The Spaghetti Detectives

by Andreas Steinhöfel

  “Do you know where she lives, then?”

  “I’m in the same class as Michael. He’s a complete idiot.” He thought for a second. “Maybe anyone would turn into a complete idiot if they had to share a room with their little sister. I know I’d go crazy.”

  “Who’s Michael?”

  “Sophia’s brother, you brainwarp!”

  That was it! First Mr. Kirk and now Felix, too. For the second time that morning I had to swallow my anger to continue. If I ever saw Oscar again, he owed me more than just a walk by the canal followed by an ice-cream cone. A lot more.

  “If you’d been here five minutes earlier, you’d have bumped into Michael. His mom sent him shopping.” He giggled quietly and pointed with one hand over his shoulder. “Over to ALDI.”

  “I just want to ask Sophia something,” I said.

  “What?”

  He wouldn’t take me to her unless I told him. He didn’t say so, but I could see it on his face.

  I took a deep breath. “The boy who was kidnapped yesterday …”

  “What about him?”

  “Sophia knows him. And I thought I’d ask her—”

  “If she put him on the trail of Mr. 2000? You’re crazy!” He let out a loud laugh. Then he turned serious again. “What do you think she can tell you? Stuff that she didn’t already tell the police?”

  “Something like that,” I murmured.

  “Because she’d rather trust a kid than a grown-up?”

  I nodded. That had been my idea, and Oscar must have had the same one.

  “Well, in that case …”

  Felix suddenly swung himself off the bench. Stubblehead did the same thing.

  “You know what you’re getting yourself into, don’t you?” said Felix as we left the playground. “Mr. 2000 himself, the most cunning kidnapper of all time! If he catches you, the first thing he’ll do is cut your ears off.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me. They always cut your ears off first.”

  I hadn’t known that.

  “Then a hand! And then, if he still hasn’t got his money, the arm it belongs to. He has to leave the other arm on so that you can still write your parents a begging letter, see? That’s why he’ll take your legs off next.”

  “You’re making it up.”

  He shook his head and his brown hair got even more untidy. “Anyway, I want to write books one day, and writers make things up all the time, you know?”

  “I only read comics.”

  “Well, they’re completely made up.”

  It was difficult to keep up with him. He took huge steps. “And have you written anything yet?”

  “A lot, actually.”

  “Is it good?”

  “You’ll have to ask Sam.”

  “Who’s Sam?”

  “Who do you think?”

  Stubblehead still didn’t say a word. He had to take twice as many steps as Felix to keep up, but he trotted along next to him as though he was fastened to him by an invisible rope.

  “I tell him all my new ideas,” said Felix. “If he thinks a story’s good, I write it down. And not before.”

  I raised a hand and waved at Sam. “Hello, Sam.”

  No reply. Sam didn’t even look at me.

  “He can’t hear you,” said Felix. “He can’t speak, either. He’s deaf and dumb.”

  “You don’t say ‘deaf and dumb.’ It’s called ‘hearing impaired.’” I knew that from school.

  “Whatever.” Felix walked even more quickly, looking straight ahead. “He’s the only person who listens to me.”

  The apartment where Sophia lived was in between a lot of other apartments that all looked the same. They had no balconies, smooth front walls, and were painted brown. The wooden window frames looked as though they’d been white once.

  Felix showed me which bell to ring before leaving for who knows where with Sam in tow. I watched the two of them go. How crazy do you have to be to tell your stories to somebody who’s deaf? And how crazy do you have to be to listen to somebody you can’t hear? Maybe they both knew sign language. Felix and Sam didn’t seem embarrassed. They were friends. For them it was the most normal thing in the world. And that made me feel a lot better.

  But not for long.

  When Sophia’s mom opened the door, a wave of gray day washed over me. There was even a gray smell. Sophia’s mom didn’t look like a mom who was interested in which children were in her kid’s class at school. Luckily for me. She was wearing a grubby bathrobe and waved me into the apartment even before I’d finished saying my lines.

