Home for the Holidays (12 page)

“Do you think you've got a cold?” he asked.

“Probably,” she said, and closed her eyes. “Which I don't have time for. I have a million things to do.”

“You've had a lot going on,” he said. “With Christmas, and New Year's and all the other stuff.”

“You don't know the half of it,” she said. Then she opened her eyes. “What other stuff?”

Had he said too much? Nicky panicked. “I don't know. It just seems like you've got a lot going on.”

“Never you mind about that,” his mother said. She didn't sound sick anymore. She sounded like Mom. “You have enough to worry about without concerning yourself with my little affairs. Now, go downstairs and see if you can help your grandmother. And make sure that Tommy calls his mother.”

Back in the breakfast room, he said, “My mom says call your mom.”

“Okay,” Tommy said. “Then what? Who was that on the phone?”

“It was him,” Nicky whispered. “I said we'd be there in an hour.”

“What's all that whispering?” Grandma Tutti asked.

“I think we should call Chad and go to Canfield,” Tommy said in a too-loud voice. “I'll just call my mom first.”

“Yes,” Nicky said. “That's a good idea. I'll get dressed.”

Twenty minutes later, the two boys were bundled up and trudging up the road to the bus stop.

Nicky said, “So what did your mom say?”

“She said I could stay for the party, but I gotta go home Monday,” Tommy said. “School starts Tuesday morning! I can't believe it.”

“Mine too. Christmas went by so fast.”

“Everything good goes by too fast,” Tommy said.

It took another thirty-five minutes for the boys to get to Ridgeway, a sleepy town that had been a big city at the turn of the century but was now mostly closed factories and boarded-up buildings. Nicky and Tommy walked down the main street until they found the
Ridgeway Register
—
in a big brick building with the year “1827” stamped over the doorway.

“Here goes nothing,” Nicky said.

Tommy followed him inside.

A janitor was sweeping the huge old lobby. He pointed at the ceiling and said, “Second floor.”

An ancient elevator left Nicky and Tommy in a vast open room filled with desks and chairs. On some of the desks there were computer monitors. On others there were old typewriters. From the far corner came a small wide man with curly yellow hair and a curly yellow beard.

“Come in, come in,” he called to them. “You're welcome.”

Sean O'Farrell introduced himself and shook the boys' hands. Nicky said, “I'm Nicholas, and this is my friend.”

“Welcome to the
Ridgeway Register.
This was a busy newspaper when I arrived in nineteen fifty-three. Every one of these desks was occupied. Then, one by one, the reporters lost their jobs. Now I write the paper almost single-handedly. It's a little busier than this during the week—but not much. Pull up a chair.”

Nicky told his story carefully. He said he had reason to believe that Patrick Arlen had been murdered, and he was almost certain that he knew who had done it. But he needed more information before he went to the police.

“I should think so,” O'Farrell said. “Murder is a serious charge. What information do you need?”

“Well, anything,” Nicky said. “Did the police have any suspects?”

“They thought it was a mob hit,” O'Farrell said. “Arlen was in business with some shady characters, of the Cosa Nostra variety—the Mafia, in other words. When someone doing business with them disappears, you usually assume they didn't just go on holiday.”

“So you think the gangsters killed him in that fire?”

“The police said it was ‘of a suspicious nature,’ but they never called it arson,” O'Farrell said. “And they never found Arlen's body. Too bad. He was a good-lookin' fella, and he would've made a good-lookin' corpse. After your telephone call, I went through my old files. Here's his picture.”

It was the same photograph that Nicky and Tommy had seen in the library. But it wasn't small and dark and grainy. It was a big 8 × 10. Nicky took one look at it and gasped.

“What?” Tommy said, and grabbed the picture out of Nicky's hands. “Wow! It's Dirk! It looks like an older version of Dirk!”

“Not exactly,” Nicky said. “It's a younger version of his dad.”

It took Nicky a few minutes to collect his thoughts, catch his breath and tell Sean O'Farrell his story. And first he had to swear the reporter to secrecy. “You have to promise, but
promise
, that you won't tell anybody about this until I'm sure my dad is safe,” he said.

