The Mysterious Disappearence of Leon (7 page)

“No luck tonight,” she said after the Mets won the game in the tenth inning. “I must have looked at 20,000 faces and read 150 signs. We’ll have to watch again tomorrow.”

“I have a better idea,” Tony said. “Let’s go to Shea Stadium with our own bedsheet: ‘Noel: Call Mrs. Carillon, SH 1-1212.’ ”

“We can’t do that,” Tina said. “Every crank
²²
in town will call our number.”

“Tina’s right,” Mrs. Carillon was quick to agree.

Tony had another suggestion. “How about: ‘Mrs. Carillon Is Here!’? When Noel sees that he’ll come to the next ball game and find us.”

“What if Noel has a black-and-white TV set?” Tina asked.

“What difference does that make?”

“If he has a black-and-white set he won’t be able to read a sign lettered on a purple-flowered bedsheet, or even an orange one, or a navy blue one. We don’t have a white bedsheet in the house.”

“No problem,” Mrs. Carillon said. “First thing tomorrow, we’ll go to Bloomingdale’s and buy some white sheets.”

Bedlam in Bloomingdale’s
²³

Mrs. Carillon and the twins were riding the Up escalator to the second floor, when Tony shouted, “Look! A red moustache and sunglasses!”

“And a black tie!” Tina pointed to a man in a tan raincoat moving past them on the Down escalator.

Mrs. Carillon spun about in time to see the back of the head of a tall, thin man with brown hair. “Leon!”

No one moved.

“Fire on the second floor,” Tina shouted, “everybody turn around and go down! Fire!”

Now they moved. Panic spread quickly as Tina’s words were echoed by the near-hysterical passengers on the Up escalator. “Fire, fire, turn around!” People pushed and shoved, trying to step down as the stairs moved up.

“We’re not getting anywhere,” cried Mrs. Carillon as she saw Noel heading for the front door.

“Hurry! One, two, one, two!” Tony shouted, counting a pace faster than the rate of the moving stairs.

The crowd began surging downward. Unfortunately, a shopper couldn’t manage her footing at the landing. She fell on the rising step and almost rode back up the escalator on her belly; but the next person fell on her, and the next and the next.

“Jump, Mrs. Carillon, jump!” Tony shouted, as he and Tina crawled over the scrambled pile of struggling shoppers.

Mrs. Carillon took a flying leap across the heap of people, landed on her knees, picked herself up, and started running for the door. “Leon, Noel!”

Suddenly, she was jerked to an abrupt halt. “Let me go, let me go!” she screamed, pummeling a pudgy man in rimless glasses whose cuff button was caught in her fishnet bag.

“I’m s-s-so s-s-sorry,” he stammered, nervously trying to undo his button.

Mrs. Carillon couldn’t wait. She turned toward the door and started running again, lurching the ensnared man off his feet and dragging him backward, his arm still linked to the fishnet bag, his legs high in the air, the seat of his pants skidding along the floor. It never occurred to Mrs. Carillon, as she pushed and shoved her way through the crowd, to let go of her bag.

“Oof!” The pudgy man’s head hit the bottom of a counter, bringing him to a painful stop. The fishnet bag tore, propelling Mrs. Carillon into a skinny, little man with a ratlike face. He was no match for Mrs. Carillon, who fell on top of him to the crash of broken glass and the stifling odor of heavy perfume.

“Fire, fire!”

The heap of people at the bottom of the escalator had untangled themselves and were running wildly for the door, shouting their warning to the other customers.

The first woman in the frantic mob tripped and fell on top of Mrs. Carillon and the rat-faced man, the next one fell on her, and once again, the next and the next. The crush of bodies and the strong perfume were too much for Mrs. Carillon. She fainted.

The Chase

Tina and Tony ran down Lexington Avenue, dodging shoppers and strollers, every now and then catching a glimpse of the man in the tan raincoat. He crossed Fifty-eighth Street and turned left—no, right. There were two tan raincoats.

Tony couldn’t make up his mind which way to go.

“You go right; I’ll go left,” Tina said. “Meet you back at Bloomingdale’s.”

