“I can come with you,” Lola said. “I haven’t seen Shoji today.”
“No!” Max said. “I mean, Houdini really needs to get out of the cage and, uh, I need to talk to Shoji about something. In private.”
It wasn’t a lie, technically, so Max hoped Lola wouldn’t get suspicious.
Lola nodded and went inside, and Max breathed a sigh of relief. She ran around the house and hurried down into the storm cellar, fearing the worst. For all she knew, Felix and Shoji could both be dead and Eric and Carl had gone to get coffins.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Instead, Shoji was sitting in a folding chair that had never been there before and Felix sat on the bench, a bottle of glue in hand, and a line of repaired Hummel dolls along the seat next to him.
“See, if you ask me, this is the Cardinals’ year,” Shoji was prattling. “I know, I know, they lost the series last year, but that’s just what happens sometimes. Even the best drop the ball every once in a while. But you can’t count them out, no sir.”
Felix nodded along, meticulously reattaching an arm to a little girl that had a shepherd’s crook and a bonnet.
“So he’s not dead, then,” Max said, and Felix jumped. The arm was stuck to the little girl’s ear.
“Oh, no, not even close to dead,” Shoji said with a grin. “When we got down here, he was out of the ropes and had gotten water from your garden hose.”
“Your neighbor is missing a pie,” Felix said as he attempted to unfix the doll so he could refix her appropriately. “A very delicious pie.”
“Adding pie theft to your list of offenses?” Max asked. “And from Mrs. Morris no less. You must really love prison.”
“A bird had already sampled the crust,” Felix said. “I was saving your Mrs. Morris from unnecessary exposure to disease.”
“I suppose she should thank you.”
“She should.” Felix set the Hummel figurine down. “As should you. The four prisoners were apprehended according to plan, were they not?”
“Three,” Max said. “One got away.”
Felix frowned. “Who?”
“Blaz.”
“Of course he did.” Felix let out a sigh. “If there was to be an anomaly to the plan, it would be Blaz. He is the most earnest Nazi I’ve ever known.”
Max nodded and remembered that she was previously occupied with keeping Lola far away from the storm cellar while also showing her that she was welcome into every corner of her life. Given the complexity of that mission, she knew she should get back to it. “Well, you’re alive, so I guess I should go.”
“When will I be able to call my Josephine?” Felix asked.
“He’s been bugging me about that since I got here,” Shoji said.
Max popped her knuckles. “I don’t know yet. It’s not exactly the simplest of tasks. I mean, I’m having a hard enough time keeping you hidden from Lol—”
“You don’t have to worry about that anymore,” Lola’s voice said from the top of the stairs. “But now I get to rip off your pinkie.”
There were probably many appropriate responses to this particular situation, but Max didn’t choose any of them. Rather, she grabbed her hand and prepared to fight for her life, or at least the life of her appendage.
Chapter Thirty-Six
In retrospect, Max knew she shouldn’t have been surprised that Lola had come out and listened to the conversation from the top of the stairs. After all, it was what Max would have done in the same situation. She had merely surmised that, given Lola’s much higher standard of morality and sense of conscience, she would have let her word be her bond. But of course, when Nazi prisoners are involved, the game of morality is played by different rules. Or so Max assumed.
“Why didn’t you tell your dad about him?” Lola asked, gripping Max’s pinkie like a vice.
“I just— It’s complicated,” Max said.
“That’s ’cause you’re trying to lie again,” Lola said. “The truth is never complicated.”
“Now, that’s baloney,” Shoji interjected. “I looked ahead in our math book, and math is nothing but the truth, but it gets super complicated.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Please, listen,” Max said, glancing over at Felix’s amused eyes. “I know I should have, or at least that it was the right thing to do, but you’ve got to trust me. We need to do it this way.”
“Not a good enough answer,” Lola said and started yanking on Max’s finger.
“Ow!” Max screeched when she felt the knuckle pop. “Stop!”
Lola gave it a twist.
“Sometimes doing the wrong thing is the right thing!” Max said. “Like how I hugged you at school.”
Lola let go. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Max rubbed her throbbing pinkie. “After what Judy said, most everybody agreed they were going to keep their distance from you, just in case it was true.”
“But it’s not true.”
“Okay, that doesn’t change how people looked at me when I hugged you,” Max said. “People have their opinions, and that’s how they figure out what’s right to do.”
Lola took a deep breath. “Are you saying this whole thing is just a difference of opinion?”
“I’m saying I need you to trust me. I only ever do bad when I’m trying to do good. Honest.”
It was painfully clear from the expression on Lola’s face that she was several hundred miles away from being happy about her next course of action, but she nodded in agreement.
“Wunderbar,” Felix said. “The servante was always meant to have ten hands. It was because it had eight that Blaz went free.”
Lola shot him a look. She had clearly not warmed to the concept of joining the league of Felix. “I never said I was going to help.”
“But you will, yes?” Felix asked. “These are your friends. Going against the dangerous Nazis. Risking their lives. Would you abandon them in their hour of need?”
“Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you, Felix?” Max asked.
“He’s got a point, though,” Shoji said. “What kind of a person would let their best friends go off alone to catch a Nazi?”
“Two Nazis,” Felix said. “Tomorrow you will catch two.”
Lola clenched her teeth. “Sure, I’ll help. But if anything goes wrong—”
“You get to rub it in our faces for as long as you want,” Max said.
That answer seemed very nearly satisfactory for Lola, so they turned their attention to getting her up to speed on the enormity of the task before them and the plan by which they were set to accomplish it. Throughout this discussion, Felix peppered them with the same nagging regarding his phone-call request.
Finally, Max had had enough. “Felix,” she said. “There are FBI agents crawling all over Abilene and the surrounding area. So as soon as I can figure out how to get you to a phone, get a call connected to New York City, and make sure nobody will see or hear you, or listen in on the line, I will tell you. You have my word.”
“Your word?” he asked.
“Yes. My word.”
“Wunderbar,” he muttered.
They settled on a plan that was actually quite exciting for all of them, although for widely different reasons each. Of course, for Shoji, the minute they introduced flammable elements into the mix, he was sold on the plan. Max, meanwhile, was happy to have a more headlining role than before. And, for Lola, she was happy that the plan involved the very first slumber party to which she’d ever been invited.
But this also brought its own issue. “So we’re going to tell my mamaw that we’re having dinner at your house and tell your parents that we’re having dinner at mine?”
“Yeah, it’ll be perfect.”
“But that’s a lie.”
Max sighed. “It’s not a lie if nobody gets hurt.”
“What kind of logic is that?” Lola asked.
“The kind of logic that lets me lie more than you,” Max said. “S
o just trust me.”
Lola reluctantly agreed, mainly because a slumber party had been a dream of equal proportions to Max’s magic show dream, and Lola had already seen that sacrifices must be made to see your dream come true.
Eventually it came time for all good little boys and girls to return home and grace the dinner table with their presence. So, after making Felix promise he would do no more pie stealing, they went their separate ways and Max hurried inside and washed up for the meal.
As the Larousses sat around the table and ate their ham and beans, the air was more silent than usual in their house.
At one point, Mrs. Larousse stood to look out the window. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” Major Larousse asked.
“It sounded like the storm cellar door opened and closed.”
Major Larousse wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I’ll go check it out.”
Max panicked and nearly choked on the beans. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said. “I hear that all the time. That old cellar is possessed, I swear.”
Major Larousse glanced at her and then sat back down.
“Anyway, how’s work?” Max asked.
He sighed. “I actually have something to talk to you about. I was thinking that it might be good for you two to go visit Grandma Schauder for a little while. Until all this stuff blows over.”
“What?” Max dropped her fork. “No, we can’t do that.”
“Why?” he asked. “Don’t you miss Brooklyn?”
More than you know, she thought to herself.
“Not really,” she said. “And besides, you already caught some of the prisoners. I’ll bet you have the rest by next week.”
He tapped his ham and cut a few more chunks off to add to the pile of chunks he still had not eaten. “Yeah, we caught three. Under the wildest circumstances. You don’t get lucky like that twice.”
Her mother reached over and grabbed Max’s hand. “Sweetie, I already talked to Grandma. She’s got the room all set up for you. She even cleared a spot for Houdini.”
Max cast her a puzzled glance. “Wait, you and I are going? Or I’m going?”
“You both are going,” Major Larousse said.
Mrs. Larousse looked at him. “Yes, both of us are going, but then I’m coming back. I was away from your father long enough while he was in Africa, I don’t want to do that again.”
Max felt her chest tighten. “Yeah, we were both away from him, remember?”
“It’s just until this whole thing blows over,” her mother said. “And from what we’ve been hearing, there’s probably only a few months left to this war.”
Max pushed her plate away and gawked at her. “When you say ‘until this whole thing blows over,’ are you talking about this thing with the prisoners? Or this thing called the war?”
Mrs. Larousse let go of her hand and grabbed Major Larousse’s. “We made a mistake making you move here.”
Max’s mind scrambled. This was becoming far more of a crisis than she had anticipated. “Okay, okay, sure,” she said. “But, if I go running off to Brooklyn, won’t that make it even more suspicious? I mean, considering the fact that I was basically an accomplice to the escape.”
Major Larousse winced. “Max, I’m so sorry I said that. I shouldn’t have.”
Max shook her head. “No, but you were right. I kept information from you. If I had told you, you could have stopped them.”
“You made a mistake,” Major Larousse said.
“And I won’t again,” Max said. “Please don’t send me away because of it.”
Major Larousse coughed. “I know you won’t do it again,” he said. “You’re too smart to make the same mistake twice. I’m sure, if you ever had information about escaped prisoners, you’d tell me right away.”
Max gulped and hoped it had been silent.
“But that’s beside the point. This is no place for a kid like you. You’re miserable here. Even I can see that.”
