Legwork

by Roland Smith

  Legwork

  By

  Roland Smith

  Legwork

  Copyright © 2011 by Roland Smith

  Published by Roland Smith INC

  All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Smashwords Edition

  For John, Will, Jack and Ethan

  Before cell phones, before reality TV, before airport TSA, before Global Positioning Systems, before Theodore and I were famous, there was my first case with the YA Detective Agency…

  Theodore

  ~

  A pigskin led me to Theodore.

  Some friends were over and we were playing football in my backyard. As always, the game was full contact without pads and helmets. My goal for the summer was to stay out of the hospital so I could try out for the Grant High School football team in the fall. On the day I met Theodore, this goal didn’t look good.

  One of my friends had invited his big brother and a few of his brother’s big friends over to give us some tips. It was brutal. Especially for me, since I was the one carrying the ball most of the time.

  “Okay, Briggs,” Stanley said. “Here’s what we’ll do. Run straight out, fake left, then angle right. I’ll throw the pigskin right into your bread basket. On three...”

  “Wait a second,” I complained, desperately trying to pick the clump of grass out of my ear. “We just ran that play and it didn’t work.”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s called strategy, Briggs. They won’t be expecting it again.”

  “Why don’t we try a quarterback sneak or something,” I suggested, noticing that Stanley didn’t have a single grass stain anywhere on his body.

  “Are you kidding?” Stanley asked. “They’d never fall for it!”

  I looked at my other teammates for support, but I didn’t find any because Stanley’s play meant that they wouldn’t have to touch the ball, which was fine with them.

  “This will work,” Stanley insisted, confidently.

  It didn’t work. I ran straight out, faked left, angled right and collided with a brick wall named, Chris, “The Cruncher,” Jones.

  Crunch looked down at me and grinned. He was missing a front tooth. Very attractive. “The ball went into your neighbor’s yard,” he said. “You better get it.”

  I stood up slowly and saw Stanley and my other teammates cowering on the far side of the yard.

  “How did you manage to throw the ball over a fifteen foot hedge?” I shouted at Stanley.

  “You were down! I had to throw it away. Strategy, Briggs. I think they’re getting tired. Hurry up and get the ball before they recover.”

  I shook my head in disgust and limped next door.

  New neighbors had moved in a couple weeks earlier. I hadn’t met them yet and I hoped they didn’t mind me going into their backyard without asking. I opened the gate and started poking around in the bushes for the football.

  “‘You looking for this?”

  Startled, I turned around. Across the yard, a kid about my age tossed the football up in the air and caught it. He was in a wheelchair, and by the looks of his thin legs, he wasn’t ever going to get out of it.

  “I didn’t see you,” I said, trying to act natural as if he didn’t have a disability.

  He threw the football up in the air again.

  “We’re playing a little football next door,” I explained.

  “I know. I’ve been listening to you.”

  “I hope we didn’t disturb...”

  He threw the football in perfect spiral that stung my hands when I caught it. I was amazed. I tossed it back to him and he caught it easily.

  “My name’s Briggs Barclay. We’re neighbors.”

  “Theodore Ronly,” he said.

  “You have a pretty good arm.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey Briggs!” Stanley yelled from the other side of the hedge. “We don’t have all day.”

  “I guess I better be going,” I said.

  Theodore nodded and threw the ball back to me. I started toward the gate, then stopped. It seemed sort of rude to just leave him sitting there. “Do you want to come over?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Theodore said. “Maybe some other time.”

  “Sure.” I opened the gate.

  “Wait a second,” he said.

  I stopped again.

  “I wouldn’t mind having you come over here sometime,” he said. “If you want.”

  “Okay,” I said, but I wasn’t thrilled about the idea. What would we do?

  “Good,” Theodore said. “i’ll see you around then.”

  I closed the gate and returned to my own backyard.

  “What took you so long?” Stanley demanded.

  “Nothing.” I threw the ball to him, then looked at the hedge. “Why don’t we go over to the park and play?”

  “Why?” Stanley asked.

  “More room,” I said, but this wasn’t the real reason.

  The truth was that I felt uncomfortable with Theodore sitting in his backyard listening to us doing something that he couldn’t do.

  It’s Just The Legs

  ~

  It took me several days to get back over to Theodore’s. I had never been around a disabled person and I was nervous about it. What were we going to talk about? I made the mistake of telling my parents about meeting Theodore. Now, every time I saw them they asked if I had been over to see him. I kept coming up with lame excuses. On the fourth day I even voluntarily pulled weeds and mowed the lawn rather than visit him.

  “That’s it!” I told myself as I pushed our rickety lawnmower back in the garage. “The next thing I know i’ll be cleaning my bedroom and scrubbing the toilet.” Before I changed my mind again I ran over to Theodore’s and knocked on his front door. His mom opened it with a pleasant smile.