Tina lost her man in the tan raincoat one block later, but Tony kept up his chase, down Fifty-seventh Street, in and out of Hammacher Schlemmer’s, to Third Avenue, left. He almost caught up with him at Fifty-ninth Street, but the traffic light changed. Tony climbed up the light standard for a better view; the tan raincoat disappeared into the back entrance of Bloomingdale’s. The Walk sign flashed on. Tony dashed across the street and into the store.

There he was, in Men’s Pajamas.

“Mr. Carillon!” Tony grabbed the raincoat just in case Noel had any ideas of escaping again.

The tall man looked down at Tony, his puzzled smile half-hidden by a bushy black moustache.

“Sorry,” Tony said.

The Bearded Beggar

Tony found Tina at the front entrance of the store. She was wearing her “miserable” expression.

“We’re miserable orphans again,” she said. “Mrs. Carillon’s been arrested for inciting a riot. She’s in jail.”

“Poor Mrs. Carillon. Maybe we can bail her out.”

“It’s no use. Today is Saturday. We can’t reach Mr. Banks until Monday, and all I’ve got is eight cents.”

Tony had five cents. “Where’s the jail?”

“Greenwich Avenue and Eighth Street. We don’t even have enough money for the subway.”

“Maybe we can borrow the money. Start crying so somebody will feel sorry for us.”

Tina screwed up her face; nothing happened. “I’m too miserable to cry.”

“Then stop making faces. No one will give us even two cents if you look like that. Hey, look at that guy!” Tony pointed to a barefoot young man with long hair and a straggly beard who was holding out his hand to a matronly shopper.

“I need $2.50 to get to New Jersey,” he said.

“Get a haircut,” the woman replied.

“I need $2.50 to get to New Jersey,” he said to a passing secretary. She opened her purse and gave him 50 cents.

“Let’s try it,” Tony said. They approached an old woman. “We need some money to get to jail.”

The old woman walked on. They tried a younger woman, then a man. No one took any notice of them.

“Get a job like everybody else,” someone said to the bearded young man, but the next woman gave him a dollar.

“Did you see that?” Tony said. “A dollar!”

“I’ve been counting how much he’s made,” Tina said, “and it’s more than $2.50. Let’s ask
him
for money.”

Tony shyly approached the barefoot beggar, taking care not to step on his toes. “Please, sir, could we have a dollar?”

“Hey, that’s beautiful,” laughed the hairy young man, whose name was Harry. “But you’re not playing the game right. First off, you’re too well dressed. Now if....”

This was too much for Tina. She had no trouble crying this time.

“I’m sorry, kids. Are you in some kind of trouble?” Harry put his hands on Tony’s shoulders. “I’ll give you a dollar. Just tell me what you need it for.”

“To see our mother in jail.”

“In jail? Where’s your dad?”

“We’re orphans,” Tina blurted out.

“You kids need more than a dollar, you need real help. We’ll stop off and see some friends of mine on the way to the prison.”

Harry took the twins by the hands and led them down the subway stairs. On the ride to Astor Place, Tony told him the story of Mrs. Carillon’s arrest.

Friends in Need

Tina and Tony followed Harry up five flights of dingy stairs to a large loft. “Hold everything,” he shouted over the din of a sculptor hammering on a rusty piece of iron. The four artists in the room looked up from their work and saw the unhappy twins.

“This is Tina and this is Tony. Their mother was arrested in Bloomingdale’s for inciting a riot,” Harry explained.

“What was she protesting?” asked Joel, a tall man with a large puff of black hair.

“She just tripped and fell and that made other people fall,” Tina said, afraid to admit that she was the one who had incited the riot by yelling “Fire,” not Mrs. Carillon.

“Injustice!” proclaimed a girl with long brown hair and red beads. The others agreed.

“She’s locked up in the Women’s House of Detention,” Harry added.

“That pest-hole!”

Tears started in Tina’s eyes as she pictured poor Mrs. Carillon in a pest-hole. She decided to give herself up to the police as soon as they reached the jail.

