Miss Maisie turned in the door and went through it and started down the stairs.
“Merry Christmas, Miss Maisie,” said Mrs. Clearwater. “May all your Christmases be white.”
* * *
Mrs. Clearwater chuckled and put her hand on Robby’s head. “Robert Clearwater, eh?” Her hand slid down the back of his head to his neck. She gave him a gentle shake. “You like that name, Robert?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It’s a name you can remember, uh? You can say it without stumblin’ over it, forgettin’ parts of it.”
“Yes, ma’am. You’re America, ma’am. You said.”
“I’m the melted pot, bo’ weevil. Trouble with a pot, Robert, is that the melted part always sinks to the bottom.” She laughed and shook him gently again. “Lordy Lord, I’m goin’ to have much trouble explainin’ you, bo’ weevil. Why don’t you go out and play with the other children?”
“Should I, ma’am?”
“There somethin’ out there you afraid of, bo’ weevil?” She turned him around to face her and looked into his eyes. “You go out and play. You have nothin’ to fear with all the other bo’ weevils around. Pretty soon I’ll come out and see how you are.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t be afraid, bo’ weevil.”
“I won’t, ma’am.”
Mrs. Clearwater turned toward the sink. “I’ll just get a rag, and wipe up this month’s contribution from the social-workin’ agency.”
In the street Robby helped the others build snowmen until the snowplow came along and knocked them down. The giggle of kids pelted the back of the snowplow with snowballs. After the snowplow had gone by once each way they built snowforts on both sides of the street and had a long, wicked snowball fight.
As people came into the street from the buildings Robby noticed that many stopped and looked at him and walked along and looked back. Lordy Lord, I’m goin’ to have much trouble explainin’ you, bo’ weevil, Mrs. Clearwater had said. Robby could not think about that just then. He was warm and happy and breathing hard and the cold felt good against his cheeks and even Ugly Mary came out to play. Robby busied himself protecting her in the snowball fight until he discovered her aim was much better than his and she could throw farther. It was simple, them against us/us against them, and the reality of play became the nearest and nicest and best and almost only reality. He lost his school cap in a tussle in the snow and reminded himself to look for it later.
Mrs. Clearwater, in her overshoes, left the house, went up the street, around the corner. In a while she came back, carrying a shopping bag so full the newspaper stuck out of the top of it like a flagpole.
They played Beat the Devil and dark fell on them as gently as snow had fallen the night before.
Just at full dark Mrs. Clearwater came out of the building again in her overshoes and again she walked up the street and turned the corner. When she returned she was carrying nothing.
A while later she called from the window that it was time all her bo’ weevils came in. In they trooped, wet and warm and tired.
They tried to dry their clothes by wringing them over the sink and laying them on and near the radiator. Robby’s knees and his cheeks were chapped and Mrs. Clearwater put some grease on them. During the long process of supper, using bowls and glasses one after the other, there were many laughs and wrestles. Francine stood on her head while others counted off the seconds for a full seven minutes. Pauley almost succeeded in teaching Blanchard, the youngest, how to wiggle his ears. Ugly Mary sat against the blankets with her skinny knees up, reading. Wellmet tried to get another cockroach race started but he could find only one cockroach. The cockroach Arthur had put in the jar the night before was dead.
They brushed their teeth and got under the blankets early because the radiators were working so hard at drying clothes the room grew cold. Under the blanket Robby kissed Ugly Mary and she kissed him back. When the light went off they put their arms and legs around each other and she went to sleep.
Robby was almost asleep when he remembered his school cap. Dark had fallen too soon and too fast for him to find it in the snow.
24
Trapped!
Robby saw his school cap first thing next morning, the instant he looked out the window. It was across the street in Tony Savallo’s left hand.
Robby backed away from the window. The room was still cold but Robby was much colder.
