Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street

by Peter Abrahams

  My dad laughed, leaned forward, mussed up my hair a little. “The story may have experimental aspects, but it’s still grounded in reality.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Magic powers of the kind you’re talking about don’t exist, as I’m sure you’re aware,” Dad said. “They’re just fantasy, child’s play, or, at best, wishful thinking.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  My dad gave me a smile. “You’re a great kid, you know that?”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  He checked his watch. “How does dinner in Manhattan sound? There’s this new Indonesian place in Alphabet City, not even officially open yet, should be good.”

  “Okay.”

  He handed me some money. “I’m having a drink with Shep and his agent. Take a cab to Jane’s office, and I’ll meet the two of you at the restaurant.”

  I took a cab to my mom’s office. The thing with cab drivers was you said the location you wanted and then added “that’s near X,” so they knew you weren’t some tourist they could take on a long meander. After that, you could sit back, relax, and enjoy the view. I saw a seagull perched on a high girder of the Brooklyn Bridge, its wings folded in tight, maybe on account of the cold.

  The taxi dropped me off in front of my mom’s building in Lower Manhattan. I paid the driver, adding a tip. Dad said to tip fifteen percent, but that made the math hard, so I tipped twenty. I went inside to the security desk.

  “Here to see Jane Forester at Jaggers and Tulkinghorn,” I said, handing over my Thatcher ID, which sported the most horrible picture taken since the invention of photography. The guard turned the book so I could sign and printed a visitor’s pass. I clipped it to my jacket, crossed the inner lobby, deserted on a Saturday afternoon, and entered an open elevator. Everything gleamed in my mom’s building, including the insides of the elevators. I pressed seventy-eight and gazed at my reflection on the shiny walls. An idea hit me out of the blue: maybe I should try wearing my hair in a side part. I tried parting it on the right, the left, and the right again. The doors opened. Jaggers and Tulkinghorn had the whole seventy-eighth floor—and the seventy-ninth—so you were in the office the moment you left the elevator. No one was at the reception desk. I walked about halfway down a long hall to a closed door with my mom’s name on it, and knocked.

  “Come in,” Mom called, in her office voice.

  I went in.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  She looked up from her work. “Hi, Robbie. I won’t be long. Have fun with Ashanti?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Hung out.”

  “Did you see Chas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “The index cards.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Yeah.”

  Her gaze returned to the big stack of papers in front of her, almost like it was in the grip of some magnetic field. She frowned, scratched out a line or two, wrote in something else. “Some new magazines arrived,” she said, not looking up.

  “Okeydoke.”

  She looked up suddenly. “What have you done to your hair?”

  “Just trying a side part.” I didn’t bother asking if she liked it, the answer already clear.

  Mom’s office wasn’t huge, but it did have a little lounge-type setup in the corner—two-seater couch, comfy chair, coffee table—for having whatever kind of conversations with clients that you didn’t have at the desk. I sat in the comfy chair and leafed through some magazines. The models, celebrities, and actresses all seemed to have cool parts in their hair.

  “Sorry if you’re bored,” my mom said, some time later.

  “I’m not bored.” But I was, and Mom was good at sensing that kind of thing.

  “There’s a TV in the upstairs boardroom,” she said. “It’ll be empty. I’ll come up when I’m done.”

  “Okay.”

  I took the elevator. Seventy-nine, where the partners had their offices, was fancier than seventy-eight, with Persian rugs scattered on the marble hallway and vases of flowers all over the place. The upstairs boardroom was at the end. It had a highly polished oval table made of some dark wood, with a couple of dozen leather chairs around it. A big flat screen hung on one wall. I found the remote and sat in one of the end chairs, maybe where the big boss partner—not Jaggers or Tulkinghorn, both long dead—sat when important decisions, like about the size of my mom’s bonus, were being made.

