Crying Wolf

by Peter Abrahams

  “They let you carry your own pills around?”

  Wags gave him a long look. “Still in there pitching,” he said again, but without animosity this time. “No, they don’t let you carry your own pills around. Not officially. But I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll defenestrate Sidney.”

  It took Nat a moment or two to figure that one out. “And then?” he said.

  “And then we’ll be even.”

  Wags got up. They went into the outer room, Wags moving stiffly, as though he’d just returned from football practice. They gazed at the snowman. Footsteps sounded in the hall.

  “Gestapo,” Wags whispered. His fingers dug into Nat’s arm.

  The door opened. Grace came in, then Izzie. Wags let go.

  “We couldn’t sleep-we were so-” They saw Wags, broke off.

  “Sight for sore eyes,” Wags said. “To the second power.”

  “Back already?” Grace said.

  “And raring to go. Remember all the defenestrating we used to do at Choate?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Or maybe it was the next year, when I was… wherever I was. Doesn’t matter. The point is we’re going to defenestrate old Sidney.” He extended his hand toward the snowman, as though presenting a friend.

  “Sidney?” said Grace.

  Wags’s eyes narrowed. For a moment he looked almost dangerous. “Greenstreet,” he said.

  “Looks more like Burl Ives to me,” said Izzie.

  “Burl Ives? You know about Burl Ives?” Wags’s eyes went to Izzie, to the snowman, back to Izzie. “You may be right,” he said.

  Grace walked over to the snowman, removed one of its green teeth, examined it. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, sticking it back on the snowman, but in the middle of its forehead.

  Wags bit his lip. “You are?”

  “I want to pick your brain.”

  Wags went to the snowman, replaced the green tooth where it belonged. He turned to Grace. “Pick away.”

  “Still into movies?” she said.

  “More than ever. They’ve got HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, plus a decent video library. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m writing an essay.”

  “On movies?” said Wags. “What course is that?”

  “Independent study,” Grace said. “It’s on plot construction.”

  Wags nodded.

  “In kidnapping movies specifically,” Grace said.

  “Right,” said Wags. “You’ve got to focus.”

  “Seen any?” said Grace.

  “Name one I haven’t.”

  “Any ransom demand scenes that come to mind?”

  “Ransom demand scenes? Like how they go about it?”

  “That kind of thing.”

  “Excellent subject.” Wags rubbed his hands together. “Can I read it when you’re done?”

  “Why not?”

  “This is so much fun,” Wags said. “What college should be all about.” He paused. “We’re just dealing with ransom-type kidnappings, now, not the sicko or political kinds? Or kidnapping by accident or kidnapping to make a nice little family group?”

  “Ransom,” said Grace.

  “ Ruthless People, of course. Pretty recent. Judge Reinhold demands five hundred thousand dollars, unmarked and sequentially numbered one-hundred-dollar bills. On the phone. No notifying the cops, of course, that’s pretty standard. There’s High and Low, also on the phone.” Wags smacked his forehead, much too hard. “And my God,” he said. “Kurosawa. Japanese. Patterns, patterns, patterns.” He turned to Izzie. “I may be taking a job in the Ginza district.”

  “Lucky you,” Grace said. “What’s High and Low?”

  “Haven’t seen High and Low? Where they kidnap the chauffeur’s kid by mistake?” A tiny spray of spittle flew from Wags’s mouth when he sounded the s in mistake. “Thirty million yen, as I recall-going to have to find out what that is in dollars-same nonsequential thing, same specifying the denomination. Speaking of chauffeurs, there’s After Dark My Sweet. Patterns and more patterns. Bruce Dern sends a ransom note. But the kid’s got diabetes and Jason Patric’s escaped from an… asylum.” He fell silent, looked down.

  “What does it say in the ransom note?” Grace asked.

  No answer. Wags kept looking down, hanging his head, bent like one of those old people who can’t straighten. His eyes got silvery. Nat waved Grace and Izzie away. They backed out of the room, Izzie first, then Grace.