  “Good morning. I’m a friend of Michael’s and—”

  “He’s gone shopping.”

  I stood in front of her in a gloomy hallway. She pointed past my shoulder with one hand. In the other she was holding a smoking cigarette. “He’ll be back soon. You can wait in his room.”

  I looked closely at her fingernails. They were splintered and painted pink. With no stickers. My mom would never go out in public with such scruffy nails. And she always combs her hair right after brushing her teeth.

  Sophia’s mom shuffled back into the living room. I could see a flat-screen TV through the open door. It was even bigger than Mrs. Darling’s and had to be brand-new, because it was the only thing in the entire apartment that gleamed. I’d already been able to hear it clearly when I was outside the front door on the stairs. Here in the apartment, it was annoyingly loud. Two neighbors were arguing on a talk show. One of them had peed over the other one’s garden fence and his neighbor’s squash plant had died.

  SQUASH: A game that you play with a racket and ball. No idea why anybody would pee on a squash racket or why you would plant one in the garden.

  At the end of the hall there were two more rooms. On one of the doors there were colorful pictures and a Barbie poster. I knocked quietly and went in. If Sophia wasn’t at home, I’d leave right away without telling anybody.

  The room was the biggest mess I’d ever seen. Toys, clothes, comics, school stuff, CD covers, and computer games were scattered all over the floor. There were empty and half-empty bottles, used plates and cups lying all over the place. You would need days to clear a path through all that mess to get outside into the hall. And over everything lay a sad, gray cloud of dust. It was as if a vacuum-cleaner bag had exploded here fifty years ago.

  Sophia was just standing there, in the middle of the room, as though she’d been waiting for someone for a long time or was practicing for a competition in falling asleep while on your feet.

  “Hi!” I said.

  Her thin, colorless eyebrows made a frown. Her gaze was cloudy, as though her eyes were trying not to be noticed in this gray room. Behind her a bunk bed stuck up out of the clutter like an island. She must get quite tired fighting her way into bed each night. I pulled the red airplane out of my pocket. Suddenly Sophia’s eyes lit up.

  “I got it from Oscar, and he got it from you,” I said quickly. I didn’t have a lot of time. Michael could come back from his shopping trip at any moment and tell his mom he’d never seen me before in his life.

  She stared at the airplane. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “He’s in great danger—you know that, don’t you?” I asked.

  For a moment I was afraid she hadn’t heard about Oscar’s kidnapping, but then she nodded. I would have been surprised if she hadn’t; the TV seemed to be on here all day. You could hear the bickering of the angry neighbors on the talk show even in here.

  “You told Oscar something, didn’t you?” I said carefully. “Something that you didn’t tell the police because the kidnapper told you something terrible would happen if you did. Am I right?”

  Finally she opened her mouth. Her voice was squeaky, like a bird that’s just left the nest but doesn’t trust itself to fly.

  “The jingle-jangle man said if I tell on him, he’ll come and get Marlon and kill him.”

  “Marlon?”

  She pointed to a sticky desk that was so full
you couldn’t even have written a shopping list on it. There was a round goldfish bowl behind a greasy, crumpled McDonald’s wrapper. Something was swimming around in it.

  “That’s Marlon. He’s sick. He’s got something on his fins.”

  Mr. 2000 must have asked Sophia who she loved best so that he could blackmail her into keeping quiet. And Sophia must have said her goldfish!

  I stared at the round bowl and Marlon stared back. He waggled two colorless, strangely frayed fins. I felt sick. Maybe the germs lurking between the piles of garbage were responsible for his illness. Maybe they were jumping germs. I breathed in very carefully and concentrated on Sophia again.

  “Why do you call the kidnapper the jingle-jangle man?”

  She shook her head slowly but stubbornly.

  “You can tell me. I won’t tell anybody.”

  “That’s what Oscar said!” she said in an unexpectedly loud voice. “And now he’s locked up in the green room!”

