Spy Runner

by Eugene Yelchin

  Jake watched him from the sidewalk, wondering if, and maybe even hoping against his better judgment that, Shubin was not a spy at all but a photographer, someone who took pictures for a magazine, for example, or a newspaper. But if he were a photographer, those magazines or newspapers were surely Russian, and what evil use the Commies might put such pictures to Jake did not even want to know. Just then, Shubin turned around and snapped a picture of him.

  “Hey!” Jake cried. “Don’t take pictures of me!”

  “Why not? Your mother would like one.”

  “I don’t care what she would like.”

  Shubin seemed surprised. “You don’t?”

  “No. I don’t.” He spun away from Shubin and began walking.

  “Hold your horses, partner,” Shubin called after him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Jake kept on marching away, fuming for letting Shubin defeat him so easily. Jake was supposed to be tailing the Russian spy, not the other way around. If Shubin was not lying, if he was really watching him since he got off the downtown bus, then Jake was no Spy Runner, not even close.

  That last thought made Jake feel so bad that it took him half a block down Stone to notice that Shubin’s satchel was still clutched in his hand. Startled, he glanced at it out of the corner of his eye. What would those G-men say if Jake showed up at their office right now? You asked for the evidence of Shubin’s subversive activities in the United States, sir? Here it is, sir. A bag full of evidence.

  The satchel was heavy, and when it banged against his knee, Jake realized that he was running. He lifted up the satchel and, pressing it against his chest with both hands, ran faster. He thought he heard Shubin running after him, but he did not look around, keeping his head sunk low between his shoulders and weaving along the sidewalk like a wild hare running away from a bullet.

  Jake was a fast runner, the fastest in his grade, and when, a quarter of the block down Stone Avenue, Shubin had still failed to catch him, Jake knew he had gotten away. He quickly glanced over his shoulder, kept running, glanced over again, then slowed down and halted altogether, scanning the sidewalk behind him in confusion. Shubin was nowhere in sight.

  At that moment, at the blocked intersection of Stone and Congress, the same black, two-door Buick screeched a sharp left onto Stone. The mounted policeman shouted for the driver to stop and began turning his horse. Instead of stopping, the Buick sped up, cut in front of the Ford truck loaded with flags, and squealed to where Jake stood on the sidewalk.

  Jake bolted instantly. The creeps in the Buick and Shubin were in cahoots, that much was clear. Failing to catch Jake himself, Shubin called on the Buick to lend him a hand. They had those neat two-way radios to talk to each other. Jake knew about things like that because the Commies had always used two-way radios in the Spy Runner comics.

  He heard the Buick gun its engine and, turning to look at it on the run, bumped into some fellow strolling out of a nearby doorway. The satchel slipped from under Jake’s hands and fell to the ground.

  “What’s the hurry, soldier?” the fellow said, bending to pick up the satchel.

  The Buick swerved to the curb beside them, grinding the brakes, and someone hollered Jake’s name out of the passenger’s window. Jake snatched the satchel from the fellow’s hands and darted up the sidewalk. The Buick screeched away from the curb. Behind the noise of the revved-up engine, Jake heard the mounted policemen blowing their whistles, and then the hooves of their horses clopping the pavement at a gallop.

  He ran by a gap between the buildings, caught sight of a shadowy alley, but kept running until the Buick passed it. When it did, Jake took a sharp one-eighty, slipped, nearly fell, caught himself, and dashed back toward the alley. The brakes grated behind his back, and the Buick sped in reverse.

  Jake swung into the alley, leaping over a pile of flattened cardboard boxes. Someone snagged him in midair. Yanked him toward the wall. A large hand slapped over his mouth, stifling his scream. The Buick burst into the alley. The person squashed Jake against his body and stepped into the shadows. The Buick roared by. In the flashing windows, Jake glimpsed the reflection of himself and the man who held him.

  It was Shubin.

  29

  Shubin held Jake until the Buick sped the length of the alley and, turning onto Convent Avenue, screeched out of sight. The horses’ hooves clopped to their left, and three mounted policemen galloped past the entrance to the alley.

  When he was let go, Jake’s shaky legs gave out under him, but Shubin caught him just in time. “You okay, buddy?”

