31

How to Detect a Lean-In Moment

Razor leapt at the Sit ’n’ Spin’s huge window. B-Man struggled to keep her from crashing through it. Inside, a crowd of Mr. Rodolfo’s poker players taunted the beast, shooing it with the backs of their hands, snarling at it from behind the safety of the glass. A-Man was there too, out in front, trying to pull B-Man toward Emerson. He must have shown up late for the poker game.

“Shit.” I stopped halfway up the block and grabbed Zoey’s arm. “We should wait here.”

“I can’t! ” There was real panic in her voice. “I need the rattler!”

She tried to pull away but I held on tight. I slid my hand down her arm and we were holding hands, unintentionally, just like at Toph’s party.

“It’s okay. I hid it pretty good. They won’t find it.”

She spun around and glared at me. “You don’t understand. I can’t go home without it. I need it.”

“We’ll get it. We just have to wait.”

Mr. Rodolfo came out of the Sit ’n’ Spin. He had the Arbitrator. He started hollering, pointing the hooked end of the huge crowbar in B-Man’s face. Behind him, the Brothers stood watching, arms folded, grim and silent as ever.

A-Man got between them, grabbing hold of the Arbitrator. He was trying to keep the peace, but it was hard to say if it was working.

“Is that him?” Zoey asked me.

“My boss? Yeah.”

“He really is an asshole. What is that thing?”

“He calls it ‘the Arbitrator.’ ”

Zoey scoffed. “You need a new job.”

“He pays me pretty good.”

“I’ll bet he does.”

I squinted at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Look at him. He looks like a Sopranos reject.”

It was true. The Arbitrator was huge, but in Mr. Rodolfo’s hands, it looked more like a chopstick. I tried to explain to Zoey that just because you spoke with a slightly thick-tongued accent and carried a wrecking bar into the street to defend your business, it didn’t make you a mobster.

“He’s just a regular guy,” I told her.

Zoey let out a derisive shot of laughter—HA!—and covered her mouth. “Oh, my god. I just realized! He’s not even trying to hide it. It’s a freakin’ laundromat !”

“So?”

“You do realize there’s more than one meaning for the word launder, right?”

“Um, no.” But then it dawned on me (vaguely). I had an inkling that the term was used to describe a process of hiding stolen money. “You mean, like, money laundering ?”

“Exactly. Let’s say—hypothetically—you stole a shitload of money. If you didn’t want anyone to find out, you’d hafta disguise where it came from. Basically, there’re two ways to do that. One, you start a business and pretend it makes more money than it really does. Say, for instance, a laundromat. Or two, let’s say the money was stolen direct from a bank. Then it’d have serial numbers. The police and insurance companies can trace those pretty easily. That’s why you have to mix up the numbers, exchange the money that you stole for new bills, and send the old ones off in all different directions. Basically, you wash the money. You launder it.” She pointed to the crowd of men. “Spreading it around in a gambling game is one way to do it.”

“Wait, you’re saying Mr. Rodolfo robbed a bank?”

“How should I know?”

“Why do you even know all that, about money laundering?”

“Don’t you watch television? Every cop show for like a hundred years has had a money-laundering episode. It’s like a … like a trope.”

“That’s TV, not real life.”

But the seed had been planted. I thought about how protective Mr. Rodolfo was of his office in the basement. I thought about how the doors down there were always locked. I thought about the way the Brothers barely spoke to anyone and, even though I’d gotten used to it, how eerie and threatening that silence had been at the beginning of high school when I’d first started working for Mr. Rodolfo. I thought about how obsessed he was with keeping everything “good for business.”

“No way,” I said, in spite of all that thinking. “I’m telling you, he’s just a regular guy.”

“Who threatens people with a—what did you call it? ‘The Arbitrator’?” Her fingers made a pair of mocking air quotes.

“That’s just how he is.”

A-Man was finally getting the situation under control. He was pushing B-Man back to the corner of Emerson. Razor was still barking, still leaping up on her hind legs, still yanking against her collar. Nevertheless, A-Man calmly guided them both away.

B-Man’s interruption had put an unofficial end to Mr. Rodolfo’s poker night. A couple of the men inside came out and got into cars. Eventually, the only ones left were the Brothers and Mr. Rodolfo himself. They chatted for a while in low voices before finally locking up.

Once they were gone, I snuck up the street and let myself in. The instrument was just where I had left it, untouched.

“Well, that was fun,” Zoey said when I brought it out to her.

“Can I help you carry it home?”

“I don’t live around here, like I said. I better catch a streetcar.” She glanced up the street, where one was already on its way toward us. “Usually they gimme shit for bringing my instrument on board, but at this time of night they don’t care so much.”

I was disappointed, of course.

“So,” I said, “you really think my boss is a gangster?”

“He sure looks like one.”

I laughed. “I guess he does.”

“Thanks for dinner, anyway. It was good.”

“No problem. Maybe you could leave the instrument at home next time. It’ll make life easier if we didn’t hafta stash it somewhere every time we want to hang out. I mean, if you feel like hanging out again.”

“You’re cute,” she said.

“What? Why?”

She tapped the side of her head. “You’re always thinking ahead. I like that.”

This was unexpected. “I am?”

She nodded. “And you’re honest. You say what you feel.”

“Is that my compliment?”

She smiled. “Maybe.”

There are moments in life when you should lean in—i.e., quit talking and kiss the gorgeous girl standing right in front of you. Detecting these moments is a skill. I was crap at it.

Zoey, however, knew what she was doing. As the streetcar rumbled through the intersection, drowning out our words, she tipped forward and pecked me on the cheek. “Gotta go.”

“Wait, can I call you? You have a phone, right?”

She scooped a random piece of paper out of her purse and scribbled the number.

“Bye,” I said, as the doors of the streetcar flapped open. “I’ll see you soon.”

She lugged the instrument up the steps and our first date (if you want to call it that) was over.