  “How’s fifty mill sound?” I said. “No objections? Done!” And I was about to switch on the TV when I heard footsteps in the hall. I glanced down the table toward the open doorway, just in time to catch sight of a man going by. He was putting on a dark coat, switching his briefcase from one hand to another. But I hardly noticed those details. What grabbed my attention was the perfect profile, the silvery blue of the eye I could see, and the platinum hair. In other words: Egil Borg.

  He kept going, without a look my way, and passed from view. But I fully expected him to wheel around the next second—how could anyone miss the sound of my pounding heart?

  No wheeling around happened. I sat motionless in the big boss partner chair. There was only one door to the upstairs boardroom, meaning only one way out. Time passed. I rose—every movement almost painfully careful—walked around the table, and halted just short of the doorway. Then I thought, Whoa! Get a grip. I had every right to be here, visitor’s pass lawfully in place. I took a deep breath and stepped into the hall.

  Deserted. I walked a normal type walk to the elevators. The indicator light showed them all at L, except for one still on its way down. Four, three, two, L. It stayed there; they all stayed there, safe at L. I headed back along the hall, past the boardroom, reading the names on every door until I came to E. Borg. Door closed, almost certainly locked. But just to be thorough, I gave the knob an exploratory twist. And it turned. So what else could I do but give the door an exploratory push? It opened. I entered the office of Egil Borg, troubleshooter and fixer for Jaggers and Tulkinghorn.

  Egil Borg’s office was smaller than my mom’s and had no little sitting area. The window was bigger than hers, but the blinds were down, admitting thin bands of light through the slats. Also my mom’s office had her college and law school diplomas on the walls, plus lots of pictures of me, my dad, and Pendleton, and some cool posters of Provence—her favorite place on earth and where we were going to spend a whole month at some future period when she could get the time off. Borg’s walls were completely bare, except for a full-length mirror—I checked my side part again: really that bad?—and one small framed photo of an unsmiling old guy in a military helmet. I went closer and read his name—Patton—and was no wiser.

  So mostly this office was about things not being there. The main thing in it was the huge desk, shaped like a rounded L and made of black metal. There was nothing on it except a phone, a big monitor, and a sleek little keyboard. The screen was blank. I touched the x key, just to see what would happen.

  The screen lit up and a message appeared: Password Please. I had an amazing intuition: the password was please. So I typed it: p-l-e-a-s-e.

  Things happened fast after that, so fast and confusing I really can’t trust my memory to be accurate. But first a little square at the top of the monitor flashed. Camera! That little square was a camera, of course, and now it had just snapped my picture, capturing a record of what I was up to at that moment, which happened to be trespassing and breaking into someone’s computer. Proof beyond a shadow of a doubt. A whole bad chain of future events unreeled in my mind, events that included my mom getting fired and my dad pounding the pavement in search of real—I meant other—work, and me in cuffs. Then came the power, instantaneous and free of pain, shock, or headache. The red-gold beam, brighter than I’d ever seen it, flared out and struck that little square at the top of the monitor. I heard a soft sizzling sound, saw a tiny puff of smoke. Meaning what? I didn’t know.

  I backed away from the computer,
sidestepping out of its range, pocketing my glasses. My first thought, an especially stupid one, was to sneak up on the computer from behind, kick it off the desk, and jump up and down on it, leaving nothing but digital innards. But then what? Leave the innards on the floor? Somewhere in those busted-up innards, I was pretty sure, would lie my picture, waiting for some nerd to find it. That—nerd—led me to a useful thought: Silas.

  Silas would know what to do. I was reaching for my phone, foreseeing all sorts of problems, like what if I couldn’t reach him, or what if he couldn’t tell me on the phone but had to come in person, when a problem I wasn’t foreseeing suddenly presented itself.