  Jake drew a deep breath and pulled away from him. “Who are those creeps?”

  “What creeps?”

  “In the Buick.”

  “How should I know? I just didn’t want you to be run over, kid. May I have my bag, please?”

  Avoiding Shubin’s eyes, Jake thrust the satchel back at him.

  “Thank you for lugging it for me, my friend,” Shubin said brightly. “And now, as promised, Jake McCauley is about to solve a mystery. This way, if you please.”

  Defeated, Jake followed Shubin out of the alley and southward on Stone. As before, Shubin strolled ahead of him as if he had no care in the world, turning his head this way and that, and swinging his satchel, and even—Jake had been right!—whistling a silly and cheerful tune. Thankfully, this torture was short: at the corner of McCormick and Stone, Shubin halted abruptly, and Jake bumped into him from behind.

  “Take it easy, kid,” Shubin said, nudging Jake with his satchel toward a glass door shadowed under a faded green awning. “Right through there.”

  They approached the door on which PHOTO & REPAIRS was written in flaking gold letters. Shubin put his hand on the dusty glass and pushed. The door swung open. A thin bell chimed.

  “Welcome to the spy lair, kid.”

  Jake glanced up at him quickly, but could not tell by Shubin’s mocking grin if he was serious or joking. He turned away from Shubin and peered into the murky space. Faded photographs of sunsets, weddings, and kids playing baseball hung haphazardly on the darkly paneled walls. Below the pictures, a glass display case held boxy photo cameras, the kind that had not been in use since the war. Beside the case, an advertisement for Kodak film leaned against the wall: a full-size cardboard cutout of a pretty woman about to snap a picture with a slick camera aimed in Jake’s direction. At the sound of the bell, a brown drape hanging from a rod behind the counter moved aside, and a young woman, who looked remarkably like the Kodak cutout, stepped out and said in a pleasant voice, “Please come in. We’re open.”

  Shubin gently pushed Jake in, and the door thumped closed behind them. The bell chimed again.

  “You’re thirty-seven minutes late, Mr. Shubin,” the young woman said. “I was beginning to worry.”

  “Sorry, darling, I was held up saving this young fellow’s life from a reckless motorist.” Unexpectedly, Shubin slapped Jake on the shoulder. “This is Jake McCauley, Kathy, my landlady’s kid. I’m warning you, he is extremely curious. Watch out what you say to him.”

  “I better be careful,” the woman said, smiling. “Hello, Jake McCauley.”

  Jake blushed and nodded awkwardly. She was much prettier than the woman on the Kodak cutout, and her hair was even redder than Trudy Lamarre’s.

  “Meet my boss, Jake,” Shubin said. “Kathy Lubeck, a perfect slave driver. Makes me work around the clock. Isn’t that so, sweetheart?”

  The woman laughed. “Well, Mr. Shubin, it is hardly my fault everyone wants their pictures developed and printed and their cameras fixed by the best photo expert around.”

  “Photo expert?” Jake breathed in astonishment.

  “The best photo expert,” Shubin corrected him, and flipped open a section of the counter beside the glass display case. “Get in there, kid.”

  Shubin pushed Jake into a cramped space behind the counter in which he stood, embarrassed and confused, while Kathy Lubeck asked him what grade he was in and what school he went to, a
nd while Shubin kept bumping into him from behind, changing out of his jacket into a soiled white lab coat.

  “The moment we were all waiting for!” Shubin cried, pulling aside the drape. “The mystery solved! Spy Runner triumphs!”

  Amazed, Jake looked up at Shubin. How did he know about Spy Runner?

  “Spy Runner?” Kathy Lubeck said. “You like spy comics, Jake?”

  “Who? Me? No,” Jake mumbled. “They’re for kids.”

  Shubin burst out laughing. “Indeed, indeed, we’re all adults here. Excuse us, Kathy.” He drew Jake past the curtain and let it drop behind them. “Take a look.”

  He punched the light switch beside the door frame. A naked lightbulb flickered, mutely lighting a low workbench, tin cans filled with tools, and cardboard boxes full of spare parts along the racks of raw and sagging plywood. The stagnant air reeked of cigarettes and chemicals and dust. The room was windowless, dead quiet, but somewhere in the shadows Jake heard the buzzing of a fly.