  “Which green room?”

  There was no reply.

  “Sophia, Oscar is my friend,” I insisted. “I want to help him, but I can’t do that unless you help me!”

  She glared at me suspiciously.

  She clenched her little hands into fists.

  Her narrow lips got even thinner.

  There was nothing to be done. She wasn’t going to tell me anything else. I held out the red airplane. She took it slowly, as though it was the most precious thing she’d ever been given. She stroked the broken wing with a clumsy finger.

  “He said he liked me,” she said quietly.

  “He does. He wore the airplane all the time. But then he must have lost it. Maybe when he was kidnapped.”

  She looked up at me, very stubborn again. “I was expensive,” she said.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “But Mom got money for the interviews.”

  I nodded. That explained the new TV. The drone of it followed me out to the stairs as I left.

  Now I had to get home. Back outside, things started to feel a little scary. The large buildings all around me seemed to be creeping closer together and bending down toward me. The dirty white windows stared at me like a thousand eyes. I rummaged around frantically in my backpack for the A to Z, opened it, looked inside, and closed it again immediately. I’ll bet people have gone crazy trying to read the A to Z.

  I’d have to go about it some other way. If I found a subway station, surely I’d manage. I just had to make it to the subway stop near my apartment on one of the lines; the rest would be easy. I can see the entrance to our subway station really well from the kebab restaurant whenever I’m eating there. From there to home it was just the other way around.

  There was a shop on the other side of the street. I could ask the way there. There was no zebra crossing in sight, but there was hardly any traffic.

  Every year almost forty thousand children in Germany die in accidents, I could hear Oscar saying. Twenty-five percent are pedestrians.

  That must be more than a hundred, I guessed. I stretched one arm out just to be on the safe side, one hand pointing forward like an arrow, and ran straight across the street with my eyes shut tight.

  No screeching of brakes, no honking. Everything went smoothly.

  No accident.

  In front of the shop there were all kinds of newspaper stands full of bold headlines about Oscar’s kidnapping. In one newspaper there was a map similar to the one I’d seen yesterday on television, with six red dots on it showing the location of each kidnapping. Underneath it said: THE PATTERN OF TERROR! And in smaller letters: PARENTS’ PANIC—COULD YOUR CHILD BE NEXT?

  Either the woman at the counter hadn’t read the newspapers or else she didn’t care if kids ran around without their parents. Whichever it was, she didn’t say anything about it when I asked her how to get to the nearest subway station.

  I couldn’t remember the directions she gave me. There was so much “turn left here” and “go right there” and “then left again” that I got really dizzy. But I said thank you in a friendly voice. It wasn’t her fault that I could only walk in a straight line.

  Back on the street I trudged along. There was bound to be a bus stop somewhere, or I might find the subway station.

  Then I saw the line of taxis. I trotted up to them in relief. I had never taken a taxi in my life and I had no idea if Mom’s twenty euros would get me all the way home, but it would be money well spent. At least Mom would get me back and wouldn’t have to pick me up in the Alps or from the Pacific Ocean because I’d gotten lost.

  I crawled into the backseat of the first car and closed the door behind me. The driver had a roll of fat at the back of his neck. He turned around to look at me.

  “What are you doing?” he barked at me.

  “What do you mean, what am I doing?”

  “What’s a garden gnome like you doing alone on the street? Where are your parents?”

  I had pretty much had enough.

  “I’ve got to go home, but I can’t find the way,” I said. “And before you ask why—I’m a child proddity!”

  “Oh yeah? That’s what all you brats are these days!”

  I didn’t want to talk back. I just wanted to be at home in the thinking chair. A jingle-jangle man and a green room … great! I didn’t have the faintest idea what either of them meant. I had traveled all that way to see Sophia for nothing. Tears came to my eyes, but the taxi driver wasn’t one bit sympathetic. He was still looking me up and down. I tried Oscar’s trick and stared back at him, but it didn’t work.

