by Lesley Kagen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Nana Fazio screamed Il mio Dio . . . il mio Dio and ran toward me in her long black dress, swinging her bosoms belt over her tiny head like a lasso. Rasmussen laughed a little and said, “Until we meet again,” and ran off toward the alley. I felt something moving around in my head like you did if you stood up too fast and I saw some shooting stars even though it’d started raining so hard. Troo told me later that I’d fainted dead away just like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind.
When I woke up, we were coming down the Fazios’ front steps. I thought that Rasmussen had probably dodged Nana and run behind the Spencers’ garage and taken off that pillowcase, and here he was with me in his arms and nobody was doing a darn thing to stop him. Where is Troo? I wanted to scream but nothing came out. I tried to push off him, but he acted like he couldn’t even feel that. Like I was a bug and he didn’t even notice. Then I relaxed a little because I figured out that he’d never murder and molest me in front of the whole neighborhood. Oh no, not tricky Rasmussen.
Held close to his chest, my face pressed against his badge number 343 as the rain came down, I sniffed his uniform, which smelled like my socks did after sledding, and that made me think of Mother and hot cocoa. And maybe it was because I was so tuckered out, or maybe I wanted to imagine for a little while that I was wrong and Rasmussen really was the good egg everybody said he was. So I’m sorry to have to say this, but I gave up, and didn’t struggle. I just snuggled up to him, felt his breath going in and out of his chest, and tried to figure out what tune he was humming.
Right in front of the Kenfields’ house Rasmussen looked down at me and asked, “Did he say anything to you, Sally? Did you recognize him?”
Ha! Like he didn’t know what he said and he didn’t know what he looked like.
I bent my head down and said, “Did you know Dottie Kenfield?” I was trying to get a look at his shoes. They were those brown ones he usually wore. He musta changed out of the spongy black ones he had on when he bushwhacked me.
Rasmussen looked over at Mr. Kenfield’s cigarette burning red in the dark and said so low I almost couldn’t hear him, “That is a sad, sad story that you are too young to know about.” And then he said louder toward the Kenfields’ porch, “Evenin’, Chuck.”
I never looked Rasmussen in the eyes because I was too afraid what I might see there. Daddy always said the eyes are the windows to the soul, which didn’t make sense because I thought your soul was located sort of near your heart and not your eyeballs, but if Daddy said it, it was true and I didn’t ever, ever want to see into Rasmussen’s raggedy soul.
I didn’t have to worry because his eyes were covered by his police hat where the rain had beaded up on the rim, but the streetlight was shining on his lips. They were soft-looking like baby blanket satin. He had murdered Junie. And Sara. Like Granny said, three’s the charm. The next time he would murder me, so a little “Ohhh” escaped out of me.
“You okay, Sally?” he asked like he cared.
The rain was starting and stopping like it couldn’t make up its mind. I looked over at our front porch. Troo was sitting there with a jar full of fireflies. She was the most amazing firefly catcher. Fireflies flocked to Troo, probably because they began with the letter f. I knew she’d tried real hard to catch some quick to make me feel better because that’s what she always did when I was out of sorts. The fireflies were flashing off and on in the jar that she held beneath her chin, and when she saw me she gave me a double thumbs-up. Daddy used to do that, so that made me finally cry. Because here I was in the arms of the man who wanted me dead and there wasn’t one thing I could do about it. I felt like a leaf going down the Honey Creek after a storm.
Rasmussen walked me up the steps near the house and set me down next to Troo and said, “Make sure she gets a bath,” and then he just walked away like he had something urgent to do. Probably to go cover up the footprints he’d left in the Fazios’ yard.
Troo said, “You like ’em?”
I said with a shocked voice, “Rasmussen?”
“No, you fruitcake . . . these.” She shoved the jar of fireflies into my hand. I could tell she was scared.
I looked down at the jar and said the first f word I could think of, “Fantastic.” And that made Troo stop licking her lips.