  “Maybe you should lie down,” Nat said.

  Wags looked up, didn’t seem to notice that the girls had gone, maybe because his eyes were overflowing again. “Don’t you want to hear about Night of the Following Day?”

  “Later.” But Nat didn’t want to hear it at all. At that moment, looking at Wags in his misery, Nat knew that the kidnapping thing was out. He didn’t understand the connection, but he knew. “First you’re going to lie down,” he said.

  Wags stared at him. “Good idea,” he said at last. “Your very best.” Wags started moving in that stiff way, but not toward his old bedroom. Instead, he went to the snowman, gouged all the pills out of his face in one swipe, threw the window open wide, flung them out. The cold wind blew his hair straight back, as though he were going very fast. Then he had his head out in the night and one foot up on the sill.

  Nat grabbed him, pulled him back into the room. Who would have imagined that a skinny kid like Wags would be so strong?

  “Jason Patric dies at the end, you asshole,” Wags said, wriggling free. Nat went to grab him again. Wags threw a punch. No one had ever thrown a punch at Nat before. He saw it coming, had time to block it or duck, or at least turn his head and not get hit flush on the nose. But no one had thrown a punch at him before, and this one did hit him flush on the nose. His eyes stung, he saw stars and, stepping back to recover, slipped in the snowman’s puddle and went down.

  Wags stood over him in fury. “You’re just like all the others,” Wags said, “only worse.” Then Wags’s foot swung into view and Nat started to roll; the foot with the rubber boot, not the Timberland, thank God — Nat’s last thought for a while.

  When he opened his eyes, dawn was breaking on a dark day, hardly lighter than night, and his room was cold. The window was open. His head hurt.

  He got up, went to the window, looked out. No sign of Wags, no sign that he’d jumped and been carried off or jumped and walked away. Nothing down there but the baseball cap. Nat turned back to the room. The snowman was gone, the floor where he’d stood almost dry. He closed the window.

  What next? His head hurt; he felt slow and stupid. Next would be the hospital bracelet, the phone number, a call. Where had he last seen it? Couldn’t remember. He searched the outer room, searched Wags’s old bedroom, didn’t find the bracelet. Wouldn’t need the bracelet if he could remember the name of the place. But he couldn’t. Or he could call Wags’s mom and get the name of the place from her. Rather than that, he went down on his hands and knees to try again. The door opened.

  Grace; no, Izzie, he saw, as she came in from the dark hall and the light hit her hair. Izzie. She looked as though she’d just had eight hours’ sleep followed by one of those runner’s-high workouts; her hair still wet and gleaming from the shower. He rose.

  “Nat! What happened to you?”

  “Me?”

  “Your nose.”

  He resisted the urge to touch it. “I’m fine.”

  She glanced around. “Wags cleared out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” She closed the door, lowered her voice. “It’s done.”

  “What’s done?”

  “The plan, of course. Sure you’re okay?”

  But the plan was out. “Done?” he said. “Done in what way?”

  “Don’t worry. Everything went smoothly. Grace called, as me, and said she’d been-” She lowered her voice still more. “-you know, kidnapped. We toyed with the idea of asking for yen, the kind of interesting twist that makes things authentic
, but then we-”

  “Called who?”

  “Our father. You’re acting funny, Nat, like you’re hearing this for the first time. Sure you’re-”

  “She called as you?”

  “Why not? No one can tell us apart on the phone. ‘This is Izzie, something terrible’s happened, I’m so scared,’ blah blah blah, million dollars, sequential, nondenominational, whatever it was, blah blah.” Izzie laughed; she had that untamed look of Grace’s in her eye.

  “We have to stop this.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We just do.”

  “Nat. I told you. It’s done. Grace is hiding down in the cave and the money’s on its way.”

  “The money’s on its way?”

  “It’s nothing to him-didn’t we mention that? He’s sending someone. Someone gives it to me, I give it to no one, Grace reappears. We get back to normal life. Voila.”

  He shook his head. That hurt, and had no other effect.

