“Wonder where Alma is now?” said Lala.
“Doubt she’ll flake with ten grand at stake,” said Brett.
Money clutched his heart. “Ten grand? Scott Jones and I are about to take a turn for the worse!”
Brett and I both started to say something and stopped. The way Lala was staring at Money, she looked exactly like Mrs. Ramirez. We knew she’d deal with Andrew later.
While we waited for the guest of honor, Lala sucked us into a conversation about which of our teachers we should nominate for this television show where you get a free head-to-toe makeover if you throw away all your clothes. We had it narrowed down to five candidates when the black town car pulled in front of the restaurant.
“Agim!” I said.
Lala pressed her nose against the one-way mirror. “AGIM!”
Money jumped up. “Who’s Agim, and what’s so great about him?”
Brett looked over Money’s shoulder. “Agim is the man with the car.”
My heartbeat felt like thunder in my rib cage as we watched Agim get out of the At Your Service Car Service town car, pop the trunk, and pull out a folded-up wheelchair. When he opened the car’s back door, Lala and I squeezed hands.
Then a man stepped out of the car and adjusted his cuff links.
I immediately assumed I was confused. But no. There was the wheelchair, and that was definitely Agim.
“Claudeline,” said Brett. “That’s Phil.”
In slow motion, words arranged themselves into sentences inside my skull. That’s Phil. Phil is here. Here, at the noodle shop. Agim brought him.
“Who’s Phil?” asked Money.
“Claude?” said Lala. “Who’s Phil?”
My heartbeat stepped on the gas. Blood rushed into my ears and made the room spin.
Agim brought Phil to the noodle shop. It’s not a coincidence.
When I tried to breathe, my lungs shivered.
What is going on?
Brett put his hand on my back and talked fast. “Okay. So, okay. It’s okay, Claude . . .” But his voice told me he knew how okay it was not.
I heard myself mumble, “Phil is Alma Lingonberry.”
Brett tried to make a reassuring facial expression, but he ended up crinkling his forehead in a way that said, I’m sorry.
For the second time in my life the walls of the world I knew crumbled. What would happen if I leaned backward? Would I lean right through Brett’s hand, and through the floor, and fall into a new universe, where this situation suddenly made sense?
And who had that been on the phone, when we’d set up the bust? Not Phil—his voice was unmistakable.
“Alma,” said Lala quietly.
I refocused my eyes on the town car. A female with a long braid dangling over one shoulder was ducking out of it. She was crouching, but she was on the tall side. You wouldn’t call her a girl. Agim helped her into the wheelchair.
Last out of the car was a guy in a dark suit who could’ve been Phil’s twin, except for his hair, which was so black and shiny you could almost see the sky reflecting off it.
“The no-good brother-in-law,” I said.
“Whose brother-in-law, Claude?” asked Brett, who was now gently holding my arm. “Phil’s?”
I said, “Which makes Alma Phil’s angel niece.”
I couldn’t believe I’d never asked her name.
Then, like the smell of rotting garbage on a hundred-degree day, the truth smacked me in the face so hard it almost broke my nose. Phil has been e-mailing me, pretending to be a dying kid. It took every scrap of je ne sais quoi I had not to put my fist through the one-way mirror, dive through the broken glass, and tackle him.
Brett took off his glasses and squinted. “Is that a spider’s web?”
We all squinted. The no-good brother-in-law was tucking a blanket over Alma’s lap. A tattoo of a spider’s web crept up Alma’s right cheek. They’d tried to mask it with a thick layer of orange powder.
That’s when my ancient gangster instincts kicked in. Call ’em family values, if you will. Hundreds of years of history, in New York City, and China, and Corsica, and the caves where we learned to stand up straight, and the oceans where we swam before we grew arms and legs, and where, instead of worrying about the next thing that was gonna go wrong, or what it all meant, anyway, we darted through the sea with our eyes glued open, blowing bubbles.
As much as I wanted to chuck a wok of noodle soup at Phil’s kneecaps, I wasn’t gonna let that guy walk outta this situation with no bigger problems than a hairline fracture and a laundry bill.
The Thing was near. It was time to starve it.
I turned to Brett. “Everybody has to play along.”