It was only later, when I was floating in the warm bath that Nell had run for me, that I recognized what that tune was that Rasmussen had been humming on the way home from the Fazios’. It was “Catch a Falling Star” by Perry Como, which was my favorite song last year. Me and Troo would put on a little show in the living room and sing and pretend we were catching falling stars and putting them in our jama pockets, saving them for a rainy day, until Hall screamed at us to shut the crap up.
Later, between the sheets, while she rubbed my back longer than she ever had, Troo said, “I figure it was Greasy Al who grabbed at you over at the Fazios’. You know how he’s always bullying.”
I didn’t even bother telling Troo that I was sure it was Rasmussen. What was the use?
“Don’t worry,” Troo said from the dark, the heat of her body mixing in with mine, the fireflies flashing on our dresser. “I got a plan to get him back. And my bike, too. Night, Sal.” She slipped her fingers into her mouth, squeezed her baby doll to her chest and turned over hard and quick like she couldn’t wait until tomorrow because tomorrow was the Fourth, the most exciting day of the summer next to the block party.
“Night, Troo.”
When I was sure she was asleep, I got up and went into Mother’s room and pulled her yellow nightie out from the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then I got Daddy’s Timex from the dressing table and put it on my wrist. After I said my prayers and told Daddy I was sorry like I did every night, I laid down at the foot of Mother’s bed and drifted off to the sound of rain that was strong enough to be good for the crops, and tried and tried to remember the last time I felt safe.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Saaally. . . Saaally.” The sound of her scream chased my dream away. I tried to jump out of bed, to get to her, to help her. Was Hall after her? Rasmussen? “I’m coming,” I yelled back, fighting to get untangled from Mother’s yellow nightie.
Troo came running from the back stairs into Mother’s room and flew up onto the bed next to me. “Wake the hell up, it’s almost seven thirty and we gotta be at the park by eight sharp.” She smacked me in the head with the pillow and then walked over to Mother’s dressing table. She didn’t ask me what I was doing sleeping in Mother’s room, but from her reflection in the mirror I thought maybe she already knew and was just daring me to say something about what she was doin’. She slid some blue eye shadow over her lids and ran a bit of the cherry red lipstick across her pouty lips and tipped the Evening in Paris bottle upside down and put some on her wrists. And then she got up and hit me one more time with the pillow and said, “I’ll meet you downstairs. Hurry. I got something to show you,” and ran off.
Just like Hall, Nell hadn’t come home last night. (Troo added that to her tattletale list with a bunch of patriotic stars.)
I pulled Mother’s nightie off and kissed Daddy’s watch and put them back where they belonged. When I was all dressed, I chased down the back steps, pushed on the screen door and had that radio weatherman ever been wrong. July Fourth, 1959, was beautiful. Today my Troo would win that bike-decorating prize because, boy oh boy, did her Schwinn look grand! She musta got up early and worked on it some more. I didn’t think she’d be able to ride it over to the park cuz it was so covered in flowers and streamers and crepe paper.
Troo was standing in front of the bike holding on to something that looked like a giant ice cream cone made out of that old Kroger bag she’d found down at the lagoon. She also had a crown or something on her head made out of aluminum foil that came to a bunch of points that reminded me of Butchy’s old dog collar.
She stood up extra straight and looked off into the distance with a serious face and when I didn’t say
anything, she said, “Don’t you get it? I’m the Statue of Liberty.”
“Ohhhh,” I said, not wanting to get too close to that pointy crown, which looked like it could definitely poke your eye out.
“It’s the pièce de résistance, non?” Troo laughed. “I looked up a picture of it over at the library and Mrs. Kambowski has been teaching me some more French words. Did you know the statue was a present from France?”
I wished I had a Brownie camera. I would’ve taken a picture of Troo and run it up to the hospital to Mother. Troo looked so beautiful and so . . . foreign.
“Do you like my chapeau?”
I searched around for whatever the heck a chapeau was.
She pointed at the crown.
“Ohhh,” I said again. “But what’s the ice cream cone got to do with it?”
Troo shook it at me and said, “It’s not an ice cream cone, you nitwit. It’s her torch. I found an old sheet for her dress but I took it off because I kept trippin’ on it and fallin’ down.”
