Griffin took another step and was immediately skewered by the beam of a searchlight. “Don’t try it!” came the harsh order.
But not even the long arm of the law could overrule Griffin’s concern for Ben. “My friend’s in there with two bad guys, and there’s an alligator on the loose!”
That got the officers’ attention. The cops barreled past them and pounded inside the building.
“The back hall!” Griffin instructed. He pulled the walkie-talkie from his pocket. “Melissa — turn the lights back on!” He was right behind the officers. Pitch, Savannah, and Logan brought up the rear.
The bulbs blazed — not the infrared of night mode, but bright fluorescent light.
An amazing sight met their eyes. Mr. Nastase was perched atop a work stool, treed there by the baby alligator, who was snapping at his heels. Not far away lay Klaus’s titanic form, still unconscious from the tranquilizer dart. And curled against the opposite wall was Ben, relaxed and snoring softly, for all the world like he was in the comfort of his own bed.
The head cop was horrified. “Call animal control and get me an ambulance! Possible alligator attack. I’ve got two people down — and one of them’s a kid!”
“He’s just sleeping,” Griffin explained. “He does that a lot. As for the big guy, his boss tranqued him.”
Mr. Nastase dropped the dart gun. “It was self defense! These are the kids who robbed my zoo! And they just attacked me with this dangerous predator!”
Savannah jumped forward and scooped up the baby alligator, gently holding its jaws shut. “That’s a lie. And he’s not dangerous. He’s adorable.”
Logan pointed at the zookeeper. “He’s the one stealing animals.”
The officer’s eyes narrowed. “And what exactly are you kids doing here?”
“We’re giving animals,” Pitch put in defiantly. “We were on our way home when these guys ambushed us.”
“In fact,” Griffin added hopefully, “we should probably get going right now —”
“Don’t even think about it. Nobody’s at any of your houses. Your parents are all waiting for you at the police station.”
The words resonated like cluster bombs. The zoobreak team had survived many near misses in the past week. But this was not going to be one of them.
Klaus sat up gingerly. “Oh, have I got a headache.” As he blinked away the dizziness of the tranquilizer effect, his eyes focused on Logan. “Hey, isn’t that Ferris Atwater, Jr.?”
Despite the trouble he knew they were in, Logan felt his heart swell with pride. Being recognized for a role you’d played was — a star sighting! His first ever!
Griffin bent down and shook Ben by the shoulder. “Wake up, man,” he whispered. “We’re under arrest.”
32
It took a convoy of three police cars to gather up the zoobreak team and the staff of All Aboard Animals for the ride to the station. As if he wasn’t miserable enough, the last thing Griffin saw before the cruiser left the grounds of the Long Island Zoo was the fleet of six Rollo-Bushels standing in the parking lot. Each prototype bore a large yellow tag that read EVIDENCE.
Griffin slumped in his seat beside Ben and Savannah. “I’m sorry, you guys. It’s on me. I should have known that you can’t keep piling plan on top of plan on top of plan without getting burned.”
“No, this is my fault,” Savannah said bravely. “It started with Cleo, and it mushroomed because I wouldn’t leave all those animals on that hideous boat.”
Ben was totally down. “Fine, you guys fight it out over who’s guiltier. Just explain it to my mother before she kills me.”
“My one consolation,” Savannah added, “is that Klaus and Mr. Nasty are under arrest, too.”
“Big deal,” mumbled Ben. “We’re in just as much trouble as they are. They stole animals; we stole animals. They broke in; we broke in. My luck, Klaus is going to be my cell mate in jail.”
“I don’t think Klaus knew anything about the stolen animals,” Griffin put in. “He was trying to talk Mr. Nasty out of boosting the alligator. And that dart he took was meant for me.”
“He’s a saint,” Savannah muttered sarcastically.
“What I don’t understand,” Griffin went on, “is how our parents found out where we were.”
Ben was listless. “What difference does that make? So they knew in advance — big deal. When the cops caught us, they would have called our folks anyway. Same result — we’re dog meat.”