Brett nodded fast, like he’d been thinking the same thing. “The plan can still work, you know?”
I did know. Our bust could still work, even if the Alma we were busting was Phil.
It had to.
And he’d already made his first mistake. Phil was so concerned about increasing his profits, he hadn’t been observing me carefully. He assumed I wouldn’t rat on him for ripping people off. He’d get his cut, we’d get our cut, Rita would get whatever she got for working with the gang, and everybody’d walk away happy.
I concentrated on morphing my brain waves into radio waves broadcasting the message everybody needed to hear: Play along.
When Phil and the brother-in-law pushed Alma’s wheelchair into the noodle shop, Dad was sitting at the RESERVED table, typing on his phone. Rita was sitting beside him, digging in her purse. At the same time, they looked up, saw Phil, and froze. Phil was expecting Dad and Rita, but Dad and Rita sure weren’t expecting Phil.
Phil nodded. Dad stared. Rita blinked and fluffed her hair.
Play along, guys. Play along.
Phil checked out Mr. Chin, and the customers slurping noodles. “Where’s Claude?” he asked.
Lala elbowed me.
“She’s not here, Phil,” said Dad, slowly standing. “She’s a kid.”
Come on, Dad, I thought. Play along . . .
But Rita got my brain-radio-wave message first. She stood and sang, “Phiiil!” drawing it out like she hadn’t seen him in a year. “What a shock to find you in this . . . position! But then, I’m not one to ask questions, am I?”
Phil’s face was more hawklike than ever. “Rita,” he said in a flat voice. It was obvious he was feeling her out.
The no-good brother-in-law stuck out his hand to Rita for a shake and said, “It’s Roger.” I tried to place Roger, but I was pretty sure I’d never seen him before. Maybe him and the angel niece really did live in New Jersey.
Rita shook Roger’s hand and smiled in a dazed way, like a toothpaste model. This would be the moment for you to bust out that gangster dialogue, Rita, I thought, but it looked like her face had gotten stuck. Rita stayed as glazed over as a Macy’s mannequin.
Roger took a seat, leaned back, and crossed his legs. Phil took a seat beside him.
Dad just stared at them.
I was starting to feel desperate. “You can do it, Dad!” I said. “Play along!”
And then a voice inside Rita’s head must’ve yelled, Snap out of it!
She clapped. “Anybody need an espresso? Make mine a double today, Skippy.”
Phil nodded toward Mr. Chin. “You know this guy?”
“Of course! This is my spot!” Rita winked at Phil. “Well, my other spot.”
Mr. Chin held up a finger. He wasn’t helping a customer, but he didn’t have an espresso machine, so I guessed he was stalling.
Then Rita faced the wheelchair and clasped her hands like when she opened them, a butterfly might escape to the ceiling. At this point I didn’t see why it wouldn’t. “And this must be our Alma!”
Alma threw up a mangled-looking gang sign and belched. “What up, dog?”
Lala gasped.
Rita peered deep into Alma’s eyes, like she was the only person in the room who mattered. “My name is Rita Flannigan, and I am a tele
vision producer. As I’m sure your father told you, I’d be honored to turn your life story into a heartwarming dramatic series.”
Alma cracked her gum loudly. “Make me a friggin’ superstar.”
“That’s the idea!” said Rita.
As she sat back down, I noticed her eyebrows do a quick flinching thing I’d seen before, when I told her tall tales at Guillaume’s. I guessed she was thinking something along the lines of I can’t put somebody like her in my screenplay. Nobody’d believe it!
“What can I tell ya, Rita,” I muttered. “Once in a while, this city deals you a doozy.”
“What happens now, Si?” said Phil. “We get the cash and walk away here, or what?”
Dad sat down and scratched his scar, like he was making a decision about something. He stole a look at the hidden cameras that were transmitting all this into Mr. Chin’s living room. Then he leaned back and let the blue streak fall over one of his eyes. “If you’re down to pretend this chick is sick, and you’re ready to put ink on some paperwork?” He stuck out his hand for a shake. “We got your money, man.”
Phil’s lips cracked slightly, enough for a half smile to leak out, as he leaned forward and shook Dad’s hand.