  Ding. A soft, quiet ding, a familiar sound I couldn’t place for a second, and then did. It was the signal made by an elevator just coming to a stop. After that one ding: silence. Maybe this was one of those times when an elevator stops at a floor for no reason, opens and closes its door, and goes away. I listened my hardest, hoping for more silence. And yes! My hopes were answered. Silence and nothing but sweet, sweet—

  But no. A footstep sounded—the hard-heeled footstep of a businessman’s shoe—and then more: clack clack clack. After that, no sound. Had whoever he was gone into his office, somewhere down the hall? Clack clack clack. No, he’d merely passed over one of those Persian rugs. Another brief silence and then again clack clack clack, closer and closer. I glanced around wildly, looking for a place to hide—like behind a two-seater couch, say, which this Spartan office didn’t have. Clack clack clack. There was nowhere to hide but under the big desk shaped like a rounded L. I darted underneath, pushing the wastebasket aside.

  And right away realized what a dumb hiding place it was: surprisingly well-lit and not very spacious, considering the size of the desk. Also—but there was no time to consider the alsos. Clack clack clack. From my angle down on the floor, I saw the shoes first. Businessman’s shoes: these were called wingtips, I thought, on account of the toe cap part having perforations shaped like two wings spreading along the sides. Then the cuffs of the dark gray woolen pants, and the lower leg parts, sharply creased. The briefcase was set down on the floor, just inches from me, a fine briefcase stamped with two small gold letters: EB. The hand setting it down was big and strong. I smelled coffee and tuna. Egil Borg hadn’t left for the day, but only nipped out for a snack.

  He sat in his chair, stretched his legs. I squeezed back against the hard inner frame of the desk as far as I could, his shoe tips an inch away. Any moment now he was going to—yes, I heard him tapping at the keyboard.

  He went still. He drew his legs back, leaned forward, said, “Hmmm.” In the next second or two he’d be looking at the image of a girl who turned out to be a moron. More tapping and then: “What’s this?”

  What’s this, meaning my goose was cooked? Or what’s this, meaning he was puzzled about something? It sounded more like that second kind of what’s this, but I couldn’t be sure, and before anything happened to clear things up, his phone rang.

  He swiveled in the chair and reached for the phone. I caught a glimpse of his strong jaw and downturned mouth.

  “Borg,” he said.

  The voice on the other end sounded small and tinny, but I recognized the speaker: Sheldon Gunn. He asked a question, something about a secure phone.

  “Of course,” said Borg.

  Gunn spoke again. I could pick out a few words, like situation and time and essence.

  “Not sure I understand,” Borg said.

  Gunn’s voice rose, and now I got every word. “Are you paid to understand?”

  “Yes,” said Borg. And then backing down a little: “Within limits.”

  Gunn was quiet for a few seconds. “That’s true,” he said, “and is even part of what makes you useful. Useful within limits.”

  One of Borg’s legs began doing a jittery little thing. He extended it suddenly, kicking me right on the kneecap, a hard spot that must have felt desklike to him. “Ow” came oh so close to popping out of my mouth, but it didn’t, and then Gunn was talking, his voice low and hard to hear again. I picked out a few phrases, like “the Saudis are getting impatient” and “financing deadline” and “speed, speed, speed.”

  “Got that,” said Borg, “but we’ll have to change tactics.”

  Gunn’s voice rose. “Why?”

  “Otherwise we’ll arouse suspicions.”

  “Didn’t you take care of that blogger?”

  Slight pause. “The blog is down.”

  “Then no one will connect the dots,” Gunn said. “There have been pyromaniacs before, there will be pyromaniacs again.”

  “All right,” said Borg, “but we’ll need more cash.”

  Gunn, his voice low again, said something about short sales and hung up. Short sales were something about the stock market. My dad had tried it once, with bad results.

  Silence. After a few moments, Borg burst out with a string of bad language, then punched a key on his phone. “Henkel?” he said, his tone changed now, much more commanding. “New schedule. Twelve thirty tonight. The Goat.” Click.

  Twelve thirty tonight? The Goat? Something real bad was in the near future. My only chance now was to stay unnoticed until Borg left the office. Leave, split, up and at ’em, I thought, willing him my hardest to go. But he didn’t go, instead leaned forward and tapped again at his keyboard.

  “Something happened here,” he muttered. He sniffed the air. “But what?”

  Had he already seen my picture? What was going on?

