The Flinkwater Factor (15 page)

39

“
Right on the Kisser”

I had to take a cab back to town. I told myself not to be too worried about Billy. They'd just ask him a bunch of questions and make him sit there for a few hours, then send him home. At least I hoped so—he hadn't actually
done
anything.

The cabbie drove me to an address on Elm Avenue. I paid him with the last of the credit balance on my phone and got out. A black SUV pulled over a few car lengths behind us. It had been following us ever since we left the airport. DHS? TSA? Men in Black? Maybe they were all the same—it didn't matter. I had a mission to complete.

I walked through a toy-strewn front yard up to a small bungalow and rang the bell. The door was answered by my aunt Janet, carrying my six-month-old cousin Melanie on her hip.

“Ginger! How nice to see you! What are you doing on this side of town?”

“I was in the neighborhood,” I said.

“Come in!”

My aunt Janet really likes having babies. In addition to Melanie, she has a set of eighteen-month-old twin boys, and her oldest child, Kellan, age two years and nine months. The moment I stepped inside, I heard the sound of a stamping toddler. An instant later Kellan came charging into the living room wearing nothing but a pair of disposable diapers decorated with, of all things, SpongeBob SquarePants.

“Gineeeeeeeee!” he shrieked, throwing himself at me. I caught him and almost fell over backward. He was getting big!

“Guess what!” he yelled in my face.

“Um  . . . you found out you have a super loud voice?”

“No! I pooped all by myself!”

I laughed. “That's great, kiddo. Now how about you give your cousin Ginger a great big smooch?” I pointed at my lips. “Right on the kisser.”

Episo
de Four

The Secretive Sasquatch

40

Gilly

The walk home was almost a mile, and there was never a moment when that black SUV let me out of sight. They didn't even try to be sneaky about it, and they never offered me a lift.

I wondered how Billy was doing, so I called him as I was walking up River Street and got a recorded message that his number was not available. Then I called Myke to find out what had happened to the talking monkey. Same story: number not available.

This was getting seriously weird. The SUV was still creeping along half a block behind me. I wanted to make a rude gesture. Then I thought about Billy being dragged off by those TSA agents, and I decided not to.

Paranoid? Maybe a little. Not necessarily a bad thing, according to Uncle Ashton. He once
told me, “Paranoid ain't paranoid if they're really after you. It's a survival skill.”

I decided to ditch them. I ducked into the alleyway behind the Jensens' house and took off running. The SUV followed me into the alley, but not before I'd climbed over the Jensens' fence and run through their backyard. Before the SUV could back out of the alley, I dashed across Seventh Street, cut through several backyards, followed the railroad tracks to the Ninth Street trestle bridge, then headed for home, taking a circuitous route through the neighborhood and letting myself in the back door.

Professional antiterrorist agents are no match for a girl who knows every square inch of Flinkwater.

I could hear my parents talking in the front room. Why weren't they at work? I heard another voice too—one I didn't recognize. Since I was already in stealth mode, I sneaked down the hall and peeked into the living room.

Mom and Dad were sitting on the living room sofa. Sitting across from them, in my dad's favorite chair, was an extraordinarily hairy man wearing ragged, camouflage bib overalls and a dark green flannel shirt.

Let me tell you how hairy the hairy man was. Neanderthal hairy. Chewbacca hairy. Five years since his last shave or haircut hairy. Thick, graying hair spiraled out from his head, forming a crown of
tangled dreadlocks. An equally snarled and knotted beard began high on his cheeks and ran all the way down his neck. Even the backs of his hands were as hairy as hobbit feet.

The creature sitting in my dad's easy chair was, without a doubt, the Flinkwater Sasquatch.

I remember the first time my cat encountered a DustBot. We had just picked Barney up from the shelter, and he wasn't much more than a kitten. Of course he immediately began exploring every square centimeter of his new home, and the first thing he saw was one of our gerbil-size DustBots crawling along the edge of the living room carpet. His ears went up, his tail puffed out, and his eyes got huge. But he didn't run away. He was scared, but his curiosity canceled out the scaredy-cat in him, and he began to stalk the strange, humming creature. It took him a few minutes, but finally he got up the courage to thwap it with his paw and flip it onto its back.

That was how I felt. The Sasquatch, naturally, scared the heck out of me. But my curiosity kept me rooted to the spot.

My dad was talking.

