by Marcia Wells
She hands me a Happy Kat Cat eraser.
“I notice you use an eraser a lot. I thought you’d like a new one.”
“Thanks,” I say. Jenny Miller has given me a present. It’s a cat, but nobody’s perfect. She’s given me a present!
I sit there and look at it, trying to think of something intelligent to say. The more the clock ticks on, the more I just appear to be a moron who is staring at an eraser.
“Edmund hates cats,” blurts a voice from behind my shoulder. “Don’t you know that? Everybody knows that!”
Jenny blushes and apologizes before I can turn around and knock the voice’s block off.
Thank you, Jonah Schwartz.
Spanish class isn’t much better. We’re studying adjectives: singulars, plurals, masculine, feminine, colors, you know the drill. We have to go around the room and say things about different people, like Jonah es heróico. (His sentence, not mine.)
If I hear “Edmundo es bajo” one more time, I may lose it. (Bajo means “short,” in case you didn’t know.) Pick another adjective. How about guapo? Inteligente? Heck, I’d even take the occasional estúpido. There are other words out there, people.
Eric Johnson is just as short as I am but he’s built like the son of Zeus and is awesome at every sport on the planet, so the teacher says “Eric es atletico” and the girls make swooning noises. And I’m stuck with “Edmundo es bajo” and no one sighs with admiration.
But the promise of kung fu wisdom is giving me strength.
Okay, it’s not truly kung fu. It’s just self-defense moves, but close enough.
After school my mom takes me to the station. She decided to tag along for my first self-defense lesson because she heard the words “sparring mat” and translated that to mean “Edmund is playing with knives and WILL die,” so she’s here to observe.
I change into sweats in the bathroom, then head to the police training gym, psyched to get cracking and work out some aggression from the Kat eraser disaster. I debate whether to tie a cool Karate Kid bandanna around my head. Maybe not. Might come off as a bit desperate.
My mom lifts an eyebrow at the shiny weaponry hanging on the walls but says nothing, taking a seat on a red bench by the boxing gloves.
I walk into the middle of the blue floor mat and start to stretch. It seems like the appropriate thing to do. I breathe deeply and close my eyes, awaiting my Master, my Sensei, my Guru of All Things Ninja.
In walks Detective Bovano.
I guess I must look stunned to see him (which I am), because he starts to guffaw right then and there, slapping his knee and laughing his head off.
“You were expecting Mr. Miyagi?” he snorts, his big belly bouncing up and down at his joke.
I stare at him blankly, then avert my eyes. Detective Bovano is a scary man on any day, but seeing him in a police-issue gym suit is über-alarming. The cotton-polyester blend is not very forgiving around his waistline, and we’ll just leave it at that.
My mom is giggling as well, as if some sort of dumb grownup joke has transpired about me that I don’t get, and I am annoyed. I step up in front of him and square my shoulders.
He stops laughing. “You think you’re gonna fight me, eh? All right, Eddie, let’s see what you’ve got.”
What? What I’ve got? I’ve got nothing. That’s why I’m here. To get something.
I shrug and get into my best defensive stance, knees bent, fists up. What now?
He pulls up his droopy pants and leans in, hands on his thighs so he can look me in the eye. “Eddie,” he whispers, “there is only one move that we are going to learn here today. I am going to tell you about this one move, and every time you get into a sticky situation, it will save you. It’s called the Nike defense. Are you ready?”
Nike defense? Sounds athletic and über-cool. I nod eagerly. I am ready.
I tilt toward him, hanging on to his every word. Unfortunately his wisdom is laced with breath that smells like salami and garlic.
“Run away, Eddie.”
I straighten up. “What?”
“I want you to run away. As a child, you cannot possibly defend yourself. The movies have lied to you, Eddie. You think a kick to the privates, or an elbow to the nose is going to help you? You’ll miss, and the perp will be ready and hopped up on adrenaline and God knows what else. They will knock you down. And then you’ll be . . .” He pauses for dramatic effect:
“In trouble.”
“Detective, I thought you were going to teach me some moves,” I protest. I glance over at my mom, like maybe she’ll confirm this statement. She’s busy texting, lost in a world of real estate transactions. Suddenly her phone rings. She stands and walks to the other side of the gym, chatting merrily about a brownstone on the Upper East Side, abandoning me to my doom.
“I’m going to teach you to run. I know kids, and I know they want to fight. At least, they think they want to fight. Just like in the movies. But you need to learn to run before someone levels you and you can’t. You want to be a hero, Eddie, I can see that. You tried to be one when you grabbed that Taser like a tough guy. So that’s why we’re here. To teach you to do the right thing. And run.”
My jaw clenches; I want blood. This is the most bogus self-defense lesson I’ve ever heard of.
Bovano squats lightly on the balls of his feet. “All right, I’m going to try to rob you. You see me coming. Do you run, or throw an elbow?” He lunges at me, all three hundred pounds of Italian meatball. I try to block him and bring my elbow to his face. He sweeps his leg under mine and flattens me on my stomach.
“If you had run, you’d be safe,” he hisses in my ear. My body convulses on the mat. I scramble to my feet, spinning to face him again.
