1 Breakfast at Madeline's (12 page)

Maybe this was a little convoluted, but I was feeling pretty pleased with
myself as I strutted down Broad
way, swinging my br
own grocery bag. But then a ter
rifying thought smacked me in the gut. I froze.
Now is the perfect time for someone to kill me.
While I still had Penn's manuscript on me. Just put on a mask, shoot me, grab the bag, and drive off down the Northway.

Oh, come on, that was paranoid. I even said it out loud: "You're getting paranoid. Totally
fucking para
noid." A purple-haired teenager walking by started laughing. I smiled n
ervously at Purple Hair and hus
tled up the street, eager to make it into the safety of the bank already. But I had to wait for the light to change at the corner of Division Street, and suddenly someone hit me from behind.

I screamed, jumped, and whirled, gripping The Penn's manuscript tight against my body, prepared to fight to the death. Then
I stood there staring at my as
sailant. A three-year-old girl. She must have run into me or something. She looked up at my terrified face and burst into tears.

Her mother grabbed her hand and pulled her away from me so hard I wa
s afraid she'd wrench her daugh
ter's arm off, then the two of them raced away at top speed. I guess with my panicky eyes, and the way I was wildly clutching a brown shopping bag to my chest, I looked like a particularly deranged homeless person.

As I watched them run off, I wondered if the woman's fear, the child's cries, and Purple Hair's laughter were the same ways that people had treated Donald Penn for most of his life, upon seeing his long unkempt hair, threadbare jacket, and off-kilter eyes. What would that sort of treatment do to your psyche if it continued for, say, a third of a century?

But I didn't wonder about it for long, because I needed to quit screwing around and unload Penn's manuscript pronto, bef
ore I died of a heart attack my
self. For God's sake, who was I trying to fool? I was a neurotic Jewish artist, not a hard-boiled private dick. I wasn't cut out for this shit.

I hurried across the street, jumped the steps to the Saratoga Trust Bank two at a time, and was about to go inside when I was accosted by a young man with greasy hair and a cheap brown suit, smoking a cigarette. "Hey," he said. Then he put a hand in his jacket pocket.

I backed away. Holy T
oledo, could this really be hap
pening? The guy was straight out of
The Godfather.
He wouldn't shoot me in broad daylight in the middle of Broadway, would he? Of course he would, if he wanted to. I tried to scream, but all that came out was a gulp.

"So how'd it go with Spielberg?" the Mafioso asked.

Spielberg?
How did
what
go with Spielberg? That concussion must have been worse than I thought. Maybe I should chec
k back into the hospital immedi
ately. If not sooner.

"Did he like your mutant beetle idea?" the Mafioso continued.

My battered mental gears clicked back into place. Aha! It was Young Gra
y Suit! That's why I hadn't rec
ognized him at first—he was wearing brown today. A bad choice, I thought, an
d told him so. "You look bet
ter in gray."

He pursed his lips, chagrined. "I know. I screwed up." He glanced aro
und to make sure no one was lis
tening, then whispered confidentially, "But it was cheap, and I needed another suit for this lousy job." He raised his voice again. "So what's the word?"

"It's a go," I told him. "Look for mutant beetles soon, at a theater near you."

"Hey, that's
excellent
. Congratulations, man," he
said enthusiastically. I nodded and started past him, but he stopped me. "So, you putting your disk back in the safe-deposit?"

"Yes." I opened the door to the bank, impatient to be rid of this guy.

"Well, don't worry, it'll be safe, all right. They just ran a special security check last night."

A
what?
I thought. "A what?" I asked.

"Special security check. You know, the lock system, timing mechanism, all that stuff."

I nodded calmly, but my mind was racing.
A special security check? Why?
Did they somehow find out that someone had broken into The Penn's safety-deposit box? Was Young Brown Suit just playing with me, knowing I was about to get busted?

I looked at his innoc
ent face, and realized I had in
deed turned paranoid. It was absurd to think that this guy had it in for me, or that the bank's security check had anything to do with me or Donald Penn. My head was spinning again, and I wondered how much of what I remembered f
rom the past five days had actu
ally happened, and how much I had just imagined. Probably Penn wasn't even really killed in the first place; it was just a heart attack, like everyone said.

But even though I knew I was being ridiculous, I couldn't help asking,
"So why'd they do a special se
curity check?"

"You got me. I thought I'd have to stay late and help out, but they said I could go home."

