Sammy Keyes and the Cold Hard Cash

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  “Thanks for the ride,” Holly and I said, getting out together.

  “Ja, happy to do it,” he called across Dot and Marissa.

  Marissa scooted over to the window. “I’ll call you later, okay?” She’d been quiet on the ride home, and even though her hair was still wet and matted, she had the warm glow of someone who’s been basking in the rays of L-O-V-E.

  I nodded, and after they drove away, Holly turned to me and said, “Thank you so much for making me go. That was the most fun I’ve had in my entire life.”

  I gave her a tired grin. “Told ya.”

  “Well, you were right!”

  So I jaywalked across Broadway, dragged myself up to the apartment, and had the calmest, quietest night of my life. I gave Grams a quick overview of what had happened at the pool party, but that’s really all we talked about. She didn’t quiz me about anything, Mrs. Wedgewood didn’t fall off the toilet or make any demands, Dorito didn’t pounce on any mice, no one knocked on the door…no one even called.

  It was unbelievable.

  And exactly what I needed.

  I should have known it was the quiet before the storm.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The next day started off strange. Not because of phone calls or pounding walls or neighbors causing earthquakes; no, it started out strange because I slept until eleven o’clock.

  “Grams?” I said all groggy-like when I saw the clock. “Grams?”

  “Right here, dear,” she said, coming out of her bedroom with a book in her hands. “My! You must’ve been exhausted.”

  I rubbed my eyes and sat up. “Wow.” I looked at her. “Why didn’t you wake me up? You always wake me up….”

  She stroked my hair. “I tried. Twice. You obviously needed to rest.”

  I took in her soft eyes and her sweet smile and felt a surge of love for her. I may have the flakiest mother in the world, but my grandmother’s a rock. “Have you heard from Mom?” I asked.

  “You mean Lady Lana?” She dropped her hand. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And she’s back in Hollywood, denies any wrong-doing, says she’s been ‘embarrassed and unfairly maligned’ by you, and expects an apology.”

  “She expects an apology from me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did she give you one?”

  “Of course not.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I was happy for her success, I really was. And I had thought that it would make her easier to be around. After all, she’s living her dream—what more could she want? But instead, her success is making her look down her nose at others. The airs she puts on! What makes her think she can act like royalty?”

  “She’s been like that forever, Grams.”

  “Maybe a little bit, but now she’s phonier than a three-dollar bill.”

  I laughed and said, “You can say that again,” because really, my mom’s always been a bit of a diva—which is why I call her Lady Lana—but hearing Grams put it that way just tickled me.

  But after I got through laughing, the tickle seemed to move into my brain. It didn’t make me laugh, either. It was like a little itch on a hard-to-reach part of your back. You contort your arm like crazy trying to reach it, and you seem to scratch all around it but never quite get it.

  All through breakfast, I tried to scratch it.

  And since it was almost noon and a bowl of reheated oatmeal was just not cutting it, I made a monster sandwich for lunch. And as I sat at the kitchen table scarfing it down, thinking about the pool party and Heather and Casey and Marissa and Danny, my subconscious was back there, reaching for the itch.

  And then out of the depths of Grams’ room came, “Oh my word.”

  “What, Grams?” I called.

  She came into the kitchen area with her jaw dangling. “Look what I just found in my winter coat!”

  She had a fistful of crisp, clean twenty-dollar bills.

  The tickle in my brain was suddenly…ticklier.

  I tried to ignore it. “That’s great,” I said. “But why were you looking in your winter coat?” I chomped down on my sandwich. “It’s gotta be ninety degrees outside.”

  She ignored the question. “I am so careful with money. I never put it loose in a pocket. Am I losing my mind?”

  I snickered and took a gulp of milk. “If losing your mind means finding money, I hope I lose mine soon!”

  “I feel like I’m dreaming,” Grams murmured. “Like this isn’t real.”

  And that’s when the itch turned into, like, poison oak of the brain.

  I knew she wasn’t talking about the actual money—she was talking about finding the money.

