By the time the police arrived, we had tied up Big Adam and his friends. Ali used some of her complicated knots, including one that circled around their legs, so they looked like those people in movies who are tied up on train tracks. I helped with the regular kind. She said she’d teach me some of the fancy ones later, when we got home.
Chief Grummel came in. Stinky stood there giving him looks that were a little mean and a little worried, while Nanny X and Boris showed him the blueprints for a factory that would have made Lovett the Smuggling Capital of the Mid-Atlantic. I don’t think the mayor or Mr. Strathmore would have liked that slogan very much. They also showed the chief the diamonds. I’d wanted to open some of the other coconuts to see if we could find even more diamonds, like the ones that had been stolen from Mrs. Bell, but Nanny X didn’t want us touching anything, in case of fingerprints. She was sure they’d find more, though.
There was a lot of reading of rights and some blah blah blah about what would happen to the diamonds and whether the mayor should be forced to leave office, but I didn’t care about any of that stuff. “What’s going to happen to them?” I said. I meant the chimps, who weren’t clapping anymore. They were wearing their sad faces, like they’d just found out there really was a banana shortage.
“We’ll have to call animal control,” said Chief Grummel. “Looks like they’ll need backup.”
Stinky had a different answer. He looked at me and Ali. “We saved the park,” he said. “And you saved me. So now I guess that means it’s time to . . .”
“Save the chimps!” we all said together.
“Save the chimps,” Stinky agreed. “I’ll make a sign: Chimps Are Cool.”
“Tundra cool,” I said.
“I’ll have a talk with the mayor,” Ali volunteered.
“Why not?” said Nanny X. “I think he owes us one—as long as he’s still in office.”
Several phone conversations later, the authorities (that’s a TV word, not a reading connection word) promised to send the chimps to the David T. Jones Sanctuary for Wayward Primates. We went with them as far as the police station, where they waited in a cell with a lot of bananas for the sanctuary people to show up.
I was hoping we could keep Howard, especially since Yeti wasn’t barking at him anymore and Yeti didn’t do that for just anyone. But Nanny X said no.
“They were meant to be wild,” she said. “He’ll be happy at the sanctuary. You’ll see.”
But our nanny looked sad, too. Howard reached up and grabbed her crazy gardening hat and put it on his own head.
He was still wearing the hat when the sanctuary people came to take him away.
“He can keep it,” Nanny X said. “It looks better on him, anyway.”
Howard looked back at us and waved, and every single one of us waved back, including Chief Grummel but especially me.
“Have fun,” I said. “Don’t drink too many coconut smoothies.”
One of the sanctuary people reached for Howard’s hand, and he took it. I wiped my eyes, in case of crying. I thought about Howard swinging from the trees. I thought about Howard in a place where nobody was going to call him a hair ball anymore. And all of a sudden I stopped being sad, and it wasn’t just because I thought he’d have a good time at the David T. Jones Sanctuary for Wayward Primates; it was because somehow I knew I would see that chimp again someday.