  “I’m Briggs from next door. Is Theo here?”

  “Well I’m glad to meet you, Briggs,” she said. “Please come in. Theodore’s downstairs.”

  She led me through the kitchen and opened a door. I expected to see a set of stairs leading down to the basement, but it looked more like a small empty closet.

  “It’s a lift,” she said. “Go ahead. And by the way, he doesn’t like to be called Theo or Ted.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” I said and stepped inside.

  “Just push the button.”

  The floor jerked and I started down, ending up in a large daylight basement. I stepped out of the lift, but saw no sign of Theodore.

  The basement walls were lined with books all the way up to the ceiling. Aside from playing sports, reading was my favorite activity. I scanned the titles wondering if they all belonged to Theodore. And if the books were his, how did he reach the ones on the upper shelves? Most of the books were paperback novels, but a few of them were thick hardbacks with names like, Inside The Criminal Mind and Homicide Investigative Procedures. I doubted that those belonged to Theodore and wondered if his dad was a cop.

  “You like to read?”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “Wheels don’t make much noise on carpet,” he said, without apology.

  His comment made me squirm a little. I stared through the patio door so I wouldn’t have to look at his thin, misshapen legs. I felt him glaring at me.

  “You see something interesting out there?” He asked, angrily.

  “Well, no I...”

  “Look,” he said, wheeling between me and the door. “I don’t give people very long to get used to the fact that I’m glued to this chair. You’re embarrassed, but it doesn’t embarrass me.”

  “I’m not embarrassed,” I insisted.

  �
��Really?”

  “Well,” I stammered. “Maybe a little bit.”

  He grinned. “At least you’re half honest. Come on outside. I want to show you something.”

  I followed him to the patio door. It slid open automatically and he rolled through. He wheeled up to a picnic table and motioned for me to sit down across from him.

  “Okay,” he said. “What do you see?”

  I looked at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “What do you see?” He repeated.

  “You?”

  “Very good!” He said, sarcastically. “What do I look like?”

  I had no idea where he was going with this. He had long red hair, thick glasses, brown eyes, and pale skin with a lot of freckles. “You look like a kid,” I said.

  “A normal kid?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “It’s because you can’t see the wheelchair,” he said.

  Now I understood what he was trying to prove. With the chair hidden behind the table he looked like any of my other friends. “You’re right,” I told him.

  “It will take you awhile to get used to the chair,” he said. “Imagine how long it took me. You want to arm wrestle?”

  “What?” He had to be kidding.

  “Arm wrestle,” he repeated, putting his elbow on the table.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I stammered. “I mean i’ve been working out and you...”

  “Are you afraid i’ll win?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “Theodore, I’m not going to take it easy on you.”

  He laughed. “Give it your best shot, neighbor.”

  I locked hands with him and it was over almost before it began. I’m big for my age and pretty strong. I stared at him. No one had ever beaten me in arm wrestling.

  “I thought you weren’t going to take it easy on me?”

  “I wasn’t taking it easy!” And I was telling the truth.

  I tried twice more with my right hand and three times with my left. The results were the same. I lost.

  “It’s just the legs that don’t work.”

  I rubbed my sore wrists. He was right. Everything else on him seemed to be working just fine. In fact, better than fine.

  “So, what happened to your legs?” I asked.

  “Auto accident. When I was a kid.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “i’ve learned that it isn’t the end of the world. Let’s go back inside.”

  We found a plate of sandwiches sitting in the lift and wolfed them down as we talked.

  Instead of going to school, Theodore had a tutor that came to his house three times a week.

  “It’s a lot less hassle,” he said. “i’ll be graduating from high school next year.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “A year older than me,” I said in amazement. “Maybe I should get a tutor.”

  “It has its advantages,” he agreed.

  A phone rang. Theodore reached down and pulled a cordless phone from a holster attached to his chair. “Hello? Yeah... Sure. What’s the license number?” He took a small notebook out of his shirt pocket and wrote something in it. “And the make?”

  He sounded like a used car salesman.

  “Uh huh...yeah. It will take awhile. Yeah, okay. Bye.” He slipped the phone back into the holster. “I hate to cut this short,” he said. “But something’s come up.”

  I wanted to ask him what it was, but I decided against it. I figured he’d tell me if he wanted me to know. “That’s okay,” I said. But I was disappointed. I was actually beginning to relax and enjoy myself.

  “Do you want to come back?” He asked.

  “Sure.”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “Okay.”

  “In the meantime,” he said. “Do you want to borrow a couple of books?”

  “Are these all yours?”

  “Most of them,” he said. “I like mysteries. Detective fiction, things like that. Have you ever read any Chandler or Hammett?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, knowing full well I hadn’t. The only mysteries I’d read were The Hardy Boys series. After that mystery marathon I decided to stay away from mysteries for awhile.

