Sinbad and Me

by Kin Platt

  “Hey, where you guys going?” It was as if I wasn’t there.

  Then something they couldn’t ignore made them stop dead in their tracks. It was a muffled menacing growl. The green curtains parted in the center.

  Sinbad shuffled out slowly, hi big shoulders rocking and rolling with that gait he has, like a sailor. He stopped and stood facing them, bow armed, head lowered, his lips spread in that horrible cockeyed grin, with two white tusks hooked out. His red eye glared like fire in the store light and a deep rumble came from his chest like far off thunder. He looked savage and frightening.

  Sinbad was letting those two big motionless men know that nobody got into Mrs. Teska’s room without his permission.

  Then I had to show off. “Stay, Sinbad! Stay!”

  As if he needed me to tell him! He’d already taken his stand. So what happened afterward is nobody’s fault but my own.

  The two men backed off another step slowly. Then one more. The blond man licked his thin lips.

  “That your dog kid?”

  “That’s right,” I said trying to sound a little tough, too. Sinbad really isn’t afraid of anything. I’ve got to make believe.

  “Is he as tough as he looks?”

  “Tougher,” I said. I was real smart.

  “What’d you call him?” Sinbad?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Good lookin’ animal,” he said. “I don’t suppose you want to sell him?” He reached into his pocket. Sinbad took another step forward and his growl was threatening. The man didn’t take his hand out.

  Then he said lightly, “It’s just money. Okay?” He was asking Sinbad. Sinbad cocked his head a little. The man took out a big roll of bills. On top was a hundred dollar one. “See? I wasn’t kidding. It’s money.”

  Sinbad growled again and his ears twitched. The man put the money back. “Okay. Just kidding,” he said. The dark man didn’t say anything.

  “He’s not for sale,” I said. Then, “Say, what are you guys doing here anyway? You still lost?”

  “Lost?” he repeated.

  “Yeah. Mrs. Teska told me.” I caught a funny look on his face.

  “What else did she say?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Nothing”.

  They looked at each other. Still with no expression. Maybe they talked to each other with their eyes. I don’t know.

  I was getting nervous now. Sinbad was acting too tough and I didn’t know if I could stop him. I know no bulldog ever starts a fight. But looking at him now you couldn’t be sure of anything. That growl made your hair stand up. So I tried to get it over with.

  “She doesn’t speak such good English. So if you tell me what you’re looking for or where you want to go—”

  The blond man stared at me a second. His eyes were the lightest blue I’d ever seen. They were like they were bleached. Almost white.

  “Okay, kid,” he said. “You know where there’s a good motel around?”

  I had to think. What do I know about motels? Then I remembered one on the highway.

  “There’s one called The Red Roost,” I told him. “On the highway going to Montauk. You can go the back way, the way you came,” I gestured toward the point. “It’s about five miles west. Just before you go over a little bridge. You can’t miss it. It’ll be on your right.”

  “Red Roost?” he said. “Sounds like a Commie Joint.” Even the dark man smiled a little at that.

  It’s just the name of it,” I said.

  “Okay kid. Thanks,” he said. “We’ll try it.”

  They both took a step toward the door and Sinbad had to growl another warning. “Maybe you better hold on to Tiger, here,” the blond man said.

  I stepped out from behind the counter and stood close to Sinbad. “Stay,” I said again, like I was a sergeant in the Marines. But when he’s got something on his mind he never hears me. He started to move forward. I got down on my knees and grabbed him around the chest.

  The men moved quickly. Very smoothly and together, like they were a dance team. They had the door open when Sinbad broke away and they just got it shut in time. He banged into the doorjamb so hard all the cans on the shelves rattled.

  I heard the car outside roar off in the wrong direction. Toward the village, not the back way out. I looked at Sinbad.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I said.

  He gave me a disgusted look, like he wanted to ask me the same question.

  “They’re lost,” I told him. “It wasn’t money. You just happened to be wrong.”

  He didn’t bother answering me.

  Old Mrs. Teska must have been having a very sound sleep because she didn’t come down after all that commotion. I was too nervous to do much of a cleaning job. I locked up and put the key back under the geranium pot near the top step. Mrs. Teska’s light were all out.

  Sinbad and me were almost at our house before I remembered the piece of paper in the icebox, that said Frank Teska owed somebody five thousand dollars.

  Mrs. Teska had said his name to me earlier in the day. Of course I knew Frankie. She had a picture of him on her dresser. A fellow about eighteen. Her son. The one who ran away and left her a long time ago.

  So now he was in some kind of trouble. Was that why those two tough looking men from out of town came to visit old Mrs. Teska?

  I looked down at Sinbad snuffing along happily beside me. Maybe he was right, after all, about the money.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Plot Sickens

  I didn’t get a good night’s sleep like Mom told me to.

  Sinbad and me sleep together. Usually he makes a good pillow. But this night he kept whining and going to look out the window. I tried telling him that Mrs. Teska was okay now but he didn’t believe me.

  In the morning I found out why.

  When I got to her store it looked like a hurricane hit it. Everything knocked off the shelves. Boxes turned over. Potatoes and cans and oranges and apples all over the floor.

