The Spaghetti Detectives

by Andreas Steinhöfel

  I tugged the sticking door until I could just about fit through with my bag of garbage, and I crashed straight into Mr. Mommsen. He was armed with a large broom and a small dustpan. I remembered that Tuesday was his day to sweep the yard.

  “Hello, Mr. Mommsen,” I said.

  He staggered a little and stared at me. “Who are you?”

  “Rico Doretti. Second floor.”

  “I know that,” he said. “Do you think I’m stupid or something?”

  Can you believe it?

  Instead of answering, I held the door open for him as wide as I could manage. He pushed past me and looked me right in the face. His eyes looked milky.

  “The door needs to be fixed,” I said.

  “Go and play!” he snapped.

  “I will. See you later!”

  “I hope not.”

  The door clicked shut in slow motion. I shook my head and went over to the trash cans. I pushed up the heavy black lid and threw in the bag of garbage, and then I saw it. In the middle of the dirty, stinky mess, a small, bright red airplane.

  I looked up at the sky, as I had done when I had found the string of spaghetti. Dark clouds were forming and pushing themselves in front of the sun. Right up at the top, on the KKs’ roof terrace, a final ray of sun glinted on the metal railing. I looked down again. There was only one way that the little airplane could have landed down here: It must have come loose from Oscar’s shirt when he was standing up there yesterday, showing me he wasn’t afraid. The airplane must have spun down into the yard and somebody must have picked it up and thrown it away. It had probably been drunken Mr. Mommsen, just a few minutes ago.

  I stood on my tiptoes and tried to fish the airplane out of the trash can without getting dirty. It took a while, but finally I reached it. There was no dirt on it. I tapped the broken-off wing, then I put it into my jeans pocket and grinned. Oscar would be really happy when I gave him back his badge! He was probably missing it already.

  Then I went back up to the second floor where my diary was waiting for me. Now I’m looking forward to a nice evening with Mrs. Darling and whole wheat crackers! Which means I have to go back up and then back down again.

  Flippin’ heck!

  ALMOST WEDNESDAY

  the special edition

  About ten minutes ago both of Mickey Mouse’s arms showed twelve. So it’s already after midnight.

  In the backyard an enormous shadowier shadow has just moved, I’m sure of it. That’s why I’ve moved from my room into the living room, into the thinking chair.

  All the lights are on, but even if they were off you still couldn’t see the moon through the window. It’s darkest night outside. A stormy wind is moving the branches of the trees, rustling their leaves and driving drizzly rain against the windowpanes.

  I’ve brought my bedspread with me and covered my legs with it. I’m sitting in front of the computer, writing my diary. I have to write down what happened this evening right away, otherwise I won’t be able to get to sleep. And I have to think up a plan.

  If only I could think more quickly.

  Mrs. Darling knows nothing.

  If I call Mom, I’ll just worry her.

  It’s up to me.

  I’m really scared.

  Just before seven thirty I went upstairs to Mrs. Darling’s. I didn’t want to miss the local evening news. Well, actually, I didn’t want to miss the whole wheat crackers, but saying I didn’t want to miss the evening news sounds less greedy.

  Anyway, I rang Mrs. Darling’s bell. No reply. I pressed my ear to the door and listened. Nothing. Then I remembered. Mrs. Darling and I almost always see each other on Saturdays, which is her day off. I’d completely forgotten that she works until eight during the week. She couldn’t be home yet. At that very moment she was probably standing behind the meat counter, wrapping up the final pork chop. Sometimes I can be such an idiot!

  On the floor above me somebody was crunching around on the stairs. Then I heard a cheerful little whistle. It couldn’t be Mr. Fitz; he has to be the least cheerful person on the planet. A door closed. Then there was silence.

  So I went up to the fourth floor. A heavy blue bag of garbage was sitting in the stairway. Strips of wallpaper and bits of plastic wrap splattered with red and yellow and orange were poking out. Great! Mr. Haven was at home, and I had half an hour to spare. If I went about it the right way, I was sure he would let me into his apartment.

  When I rang, he opened the door immediately. He looked at me in astonishment. With concern, almost.

  “Rico! Did something happen?”

  Why do so many people ask if something has happened when a kid rings their doorbell?

  I shook my head and stretched out a hand. “Good evening! My name is Frederico Doretti. I’m—”

  “Ehm … I know who you are.”

  He wouldn’t let me finish! Some people can’t even keep quiet for ten seconds, and what I had to say was almost as difficult as the thing about Mr. Marrak’s Alarms, Safes, and Locks business. Somewhere in my head a small switch flicked on almost by itself and started up the lottery machine. I was hot and uncomfortable. I dropped my hand. I’d have to forget about shaking his. You can’t concentrate on everything at the same time, after all, and up until now Mom had always said this part for me.

  “My name is Frederico Doretti!” I repeated in a loud voice. “I’m a child proddity! That’s why I can only walk straight ahead and don’t see much of the world!” I got faster and faster. “That’s why I like looking at other people’s apartments canicomeinplease?”

  Suddenly I wanted to turn on my heels and run away. If you knew ten seconds before you said or did something how stupid you would feel ten seconds later, you probably wouldn’t say or do a lot of what you do say and do. But it was too late now.

