The Outlaws of Sherwood Street: Giving to the Poor

by Peter Abrahams

  “Not unless we have to,” said Ashanti.

  “She won’t believe it,” Silas said. “And she’ll think we’re nuts.”

  “Maybe it’ll do something to convince her,” I said. I glanced around. Hugh had gone back to foaming and frothing, and no one else was interested in us. I took off the charm and laid it on the table. We stared at it.

  “Do something,” Silas commanded.

  But the charm just sat there, looking like a small metal heart, kind of cheap and not even well-shaped for a heart, being too wide at the bottom and rounded instead of pointed. I put my finger on one edge. The others did the same, so we were all in contact with the charm. It did nothing, refusing to heat up or cooperate in the slightest way.

  “Let’s vote,” I said. “All in favor of calling Dina?”

  Ashanti took her finger off the charm and raised her hand. So did I. Silas alone was still touching the charm.

  “Does it have to be unanimous?” he said.

  “What do you think?” said Ashanti.

  “What do I think?” Silas answered. “I’m not so sure about democracy, for starters. There’s a lot to be said for dictatorship, the benevolent kind, to say nothing of—”

  “Silas!” Ashanti and I said together.

  “She’ll think we’re nuts,” he repeated. “And there are lots of other risks as well.” He glanced around. “Do you want me to go into them?” Silence. “I suppose not. But I will anyway. For example, all of a sudden we’re cool with trusting adults?”

  Ashanti stared hard at the wall, almost like she was trying to see right through it. “I go back and forth on that,” she said.

  Uh-oh. The Ashanti problem was with me all the time, even when I’d succeeded in burying it.

  “It’s not so much about trusting adults,” I said, “as this particular adult. She’s no friend of Sheldon Gunn.”

  I turned to Silas, waited for him to demolish my argument. Silas surprised me. Slowly and reluctantly, like it weighed a thousand pounds, he raised his hand.

  “All opposed?” I said, not to be funny, but because of a sudden hunch that the charm might want a say at this point. But it remained inert. “Three yesses, no noes.”

  “What about Tut-Tut?” Silas said.

  “We’ll have to vote for him,” I replied. “For now.”

  “Can’t you just see him raising his hand?” said Ashanti.

  I could, and easily. “That makes four,” I said. “We call Dina. Who wants to do it?”

  No one wanted to do it.

  “I nominate you,” Silas said.

  “Second,” said Ashanti.

  The vote was two to one in favor of me making the call, with only me opposed. I called Dina at the TV station. They transferred the call, and she answered while the first ring was still ringing.

  “DeNunzio,” she said, quick, crisp, strictly business. Being a reporter would be cool for sure; I put that thought aside for later.

  “Um, hi,” I said. “It’s Robbie. Robbie Forester.” There was a pause, and for a moment, I wondered if I’d gotten everything wrong. “We met a couple of—”

  “I know who you are,” Dina said. “What’s up?”

  “We, uh, want to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “Mr. Wilders.”

  Another pause. I was sure I could feel her thinking, real fast. “Where are you?” she said.

  “In Brooklyn,” I replied, real nonspecific, as though her quick-thinking ability had somehow spread to me.

  “At home?”

  “No,” I said. “We could come to you.”

  “The station’s in Manhattan,” she said. “Tell you what—I’ll come to you. Name a place.”

  Name a place? Not this place: much too public. I covered the phone with my hand and whispered, “She wants to meet somewhere.”

  “Not here,” said Ashanti and Silas together.

  “Joe Louis?” I said. They nodded. I uncovered the mouthpiece. “Do you know Joe Louis School?”

  “See you there in forty-five minutes,” Dina said.

  Hugh brought the bill. Then came a big surprise. Silas reached into his pocket, pulled out four twenties, two fives, and a one.

  “You made that on your printer?” Ashanti said.

  “I suppose I could have,” Silas said, “but the fact is I earned it doing honest work.”

  “Like what?”

  “I got Mrs. Rubinstein’s computer up and running for her—she’s the neighbor down the hall. She was so grateful she paid me a hundred bucks.”

  “How long did it take?” I said, wondering if Silas could turn this into a real career.

  “A couple of seconds,” he said. “It wasn’t plugged in.”

  “Which you told her in this honest working way of yours?”

  “Actually not,” Silas said. “What if she felt embarrassed, like she was dumb or something? So I fooled around with it for a while, upgraded a few things, and downloaded a cool game about these giant ants biting the heads off of anybody you choose.”

  “Mrs. Rubinstein wants to play a game like that?” I said.

  “Can’t say for sure. She doesn’t know she has it.”