Rita pulled the fake television contract out of the leather folder and cooed at Phil in a best-friends type of way. “Who’s happier to be making a little extra cash these days, Philip? You or me?”
“Hard to say,” he said. “I admit, when Claude told me she had a television producer, it caught me off guard. I mean, you? Tangled up with the family business? But hey.”
“We shouldn’t be so surprised,” said Rita. “You and me and Claudeline have always been in sync. It’s like, excuse me, but if you think this country was built by idealists, you don’t know your history.” She raised her eyebrows.
Phil leaned forward and spoke quietly. “That’s just it, Rita. People don’t know. They don’t care. Who do you think made this country great? Hippies ridin’ bicycles?”
Rita opened a gold case that was about the right size to have a pen inside. “It’s a free country! Make some money! Be creative for the love of—okay, I’m going off-topic . . .”
Had Phil’s laughter always had such a screechy burn to it, like a car that takes a corner too fast and skids out of control?
“I’m sorry!” said Rita. “But Phil—you know? Roger? Right?”
Roger laughed like a machine gun. Heheh. Heheheheh.
Phil raised one eyebrow and shook his head. “I tell ya, Rita, my small-scale setup with the e-mails? Better than credit-card fraud. Low profile. The lonely ones’d give you anything just to listen to them for a few minutes. And with e-mail, you don’t even have to do that! It’s like, wow, nine pages about your childhood in Estonia. Delete!”
Sometimes when you dive headfirst into the deep end, life jumps in after you with a floaty thing and a glass of lemonade. When Brett looked at me, I knew what he was thinking.
Phil just said that out loud.
And, via live remote broadcast to Mrs. Skippy Chin’s large-screen television, Federal Agent Hank Banazio had heard him.
“And that, folks, is what you call a colossal bust,” said Money.
Brett refilled his cup of tea. “Rita is excellent, Claude.”
“She should get an Oscar,” said Lala.
Despite the fact that this was the second worst day of my life, I smiled. She was my true friend, Rita the Producer. And she could sell dirty water to a hot dog.
That’s when I observed a man nearly as tall as the front window of the noodle shop running past it. Midrun he looked inside, saw Phil, and waved. Phil raised his hand, slowly, as Federal Agent Hank Banazio skidded into the shop and gave Mr. Chin a fist bump.
“Running late to an important appointment, Skip!” said Banazio, all out of breath. “But I didn’t want to pass my favorite noodle shop without saying yo to my bros! What are you cats doing indoors this sunny afternoon? Brunch? You know, I miss those days at the Wharfman’s Shore, Phil, enjoying a scalding-hot cup of that sludge you called coffee. What’s with the suit? Coming from a funeral?”
Phil narrowed his eyes at Banazio.
I heard myself whisper, “No.”
Mr. Chin glanced up at the one-way mirror. Then he said, “Nice seeing you as always, Hank. But I have some . . . soup to make . . .”
“Yep, me too, in the soup.” Banazio slicked back his hair and turned to leave. He pointed at Dad. “That daughter of yours, Simon. Sharp as a fistful of razors! Don’t worry, the USA won’t let her down.”
“No,” I said. “No, no, no!”
“You know Claude, right, Philip?” said Banazio. “Had a deep talk with her the other day. Wow! I mean, wow.” Then Banazio noticed Rita and froze. “Who’s that?”
Rita looked around.
“What’s going on, Claude?” asked Lala. “Do you know that guy too?”
Rita said, “I’m—”
Banazio interrupted her in a movie-star voice. “Single? I’m praying.”
“LEAVE!” I yelled. “YOU’RE IN A HURRY!”
Banazio handed Rita his card.
“Hank Banazio, FBI. I’m in the middle of fighting a large-scale, federal-level crime right now, but I’ll be free later, if you’d like to catch a drink? I know some great places around here. You can’t find them in the guidebooks.”
Rita’s face made an expression I had never seen before, like she wanted to call an ambulance and crack up laughing at the same time.
“Is that guy part of the plan?” asked Money.
Banazio managed to remember he was in a hurry. He saluted the room and took off running down Eighth Avenue.
“Claude, who was that?” asked Brett, in a low, slow voice that told me he already knew the answer.
