Dunc and Amos and the Red Tattoos (4 page)

“You worms get to work. No slackers. Hup hup, keep it up, two three four.”

He walked on to the next table.

Amos picked up his plastic strings. “Marine Corps. Definitely.”

Dunc stared at Chuck. “Did you see that?”

“How could I miss him? He makes the Empire State Building look like a tollbooth.”

“No. His arm. Look at his right arm. A tattoo.”

“Lots of ex-servicemen have tattoos. So?”

“In the shape of a red flower?” Dunc smiled. “Amos, something is going on here. I think they’re all in on it: the doctor, the caretaker, Adolf, and Chuck. Somehow we’ve got to figure out what it is.”

Amos had woven his finger into the middle of his key chain. It was stuck. “Why don’t you just go ask him?”

Dunc’s face brightened. “That’s what I like about you, Amos. You’re always one step ahead of everybody else.”

Amos shook the key chain. He tried pulling it off. It wouldn’t budge.

Dunc reached over and pulled some of the plastic strings loose. “Like I was saying. You always know just the right move.”

Amos jerked his finger out. “What are you talking about?”

“I was just saying how amazing you are. Brilliant, actually.”

Amos cocked his head to one side. “Okay. Let me in on it. What is it that you
think
you’re going to talk me into?”

Dunc smiled. Kind of a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smile.

Amos waited.

“Great idea. Asking him. But you need to hurry. Arts and crafts won’t last much longer.”

“Hey. I didn’t—I mean, I don’t … I was only—”

Dunc pushed him toward the front of the room. “Try not to be too obvious. Just tell him you noticed his tattoo. Ask him where he got it and what it stands for.”

Chuck was standing with his arms folded, glaring at everything.

Amos gulped. “Ah. Chuck?”

“What do you want, kid? Make it quick.”

“I, ah, was just noticing your arm there, and I just wondered if you lifted weights or something.”

Amos had hit on the one thing Chuck loved to talk about. He started flexing his muscles and making them wiggle. He went through a whole routine before Amos could stop him.

Amos looked back at Dunc and shrugged.

“Ask him,” Dunc mouthed.

Amos waited patiently until Chuck finished his routine. “That’s great. You being able to do that. I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

Chuck grinned. “Wanna see it again?”

“No. That is—I noticed you have a tattoo.”

“So. What’s it to you?”

“I was just wondering where you got it.”

Chuck made the flower look like it was dancing on his arm. “I got this baby during the war.”

“Does it mean anything in particular?”

Chuck’s voice changed into a snarl. “None of your business, maggot head! Go sit down.”

Amos started backing away. “Gee, thanks, Chuck. It’s been real nice talking to you.”

He turned and moved back to the table.

“What did you find out?” Dunc asked.

“About muscles—it’s disgusting. He wiggles them. About tattoos—zero. He’s not talking.”

•
9

It was two o’clock in the morning. Twenty-four boys had gathered near the lake and were smearing mud on their faces.

“I shouldn’t have told you I’d do this,” Dunc said.

Amos grinned. Not a little grin—his face was covered with mud, and all you could see were teeth. “That’s usually my line. It sounds funny coming from you.”

Dunc slung a wad of mud off into the darkness. “I just don’t understand why we have to do this. It seems kind of mean.”

“Toby Gillis says that all first-year campers
have to pull a raid on the girls’ cabins. If they don’t, they’re marked men for the rest of camp.”

“What’s so bad about being marked?”

“He says they do stuff to you. Like fill your sleeping bag with spiders and snakes. Sometimes they wait until you’re in the shower and hide all your clothes. One guy stayed locked in the latrine for three days until a counselor found him.” Amos shivered.

“Do you think they’d do that kind of stuff to us?”

Amos nodded. “In a heartbeat.”

Dunc hesitated. “I can see where that might be a problem. But I really need to concentrate on the case. We don’t have much time.”

“Come on,” Amos pleaded. “I’ll help you work on the case tomorrow. I’ll even go along with any dumb ideas you come up with. I just don’t want to wake up next to a snake.”

“Okay. I said I’d go. But it still seems kind of mean.”

“Toby says the girls really like it. He says they look forward to it every year.”

The group had their instructions: Spread
out. Do your job. And most of all, don’t get caught.

They moved like a silent army across the exercise field. Dunc, Amos, and a boy named Rubio had been assigned the outside of cabin eight. Two others had the inside.

In six minutes, while the girls slept, the inside was turned into a complete disaster. String was tied cobweb style from cot to cot. The doorknobs were loosened to fall off at a touch. The latrine stalls were all locked from the inside, and dirt and honey were poured on the floor in strategic places.

The outside was almost finished. Toilet paper hung from every available place. All of the windows except one had been soaped.

“Hurry up, Amos! Everybody’s leaving,” Dunc whispered.

“I’m trying to. But I can’t get this window to close. Get something for me to stand on.”

Dunc looked around. “There isn’t anything. Leave it. Come on.”

“I’ve almost got it. Come over here, and give me a boost.”

Dunc cupped his hands and lifted Amos up.
He was about to shut the window—when he saw her.

Melissa.

There she was. Second cot from the end. The most beautiful girl on earth sleeping like an angel.

He leaned inside the window and let out a long, deep sigh.

By this time, Dunc was weaving under the strain. “What are you doing up there, Amos? I can’t hold you much longer!”

