The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode (23 page)

I was in a daze. I had almost given up hope of ever hearing from the mayor.

What a day! Tunnel found! El plan liked, feast line liked...

"Neat work, Nicholas," my mom said. (She doesn't go for the Copin-Tornid aliases.) "Aren't you hungry? Have a snack."

I said OK. I was hungry—three times down in one day! I mean it. I was hungry and tired, and the big expedition—Descent No. 5—to come any minute now ... I was resolved. The minute I'd had something to eat, then I'd broadcast my invitation. "Come one and all." Maybe that was the way to start it all off, the announcement. Most people had gone back out and regathered at the drain, resuming their interrupted pondering over the words below and should they call the police ... that's what they were thinking now, because that voice yelling help, help, really began to sound like more than just me or the
grils
or Tornid.

The only ones left in the kitchen were the moms and dads and Tornid and me. I ate some coffee cake and had some non-coffee coffee ... Tornid, coffee cake and milk.

Tornid's mom said, "I wish somebody"—she gave me and Tornid piercing looks—"would tell me what's going on around here. Where's the tape recorder? And what's this about a tunnel? What's the mayor talking about?"

"Well," I said to myself, "now's the time all right. Now's the time to reveal the secret of the under alley ... the Tunnel of Hugsy Goode." Hard though it was to suddenly share Tornid's and my top secret findings, proving that Hugsy's ESP was perfect, I began. "One day, Tornid and me, we..."

But ... just then, fate intervened again. The phone rang.

My dad answered the phone. We all listened to see who it was. When we answer the phone in this house, we usually say, "Why, hello, so and so"—whoever it is, so the other people can listen or not but at least know who it is on the other end. "Probably Bombel," my mom said. (He's a professor in my dad's department.) "Probably more shop talk," she said, pouring herself a cup of coffee. "That's all you hear around here. Grandby, Grandby, Grandby."

We heard my dad's part of the conversation. It was not Bombel, so we listened. My dad's end went like this:

"Why,
hello,
Gladys. You did say Gladys? Yes, of course ... haven't heard your voice in such a long time ... yes, should have recognized it ... yes. And how are you? And all the kids? Not kids any longer. Really! How does he like it?...How they grow up! Hugsy is a freshman at ... where did you say? Oh yes ... fine school, very fine school.... Oh yes, I have heard of it. Who hasn't? What? Hugsy? No-o ... we haven't laid eyes on Hugsy since you all moved away from the Alley ... must be eight ... nine, really!...years ago. How time goes. Hugsy? No ... he hasn't been here. I'll ask the others." (Dad turns to us at the round table, asks, "Have any of you seen Hugsy Goode?" The moms shook their heads, no. Tornid shook his head no. "I never ever saw him and wouldn't know him if I did," he said. My jaw hung open, and thoughts of the phantom raced through my head.) "No," says my dad. "Well," he says, "you know how young people are ... say they're going to do one thing ... do another ... not intentional ... forgetful. Oh ... said he wanted to visit his old haunts in the Alley? Well, if he comes, we'll get in touch.... Our best to ... yes, we'll get him to call you ... if he comes. Yes ... want to speak to Latona? Oh, yes, you run ... cats do get in fights. Come over, soon, yourself, all of you.... Bye.... Oh yes ... better go quickly. Yes, we'll remind Hugsy of his date if he comes. Not likely to, this late, though.... That's right ... never can tell..."

"Phew!" said my dad, mopping his brow. "What a talker..."

"Always has been," said my mom. "I take it it was Gladys Goode?"

"Yes," said my dad. "She thought Hugsy was over here ... he'd said he thought he'd like to revisit his old haunts ... the Alley..."

"Hugsy Goode?" said Tornid, puzzled. "Over here?"

"Oh, you wouldn't remember him," my mom said. "He used to live in your house before you moved in."

"Oh, I know him. I've never seen him, that's all," said Tornid. "He planted our peach tree ... planted the squash vines over the hidey hole..."

I kicked Tornid under the table to make him shut up. My heart had begun to beat very hard. My mind was in a daze. Could Hugsy Goode's mother have some ESP, too? Maybe it runs in families. I gave Tornid a signal—three small taps on the ankle bone. It means, stand by ... and I said...

"Mom," I said. "On the way home from the library, I—Tornid and me—dropped my fountain pen. (Cross fingers, excuse the lie.) Could we just take a quick look? Be right back. I thought I heard something drop outside Mrs. Stuart's house..."