“Trust me to keep a secret,” O'Farrell said. “But
you
have to promise that you won't tell this story to any other reporter. I want the exclusive. Do we have a deal?”

“We have a deal,” Nicky said. “But what do I do now?”

“It's a bit tricky,” the reporter said, and put his feet up on his desk. “You can't let this Peter Van Allen know that you know he's really Patrick Arlen. And you can't talk to the police until you've made sure your dad's in the clear. Am I right?”

“Right,” Nicky said.

“You'd best let me investigate,” O'Farrell said. “See what I can find out about this Van Allen, without bringing Mr. Arlen back from the dead.”

“Can you do that?”

“I'm a newspaper man!” the reporter said. “I've a license to stir things up. Let me snoop around a bit.”

“Okay, but can you do it fast?”

O'Farrell smiled. “I work for a daily newspaper. I do everything fast. But what's the rush?”

“This real estate deal in Fairport is supposed to be finished on Monday,” Nicky said. “I heard my dad say they were going to sign the papers then. I just have this bad feeling that if Van Allen is going to do something, he might do it soon.”

“I understand entirely,” O'Farrell said. “You're a good lad to worry so about your poor old father.”

Nicky shrugged and looked at the floor, like it was nothing, but his eyes filled with tears.

“I'm just afraid something bad is going to happen,” he said.

“Now, now, you've nothing to worry about,” O'Farrell
said. “Trust me. I'll see that no harm comes to you. Or to your poor old father.
Trust
me.”

As they rode the bus along the snowy streets, back to Carrington, Tommy said, “Are we making a mistake? That guy gives me the creeps.”

“He's a newspaper reporter,” Nicky said. “I think he's on the level.”

“Really?” Tommy asked. “I remember my own mother telling me, ‘Never trust a man who says “Trust me” more than once.’ It's my mother, I know, but that guy said it about ten times.”

“I think he's okay,” Nicky said. “I have a good feeling about him.”

When the two boys had gone, Sean O'Farrell sat with his feet on the desk for a while, considering their strange story. Patrick Arlen reborn as Peter Van Allen? Who'd believe such a tall tale? He tried to imagine the headlines. Carrington's leading citizen unmasked as a former Mafia errand boy?

When he was finished laughing about that, he pulled a tattered reporter's notebook out of his desk and thumbed through it until he found a phone number. He dialed and waited.

Then he said, “Mr. Van Allen? It's your old friend Sean O'Farrell, down at the
Ridgeway Register.”

There was a long, silent pause. Then O'Farrell said, “Yes, it has been a long time. I'm calling because I've got a
little story for you—and it's a corker. It involves two fellas who've identified you as Patrick Arlen.”

O'Farrell listened for a moment, then interrupted. “Mr. Van Allen, I didn't say I had a story for my newspaper. I said I have a story for
you.
The only question is, what's it worth?”

O'Farrell listened for another moment, then said, “Oh, I think it's worth quite a bit, Mr. Van Allen. But you think it over. And I'll hang on to the names of these two fellas while you do. Ta-ta for now.”

O'Farrell hung up. He thought,
If the phone rings again very shortly, that means he's going to pay me to be quiet. If it doesn't, that means he's going to pay someone else to
make me
be c[uiet
—
permanently. I wonder which it will be ….

He didn't wonder long. The phone rang. The reporter picked it up and said, “Yeah, O'Farrell.” He listened, smiled and said, “That's a very generous offer, Mr. Van Allen. I'll take it.”

Nicky's mom was sitting in the library when the boys went in through the front door. She said, “Where in the world have you been? I tried your cell and got no answer. And Chad's mother said—”

“We went without those guys, Mom,” Nicky said. “Then the bus—”

“Well, never mind,” his mother said. “Go get cleaned up. I'll tell your grandmother that you're back. I just heard from your father. He and Frankie are on their way home now.”

“Okay,” Nicky said. “And I'm glad you're feeling better.”