  More tapping. Then the sound of him sipping his coffee. “Yech,” he said, and compared the taste of the coffee to dog pee, although pee was not the word he used. Then he lowered the coffee cup—a paper cup with KWIK KOFFEE written on the side—down into my field of vision. He moved it first in one direction, then another, like he was searching for something like—oh, no!—the wastebasket. But the wastebasket wasn’t in its usual place, on account of me having moved it.

  I got hold of the wastebasket—gently, gently—and began to slide it toward a spot underneath that coffee cup. Suddenly Borg made a sweeping movement and his hand brushed against mine and then bumped the rim of the wastebasket. He dropped the coffee cup inside. His hand lingered there for a moment, feeling the wastebasket rim, then patting at the air around it. I shrank back, just out of reach, not even breathing. I could smell his breath: coffee, tuna, breath mint. He patted the air some more, his strong fingers—tiny tufts of platinum hair grew between the knuckles—coming an inch from my nose. His hand paused there, and then after what seemed like centuries, moved to the wastebasket. He adjusted its position back to exactly where it had been originally, straightened in his seat, and turned to the computer.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  Egil Borg, fixer and troubleshooter, worked away on his computer. I stayed where I was, motionless under his desk, smelling coffee and tuna, and sensing his bad mood pressing against me like a material thing.

  “Blank?” he said after a while. “How can it be blank? What’s been going on here?” He kicked out again with one of his feet, nailing my knee once more, exact same spot, with his fancy wingtip. This time it hurt even worse than before.

  I rubbed my knee. This—staying under the desk and getting kicked from time to time—couldn’t go on. I was starting to get the picture, which was all about the lack of a picture, specifically mine. That was what was annoying Borg so much. He must have been thinking that his camera, or his programming, or some other thing that Silas would understand had screwed up. So soon he’d be giving up, right? Calling it a day and going home. I was starting to get a cramp in my leg, but there was no way to straighten it without bumping into one of those wingtips.

  Meanwhile Borg was back to tapping at the keys. A fixer and troubleshooter, yes, but also a lawyer, and I knew lawyers could stay at their desks for long, long sessions. Was it possible to somehow crawl out from under the desk, across the room, and out the door? I moved ever so slightly, not even crawling, more like the wriggling of a very slow worm, ju
st enough to peek out from behind the corner of the desk and check the position of the door: a football field away, and closed.

  At that very moment, someone knocked on it.

  “Who is it?” said Borg, sounding impatient and unfriendly.

  “I.T.,” said a man on the other side of the door.

  “Come in.”

  A man in jeans and a T-shirt came in, carrying a tool kit.

  “What took you so long?” Borg said.

  “Uh, sorry,” said the I.T. guy. “What can I do you for?”

  “I hate that expression,” Borg said. The I.T. guy’s mouth opened, but he didn’t say anything. “Someone entered a wrong password,” Borg told him. “The camera is programmed to take a picture of anyone doing that, but I can’t find it. I need that photo, and I need it pronto.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said the I.T. guy.

  “Just do it,” Borg told him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The I.T. man approached the desk. I ducked out of sight. He came around the back. I was just noticing that he wore big heavy boots when one of them came right down on the back of my hand.

  It hurt! And the cramp in my leg was hurting, too. Those twin hurts teamed up to try and make me utter some cry, but I kept it inside.

  The I.T. guy, one booted foot still on my hand, put his tool kit on the desk, leaned forward, and got to work.

  “Well, well,” he said after a while.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” said Borg.

  “Fried,” said the I.T. guy.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Lens, circuitry, the whole photo library,” the I.T. guy said. “All wiped out.”

  “You’re saying you can’t retrieve the photo?”

  “No way.”

  “How could that happen?” Borg said.

  “Must’ve been a power surge,” said the I.T. guy, not sounding very sure.

  “Haven’t we got surge protection?”

  “Best there is, but there’s no guarantee that—”

  “And if there was a power surge how come the rest of the computer’s fine?”