by Lavie Tidhar
Inadvertently, Mr Lloyd-Williams had handed me a piece of the puzzle.
The teddy bear on his own had no value. But it meant something to its owner.
That was why they were after it.
They weren’t after the teddy bear itself. They were after its owner.
They were trying to find Mr Farnsworth.
15
When I got home, a note had been slipped under the door for me. It said:
Be outside the shop at eight o’clock tonight if you want to learn more. Tell no one. Do not approach.
Bobbie
I stared at the note, wondering what it meant, feeling apprehensive about going, knowing that I would all the same.
Things were going sour in the candy trade, and I wanted – needed – to know why. Eddie was missing, Waffles was panicking, and Sweetcakes Ratchet was on the war path.
It was enough to give anyone stomach ache.
That evening I waited until my mom thought I was fast asleep and snuck out of the house while she was watching TV. I left the teddy safely at home. I wheeled the bike until I was clear and then rode it the rest of the way to Bobbie Singh’s place. My bike looked almost new. The front of Mr Singh’s shop looked the same as ever
At eight o’clock sharp a big silver car pulled to a stop in front of the shop and a man with sad mournful eyes and a butler’s uniform stepped out of the driver side. He opened the passenger door and out came Waffles McKenzie.
He stood still for a moment chewing his lower lip thoughtfully, as though he’d never seen such a dump before and wasn’t sure he ever wanted to again. Then he nodded to himself, said something to the butler, whose name, I remembered, was Foxglove, and went in.
He wasn’t inside for more than five minutes and when he came out again Bobbie Singh was with him. They spoke briefly before Foxglove opened the car door and Waffles slid in and they were gone. I watched Bobbie stand there watching them drive off into the distance. He didn’t look happy but then, he seldom did any more.
I waited as Bobbie went back inside. Then he left and got on his own bike and cycled away and I followed.
We rode through quiet streets where the street lamps winked alive as the sun set and night settled on the city. The air was warm and scented with flowers. It made me think of when I was young, last summer, before I was a private eye, and Bobbie and I played together and rode our bikes with nothing more to do than have fun. Now I followed him, unseen, as he drove to the meeting point. It was just beyond the point the city ended and the rest of the world began.
There was a gas station on the road that led out of the city. The factory towered overhead on the hill. The sea was nearby, and I could smell the salt and beach fires and hear distant laughter and gulls’ cries coming from the direction of the beach.
Bobbie parked his bike in the deserted car park, then stood beside it and waited.
I watched from across the road.
A truck came along the road, driving towards the city. It slowed and turned at the last minute, then entered the gas station and parked in the car park. The engine stilled. Bobbie watched. The driver came out and whistled. Bobbie ambled over. I saw them speak briefly. Bobbie gestured angrily. The driver shrugged. Bobbie looked at his watch, pointed. The driver shrugged again. Bobbie looked from side to side. Nodded. He followed the driver to the back of the truck and the driver opened the cargo bay and—
The sound of a police siren shattered the night. It rose and fell like waves breaking, like nails against glass, like a baby who wouldn’t stop crying. It demanded attention. It filled everything until it was the only sound left in the world. I covered my ears. The siren swept past me and with it came the flashing blue light, and a familiar black car.
It roared across the asphalt and into the car park and came to a stop with a screeching of brakes, blocking escape. Bobbie and the driver stood, frozen. The car doors opened in unison and slammed in unison and two familiar figures emerged into the night under the pale yellow light of the street lamp.
It was Tidbeck and Webber.
“Well, if it isn’t little Bobbie Singh,” Tidbeck said. Her voice carried. The light caught her pale, sculpted face and the amused cruelty in her eyes. “Isn’t it a bit late for you to be out on your own, Bobbie?”
Bobbie just stood there.
“What’s in the truck, partner?” Webber said. The driver shrugged sullenly. Webber’s steps across the concrete were like the beats of a drum. He peered inside the truck and whistled.