  Whistling the same silly tune, Shubin set the satchel atop the workbench, snapped it open, and began taking the cameras out and placing them carefully onto the yellowed newspaper sheets with which the workbench was covered.

  “So you are…,” Jake began but halted.

  “Hate to disappoint you, kid,” Shubin said. “A photo technician. Not a spy.”

  Jake peered into Shubin’s face, inspecting it for signs of lying. “Why did you hide your bag under the floor, then?”

  “I didn’t, my friend, I didn’t,” said Shubin brightly, sorting out the cameras. “One board happened to be missing below the cot, and the bag must have fallen in. In fact, I’m much obliged to you for retrieving it. I was afraid it was lost for good. I’m terribly absentminded.” He winked at Jake. “It seems I also lost my suitcase with all my clothes.”

  Jake felt his face burning and quickly looked away. So Shubin was not a spy after all. He was a photo technician, the best photo expert around. Jake felt almost giddy, almost wishing to thank him for not being a spy. Ashamed for his feelings and anxious that Shubin might read what he felt on his face, Jake turned away and, with a nod toward a narrow door in the corner, said, “What’s in there?”

  “You’re going to love this, kid,” Shubin said. “It’s a darkroom.”

  He pulled the door open, stepped into a tight closetlike space, and yanked on a chain dangling from the ceiling. A red light came on.

  “Besides fixing cameras, the charming redhead slave driver that you just met makes me process film and print pictures. Sunsets. Weddings. Kids playing baseball. Family folks’ day-to-day, regular lives.” He sighed, as if he were envious of someone having a regular life. “I can pull a half-decent print from a lousy negative, but you see, my problem is…” He lifted a tray piled with snapshots out of the sink, set it on the splattered tiles below the shelving unit, and shoved it out of sight. “My problem is that on occasion, I put pictures in the wrong envelopes and make the customers angry.” He laughed and motioned for Jake to enter the tiny room. “Want to learn how it works? I can teach you.”

  Jake looked attentively at Shubin’s stooped body, which filled the narrow space, and at his face, completely dark save for his thinning hairline, bloodred below the lightbulb, and said, “Sure. Maybe. Not now.”

  Shubin leaned forward against the door frame, and his face came into the light. He seemed disappointed. “Oh, well, I thought this was something we could do together.” He hesitated for a moment, as if turning something in his mind, then said, “Do you ever think about your dad?”

  “What?” Jake said, caught by surprise. “Why?”

  “Why?” Shubin repeated. He also seemed to be surprised.

  At that moment, the doorbell chimed. Shubin looked up quickly at the drape separating the front of the store from the workshop. Behind the drape, two voices were heard. One was Kathy Lubeck’s, the other, a man’s low grumble. Shubin froze, listening intently.

  The drape moved aside, and Kathy Lubeck’s face appeared. “Excuse me, Mr. Shubin? When will Mr. Bull’s prints be ready?”

  Shubin brushed past Jake, patting his shoulder briefly, and looped around the workbench toward Kathy Lubeck. With their heads close together, they spoke in hushed voices. Jake watched them for a moment, then all at once, ducked into the darkroom, squatted, and slid out the tray that a moment ago Shubin had pushed out of view.

  The snapshots piled in the tray must have been taken in a quick succession. What they captured astonished Jake, and yet somehow did not, as if he was expecting to see what Duane had warned him about. On the snapshots, Duane’s father, Major Armbruster, was (1) climbing out of his Cadillac, and (2) shutting the door, and (3) looking around, and (4) walking up the steps to (5) a restaurant entrance with (6) a sign above it that read in flashy neon letters EL MATADOR. All the snapshots were slightly fuzzy, taken from somewhere across the street, clearly without the major knowing that he had been photographed.

  The drape swooshed along the rod. Jake leapt up, spun around, heeled the tray below the shelving unit, and stepped out of the darkroom. He saw three things at once: Shubin hurrying toward him, Kathy Lubeck pulling at the drape, and in the brief instant before the drape was closed, the man with gold teeth peering straight at him from behind the counter.

  “You better run on to school, kid,” Shubin said. “She’s giving me more work than I can handle.”

  The doorbell chimed again. The gold-toothed fellow must have left.

