The Bad Kid

by Sarah Lariviere

  I hadn’t expected to be so paranoid just from walking into an FBI office. Maybe it’s in my blood. Everybody who looked me in the eye and sized me up, I looked her in the eye and sized her up. The security guards, the secretaries, the people walking down the hallways. One lady, the lady in charge of letting people into some room where you wait to get into some other room, stared at me so hard with her blue eyeliner and black eyeballs and I stared at her so hard with my nostrils twitching that a whole group of people in suits and white shirts stopped in front of us. One of them asked Dad, “Is everything all right here?” Which shocked the lady into being more appropriate, and so I won the staring contest and was satisfied. I gave the group my innocent girly smile. It’s modeled on Lala’s, but like the smile of a certain hostess we know and love, it Needs Improvement. A couple people smiled back, but they looked more suspicious, not less, so I switched back to my plain and regular face.

  “We’re waiting for Gotcha,” said Dad.

  A tall guy laughed. “Gotcha!” he said.

  “Gotcha!” said the lady next to him. And they kept going down the carpeted hallway.

  When they were far enough away, I whispered, “Do people around here seem shady to you?”

  Dad patted my back. “You get used to it.”

  “What’s with the ‘gotcha’ thing?” I asked.

  Then a man with shoulders as wide as a sideways double-decker tour bus walked up to Dad and shined his teeth at him. I mean, he aimed his teeth at Dad and turned them on like a flashlight, and looked down, way down, at me. His voice was booming, like a microphone was hiding in his shirt collar and we were on the news, or the Saturday Night Live version of the news, where the reporters have half a brain and the news comes out as jokes.

  “Claudeline Feng LeBernardin, born eleven years ago under an auspicious sign, heir to the Song family throne. Wow. I mean, wow.”

  A tan hand appeared in front of my face. I didn’t shake it.

  “Let’s step into my office,” said the man.

  Dad followed him.

  I didn’t move. You understand what I’m doing here, right, Grandpa? I thought.

  And as I stood there, I swore I heard him answer.

  (In English, not Russian. And his voice wasn’t warbly; it was normal.)

  You’re in charge now, Claudeline. Remember? I don’t have to understand. You do.

  Dad turned back. “You okay?”

  I nodded and followed them.

  The FBI guy escorted us down a hallway with paintings of deflated flowers on the walls, and into an office. He sat behind a heavy-looking metal desk and pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. Dad sat in a dull green chair. Another pad of paper and a box of crayons that had never been opened were stacked on a table beside a small rocking chair. Guessing that was my spot, I took a seat and rocked.

  “Get many tweens in here, sir?” I asked, looking at the crayons.

  “You’re not the first, C-Feng.” The FBI guy pressed his palms together and rested his fingertips on his lips. “What’s the matter? Catch you off guard? Claudeline Feng LeBernardin, street name C-Feng. Gotcha!   ”

  I looked at Dad. He shook his head.

  “So Simon,” said the FBI guy. “No Sara today?”

  “No dice,” said Dad.

  The FBI guy studied his fingers like they were a word search he’d half quit working on. “C-Feng, C-Feng. Your mother is the ancient walled land whose gates admit neither friend nor foe. What mortal can penetrate those sphinxian guards?”

  “In English, Hank,” said Dad.

  The FBI guy spun his chair to gaze out his window. “Your Sara is a tough cookie.” His chair kept spinning until it faced us again. “Anyway, cats, you’ve got new information for me? A line on some illegal weapons, C-Feng? Black market? Money laundering? We’ve touched on a lot already, but whatever you can add will be a heap of help for my ongoing below-the-radar, barely funded investigation into the gangs of Sunset Park.”

  “May I ask your name, sir?” I said.

  The FBI guy snapped a card out of his jacket in one flick, like he’d been practicing at home in the mirror. “Federal Agent Hank Banazio. But just like you, C-Feng, the fellas call me by my street name.”

  “Let me guess,” I said.

  All at once, now: Federal Agent Hank Banazio, Dad, and I said, “Gotcha!”

