Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen

by Wendelin Van Draanen

Holly and I loved every minute of it. And at one point it hit me that keeping all those bloodthirsty monsters inside the chain-linked yard looked like a huge version of what they'd done with the cats.

  Too bad there wasn't a T rex around to cut loose on them.

  We didn't see Officer Borsch or Tony, or the Bulldog for that matter. But as they were piling people into a paddy wagon, Holly said, “They've got T.J.!” Then she laughed. “I guess he's gonna be doing the jailhouse rock tonight!”

  So we watched a while longer, but when things settled down a little, Holly and I headed home and snuck into bed. We had a real hard time falling asleep, but we agreed not to mention a word of what had happened to Vera and Meg. “They'd have a fit!” Holly said. “They'd never let you spend the night, ever again!”

  Can't have that.

  But in the morning Vera and Meg read all about it in the Santa Martina Times. Holly and I couldn't actually believe it had made the newspaper, considering how late the raid had happened and everything, but there it was on the front page, with a headline reading:

  GAMBLING RING BUSTED

  And underneath that:

  Undercover Cop Cuffs Ringleader; Saves Cats

  “Girls!” Vera called from the kitchen table. “You're not going to believe who El Gato is!”

  “Who?” we asked, and tried to act surprised when she said, “Officer Borsch! He was working undercover!”

  Grams called, too, wanting to know if we'd seen the paper. And when I told her we had, she said, “I can't believe it. That scoundrel was the ringleader! He probably had Dorito the whole time! Think what could have happened to him! What a cruel, vicious, despicable—”

  “Stop, Grams, I know! Believe me, I've thought about it plenty.”

  “Well, I hope they lock him up for a good long time!”

  “Yeah. In a nice, spiky cage.”

  But after I got off the phone, something was still bothering me. So when the Pup Parlor opened for business and Holly got tied up with chores, instead of going home I went next door to Slammin' Dave's.

  I was relieved to find the door open. I mean, if it was locked up, then maybe Dave was locked up, too. There had been so many people at the warehouse that he could have been among them, who knows?

  Inside, the place was quiet. But when I called out, “Dave? Hey, Dave, are you here?” he came out of his office. “Triple-T, nice to see you.”

  Now, the way he said it was really subdued. Like he was totally depressed. So I said, “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” he grumbled. “Just disappointed in a few people.”

  “Like Tony?”

  “You've seen the paper, I take it.”

  “Yeah.”

  He shook his head. “And I could have gotten that cop killed! I showed Tony the picture you girls took.”

  “So… you didn't know El Gato was a cop?”

  “I had no idea.” He shook his head and said, “I knew he was a little weird, but a cop? And he wouldn't explain the picture—he just said he wasn't a thief and asked me to trust him.” Dave shrugged. “But I didn't.”

  “Well, I'm glad you didn't have anything to do with it.”

  “Me? Are you crazy? I like animals. And now I'm all embroiled in this mess because Tony hired some of my boys for muscle and had the nerve to steal my old equipment. Here I thought he was just an industrious guy, but instead he was piecing together his own sick operation. It's hard enough running a decent school without having to deal with this stuff.”

  “Well,” I said, “I tell everyone you're cool.”

  He snickered. “Thanks, Triple-T.”

  “I'm serious. And by the way—I had occasion to use some of your moves the other day.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “These girls attacked me down by the mall…”

  “And?”

  “And let's just say, they bit the mat and I didn't.” I shrugged. “So thanks.”

  He laughed. “Hey, we don't call you Triple-T for nothing!”

  I laughed and said, “Bye!” But when I got outside, I decided to take another detour before going home.

  I found Hudson sitting on his porch, drinking tea, reading the newspaper. “Sammy!” he said when he saw me, but went right back to reading the paper. He didn't even offer me any tea.

  “What's wrong?” I asked him.

  He slapped the paper with the back of his hand. “Aside from this being unbelievable, it's unbelievable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are holes all over this story. There are parts that just don't make sense.”

