by Linda Urban
The man in the yellow shirt! Max had almost forgotten about him! He looked up and down Birch Street. Finally, Max spotted him. The man had crossed the road and was about to enter another building. SHOPS ON BIRCH, it said above the door.
“We can’t lose him!” said Max. He ran to the corner, and Dad followed, but just as they reached it, the streetlight turned red. Max hopped up and down. He wanted to keep running, but even spies needed to obey traffic signals.
At last the light turned green. Max and Dad ran across the intersection and down the street to Shops on Birch. Inside was a wide corridor lined with stores.
The man in the yellow shirt was gone.
Chapter
Four
“What next, Agent Pepperoni?” asked Dad.
Max was not sure. The Sneaky Book of Spy Skills had not covered this exact situation. Should they wait to see if the man in the yellow shirt came out of one of the shops? Or should they go look for him? What if the man came out of one shop while he and Dad were inside another? He might get away!
“You stay here and keep lookout,” said Max, “and I will go in each shop and spy.”
“Sorry, pal,” said Dad. “I can’t let you go running around in those stores by yourself.” Dad did not sound like an army guy or a police officer or even Agent Cheese now. He sounded like a dad.
“I won’t go running around,” said Max. “Running is not inconspicuous. I will open each door and step inside—two steps. I will take three sneaky photos and then come right back out here where you can see me.”
Dad thought for a minute. “Two steps?” he said.
“Two steps and three sneaky photos.”
“And I’ll stay right here and watch you?”
“You’ll stay right here and watch for the man in the yellow shirt,” said Max.
Dad nodded. “Okay, Agent Pepperoni. Get to work.”
Max opened the door of the first shop and took two steps in. It was a toy store. There were games and puzzles and stuffed animals everywhere. A lumpy stuffed walrus stared at him from a nearby shelf. “Have you seen a dark-haired man in a yellow shirt?” Max asked the walrus.
“Excuse me?” said a skinny saleslady.
“Nothing,” said Max. “Sorry.” He took three sneaky photos—snap snap snap—and stepped out of the shop.
“Any luck, Agent Pepperoni?” asked Dad.
“Nope. How about you, Agent Cheese?”
“Nothing yet,” said Dad.
Max dashed to the next shop. It was filled with cigars, and it smelled terrible. He held his breath, took his three sneaky photos—snap snap snap— and hurried back into the corridor.
“Anything?” he asked Dad.
“Nope,” said Dad.
Max was beginning to get discouraged. He walked a little more slowly to the next store. FRANZI’S CHOCOLATE FACTORY, it said on the door. Max took two steps inside. Franzi’s Chocolate Factory did not smell like stinky cigars. It smelled like heaven.
“Be right with you,” called a lady’s voice.
A curtain at the back of the shop jiggled, and out from behind it walked a dark-haired man in a yellow T-shirt, but he was not the man Max had been following. Another man came out. He was wearing a yellow shirt too, but he was not the man Max had been following either. Another man followed and then another. And then several women and two children and a few more men, all in bright yellow T-shirts, all munching on large wedges of chocolate. And right behind them was a smiling lady in a pink apron.
“This is just a tour group,” she said to Max. “You can come in. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared behind the curtain again.
“Hello,” said Max to the tour group.
“Hello,” said the tour group to Max. The hello sounded very happy, but also a little different from the hellos Max was used to hearing.
“No English,” said the man nearest him. “Italiano?”
“No Italiano,” said Max.
The man shrugged and smiled and pointed at Max’s hat. Then he pulled a camera from his pocket. “Cheese?” he asked.
“Sure,” said Max, smiling for a picture. Snap went the man’s camera.
“Cheese?” asked Max, holding up his own camera. The man smiled. Max took three pictures that were not at all sneaky—snap snap snap—and hurried out of Franzi’s Chocolate Factory.
“Agent Pepperoni!” said Dad. “You just missed him! The man in the yellow shirt went in there!” Dad pointed to a shop with wedding dresses in the window, just as the man in the yellow T-shirt came out.