"Yes," said my mom. "But hurry right back. I'll leave the front door unlocked so you don't have to ring and wake up the baby. Now, hurry, I mean it..." My mom was sort of basking in the pride of having a son who, in spite of being awful, had had a letter of praise from a mayor, especially an intelligent mayor. But you could see she thought there might be some sort of catch to the whole thing and was playing it safe when she added, as we went out the front door, in her usual snap-the-whip tone, "Hurry, Nicholas. I mean it! Now, git!"

We got! We quickly retrieved our shillelaghs and gear from the ivy in Jane Ives's front yard and raced to the Alley gate with it all, pushing it under. Then we climbed over the Alley gate. We have done it many times and know not to tear our skin on the rusty barbed wire. Then we raced to the hidey hole, and we put our gear where we always put it. Then we raced back and up and over the Alley gate and through our front door. The moms and dads were still chatting and had already forgotten all about Hugsy Goode and did not think it odd at all he was supposed to have come over here to the Alley for a visit—an old-folks-at-home sort of visit—and had never shown up.

It was almost ten o'clock. "Mom," I said.

No answer. "Mom," I said again, and stood right beside her, and she looked at me, and we smiled our cracked-grin smiles we reserve for each other. And I said, "Mom, could Tornid and me go out in the Alley for a little while? It's hot. See how hot I am? (I showed her my beady face, and Tornid wrung sweat off his.) There's no school tomorrow. We'll just sit in the tree house, or—be right somewhere, some cool place, in the Alley."

The two moms exchanged glances, and the dads continued the conversation about the troubles of the school ... and the moms, having the ESP between them, agreed by way of their ESP that we could go out to cool off in the Alley. "But—only for one half of one hour!" said my mom in her normal "or it will be the worse for you" voice. The letter from the mayor? Forget it! She has!

"Come on," I said to Tornid, once we were outside. "We have to hurry. Hugsy Goode is missing..."

"I thought," said Tornid, "Hugsy Goode was just someone from olden Alley times."

"Never mind what you thought," I said. "He is a real live guy—or was, until recently—a boy about my age. Oh, no ... that is what he was when he lived here and planted the peach tree.... Now, oh holy cat, he's grown, has a beard they say. Tornid, old boy, old boy. That guy that was sitting in the Throne of Hugsy Goode this evening—well, that guy may have been Hugsy Goode! By now, the skeleton-maker may have made a skeleton out of him. Poor Hugsy Goode! At least we have his voice on Blue-Eyes' tape recorder—his last words taped on mini tape. Now, Tornid, you and me have to recover the mini tape recorder, restore it to Blue-Eyes, and let the mother of Hugsy Goode hear Hugsy say, 'Get me out of here!'—his last words."

"I don't want to go down there," said Tornid. "It's not my tunnel. It's the Tunnel of Hugsy Goode. It's time to tell the moms. And dads. I been down there a million times today."

"Crud! We're just going as far as the chair and get the recorder. Rush right back. By now, the skeleton-maker is probably in one of the places of business we haven't had time to locate yet, has probably lugged Hugsy off with him to make him into a phantom, the phantom of the alley under the Alley. He will be a legend, Hugsy will—the legend of Hugsy Goode. A Brooklyn legend."

Tornid still didn't want to go. Who would? I didn't myself. But, follow things through to the end—that's my motto. And I just had to get the recorder and watch the astonishment on everybody's face when they heard the whole story of the Tunnel of Hugsy Goode. "Too bad he died," they'd say, "but you usually name tunnels and bridges after dead people, anyway, not live people."

After that, they'd call the police, I thought, or somebody, to ferret out the smoogmen, or the skeleton-maker, so the tunnel would be safe for processions and such. This thought made me happy, and a few words of encouragement convinced Tornid we had to get Minny. Calling his sister's recorder by this nickname made the whole expedition less dangerous, a family project, and we slid down the hole in the hidey hole. This descent is No. 5. The hole was much larger than it had ever been before, the dirt and loose rubble around it more crumbly than it had been even the last time down—Descent No. 4—a couple of hours ago.

We had traveled through Tornid's passageway and then around the bend into the top of the T and to the chair so many times, we hardly needed lights on. We had them turned on, anyway, to blind whatever or whoever needed to be blinded by them.