  “Promise you’ll come back,” Shubin said. “I’ll show you the ropes. This photo business can be fun.”

  Jake did not answer, studying his face intently.

  “What? Still suspicious?” Shubin smiled. “Tell you what. We’ll have a nice heart-to-heart in the parlor tonight, just you and me, without your mom. You can ask me anything you want. But promise not to flip my rocker over again, will you?”

  Startled, Jake took a quick step back.

  “That’s all right. I’ve done such things myself.” Shubin’s crooked smile lingered on his face as if forgotten, while his unsmiling eyes peered at Jake from behind his spectacles. “We’ll talk about your dad, too. I knew him well.”

  30

  On the way back to Congress and Pennington where he had hidden his bike, Jake tried hard to figure out what had just happened in the photo shop, but he could not make any sense of it. What were those snapshots of the major that Shubin was hiding from him? Why had that gold-toothed fellow they called Mr. Bull suddenly appeared? What were Shubin and that redhead Kathy Lubeck whispering about? And the hardest thing to understand, the hardest thing to even think about, was the mind-boggling discovery that Shubin knew Jake’s father.

  Lost in thought, Jake missed Davis & Son Hardware by a good block and a half, and had to retrace his steps. He ducked in between the buildings and found the trash bin just as he had left it. He heaved it away from the wall and reached in for his roadster. The bike was not there. Jake peered into the dark space between the wall and the bin, blinking to keep from crying. Someone had stolen his dad’s bike.

  The working day had begun, and there were fewer people on the sidewalks, fewer vehicles on the street, but many more flags everywhere. Jake emerged from the passage into the blazing light and stood on the sidewalk, watching the men in overalls high up on their ladders, hanging flags and shouting to one another. Their voices reached him from afar as if through a thick layer of wool. What would he tell his mother? That his bike was stolen? Downtown? When he should have been at school? He could just see her face, stern, cold, as she pretended that she was not angry. Sure, Jake, such things happen. Things get stolen. Not everyone is honest. And then, sighing, We don’t have money for a new bike. That’s all. You can go.

  When the image of his mother slowly faded, he remembered that something much worse than having his bicycle stolen had happened to him already. How could he go back home after what he had witnessed last night between her and Shubin? The thought that he might never see his mother again had not occ
urred to him before, and now, frightened and confused, he looked around, not understanding where he was.

  “What seems to be the trouble?” A mounted policeman was looking down at Jake from his impossible height. “Are you all right, son?”

  Jake squinted up at the policeman past the enormous head of his horse, and past its great teeth and past its glazed eye the size of a baseball that reflected Jake’s tiny figure back to him and mumbled, “I’m fine, sir.”

  “You don’t look fine to me, young man,” the policeman said, pulling on the reins to keep his horse from sniffling at Jake’s hair. “But you must smell good to Buddy. You eat oats for breakfast, or what?” The saddle creaked under him as he began turning the horse. “You’re a bit early for the parade. Shouldn’t you be at school about now?”

  “Yes, sir. I was just on my way.”

  Jake began walking away from the policeman, but then he stopped and looked over at him again. “Excuse me, sir? Do you know where El Matador is?”

  The policeman peered down at Jake for a moment, snapped his bubble gum, and said, “You mean that Mexican joint on Herbert? The restaurant?”

  “Yes, sir. I think so.”

  The policeman worked his chewing gum in silence, but if he was at all suspicious why a boy who ought to be at school was looking for a restaurant, he did not mention it.

  “Why, it’s seven blocks east up Congress and then a block south on Herbert. Northeastern corner. Can’t miss it. They’ve got a neon sign going all day.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Then, all at once, in some inexplicable way, everything around Jake came into motion. The policeman and his enormous horse were swept away, the lampposts with the American flags began to flicker past him, the storefronts sparkled and flashed in the sun, and when the parked vehicles to his left merged into one madly billowing streak, Jake realized that he was running. Noisily inhaling and exhaling the scorched air and pounding the soft concrete, he ran for seven blocks east on Congress, a block south on Herbert, and stumbled to a sudden halt at its northeastern corner before Major Armbruster’s Cadillac, parked below a sign flashing in red neon letters, EL MATADOR.