“Now I’m a creep in a parking lot, following you,” he says. “Do you run, or try a karate kick like you’ve seen in the movies?” He slinks around the mat edge, pretending to be a stalker.
Slowing my breathing through my nose, I summon the spirits of karate. I lift my leg up like a ninja crane, ready to strike. Anger races through my veins. I want to kick his teeth in.
Bovano grabs my kicking leg and flips me onto my back. The slam of my spine on the mat knocks the wind out of my lungs. He squats next to me as I lie there paralyzed and dying.
“If you had run, you’d be safe. Now you’re roadkill. Get up!” he barks.
I get to my knees, coughing, eyes watering in the direction of my mom. She’s still a good twenty feet away, frowning off into space with the phone pressed by her ear. Where’s the motherly panic? The protection? I’m getting my butt handed to me by a grownup here—an officer of the law, of all people! She and I are going to have serious words tonight.
“Do you get it now, Eddie? You run. You always run. Until you are all grown up. And judging by your size . . .” He scrutinizes me and smirks. “You should probably run when you’re an adult as well.” He chuckles.
I am seriously going to kill this man.
I crouch, teeth bared, legs bent, like a tiger ready to pounce, my body tense with rage. Use what you have, Edmund. A low center of gravity. Lure him in, knock him off-balance.
Bovano sees me ready myself, his exasperation showing in his red blotchy skin and darkening expression. He’s had enough of our lesson. Eyes bulging, he comes at me like he’s got a knife in his hand.
Kick him! my brain screams.
I focus all energy, all of my puny wimp power, and kick hard as he lunges. He trips on the edge of the mat and my foot makes contact with his groin. With a yelp, he crumples to the floor.
“Oops,” I say, instantly regretting this entire situation.
My mom rushes over. “Frank . . . Frank, are you okay?”
Sure, now she clues in to what’s happening.
She kneels by his trembling body, giving him a few friendly pats on the back. I shuffle over to stand safely behind her, anxiety squeezing my lungs (which are still not working at full capacity, by the way).
This was not what I intended. I
just wanted a karate lesson, for Pete’s sake.
“Hmph,” Bovano huffs, pulling himself into the fetal position, eyes still closed. He lies there, breathing hard.
My mom bites her lip. It’s obvious she doesn’t know what to do. Girls just don’t understand these things.
Ice? Heat? Either way, I’m not offering to help hold it in place.
“It’s probably better to let him be, let him breathe,” she whispers to me.
Sounds like a good idea. Learn to run? I am running outta here, and never coming back. Once he gains his composure, I am a dead man.
She turns to Bovano and leans over his body. “Frank, I think we’ll go now, and leave you to your . . . self.”
She throws me a stern look, gesturing with her head. My cue:
“Sorry, Detective Bovano,” I whimper.
Thus endeth the lesson.
Chapter 20
Sunday Studies
March 27
You can probably hear Jonah’s laughter across Central Park. I’m glad he thinks it’s funny.
I, however, am completely traumatized, having slept only five hours the past two nights. I’m not sure if I can face Bovano again, but I have to because the picture of the lady with the green eyes is haunting me. Bovano holds the key, I’m sure of it.
A knock sounds on the door. “Boys, I hope you’re not playing video games,” my mom’s voice calls.
“No, Mom. We’re playing Demons and Warlocks.”
“Okay, then. Let me know if you want a snack. I’ll be in the kitchen.” I hear her retreat down the hallway.
It works every time, like a parent-repellant spray. She knows better than to interrupt a card game of Demons and Warlocks. Jonah will assault her with random factoids about the talking tree that shoots fireballs that he invented, or insist on showing her the cool Snake-Demon card that he bought the other day. She’ll have to stand there politely nodding for an hour.
I’m glad she left, because there is no covering up the evidence in here. One peek and she’d know we are most definitely not playing Demons and Warlocks. I would call this game Skinny Kids and Bad Guys. There’s a mountain of papers spread out on my bed, along with a bright smear of mug shots and color-coded flash cards plastered on my wall. Jonah finally slept over last night, and after breakfast this morning we came into my room and have been sitting here for four hours, which is astounding for someone with his attention span.
Everything I’ve drawn from my office espionage is laid out. Jonah has organized it into neat piles and then written down categories and subcategories and pinned them up so he can do further analysis. The kid is in heaven.
I have every picture I’ve sketched for the police (I made copies on my mother’s scanner). Some are mug shots of the known criminals, some are random (like that guy who stole the canvas from me—I saw his face later on the surveillance tape) and some are my own personal suspects, like the green-eyed woman from the photography exhibit. There’s something about her that’s creeping me out. Call it a hunch.
Turns out the four suspects Bovano showed me in the beginning are a group of thieves known as the Picasso Gang. I saw that name along with their pictures in a folder on his desk. I write down what I know about them:
The Picasso Gang
1. Asian guy—“Marco”
2. Older, crazy-haired guy—Jackie Vincent
3. Bald guy—knife perp from alley with Dad
4. Blond guy—Heinrich. The leader?
I frown at my notes. Somehow listing everyone as “guy” seems like pathetic police work, but I still don’t have many names. I managed to see the last name Heinrich on Bovano’s desk, written on a file that contained pictures of the blond man, black-and-white shots of him out to lunch at an outdoor café of some kind. In Europe? He looks European with his short-trimmed beard and black turtleneck.