  “It's the paper, Hudson. They get stuff wrong all the time. Besides, it happened late last night—I'm surprised they were able to report on it at all.” Then I added, “But wasn't Officer Borsch great? I can't believe he was El Gato!”

  Very slowly Hudson turned away from the paper and toward me. And the look on his face was the same look I get when things in my brain snap together.

  But before he can start quizzing me, something bright orange catches the corner of my eye. “What was that?” I whisper.

  “What was what?” Hudson whispers back.

  And then the Psycho Kitty Queen comes around the corner. Her bottom half is still shrink-wrapped in denim. She's still wearing a halter top—this time bright orange. She's still got on twenty coats of makeup, and her tiara's still perched neatly on her Barbie-doll hair, but there's something different about her.

  Something softer.

  Something sad.

  “Why, good morning, Miss Kitty,” Hudson says as she walks up the side steps.

  “Good morning, Hudson,” she says quietly, then turns to me. “Good morning, Sammy.”

  Whoa now! This was weird. I didn't even know she knew my name.

  Hudson asks, “Would you care for some tea?”

  She shakes her head, and she keeps on looking at me, but not for a stare-down. She's just looking. And finally she simply says, “I'm sorry,” then turns around and walks away.

  I was stunned. But finally I stood up and called, “Wait!” I wanted to ask her if she'd gotten any of her cats back. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, too—that I had no idea she had so many cats because she was rescuing them from the pound.

  Unlike the Bulldog, who had rescued them just to kill them.

  But she didn't wait, and Hudson held me back, saying, “Let her go, Sammy. She's a very complex person. And it seems to me she's in the middle of trying to figure things out for herself.”

  So she just walked away. And when she was gone, Hudson smiled at me and said, “So what does she know that I don't?”

  “I… I really don't know.”

  “Well, then,” he said, sitting down again. “Maybe you can start by telling me why you have your backpack with you on a Saturday.”

  “Uh, I spent the night at Holly's.”

  “And how about those scratches on your neck?”

  My hand shot up to my neck. “Those didn't have anything to do with…” I almost said, last night, but caught myself in the nick of time. Trouble is, I couldn't think of how to finish the sentence.

  “With…?” he asked me, grinning.

  So I broke down and told him. And when I was all done, he held his head in his hands and said, “No wonder you didn't want to tell me!”

  “I haven't told Grams, either. And I think I probably shouldn't. You know how she gets.”

  “And with good reason! Do you realize how lucky you were?”

  “Yeah,” I said, then kicked my high-tops up on the rail. “Seems I've been lucky a lot lately.”

  On my way back to the Highrise, I stopped at Madame Nashira's House of Astrology. I wasn't really expecting Gina to be there, but there she was.

  “Ooooh,” she said when the sunlight streamed in. Then she saw it was me. “You're telling me it's morning already?”

  I laughed. “Did you pull another all-nighter?”

  “It's your fault,” she said, hurrying over with a scroll in he
r hand. “This is fascinating! Absolutely fascinating!”

  “What is?”

  “You and Heather! You were born two minutes apart, in the same astral plane …you're like cosmic twins!”

  “Cosmic … no, we're not!”

  “Yes, you are!”

  “You're wrong.”

  She put her hand on her hip and wobbled her head. “Don't you argue with Madame Nashira!”

  “But Gina, she's evil!”

  “Look at this! Just look at this.” She spread the scroll and said, “This is a montage of the two of you.”

  “You put us together?“

  “Don't worry, honey. I've got your individual birth chart done.” She waved a hand behind her desk. “It's over there.”

  “So why'd you do this one?”

  “Because it's interesting”

  It was a birth chart, all right. With a wagon-wheel design and signs of the zodiac and all the usual stuff. But this one looked like it should come with 3-D glasses. There were red markings and, sort of shadowing them, green markings.

  She points and says, “You're the red one—”

  “I'm the red one? Why'd you make me the red one?”