  But…not real?

  I sat up a little straighter. Maybe that was why Buck Ritter from Omaha, Nebraska, had wanted me to chuck it overboard.

  Maybe I’d been going around town buying cameras and art and bikinis and pretzels with money that was…fake?

  I suddenly lost my appetite.

  I reached out for Grams’ wad of cash and said, “Let me see.”

  She handed over the money and sort of jelly-kneed into the seat across from me. “Those are brand-new bills,” she said. “Did I go to the bank? Did I…?” Her voice trailed off as I took one of the twenties and felt it between my fingers. I turned it over and over and over. I snapped it. I had no idea what I was looking for, but it sure looked real to me.

  And then I remembered Grams telling me that T.J. had used a counterfeit pen on the money she’d spent at Maynard’s Market. It had passed that test just fine!

  I handed it back. “Definitely not Monopoly money,” I said.

  “I know it’s real,” Grams said. “Obviously, it’s real. How did it get there, that’s what I want to know.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe Lady Lana left it for you.”

  “Hrmph!” she said, standing up. “That would be the day!” Then she shook her head. “Maybe I should go see a doctor.”

  I laughed, “Grams!”

  “I’m serious.” She gave me sort of a bewildered look, then handed me a twenty. “Here. You never have any spending money.”

  I put up a hand. “No, that’s okay.”

  She wagged it at me. “Take it!”

  So I took it.

  And when she wasn’t looking, I checked it over again and again. It felt real. It looked real. It smelled real.

  But still. I had this little seed of doubt in my mind.

  Could it possibly not be real? Could T.J. have checked money that wasn’t the money I’d slipped her?

  The more I thought about it, the more worried I got.

  “Uh, Grams,” I finally said, trying to come up with an excuse to get out of the apartment. “I think I should go over to Marissa’s and see how she’s doing.”

  Grams was at the sink, doing dishes. “Shouldn’t you call first? That’s a long way to go if she isn’t home.”

  “Uh, yeah. I guess I will.”

  So I gave the McKenzes’ house a call, thinking I’d go over after I was done doing what I was planning to do, only Grams was right—Marissa wasn’t even there.

  “She went to visit Michael,” Mrs. McKenze informed me.

  “At Hudson’s?” I asked.

  “That’s right.”

  I got off the phone feeling totally surprised by that. Only then it hit me that Mrs. McKenze probably made her go visit Mikey. So I said to Grams, “She’s at Hudson’s.”

  “Because of Mikey?” she asked, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “That whole situation is so…unfortunate. I blame the money, you know that? Look at the dysfunction it’s caused that family. Glass furniture? Priceless art? What good does that do them?” She came over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “It’s nothing compared to what I have.”

  I felt a sudden sweep of sadness.

  Of guilt.

  What she had was a lying, deceiving granddaughter. And if I’d go through all this to hold on to three thousand dollars, what would I do to hold on to three hundred
thousand dollars?

  What about three million?

  And then a nauseating thought hit me—how was I any different from Lady Lana? I was sneaking around and lying…. I was actually worse than Lady Lana!

  Grams was moving toward the bathroom, saying, “Tell that old hound dog I say hello.”

  “Huh?” I said when it registered, and then my jaw kinda hit the floor. I mean, if you know Grams, you know she just doesn’t say stuff like that. She’s, like, too proper to say stuff like that. “You mean Hudson?”

  She gave me a mischievous smile. “Of course Hudson.” Then she closed the bathroom door.

  So I grabbed my skateboard, shoved the twenty bucks Grams had given me into my pocket alongside some other bills I had left over, and took off.

  The first place I went was definitely not Hudson’s.

  It was the Office Emporium.

  I found the security products section, snagged a three-dollar counterfeit-detector pen, and got in the shortest checkout line. There was a middle-aged woman getting rung up, then a tall baldish guy in an old stretched-out T-shirt, then me.