  I felt a little sick when I saw the cash register drawer open again.

  I ran over to look. There was money in it, still the same amount as on Friday. There didn’t seem to be anything else missing either, Mrs. Teska was in her little backroom.

  “The money’s still here,” I yelled. “What did they want?”

  She stuck her head out between the curtains and, for the first time, her face looked old.

  “Is curse of my kum,” she said bitterly. That’s what it sounded like. Then she let the curtain fall back in place.

  I went over and looked in the icebox. The container of milk was till there. And the ice cubes. Only the little white note was missing.

  Well I thought, maybe she’d put it someplace else. Or maybe whoever was in the store found what they were looking for.

  I shut the door quietly. There wasn’t anything I could say to her until she spoke about it.

  I went back into her little room. Whoever ransacked the store had done a good job here, too. She was picking up a big black iron key, and muttered something about it being the key to her castle.

  Everything from the drawers of her chest was dumped on the floor as well as all the books from the bookcase, and magazines and papers

  Whoever had been looking had something special in mind. Otherwise there was no reason to go through all that old junk she had.

  I started helping her pick up and sort things. I came to one of those old-time sepia colored photographs in a cardboard album frame of a big nosed man and a woman. She reached down and grabbed it. She could bend, all right, when she wanted to.

  “I was just going to give it to you,” I said.

  She held it close to her face and I saw she was smiling. “Ha!” she said. “You think maybe I always be ugly old woman, ha? You look now. See how pretty Mrs. Teska be long time ago. That real pretty, no?”

  The way she was holding the picture allowed me to see only the half that showed a slim girl, her hair piled high, wearing an old-fashioned dre
ss with big puffed sleeves. The girl was smiling and really very pretty. She seemed to be standing in front of a boat. Of its name I could only make out the letters R and Q.

  I wanted to look closer but the old lady wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t help but wonder why her hand was covering up the man standing next to that pretty smiling girl.

  I’d caught a glimpse of him before she grabbed the picture away. He looked very tall, with thick black hair and a moustache with pointed ends. His nose was big and curved like a hawk’s. He wore a high white collar, a dark blazer and light pants. I thought I saw his arm around the girl’s narrow waist.

  “No kidding, Mrs. Teska, is that really you?”

  “You bet’cha,” she said. I be pretty girl, no?”

  Again she stared closely, almost greedily at the picture. “Oh, this very long time ago. Forty, fifty year. I be about twenty, so.”

  Then, “That silk dress. Latest style. Latest fifty year ago anyway, by Jim!”

  Just looking at the old picture seemed to take her mind off what had happened to her and her store.

  I couldn’t figure out one thing. She had always told me that she was very poor. But the girl in the old brown-toned picture didn’t look poor. If that dress was the latest style then it probably cost a lot of money. Well, I had to admit I didn’t know anything about dresses. She worked, so maybe she made enough to buy it.

  The hawk-nosed man with her, though, somehow had a rich air about him. The way he stood. Like an old rich house just stands there, relaxed because it knows how good it is.

  I didn’t have the nerve to ask her who he was. I figured she must have a reason for hiding him. But it would have helped later if I hadn’t been so darn polite.

  She said her apartment upstairs was okay. I asked her if she reported about the store to the police. “Police no believe curse of my kum,” she said.

  “It’s not a curse,” I said. “It’s robbery. Someone broke into your place.”

  She said sarcastically, “I call police. But what I say? Crazy persons break into store but not take something?”

  I couldn’t tell if she meant she had called them or not. “Maybe you’ll find something missing after you’ve checked.”

  “Bah!” she said. “Is too much trouble. Is nothing here worth five cents. Just crazy people break in, no reason.”

  Well, it was her store and her business. She put the photo in her top drawer and we went back to straightening things. She thanked me when I left and told me not to worry.

  I rode my bike down to the village to see if I could come up with a job. All it got me was two promises, in case other boys didn’t work out.

  Then I nearly ran down our chief of police.

  His whole name is Langwell Otis Laundry. Besides being Chief of Police he also is sheriff of the county, which means he’s pretty important.

  I saw him coming out of Ellen’s Diner and jumped my bike over the curb to talk to him before he got into his squad car. My brakes didn’t hold and I skidded to a wild stop.

  “That’ll be thirty days for reckless driving, driving a moving vehicle on a pedestrian walk, and disobeying an officer of the law,” he said.

  “W-who’s disobeying?” I said.

  “You better,” he said, “I don’t have time to take you to jail.”

  “Going out to Mrs. Teska’s?”

  “What happened there?”

  That’s how I found out she didn’t call the police.

  I’ve known Sheriff Landry practically since I’ve been born. He’s an old army buddy of my pop’s. I know his daughter Minnie pretty well, too. She’s a year younger than I am, but smarter. At least she never flunks anything. Once in a while, when I’m in their neighborhood, they let me use their pool. That’s probably the only thing I can beat her at. Swimming. But mainly because I’m stronger and pack more blubber.

  “How’s Minerva, Sheriff?” I asked politely.

  “She hasn’t been flunking science lately, for one thing,” he said. “Now what was that about Mrs. Teska?”