When we got within sight of the chair, no one was sitting in it, not Hugsy, not his phantom, not the raccoon, not even the mini tape recorder with its famous last words taped on it. Like it or not, we had to go farther. So on and up into the glooming we went. I had a terrible feeling of foreboding. Every few steps we paused and listened. Then, from far ahead, perhaps at the under Circle, came a voice, hoarse and desperate. "Come one step nearer, whoever you are, and you'll get it..."

A voice! Could it be the voice of Hugsy Goode? Or—his phantom? Or Minny?

"Listen! Whoever you are," came the voice from out of the glooming.

I clapped my hand over Tornid's mouth to keep him quiet while we listened and studied whose voice this was.

"Who's up there?" asked the voice. "I'll tell you who I am ... I am Hugh Z. Goode. I used to live in the Alley. I fell through some ... hole and landed in darkness. I bumped my head, I lost my bearings ... can't see anyway, and I don't know where I am. I must have freaked out. Get me out of here, please. I have a date in Paterson..."

"Come slowly, with your hands up!" I said. "Take ten steps." To Tornid, I whispered, "Keep mum. It may be an impersonator—the skeleton-maker, some creepy smoogman. Raise your shillelagh. Be on guard for anything."

"I hope I can still count," said the guy. "I may have a concussion. I can't hold my head up ... it keeps hitting something. I'd sure like to know what sort of thing I'm in. One, two..." and on up to ten he counted.

Whoever this guy or smoogman is, he is awfully tall, I thought.... Tornid and me took ten steps, too. So then all of us were twenty steps nearer each other. Now we could barely distinguish his form way up at the Circle, preserved in the under alley though not on top. His hands were up, and as far as we could see, he didn't have any weapon. I whispered to Tornid, "We have to be sure this is the real Hugsy Goode, not his phantom or a guy that could strike us dead at a glance and then make a skeleton out of us."

The guy couldn't see us behind our lights unless he had the beam type of eye that can penetrate everything. "Hey," he said, "whoever you guys are, get me out of here, will you? I'm confused. Is this some sort of tunnel? Or what?"

"Freak out, man," I said. "You can't fool us. Hugsy Goode is a boy in Iowa..."

"Iowa! Crud! It's Michigan, man, Michigan..."

I whispered to Tornid, "It might really
be
Hugsy Goode, the real Hugsy Goode. After all, he thought up the tunnel. And we found it for him and named it after him. And now, after all these years, maybe this is him.... Tunnel's been on his mind all these years, maybe. And his mother did call in just now. But I remember him as just a boy—about my size that I am now."

Out loud, I said, "Come ten steps nearer. Keep your hands up."

We did the same. This brought all of us close to Passageway J.I. "Say, who are you fellows, anyway?" asked the guy.

"Don't tell him anything," I whispered to Tornid.

"Yikes!" said the guy. "What's that?"

Tornid and me jumped. We were more scared than the guy, but he may not know about smoogmen. Then I realized he was looking at the psychedelic head of the skeleton I'd drawn. "It's OK," I said. "It's art."

"That may be art," he said. "But now I've gone and twisted my ankle on some gol-darned tree trunk or something."

"Oh," I said. "That's just the leg of a skeleton."

"Say, who are you guys?" the fellow said. "Come on, now. I'll make mincemeat out of you if you don't tell me who you are and how you get out of here."

"We're just two boys in a tunnel," I said. "
The
tunnel. I mean. The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode."

"Thanks a lot," said the guy. "But I'm in a hurry. I have a date in Paterson..."

"He must be real, the real Hugsy Goode," I whispered to Tornid. "Not his ghost. Because how would his ghost know about Paterson?" Out loud, I said, "My name is Copin Carroll."

"One of the Carrolls, eh?" said the guy. "I remember them. Don't remember one named 'Copin' though. Remember one named Nicky ... he was just a baby, always had a rope."

"That's me," I said. "I changed my name to throw people off the track while Tornid and me were looking for and finding your tunnel."

"Who's Tornid?" asked the guy.

"My friend. His real name is Timmy Fabian. He lives in your old house," I said. "What'd ya do with the mini tape recorder? It belongs to Tornid's sister."

"Don't ask me," said the guy. "Some creepy thing came along, some furry thing, and grabbed it in his mouth and ran away with it."

"That's Racky," I said.

"Well, Racky must be a very bad character," said the guy-

"He's a raccoon," Tornid said. "Not a character. A sport raccoon."