“I have a present for you,” he said, reaching behind the velvet curtain.
“A present?”
Woody brought her a large rectangular box in silver and purple wrapping paper. It looked like it came from a fancy boutique.
“Pretty wrapping paper,” Amanda said.
“Open it,” Woody said as he darted back behind the curtain. Amanda stared at the box. She didn’t want to open the present while he wasn’t in the room.
“G’head. Open it,” he said, popping out from the curtain with a professional-looking heavy black camera in his hands.
Amanda’s hand shook as she tore the wrapping away. It was the thick kind, the kind her mother would keep in a box when they were in Nairobi to reuse for other gifts or for school projects.
“I’ll take your picture while you open the box. Sometimes candids are fun, too,” Woody said as a flash went off in Amanda’s face.
*
Inside the car the sound of the paper rustling was so loud that it almost blew out Inky and Rungs’s ears. Rungs turned down the volume. This is so creepy, Inky thought as they heard the sounds of ripping paper. He felt like he did when he was really young and listened to his parents’ conversations through their closed bedroom door: embarrassed and confused. It made him sad to think of his parents together. Rungs’s voice brought him back to the present.
“That’s a box, a lid coming off a box,” Rungs said, indentifying the popping sound they heard.
“Oh, my god,” they heard Amanda exclaim. “Is it really? They’re amazing.”
“Tell us what it is,” Rungs said.
The sound became muffled. “She must’ve put the wrapping paper and box on top of her purse. Hear how the levels changed?”
Inky nodded, but he was thinking about more than the tape sound. Whatever was in the box, he didn’t want her to like it. He didn’t want anything to tempt her to let her defenses down, and he didn’t want her to feel too kindly toward Woody. After this was over, he’d have to think of a gift to give her that she’d really like.
“I can’t believe it. They’re the same, aren’t they? They’re the boots from Megaland. The high boots from the closet dress-up game?”
“Good girl,” Rungs said. “Keep narrating. Tell us everything that’s going on.”
They heard footsteps coming towards Amanda.
“Try them on,” they heard Woody say to Amanda.
“Creep,” Inky said to the voice coming out of the receiver. “Stay away from her. Keep your freakin’ distance.”
“Quiet!” Rungs said.
They heard more rustling. Amanda’s voice was harder to hear. “Size eight,” she said.
“She must be bending over. See how her voice changed,” Rungs said. Glad he’s enjoying this, Inky thought, then felt badly for thinking that. Rungs was good at this, and if it weren’t for him, they might never have come up with this plan to begin with.
“How’d you know?” Amanda asked Woody.
“That’s the box you clicked on in the dress-up closet in the game. I guessed you might pick your real size.”
“Whoa,” Inky said. “Clever bastard.”
They heard some shuffling and then Amanda’s voice sounded farther away as she made appreciative noises about the boots. Then they heard the electronic sound of a camera.
“Yuck,” Inky said. He looked down at his artwork, carefully rolled, sitting on the floor of the car. He wanted to deliver it now. He wanted all this to end.
“They’re perfect. I love them,” Amanda said.
“G’head. Walk around. Let me see for sure that they fit you—you know, like how you do it in the shoe store,” they heard Woody say.
They heard footsteps, softer footsteps than before. Footsteps walking away from the microphone. Amanda’s footsteps. Why’d she have to be so cooperative? Inky thought.
“Are you ready for some posed pictures? I have a lot of costumes and props.” Woody’s voice seemed louder.
“Sure,” Amanda said, from what seemed to be more of a distance.
“C’mon, talk to us, tell us what you’re doing,” Rungs said.
Inky heard Amanda’s soft footsteps. “Back here?” she said.
“Behind the curtain,” Woody answered.
When Amanda spoke again, it sounded even more distant, her voice subdued, like how a color was diluted when he added water to an ink wash.
“Wow. You have some unusual clothes here,” she said.
Inky opened the window, but the outside noises made it too hard to hear the transmission of what was going on in the studio. He closed the window again. The driver glanced back disinterestedly and turned back to the action scene on the DVD he was watching.