A dim light bulb came on in some cobwebby recess of my brain. "Who is this 'they' you're talking about?"

Young Brown Suit shrugged. "You know, the big honchos. The guys that own this crummy joint."

The dim light bulb tu
rned into bright red neon flash
ing through my cerebrum. "Like the mayor? Was he here?"

Young Brown Suit nodded. "Yeah, he set up the whole thing. Why?"

Why, indeed. "Do they run a lot of these security checks?"

"No, this is the first one since I've been here. Eight months and counting."

I got the feeling I had just uncovered further proof of that ancient proverb: Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Sure, maybe there was an innocent explanation. But City Hall had given Penn free Ethiopian, which, if I had it figured right, mean
t
someone
there was being black
mailed. And the mayor certainly got upset when he heard me trying to confront Gretchen about Penn. And I remembered how oddly intense he'd been on the post office steps when he asked me about Penn's writing. Was he afraid that his blackmailer would return from the dead, via the written word, to haunt him?

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if the mayor had thought up this bogus "special security check" as a means of breaking into Donald Penn's safety-deposit box himself and stealing whatever was in there. And for all I knew, maybe breaking into
my
box, too.

Which meant my box might not be the safest place to deposit Penn's manuscript. I let go of the bank's front door and headed back down
the steps, still car
rying my damn grocery bag. My ball and chain.

"Hey, aren't you going in the bank?" Young Brown Suit called after me, puzzled.

"I changed my mind," I said, as I got myself the heck out of there and walked back down Broadway.

17

Okay, so I couldn't trust the Saratoga Trust. But then whom
could
I trust?

I thought about depositing Penn's magnum opus in another bank in Saratoga, but after this experience, I was spooked. Besides,
I had no time to do all the pa
perwork for opening a new safety-deposit box. Andrea was at home franticall
y finishing up her students' se
mester grades, which were overdue as usual. So I needed to pick up the kids from Judy Demarest's house, drop off the Sultan of Swat at school and the Great One at the babysitter's, and then hit the Albany Amtrak station in time for the Friday 11:25 to New York City. I needed to be on that train; otherwise, I wouldn't make it in to the NYFA office until Monday. No way was I driving into the city today, with my head the way it was.

So I decided to lo
ck up The Penn's stuff in an Am
trak locker in Albany. Until then, I'd have to lock it in the trunk of my car.

I'd parked on Broadway right in front of Madeline's, so when I opened my rusty trunk to put the grocery bag in, I felt like all
eyes were upon me. I stared ag
gressively at Madeline's plate glass window, trying to scare off any potenti
al murderers who might be watch
ing. Then I slammed the trunk door down and drove off, my muffler chugging out a noisy good-bye.

I turned onto Phila Street, then went right on Henry, doubled back on Circular, and went up Henry again, checking my rearview mirror to see if any cars were following me. Unfortunately, my surveillance efforts were hampered by the fact that as a teenager, I was too busy getting high and grooving on the Grateful Dead to learn about cars. To this day, all cars look alike to me.

Besides, with my muffler from hell, a car would be able to follow me from a mile away. But I did the best I could, putting on fake turn signals and speeding through red lights, and made it to Judy Demarest's house in record time. Record
slow
time, that is.

It was already pas
t nine-thirty, but Judy had gra
ciously agreed last ni
ght to keep the kids until when
ever we showed up and go in to the
Saratogian
late. My five year old would be late to school again himself; I guess that's the price you pay when your Daddy is a high-powered private eye.

Judy did favors like this for us from time to time, and seemed to enjoy it. She didn't have a spouse or kids of her own, and our children were the closest thing to nephews or nieces she had.

It was odd that my wife and Judy had grown so close, because these days it seemed like Andrea only got close to other women if they were mothers of young children who understood the traumas of peepee and preschool. But Andrea met Judy four years ago, when she had a major identity crisis, decided there must be more to life than work and family, and insisted on getting out of the house by herself at least one night a week. She wound up doing volunteer work for the Literacy Volunteers of Saratoga, Judy's special project. They soon discovered that not only did they share a passion for teaching children to read in
this barren television age, they also shared an even deeper passion: bowling.

When I walked up Judy's front steps, Gretzky and Babe Ruth bounded outside to greet me. "Daddy! Daddy!" they shouted gleefully, then immediately started telling me some complicated tale about a dog named Doughnut, or a doughnut named Dog, or a dog that ate a doughnut, or vice versa. I couldn't figure it out for the life of me, but whenever they stopped for my reaction, I said "Wow!" or "Way cool!" and that seemed to do the job.