“That?” I said, as every cell in my body curled up to cry, “was the worst FBI agent in the world.”
“I thought he was at Mr. Chin’s house, watching Phil give it up?” said Money.
I felt Brett looking at me, but I couldn’t look back. My heart was in my neck someplace, blocking traffic.
If Rita knew we’d just taken a nosedive into a toxic sinkhole, she didn’t let on. She slid the paperwork and a pen to Phil and Roger. “Here’s the contract. Don’t hesitate to ask questions.”
“Will the actress who plays me be hot?” asked Alma.
“Excellent question!” said Rita. “You’ll appear very appropriate for a girl your age.”
“What am I, eleven?” said Alma.
“I got a question, Rita,” said Phil.
“Ask away!” said Rita.
Phil stood. “How dumb do you think I am?” He turned to Roger. “Lights out on this thing.”
Alma leaned forward. “Excuse me? Phil? My show?” She wheeled around the table to Rita. “Lady! Write the check to my uh, friend, Joanie Gascogny—”
“Roger, shut her up,” snapped Phil. The skin on his face sagged as he walked around the table, holding out his hands like he was daring Dad to put something in them. “Something you wanna tell me, Simon? About Federal Agent Gotcha and some ideas bumpin’ around that lump you call a head? Shame on you. Your father woulda been disgusted.”
I had never seen my father snap.
Dad knocked over his chair and grabbed Phil by the shirt collar. Mr. Chin hopped over the counter yelling, “Si! Cool it!” Phil made like he was gonna throw a punch; Mr. Chin caught his arm and twisted it behind his back. Rita ran toward the cash register. Roger stumbled backward with both hands in front of his face, like he was afraid of getting socked. Alma twirled around in her wheelchair, laughing hysterically.
The last few customers left fast.
I ran through the kitchen with Brett, Lala, and Money right behind me and yelled, “PHIL!”
When our eyes met, the clock tower that looks out over Downtown Brooklyn stopped ticking, to give me time. Time to look at Phil and understand what he’d done. Time to know how things actually were, and feel how they actually felt.
Which was devastating.
Phil.
Phil?
Observing his silver hair, and his wrinkled face, I felt a tear run down my cheek. When had it happened? When had Phil’s heart gotten offed? I couldn’t believe anybody’d be born that way. Heartless.
I made my voice as strong as I wanted to feel, even though I felt sad, very sad, and that was all.
“Give it up, Phil,” I said. “You were trying to make money off people who wanted to help a sick little girl. But this girl ain’t little and she ain’t sick. It’s pathetic.”
Phil’s eyes reminded me of one of those wild dogs that prowl the edges of the Gowanus Canal, fighting for scraps. But he couldn’t look at me for long. He talked to the ceiling, to the fluorescent lights. “I coulda used you, Claude. Business is always expanding. Just had to toughen you up a little bit. You girls. You get so sensitive.”
And as he talked to the ceiling instead of me, I swore I caught a glimpse of the person I thought I knew still fighting with this other Phil—Phil the liar, Phil the thief. Maybe, just maybe, his heart wasn’t quite dead yet. Maybe it was leaving him messages with every beat, and he told himself he’d get back to it, someday.
Phil tried to yank his arms away from Mr. Chin. “Simon, tell this goon to lemme go. Unless you want me announcing to the neighborhood that you got a friend downtown.”
For a split second I was distracted. People really say that?
Dad didn’t look comfortable-uncomfortable. He looked straight-up nervous. “Good idea, Phil,” he said. “Go.”
Mr. Chin loosened his grip. Roger grabbed Alma’s wheelchair and whirled it to face the door.
Lala grabbed my wrist and whispered. “This can’t be it. Phil confessed!”
“Claude?” said Rita.
Brett looked at me like he wanted to do something but he didn’t know what.
I wasn’t sure what to do either.
On their way to the door, Phil turned back. “You know who I keep thinkin’ about, Claudeline?”
“I don’t know anything about you, anymore, Phil,” I said.
“Your grandfather. Him?” Phil pointed at Dad. “Him, Si had no hope for. But you? Reason he woke up in the morning. To think his granddaughter would go the rat route? Kills me. Just as well he ain’t around to see it.”
The Bad Kid Page 18