Inky heard a scraping sound and closed his eyes to try to get a picture. Hangers, it was the sound of hangers on a rack.
“This is better than my mother’s closet ’cause they’re all cute.” Inky hated that Amanda sounded like she was having fun. He thought of how Woody had been so charming and so supportive, when all he really wanted was to use Inky’s artwork to lure young girls. Yuck. Now he was being charming with Amanda. And she was up there alone.
Inky looked over at Rungs. “That’s enough. I’m gonna ring the buzzer.”
“Not yet,” Rungs said. “We need him to take a couple of pictures.”
“Shh!” Inky said. He had to hear what Amanda said next. He didn’t want any of Rungs’s reasoning.
“Ooh, a Halloween costume. Is this a maid’s outfit?”
“I gotta go in there,” Inky said.
Rungs pressed his arm against Inky and held him back. “Soon. Very Soon.” Inky sat back halfway.
“Ooh, look at this.” Amanda sounded like she was faking enthusiasm. Or maybe he just wanted to hear it that way. “I love the beads and the V neck.”
“Hold it up against you,” Woody said to Amanda. His voice sounded more muffled. He must be standing closer to Amanda, Inky thought.
Inky pushed Rungs’s arm away and reached down for his artwork.
“That’s lovely,” Woody said. “It looks really sophisticated. It’ll show off your long legs. Let me take a picture of you in it. Here, you can change behind this curtain. The catch can be tricky. I’ll help you with it.”
Chapter 37
Picasso2B in Megaland
INKY’S HAND WAS ON THE CAR DOOR handle. He pressed down halfway and it clicked. The driver looked up from the DVD player on the front seat, turned his head halfway, gave Inky a disinterested glance and turned back to his DVD.
Rungs stretched out his arm and held Inky back. “Let’s call it in first,” he said as he picked up Hawk’s cell phone and dialed.
“I’m counting on caller ID here,” Rungs said, and dialed the Midtown North precinct, a couple of blocks away.
Counting on Hawk was more like it. But Inky knew this time she’d come through. While her mother was so sick, her father still traveled a lot. It fell to Hawk to supervise her mother’s care, and that, he knew, had included several emergencies.
“An officer is needed, six hundred block of West 53. Request arrival without lights or sirens,” Rungs said in a put-on adult voice that almost convinced Inky. Rungs was also mimicking the trace of a German accent that Hawk’s father had.
Rungs gave Inky a thumbs-up. Inky assumed the officer on the other end had asked about the nature of the crime.
“Level 2 sex offender, William Turner, ID number 28292, in violation of parole; violation of the no-contact with minors clause, possible intent to engage in questionable activity with a minor. Request caution, minor present,” Rungs said, the fake accent less pronounced.
Just as Rungs finished with the police, Amanda’s voice came through the receiver. “I can do this myself,” she said. Her voice sounded wobbly.
“Let me make it easier,” Woody responded.
“Really, I’m good,” she said. It sounded like she was stepping away from him.
“I don’t want to leave her up there any longe
r,” Inky said to Rungs.
“Precinct house is a few blocks away,” Rungs said. “They’ll be here any second.”
They heard Amanda’s footsteps, the soles of her new boots tapping on the wood floor, then Woody saying, “You look lovely.”
A second later they heard the mechanical whir of a digital camera. “Hold that,” Woody said to Amanda.
Inky clutched his drawing and opened the car door. “That’s it. I’m outta here. It’ll take him some time to get downstairs,” he said to Rungs as he got out of the car. “The police’ll be here by then.”
Inky didn’t wait for Rungs’s reaction. He walked by the auto repair shop. His swift steps were so strong he could feel the sidewalk through his sneakers. He passed the boarded-up building and noticed a lady cleaning furniture on a fire escape. The studio was a few buildings away. Was Woody still taking pictures of Amanda? What was he asking her to do? Inky shuddered at the possibilities and broke into a trot. He had to get there as soon as possible. He had to get to Amanda.