“Chocolate,” he said, loathing in his voice. Tidbeck grabbed Bobbie’s ear between her fingers. He didn’t make a sound, though his face twisted in pain. Tidbeck dragged him with her and looked inside the truck.
“You know anything about this, Bobbie?” she said.
“You could feed the city for a month on this junk!” Webber said. The driver spat on the pavement.
Webber turned to him. “Who do you work for?” he said, in quiet menace.
The driver shook his head. “I ain’t telling you nothing,” he said.
Webber smiled grimly.
“Who’s behind this shipment?” he screamed. “The Soufflé Brothers? Madame Sosotris? Edmonton St Creme-Egge? Is it Borscht?”
“Is it Borscht what?”
“Wrong!” Webber said, and his heavy fist rose, but Tidbeck grabbed his arm.
“I ain’t doing nothing wrong!” the driver yelled, shocked out of his seeming boredom. “Ain’t illegal to carry candy!”
“It is across the city line,” Tidbeck said. “And this is the city line.”
I saw Bobbie rub his ear and steal a glance at his bike; but he knew there was no getting away. I was afraid for him, afraid for myself. I could feel the blood beating in my ears. Should I run away?
But I couldn’t leave Bobbie behind.
“More importantly,” Tidbeck said, with quiet menace, “this is a chocolate shipment we didn’t authorize. We don’t get our share. Now why is that, do you think? So I’ll ask you again, who authorized this … this unauthorized shipment?”
“I don’t know nothing!” the driver said. “Besides, I ain’t across the line.”
I stood very still where I was. So Tidbeck and Webber were a part of the chocolate smuggling operation? They were profiting from it!
The driver glared at them sullenly. “You folk in the city are crazy.”
“Crazy or not, the law’s the law,” Tidbeck said.
“Yeah,” Webber said. He smiled unpleasantly.
“It’s just candy!” the driver said. I could sympathize.
“Rots your teeth,” Tidbeck said.
“Rots your gut,” Webber said.
“So you go back to the Consortium,” Tidbeck said. “You go back to your bosses, those chocolatiers.”
Chocolatiers. That meant chocolate makers, I knew.
But she’d said the word with awful contempt.
“You go back and you tell those vanilla-bellied candy pushers, this is my town! You tell them to stick to the arrangement. Oh, and the price of doing business has just gone up. You tell them—”
“I’m just a driver!” the driver said.
“You tell them –” Webber yelled, waving his finger in the driver’s face. I saw Bobbie try to make himself as small as possible.
“– that the price of doing business is now thirty-five per cent,” Tidbeck said.
“Thirty-five!” the driver said, shocked.
“Yes,” Tidbeck said.
The driver shrugged. “I’ll tell them,” he said. “But they won’t like it.”
“They don’t have to like it, buddy,” Webber said. “All they gotta do is pay up.”
The driver shrugged again. “And the stuff?” he said. “Do I take it back, or what?”
“Who said anything about taking it back?” Webber put his arm around the driver’s shoulders. His smile had the sticky quality of fudge. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll buy you a coffee.”
He led the other man towards the stati
on. Tidbeck was left alone with Bobbie Singh. She smiled at him. She looked like she’d only ever practised it in front of the mirror.
“I hear Eddie de Menthe’s gone missing,” she said conversationally. Bobbie stared down at his feet. The wind carried their voices to me as clear as if I were standing beside them.
“I guess,” he said.
“Know where he went?”
“Don’t know nothing,” Bobbie said.
“Anything,” Tidbeck said. “I don’t know anything.”
“That’s what I meant to say.”
Tidbeck sighed. “Bobbie, I’m not the bad guy here,” she said. “I’m just trying to help you out. I know you’re in a bad spot. Eddie’s on the loose, Waffles is too busy eating the merchandise rather than selling it, and that little girl, Sweetcakes, she’s not that sweet, really, is she.”
