Hold Fast (9780545510196)

by Balliett, Blue

  Early tried to imagine Dash’s hand touching the side of her head. She thought about where he might be. The image of him back in that alley, wrapped in a blanket, was too miserable to fall asleep on.

  So she pictured them all walking up to the yellow house they’d loved in Woodlawn, Sum and Dash holding hands, Early and Jubie running ahead up the front steps; everyone stamping the snow off outside their front door; Sum making them cocoa in a kitchen with blue walls.

  Cover

  Drugs was the word murmured in the breakfast line.

  Isobel and Marcus’s mom had been arrested last night. Early and Jubie looked at each other.

  “What?” Early said. “I can’t believe it! Poor Isobel and little Marcus — that’s terrible!”

  “Those guys all alone now? Who’s taking care of them?” Jubie asked, his voice squeaky with worry.

  “I’m sure the police took them somewhere safe,” Sum said. “It’s awful, but this kind of thing happens to kids all the time.”

  “Maybe they have some relatives,” Early said. “I hope. Isobel’s my new buddy, and we had plans together! She must be so scared.”

  “Yeah, if they took Sum away, it would be baaaaaaad, right, Early?” Jubie asked. “I hope Marcus got to bring his orange truck.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you two — you can bet your booties,” Sum said. “Settle down now and eat those eggs. Gotta keep up our strength.”

  Velma nodded slowly, straightening a pin with a rubber troll that was fastened to her coat. She smoothed the troll’s hair, saying only, “We moms need to help each other. Because kids need their moms.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Sum said, and patted Velma’s back. Everyone ate in silence for a few minutes; shelter meals were always more thoughtful after there’d been an emergency. It seemed like bad and hard things of one kind or another were always happening at Helping Hand.

  When two police officers walked in the shelter doors just as everyone was clearing their plates and cups, Mrs. Happadee’s shoulders sagged. “Not again,” Early heard her say.

  She took the police to her office. Sum, Early, and Jubie were heading up the stairs to their new room when Mrs. Happadee called after them.

  “I’ve got some news you’ll want to hear,” she said to Sum. Sum froze, and her face looked so eager that Mrs. Happadee hurried to say, “Nothing settled, but this is more information than you’ve had so far.”

  “The kids and I stay together,” Sum said. Turning to Jubie, she ordered, “I’m counting on you to sit quietly. Not a word now.”

  He nodded, making a zip-the-lip sign.

  The three Pearls crowded into Mrs. Happadee’s office with the police.

  “Ma’am, turns out some of your suspicions were right. Your husband got pulled into some scary stuff. It’s possible he had no idea what he was mixed up in.”

  A glance at Sum’s face pulled the officer up short. He said, “We still have no idea where he is. I have to be honest about that. But we’re getting a better picture of what went on. It could be that he was — or is, excuse me — just a person who got used as a game piece in someone else’s crime.”

  Sum nodded, her shoulders sagging. “I’ll take that as good news,” she murmured, “although it’s what I already thought. Please tell me everything. Everything you can.”

  The policeman shared a crazy story.

  First, Mr. Alslip said he had wanted to be arrested. He identified himself as a Chicago Public Library employee and told the police he needed protection. He described the meeting that Early had tried to listen to, the one with Mr. Pincer, Ms. Whissel, and Mr. Waive. At least, he gave his version of it.

  According to Mr. Alslip, Mr. Pincer had warned them all that they were in the midst of an international diamond-smuggling operation, part of which was being handled by a gang based in New York. He said they had to keep quiet.

  Mr. Alslip then told the police about having kept the money Dash gave him for a book, out of fear. He described an address in Marquette Park where he said he’d delivered the cartons of books, then admitted he felt badly about what he’d done and didn’t want any more harm to come to the Pearl family. He said he’d had no idea how bad things were until he bumped into Early at the library.

  Early asked if the policeman remembered the address in Marquette Park. He looked surprised and shrugged. “Oh, it was an old warehouse with no numbers on it,” he said. “Completely empty.” Early frowned. Hadn’t Mr. Alslip told her the building had a number?