  Now, at first I was pretty busy studying the directions on the back of the package: Identify phony bills easily with a swipe of the pen. Pen leaves a brown mark on suspect bills (light yellow on genuine bills) so you know right away when to decline payment.

  But when the lady getting rung up started arguing about the price of the software she was buying, the bald guy in front of me got antsy. He shifted from side to side and sighed loudly, and just as I was thinking his head looked like a giant mottled egg poking out of a nest of gray feathers, he scratched the back of his neck.

  And that’s when I noticed the faded tattoo peeking out of the neck hole of his T-shirt.

  It was the tops of wings.

  Angel wings.

  My heart started thumping faster. I mean, I couldn’t see the whole tattoo, but I could see that there were letters arching over the tops of the wings.

  Obviously, Buck Ritter from Omaha, Nebraska, hadn’t risen from the dead, lost fifty pounds, and grown six inches. But the tattoo sure looked like the one Grams had described.

  I moved a little closer and tried to make out the letters.

  TOL MERV PAR.

  Tol Merv Par? Tolm Erv Par? Maybe it was Latin or Greek…?

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the cashier was saying to the lady buying software. “Let me call the manager.”

  All of a sudden Mr. Wing Tattoo’s head turns, so I jump back and act like I hadn’t been doing anything snoopy, like, say, trying to read his neck.

  We’re in the farthest lane to the right, so he turns his head pretty good, looking at the other registers, then says, “Excuse me, miss,” to the cashier. “All I have is this roll of tape.” He picks up some flattened cardboard boxes he’d rested against the counter. “These are discards from your warehouse.”

  “I’m sorry. This transaction is already in progress, and I can’t ring you up until it’s complete. It’ll be just a minute.”

  “Can I just leave you the cash? I’m in a hurry.”

  The cashier shakes her head. “I’m sorry, sir. We need to scan your item for inventory purposes.”

  Now, I’m dying to ask him about his tattoo, but I’m also thinking that his voice is familiar.

  Really familiar.

  Then he takes the stack of flattened boxes, turns, and bumps right into me.

  “I’m sorry!” he says, his neck craning clear around to face me. “I didn’t see you there!”

  Now, I may have been behind him, but I wasn’t invisible. And in the few seconds he’s facing me, excusing himself out of the lane, I notice that there’s something odd about his eyes.

  About his left eye.

  And it’s not that it looks clouded or bloodshot or, you know, blind. It looks totally normal, except that it’s a little bigger than his right eye, but it seems kinda…paralyzed. Like it’s not moving the way his right eye is.

  “Give up on this lane now,” he whispers to me. “You’ll be here all day.”

  The whispers send an eerie tingle through me, and that’s when it hits me why his voice is so familiar.

  It’s the voice I’d heard over Mrs. Wedgewood’s rigged phone.

  Well, my heart was beating pretty fast before, but now it’s pounding. And I do hesitate for a second, but then I follow him to another lane, making big waving motions over by the left side of his head.

  Does he turn to me and say, What are you doing flapping in my ear like a big ol’ bird?

  No.

  He just keeps on walking like I’m not even there.

  My mind flashes back to Rex Randolf not seeing me as he stepped out of the fourth-floor elevator, and it now makes total sense.

  The guy’s got a fake left eye!

  And the clothes he wore to Mrs. Wedgewood’s made total sense, too.

  The beret hid his bald head.

  The tinted glasses hid his fake eye.

  The scarf hid his angel wings tattoo.

  I stared at him a minute as he put his packing tape on the checkout counter.

  It had to be him!

  Then I ditched it back to the first lane we’d been in.

  There was no way I wanted the Jackal to notice I was buying a counterfeit pen!

  THIRTY-TWO

  The Jackal made it through his line before I made it through mine, so after I paid for the pen with the miscellaneous bills I had in my pocket, I ran outside and spotted him putting his boxes in the back of a white van.

  Now, I’ve been accused of having a “vivid imagination,” an “overly active imagination,” a “wild imagination,” and a “destructive imagination.”