  “Child proddity?” Mr. Haven’s eyebrows had slid together in the middle.

  “That means I can think a lot but not particularly quickly,” I squeezed out a further sentence.

  “Ohhh-kay,” he said very slowly.

  “But that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. For example, the moon is two hundred and thirty-eight thousand, eight hundred and fifty-five miles away from the earth. On average.”

  “I see.” Very slowly again.

  “The day before yesterday I didn’t know that and it’s very likely I’ll forget it again soon. Sometimes a few things go missing from my brain, but I don’t know when and where until it happens.”

  “Well, if that’s the way things are …” Mr. Haven was smiling now, and it was a nice smile. He pulled the door open toward him. “Come on in.”

  About time!

  I pushed past him and he closed the door. The smell of paint hit my nose. There were boxes all the way down the hall, most of them piled up on top of other boxes, some of them closed, others open.

  “I hope you don’t mind the mess,” Mr. Haven said. “I’m still moving in.”

  I shook my head. The mess was perfectly OK as long as he could get used to things being tidy, just in case he married Mom.

  The door next to me was open, so I went in. It was the living room, and it looked like winter itself in there. Instead of a carpet there was a wooden floor, painted white. The walls were white and so were the shelves. The shelves were only half-full, with books and CDs standing and sitting on them. I couldn’t see a picture or a poster anywhere; there were no nice knickknacks like in Mrs. Darling’s or our apartment. There was a white leather sofa with a table in front of it. An empty glass was standing on an open newspaper. The bottom of the glass was wet and had made a wavy stain right across one page. Other than that there were all kinds of things scattered across the table: pens, a notebook, receipts, and so on. In one corner of the room a small TV was standing on the floor, and in the other corner there was a stereo system.

  “Everything fine and dandy?” Mr. Haven said behind me.

  It sounded like the kind of question you ask when you don’t know what else to say. It also sounded like a q
uestion you can only answer with a yes, so I murmured yes.

  DANDY: Somebody like Mr. Kirk from the third floor who’s got a lot of clothes and spends a lot of time in front of the mirror. I washed my face and put on a clean T-shirt before leaving the apartment, so maybe that’s what Mr. Haven meant.

  I folded my hands behind my back and looked up at the ceiling. At least the ceiling was pretty—very pretty, in fact: old-fashioned plaster, and the only part of the room that was painted in a color.

  “How’s your mom?”

  The ceiling looked a bit like a rain forest. There were all kinds of flowers and leaves in orange and yellow and red wrapped up in each other. A few of them looked so real they could have been growing down from the ceiling. Mom would like it….

  “Rico?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Your mom.”

  “She thinks you’re the hottest thing she’s ever met in her life. But …”

  A little green in between the other colors would have been nice. Or something completely different from all the flowery, leafy things. I wondered if you could get plaster shapes like fish. Then your ceiling would look like an aquarium. You could have a turtle coming out of one corner and a bright little fish out of the other. And in the middle a blue whale, as big as —

  Mr. Haven cleared his throat loudly. I turned around in his direction. He was standing in the doorway with his thumbs stuck in his pants pockets. He was smiling again, but at the same time he looked impatient, like somebody who can’t wait until his aquarium has been put together.

  “Yes?” he said. “But?”

  “Well, I guess she can’t fall in love with you because then she’d have to think about Dad.”

  “Oh—I see.” Now he wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked at me as though he’d just got a bad grade on a test. “I, um, I thought you lived alone?”

  “We do. Dad has been dead for a long time.”

  And now he was looking at me as though the teacher had just given him the wrong test back and he’d gotten ten out of ten after all. His face was very tan, as if he’d spent the last few days in the sun. The only pale part was the little scar on his chin.

  “I’m very sorry for you.” His voice was suddenly so warm, I had the feeling the whole wintry room around me was thawing. “I’m very sorry for both of you!”

  “He died on a stormy day,” my voice said all by itself. “It was in autumn. Dad wanted—”

  There was a noise like a cell phone. It had a cool ringtone. It sounded like a mouse running over the keys of a piano.

  “I’m sorry!” Mr. Haven lifted one finger. “Don’t run away, OK? I’ve been waiting for this call. It won’t take long.” He turned around and ran out of the room. The noise stopped.

  Frederico, I thought, you must be crazy! I had been about to tell Mr. Haven my biggest secret, and I wasn’t even friends with him. How had he managed to make me do that? When he came back, I’d tell him I was sorry but I had to go.

  He had disappeared into the room diagonally across from where I was. I stretched out my neck — it was the kitchen. He was speaking into his cell phone in a low voice. I didn’t understand a word, and before I could creep into the hallway to hear better, the phone call was already over. I drew my head back and looked casual.

  “I’m afraid I have to go,” Mr. Haven said when he came back. He still looked nice, but he was acting all businesslike. He had a brown leather jacket in his hand. “But I’ve got a suggestion,” he said as he slipped it on. “Why don’t you come back tomorrow in the late afternoon? Then I’ll have a bit more time for you. And for your story. Agreed?”