  Mr. Pincer and Ms. Whissel had both been arrested last night. And Mr. Pincer, it turned out, was a guy with a slippery past. An unemployed hatchet man for large industrial companies that needed to cut back, he had lied about a background in the library world, forged an appropriate resume, and been hired in recent months to help the Chicago Public Library balance its complicated budget. Ms. Whissel had appeared on his first day at Harold Washington, offering to work for free as a personal assistant. She explained that she was between jobs but had always wanted to experience library work. Mr. Pincer agreed, thinking he was getting a bargain. What he didn’t realize was that this stranger was a part of a huge and clever crime ring that was following recent developments at the city libraries.

  When a certain Mr. Scrub approached Mr. Pincer, offering a considerable amount of money to look the other way if this “bookseller” hired two of the Library Pages for a little extracurricular work, he was thrilled. A greedy man, he accepted immediately, having no idea that he was now in the hands of a circle of expert criminals, and that Mr. Scrub and Ms. Whissel had known each other for years.

  Like Mr. Pincer, Mr. Alslip was a man careless with the lives of others, and when Mr. Scrub approached him, offering extra money to pick a working partner who was an innocent type, he didn’t hesitate.

  When Sum heard that, she dropped her head in her hands.

  “A rat with regrets,” Early murmured. “That’s Mr. Alslip,” she said, when the adults all looked at her.

  Ms. Whissel had admitted to visiting the shelter in disguise, hoping to get a peek at the Pearls’ possessions, but there had never been a moment when the open sleeping area had been empty enough for her to paw through them unseen. She had reported back to the others at the library. Early wondered just how selfless Al’s trip had been. If Velma hadn’t stopped him, would he have left with all they owned, including the mysterious diamond?

  Early squirmed in her seat, laying her hand casually on top of the tiny stone still in her pants pocket. Did that make her a criminal, hiding this diamond?

  Should she say she had it, right this minute? But what if that made Dash look not as innocent? What if it might seem like Dash had known there was a diamond in their apartment? And what would happen to them all if she didn’t tell? The what-ifs swirled this way and that, making her dizzy.

  A diamond … Early realized, right then, that there was power here, and that selling a stone like this could make many things possible.

  It was a thought she didn’t want to have. Suddenly, she understood how tempted Mr. Alslip must have been.

  Cast, from the Middle English casten

  Verb: to hurl, toss, or fling; to throw outward; to

  calculate or add numbers.

  Noun: the throw of dice; a stroke of fortune or fate.

  Cast

  Two FBI agents arrived, and asked to talk to Sum alone. Mrs. Happadee shuffled Early and Jubie out before Sum could argue.

  “What did I miss?” Early asked as soon as Sum came out. “What else?”

  But Sum shook her head. “You heard most of it: They’ve caught some of the bad folks, and they now truly believe Dash is innocent. That’s the greatest gift of all! But they’re still missing pieces of the picture, details on the diamond-smuggling operation and who-all is involved. They kept asking me if Dash had ever mentioned the warehouse location. The one Mr. Alslip sent them to looked impossible. Completely abandoned. I couldn’t help.”

  Interesting, Early thought
. Clearly the rhythm of fear, a fluttering on-off beat, was preventing Mr. Alslip from telling them everything. Maybe he was still afraid of the gang members who hadn’t yet been caught, the men he’d seen each time he dropped off the boxes.

  “So the big, big news is that it’s safe for our Dash to come out; he just has to somehow get told. One of the FBI agents told me that they wouldn’t release anything about a famous stolen diamond being found or the suspected gem smuggling until they had more information, but they would show pictures of Dash, asking that he come forward for protection. They’d also say that his family was waiting.” Here Sum’s voice wobbled and she had to stop. No one had spelled out the worst possibility of all: that Dash was no longer alive.

  Early was overjoyed, but also terrified. Did the police know as much as she did? Did they know there might be — no, was — another loose diamond involved, and close by? And that it might well be a stone from that most famous of all diamond heists? Was it really safe for Dash to appear?