The boys had time for a round of
BlackPlanet Two.
Sometime near dusk, Nicky glanced out his bedroom window while Tommy was making his play, and noticed someone moving around in the backyard. Nicky went to the window and looked out.

Below him, in the dim light, was a man in black jeans, black boots, a black parka and a black ski hat. He was studying the back of the house. He slipped behind some trees. He ducked behind the pool house. He seemed to be staring at the upstairs windows.

“Tommy!” Nicky whispered, and dropped to his knees. “C'mere!”

Tommy squatted next to him. “What?”

“There's a guy in the backyard. See him?”

Tommy looked. “Maybe it's the gardener.”

“Tommy! I know what the gardener looks like.”

“What about the, like, pool guy?”

“Does that guy look like the pool guy?”

“No,” Tommy said. “He looks like a burglar. He's casing the joint.”

“No!” Nicky said. “What does that mean—casing the joint?”

“He's figuring out how to break in, and how to escape with the stuff,” Tommy said. “Look at how he's dressed. He's a real pro.”

“What do we do?”

“How should I know? Call your uncle?”

“Yeah!” Nicky grabbed his cell phone out of his backpack. “No! Wait! What if—”

“It doesn't matter,” Tommy said. “He's gone. He was there, and then he wasn't there.”

“Listen!” Nicky said. “That's a car starting.”

The boys stared at the snow-covered backyard.

“Wow,” Nicky said. “You don't think he could be one of the guys we saw at the amusement park, do you?”

“Maybe. Why?”

“'Cause what if they know we heard them? What if they know that we know what they're going to do?”

“So, what if?”

“Well, wouldn't they want to, you know, uh, like,
take care
of us?”

“Get outta here!” Tommy said, and laughed. “That's ridiculous.”

The two boys stared at the yard.

“At least I
think
it's ridiculous,” Tommy said.

Nicky's dad and Uncle Frankie were back. The house was filled with noise again. The living room smelled like food. Dinner was wonderful.

“Nicky, have you and Tommy seen the Fairport thing?” Frankie asked.

“Uh, yeah, sort of,” Nicky said. “Just the outside.”

“It's gonna be huge,” Frankie said. “You start with the housing, get those artists in there, bring in your Starbucks and your Sbarro—I'm telling you, it's gonna be huge. Where do I sign up to invest?”

Nicky's father laughed. “You'll have to talk to Van Allen,” he said. “He's the bankroll. I'm just the brains.”

“Just the brains!” Grandma Tutti said. “Listen to Senator Borelli—modest all of a sudden!”

After dinner and a bad TV movie, the boys went up to Nicky's bedroom. Lying in the dark, Tommy asked again if Nicky thought Sean O'Farrell was going to protect him.

“I think so,” Nicky said. “But you never know with grown-ups.”

“Tell me about it,” Tommy said. “I never know whether my mom is telling me the truth or not.”

“I know,” Nicky said. “It's like they've got one story for their kids and another story for the adults. Like my mom, with the guy we saw at the mall. She told me this morning that I should keep my nose out of her affairs. I don't even know what that means.”

“Maybe it doesn't mean anything,” Tommy said.

“But she said ‘affairs.’ What else could she mean?”

“How would I know? But if it was, like, an
affair
, she wouldn't tell you about it, right? So it must be something else.”

“I guess,” Nicky said. “But what?”

10

I
t was the day of the Snow Ball. Nicky woke up excited, and nervous. He had dreamed the night before about dancing—about being at the Snow Ball, in front of Amy and Donna and Dirk Van Allen, and really dancing. He had flown around the dance floor. The people had stopped and stared—and applauded.

When he woke up, though, he felt like his clumsy old self. He went downstairs.

His mother was drinking coffee with Uncle Frankie while Grandma Tutti cooked something on the stove. His uncle cleared his throat and said, “Yo, Nicky D. How'd you sleep?”

“Okay,” Nicky said. “What are you guys doing?”

“Nothing,” Frankie said. “What does it look like?”

Nicky said, “It looks like you've got some kind of secret.”