by Maxine Kumin
“Alton loves to cook,” Martha explained. “He likes to concoct his own recipes, he says it’s like inventing new algebra problems.”
Concoct, I thought to myself. And kumquats, my favorite citrus, a sweet and sour mouthful. They almost rhymed.
“They’re just about out of season,” The Hammer said. “But I have an inside source.”
It was time to hear Julio’s story but first, Digger warned us. “This goes no further than here in this room.”
Mom said, “Of course,” as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Julio said, “I saw the murdered man up close only once. I was in the warehouse cleaning the monkeys’ cages and giving them a few banana treats and some fresh water after their evening meal when I heard the sound of a car arriving.”
Digger prompted him. “Was your uncle there at that time?”
“Yes, because he had just come to bring me my groceries for the week. I heard him swearing, telling this other man who had just driven up that he had no right to come out here, and the other man cursed him back with words I won’t repeat, but I was scared they would start to fight. Or pull a knife or a gun.”
“So what did you do?”
“I crept out very quietly through the warehouse door and flattened myself against the wall where I couldn’t be seen but where I had a clear view of the quarrel. If there was going to be a big fight I thought somebody might get killed. I didn’t know what I would do then. I was too scared to try to come between them.” There was a pause while Julio struggled with his feelings. His voice had cracked on scared and I was scared with him.
“Take your time, son,” Digger said. “Just try to remember what you saw.”
“He stood facing me for what seemed like hours,” Julio said. “I thought, This is it. This is when someone gets killed. So I tell you I would know his face anywhere. They were quarreling about money. The man facing me was furious that Jeb Blanco was cheating him out of his fair share and if Blanco didn’t agree to a fifty/fifty split he—Carlos is what my uncle called him—said he would rat on him.”
“Rat on him?” I asked, and Digger answered, “Tell the authorities. That’s how you say it.”
“Finally, my uncle’s voice changed. You know how polite and smooth he can be in public? When you first meet him you think, Oh what a nice gentleman? Well, that’s what he did. He grew soft and pleasant and said, ‘Okay. You are right, Carlos, we are equal partners. But I don’t have the cash here. If you will wait out on the end of the jetty tomorrow night after all the fishing people have gone, I will send a cigarette boat to you with $100,000 in $100 bills and you can count them on the spot.’ ”
“Is that a little speedboat? There are always lots of them whizzing around out there.”
Digger said, “Yes,” and nodded to Julio to continue.
“Carlos agreed. Then Jeb Blanco said, ‘The little boat may be very late, maybe after midnight. It will have to come after the cruise ships have departed because the tender that brings the pilot back in also brings in the week’s money. All of that takes time. You might have to take a little nap out there while you wait.’
“Carlos said, ‘That’s no problem. I have just the thing for a nap,’ and then I saw him pat his pocket. He took out a silver flask and showed it to Blanco. Then they each took a sip to seal the agreement.”
I got very excited. “The flask! Remember Digger, when you searched the body and you found a silver flask? And we both said it could be a clue?”
“I remember, chica.”
Then Digger added, “You did a good job retelling. Now comes the unpleasant end of the story. You must come with me and the officers to identify the corpse.”
I said, “All this time Carlos’s corpse, blue with cold, has been lying on a slab in the morgue in the dark with a ticket tied to his toe labeled UNKNOWN.”
Mom said, “You’ve been watching too many detective stories on TV, Lizzie.”
Which was true but wasn’t this a detective story? And hadn’t Julio come forth to solve it? Even if it meant he would be put back in juvie and the gang might get him?
When we said goodbye and thank you to the Hammersmiths, Martha Hammersmith said, “Come see us again anytime Lizzie. It’s good for the dogs to experience new people and new situations.”
I thought the “situations” had to do with my wheelchair, but I just smiled and thanked them both again for the refreshments.
“Bye Lizzie. See you around,” Julio said. “Anytime you’d like to help me walk the dogs … I could push your chair.”