  “So we’re all waiting,” Sum was saying, as if everything had been solved. “Dash can truly head home now, and fill in the details for everyone. He feels so close, it’s agony not to be able to reach out and grab him!”

  Early nodded. She had to think, and wished at that moment that her brain were as hard and bright as a diamond, that stone with so many secrets. But a pearl, she reminded herself, comes from something uninvited and difficult, a grain of sand in an oyster, something that eventually, over time, becomes a thing of beauty. Better to be a pearl. “Can I lie down upstairs for a few minutes?”

  “Of course, baby!”

  Sum and Jubie took a load of laundry downstairs to do a wash while Early rested in the room, which was just what she wanted: a few minutes alone.

  “Dash,” she said urgently, and this time in a whisper. “Dash! I don’t know what to do!”

  She heard the grinding of a garbage truck somewhere outside. She stared at the dark wall opposite their window and wished she could see a sliver of sky, or at least some color.

  Maybe she should flush the diamond down the toilet and no one would ever know the Pearl family had been living with it.

  Then she thought of all the people outside in the snow, people with cups, hopeful signs, and only a few quarters. She wished with all her heart that the diamond could fly magically out the shelter door and into some of those sad hands, answering dreams. Then she focused on one of the missing pieces that could be essential: the warehouse address.

  Suddenly she heard Dash, loud and clear: You can do this, not as hard as it seems.

  She sat straight up on the bed.

  “Dash?” she whispered. And quite suddenly, she recognized something else. Everything here was connected, like the facets on that tiny stone in her pocket. Like the beat in Langston’s book. On the last page, he’d written that “all men’s lives, and every living thing” were related to rhythms of “time and space and wonder.”

  The address! An hourly beat of threes that in turn added to multiples of three … Why hadn’t she seen this before? Mr. Alslip had practically told her!

  The number was 369. It had to be.

  But how could she let the police know? It would seem strange if Sum told them, after she’d just assured the FBI she didn’t know anything. And would the police take a phone call from a kid, or even listen to her?

  Early went through the adults who might be willing to help, jumped up, and grabbed a new pocket notebook. She carefully ripped out one page and began to write.

  Cast

  “I’m just gonna take a nice, hot shower, Sum. Is that okay?” Early asked as soon as Sum and Jubie came in the door.

  “Sure, baby,” Sum said.

  Early stood, already hugging her towel, clean clothes, and shampoo bottle. Once out the door, she closed it and took off at a quick, silent run for the stairs.

  Velma was on the first floor, slumped at one of the long tables where she often sat during the day.

  “Velma!” Early called out. “Come on, we gotta talk!” She hurried Velma around the corner to the hallway in front of the tutoring room, which was locked and empty. It was hard to find a place in Helping Hand where you could be alone for a few moments.

  Minutes later, Velma walked toward the shelter door, beaming. “Headed to glory. I’ll tell them cops where to look, but just the bare bones. And I’ll give ’em, you know, the goods. Ever’thing’ll be perfect,” she muttered, patting the huge pockets on her coat.

  “Thanks, Velma, you’re the best,” Early said.

  “Tell your mama I’m still watchin’ her stuff,” Velma called over her shoulder.

  Cast

  Velma did some inventing for Early. First she walked into the police station nearby and announced to one of the detectives that she was a friend of the Pearl family, over at Helping Hand, and that she had found a diamond on the floor in the shelter after the man with the black bag had been arrested. She handed it over.

  Next she showed them the note printed carefully by Early, whose handwriting was tidier than hers. It said 369, warehouse in Marquette Park. Velma claimed, in another little lie, that she’d overheard the man who was later arrested making a cell phone call and mentioning these words.

  The police fed Velma a delicious pasta lunch after she’d shown them that she didn’t have the teeth to bite into a sandwich. While they waited at the precinct for news, the FBI, accompanied by Chicago police detectives, sped back and forth through Marquette Park. And as they did, Velma told the officer waiting with her in the station the truth about the address: It had been given, in a kind of code, to Dashel Pearl by a colleague at the Chicago Public Library who had gotten him into the book business, a certain Mr. Alslip, and it was Dash’s daughter, Early, who had just figured out her father’s notes.

