" his coach asked guardedly. "Are you in a zone there, too?"
"You bet." James Richard's smile was broad and bright. He felt like he had the world in his pocket.
"Hit the showers," Barczak told him and James Richard hurried away. He hesitated only when he heard his coach's voice.
"Can I help you?" James Richard turned to see a man with short brown hair leaning against the bleachers at the far end of the gymnasium. "Hey buddy, can I help you?" Barczak repeated.
The man hurriedly left the gymnasium without replying, but not before giving James Richard a long, hard stare.
"McNulty?" the coach asked. "Ever see that guy before?" James Richard shook his head. "Let me know if you see 'em again."
"Sure," said James Richard.
***
Lacey Mauer spoke so loudly, James Richard had to hold the cellphone away from his ear. He was sitting at his kitchen table, a can of root beer in front of him.
"I still can't get over it," she told her friend.
"Will you forget about the money. Geez."
"I can't help it, it's just so exciting."
"It's only money."
"Yeah, right."
"Well, maybe it is important."
"I'll say."
"Only it's not going to help me pass geography."
"Who cares?"
"I care," James Richard said. "If I don't ace the final and get my grades up, they're gonna toss me off the basketball team. That's why I called. I need your notes."
"Say, did you hear?" Lacey asked, changing the subject. "The girls' team is going to scrimmage the boys before the season opener. Me and you pal," Lacey added, her voice suddenly sounding like an announcer at a professional wrestling match. "In your face, disgrace basketball. Loser leaves town forever and forever is a long, long time."
Lacey said more, something about her size six-and-a-half tennis shoe and James Richard's sorry behind, only James Richard wasn't listening. A loud thump captured his attention. It sounded like something large bouncing off the side of his house. He listened intently, heard nothing more.
"Huh, what did you say?" he asked.
"I said, 'I'm going to fast-break you into the floor'," Lacey repeated.
"Talk is cheap," James Richard reminded his friend. "If you…"
There it was again.
"If I what?"
"Shhhh, I heard something."
"What?"
"Hang on."
James Richard gently carried the phone with him as he crept silently to the front door and turned on the light. He looked carefully through the spy hole, but saw nothing. He went to the windows. The street was empty and quiet. He then went to the back door after first turning on the garage and porch lights. He saw nothing. Nothing moved. He returned to the telephone.
"What was it?" Lacey wanted to know.
"Nothing," said James Richard. "It must have been the wind."
"The wind's not blowing," Lacey told him.
Back to TOC
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sickler paced Worlie's tiny motel room, moving restlessly to the bathroom and back again, then retracing his steps. While he walked he kept practicing his quick draw, reaching under his jacket, pulling out his gun and squeezing the trigger, listening to the "click" as the hammer fell on an empty chamber.
"Stop doing that," Truax told him. "Sit down."
Sickler ignored him.
"I said sit down!" Truax shouted, balling up the newspaper and tossing it across the room. "You're driving us nuts."
"I'm driving you nuts? I'm driving you nuts? Huh? Is that what you said?"
Sickler drew on Truax and pulled the trigger.
Click.
"You are nuts," Sickler announced.
"It's over," Worlie said bitterly, his dreams of buying a fast food restaurant shattered. He was sitting next to Truax and like Truax he had reread the newspaper article several times before Truax crumpled it up. "It's over," he repeated.
Sickler pulled his gun yet again and aimed it at Worlie's forehead. "It's not over until I say it's over," he shouted.
"Put that away," Truax said. Instead, Sickler turned and pointed the gun at him. Truax smiled, reached under his jacket and drew his own gun. He made sure Sickler got a good look at it. Then he said, "Mine's loaded."
Sickler had nothing to say to that.
"You want to listen to me now?" Truax asked. "Or should I do the world a favor and blow your brains out?"
From where Worlie was sitting, a thin layer of fear-induced sweat on his forehead and under his arms, doing the world a favor seemed like a good idea.
"I'm listening," Sickler said. His voice was calm and well-modulated. He wasn't fooling anybody though. Both Truax and Worlie could see the rage behind his eyes.
"What was our original plan? We were going to snatch the kid and force his parents to turn over the money," Truax asked and answered his own question.
"Only according to the newspaper, the parents haven't got the money," Sickler said.
"According to the newspaper, they will in a week," Truax reminded him.
"If the rightful owners don't claim it."
"Why, you big dummy," Truax spat at him. "We're the rightful owners."
"If we don't claim it…" Worlie muttered.
"Duh," grunted Truax.
"The cops'll give the money back to the kid and his family and then we can go for it," Sickler said.