  “Well, if she didn’t tell you, it’s probably not important,” I said.

  “What is not important?”

  I couldn’t get out of it now. “Somebody broke into her store late last night or early this morning.

  He took out a long thin black book.

  “How do you know?” he asked me.

  “I just finished helping her straighten out the mess.”

  “How do you know it was late last night or early this morning?”

  “Well, I cleaned up last night a little before seven, and it was okay then,” I said.

  “How do you know it was early this morning or late last night?”

  “Sinbad tried to tell me.”

  “Why didn’t you say so in the first place,” he said. “I can only use reliable evidence.”

  “Anyway, they didn’t take anything.”

  He gave me a cold stare. “How do you know that?”

  I shrugged. “That’s what she said. She ought to know, I guess.”

  “Well, if they didn’t take anything, it’s just vandalism,” he said. “Did they break anything? Burn anything?”

  “No. Just threw things around.”

  He made some notes in the book.

  “It could be two men,” I said.

  “Two men,” he said.

  “In a new Lincoln Continental. Black.”

  “Black Lincoln Continental. Check. License plate number?”

  I scratched my head.

  “You’re a big help,” he said. “Am I supposed to believe that two men in a new expensive car like that broke into old Mrs. Teska’s two-penny store just for fun of it?”

  “I saw them in there yesterday,” I said weakly.

  “So what?” he said. “They could have run out of cigarettes?”

  “They didn’t buy any.”

  “Cigars?”

  “Nope.” Then I remembered. “The dark fellow had some.”

  “They from around here?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Then they could have been lost. Stopped to ask for directions,” he said.

  “That’s just what I thought,” I said happily.

  He closed his black book. “In that case,” he said, “forget I mentioned it.” He looked down at me for a long moment. “There’s another suspect you haven’t mentioned.”

  “You’ve got one?” I said. “Who?”

  “You,” he said. And turned away abruptly. I nearly dropped my bike on my foot. “Me?”

  “That’s right,” he said. He brushed past me, walked around his car and got in. I stuck my head in the car window.

  “Hey, Sheriff, are you kidding? Why me?”

  “Simple,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes. “You’re the only other person who has the key.”

  He switched his ignition on and the motor caught. I got my head out of the window in time and he roared off without it. But I watched him go off with a sick dismal feeling. I knew right then I didn’t have the right kind of brains for what I was doing.

  My first case, and the best suspect I turned up was me.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Red Warning Or A Dog’s Best Friend Is His Nose

  “Okay, big brain,” I told Sinbad. “Now look at the trouble you’ve got me into.”

  We were in my room lying on the bed, having another summit conference.

  “So that’s it for now. You got more brilliant suggestions?” I asked him. He just looked at me with his floppy jowls hanging down, not the least bit worried. His expression was something like: “So what else is new?”

  Suddenly he turned his head, barked, and leaped off the bed. I thought I heard a thump outside our front door. I started to follow Sinbad, who was galloping down the stairs, but heard a car and ran back to the window. I was just in time to see a small panel delivery truck turn at the crest of the hill, down Steamboat and out of sight.

  Sinbad was whining and sniffling at the door as I ran dow
n. I got a good grip on his collar and opened the door. There was a small package on the middle step. I reached out fast and got it.

  “You’re not only a rotten detective,” I said to him, “You’re even turning out to be a rotten watchdog. This could have been a package of dynamite, and then you’d know you should have barked sooner.”

  It was a small package wrapped in the brown paper butchers use. Sinbad whined softly.

  “I think it’s meat too,” I said. I broke open the little strip of cellophane that held the ends together.

  We were both right. It was meat. That nice red chopped meat called ground round or chuck that makes great hamburgers. Sinbad eats it raw.

  “I guess this is Mom’s special going-away-treat for you,” I said. “She must have ordered it from Mr. Maytag before she left.” Mr. Maytag is our butcher, in the old village. The part we call the new village, at the other end of town, has fancier places we don’t care too much for.

  I looked at our wag-on-the-wall clock in the kitchen. It said a quarter to four. Usually I feed Sinbad around five or six, but there was some good TV on Saturday night so I figured I might as well get it over with.

  He kept running around me and sniffing as if he couldn’t wait. There seemed to be about a pound of it and I plopped it all out and then pushed the dish across the floor to him. “Okay. Soup’s on. Come and get it.” We both knew it wasn’t soup so it didn’t matter. He stood stock still and cocked his head up at me. “It’s all right,” I said. “We’re having dinner early tonight so I can watch TV. They got that surfing show on around seven.”

  He sneezed and then eased himself down on his stomach slowly, pointing his black rubbery nose at the dish, resting his big chin on his front paws. He let his back feet slide out behind him. That’s the conference position. He looks like a flying squirrel that way, a grounded one.

  He made the cracked parrot sound in his throat.

  “It’s hamburger meat,” I said. “I’d have some of it myself but I still got a lot of stew left in the pot Mom cooked up for me. So be my guest.”

  He didn’t budge. Just kept his eyes fixed on the dish and whined softly. Almost whimpering, like a baby.