“Don’t you see the difference?” Griffin reasoned. “Someone must have ratted us out. But who?”
When they arrived at the police station, the squad room was crowded, but the first face they saw was the guilty countenance of Darren Vader.
“I should have known,” said Griffin through clenched teeth. “No situation is ever so bad that it can’t get worse by Darren being involved.”
But Darren seemed interested only in Mr. Nastase. “There he is! That’s the guy who stole my owl and blackmailed me into telling on my friends!”
Pitch was annoyed. “Since when are we your friends?”
Griffin shushed her. Darren might be able to expose just the kind of man the zookeeper was. That was the only thing that could save them — the fact that everything they’d done had been to rescue the animals from Mr. Nastase’s cruelty.
The sight of their children, alive and unhurt, was so welcome to the parents that there was a lot of relief and very little anger.
Griffin had an extra apology for his father. “Dad,” he said, shamefaced, “I’m so sorry I got your prototypes impounded by the cops. I swear I wouldn’t have done it if there was any other way to get all those animals to the zoo.”
Mr. Bing sighed. “Let’s hope it’s just for a few hours. I wouldn’t be so worried if the paperwork for the patent had been filed.” He cast a resentful look in the direction of Darren’s mother.
Griffin’s mother spoke up. “Well, I say hurray for Daria Vader. She may not appreciate your newest invention, but at least she had the smarts to confront her son when she knew something was fishy. Who knows what would have happened if the police hadn’t arrived when they did?”
Griffin nodded in reluctant agreement. Against all odds, Darren’s big mouth might actually have done some good for a change.
“What I can’t understand,” Mom went on, “is why you always have to go off half-cocked on these crazy misadventures instead of just coming to us! We’re your parents, not your enemies! Honestly, Griffin, if you were so dead set on rescuing those animals, why didn’t you just ask?”
Griffin was chastened but unrepentant. “Think about it, Mom. Did you want me to ask you so you could help, or so you could talk me out of it?”
She sighed. “Maybe you have a point. But it’s my responsibility to try to keep you from getting yourself killed, and that’s what very well might have happened tonight.”
It stung, mostly because she was right. Griffin had always believed that, with planning, kids could get along in the adult world. Yet the chaotic scene in the back hallway of the Reptile/Amphibian Center had him questioning himself. What would Mr. Nastase have done to them if Melissa hadn’t killed the lights just in time? What if Klaus had gone along with his boss instead of stepping in front of the dart meant for Griffin? What if the baby alligator had bitten Ben in the dark? Griffin had to face the fact that there were situations that called for adult intervention, even if that meant the plan had to fail. Some things — like your safety and the safety of your friends — were more important than winning.
The buzz of whispered conversation turned to silence when Mr. Nastase and Klaus were paraded into an interrogation room. Both men were now in handcuffs.
Griffin rushed over to the officer who was bringing up the rear. “Don’t be too hard on the big guy. He really came through for us in the end.”
Mr. Bing held his son back gently but firmly. “Let’s just let the police do their job.”
That job was not a quick one. It was nearly three
a.m. when Mr. Benson asked the desk sergeant if it might be better to take the kids home for a few hours’ sleep and reconvene in the morning.
“Sit tight, sir,” the officer replied gravely. “We’re trying to get a handle on this whole situation.”
The tone was echoed by all the cops at the precinct. The words were polite, even friendly. But their expressions were dead serious.
The arrestees remained with their parents, waiting in stiff-necked misery. There was no communication among the zoobreakers themselves. Even Darren kept his mouth uncharacteristically shut. He wasn’t in trouble with the law, but it was obvious that the Vaders were not happy with the role he had played in this caper.
Griffin caught Ben looking his way a few times, but Mrs. Slovak pointedly stepped in to block her son’s line of sight. Not since the baseball card heist had Ben’s mother regarded Griffin with such suspicion. She was probably thrilled that, nine days from now, Ben would be in New Jersey, away from the evil influence of The Man With The Plan.