"Gosh, you're smart," Truax mocked him.
Sickler put his hand in his pocket and fingered the loose bullets he found there. One of these days, he told himself while he stared at Truax. One of these days.
Truax smiled at Sickler as if he could read his mind.
"The day the cops return the money, we snatch the kid," Truax said.
"If we don't kill each other first," Worlie added.
***
Lieutenant Kennedy was in his living room watching Cartoon Network while eating a bowl of Cap'n Crunch cereal. He used to watch Saturday morning cartoons with his kids when they were young. While they grew out of them - grew up and moved out, in fact - he couldn't break the habit.
The phone rang. It was Sergeant Rustovich.
"You saw the article in the newspaper, Lieutenant?"
"Yeah, I saw it."
"I still say this is a bad idea."
"Has Fast Eddie talked, yet?"
"No."
"Is he going to?"
"No."
"Then we keep doing what we're doing."
"These are bad people," Rustovich said.
"I know," said Kennedy.
"It makes me worry about the kid and his mother even more."
"Me, too."
***
Laundry, grocery shopping, house cleaning, Sheila McNulty decided all that could wait. She vowed to spend the entire weekend with her son. She even prepared a long list of activities the two could enjoy together. James Richard thought most of them were pretty lame. Apple orchard? Who wants to go to an apple orchard? The idea of spending time with his mother so delighted him though that they could have gone to the dentist for all he cared.
As it turned out the apple orchard was a lot of fun. James Richard and his mother were met at the entrance by the owner's wife. Her name was Agnes, that's what it said on the name tag pinned to her sweater, and she insisted James Richard make his own apple juice. He resisted at first, but gave in at his mother's urging. With Agnes' help, he chopped up a few apples and placed them into the well of an apple press. Turning the crank, he crushed them into pulp. A stream of juice flowed from a small hole in the base of the press into a small, metal pitcher.
"Very good," Sheila McNulty said after drinking half a cup.
"Very, very good," James Richard agreed, eyeing the apple press. "We should buy one of these."
Mrs. McNulty looked heavenward and shook her head.
"All aboard," a voice happily shouted. The voice belonged to the owner of the orchard, his name tag said Peter. He was sitting at the controls of a small tractor. Attached to the tractor was a long, low-slung wagon loaded with hay and two dozen passengers. Sheila McNulty and her son quickly bought two plastic bags with string handles, six-fifty each James Richard noted, and hopped on the wagon just as Peter started it in motion. A pretty woman and her teenage daughter began singing as the wagon lurched forward, Return To Pooh Corner, in perfect, two-part harmony. The riders applauded wildly when they finished. The woman's husband started to sing in a terrible baritone. "Since my baby left me…" The audience shouted him down to his mock astonishment and raucous laughter.
The tractor pulled the hay wagon along a narrow, rutted dirt road that traversed the sprawling orchard. At strategic points it would stop and Peter would call out varieties of apples: Mackintosh, Heralson, Redwell. At each stop, a few passengers would disembark and commence filling their bags. Others, waiting at the stop, their bags overflowing, would climb aboard the wagon for the return trip to the entrance.
James Richard and his mother jumped off the wagon when Peter yelled, "Sweet Sixteen." Soft red and specked with yellow, Sweet Sixteens were smaller than most apples, just the right size for snacks, James Richard concluded. He filled half his bag with low hanging apples before deciding the best, most juicy apples were at the top of the trees. With his mother repeating "be careful" every few minutes, he climbed a tree and started picking.
"Young man, could you throw down those over there?" asked an older woman, someone's grandmother, James Richard figured, pointing to a branch just within James Richard's reach.
"Sure."
As it turned out, she was somebody's grandmother. She had come to the orchard with her husband in search of ripe, juicy apples fit for her family's tenth reunion. Her brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and cousins were gathering from all over the country. She preferred Sweet Sixteens for her applesauce because of the way they mixed with sugar and simmered in the pan, although for apple pie, you just couldn't beat Cortlands, she claimed.
"Why?" asked Mrs. McNulty, who was thinking she hadn't baked a pie since forever.
The grandmother looked at the younger woman without blinking for a full fifteen seconds before replying, "Because that's what my grandmother used and she should know. She brought the recipe over from the old country after the war with the Spaniards…"
Spanish-American War. 1898. "Remember the Maine!" Fought primarily in Cuba and Manila Bay, Philippines. U.S. gained the Philippine Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico. Spain renounced all claim to Cuba, which became independent in 1902. Theodore Roosevelt became a national hero. The war also served to heal many national wounds caused by the Civil War.