Amos pulled himself up to the window ledge and sat on it.

“Are you crazy?” Dunc hissed. “Get down here!”

Amos was like a lovesick puppy. He sat in a trance and would have probably sat that way the rest of the night except that he lost his balance.

He dropped through the window like four pounds of rotten yogurt in a three-pound bag and landed face-first in a pile of dirt and honey. His eyes were glued shut. His mouth was full of dirt. He rolled around on the floor fighting the string cobwebs until he was covered from head
to toe with honey and dirt and completely tangled in the string.

He finally got to his feet and started for the door, but he tripped on the string and fell flat on one of the cots.

That was when things started to go bad.

“Swamp monster! Help!” somebody screamed.

Amos was going around in circles, waving his arms trying to keep his balance. He still couldn’t see, and the only sound he could make was a low growl.

The girls’ counselor tried to get out of her office, but the doorknob was hanging halfway off and she couldn’t open the door.

By this time every girl in the cabin was jumping on her cot screaming.

“Get it out of here! Somebody save us!”

Dunc pulled himself up to the window to see what was going on.

A few of the girls had started throwing things at Amos: shoes, hairbrushes, pillows, footlockers, bunks.

Dunc shook his head. This had to be Amos’s all-time worst. For a second he thought about
leaving Amos behind. No—they’d probably hang him from the flagpole when this was all over.

Dunc sighed and slid through the window. Maybe nobody would recognize him with mud on his face, he thought.

“It’s me,” Dunc whispered as he took Amos by the hand. “Step over the string when I tell you.”

The girls continued throwing things as Dunc and Amos disappeared out the door into the night.

•
10

“You really don’t look that bad—considering,” Dunc said.

“Considering what? That I’m not in traction?”

Amos was missing patches of skin on his arms. His face had strange purplish bruises, and he had a few bald spots on his head from rubbing too hard to get the goo out.

Dunc picked up his notepad. “It’s not as bad as it could have been. For one thing, we didn’t get caught.”

Amos tried to mash some of his hair over to cover one of the bald spots. “I wonder if Melissa knows it was me.”

“No, she doesn’t. And you’re not going to tell her. Ever.”

“She probably knows.”

“Get real, Amos. You had every girl in that place ready to kill you. They all thought you were the Monster from the Black Lagoon.”

Amos sighed. “It would be like her to pretend she didn’t know—to protect me.”

Dunc decided to ignore him. Otherwise, Amos might talk about Melissa for the rest of the year. He was trying to come up with the ultimate plan, one that would put his whole case together and solve it at the same time.

“Do you remember that promise you made last night?”

Dunc asked.

Amos looked up. “Promise?”

“You said that if I went on the raid with you, you’d go along with any plan I came up with.”

“I think my exact words were ‘any
dumb
ideas’ you came up with. You’re not going to hold me to it after all that’s happened, are you?”

A tiny smile started at the corner of Dunc’s mouth.

“After all,” Amos went on, “I was under a lot of pressure last night. People were threatening
me. My life was in danger. Who knows what horrible—”

“You did promise,” Dunc interrupted.

Amos knew he was stuck. “Okay. But just how far off the wall is this next great idea of yours?”

Dunc took his arm. “It’s not all that bad. Come on, I’ll tell you more about it on our way.”

“On our way to where?”

“We’ve got almost an hour before our next activity. I figure that ought to be just about enough time.”

Amos stopped walking. “Enough time for what?” His voice started to get loud. “How am I supposed to know what my part is in this demented plan, if you don’t tell me the plan?”

“Shh.” Dunc pulled him off the path and looked around to make sure no one was listening.

“Here’s the deal. I need to get back inside the doctor’s office. This time we need to take a good look. The only way to do that is if the doctor is somewhere else.”

Amos shrugged. “So?”

“I need you to get him out of his office.”

“And just how am I supposed to do that? He eats and sleeps in that place. He wouldn’t leave if it were on fire.”

“I thought about fire. Too close to the trees. I figure the only sure way to get that doctor out of his office is to tell him somebody is sick or maybe dying.”

“I still don’t get it,” Amos said. “Who’s sick?”

Dunc was starting to get frustrated. “Nobody is sick! You just knock on the door. Tell him somebody up in the woods is hurt and needs a doctor real bad. He’ll take off, and we’ll search his office. Easy.”

“What if he doesn’t fall for it?”

“It’s your job to make absolutely sure he does. Now come on. We’ve wasted too much time already.”

Amos moved to the front of the infirmary. He raised his hand to knock on the door.

Suddenly the door burst open. The doctor rushed by him carrying his medical bag, trying to put on his white coat at the same time.

He looked surprised when he saw Amos. “Unless it’s an emergency, son, I can’t help you
right now. Somebody fell on the hiking trail. They may have a broken leg.”

The doctor ran across the exercise field and up toward the woods. Amos stood there with his mouth open and his hand raised.

Dunc came out from the side of the building. “I’m impressed, Amos. You must have told him something good to make him run like that.”

Amos watched the retreating doctor. “You know you can always count on me.”

The inside of the infirmary looked the same as before.

“You search his sleeping quarters. I’m going to have a look at that desk again,” Dunc said.

After about ten minutes, Dunc called out, “Have you found anything yet?”

Amos walked back into the room. “I found that same army picture with all of them in it. Nothing else, though. How about you?”