Failure. Arrest. The Rollo-Bushels impounded. Ben headed for the DuPont Academy. There was so much to be sad about.
By four o’clock, Ben was fast asleep between his parents, and even Griffin was beginning to nod off, when the lieutenant himself came out to address the anxious families.
“I need everybody’s attention —”
“Wait!” Savannah leaped to her feet. “I’m the only one who should be under arrest! I talked everybody into rescuing Cleopatra, and it was my idea to take the other animals, too! None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for me!”
“Honey —” her father began.
“Let me finish!” She turned back to the lieutenant, her face impassioned. “You have to let the others off the hook! Whatever they did, it was because of me. And even if I have to go to jail for the rest of my life, you can’t give those animals back to Mr. Nasty, because he is a cruel and terrible person. He doesn’t understand them, he doesn’t treat them right, and he definitely doesn’t give them the love and respect that they deserve.”
The lieutenant waited patiently through this long speech. “Are you done?”
Savannah sat down again, nodding bravely.
“Thanks. Well, what I came to say is this: Go home.”
Mr. Kellerman looked cautiously optimistic. “And then what happens?”
The officer let out a heavy sigh. “Contrary to what you may think, a cop’s job is more than eating doughnuts and yelling at teenagers to turn down the stereo. While you’ve been cooling your heels here, we’ve done some investigating. We know, for example, that there have been more than three hundred complaints about conditions at All Aboard Animals over the past eighteen months. We’ve also been in touch with the emergency staff that was called in to the Long Island Zoo tonight. They tell us that the ‘extra’ animals are all fine and in very good shape — and the places you stashed them showed care and a lot of thought. And after a heart-to-heart chat with your friend Mr. Nastase, our officers are on their way to make arrests in an exotic animal ring, responsible for stealing the Drysdale monkey and a certain meerkat that was reported missing from Barrington, Rhode Island, six months ago.”
Parents and zoobreakers alike digested this information. When someone finally spoke, it was the shyest person in the group — and her timid voice barely made it past her curtain of hair.
“So … we’re not under arrest anymore?” Melissa ventured.
“Only because there are people older and guiltier than you in this mess,” the lieutenant said sternly. “Just because you did it for all the right reasons doesn’t make it okay. Another thing that came up in our investigation was the little matter of a stolen Babe Ruth baseball card last fall. This is what we in the law enforcement community call a pattern. You lucked out on that one, too, but be warned: Your lucky streak is officially over. If your names come across our blotter again, it’s going to go just like on the TV shows. You’ll be arrested, cuffed, fingerprinted, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Now, I repeat — go home.”
The collective sigh of relief moved the air in the room. Slowly, as if this break might be too good to be true, everyone stood and began to straggle toward the exit.
Savannah regarded her teammates. “I’m so sorry, you guys.”
“Don’t apologize,” said Pitch stoutly. “We knew what we were getting into.”
“I’m sorry, too,” put in Darren. “I didn’t want to mess you up. I mean, I wanted to mess you up, but — I would have been sad if any of you got eaten by an alligator.”
From Darren Vader, that was heartfelt emotion.
When Mr. Dukakis opened the door, there was a whoop of merriment, and a young patrolman came wheeling into the squad room on an impounded Rollo-Bushel, executing spins and hairpin turns. Grinning like a kid at Six Flags, he jumped off in front of his commanding officer. “This thing is amazing, Lieutenant! Somebody ought to patent it!”
Mr. Bing’s eyes locked with Mrs. Vader’s across the group. She was, after all, the lawyer who was supposed to help him.
She nodded, impressed. “First thing Monday morning.”
33
Dr. Kathleen Alford returned from her trip to Africa to find that the population of the Long Island Zoo had increased by more than just the three rain forest baboons she had brought with her. With the aid of her young friend Savannah Drysdale, she set to work finding new homes for the former All Aboard Animals collection.