“ . . . keep asking about the NLP protocols developed by our kinesthetics division for something they're cooking up over in Area Fifty-One. The DHS has their people monitoring every department.
I can't even wash my hands without a DHS agent looking over my shoulder. It's as if the government has taken over ACPOD, and—”

The Sasquatch interrupted. “ACPOD is a private company and under no obligation to cooperate with any government agency.” His voice was surprisingly soft.

“Unless they declare martial law,” said my mother.

“Which is what they did after the SCIC incident, Gil,” said my father. “But even after we solved the SCIC problem, they didn't
undeclare
it. There are more than a hundred DHS agents here. George George has essentially given them the keys to ACPOD.”

“Unacceptable!” said the Sasquatch. “Impossible! Egregious! Unspeakable! Intolerable! Incon—”

“Gilly!” My mother cut him off.

“Sorry.”

“The point is, Gil, you have to step in,” my dad said. “No one else has the authority to overrule George. And we need to take this public—let people know that their government is using these strong-arm tactics on a private company for no good reason.”

“I  . . . can't,” said the Sasquatch known as Gil.

“Why not? You're still the majority shareholder, chairman of the board in absentia, and the company founder.”

My heart went
thud
, then it went
ka-thump
, and for a few seconds I thought I might pass out. Gil? Short for Gilbert, as in Gilbert Bates, the reclusive and missing-for-ten-years founder and genius behind ACPOD Industries? One of the smartest and richest men in the whole
world
? In our
living
room? The
Sasquatch of Flinkwater Park?

And my mom calls him
Gilly
?

As I was having my moment of being stunned beyond all comprehension, they'd kept on talking.

“ . . . it's the only way, Gil. Call some of your old congressmen friends. Call the president! Didn't you have a sleepover in the Lincoln Bedroom?”

“That was ten years ago,” said Gilbert Bates. “Different president.”

“Then call the new one. You don't think he'd take a phone call from the most famous missing person on the planet?”

There were several seconds of silence, then Gilbert Bates said in a small voice, “I like living in the woods.”

“You can still live in the woods, Gilly,” said my mom.

“Would I have to cut my hair?”

“Not if you don't—” my dad started to say, but he was cut off by my mom.

“I think a little trim would be a good idea, Gilly. You do rather resemble a Sasquatch.”

I couldn't stand it anymore. Now that I knew who he was, I just had to have a closer look at the famously elusive Gilbert Bates. I was about to step into the living room when the doorbell rang. All the talking stopped. I scooted down the hall to my dad's study and closed the door. Through the window I could see two dark-suited men standing on the front steps. One of them was Agent Ffelps.

A second later the study door opened. I ducked down behind the desk.

“Wait in here, Gil,” I heard my dad whisper. “We'll get rid of them.” The door closed. I peeked over the top of the desk. Gilbert Bates was standing in the middle of the room looking as lost as he was hairy.

41

Caba
l

I stood up. “Hey.”

He jumped, saw it was me, and relaxed. A little.

“I saw you in the park,” I said.

He didn't say anything.

“You're the Sasquatch, right?”

“Only in the summer.” A hint of a smile peeked through his beard. “In the winter they call me the Abominable Snowman.”

We stared at each other. I decided I liked him.

“Are you really Gilbert Bates?”

“Only when it can't be avoided.”

“And you've been living in the park all this time?”

“On and off. I have a little ranch outside of Santa Fe. But I like Flinkwater Park. I grew up here, you know. Spent most of my childhood in those woods. Also, I can keep an eye on my baby.” He sounded so normal that for a moment
I forgot that I was talking to a Sasquatch.

“Your baby?”

“ACPOD, my baby, my child, offspring, progeny, pride and joy, ankle biter, youngster  . . .”

He was spinning off again.

“ . . . sweet pea, little one, rug rat—”

“Gilly!” I said, using my mother's technique.

He stopped.

“Why does my mom call you Gilly?” I asked.

“That was her name for me when we were dating, back in the day.”

“You  . . . dated  . . . my
mom
?” It was flat-out impossible to imagine.

“Back in the day.”

“What day was
that
?”

“We were at Stanford. It was a long time ago.”

“You were in college?” I thought back to what my mother had told me a few weeks ago. “I thought she was dating Josh Stevens then.”

“Josh?” Gilly gave me a sideways look and snorted. “Josh never had a chance with her.” His expression softened. “Then again, neither did I, once she met your dad.” He shuffled over to the window and peered out. “Those men are still here.”