  Banazio (I refuse to use his “street name”) made me wonder if we’d regret including the FBI in our plan. But instead of worrying, I took the next step. On his desk I spread out a few Alma flyers I’d collected from the neighborhood that morning.

  “There’s a girl,” I said. “Or should I say, somebody pretending to be a girl.”

  Banazio leaned over the flyers. “What’s this? Some twisted poetry cult?”

  “Alma here is taking donations,” I said.

  Banazio held a flyer to the light, like he was inspecting it for fingerprints or a secret code. “Mmmm-hm,” he said.

  Was Banazio insane? I snuck a look at Dad, but he didn’t notice. He was spaced out, like he was prepared to spend a few hours being totally bored.

  Finally Banazio asked, “So, C-Feng, what’s the plan?”

  I checked Dad again—still absent. So I said, “Well, I was thinking we could get whoever’s being Alma to show up someplace. To, like, take a donation? And you could spy on her from behind the curtain, or something. And catch her in the act!”

  Banazio clapped and pumped his fist in the air, as giddy as one of those disco roller skaters in Central Park. “I haven’t seen potential for a Gotcha! moment like this one in years!”

  “Really?” I said.

  Dad seemed to be tuning back in. “Hold up, Hank.”

  “Give me a date, a time, and an address, and with the USA as my witness, I’ll be there to take credit for your hard work,” said Banazio.

  “You don’t wanna know the plan?” I said.

  Banazio stood. “The less I know, the better I feel. Delegating is the key to managerial success.”

  “Hold up!” said Dad.

  Banazio picked up a duffel bag. “Let’s do it again tomorrow, Simon. I’m off to the gym. Tell Sara howdy-do. See you when I slap on the cuffs, C-Feng!”

  Dad was totally awake now. “Hank—no! I don’t want my kid busting some criminal!”

  I stood. “Oh, come on, Dad. You have no idea where I am, ever. For all you know I spend every day at the Port Authority bus station screaming ‘America the Beautiful’ at the top of my lungs.”

  Dad flared his nostrils at me. “You are not doing this all by yourself. You are eleven years old.”

  “So you’re both in!” Banazio gripped Dad’s shoulder. “Si, gimme a buzz with the deets ASAP. Let’s lock up the Brooklyn bard before she beatboxes the borough into oblivion.”

  “We’ll call you!” I said, as I stuck out my hand for a shake. Banazio’s hand was warmer and gentler than I’d imagined it would be.

  “What just happened?” said Dad.

  “I never miss an opportunity to play ball in Chinatown,” said Banazio in a dreamy voice, on his way out the door. “Claudeline LeBernardin, welcome to the FBI.”

  Dad scooted inside the taxi beside me and slammed the door. Our driver was having a phone conversation that required extreme yelling in a thick Irish accent. As soon as Dad told her where we were going, we shot into traffic and she went back to yelling. I was pretty sure she had too much on her mind to be driving, let alone eavesdropping, so I turned to Dad.

  “I love that corny fed!” I said. “Where’d you find him?”

  Dad rubbed his face like he was waking himself up. “Everybody on Eighth Avenue knows Gotcha. He’s always hanging around, trying to get people to talk to him and give him information about crimes or whatever.”

  “I didn’t know him,” I said.

  “Your mom and I aren’t perfect parents, but we get some things right.”

  “If you don’t like Banazio,” I said, “why are you ratting to him? Or whatever the
nice word for that is.”

  Dad drummed his knees with his fingertips. He really did have a talent for looking comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. Maybe he was comfortable being uncomfortable. Or uncomfortable being comfortable.

  Finally he said, “Like everybody says, Claude, I’m not like Grandpa.”

  I felt in my pocket for the creased-up, worn-out photograph I’d been carrying around all summer. As our taxi wove through Manhattan, Dad and I looked at it, together. Grandpa’s hair was still black, and Dad was positively a butterball.

  “This was on your wall, right?” said Dad. “From the trip we took after my mother died.” He looked more closely. “You know Grandpa traveled half the world on foot, on buses, even on a raft to get to New York City? It nearly killed him. Cost a ton too. He told me that every time he turned over the cash he earned sweating in some terrible job to pay the people who brought him to the United States, he swore he’d figure out how to get on the other side of that transaction. Someday people would hand cash to him, you know?”