“What do the dots even mean?” Jonah wonders aloud, gesturing to a map of Museum Mile that we pinched from my parents’ New York City survival stash. I drew circles in pencil on two museums, sites that Bovano had marked with a thumbtack on the original. The Neue Galerie and the Jewish Museum. My two least favorite places in the world at the moment. Plus more circles on cafés across the street from those sites. Seven spots total.
“And why are the cafés marked?” he continues. “Are they places that have been robbed? Or places where this gang has been seen, wandering around? We need to figure this out.”
“Wait—” I start to say as he traces my circles with black permanent marker. I end my protest with a sigh. I guess we won’t be returning the map.
We keep looking for patterns, but it all seems random. Just two parallel lines running down Fifth Avenue and Madison.
The block where the ice cream incident took place is not marked. That was over on Lexington Ave., three streets away from the museums. Obviously the police don’t think it’s important. Jonah decides to mark it with a big black X, for a caution marker.
The geometry book on Bovano’s desk is a mystery, as is the Egyptian book. Jonah’s theory is that Bovano is looking for a pattern on the map, some sort of geometrical shape that will tip him off as to where the next robbery will take place. The sites along Museum Mile form a long tube. I tell him it could be an obelisk, which would explain the Egyptian book. But the top point of the obelisk would land in the middle Madison Avenue, so that doesn’t fit.
We come up with a list of research that will be done over the next week. My dad is, after all, a librarian, and I’m sure we can use the database at the library he used to work at. They’re still on good terms.
I write down the major questions:
1. Have there been robberies at these locations?
2. Do the circles form a pattern that predicts where the ultimate heist will take place?
3. Is the green-eyed lady important, or am I losing my mind?
If we can’t come up with any answers, I’ll have to go back to Bovano’s office and sneak around again. Or Jonah will attempt his pizza plan, which makes me break out in a cold sweat whenever I think about it.
“Son, I’m very proud of you. I don’t think I tell you that enough.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
We’re at the library later that afternoon and he’s getting all emotional on me. I can tell that he’s psyched I’ve asked for his help. Usually I reject his library geek-outs completely.
I wonder if he’d be so proud of me if he knew that I stole information from Bovano, Tasered a cat, and am currently lying through my teeth to him.
I have him working on the geometrical shape problem. I told him it was for math class, to figure out what two parallel lines can form as a shape, given other lines that intersect with them. Meanwhile I’m scouring the newspaper database for recent New York City robberies. We’re side by side, typing in computer cubbies with a partition between us, but we might as well be working at the same desk, because he keeps leaning over into my personal space to “share” his discoveries. It’s worse than sitting next to Jonah.
“You know, Edmund, not all geometrical shapes are based on their perimeters,” he says as he swivels his chair into my cubby. “Are you sure these lines intersect with others? Do they have closed sides like a rectangle? Some shapes are open ended. Like a balbis.”
“A what?”
“A balbis. A shape like an H . . . two parallel lines connected by a third. Like rugby posts. Know what I mean?”
“Yep. Not the shape I’m searching for, though.” Come on, Dad! Stay focused! I knew this mission would be risky. The man can seriously mentally derail and tool away on random stuff for hours.
He scratches his mustache. “There’s also shapes within shapes. Triangles that have circles inscribed in them, called the incircles of the triangle. Are you sure it’s just two parallel lines? Could be triangles within a rectangle. Circles within that.”
I’m not sure about any of it. Shapes within shapes? This is insane. I’m hoping Jonah has more luck.
“What are you work
ing on?” My father peers over my shoulder.
“I’m researching crime in New York City for history class. Art museum robberies. Mr. Daniels asked us to research New York history, and I guess I got interested because of my job.”
He buys the lie and returns to his computer to help me look up stuff about Museum Mile.
Lying is second nature to me these days, which I’m not too happy about. I hope in the end there’s some sort of good karma that comes from solving the case, or I have some serious repentance to do with the Big Man Upstairs.
Dad’s phone rings. Not so much rings as plays a jazzy tune that mortifies me every time it happens.
“Hi, honey. What’s that? All right, I’ll tell him. Yep, we’ll be home right away.”
He grins at me over the partition as he ends the call. “Good news, Edmund. The police are taking you out to dinner tonight. A thank-you present for all of your hard work. We’re all invited. Let’s go home and get changed.”
I force a smile. I’m sure this has something to do with Detective Bovano and my ill-fated kick during self-defense class. Having dinner with that man is the last thing I want to do. And doesn’t a thank-you dinner happen at the end, when you’ve solved the case and everyone wants to celebrate?
I don’t know what to make of this invitation, but I don’t like it. I’m going to make my father taste all of my food before I eat it. Who knows what Bovano is capable of.
Chapter 21
Gelato
Of course we meet Bovano at an Italian restaurant and of course he sits across from my mother. My dad sits next to her, a friendly smile on his face. How is he so oblivious to this creepy date scenario that Bovano is working here?