Then everything went dark.
There was something around his head. It was heavy and odorous. A chemical smell filled his nose. It combined with his panic to make him light-headed. He tried not to breathe.
He wanted to scream. He was afraid to scream. Would screaming blow all that they’d planned for? Would it mean danger for Amanda? He was braced for an attack, but he didn’t sense anyone near him. Who wanted him not to see?
He had to see. Seeing was everything. “No, damn it. No,” he screamed.
Inky sucked in a breath of the chemical, and the colors in his head went hazy. He thought of the art room at the school. The scent was familiar—turpentine!
He reached up to his eyes and felt a nubby, rough fabric on his face. He found the frayed end of the fabric and lifted it away. He gasped and took in the cold, fresh air.
“Lo siento mucho, lo siento,” he heard a woman’s voice say. It came from above him. The fire escape. The lady in the flowered dress on the fire escape cleaning her furniture. No one was out to get him, she’d just dropped her cleaning rag.
Like a painting by Utrillo, the once seedy street scene now seemed a thing of beauty. The rusty sign, the steel gray sky, the overflowing trash, all glorious in their contrast of color and light. The flowers on the dress that apologetic Hispanic woman wore now transformed into a garden path leading him straight to Amanda.
Inky looked down the street to the car. Had Rungs seen any of this? Probably not. He was busy waiting for the police.
Finally he was at the front of the studio. He texted Rungs that he was about to go in but got no response. He yanked at the big glass front door to the studio building and entered. He looked at the buzzer that said “Turner and Megaland Studios.” What had Amanda been thinking when she faced this buzzer? What she was thinking now?
Inky noted that the door opened out. That would make it easier for him to step outside once Woody came down, so he could block Woody’s view of the approaching police, and maybe keep him from running away. He wished he had timed how long it took for Woody to come downstairs after Amanda had rung the buzzer, but he’d been too busy straining to hear the sounds from the receiver. Probably it would take longer now. He was interrupting, after all.
Inky pushed in the black button. The sound of the buzzer went through him. What if Woody ignored it? Last night on the phone he and Rungs had decided if that happened, Inky would keep pressing the buzzer and talk to Woody through the intercom. They figured Woody would not want a scene with Amanda there. The doorway now seemed eerily quiet as he waited for Woody to acknowledge the buzzer.
Inky made a note of his distance from the door, how his back was to the wall and where he needed to stand to reach the door to open it. He stepped in and out, counting his steps. He felt like he was in the awful folk dance unit of gym class. He always came in at the wrong part of the music, and now he was afraid he’d mess this up, too.
He wished he could talk to Rungs, wished he knew what was going on with Amanda. They should have a two-way system the next time they did this, he thought, then caught himself. There would be no next time. It was hard enough to believe there was a this time.
*
Down the street, Rungs greeted the policemen. He was surprised to see two officers in the squad car; his father worked alone. He wondered what else he hadn’t calculated. He had a vaguely metallic taste in his mouth as the police officer rolled open his window.
“I called.” Rungs said, standing up as straight as he could, glad for his height but knowing there was no way he looked like the president of an international bank, which is what he knew they’d presume because he’d used Hawk’s phone with her father’s caller ID.
“This some kind of prank? ’Cause we have zero tolerance for that kind of thing.”
“No, sir. Deadly serious,” Rungs said. How to explain? He started walking toward the sedan that was serving as their command central. One officer followed. His name tag said “Hogan.” His partner remained in the squad car.
Rungs started with the facts. “William Turner, offender 28292, was posing as a game developer. He made arrangements to meet my friend. She’s inside now, Officer Hogan.”
“Her phone?” the officer asked.
Rungs didn’t confirm the officer’s assumption. “I gather I don’t have to tell you who Helen Stegmann is. How her father would do anything for her. Her father the bank pres—”
“Yeah, kid. We got all that …” Officer Hogan said.
Rungs was glad he didn’t have to totally lie. He glanced down the street toward the studio. Good. Inky hadn’t stepped outside yet. He walked up to the car, thinking he might have won the policeman over. Officer Hogan, a few steps behind him, approached the driver’s window.