  “I’ll ask you again. Where are your parents?”

  He wouldn’t drive off until I’d given him some kind of answer that satisfied him. Honestly, how annoying! He knew his way around the city and didn’t know what it felt like when you have problems with directions and your only friend has been kidnapped from under your nose.

  “I was with a friend from school,” I said finally. “My mom phoned. My dad is dead and I have to go home right away. She told me to take a taxi.”

  It was a pretty hopeless thing to say, but it worked. I finally started to cry and the taxi driver looked all worried. He turned around, started the car, and drove off. He didn’t say another word until he’d dropped me off in front of my building on Dieffe Street, and when he took thirteen euros forty off me, he almost looked as though he felt bad about it.

  WEDNESDAY AGAIN

  shadowier shadows

  Bad things take all your energy away and make your legs shake. By midday I had typed everything that had happened into my diary. Now I was sitting in the thinking chair, staring out the window and thinking about Felix telling his stories with no one to listen to them, about silent Sam with his ladybug-bath eyes, and about Sophia, surrounded by all those gray days. I thought about Oscar, locked up somewhere, very frightened even though he’s so smart. Then I thought about me, sitting around here because I’m a child proddity and don’t know what to do next. Somebody who is smarter than I am would have been able to get more clues out of Sophia.

  DEPRESSION: Gray days. Mom called it that once when we were talking about Mrs. Darling. Depression is when all your feelings are in a wheelchair. They don’t have arms anymore and sadly there’s no one to push them, either. The tires are probably flat, too. It makes you very tired.

  I crept into my room and lay down on the bed. Now and then I squinted through the window at the cracked front of the building behind ours, which looked less scary during the day than it did in the evening and at night when the shadowier shadows came. I could still be a little bit happy and proud, I thought, because I’d been brave enough to go to Tempelhof alone and had survived.

  My eyes closed all by themselves. Last night I had slept badly and not for long enough. At one point I jumped out of bed because I thought the phone had rung, but the apartment was quiet. Then I dozed off again. I dreamt that Oscar was standing in front of me on the roof terrace. He had just proved his bravery by leaning over the railing and looking down
into the backyard. Then he looked at me and I really wanted to know if he was my friend. I heard myself asking if he would come by again tomorrow. I saw Oscar scratching his arm. Fingering his airplane badge. Chewing on his lower lip with his large teeth before he said: Actually, I’ve got plans for tomorrow. They could take all day.

  I woke up with a start, as though somebody had hit me in the head, only it didn’t hurt. Something was wrong with the dream. Or something was wrong with my memory. I could almost reach it with both hands, but when I grasped for it …

  Keep calm, Rico, don’t get excited! I closed my eyes and called up the images again. Sun on the roof terrace. Oscar leaning against the railing that looks out on to the backyard, rock, rock, rocking. Scratching his arm. Fingering the airplane that I found the next day in the trash can, the small red airplane, the airplane —

  — that up until now I had thought had fallen off his shirt into the yard while he was swinging on the railing!

  I sat up in bed so fast that I got dizzy. My memory was wrong! Oscar had still been wearing Sophia’s plane when he stepped back from the railing on the KKs’ roof terrace. Which could only mean …

  “He came back again later on,” I whispered.

  But when? After we said good-bye on Monday, I had seen Oscar from the living room window, leaving the building. I had fun counting the number of steps he took from the stairs down to the street, to find out if he was as fast as me. Oscar had been faster than my counting. On Monday he definitely hadn’t been in the backyard, unless he’d come back later and had rung somebody else’s doorbell—very unlikely. And on Tuesday, yesterday morning, he had already been kidnapped, probably while he was on his way to see me.

  And that could only mean …

  It could only mean …

  I had no idea what it could, should, or had to mean. As always when I get worked up, I could feel my heart beating and a thousand birds fluttering through my head. I had to talk to somebody. Sometimes, when you tell people something that’s got you really confused, you’re less confused afterward.

  And I knew exactly who I could talk to.