  “You and Wags had a little disagreement, didn’t you?” She came closer, brushed her lips against the tip of his nose, barely touching it. “Give me a kiss.”

  He kissed her. They’d kissed maybe dozens of times by now, but never like this.

  24

  “The fantasist denies reality to himself, the liar does so only to others.” Illustrate with examples from history or literature.

  — From the final-exam study guide, Philosophy 322

  All those years, growing up in this town-Inverness, the name itself snotty and hateful-all those years and he’d never once been inside a house on the Hill. Been in their yards, as he was in the backyard of Leo Uzig’s house now, the summers he worked for one landscaper or another, but never inside. They had nice yards up on the Hill, and this was a nice one, surprisingly big, with different kinds of trees and a high stone wall. A snow-covered terrace led up to double back doors, heavy and black with brass fittings, like the door at the front. No cheap sliders, no bulkhead with stairs down to the basement, nothing easy. Funny thing, though, about people who lived on the Hill, especially those who’d lived there since the time when no one locked their doors-some still didn’t lock them. Freedy tried the polished brass handle. Locked.

  He stepped back, almost knocking over the bird feeder, checked the house, hoping for balconies, windows cracked open an inch or two, maybe a One of the double doors opened. An old woman came out with a bag of birdseed in her hand, saw Freedy, stopped. She was all in white-a long white housecoat, white slippers-except for her hat, red with earflaps sticking out to the side. She looked like somebody’s old gran. He himself had no old gran, his mother’s mother, whoever that might have been, belonging to some earlier life. Not to mention the other side, where The other side. Freedy had maybe the most amazing thought of his whole life, a kind of jump or leap, like you turn the key in the ignition and then you’re there, without doing the actual drive. This, this old thing with the watery eyes and the Kleenex sticking out of her goddamn sleeve, could be his gran! They stared at each other. Freedy knew he should say something, but what? No idea. Had he run into a situation he didn’t know how to handle? That would be a first.

  He got lucky-a nice change. The old lady spoke first. “Can I help you, young man?” she said.

  “I, uh, represent the Aqua Group,” Freedy said; meant to say Agua, too late.

  “We’re happy with what we have now.”

  “With what you have now?”

  “Poland Spring, I believe. Or possibly Mount Monadnock.”

  What the fuck was she- Then he got it. “This is swimming pools,” Freedy said. “I was just checking out your space for possible swimming pool installation.”

  “Were you?” she said, making a big thing out of that were, like she was pleasantly surprised.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But it’s the middle of winter.”

  “The early bird,” Freedy said.

  The old lady smiled. “How right you are.” She gazed beyond him, scanning the trees in the backyard, the smile slowly fading, but not completely. “Perhaps you can help me,” she said, indicating the birdseed. “Before we get to the actual spiel.”

  Freedy took the bag from her, spread seed in the feeder.

  “Richie,” she called, in a yoo-hoo kind of voice, although she didn’t say yoo-hoo. “Richie.”

  “Richie?” said Freedy, glancing around, seeing no one.

  “My cardinal,” said the old lady. “Short for Richelieu, of course, but I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “None of my business anyway,” said Freedy.

  The old lady laughed. “I love a sense of humor. Swimming pools, you say?”

  “The best.”

  “But now? In the middle of winter?”

  “The early bird,” Freedy said again, since it had worked so well the first time.

  The old lady nodded. The sky had brightened slightly and he got a good look at her face. Did he resemble her, at all? “Those folk sayings,” she began; but a crow swooped down at the feeder and she threw up her hands in horror. “Oh, no.”

  Freedy took a swat at it. He was quick, yes, and a fuckin’ leg breaker, yes, but not bird-quick, so some luck must have been involved. Good luck-a nice change. Supposing, on top of all his other qualities, he was starting to get lucky too? Shudder to think, whatever that meant.

  Some luck must have been involved. Why? Because he caught that crow a pretty good one, not on the button, but close enough. It went down and stayed down, a black feather or two drifting in the air.

  “My goodness,” said the old lady, gazing down at the crow, then up at Freedy. “What a competent fellow!”