I knew that was hard for him to say. “It’s a deal. If you push I can hold a leash in each hand.”
CHAPTER 20
The rest of the school year went by in a flash. All of a sudden it was time for Josh and me to graduate from eight grade.
Teresa wanted to throw a big party for us.
“No, abuelita, please don’t fuss.” I tried to explain that it isn’t exactly a major event to graduate from middle school.
But of course she and Digger came to the ceremony in the school auditorium. The place was crammed. They sat in the front row. Mom and Josh’s whole family sat right behind them and just as the disc playing the graduation song began, Dr. Will’s cell phone started to vibrate. He whispered something to Jenna and went out, down the side aisle.
I knew we would have to cross the stage in alphabetical order, so that meant Josh would be second, behind Eloise Armansky. He scooted out in his electric chair and took his diploma gracefully from the president of the George W. Graver Academy, Ms. Hermina Rodriguez, who we almost never saw. When you’re the president of a private school grades K through 12, you’re on the road most of the time fund-raising but you make sure you get back in time for graduation. I know this because that was the way it worked at my mom’s private college in Wisconsin. Anyway, I was number 14 in line and I aimed my chair straight at the president. I stopped in exactly the correct spot, took my diploma with one hand and shook her hand with the other. She said, “Congratulations Lizzie, I am proud of you,” and I said, “Thank you,” and poof! I was a high school freshman. Freshwoman. Freshperson. I was in the first year of high school.
When it came to placement in the class, Josh and I cleaned up. He was first and I was second. Mr. Hammersmith said, “It could have been the other way around, that’s how close you were.” I knew he wouldn’t say so just to make me feel better. I know the grade for my final essay in English class could have been improved with the judicious use of commas, but if you’ve gotten this far, you’ve seen all the commas I’ve put in to make up for it. I feel I have paid the comma price.
I got an A+ in Latin at least, and a little plaque in the shape of a shell. It says AD ASTRA! which means to the stars as if this was Hollywood. Josh won the math prize, a little bust of Archimedes, the father of mathematics. It looked to me like one of those busts of Beethoven kids get at the end of the year from their piano teacher.
Well, we ended up having a party after all. While we were busy graduating, Aurelia and Tom had secretly organized a big spread out on our porch, with Tom cooking hot dogs and hamburgers on a grill they had set up out on the beach, and Lia handing ’round potato chips and pretzels and pouring quarts of lemonade—the real kind, with fresh lemon slices. There was a surprise chocolate cake with CONGRATULATIONS, GRADUATES written on the top in white icing. I couldn’t tell if the d in Congradulations was there on purpose or because the cake icer couldn’t spell. The Hammersmiths arrived with Julio and the Blaines all came. Dr. Will had returned from his emergency, Josh’s brother Greg had brought along his girlfriend who didn’t do sports but played a cool guitar.
I was sorry that Trippy had to miss the fun. She didn’t graduate for another two weeks, but when she did, it was goodbye and curtains to Mercer Middle School and hello in September to North Side High. It would be scary starting over at the bottom of the ladder as a high school freshman in a three-story brick building with Up and Down staircases and an attached
gymnasium. But in a way I envied her. She would be a minnow in the ocean of secondary school and I would be a big frog in the small pond that was Graver. In fact, my homeroom would be right next to The Hammer’s math classroom and my second-year Latin class would meet in the same room I’d been wheeling to all year.
I haven’t said so yet, but I liked my Latin teacher a lot. I liked the way she handled the four boys who always sat in the back of the room and cracked their gum and whispered to each other. She would say, “Will Sleepy Hollow please come to order?” and for some strange reason they did. Also she made many references to The Good Book, as in, “As The Good Book says, time and tide wait for no man.” That had a cool mysterious sound to it. I am embarrassed to admit that it took me a whole year to figure out that The Good Book was the Bible.