Tony Savallo was on the sidewalk across the street, the other side of the farther snowfort. His arms were folded across his chest. Watching all the buildings at once he paced up and down the sidewalk, stepping lightly over the hunks of snow. He walked ten meters along the block one way, then ten meters back. Within two or three blocks of the railroad station, with the help of the school cap, Tony Savallo had located Robby Burnes.
“Curse my cap!” Robby said to himself.
The room was full of chatter, but Robby heard none of it. He picked his clothes off the radiator and dressed as quickly as he could, imagining terrible things. Robby was a danger to the Clearwater giggle of kids. He was a danger to Mrs. Clearwater. He had led a murderer to them. He imagined Tony Savallo bursting through the door of the little apartment and shooting everyone in sight. Robby’s hands shook so much it took him forever to tie his shoelaces.
He put on his overcoat.
“Where you goin’, bo’ weevil?” asked Mrs. Clearwater. “You ain’t had breakfast yet. Anyway, you’re comin’ with me today, to help me clean the Baptist church.”
“Just cold, ma’am,” said Robby. He shouldered his collars up around his neck and rubbed his hands together. “Just cold.”
Doling out breakfast to the others she gave him a long look.
Robby went behind the brown curtain. It took forever for him to relieve himself. From his overcoat pocket he took the envelope. It was wet from yesterday’s snowball battle. He tore it open. The one hundred one-hundred-dollar bills were held together by a wide elastic. He stuffed the bills back into his pocket. He tore the envelope into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet.
Back in the main room Mrs. Clearwater gave him another curious look. She was busy feeding the children. Heddy was arguing with Wellmet about Leonardo and the airplane and the Wright brothers.
Robby brushed his teeth. As he did so he moved so that his body concealed the little brown table from the rest of the room. With his left hand he took the ten thousand dollars out of his pocket and stuck it in a cereal box at the back of the table. He pushed the money down into the box so it was not visible. Then he moved back and spat into the sink and rinsed the toothbrush.
“You haven’t eaten, bo’ weevil,” Mrs. Clearwater complained to him.
“Later, ma’am,” he said.
He moved into the crowd of children around Mrs. Clearwater and vibrated with them there a moment. Heddy challenged him: “Who invented the airplane?”
“What?” Robby said. “I don’t know.”
Slowly he backed toward the wall near the door. He stumbled over a mattress. His fingers found the wall. Behind his back they danced along the wall until they found the doorknob. He waited until Mrs. Clearwater turned her back to help Willy put on his steam-stiffened mittens. With her back to the room, Ugly Mary was putting on her coat without dropping her books. Her movements were slow and dignified. Robby opened the door only wide enough to let himself through. Standing in the corridor he closed the door quietly.
He ran down the two flights of stairs lightly. He stood at the front door, looking through the thick window into the street. At first Tony Savallo was not in the window. Then he sauntered into view from the left. The uneven thick glass made his body seem to waver.
Robby went along the corridor to the back of the house. Under the staircase were bashed-in rubbish barrels. Newspapers and tin cans had spilled out of them onto the floor.
At the back of the corridor he found the door to the cellar open. The cellar stairs were blocked by cardboard boxes
, some empty, some full of rubbish. He started down the stairs, hoping to wade through the mess. On the fifth stair down he was up to his shoulders in cardboard boxes. Some of them were not moving easily for him. With his foot he groped for a sixth stair and found none. Crouching on one bent knee, sinking in boxes, he felt for a seventh stair and found none.
Quickly, quietly, he ran up the five flights of stairs to the top of the building, and then up another half flight. At the top was a metal-sheathed trapdoor. The bolt was rusted. He took off his shoe and banged at the bolt until the door was unlocked. Robby pushed against the door with his hands and then with his hands and his head and then with his hands and his shoulders. He opened the trapdoor just enough for a few flakes of snow to fall through. On the roof the trapdoor was blocked with snow and ice.
He put back on his shoe and ran quietly down the stairs again to the front door. Tony Savallo was exactly centered in the window, facing the house. The window’s distortion made him look very tall, his shoulders very wide.