Judy came outside dressed for work, air kissed me hello, and asked how my head was. I started to tell her about the latest burglary of our house, but decided to wait until the kids were safely out of earshot. They'd already had to deal with more than enough scary stuff this week. I hoped all the craziness wouldn't make the Babe's sleepwalking episodes, or the Great One's peepee boycotts, even more frequent.

When the kids ran off suddenly in search of anthills to attack, I thanked Judy profusely for her babysitting and was about to whisper to her about the burglary when she threw me a curve. "Hope you don't mind," she said, "kids were up late last night. Took 'em to Madeline's."

I looked at her, feeling confused. Something was bothering me, but I
wasn't sure what. Judy got ner
vous. "That's okay, isn't it?" she asked.

"Sure," I answered, but meanwhile I'd figured out what was bothering me. "Did you mention to people at Madeline's why y
ou were babysitting? Because An
drea was visiting me at the hospital?"

"I guess so, yeah. Why?"

Why? Because
this meant whoever was at Made
line's last night knew our house was empty—and ripe for burglary. "So who was at Madeline's?"

"Totally packed. Hey, your kiddos were the life of the party. Got all the grownups playing with the barrel of monkeys."

"When were you there?"

Judy stiffened, getting annoyed at my interrogation. "I don't know. Maybe eight-thirty to ten."

Eight-thirty to ten. We'd been burglarized around nine-thirty.

Of course, maybe the burglar had been nowhere near Madeline's last night. But that silver high heel did make the burglary look like a spur of the moment thing. Which fit m
y scenario: Judy pops into Made
line's with my kids, sh
oots her mouth off, and Ms. Sil
ver Heels, inspired by our first burglary the night before (hell, maybe even t
he
perpetrator
of our first bur
glary), slips out of Madeline's and drives over to our house.

Judy misinterpreted
my frown as criticism for keep
ing the kids out late.
"Hey, sorry I took 'em to Made
line's, but the Literacy Volunteers special events committee was meeting there last night, and I had to bring them some in
fo about last year's silent auc
tion—"

"Who's on the committee?" I interrupted.

She threw me a look. "Why?"

"Just curious."

She gave one of her characteristic world-weary shrugs. "Usual gang of suspects. Diane Gee, Annette Dobrow, the mayor..."

The mayor again.
To use the Novella Man's favorite word, he was ubiquitous. Harder to escape than the theme song from
Scooby Doo
.

I nodded thoughtfully to myself. It fit, all right—it fit perfectly. The mayor devises a sneaky scheme to get his hands on The Penn's safety-deposit box, but it's
empty. He figures out I've already made off with The Penn's stuff, and he's furious. Desperate, even.

But later that same night he's at Madeline's, and finds out there's n
o one at my house. So he immedi
ately carpes the diem and drives over there so he can break in and nab that elusive manuscript at last.

Only one problem with this theory. The high-heeled shoes. Did the mayor dress as a woman to disguise himself?

If this were a movie, yes. Since it wasn't, no. Besides, his feet were too big.

Did he get some wo
man at Madeline's to do the bur
glary for him? That seemed more likely. But who? And why?

"Judy, were there any women at Madeline's last night wearing silver high-heeled shoes?"

Judy r
aised an eyebrow at me. In fact
she raised both of them. "What the hell is this all about?"

I didn't answer her. And it wasn't just because both kids were pulling at my shirt sleeves and insisting that I join them in their ant demolition project. At this point I was so paranoid, I even suspected Judy.

I mean, hey, she'd been awfully eager to publish Penn's opus. So eager that she pushed me real hard to get her own paws on i
t and do the editing all by her
self, before I even had a chance to read it. Was she just being a conscientious newspaperwoman? Or was there something more sinister at play?

For all I knew, she w
ent to Madeline's last night ex
pressly to tip somebody off that my house was empty. Maybe she even left the kids in someone else's care for a while and slipped out to my house herself. It would have taken her three minutes max to drive there, five to break in and do a quick search, and three more to drive back. And if she got caught, she could always
say she was looking fo
r an outfit for Gretzky or some
thing.

So I didn't give Judy a straight answer. Instead I dropped my car keys, bent down, and took a close look at her feet.

And wondered if they were size eight.