She carefully wheeled her bike through the backyard and down the front hill, me trailing behind. Looking at Troo that morning as we walked toward the park, the sun bouncing off her shiny chapeau, I knew what I had to do to protect her. I had to come up with some sort of a plan for my little Statue of Liberty. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? Because if Rasmussen murdered and molested me, she would never be able to stand it. Nobody could whistle in the dark that loud, not even my Troo. So a scheme was what I needed. Like in one of those movies at the Uptown. Just like that Humphrey Bogart. He always had a scheme.
Yes, what I needed to do was get the goods on Rasmussen. Spy on him, catch him doing something that he shouldn’t or find some evidence, and then I could reveal him to everybody for what he really was. But maybe I wouldn’t start that until I had a chance to talk to Mary Lane, because she was the best spy in the neighborhood. Mary Lane was a regular Mata Hari. Or maybe I’d wait until after Sara Heinemann’s funeral, which was going to be tomorrow. Would Rasmussen go to the funeral? Sometimes in movies after somebody murdered somebody they would go to the funeral. Mary Lane always hung around after she lit a fire. Just stood there and watched it burn until there was nothing left but the smell and the smile on her face.
What a show!
Hundreds of kids and bikes and dogs with bows around their necks and even some baby buggies covered the big grassy area that ran along the banks of the Honey Creek. There were balloons hanging from the trees and picnic benches scattered around with paper tablecloths the same color as the flags on little sticks that everybody was waving around. The day was the hottest yet this summer and everybody was saying thank God for the shade. The Fourth was always hot around here, you could count on that. But this was even hotter than what you could count on.
The Everly Brothers were blaring out of loudspeakers, trying to wake up Little Susie, until someone came on and said, “All children under twelve should meet under the oak tree with the red ribbon around it.” Troo jumped up off the grass and said, “One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now go, cat, go.”
I trailed behind her as we shoved through a crowd of older kids, one of them being Greasy Al Molinari, who was probably just there to steal some kid’s bike when they went to the bathroom.
Greasy Al pointed at Troo’s crown and torch and said, “What ya s’posed to be, O’Malley? A TV-antenna-eatin’ ice cream cone?” His beady greasy eyes stared out from beneath his clumpy black eyebrows. His mouth hung half open like it always did. “I been lookin’ for you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Troo smiled and said, “What would a spaghetti for brains like you want with me?”
The big muscles in Greasy Al’s arms twitched. He and his brothers liked to lift weights in their garage on this bench they had sitting below this picture of Ava Gardner in a leopard-skin bathing suit. “What did you just call me, you little mick?”
Troo smiled her even better smile, the one where she shows every single one of her teeth. “You heard me. Or are your ears as gimpy as your polio leg?”
Greasy Al pushed off the tree and walked up to us. “Nice bike.”
“Don’t even think about stealing this bike,” Troo snarled. “And if you ever come after my sister again, I’ll—”
The voice crackled over the loudspeaker. “Last call for the under-twelves bicycle-decorating contest. At the oak tree with the red ribbon.”
“Let me by, you dago,” Troo said, trying to push past him. Greasy Al had her front bike wheel in between his legs.
And then real fast, Greasy Al took out his switchblade knife from his back pocket and cut all the white Kleenex flowers off Troo’s handlebars with one hand and with the other ripped off her crown. He hunch-limped away laughing, smashing the shiny aluminum foil between his fingers.
“Last call for the under-twelves,” the voice said again.
If this had happened to anybody else but Troo, like me for instance, I’d be bawling my head off. But not my Real Trooper. She stared after Greasy Al, and if looks really could kill, Greasy Al woulda been deader than a doorknob.
Then out of nowhere Rasmussen showed up with a ribbon on his T-shirt that said JUDGE. No matter where we went or what we did, it seemed like Rasmussen was just around the corner.
“Morning, girls,” he said. He looked different out of his policeman’s uniform. More like some of the other men from the neighborhood. “You better get over there, Troo, the judging is about to begin.” He took out some Scotch tape from his pocket and then quickly picked up the white flowers off the ground and taped them all back on to Troo’s handlebars.