She also hired a new assistant zookeeper — a burly young man with zoo experience, who would have no problem dealing with even the largest animals. Klaus Anthony had already been cleared in the case against his former boss, Mr. Nastase. His final act as an All Aboard Animals employee was to help the coast guard get the abandoned paddleboat out of the inlet at Rutherford Point. Once the engine had been coaxed back to life, a loud, grinding clatter cut the air. The giant paddlewheel made a single revolution before dumping several splintered, seaweed-tangled wooden planks onto the deck — the last remains of a discarded rowboat.
Mr. Nastase pleaded guilty to receiving stolen goods, attempted theft, and reckless discharge of a tranquilizer gun. In exchange for his testimony against the stolen-animal ring, he avoided jail time and was sentenced to fifteen hundred hours of community service for a wildlife preservation group. His job, though, would be in the mail room. He was banned from ever having direct contact with animals again.
Thanks to her extensive connections with zoos and preserves around the country, Dr. Alford had little trouble relocating her newest tenants. The meerkat went back to its owners in Rhode Island. The loon and the duck got the okay to return to the park next to Savannah’s house. The loon in particular had become a neighborhood celebrity. The piglet and chicken, friends to the end, went together to the Queens County Farm Museum.
The squirrels and chipmunks were released into a wooded area. The hamsters, gerbils, mice, turtles, salamanders, and frogs were distributed to various pet stores. The beaver went all the way to a provincial park in Canada. The rangers there were amazed that it refused to cut down trees but instead built its dam by dismantling an old piece of furniture that had been dumped by the creek.
Darren’s owl escaped while being transferred to the Central Park Zoo and took shelter in the bell tower of St. Sebastian’s Church on First Avenue, where it eventually made its home. Hoo was on First.
The chuckwalla was adopted by a large beach resort in Aruba to star in their TV commercials as Chuck Walla, Party Lizard. They guaranteed a climate-controlled home, celebrity status, and all the flies he could eat. His sauna days were just beginning.
The deal had been set to transfer the prairie dog and ferret to the San Diego Zoo. But when their female ermine gave birth to an oversized litter, it was no longer feasible to introduce a new male into the habitat. The prairie dog was still welcome; Ferret Face had to stay behind.
Dr. Alford’s brow furrowed. Savannah would be upset. The poor girl felt guilty enough. To leave the ferret homele
ss would eat her alive.
And then the phone rang.
“How about these?”
Griffin tossed over another pair of pajamas, which Ben jammed into the suitcase.
“Why not?” he said listlessly. “It’s a sleep academy. I might as well be dressed for it.”
It was a moment both of them had been dreading. While Savannah, Melissa, Logan, Pitch, and even Darren had been basking in the relief of being off the hook for the zoobreaks, he and Ben had been looking ahead to something far worse. The fateful day had finally come. Ben was departing for the DuPont Academy.
Griffin checked his watch. “I thought you guys were supposed to be leaving around noon. It’s after two.”
“My folks got a call for a last-minute conference with the pediatrician. The school nurse is there, too.”
Griffin frowned. “That doesn’t sound good.”
Ben shrugged miserably. “I’m on my way to New Jersey. How much worse can things get?”
As if on cue, a car door slammed outside.
Ben took a deep breath. “This is it.”
Griffin took an even deeper one and resolved not to make an idiot out of himself. It’s New Jersey, not the moon….
“Ow!!”
“My dad!” Ben exclaimed in alarm.
The two ran out of the room and started down the stairs to Mr. Slovak’s aid.
An unidentified furry object came streaking toward them. It leaped on Ben, knocking him flat on his back on the first landing.
Ben gawked as the creature burrowed under his shirt and made itself comfortable.
“Ferret Face?!”
“Yeah, and he nearly bit off my finger!” Mr. Slovak complained. “In the future, keep him away from me.”
“Future?” Ben echoed. “There is no future. I’m going away to school.”
“Dr. Patterson and Nurse Savage noticed that your sleeping habits were improving,” his father explained. “When they found out about Ferret Face, they got an idea and ran it by the experts at the academy. We give you back the ferret, and he keeps you awake during the day, which in turn makes you sleep better at night.”
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