From upstairs came the sound of a door opening. Arthur shouted, “No, no, Marconi invented macaroni!” There was a great clatter of feet as the children started down the stairs.
“The Wright brothers are not wrong,” insisted Arthur. “They couldn’t be!”
Robby dashed along the corridor again and squeezed himself in among the rubbish barrels under the staircase. He turned to face the corridor and sat cross-legged on the floor. Eleven pairs of feet thundered on the stairs over his head.
The front door opened and slammed, opened and slammed, opened and slammed as if it were waving the children good-bye. The last pair of feet down the stairs Robby knew were Ugly Mary’s. They were slow, deliberate. Robby knew she was reading as she walked.
“Mr. Plane invented the airplane,” said Francine. “Plain Mr. Plane!”
Behind Ugly Mary the front door closed quietly.
Robby heard another door open, somewhere up in the building. Then he heard Mrs. Clearwater’s voice. “Bo’ weevil? Robert? Where are you, Robert? Hunh! Must have forgot and gone to school with the others! Now what will happen…”
Upstairs the door closed.
Robby looked around at the rubbish under the stairwell. He was staring at himself. He stretched his legs out into the corridor and reached for the newspaper. It was the Monday Evening Star. The photograph of himself on the front page, albeit large, had been cropped. The New York Star had used less of his photograph, bigger, in each new edition. This version ran from the peak of his school cap to the bottom of his chin. His hand was missing from his chin, now, and his chin looked blotted. It was as if The New York Star were consuming him slowly while making his head balloon. He leaned his back against a rubbish barrel and smoothed the newspaper in his lap.
EXTRA
$100,000 RANSOM PAID
ROBBY’S RETURN IMMMENT
BY THADEUS LOWRY
Because of the heartwarming, fulsome and wonderful response of the readers of The New York Star, the $100,000 ransom for the safe return of 10-year-old Robby Burnes has been paid.
His return to safekeeping is expected imminently.
The kidnapping of the orphaned Duke of Pladroman has had the New York Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation thoroughly baffled. Every telephone call to this reporter for The New York Star from the kidnappers has been traced, but, because of electronic confusion, only traced back to the police station assigned the job of tracing the call.
However, once it was reported in this morning’s New York Star that the ransom—every penny of the $100,000—had been raised successfully from the readers of The New York Star, this correspondent of The New York Star received a very special telephone call.
In metallic, measured tones the heartless kidnapper gave this correspondent of The New York Star precise instructions as to how to turn the money over to their criminal hands for the safe return of little Robby Burnes.
Again efforts to trace the call (with the help of the New York Telephone Company) led back only to the police station administering the trace.
INTREPID
Dutifully, with no thought for personal safety, your correspondent followed the kidnappers’ instructions precisely. The kidnapper ordered that this reporter, in delivering the ransom to them, was not to be accompanied or followed by any member of the police or F.B.I.
The kidnapper’s precise words were: “If there’s a cop anywhere in sight when you deliver the cash the kid’s head will end up in the East River and his body in the Hudson.”
Carrying $100,000 cash in a brown paper bag (the publisher of The New York Star donated the first $5,000 to The Robby Burnes Ransom Fund) this correspondent made his way to Grand Central Station. Working through the commuters and the holiday throng this reporter reflected on how joyous an occasion is Christmas. If the joyous revellers in the railroad station only knew who passed among them, and what he carried in that brown paper bag! At what risk to himself! And for what purpose!
Your intrepid correspondent crossed Grand Central Station attracting little or no attention, and, pretending to be an ordinary person going about routine business, placed the bag containing $100,000 in locker number 1313. He closed the door without locking it, and without taking the key.
His instructions were not to wait about, but to leave the station as quickly as possible.
NEWS
Police have just reported to your correspondent for The New York Star that locker number 1313 of Grand Central Station was checked before noon.
It was found empty!
The brown paper bag containing $100,000 ransom for Robby Burnes (age 10) has been taken.