  She rolls her eyes. “You are being so… annoyable.”

  “Heather should be red. She has red hair!”

  “That's irrelevant.” Then she eyes me and says, “And if it's anything like her mother's, it comes out of a bottle.” She goes back to the chart. “But the point is, look at these!”

  “What about them?”

  “She is your shadow. She moves slightly behind you—”

  “Through my whole life?” My whole face scrunched.

  “Possibly.”

  “No! Don't say that!” I was shaking my head like crazy. “And this doesn't explain anything!”

  She rolled up the chart and frowned at me. “Fine. Be that way.”

  I followed her around her desk. “You don't understand! Heather's evil—I don't want her lurking around my whole life!”

  Gina looked straight at me. “Well, she's your shadow sister.”

  “Sister? Sister?”

  “That's what it's called.”

  “But you don't mean that literally, do you? I mean, she can't really be my sister, can she?” I was freaking out. Totally freaking out.

  “Honey, honey, calm down. I can't tell you if she's your real sister or not. You're gonna have to have a heart-to-heart with your dad about that one.” She sat down and said, “All I'm saying is, the two of you have a close cosmic connection. You were thrown into the cosmos in the same astral place and time.” She leaned forward. “Avoiding her is as futile as avoiding your own shadow. Being afraid of her is as ridiculous as being afraid of your own shadow.” She handed me my birth chart and birth certificate. “Capisce?”

  I meant to say yes, but I shook my head. “No! I don't capisce !”

  She laughed. “Well, honey, like it or not, that's what's in the stars.”

  When I finally made it back to the Highrise, I was more confused than ever about Heather. I was also beat. So I hid my birth chart under the couch, told Grams that yeah, I had had fun at Holly's but hadn't gotten enough sleep, then cuddled up with Dorito and took a nice long nap on the couch. And I probably would have slept clear to dinner, only at around three-thirty there was a soft tap-tap-tap at the door.

  I did not feel like hiding in Grams' closet. I was way too wiped out for that. So when Grams gave me the signal to scoot along, I shook my head and whispered, “Can't I just be visiting you?”

  She shrugged like, okay, then opened the door. Only the minute I heard “Hello, ma'am,” I knew I should've dived for the closet.

  Grams tried to sound calm. “Why, hello, officer. How can I help you?”

  “I was hoping you'd let me have a word with Sammy.”

  “Oh,” she said, fluttering a little, “you're in luck! She's here visiting me.” She let him in, saying, “You're quite the community hero, aren't you?”

  He didn't really say anything in reply. He just sort of gave a grunt.

  I sat up straighter and tried to look awake. “Hi, Officer Borsch. How are you?”

  He said, “Fine,” but he looked really uncomfortable.

  “Must've been a late night for you, huh?”

  He nodded, then raised an eyebrow Grams' way. So I shook my head, letting him know that she didn't know I'd been involved in the raid.

  That made him even more uncomfortable.

  “Samantha's not in any trouble, is she?” Grams asks, and all of a sudden she's not looking too happy.

  “No, ma'am,” Officer Borsch says.

  “Well, can I offer you something to drink? Coffee? Juice?”

  “Maybe some water? My stomach's kinda…” He wobbles his hand.

  So Grams scurries off, saying, “Have a seat.”

  He nods, then looks at his choices—the couch next to me, or an easy chair across the coffee table.

  To my surprise he picks the couch.

  And when he finally does speak, he sort of snorts first, then says, “You know, Sammy, I have a nephew and two nieces—they're all about your age, and they're brats.” He looks at me and says, “I also see a lot of the negative faction of society. A lot of kids gone bad. So, as I suppose you already know, I don't like kids.”

  I laughed. “I sort of picked up on that.”

  “What you may not know is that I've been passed up for sergeant five times in a row.”

  I didn't know what to say to that, so I just waited.