It wasn’t a question and, involuntarily, Bobbie shuddered.
“I don’t know nothing,” Bobbie muttered sullenly. He did a pretty good impression of the truck driver.
“Listen to me, you little—” Tidbeck said, and then she stopped and tried on a smile again, but it didn’t take so she dropped it. “Listen, Bobbie. We let you kids play. Why not? You all get what you want – as much candy as you can eat, the Consortium get to sell their candy inside the city, we provide security and get our cut of the proceeds, and everyone’s happy. Right?”
“Right,” Bobbie said.
“What we can’t have is any more shenanigans. And more importantly, what we really can’t have is a lack of stability. Not right now. Something’s going down, Bobbie, and I think you know what it is.”
“I don’t—”
“Know nothing. Right.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I want Eddie,” she said. “I want Eddie, and I want what he knows. You get back to your boss and you tell him, little Bobbie Singh. Or I could take you with me right now and book you into juvie.”
Juvenile Detention. Bobbie looked up at her in horror and I froze in place. “You wouldn’t,” he said.
“Try me.”
“I don’t know where Eddie is!” He was going to spill and she knew it. “I don’t … he came to see Waffles. They were friends! He saw him all the time, up in the house. He had this crazy idea that if only he could find Farnsworth, if only he could make him come back from wherever he went, he could make everything better again. He said we needed to go back to being just kids. He was tired of running a gang. He said he’d found something, something important, that it could lead us to Farnsworth.”
Tidbeck was very still. When she spoke her voice was soft and low; but it carried. “What was it?” she said.
“I don’t know!” Bobbie was close to tears. “It was just a story, something he made up. Waffles didn’t care. He just liked having him around. Waffles doesn’t really have any friends.”
“But you have a friend, don’t you, Bobbie?” Tidbeck said. “That little girl. What is her name? Nelly? Little Nelle?”
I felt as though someone had dumped cold ice cream all down my back. Bobbie blinked up at Tidbeck.
“Nelle?” he said nervously. “What about her?”
“She’s been snooping around,” Tidbeck said. Her voice was low and menacing. “Asking questions. Sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. What does she know, Bobbie?”
“Nothing!”
“What does she know?”
“I don’t know!”
“Then make sure you find out,” Tidbeck said savagely. She poked Bobbie in the chest with her index finger and he staggered back. Tidbeck exposed white sharp teeth. As though it had been a signal, her partner stepped out of the café and came to join her.
They stood together and conferred in low voices. Webber laughed. He looked at Bobbie and gestured at the open truck.
“Well, get on with it,” he said.
“Sir?”
“You got a job to do, don’t you? Then do it,” Webber said. He and Tidbeck went back to their car and climbed in and a moment later they drove past me, back towards the city.
Bobbie stared after them with big haunted eyes.
16
I ran to Bobbie.
“Nelle!”
“Bobbie, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Honest.”
I looked at him, both worried and relieved that it was over. The note said I would learn more if I came, and I did – far more than I’d bargained for. I tried to make sense of it all in my head – the discovery of Tidbeck and Webber’s role in the candy trade, the fact that they must have been the people who broke into my office too – the whole involvement of grown-ups in what only a few days ago seemed to me to be just a game.
It was a lot to try and make sense of.
“What is going on, Bobbie?” I said. I grabbed him by his shirt. His small sad face looked up at me mutely. “What do you know about what’s going on?”
“You heard what I said! I know what Eddie was looking for. Who he was looking for. But not just that. He figured he was close. No one knows what Farnsworth looks like. He could be anyone. They say he changed his name and disappeared. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Eddie said it’s all gone on too long. The Consortium of Chocolatiers are behind it, Nelle. The Soufflé Brothers, Madame Sosotris, Edmonton St Creme-Egge and the rest. Borscht.”
“Borscht?” I said. Bobbie shrugged.
“They were the ones who pushed Farnsworth out. They hated him, Nelle. He was the best. Do you remember?”