Dad ducked behind a potted plant, but Max did not.
“Hello,” said Max to the man.
“Hello,” said the man to Max. His hello did not sound as happy as the tour group’s had.
“Are you lost?” asked Max.
“No English,” said the man in the yellow shirt.
Max held up his sneaky spy phone and showed the man in the yellow shirt the picture on the screen. “Ah!” said the man. Now he sounded happy.
“This way,” said Max. He waved for the man in the yellow shirt to follow him. Then he waved for Dad. “Come on, Agent Cheese.”
Dad and the man in the yellow shirt followed Max to Franzi’s Chocolate Factory.
“Hello,” said Max when he opened the door.
“AH!!” said the tour group.
“AH!” said the man in the yellow shirt.
“There you are!” said a lady with a yellow shirt and a yellow umbrella. She rushed up to the man, and they spoke in Italian. The man pointed to Max. “Cheese,” he said.
“Pepperoni, actually,” said Dad. “I’m Cheese.”
“Well, thank you both,” said the lady with the umbrella. “I was giving a tour of the neighborhood, and I didn’t even notice that Mr. Benetti had wandered away. He couldn’t call any of us because his phone battery died.”
“Happy to help,” said Max.
The lady in the pink apron gave Max and Dad each a large wedge of chocolate. They posed for a picture with Mr. Benetti. Snap snap snap snap snap snap snap! went all the cameras in the room.
“So much for being inconspicuous,” said Dad. “I guess there’ll be no spying in Italy for us. Our cover is blown.”
Max took another bite of heavenly chocolate. “It’s worth it.”
Chapter
Five
Before he and Dad left Shops on Birch, Max needed to stop at the toy store.
“We found the man in the yellow shirt,” he told the lumpy stuffed walrus when they walked into the shop. “I thought you’d want to know.”
“Excuse me?” said the skinny saleslady. “Nothing,” said Max, pulling his spy hat down low.
Dad whispered something to the saleslady that Max did not hear.
“I’m sure we can arrange something,” said the saleslady. “Hey, kiddo, come with me. Your dad thinks you might want to see the football trivia game we just got in.”
“I’m going to use the restroom,” said Dad. “Be right back.”
Max followed the lady to the game section and half listened as she explained the football trivia game. Mostly, he took sneaky photos—snap snap snap snap snap—until she had run out of things to say and Dad came back.
“Did you gather any important information while I was away?” Dad asked Max, but the saleslady thought he was talking to her.
“I’m not sure your son cares that much about football,” she said.
Dad looked surprised. The plastic scar Max had stuck on Dad’s forehead wrinkled, then dropped to the floor.
Max handed it to Dad, who put it in his pocket with his mustache.
“We should leave, Agent Cheese,” said Max. “Before our cover is blown here, too.”
“Roger,” said Dad. It was a pilot way to say “I agree,” not a spy way, but on a day when a helper spy had already lost his scar and his mustache, it seemed nicer not to correct him.
“I told you I was a sneaky-photo expert,” said Max.
As soon as they had returned to Dad’s apartment
, Dad had downloaded all the photos from Max’s sneaky-spy camera onto his laptop so that they could look at them together. Some of the pictures were blurry, but the rest were interesting. The lady in the turban looked very nice, and so did the man in the yellow shirt. There were artistic-looking photos of people’s legs and of the sky and the sidewalk. In the cigar store, Max had taken a very funny photo of a man he had not even known was in the room. The man was adjusting his toupee.
There were photos of all the places on Dad’s map, too. “A good day of important information gathering, Agent Cheese,” said Max.
“I guess you got to see my new neighborhood after all,” said Dad.
A loud buzzzz sounded from the box beside Dad’s front door. Dad went to it, pushed a small button, and spoke into the box. “Hello?”
“Delivery,” said a voice. “Pedro’s Pizza and an extra package from—”
“Yes, yes. Okay,” Dad interrupted. “Be right back, Max.” He left the apartment to meet the delivery man in the lobby, and Max went back to looking at his pictures.