  “Good,” he said pulling a couple of paperbacks off the shelf and handed them to me. One was called The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. The other was called, The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett.

  “Hope you like them,” Theodore said. “i’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Private Eyes

  ~

  As soon as I got home I cracked open the Continental Op and started reading. The book was a series of short stories about Operatives (called Op’s for short) working for the Continental Detective Agency in San Francisco. The stories were great. I finished the book before I went to sleep that night.

  The next morning I started reading The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Before I knew it, the morning was gone. It was about a private eye named, Philip Marlowe solving a case in Los Angeles and it was even better than the first book.

  Both books were written in the 1930’s and reminded me of the old black and white movies my parents liked to watch on TV. I had never paid much attention to these movies because I like science fiction and action pictures. But after reading the books I decided to catch a couple of these black and whites films to see what they were about.

  During the next week I went over to Theodore’s almost every day. He gave me more mysteries to read, which were just as good as the first two. Theodore seemed to know a lot about everything, but he didn’t act like a know-it-all. He was a good listener, had a great sense of humor, and overall, he was very easy to be around.

  My parents were very happy about the whole thing. Especially my mom. She thought there was no way that I could possibly get in trouble with a friend confined to a wheelchair. She didn’t know Theodore. And it turned out that I didn’t know him very well either.

  Theodore’s cordless phone was constantly ringing. In fact, he got more phone calls than my older sister Teri did, which was hard to believe. When the phone rang he’d snap it from the holster like a gunslinger pulling a six shooter. Sometimes he would just mumble a “yeah” or “okay,” then hang up and continue talking with me as if nothing had happened. Other times the phone conversations where longer and more involved, but I still couldn’t get a sense of who he was talking to, or what he was talking about. He’d say words like, SS number, data, records, credit card, password, then jot things down in his notebook. It didn’t make any sense and when I asked him who was calling, he’d tell me it wasn’t important and quickly change the subject.

  A couple of times when the phone rang, Theodore actually excused himself and went into the other room to talk. And this was another mystery I couldn’t figure out. Was he hiding something in there from me? Or was he just trying to act mysterious for my benefit.

  He had never shown me the other basement room, which I assumed was his bedroom. The door was always closed. At first I thought he just didn’t want me in there because it was messy or something—like that would bother me. But I soon realized it was more than this. He not only didn’t want me in the room, he didn’t want me to see in the room. He had a way of getting through the door so quickly that I couldn’t peek inside—not an easy maneuver in a wheelchair.

  The third time Theodore disappeared into the room, he was gone a long time. After waiting about twenty minutes I began to wonder how Philip Marlowe would handle this situation. He’d probably kick the door in, grab the phone from Theodore, and phone-whip him with it. But this wasn’t a black and white movie and I wasn’t Philip Marlowe, so I decided the best way to handle the situation was to go home.

  I was halfway across the backyard when Theodore called out.

  “Hey, Briggs! Where are you going?”

  “I have some things to do,” I said, sharply.

  Theodore looked thoughtful, then said, �
��I’m sorry that took so long.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You’re probably wondering what’s going on,” he continued.

  “It’s none of my business,” I told him.

  “Why don’t you come back inside. I have something to show you.”

  “That’s what you said when you beat me at arm wrestling,” I reminded him.

  Theodore grinned. “Well, this is a little different.”

  He was wrong. It was a lot different. I followed him back inside and he opened the secret door. My eyes almost popped out of my head. The room was filled with phones, fax machines, computers, and other electronic gear that I had never even seen before. All the computers were on and groups of numbers were flashing across the screens.

  “You’re a computer hacker!”

  “Not exactly,” he said with a laugh.

  “Then why do you have all this equipment?”

  “Are you interested in computers?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “We have an old clunky computer at home. Nothing like these. I’ve wanted to get a new one, but we can’t afford it. But that doesn’t answer my question, Theodore. What are you doing with all this stuff?”

  He motioned me to an empty chair and I sat down. There was a hospital bed on the far side of the room. Hanging above it were a series of stainless steel bars, which he must use to get in and out of the bed. Near the bed, attached to the wall, was an elaborate exercise machine with pulleys and weights. This explained how he had destroyed me in arm wrestling.

  “I don’t know exactly where to start,” he began, a little nervously. “I was going to wait a couple of weeks and then talk to you about it.” He hesitated. “You know those books I gave you to read?”

  I nodded.

  “Have you ever thought about being a private detective, or confidential investigator?”

  “Not really,” I said. Although, after reading the mysteries I had been thinking about it a lot. “Why?”

  “Well...,” he stammered. “I run a private detective agency.”

  “What?” I shouted. “You’re only fifteen years old!”