I thought of rich creamy chocolate and sour strips and crunchy bars, and my mouth filled with saliva. “I remember…” I said softly.
“They helped Thornton get elected and they made candy illegal and they put Farnsworth out of business. But Eddie said he could change it. He was tired. He didn’t want to be a bootlegger any more.”
“But how do you know all this, Bobbie? If this is true it’s…” I didn’t know what to say. “Huge.”
“You’d have to talk to Waffles about that,” Bobbie said. “I just sell the candy, Nelle. I never asked for the rest of it. Or to get involved with those two detectives. They scare me.”
“They scare me too,” I said.
But something still didn’t seem right. I had more of the puzzle pieces, but I felt I was still missing a few. The Consortium seemed too distant. Could they really be behind it all? Behind Prohibition?
But Prohibition started when the mayor came into power. So what did that mean? Did the Consortium help Mayor Thornton? Or did they just use the opportunity that was created for them when the mayor came into power and passed Prohibition?
The truth was, I just didn’t know.
“Why are you telling me this now, Bobbie?” I said.
“Eddie said if he were ever in trouble then he’d come to you,” Bobbie said.
“Me? Why me?”
“He liked you. He said you used to play in the sandbox together when you were small. And he said you were good. You weren’t involved like we are.”
“I am now,” I said.
He lowered his head. “Yes,” he said. And, “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for, Bobbie.”
When he looked up at me his eyes were very bright. “Are we still friends?” he said.
“Of course we are.”
“I’m worried, Nelle.”
I patted his shoulder awkwardly. “I know.”
“I never asked to be dragged into this. At first it was just a way to make some pocket money. It was just a bit of fun. You know? Then my mom got sick and my dad was worried about the bills and now I never leave the store unless it’s to do … this.” His hand swept over the abandoned car park, the truck, the streetlamp that cast us in a yellow pool of light. “I don’t remember the last time I played a game, Nelle,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say to him. He was my friend and he was lost.
“It will be all right, Bobbie,” I said gently. “I promise.”
“I
f you say so, Nelle.”
“I do,” I said – with more conviction than I felt. Then, “Hey, Bobbie, what happens to all this candy?”
I looked at the parked truck. Bobbie didn’t say anything.
Instead, he stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
The whistle cut through the night like a butter knife. It rang through the clear air, a piercing, high cry.
For a moment, nothing happened. There was no one around for miles, or so I thought.
Then the night exploded with motion.
They came from everywhere, at once. They came out of the shadows, and I realized with shock that they had been there all along.
I had thought – like Tidbeck and Webber no doubt had – that we were alone.
But we weren’t.
They came on their bicycles, from every street and road that drained on to the highway. From the hill and from around it, from all directions: kids on bicycles, Bobbie’s boys, Waffles’s gang. They were the candy couriers, the sweet smugglers, the chocolate runners.
They swarmed over the truck. It was all done in efficient silence. Boxes were carried out of the truck and passed from hand to hand. Then the first bike departed, a young girl cycling furiously, a box of candy on the back seat of her bike. Then another, a boy this time, and then another, and another, shooting out of the car park, across the highway, and into the city.
They all took different routes, as one by one they disappeared into the night.
They streaked like candyfloss ghosts across the horizon, the only sound that of wheels spinning on asphalt, and by the time the truck driver emerged from the abandoned café of the filling station, a cup in his hands, the truck was empty, and Bobbie and I were the only ones left.
Silence lay over the sleeping world. The tail-lights of a passing car illuminated the curve in the road and passed into the night.
Even the gulls had stopped their crying.
On the hill above us the chocolate factory squatted, immense and dark and closed. It was a place of magic and mystery, unknowable and unknown.
And a thought came unbidden into my mind, and wouldn’t go away, as unlikely as it first seemed.
“What if Eddie’s there?” I whispered. I looked sideways at Bobbie. “What if he’s hiding in the chocolate factory?”