  These have come from principals, vice principals, and policemen.

  Oh.

  And my mother.

  I’ve never mistaken any of these as compliments—probably because of the sneer or frown or eye roll that went with it. And I have to admit that it’s kinda true. My brain can get really spun up in thinking things are connected when it turns out they’re not.

  So even though I’d convinced myself that this bald, one-eyed guy with the angel wing tattoo is the Jackal, as I’m watching him drive away, I’m thinking, What if he’s not? What if he’s just some old guy buying tape at the office supply store?

  How will I ever know?

  And then I start kicking myself. Why didn’t I have my camera with me? Why was it zipped inside a couch cushion? Why did I even have a camera if that’s where I was going to leave it? I could have taken a picture of the bald, one-eyed guy! I could have zoomed in and snapped his license plate! I could have had something to work with!

  But I didn’t have the camera, so instead, I tossed down my skateboard and chased after the van.

  Now, if he’d been going clear across town or out to the highway, there’s no way I could have tailed him. But with downtown traffic and him sticking to downtown streets, I managed to keep him in view.

  It involved some illegal street crossings and grabbing my skateboard and running a couple of times, but I never lost sight of him.

  And you know where he went?

  Straight to the Senior Highrise.

  Most of the people who live at the Highrise don’t drive. And most of the ones who do probably shouldn’t. But the point is, there’s no garage or any, you know, parking structure for the Highrise. There’s just a parking lot tucked around back and street parking.

  The one-eyed bald guy pulled into a place on Main Street, took his boxes, and went in the front door.

  I waited a few minutes, then jaywalked across Main and went straight for his license plate.

  Trouble is, the license frame said BUDGET RENT A CAR.

  I memorized the plate anyway, then went in the front door.

  “Sammy-girl!” Mr. Garnucci bellowed from his desk.

  “Hey, Mr. G.,” I said, hurrying up to him. I kept my voice real low as I asked, “You know that guy who just came in? The one with the boxes?” />
  “Sure do!” he shouted.

  “Shhhh!” I looked around. “Don’t you think he’s kind of…you know…scary?”

  “Jack?” he said, his eyebrows reaching for the sky. “Jack’s a great guy!” His eyebrows ease down as he leans back in his chair. “Ohhhh. It’s the eye. He can’t help that.” He shrugs. “But I can see how it might give a kid the creeps.”

  “So he’s okay?” I ask, trying to fish out some more information.

  “Sure he is.”

  Now, since he’s not volunteering any details and I don’t want to seem like I’m actually snooping, I just say, “Okay, well, thanks. I feel better.”

  “I keep a good eye out, don’t you worry.” He chuckles, “No pun intended.” Then he adds, “Your grandmother’s safe here.”

  So I start for the door, saying, “Thanks, Mr. Garnucci.” But after a few steps, I backtrack and say, “I feel bad. I thought for sure he was, you know, shady.”

  He laughs. “Trust me. Jack Allenson is a good man. A very good man.”

  I nod and smile, but my body’s shivering with the heebie-jeebies.

  Jack Allenson?

  Jack-Al!

  I left there wondering what Mr. Garnucci would say if I told him his “very good man” had been sneaking around the Highrise in disguises and breaking into fat ladies’ apartments.

  When I was safely across the street again, I found a quiet place near the mall, parked myself on the ground, and finally ripped open the counterfeit pen package. Then I pulled out the twenty Grams had given me, uncapped the pen, and swiped.

  I waited and waited for the swipe to turn dark, but nothing happened.

  I swiped again.

  And again.

  On the back, on the front, everywhere.

  All the swipes stayed yellow.

  “Yes!” I whooped. “Yes, yes, yes!”

  I jumped up, feeling like a million bucks. The money wasn’t fake—it was the real deal!

  I toed my skateboard around, pushed off, and flew to Hudson’s house. “Sammy!” he said from the porch, where he was all by himself, reading the paper.

  “Hey!” I called, picking up my skateboard. “I heard Marissa’s visiting.”