  “And I've been pretty frustrated about it. So when I caught wind of a gambling ring, I foolishly decided to do a little legwork on my own—just to prove myself. I should have known they were on to me—I should have known Dave would show them the picture. But when Tony offered me a job, I wanted to believe I'd broken in. I wanted to believe I'd be able to get to the bottom of things, then spearhead a sting operation.” He gave me a lopsided smile. “It didn't quite work out the way I'd planned. I almost wound up dead.”

  “But you didn't,” I said, pulling a face to remind him to watch what he said. “And now, like Grams says, you're a community hero … and you deserve to be.”

  Grams handed him some water, saying, “Well, you're sure to get a promotion after this!”

  He nodded and took a sip. “So it seems.”

  Then he just sat there for the longest time. Finally he put the glass down, took a deep breath, and held it a minute before saying, “So like I said, I don't like kids. Never wanted kids. But….” His chin quivered a little as his voice drifted off. But then he took another deep breath and said, “But if I had one like you, I wouldn't trade her for the world.”

  All of a sudden I had an enormous lump in my throat. I mean, I couldn't believe that Officer Borsch had actually said that. And I sure didn't know what to say in return, because if I had a dad like him, well, I would have traded him. In a hot second!

  But right away he cleared his throat and stood up. “Well. That's what I came to say. Now I should be going.”

  I jumped up and said, “Wait! Uh…you can't just go… aren't you going to tell us what happened to those monsters you caught last night?” I looked at Grams and whispered, “Do we have any cookies or anything?”

  “I'll check,” she said, and hurried off to the kitchen.

  So Officer Borsch sat back down and started talking. About how those cat-killing creeps'll be stuck in their own little cages for a while, about how good it felt to be able to return the cats they saved to their owners. And when I asked him, “Zippy? Do you know if one of them was named Zippy?” he said, “The one on the poster? Yeah, and he's fine.”

  And then, when I asked him if he was the one who had taken the posters down, he said, “Nah,” and eyed Dorito. “I didn't take down the one for a speckled orange cat, either.”

  Normally that would have freaked me out, but now it didn't. Now I realized that Officer Borsch had known for quite some time where I lived, but I didn't have to worry abou
t that anymore.

  My secret was safe with him, just like his was safe with me.

  And somewhere in the middle of us talking, Grams came in with cookies and two large glasses of milk, then disappeared into her bedroom. I guess she sensed we could talk better when she wasn't around. Later, though, there'd be no way to avoid telling her what had happened.

  My grams is no dummy.

  Then Officer Borsch explained that Tony had been spreading rumors about the Kojo Buffet as a way to get people to suspect them when it came to missing cats. He also told me that two of the cats they'd rescued were Miss Kitty's. “I had a little chat with her this morning, and without going into any real details, I told her that if it wasn't for you, her cats would be dead this morning.” He shook his head. “I don't know if it sank in, but I tried.”

  “You know, I think it did. She apologized to me at Hudson's today.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding.” Then I asked, “Was she embarrassed to see you?”

  “Me? Why?”

  I grinned. “Because she had the total hots for El Gato.”

  He made nervous little noises in his throat, then said, “Well, we all know the woman's nuts.”

  I laughed, then said, “Yeah, but I do feel kind of sorry for her.”

  “You feel sorry for a woman who hosed you down?”

  “I know. I did used to think she was evil, but then I found out that the reason she's got so many cats is that she rescues them from the pound.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah. Plus Hudson says she's stuck in time, trying too hard to hang on to the past.”

  “Hmm,” he said, then he stifled a grin and asked, “So who was that young man I saw you with on Hudson Graham's porch?”

  I tried to stay cool as I answered, “Oh, just Heather Acosta's brother.”

  His eyes widened. “You don't say!” Then he chuckled and shook his head. “The plot thickens….”

  So there we were, Officer Borsch and me, having cookies and milk, actually enjoying each other. And I started wondering what this meant for the future, and also what it said about the past. I mean, how long had Officer Borsch known I lived with Grams? He couldn't say he knew, because I was breaking the law and he'd have to do something about it, but it was clear to me now—he knew.