So far, he liked the sneaky photos he had taken at the toy store the best. One made it look like a toy fire truck was flying through the air, and another showed the skinny saleslady’s wrist tattoo. And . . . what was this one? A behind-the-back shot had caught an image of the cashier’s stand and a man who looked a lot like Agent Cheese. The man had his wallet out, and something brown and stuffed and lumpy was sitting next to the cash register.
“Suspicious,” said Max.
Max looked up as the apartment door opened and Dad backed into the kitchen. “Keep looking at your photos,” called Dad. “I’ll just get this pizza on some plates.” From where he sat in the orange armchair, Max could see Dad’s head and shoulders, but the breakfast bar blocked his view of the kitchen counter and the pizza.
“Very suspicious,” said Max.
Dad set two plates of pizza on the breakfast bar. “Oh, shoot. I forgot the drinks in the fridge. Could you get them, Agent Pepperoni?”
Max set the laptop on the orange armchair and went into the kitchen to get the drinks. There on the counter was something lumpy and stuffed, wearing a hat and glasses. “What’s this?” asked Max.
Dad leaned over the breakfast bar. “Hmm,” he said. He reached to pull the hat and glasses off of the lumpy, stuffed thing. It was the walrus from the toy shop. “Oh! It’s you, Agent Whiskers!” said Dad.
“Agent Whiskers?” asked Max.
“He’s new to spying. He will need lots of training,” said Dad.
“I can train him,” said Max. “I trained you.”
“Yes, you did,” said Dad.
Max got the drinks, and Dad lifted Agent Whiskers up onto the breakfast bar. “He will need practice keeping secrets,” said Dad.
“I can tell him mine,” said Max. “When you’re not around.”
“As long as you fill me in on the weekends,” said Dad. “I don’t want to miss anything.”
Max took a bite of pepperoni and nodded.
“I wonder if we should tell him a secret now, just for practice?” asked Dad. “Do you have any secrets right now?”
Max thought about it. He did have one secret. He whispered it in the spot where Agent Whiskers’s ear would be if walruses had ears.
“Okay,” said Dad. “Now tell me.”
Max hesitated. “Tell you?”
“Otherwise, how will I know if Agent Whiskers spills the beans?” asked Dad.
Max got that someone-sitting-on-his-chest feeling again.
“It’s okay,” said Dad. “Main spies can tell their helper spies anything.”
Max leaned over and put his mouth right next to Dad’s ear, which was good, because then he would not have to see Dad’s disappointed eyes. “I don’t like football curtains,” he whispered. “And I don’t really like helmet lamps.”
“That is important information,” said Dad. “I’m glad you told me.”
Max realized he had his eyes closed. He opened them and looked at Dad’s face. If Dad had been wearing his mustache, it would have fallen in his pizza. Dad was smiling. Max’s someone-sitting-on-his-chest feeling vanished.
“Is there anything else you want to tell me, Agent Pepperoni?”
There was one more thing. “You’re a good dad, Dad,” said Max.
Dad hugged Max. “And you’re a good son, son.”
It was the most important information either of them had gathered all day.
Chapter
One
“You’ll never defeat me, Baron Mincemeat! I’ll never give—AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!” Max flicked a plastic man off the plastic brick tower he had built. The man hit the hard wooden floor, and his head flew right off.
“Ha! Ha!” A second plastic man peered down from the tower at the headless body below. Max made his voice sound dark and evil. “Stevicus has fallen to his doom.”
“Max?” said Dad. “Do you think your men could fall to their doom a little more quietly?”
Dad was sitting in the orange armchair. He had a ukulele in his lap. On the big TV was a movie, Big Bad Blues, that Dad had borrowed from Ace. Max had glanced at the movie a few times. It wasn’t very interesting. The movies Max liked were action movies, which meant people were always chasing each other or jumping off cliffs or shooting bows and arrows. This movie was a documentary, which meant nobody did anything. They just sat there and talked.