  Freedy tried to think of some aw-shucks folk saying that fit; he knew there must be some, even felt one on the tip of his tongue, but it didn’t come.

  “And modest as well,” she said. Yes, even things he didn’t do were paying off. This was the start of a lucky day, had to be. He should buy a lottery ticket, maybe go on Jeopardy.

  Something caught her eye, something red. “Good morning, Richie.” The cardinal settled on the rim of the feeder. “Isn’t he the most elegant little man you’ve ever seen?” the old lady said, lowering her voice.

  Quicker than a crow, Freedy wondered, or slower? Not the time to experiment. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  She turned to him. “I’m glad you agree. Now get on with it.”

  “Get on with what?”

  “Why, swimming pools. I was a champion swimmer.”

  “You were?”

  “At Camp Glenwhinnie. Many, many ribbons, red and blue. Do you know Camp Glenwhinnie, Mr…?”

  “Just call me Freedy.”

  “Freedy. What an interesting name. I don’t believe I’ve met a Freedy before. Camp Glenwhinnie, on Lake-is it a diminutive?”

  “Huh?”

  “Freedy. Is it short for anything?”

  “Friedrich, I guess.”

  “Friedrich? Is that true?”

  “Sure.” How dense could she be? “Like the Freed part’s in both of them,” he explained patiently, reminding himself that she was old.

  “I meant is that really your name-Friedrich?”

  “Want to see my birth certificate?” he said. Amazing. He actually had the goddamn thing in his pocket, almost pulled it out.

  Her laughter, abrupt and unexpected, stopped him. “Aren’t you the funny bunny,” she said. “How about coffee?”

  “Sounds good,” said Freedy.

  “Excuse the mess,” she said, leading him inside. “It’s everybody’s day off.”

  Freedy sat at the kitchen table, in a little nook with a good view of the feeder. There was no mess that he could see. Why would there be in a house on the Hill? It was all very nice. He stretched out his legs, trying to get comfortable. And he did, right away; comfortable, up on the Hill.

  “Richie,” called the old lady, although the bird couldn’t possibly hear her, “eat up, there’s a good boy.” The fat red fuck stood on th
e rim of the feeder, doing nothing.

  She gave Freedy coffee, poached eggs on toast, bacon-a gran breakfast. They talked about swimming at Camp Whatever-it-was on some lake whose name he didn’t catch, up in Vermont or maybe New Hampshire.

  “What kind of pools do you install?” she said.

  “All kinds.”

  “Like what, for example?”

  “There’s the Malibu. One of our biggest sellers. If that’s a little too pricey, we’ve got the Miami. The Mediterranean’s pretty popular too.”

  “This is so exciting-and they all start with M. More bacon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t I think of this before?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  “I’ll have to check with Leo.”

  “Leo?”

  “Not because of the purse strings-don’t think that for a minute. But he’s sensitive to noise.”

  “Leo?”

  The old lady nodded toward a framed photograph on the wall. Freedy went over for a look. He saw a guy with wild gray hair, wearing a tuxedo and standing at a podium; behind him sat some famous person whose name escaped Freedy. He peered at the man in the tuxedo. Laid his eyes on him but felt no chill, nothing. Did he resemble this man, at all?

  “That was last year, in Vienna,” said the old lady.

  “Your son, right?”

  No answer.

  He turned to her. She was glaring at him.

  “What’s up?” Freedy said.

  “I hate when people say that,” she said. “Have always hated, hate now, will hate. Leo is my husband.”

  Freedy tried to remember what he’d heard in the dollhouse, all so complicated. “You’re not my gran, then,” he said; said without thinking, the words just popping out.

  “Your gran?” said the old lady.

  The way she said it pissed Freedy off, all that Hill-and-flats shit, just in her tone of voice. He’d been so nice, so polite, even making sure to eat with his mouth closed. And now this. He whipped out his birth certificate, slapped it on the table in front of her, stabbed his finger at the space marked FATHER. Full name: Unknown.