I PICKED UP MY bike at Jupiter, and rode over to Oak Street, which runs parallel to Summerville Avenue. I didn’t want Cyndi to see me going by Saturn, so I stayed on Oak for a while before cutting over. After a year of living around there, I knew the streets pretty well from driving with Mom, even if I hadn’t biked on all of them.
Finally, I cut over to Summerville. Rush hour had already started. A mass of traffic was screaming along. When you’re downtown like that, you’ve got to watch out for cars turning into the side streets. Some people are so crazy to get somewhere, they’ll drive right over you and never even see what they did.
I came to Bolton, parked my bike in the entrance to the empty hardware store, and looked around for green Pintos. It was 3:35 on my watch. I beat the time by ten minutes.
The Pinto must have been watching for me, because a few seconds later, up it comes to the corner and stops. I go over and pass the bag in the passenger window. Like clockwork, out comes a hand with another bag. It’s all going down so smooth and fast, I’m not even nervous.
Then, just as I’m stuffing the bag in my jacket pocket, my eye catches on something dark across the street. I look up. There’s a cop staring straight at me. He’s standing there with his hands on his hips, staring.
My knees went weak. Before I could do anything, off goes the Pinto into the traffic and it’s just me and the cop, facing each other across the street. I was so scared, I didn’t know if I could walk.
Somehow I did, I guess, because suddenly I was on my bike pedaling back down Summerville. I didn’t look behind me. I just pedaled and pedaled with everything I had. About three blocks down, I cut off Summerville and looped around on some back streets. Even then I didn’t feel safe. The whole time I thought the cop was on my tail, I thought I was a goner.
I swung back onto Oak Street, took Reed Street across Washington, and came down Garden Street from the other direction, going about a hundred miles an hour. Well, maybe not a hundred, but twenty-five at least. Just before I came to 5446, I sneaked a look over my shoulder.
The cop wasn’t there. Or not yet, anyway. I turned in the drive, flashed around in back, threw my bike on the ground and crouched down against the side of the house, sucking air. For a while, it seemed as if the wind was still screaming by my ears. Then, slowly, everything died down into one long, terrible silence.
That was the worst silence I ever lived through. When it goes quiet like that, you start thinking like a madman. Your mind takes over. I was sure the cop was coming. I had myself going downtown to jail. I had my mother looking at me through the bars. I swear I heard the cop’s cruiser pull into the driveway. Maybe it was a breeze crunching around in some branches, or maybe he really did come by, I don’t know. It took me about a century to get up the nerve to look around the side of the house. When I finally did, nothing was there.
I got a hold of myself and went and knocked on the Night Riders’ door. One of the Night Riders came. It was this kid I remembered from the hold-up at Wong’s.
“Hey, it’s only me, Ringo.” He laughed. I guess I must have looked kind of wild. “How’d it go down?” he asked.
“Okay,” I said. I gave him the paper bag, which felt empty, if you want to know. It felt like there was nothing in it.
“That’s what money feels like in a paper bag,” Raven told me later. “Even a couple of hundred bucks feels like nothing, especially if it’s in big bills.”
Ringo took the bag downstairs. About five minutes later he came back and gave me a ten-dollar bill.
“The Cat Man says come by tomorrow. You probably got another job,” he said.
“Tell him I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if I can make it tomorrow.”
“Well, try,” Ringo said. “The Cat Man says he can use you. You did real good. You did record time.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.” I didn’t want to get into a discussion about it.
I picked my bike up off the ground and rode out. All I wanted was to get away from there. The cop was still in my mind. I was sorry I’d ever bumped into the Night Riders, sorry I’d run that job. I knew it was about the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life, and I never wanted to see Garden Street again.
Oggie wasn’t ready to go when I got to Mrs. Pinkerton’s. Everything had happened so fast that I was early. Mrs. Pinkerton’s helper made me stand in the hall and wait. I didn’t mind. I was working on getting myself back to normal.
I started watching the kids. They were running around and yelling, grabbing things and ganging up on each other behind Mrs. Pinkerton’s back. If you stop and really look at what’s going on with little kids, you see they can be just as rotten to each other as big kids. They get the same dirty looks on their faces and pull the same stunts. The only difference is, everything in their world is small, and the action goes on at about three feet and under, so it’s easy to miss.
Oggie got his coat on at last and came out.
“How’d you do today?” I asked. He always looks a little gray when he gets out of Mrs. Pinkerton’s.
“Okay,” Oggie said. It reminded me of me answering Dad’s questions about school, putting the best face on things.
“Who was that redheaded dude pushing people into the wall?” I asked.
“Marvin,” Oggie said. “He’s a bad actor.”
I laughed. That’s what Dad always says about people at his job.
“You don’t let Marvin push you around, do you?” I asked.
“No,” Oggie said. “I just go in the closet.”
Dad would have hated to hear that. He believes in people standing up for themselves. He would have said something to try to make Oggie shape up. I let it pass, though. Oggie’s not a fighter and most likely never will be. I could see how I’d probably be looking out for him the rest of our lives. Not that I’d ever mind. He’s my brother.
“Did you get my wallet?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“I know.”
I wished like mad I could tell him what happened, the kind of wall I’d run up against with the Night Riders, but I couldn’t. The only thing to do was keep up a good front and try to think of another plan.
I guess I could’ve handed him the ten-dollar bill to show I was trying. But I knew that wouldn’t be enough, and he’d probably think I was going to let him down. The last thing Oggie needed right then was to think that somebody else planned to let him down.
“Hey, Oggie. Did you know that Amory Ellington met another kid, an investigator just like him, in the Mysterious Mole People’s kingdom?” I said as we walked along.
“When did he do that?” Oggie said, only half-interested. He was still in the dumps.
“Recently,” I said. “In the last twenty-four hours.”
“The last you told me, Amory was in the glowworms’ pit,” Oggie said in an accusing voice. “He was trying to stay awake so he wouldn’t be sucked bloodless.”
“He still is. I mean, he was. In the glowworms’ pit. That’s where he met her.”
“Her!” Oggie stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk and glared at me. “What do you mean? He met a GIRL?” He wasn’t too friendly with girls at that time.
“He did. Pretty amazing, right?”
Oggie frowned. “Who is she? What’s her name?”
“I’ll tell you tonight. Can you wait till then?”
“NO, I CAN’T,” Oggie said. “I can’t wait! Tell it now! Who’s this GIRL? I want to know.”
I looked up at the sky and kind of squinted as if I was having a hard time remembering.
“I don’t know if walking down a sidewalk is a good time to be telling something like this,” I said. “We should probably wait.”
“NO, WE SHOULDN’T!” Oggie yelled. “We shouldn’t! We can’t!”
I shook my head as if I was in grave doubt.
“You GOTTA tell it,” Oggie shrieked, so loud that this lady up ahead of us turned around and gave us a look.
“All right! Change the channel. I’ll tell.” I was laughing.
“Right now!” yelled Oggie. “Stop that laughing and tell!”
You never saw anybody look so different from the sad little kid that had dragged out of Mrs. Pinkerton’s ten minutes ago.
“Well, her name is Raven,” I started off, “and she has really short hair.”