“I’m not miserable!” she said and forced a big smile. “I love the desert. New York is too crowded. And the traffic, blech. Plus all those buildings? You can’t even see the horizon half the time. Also, at night, you never see the stars.”
“This isn’t a discussion,” he said. “You’re leaving Monday.”
Max had to find a card up her sleeve. A misdirection. Something.
“What if you catch all the prisoners before then? Can I stay?”
“Before Monday?”
“Yeah.
He pondered that. “What difference would that make?”
“Maybe it wouldn’t,” she said. “But let’s just call it a wager. I’ll bet you that all the prisoners are caught before Monday. If they are, then I stay. If they aren’t, I go.”
Major Larousse looked at Mrs. Larousse for her opinion. She shrugged.
He held out his hand. “Okay. It’s a deal.”
Max shook his hand, satisfied that once again she had made a wager she was guaranteed to win.
That is, provided she could trust the elements of the plan that were outside of her control.
In other words, every single element of the plan.
She began to sweat profusely.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“I never would have thought I’d be fighting so hard to NOT go back to Brooklyn.”
—Max’s Diary, Friday, March 31, 1944
Judy’s absence from class was a surprise to nobody, considering she generally skipped every time a new movie came to town, and also considering the drama she had partaken of the day before. Not that drama was unusual for Judy, but usually she knew the script beforehand and chose to adlib her lines like the other Judy, of the Garland family. Unscripted, unplanned drama was not in Judy’s acting portfolio.
The absence, however, that did fill the class with shock was Margaret’s absence. She was not the sort who skipped school, at least not to anyone’s immediate recollection. Perhaps she had two years ago, one boy posited, but that was the day her father shipped out, and it was unlikely that that event had happened again.
The person in class who seemed the most distraught over the absence was Natalie. Her usually ever-present cheer was gone and replaced with an unattractive gloom. It was so very painful to see that Max offered her a word of encouragement and even a note with an unsavory limerick to cheer her up.
Natalie passed a note back.
I think Judy’s in trouble.
Max wasn’t sure if she could be so lucky, but she passed a note back asking for more details.
Natalie passed forward a letter, which was written entirely in German. The accompanying note read:
I found this in her room yesterday. Blaz gave it to her the day before the escape. I told her I’d keep it a secret, but now I’m getting scared.
Max scanned over the letter. Her limited knowledge of the written language allowed her to recognize some of the words and phrases, most of which were terms of endearment. Other than that, she was not nearly well versed enough to determine what it was the rogue prisoner had communicated to Judy.
Does she read German? Max wrote on a note back to Natalie.
“No,” Natalie whispered. “That’s what’s so weird about all of this. And Margaret didn’t show up for school today, either. They’re both missing.”
“From class,” Max whispered. “I doubt they’re in any kind of danger.”
“You don’t know that, though,” Natalie said. “What if Blaz was one of the prisoners that got out?”
Max nodded. Natalie didn’t know that Blaz was off roaming free.
“Do you want me to have somebody read this letter and see what it says?”
“Do you know somebody who reads German?”
“I’ll give it to my mom,” Max lied.
When she handed the letter to Felix later, he read over it quickly.
“Blaz wrote this?” he said. “I did not know he was so poetic.”
“Ew, gross,” Max said in shock. “He’s a grown man.
She’s just a kid.” As if to emphasize the youthfulness of people her age, Max tightened her pigtails.
“It is a farewell letter, such as a man might write to his family,” Felix said and folded the item into a tiny square to fit into his pocket. “He must have grown to see your friend as a baby sister.”
“Not my friend,” Max retorted. “And are you saying he loves her? Like they’re family or something?” The idea that Judy could be emotionally related to Blaz was almost too perfect for Max to bear. “Please say ‘yes.’”
He shot her a disparaging glance. “I do not feel such matters are to be taken so lightly,” he said. “Love is not a triviality. Love is a fundamental force of the universe, more powerful than magnetism in binding people together, more powerful than gravity in bringing men to their knees.”
She fought an anxious squirm that had suddenly become trapped in her muscles and went to check the bags Shoji had left at the bottom of the stairs. “Wow, do you think he got enough kerosene?”
“Fräulein, I am growing anxious. When will I be able to call my Josephine?”
Max tugged on her pigtail again and sighed. “How do you even know she’s still there?”
Felix leaned the chair back and balanced on the rear legs. “She is still there.”
“How do you know, though? I’ll bet there’re people that think I’m still there. People move all the time.”
He dropped back down onto all four legs of the chair. “What are you saying?”
“If there was just some way to know before we try connecting you all the way to an operator in New York.” She took a deep breath. She’d been dreading her next suggestion for a while. “What if I call her first?”
“You want to call Josephine?”
“Just so we know we’re not sticking our necks out for nothing.”
He contemplated this idea. “Then you must do it now. Before we go any further.”
“But we need to get ready for the next capture,” she said. “What if I do it tomorrow? It’s a Saturday, she might be more likely to be home.”
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