“He’s not part of this,” Rungs said, and he opened the back door of the car. Hawk’s driver looked back, alarmed. “It’s OK, we called him,” Rungs said to the driver loudly enough so he could hear through the plexiglass barrier. “It’s about our friend upstairs.”
Rungs heard Woody’s voice coming from the receiver, then the whir of the camera. “She’s with him now. He’s taking pictures of her,” Rungs said to Officer Hogan. The officer let out a low whistle.
“Got a diddler,” he radioed to his partner.
Then they heard Inky’s distorted voice; it was what Woody and Amanda were hearing from the intercom. Rungs smiled. Inky was saying exactly what they’d arranged. “It’s me. Picasso2B, the kid who draws for Megaland. I have that new drawing you asked me to drop off.” They’d thought that Woody wouldn’t be able to ignore the request, not in front of Amanda, who was supposedly testing the site, and especially if Inky made it a point to say he was a kid.
Sure enough Rungs heard Woody say to Amanda, “Why don’t you look through the makeup over there while I get the buzzer.”
“Cool,” Amanda said. “My mother doesn’t let me wear makeup.”
Officer Hogan looked at the receiver, then at Rungs. Rungs noticed a flush of anger at the top of his pudgy cheeks.
“It’s connected to a G-phone,” Rungs said. “She has it in her purse. The box has a speaker and an HD recorder.” Rungs couldn’t help bragging about the gear, but the look on the officer’s face suggested he was less than thrilled seeing Rungs’s fieldwork in action.
“Unauthorized civilian use—and a kid. What all are you trying to do? What are you trying to pull? I should confiscate that,” the officer said.
“I wouldn’t be doing that,” Rungs said, stepping closer to the officer so he was uncomfortably close to his face. “It’s property of the Sahmnakkhaogrong-hangshaat.”
“The what?”
Rungs reached into his pocket for his father’s business card and handed it to Officer Hogan. “Thai National Intelligence Agency.” Rungs pointed to the lettering.
The officer studied the card. “You print this out on your computer?”
“No, sir.”
The officer ran his fingers over the
raised letters of the card. Rungs pointed to the equipment again.
“My father’s.”
What the hell?” He let out a whistle. “Tell you what though, son, in this country, what you got from this box, it’s not admissible.”
Rungs replied quickly, thinking Woody would soon be in the building entranceway with Inky. “Get his camera, then. She’s 14. That should be all the evidence you need—that and the captures of their chats you can get from his computer.” Rungs could see the officer was now interested.
The policeman whistled again. “Sarge is gonna love this if we bring it in clean.”
Rungs looked down at his phone and saw the text message from Inky. “My friend just buzzed up. He’s gonna make the guy come down to collect this drawing he really wants. It’s his artwork the creep has been using to woo her.”
“Grooming,” Officer Hogan said, as if he was talking to a colleague. “They all do that shit.”
*
Inky was sweating even though it was chilly in the doorway. He was growing impatient. He hit the buzzer again, this time sounding out two staccato bursts.
“Coming, coming,” a voice came through the intercom a moment later. Inky jumped at the sound and knocked the drawing against the wall, bending an edge. Hearing Woody’s voice made it all real, and that was scary.
Please don’t do anything to Amanda, Inky thought as he strained to hear footsteps. He thought of his abandoned religious school education. He needed a real prayer now, but none came to mind. So he squeezed his eyes shut and said his father’s name over and over again, hoping it would do.
Inky steeled himself and glanced out the door. Rungs was still out of sight, but hopefully with the police. But what if the police didn’t believe Rungs? And what if Woody figured out they were trying to trap him?
It felt like forever to Inky, standing there, straining to hear Woody’s footsteps. His mind saw only the neutral palate of the doorway. He memorized every detail. He could draw this scene over and over; he would always know just the way the light came in through the doorway, the same way he’d always remember the image of the charred remains from his father’s plane crash.
Drawing Amanda Page 17