“Don’t worry, kids, we’ll get your mother out of there,” Joel promised. “Everybody, find some poster board and start making signs. We’re going to march on the prison.”

“What’s your mother’s name?” asked the girl with the beads, brush in hand.

“Mrs. Carillon. C-a-r-i-l-l-o-n.”

The artists worked quickly. Tina watched with awe as the bold brushstrokes formed letters, then words. Tony walked from easel to easel, reading the signs aloud:

FREE MRS. CARILLON

FREE THE ORPHANS’ MOTHER

WOMEN’S HOUSE OF DETENTION IS A PEST-HOLE

GRAPE MRS. CARILLON

“Grape Mrs. Carillon?” Joel exclaimed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

The girl with the red beads stared at the poster. on which she had just lettered “Mrs. Carillon.” “I guess this sign was left over from the grape workers’ boycott,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t notice. . .”

“Well, no time to change it now. Everybody ready?”

The protest march was about to begin.

Grape Mrs. Carillon!

Tina rode on Harry’s shoulders, Tony on Joel’s, as the march proceeded single-file up Eighth Street. Joel started to chant, “Free Mrs. Carillon,” and the others joined in. Two long-haired girls joined the line; then a bearded man in sandals; then five young men with shaven heads and long saffron robes who beat a rhythmic step with cymbals, castanets, and bongo drum.

Tony chanted along with his new friends, but Tina was too nervous to do anything but bite her nails. If the protest march didn’t work, she, too, would have to spend the weekend in a pest-hole.

“Harry?” she asked in a choked-up voice, “What’s a pest-hole?”

“Just what it sounds like. That jail is filthy with pests: cockroaches, bedbugs, rats.”

Tina sorted out the filthy pests in her mind. She knew all about cockroaches, everybody in New York did. You stepped on them or hit them with a shoe, and sometimes you squashed one, and sometimes it would escape. She could handle those bugs, as long as there weren’t too many. Just in case, she would buy a can of roach powder before she made her confession. But what about the bedbugs?

“Have you ever seen a bedbug, Harry?”

“Can’t say that I have. Bedbugs are shy creatures; they only come out at night when it is dark and everyone is asleep.”

“Shy creatures” didn’t sound too horrible. But rats! It was the miserable rats that scared her to death. Tina shivered at the thought.

“Harry, did the grape workers win?”

“Yep, they sure did.”

Tina breathed a sigh of relief. If Harry and his friends could help the grape workers, they could certainly help Mrs. Carillon.

“Harry, how long did it take for the grape workers to win?”

“Five years.”

Tina started to shiver again.

“Free Mrs. Carillon! Free Mrs. Carillon!”

The chanting grew louder as the protesters neared the prison, but not loud enough to drown out a whining voice from the sidelines.

“Would you look at that! Did you ever see anything so disgusting? I’d like to stick them all in a bathtub and cut their hair.”

Tony turned toward the shrill voice and saw two overdressed, overstuffed women shaking their heads at the straggly marchers.

“And just take a look at that filthy language,” the voice continued. “‘Grape Mrs. Carillon’ it says. There should be a law.”

“What does ‘grape’ mean?” her companion asked.

“You can well imagine what such filth means. It’s obscene, that’s what it is, foul and obscene.”

Tony wondered how anybody could be so mean. Couldn’t that silly woman see that his friends were trying to free his mother from jail, or didn’t she care?

“Indecent!” she shrieked. “You all belong in jail!”

That was more than Tony could stand.

“Grape Mrs. Carillon!” he shouted. He turned and stared into the hateful woman’s shocked face. “AND GRAPE YOU!”

Tina was still worrying about the rats, but Tony felt much better.

A Familiar Arm

“Free Mrs. Carillon!” the thirty members of the Ad Hoc Committee to Free the Orphans’ Mother shouted from the triangular traffic island facing the prison.

Tina and Tony, high on their friends’ shoulders, peered over the picket signs at the massive brick fortress, The Women’s House of Detention, the “pest-hole,” that towered over the quaint neighborhood of small shops.