  “Why didn’t he just open a store?” I asked.

  “You say ‘just,’” said Dad, “like it’s so easy. But him, yeah. Pop could’ve done anything.”

  I thought about all those nights at the Wharfman’s Shore, Grandpa shouting to the whole tavern how he was gonna leave everything to me instead of Dad.

  “Grandpa used to try to make you depressed that you weren’t as tough as him, didn’t he?” I asked.

  “My dad was tough in one way. Tough isn’t really my thing. You, though, you’re as tough as Grandpa,” said Dad. “It’s what you wanna do with it.”

  I noticed that Dad’s eyes were sort of the same color as Sixtieth Street. An easy color, like walking home.

  “BQE ain’t movin’,” said the taxi driver. “We’ll cut through downtown.”

  The rain started again, in smacks and splats. It sounded like a radio station coming into tune.

  When Dad leaned forward, his hair fell over his face. “Now you and me gotta clarify some stuff. And listen to me, too, because I am your father.”

  “Stop using your CDs as Frisbees?” I said.

  “No.” Dad adjusted his earrings and rings. Then he looked me right in the eye and said, “I am your plan.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Meaning,” said Dad, “if you really can get this Alma girl—this whoever—to show up someplace, I’m the one who’s gonna be in the room with her. Or with him, or with them. Not you.”

  “What?” I said.

  Dad took my chin. “Listen to me. I don’t know why you’re all Sherlock Holmes on this thing, but it sounds positive, and I’m proud of you, so I’m gonna back you up. But I won’t put you in the same room with another thug. That’s something I promised myself. I wanna be a better parent to you, Claude. And so, make some kind of plan, and tell me what you come up with. If I’m cool with it, it’s gonna be me in there, doing it. That’s my rule.”

  When Dad let go of my chin, he looked extra uncomfortable, but I knew he was right. The real Alma might be dangerous. Dad was looking out for me. That was when another idea poked its head through the smoke-colored day, swooped through the taxicab window, and landed, fully formed, on my shoulder. I rested my head against Dad’s arm and smiled.

  “You got it, Dad,” I said.

  His voice cracked, like I’d caught him off guard. “Really?”

  “Mm-hm,” I said. “We’ll be in a different room.”

  “Who is we?” asked Dad.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “So, hey. This Banazio guy ain’t a mental case?”

  “Oh, he is.” Dad motioned with his hands like he was smoothing a tablecloth. “Totally.”

  He had to be. Banazio was gonna let us set up Alma ourselves, instead of opening a file on her, dumping it in a bucket, and forgetting about it.

  Perfect.

  A JOURNEY OF A KAZILLION MILES

  It’s one world, pal. We’re all neighbors.

  —Frank Sinatra

  Green-Wood Cemetery is bigger than the park, and quieter, since people are not there for fun. Brett, Lala, and I wound our way through its stretched-out hills while the wind and the trees had a conversation, the wind blowing their branches one way, the trees whipping them back. When we got to my grandfather’s grave, a light sprinkling of rain joined in, letting the wind blow it, and the trees catch it and drop it again, until it settled in the grass and sank into the dirt.

  We sat cross-legged on the ground. Dampness soaked through my jeans. It made me feel connected to the spot where Grandpa Si was turning from a living person into a memory.

  Brett and Lala never asked why we were meeting at the cemetery where my grandfather is buried. I wasn’t sure what I would’ve told them, if they had. It was almost like they knew, or they didn’t know but it didn’t matter. It was amazing to me that even with friends like each other, we’d gotten suckered by Alma. She kind of was a sniper.

  I told them about my meeting with Banazio and explained the idea I’d had in the taxicab about how we could set up Alma. While I talked, the fluttering leaves on the trees sounded like clapping. I felt like Grandpa Si was with us, cheering us on. Like he was the wind shaking the branches so the truth could fly out and cover the sky with exclamation points. Whether Grandpa’s help would’ve been a good thing or a bad thing, I couldn’t tell you. But I liked to think he’d want to help, even if it was just a wish, or a dream.