“My uncle Ashton says they're like ticks on a dog.”

“Ashton? Ash Crump? How is he, anyway? Still a spy?”

“I
knew
it!” I said.

“Ash helped me out, back in the day. He landed us our first Pentagon contract. Six thousand SpyBots.” Gilly noticed a DustBot crawling along the baseboard and smiled. “That was just after we built our first DustBot. Same basic platform, only DustBots don't hover. Or spy.”

The DustBot, as I'm sure you know, was the product that put ACPOD on the map. These days just about everybody has a few of them scurrying around the house cleaning up. The bot made a right turn and began climbing up the wall.

“Josh Stevens and I were roommates, you know, back in college. He still thinks the DustBot was his idea, only he called his version the Dustbunny. I think he's still mad at me.”

“Why should he care? D-Monix is just as big a company as ACPOD. Practically everybody uses D-Monix tablets and desktop computers.”

“Yes, but Josh is insanely competitive. He wanted to get into robotics in the worst way, but the DustBot kicked his butt.” Gilly chuckled. “That Dustbunny of his never took off.”

“Was it really his idea?”

“The
idea
had been around for years. When I was a boy, there was a thing called a Roomba. A sort of self-propelled vacuum cleaner. Josh and I were both trying to develop our own cleaning bots around
the same time. Josh came out with his Dustbunny first, but it was too big, too noisy, too expensive, and too rabbity. Why he made it look so much like a bunny I'll never understand. Creeped people out. I mean, who wants a house full of rabbits?”

I heard the front door close. A second later my dad came into his study.

“They're gone, Gil, but—” He did a double take. “
Ginger?
What are you doing here?”

“I, um, live here?”

“Minding your own business as usual, I see.”

I shrugged. He sighed, walked over to the window, and closed the blind.

“What did they want?” I asked.

“Actually, they wanted you. I told them we had no idea where you were.” He cocked his head. “Which we didn't. Where
have
you been?”

I'd been so many places that I wasn't sure how to answer him.

“Just hanging out,” I said after an awkward pause.

“Yes, well, your friend Billy George has been taken into custody. As has Mycroft Duchakis. As
you
would have been, had they known you were here.”

“We didn't
do
anything,” I said.

“According to the agents, Billy threatened to smuggle a bomb onto an aircraft, and he had several restricted key cards on his person. And Mycroft
broke into an ACPOD laboratory and stole some valuable research animals. The agents claim that you were present at both events.”

“They're lying! Sort of.”

He cocked his head. “Sort of?”

“Well  . . . I was at the airport with Billy, but he didn't threaten to bomb anybody. He just said he knew how to get a bomb past the TSA scanners. And the monkey ran off on its own. Myke found him in the woods.”

“Monkey?”

“Yeah, a talking monkey.”

“That monkey's a
mean
little rascal,” said Gilbert Bates.

Dad and I turned to look at him.

“You know about this monkey?” Dad said.

“I met him in the woods. He wouldn't shut up. I was glad when the boy caught him.”

My mom called from out in the kitchen. “Gilly, would you care for a cup of tea?”

“Yes, please,” said Gilbert Bates. “Earl Grey, hot.”

My dad shook his head. “Monkeys don't talk,” he said.

“Dipwad does,” I said. “I met a talking dog, too.”

Mom came out of the kitchen with a tea tray. “I told you about the dog, dear.”

“You told me it was a stray dog with some sort of joke collar!” Dad said.

“It's no joke,” I said. “The animals escaped from Area Fifty-One. They're trying to control animals like they're robots.”

They all stared at me.

Gilly said, “Impossible. I shut down that animal research program ten years ago. It was cruel. Not to mention unusual.”

“Well, it's not shut down anymore.”

Dad said, “Are you saying that ACPOD is making talking animals? How do you know this, Ginger?”

“Myke's dad is on the research team.”

Gilly and my dad sat in stunned silence as Mom poured us cups of tea. She sat down and said, “You see, Gilly? You have to return to ACPOD and take charge. Flinkwater is about to be overrun with talking monkeys.”

Gilly sighed and sank lower in his seat. “I fear you are right.”

My dad turned to me and said, “Since you seem to have become both a fugitive and a capable spy, Ginger, I suppose we must invite you to join our little cabal.”

Cabal!
I liked the sound of that. Except  . . . I looked at the Sasquatch.

“Do I have to go live in the woods?”

My dad laughed. “That won't be necessary  . . . probably.”