Police efforts to apprehend the kidnappers of Robby Burnes have been to no avail.
The kidnappers have gotten the ransom money and have gotten away scot-free!
The nefarious voice on the telephone, dripping evil with every utterance, assured your correspondent for The New York Star that if ransom was paid exactly in accordance with their instructions, 10-year-old Robby Burnes would be returned to safekeeping in some unannounced location today, Tuesday.
Now we will see if there truly is honor among thieves…
The newspaper Robby read under the stairwell had darkened. A shadow had fallen across it. Robby realized he had left his legs and feet sticking out into the corridor. Robby inhaled. He took in as much breath as he could. A bulk, a person, a man was standing over him. In Robby’s hands the newspaper began to shake.
“Robby?” a man’s voice asked quietly. “Robby?”
25
Mort à Guerre
“Thadeus Lowry!”
“Perusing my deathless prose?”
Robby first had seen the two brown shoes near his own, then the ferule of a walking stick lower to the floor. His eyes snapped up over the vested belly, over the hanging overcoat and suit coat and over the double chins to the flushed face, bulbous nose and protruding eyes. He gulped. “No, sir. I’m reading your story in the New York Star.”
Robby felt as if he had screamed, when he hadn’t. He was breathing as unevenly as if he had screamed.
“I’ll have you know,” announced Thadeus Lowry, “that you are reading the second-to-last Thadeus Lowry story for that rag, The New York Star. After a day of breathless waiting, a dramatic pause, an update by that hack, Ronald Jasper, reporting there is no news from the police on Robby Burnes, my last story about you shall appear in tomorrow morning’s Star. The very last word.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve already written it.”
“What’s it about?”
“Your safe return.”
“Have I returned safe?”
“Of course,” said Thadeus Lowry. “After a latish breakfast, which we call brunch here, dreadful word, of course, but an appetizing enough pastime—”
“But, sir, I haven’t returned safe.” Robby scrambled up from the rubbish and out from under the stairwell. “That man standing across the street—Tony Savallo—is going to sho
ot me. How did you find me, anyway, Thadeus Lowry? How did you know where I was?”
“Never mind about that now.” Thadeus Lowry seemed as perturbed at the thought of Robby Burnes being shot as at the thought of having to rewrite his copy for the early edition. “What do you mean Tony Savallo is going to shoot you?”
“I saw him shoot a man Saturday night. In the street. I was in Tony Savallo’s truck and I saw him through the window, and he saw me, and he’s been chasing me, he shot at me twice—”
“Tony Savallo.” Thadeus Lowry reflected. “So Tony Savallo shot Ginsy O’Brien.”
“He shot someone, sir.”
“He’s shot lots of people. It’s what he does.”
Thadeus Lowry stepped to the front door and looked through the distorting glass. Robby peeped over the lower edge of the window frame.
“Odd I didn’t notice him when I came in,” said Thadeus Lowry. “Yet I did observe your legs sticking out from under the stairwell. It does go to prove,” sighed Thadeus Lowry philosophically, “that one is inclined to see only what one is looking for.” He turned away from the door. “That is Tony Savallo, all right.”
“You know the Savallos, sir?”
“I’ve known Guido Savallo for years. We were both members of the 1928 crime commission. He had some remarkably instructive insights as to how crime is organized, I must say, but was extremely reticent about specific names and dates. A very theoretical fellow, he seemed. Tony Savallo I’ve been observing lurking about since he made his bones at the tender age of sixteen.”
“Do you know him to speak to, sir?”
“I wouldn’t speak to him.”
“You wouldn’t, sir? Nothing you might say—”
“He’s a hit man for his Uncle Guido.”
“A hit man?”
“He murders people.”
“I know, sir.”
“By the dozens.”
“No one to talk to, sir? You talk to everyone.”
“Conversations with Tony Savallo have a way of being short and terminating with a bang.”
“He really wants to kill me, sir.”
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