  “Jeez, Claude, you got a lot farther with this than I did,” said Brett. “All I learned is that lingonberries grow wild in the forests of Scandinavia. Apparently, they make great jam.”

  “Kelvin told me Alma’s e-mails are untraceable without, like, a warrant,” said Lala. “But that’s all I got. I love your idea!”

  Brett nodded. “If we can pull it off, it’ll be classic.”

  We all agreed on the next step: I needed to have a chat with a certain television producer. While I tried to track down her number, I overheard Brett and Lala analyzing Money’s fear of leaving his house. Money may not have been the least shady friend a kid could dig up, but talking about him was sort of like our hobby.

  I don’t know if normally over in television land they get a bunch of kooks making crank calls asking to speak to Kermit the Frog or what, but it took half an hour for me even to get to Rita’s assistant’s assistant, who asked me a pile of trick questions, such as “You say that you are acquainted with Ms. Flannigan via whom?” and “Did you want to put your mother on the phone?”

  I suppose it didn’t help that I didn’t know Rita’s last name was Flannigan and not “The Producer.” I mean, why would I?

  Finally: “Margarita Flannigan’s office,” said Rita’s actual assistant; then I got put on hold for another ten thousand minutes.

  And then: “Claudeline! What a treat to hear from you!”

  Rita’s phone voice sounded jolly and confident. I could almost see her sitting at a glass desk with her legs crossed on top, and several security guards who had been alerted to a random phone call from a possible psycho leaning over her with their earphones plugged into our conversation.

  “Can you please give me your cell phone number, for future reference?” I asked.

  Then I explained our plan to bust Alma, and how Rita could help us. At first she was skeptical. Then she had a ton of questions. Then she sounded nervous. And then she sounded confident again.

  Too confident.

  “Your plan is adorable,” said Rita, “but you’ll have to find someone else to help you with it.”

  Adorable. I suspected she’d say something like that. Rita’s confident voice could not cover the fact that she was a total scaredy-cat.

  I paced between graves. Fake flowers glowing neon bright shimmered in the breeze.

  “We need you, Rita,” I said. “You, specifically. Because you’re the only legit rich person I know.”

  “Crimes and setups and the FBI and this type of thing? It
’s normal for you, Claude,” said Rita. “But it’s not my world! My father was—”

  “If it’s not your world, why are you writing a screenplay about it?” I said.

  There was a pause.

  “I told you I shouldn’t write a screenplay about your family!” said Rita.

  I paced the other direction. “Wrong answer, Rita. Wrong. The right answer is that everybody lives in the same, messed-up world. And since you and me met, we’re even more in each other’s worlds. The question is, can you do something now that might make a difference, or are you gonna stay stuck on the same barstool, in the same city, having the same depressing life forever?”

  There was another pause.

  “Ouch,” said Rita.

  “You can put that whole thing in your screenplay,” I said.

  “Oh, Claude,” said Rita. “I don’t know about making a difference in the world. But I do, do, do want to finish my screenplay. Sheesh. Helping you would give me the opportunity to polish up my gangster dialogue. And I did meet lots of characters at the carnival. Oh, I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t . . .”

  I got Brett and Lala’s attention, gave them a thumbs-up and mouthed, She’s in.

  I’ll tell you right now I’m not gonna describe every eensy-weensy detail of every baby ant that stomped through every muddy footprint of the rest of the steps of our plan to take out Alma. I’m not trying to bore my own face off.

  So let me put it like this. When I hung up with Rita, we all walked back to Sixtieth Street. I left Brett and Lala at Brett’s place and ran home to talk to Dad, since, as he put it, he was the plan, and I needed to make sure he was down with it.

  I found Dad sitting in the kitchen with his feet crossed on top of the table, eating microwave popcorn from the bag. He kept saying stuff that sounded like philosophy to me, such as “There is no reason that any of this should be happening” and “My life went from tragic to ridiculous in a hot second” and “Watching television all summer will give a kid some wack ideas. I shoulda enrolled you in soccer, or whatever, right?”

  But the important thing was, Dad was in.

  The only person left to convince was Alma.