Trippy, though, would get the chance to start over, getting to mix with kids from three other middle schools and make a whole bunch of new friends. Even a boyfriend. But in a way it was comforting to know I didn’t have to make a big adjustment. I wasn’t going to think about Josh’s adjustment right now. The evening turned into a song fest, with The Hammer harmonizing with Tom and the Scarecrow in “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore” and “Kumbaya” and all of us chiming in as best we could. Who ever heard of an algebra teacher who rescued dogs and could sing baritone too? The evening ended in a kind of long drawn-out goofy version of “Good Night, Ladies.”
CHAPTER 21
Rob the Scarecrow had news for us the next day. He had agreed to take Julio’s case pro bono, which is short for pro bono publico, which means doing it for free for the good of the public. “But as it turns out, there is no case. Yes, he is on probation at the moment but it looks like Julio will be a free and independent citizen very soon.”
“Is this because Jeb Blanco was holding him prisoner? Even though he paid for his groceries, is it still involuntary servitude?”
“Well, that would be a good reason Lizzie. But that’s not why. He will be on his own the minute he turns eighteen. Then he will no longer be a minor and he will not need the Hammersmiths in loco parentis. There are no outstanding charges against him for the robbery because it was a first offense and no assault took place, so he can come and go as he wishes as of his eighteenth birthday.”
“That’s only a month away!”
“Right. It appears that his birthday is Bastille Day, July 14th.”
Mom said, “How appropriate.”
“Bastille, that was a prison in Paris, right?”
“Right. It’s the day the people stormed the Bastille, the fortress where all the political prisoners were kept.”
I could see why Mom said appropriate.
“Julio is essential to the prosecution of the case,” Digger said. “Because he is the only person besides Jeb Blanco himself who knows who the victim is. Was. Even though he only saw him that one time, Julio is positive he recognized the victim.”
“Wasn’t he scared of seeing a dead body?” I asked Rob.
“On the way over I asked him how he felt about going to the morgue. He said, ‘No, I’ve seen dead bodies before.’ I didn’t ask him where. Some things are none of my business.”
I would have asked him where, I thought to myself.
And then Digger said to Rob, “Well, it won’t be a piece of cake. You know how unreliable eyewitness testimony is. And we still don’t know who Carlos is or what part he played in this business.”
“And now he can’t tell us,” I said.
Rob agreed. “It won’t be easy to have Julio’s identification accepted without any corroboration. But I think we can make it stick.”
Corroboration. Digger used it earlier, so it was time to look it up. Well, who would guess that the root goes all the way back in Latin to robur, literally oak. To make strong as oak.
By the time Trippy arrived it was really summer. Hot. Humid. Showers followed by rainbows. Too hot to hang out on the beach but we did go swimming every day even when there was lots of grungy seaweed to squish through. She described her graduation with the high school orchestra playing “Pomp and Circumstance” as the class came forward one by one for their diplomas. How two of the boys had upended a bottle of cherry brandy filched from one of their houses just before the ceremony started and they staggered so badly lining up that they had to be escorted from the premises. Trippy’s mother said it was a scandal but her father said, “Boys will be boys.”
“Did they get to graduate? Or were they expelled?”
“No. I mean, they didn’t get to graduate with the rest of us or go to the class party after but they’re going to North Side High in the fall. I know this because one of the mothers belongs to the same book club as my mother. That boy’s mother says entirely too much is made of finishing middle school and transitioning to high school. There is absolutely no need for a graduation ceremony.”
“Especially if your kid gets drunk for it.”
One afternoon Mom drove us over to visit the Hammersmiths and let Trippy meet the dogs. The big white friendly dog with the bushy tail was gone.
“She got adopted into a terrific new home,” Julio said. “Three kids and a big backyard with a fence. They’ve had dogs before, their last one also came from a shelter and lived to be sixteen. So they were sad, but ready.”
“Is sixteen old?”
“Very old for a big dog. Little dogs live longer. Come see who took her place.”