The man on the TV had a guitar he said was named Bernadette. There had been times, he said, when Bernadette has been his only friend. Times when he was low-down and blue.
Blue was another word for sad, Max knew, but he liked picturing the guitar man holding his breath until he turned the same color as Max’s bedroom walls. Dad had said he would repaint those walls any color Max wanted, but once the football curtains and the helmet lamp had been swapped for regular red curtains and a regular red lamp, Max decided blue was fine. But it would be a pretty funny color for a guitar guy to be.
Baron Mincemeat turned his back on the broken Stevicus just as the man on the TV started a song. Max could hear Dad plucking the ukulele strings, trying to match the notes that the guitar man played. When the man sang, Dad said Uh-huh and That’s right. The words in the song were about heartache and being broke and even the dog turning its back on you.
“He should sing about something else,” said Max. “Then he wouldn’t be so sad.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Dad.
“He should sing about pizza or rockets or car chases,” said Max. “He’d be happier.”
“Maybe he would,” said Dad. “But maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe when you feel bad, you can sing things that you can’t find words to say otherwise. Maybe songs help you sort through the sad or the bad or the uncomfortable.”
Max knew about being uncomfortable. There were only three chairs in Dad’s whole apartment, two tall stools at the breakfast bar and the orange armchair Dad was sitting in to watch his documentary. Max had been sitting on the hard wood floor all night. When he had been busy making adventures for Stevicus, this was okay. But now that Stevicus had met his doom, it was not.
“Ow-oooo. Ow-ooooo,” sang Max. “I’ve got the sore-butt blues.”
Dad laughed. “The what?”
Max made his face look sad, like the singer on Big Bad Blues, and sang:
“I’m sad because my butt hurts.
I’ve been sitting on the floor.
Yes, I’m sad because my butt hurts.
I’ve been sitting on the floor.
If I don’t find a couch soon, baby,
I won’t be coming here no more.”
Dad laughed again, but his face looked a little bit like the guitar guy’s had, too. He clicked off the TV. “It’s late, son. Let’s see if your bed is more comfortable.”
“Just a minute,” said Max. He popped Stevicus’s head back on its body. If anything should give a person the blues, it would be having your head fly off, but Max did not think Stevicus would sing a song about it
. Stevicus would wait for Max to snap him back together and then he would leap back into action.
“Sleep well, Baron Mincemeat,” Max whispered in Stevicus’s voice. “Tomorrow, we battle again.”
Chapter
Two
“Ba-da ba-da ba-da ba-da BOP-doo-dow.”
Dad had been humming the same tune all morning. At the coffee shop, Max heard him tell Ace that out of all the songs in Big Bad Blues, it was his favorite.
“I’ve been working on that one myself.” Ace pulled his ukulele from under the counter and played a few notes. Everyone in the restaurant looked up expectantly. “I hope you’re ordering the pancakes,” Ace whispered to Max.
“Yep,” said Max. Why wouldn’t he order the pancakes? They were the County’s Best. And Max liked the song that went with them. It was not a sad song. It was a funny song. The last rhyme in it was so bad that people always laughed, no matter how often they had heard it before.
“Are you going to Doctor Spin tonight?” Ace asked Dad.
Doctor Spin was the old-fashioned record store in town. “Why would we go to Doctor Spin?” asked Max.
“It’s Open Mike Night,” said Ace. “Anyone can perform.”
“It’s not a very kid-friendly event,” said Dad.
Max pictured evil men like Baron Mincemeat scowling down at him. “I can take it,” he said. “I’m tougher than you think.”
“You’re a brute,” said Ace, sliding a cup of hot chocolate over to Max. “I can tell. But your dad’s right. The language isn’t always schoolyard appropriate. Some other time, Leo.”
Dad had nodded and ordered his usual. Max peeked at him out of the corner of his eye. Dad had that guitar-man look on his face again. Did he have the blues because he couldn’t go to Open Mike Night? Because he was stuck with Max? The thought made Max feel bad. Low-down and blue, even. Max did not like feeling low-down and blue.