Troo pushed her bike past him and made her way over to the oak tree. She forgot to thank Rasmussen because I knew she was busy thinking about how she would find Greasy Al later and do something really hideous to him. My sister had her cruisin’ for a bruisin’ wild look on her face.
Rasmussen smiled down at me and said, “You feeling okay? Recovered from last night?” I didn’t look up, but I nodded. “Glad to hear it,” he said, and him and his clipboard moved over to a group of mothers with decorated baby buggies. Too bad Rasmussen liked to murder and molest girls because if he didn’t he probably would’ve been considered a good egg. That’s why Junie and Sara went off with him, because I also learned from those movies that when a crime was committed it was always somebody that nobody suspected. Like Jeeves, the good egg butler.
The smell of hot dogs and hamburgers and Italian sausage and bratwurst on the grills hung in the air even though it was early in the morning. After the sack races, Troo and me planned to eat so much food they’d have to take us home in a coaster wagon. Like camels, we’d be able to go a few more days without eating, and then on Thursday night Willie had invited us to have supper with him and his ma and Officer Riordan, who I thought I would tell about Rasmussen after all. If the timing was right.
Over thirty kids had entered but everybody there could tell right off that this was a two-horse race, just like it’d been last year. Troo was smiling at one of the judges, who was Mary Lane’s father. I guessed since the zoo was right next door, maybe since he wasn’t feeding Sampson, they made him come over and judge the bike-decorating contest.
Mr. Lane was looking over Artie Latour’s bike. Holy Ma gillacuddy! Artie had really gone all out. Way out! He had streamers trailing off his handlebars and baseball cards in the spokes and sitting in his basket was a giant cardboard picture of Abraham Lincoln, who looked—I’d never noticed this before—quite a lot like Nana Fazio, but much, much taller.
Mr. Lane came up to us and said, “How’s your mother feeling?” He bent down to look at the flowers that Rasmussen had taped back on Troo’s handlebars.
Putting on her absolutely best manners and her dolly voice, Troo said, “She’s doing fine, Mr. Lane. Thank you so much for asking.”
“Top-notch decorating, Troo. Top-notch.” Mr. Lane wrote something on his clipboard and moved down the line.
The loudspeaker crackled again
and the man said, “Five minutes, judges. Five minutes left.”
Greasy Al Molinari was sitting on a picnic table using his switchblade to carve something into the brown wood. Troo couldn’t take her eyes off of him even after Rasmussen went over and started talking to him. I watched as Greasy Al slapped his switchblade knife into Rasmussen’s hand and limped off toward the Honey Creek, kicking Troo’s crushed-up crown along the ground.
“Before the sack race, let’s go down to the creek and cool off, okay?” Troo said, wiping the sweat off her forehead with her arm.
“Yeah, the creek sounds real good.” I knew she might lose this year because Artie’s bike was a lollapalooza and I would’ve done anything to make her feel better, even go down to the creek with her and throw stones at Greasy Al.
The loudspeaker buzzed back on. “All right, everybody, all the judging is final. If you hear your name, please go over to the judges’ table next to the picnic area to pick up your prize.”
Wendy Latour won the prize for the best-decorated wagon. When she saw me she sang, “Thally O’Malley. Hi . . . hi . . . hi,” and then threw me some of her Dinah Shore USA kisses.
Mr. Mahlberg, who was doing the announcing, told everyone that some kid I didn’t know named Billy Quigley won for best tricycle. And then he said, “The twelve and unders were tough this year. Real tough.” Oh no. Oh no. Poor Troo. “Will Artie Latour and Troo O’Malley please come to the judges’ table?”
Of course I went with, and when we got there, Mr. Lane smiled and said, “Congratulations, Troo. You and Artie tied.” I thought the judges made it into a tie like that because our mother was dying, because Artie really deserved that first place. But a tie was good. That way nobody was going to spend the rest of the day shooting daggers out of their eyes at one another. But Troo wasn’t any too happy with that tie. I could tell by her too-wide, fake smile. “Go claim your prize,” Mr. Lane said, pointing behind us.