A big ribby sort of part greyhound and part collie stood quivering by the kitchen door. “It’s all right Sasha, we can all go out—” And then Julio realized there were three steps from the back door down to the ground.
Trippy was quick to act. “You get in front and catch the chair on each step and I’ll bump it down one at a time.”
“Good job, goonie,” I told her. Once Julio turned to her, Sasha raced to the fence waiting for the rubber ball he threw. She leaped in the air and caught it cleanly, then raced back to the steps.
“She hasn’t learned how to bring it to me and drop it yet. But for a dog that was found locked in a cellar and starved almost to death, she’s doing well.”
I remembered the root cellar and shuddered. Then I remembered Julio waiting for his uncle to bring him food, never knowing when he might come or when he might turn him over to the gang.
We played with the dogs all afternoon. The shy one who hid under the table during our last visit seemed to be one of the gang now. Julio was kept busy throwing balls and Frisbees and playing chase. When it was time to go he wheeled me around the side of the house to the walkway.
“Julio’s really cool, isn’t he?” Trippy said once we got into Mom’s car and headed home. “He’s so much fun to hang with. Remember how scared he was talking to us that first time?”
Mom said, “People change. When you give them a chance they can change.” I thought of that first scared dog at the Hammersmiths who is now such a happy camper but I didn’t say anything. Julio, Julio, I hummed to myself. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trippy had been humming the same thing.
Well, we just had a few more days before Trippy had to fly back to Wisconsin and it rained almost every day. We spent a lot of time on the computer. We read everything we could find about sanctuaries for primates. We Googled Old Harmony Refuge for New World Primates in Georgia and I decided then and there to save half of my allowance from now on to contribute to their fund.
For Julio’s birthday Mom and Martha Hammersmith took him shopping for some new clothes. They had to practically drag him to the mall but he ended up with two new Tshirts, sweatpants, a hoodie, and new sneakers. We had ice cream and a cake with nothing written on it. Just before she brought it to the table, Mom lit nine candles—“Each one stands for two years because the cake will fall apart if I put any more on it”—and we sang “Happy Birthday.” Julio got up and walked away from the table and for a second I thought we had hurt his feelings. But then I realized he was feeling cared for and it was hard to handle after all that time in the Bastille.
It took almost another month to catch Jesús Ernesto Blanco. Even though there was an APB on him, he had melted into the general Miami population and there was no sign of him. APB stands for all points bulletin, which is information that goes out to all points where a criminal might try to get away, like airports and the ticket counters of train and bus stations and to state troopers who patrol highways. Miami is a big city and a lot of people come and go in it all year round. Snowbirds start coming in November to get away from the cold. They start leaving in March to get home in time for the daffodils. A lot of families come over spring break to walk on the beach and swim and salesmen and CEOs fly back and forth all year. All it took to catch Jeb Blanco was a smart guard checking everybody’s papers. He saw something fishy about the passport, I don’t know how he knew it was phony but he quietly signaled to a policeman standing nearby and Blanco was captured.
“ ‘The suspect was apprehended standing in line at the Miami airport, holding a ticket to Cat Island in the Bahamas. Blanco, his head shaved and sporting a trim goatee, was wearing mirrored aviators. He was carrying a false passport in the name of Ricardo Jimenez, a deceased fisherman, and offered no resistance. He has retained Fletcher Rockingham to represent him. Rockingham is famous for representing several notorious criminals in the past decade, chief among them the triple-murderer Rabbit Dykeman from South Carolina, who walked away on a technicality. Dykeman then flew to San Francisco and one week later committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. His motive was never made clear, but it is conjectured that he was overcome with remorse.’ ” I was reading this aloud to Mom and Brianna and Rob from the Miami Clarion & Bugle. Technicality was easy but I had a little trouble with conjectured. It comes straight from the Latin. Con means together, and jicere/jacere means to throw, and some of the things thrown together to make the word conjectured were never solved.