  “I don’t know if—”

  “If you don’t want to tell me after all, you don’t have to. But the invitation stands, OK?” He pointed to the door and tried to smile, but couldn’t hide his tension. “And now off with you, you nosy child proddity!”

  Mrs. Darling beamed at me like Halley’s Comet when she saw me standing in front of her door, and suddenly I realized that she had more gray days than she would like. For the first time I wondered why she didn’t have any children of her own.

  “Mom had to go away,” I said as she let me in. “She won’t be back until the day after tomorrow at the earliest.”

  “Yes, Rico, she called me to ask if I could look after you. Where’s she gone again?”

  “To see her brother at the bottom and left. He’s got cancer.”

  “How terrible!” Mrs. Darling pushed the door shut and turned around with a look of shock on her face. “Where?”

  “At the bottom and left.”

  “I know that. I meant which part of the body?”

  “Oh … no idea.”

  Mrs. Darling shook her head sadly. “It’s always the wrong person who gets it.”

  “Who’d be the right person, then?”

  “That superintendent,” she said without batting an eyelid.

  “What’s up with him?”

  “I had words with him as I came in. The door to the backyard has been sticking for weeks, you’ve probably noticed.” She was so annoyed she didn’t even wait for me to nod. “You can barely get it open when you take the trash out; it’s getting worse by the day! But do you think that walking bottle of whiskey has done anything about it?”

  I shrugged my shoulders and followed her past the pictures of laughing clowns into the kitchen. “At least cancer isn’t catching,” I said to get her off the subject. If she kept on complaining, she might forget about the whole wheat crackers.

  “Did you think it was?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “Of course not! I just thought you might not know that.”

  Unlike stupid Mr. Marrak, Mrs. Darling obviously didn’t think it was too bad that Mom had left me by myself. She didn’t mention it, in any case, and instead she finally got to the food.

  “I was just about to make myself something to eat. Have you eaten already?”

  “Crunchy Nut Clusters, this afternoon.”

  “Good, then we’ll have some whole wheat crackers.”

  About time!

  She opened the fridge to get the ham and cheese, pickled onions, and tomatoes. “By the way, it just so happens that I’ve bought a new movie.”

  I leaned against the table. “Is it a thriller?”

  “A romance. While You Were Sleeping.”

  She took some bread out of the cupboard. “Now, let me make the food. Have a seat in the living room and turn on the boob tube. Then you can tell me what’s going on in the world while we’re eating.”

  She was talking about the news. I would rather have just kept watching her.

  “I won’t remember.”

  “Yes, you will. You’ve got an amazing memory; don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

  She waggled the bread knife in front of my nose. “Off you go, shoo, shoo! I don’t like people getting under my feet in the kitchen.”

  I went into the living room grumpily. I flopped onto the sofa, grabbed the remote control, and switched on the giant TV. It’s always set to the local channel so that Mrs. Darling never misses her beloved newscaster. Before the picture came on, a woman’s voice could be heard.

  “— who has been terrorizing Berlin for three months, has, it has just been announced, kidnapped his sixth victim. Our special edition will fill you in on the latest developments — in a case that is surprisingly different from its predecessors.”

  You could see the woman reporter now; she was one of Peter Duffel’s colleagues. Now and then they took turns doing the news from Berlin. The woman was trying to look concerned because there was a child involved. I didn’t believe her, though. Grown-ups always look concerned on television when there’s a child involved in a crime, and then in the supermarket they shove their shopping carts into your back or almost push you into the freezer compartment if you get in their way.

  But it was exciting all the same. The newscaster explained that it was unusual for the kidnapper to have released a child just last Saturday
only to have snatched another one straightaway. She was right. It was pretty quick. Maybe Mr. 2000 had been afraid he wouldn’t be able to get any kids over the summer because everybody would be away on vacation.

  A map of Berlin came up on the screen, and they highlighted all the different parts of the city, one after another.

  “There appears to be no pattern to the kidnappings. The police are assuming that Mr. 2000 drives around aimlessly, luring children into his vehicle when a suitable opportunity presents itself.”

  Next up on the screen was Schöneberg, where Mom and I live. It had to be where the latest victim was from. The other parts of town weren’t shown, but six red dots flashed on the map to show where the kidnappings had been.

  “Well?” Mrs. Darling called out from the kitchen. “Any news?”

  “The ALDI kidnapper has snatched another kid!”

  “Gracious me. Turn it up! Milk or juice?”

  “Milk, please!”

  I turned the volume up with the remote.

  “For the first time in this series of kidnappings, the father of the victim has turned to the police without paying the ransom money demanded.”

  The six parts of town and the red dots turned into shaky camera shots. The upper right corner of the screen said LIVE. A youngish man who looked kind of scruffy came into view. There were so many microphones being held in front of his nose that you could barely see his face in the crush. He kept blinking, because the flash of the cameras dazzled him. Reporters were calling out questions all around him.

  “Why did you notify the police? The kidnapper usually threatens the kidnapped children with—”

  “I don’t have the money,” said the man. “It’s as simple as that.” And he added with a snort, “I had to go to the police because no bank in the world would have given me a loan. Not even for a kidnapped child.”