James Richard smiled as the information flowed through his head. American History final? Bring it, baby!
"A good apple pie is seventy percent crust," the woman told James Richard's mother. "Can't stress the importance of crust enough. The right amount of cinnamon and sugar, that's another ten percent."
Mrs. McNulty nodded.
"But apples…"
Mrs. McNulty nodded some more.
"Apples is all the rest. Gotta have good apples, young lady."
Mrs. McNulty liked being called a young lady.
"James Richard," she said after the boy dropped out of the tree. "Let's pick a bag of Cortlands."
The old woman smiled her approval. "That's what grandma used," she repeated.
The old couple stayed with the trees while James Richard and his mother made their way back to the dirt road. They sat on a wooden bench. Each ate an apple while they waited for the return of the hay wagon. Behind them, a young man with short brown hair stood holding a half a bag of Sweet Sixteens. Neither Sheila or James Richard knew he was there until they scrambled aboard the hay wagon.
After a brief ride, Peter announced, "Cortland," and James Richard and his mother once again hopped off. The young man with short brown hair stayed aboard. He watched the woman and her son intently until the wagon made a wide turn around a stand of trees, effectively hiding them from view.
James Richard was sure he had seen him before, but couldn't place where.
***
"I'm hungry," James Richard announced when they had returned to the entrance of the orchard, each carrying a large bag of hand-picked apples.
"You're always hungry," his mother replied.
How would you know? James Richard almost said. He realized that was unfair though and forced the words back down his throat.
"Food," he said instead, pointing at a small stand set up near the parking lot. The menu featured hot dogs, pop and chips, which was just fine with James Richard. But it also boasted apple cobbler, apple crumble, apple fritters, applesauce brownies, topsy-turvy apple pie and other apple treats that made Mrs. McNulty's mouth water.
"Well," she said. "One must eat." She took James Richard's hand and pulled him so hard toward the stand he nearly lost his balance.
A few minutes later, they were seated alone at a picnic table. Mrs. McNulty had talked James Richard out of hot dogs and pop. Instead, he was eating apple fritters and drinking apple juice and praising both with his mouth full. Mrs. McNulty couldn't bring herself to check her son's manners.
James Richard finished before his mother did and began to look around. He noticed the young man with short brown hair again, this time leaning against the food stand and staring into the distance.
"Hey, Mom. I just remembered where I saw that guy before."
"What guy?"
"The guy over there."
James Richard pointed. The man disappeared behind the stand just as Mrs. McNulty turned around.
"Where?" she asked.
"He just went behind the food stand."
"Who is he?"
"I don't know, but he was hanging around basketball practice yesterday."
"Are you sure?"
"I think so."
They both watched the food stand, but when the man didn't reappear, Mrs. McNulty turned back to her food.
"I wonder where he went?" James Richard asked.
***
Sheila McNulty was humming as she drove her Pontiac Grand Am back toward the city. Her voice was light and pretty and James Richard remembered the mother and daughter who sang on the hay wagon. His mother could sing so much better than they did, he thought.
He sighed contentedly, stretched, straining against his seat belt. James Richard loved his mother deeply. He almost told her so. Of course, he didn't. That would have been so uncool. Instead, he glanced out the side passenger window. There was nothing there to hold his attention, so he tried the mirror. He spotted a sky blue car was following behind. In that instant his mind flashed on the blue car that had followed the bus last Thursday night. Lately, that had been happening a lot. James Richard would be thinking of one thing when all of a sudden he would remember something else, something from the bus ride or his visit to the police station: the man with the suitcase, the man who chased him, what the two police officers said in the restroom. Why this was happening? He didn't know, but he didn't believe it was worth asking anyone about. Instead, the boy shook the image out of his head. It couldn't be the same blue car anyway.
The boy turned in his seat and faced his mother.
"What next?" he asked.
She quickly reviewed the activity list in her mind. "The zoo," she said.
"No zoo," James Richard replied, almost contemptuously.
"No zoo?" his mother repeated.
"No way."
"Okay," Mrs. McNulty said, going back over her list. "How about miniature golf?"
"Seriously?"
"Have you ever played miniature golf?"
"Not that I remember."
"Consider it a life experience then."
James Richard shrugged, smiled as his mother exited the highway and hung a left. He glanced at the side mirror again. The blue car was still there. He turned in his seat and looked at it through the rear window. He could not tell who was driving, but a picture of the young man with short brown hair came to mind.
"Mom?" he asked cautiously.
"Hmm?" she asked back.
"Make a right turn."
"What?"
"I think we're being followed. Make a right turn."