  That afternoon, the case broke wide open: Bursting into a warehouse with the number 369 on the door, the officers found a group of nine armed men guarding neat piles of over a hundred books on a table, in an otherwise empty room. They were all wearing guns but had been watching TV with the sound on loud, and hadn’t heard the FBI quietly removing the bars on a first-floor window and entering. All nine were arrested without anyone firing a shot. The men had clearly been living in the building; there was clothing, a garbage can filled with beer bottles, soda cans, and a soggy mass of fast-food containers. A quick search revealed the room where they’d held Dash, a nasty bathroom with one tiny window. They swore to the police that he had escaped.

  That afternoon, after Velma had been driven back to the shelter by the police and the Pearls had heard the good but scary news, Sum went upstairs to lie down for a while before dinner, leaving Early and Jubie in the tutoring room.

  Velma stopped in to talk with them. She placed a hand on Early’s back. “You’re a smart girl, and a life-changer. Gonna help your mama all she needs,” Velma said.

  “Hey, aren’t I smart, too?” Jubie squeaked.

  Velma patted his arm. “Of course you are. Just like your dad, I’ll bet!”

  Jubie flopped his head back and forth so vigorously that he dropped his blue truck, and had to scramble after it.

  “My father loves Langston Hughes, and he sometimes says, ‘What’s the rhythm, Langston?’ when he’s trying to see things right,” Early said.

  “I like that,” Velma said. “I’m gonna try askin’ that same thing.”

  “It helps,” Early said. “And thanks again, Velma. For everything.”

  “Early, you quite a girl,” Velma said. “Jubie, keep drivin’. Come on now, it’s time to go find your mama and tell her waitin’ time is better than no time at all.”

  Click, uncertain origin

  Noun: a brief, sharp sound sometimes traced to a

  mechanical device, as with a camera or computer;

  a part of some African languages.

  Verb: to select; to become a success; to fit seamlessly

  together.

  Click

  Things were brighter, but also darker,
in the days after they heard that Dash had been kidnapped but had apparently escaped.

  The police told Sum that law enforcement officers at all levels were trying to find the connection between certain European crime rings and the messier New York group that had been working in Chicago. They warned the Pearls that it could be ages before they tracked down all of the criminals involved, but the men arrested at the Marquette Park warehouse stuck to the story that Dash had left there alive. The worry, of course, was that other members of the ring would find Dash, wanting to prevent him from saying anything before he realized he could safely go to the police.

  One of the hardest things for the Pearls to hear was that no one knew what Dash had been told. Detectives and police were quite sure that he had been warned by his kidnappers not to show his face anywhere in Chicago. In other words, even if he escaped, he’d look guilty, which could hurt his family. He might have no idea that some of the criminals had been caught and the truth was out.

  Oddly, the only picture the three Pearls still had of Dash was the one on his state identification card, as he hadn’t either a license or passport, and all of their family pictures, the ones in their apartment, were gone. The face looking out was hardly familiar, it was so serious; Dash usually had a twinkle in his eye.

  Copies of the picture went to every TV station and newspaper in Chicago, but there wasn’t yet much of a story to be told. Sum wasn’t sure what had been shown or when, but Mr. Waive was watching all the time and had seen Dash flash by on the evening news. There had been short articles in some of the Chicago papers.

  Dash’s old teacher was in the hospital by the time the arrests were made, and because he’d been forced into Mr. Pincer’s office that day and threatened, he was able to add to the story the police heard from Mr. Alslip. Mr. Waive’s testimony was invaluable. His memories helped detectives realize that Dash was no ordinary guy, but a man of integrity and rare promise.

  Sadly, Mr. Waive was seriously ill. Living in the shelters had made him sicker; it seemed like colds and flus loved those places. Almost everyone got sick in there, but anyone with trouble breathing had an extra tough time. Early wrote a note to Mr. Waive and looked forward to seeing him again when he was released from the hospital.