  22

  Joe Louis was a shabby old brick building on a shabby street that was just around the corner from a fancy one, a common situation in Brooklyn. It had a small, paved schoolyard with a single backboard, although as we walked up, I saw that the hoop, which had always lacked a net, was now itself missing. We crossed the yard and stood under the overhang at the school entrance, out of the rain.

  Silas checked the time. “Eighteen more minutes,” he said.

  “What if she brings a camera crew?” Ashanti said.

  I hadn’t thought of that, had no answer. No one had an answer. We stood in silence, eventually slumping down into sitting positions, our backs to the door. The wind blew scraps of this and that across the pavement. No talking happened. I felt kind of alone, which didn’t make sense: these were my best friends! But a horrible feeling was growing like a dark thing inside me, a feeling that all this friendship was now at risk of getting trampled or thrown away.

  “Two minutes,” Silas said.

  We rose, looked west, where Dina would be coming from if she’d taken the subway. Then we looked east, where she’d appear if she was driving, Joe Louis being on a one-way street. It was one of those weird big-city moments when no people or cars were around and you could almost imagine yourself the only living inhabitant.

  “Time,” said Silas.

  A car drove by, and then another, followed by a steady stream, windshield wipers whipping back and forth. And now there were pedestrians, most alone, all of them hurrying to get out of the rain. But no sign of Dina.

  • • •

  “It’s been an hour,” Silas said. “I’m freezing.”

  “Why don’t you give her a call?” Ashanti said.

  “Okay.” I redialed the station, again was put through to Dina, but this time she didn’t pick up and I got sent to voice mail.

  “Hi, it’s Robbie. We’re at Joe Louis. Are you—I mean—um, should we keep waiting? Or . . .” I clicked off.

  “Smooth,” said Silas.

  My voice rose. “Zip it!” All at once I was real angry, not knowing why. I paced around a bit, even kicked at the brick wall. I found myself wishing Tut-Tut was here. Ashanti came over and gave me a light pat on the shoulder. I calmed down.

  We waited for another half hour and then left, heading toward the subway station on our way back to HQ, although I wasn’t sure why: I was out of ideas. Just before the subway entrance stood a newspaper stand with a cold-looking turbaned guy inside. His attention was on a small TV propped up on some magazines. On the screen—for just a second before a toothpaste commercial—was a still picture of Dina DeNunzio, with a
caption that read MISSING.

  “Missing?” I said.

  The newsstand guy turned to us. “Terrible, terrible news,” he said, speaking in an Indian accent—the kind from India—that makes English suddenly sound so musical. “I myself am the biggest possible fan of Dina DeNunzio.”

  “But what happened to her?” Ashanti said. “What did they say on TV?”

  He shrugged. “A paucity of facts—that is the problem. It seems Miss DeNunzio left the office and was last seen driving away in her car. The car was found thirty minutes ago—door open and engine running, very bad—and no sign of her.”

  “Found where?” Silas said.

  The newsstand guy paused before answering, giving us a careful scan. “You, too, are fans of Dina?”

  We all nodded.

  “I think they were referencing somewhere in Dumbo,” the newsstand guy said. “Down under the bridges.”

  • • •

  Dumbo is one of the very coolest parts of Brooklyn, at least for now; these things can change pretty fast. It borders on the river, right where the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges come close to each other. We took a cab, on account of Silas’s recent windfall. He sat up front with the driver—which is where you never want to sit in a cab—and Ashanti and I sat in back. Silas didn’t seem at all uncomfortable up there, was soon involved in a conversation, and not long after that, he was busy upgrading all the driver’s electronic devices—phone, tablet, GPS.

  We arrived in Dumbo, bumped along on a cobblestone road. “Anywhere special?” said the driver.

  “The sculpture park,” Silas told him.

  I leaned forward. “Why there?”

  “Trust me,” Silas said, sounding even smugger than usual, not bothering to turn his head. I guessed that he’d picked up some info on the driver’s tablet; maybe I was starting to know how his mind worked.

  The driver turned a corner, drove under the shadow of one of the bridges, reached the river, and came to a stop. “Can’t go any more,” he said, pointing ahead. “Police activity.”

  Up ahead I saw the sculpture park, a small green space bordering the river, now blocked off by squad cars, their blue lights flashing wetly in the rain. Tall insect-like sculptures towered over everything, all of them the color of dark clouds. We got out.

  “No charge,” the cabbie said. Had that ever happened before in the whole history of New York?

  And as we walked away, Ashanti—not for the first time—spoke my thought aloud. “Has that ever happened before in the whole history of New York?”

  “Sure,” Silas said. “All the time with movie stars and athletes.”

  We approached the police line. Crime scene tape was still going up. Beyond it I could see some cops gathered around a car parked on the grass, maybe twenty feet from the road. The driver’s side door hung open, as the newsstand guy had said, but the engine was no longer running. A plainclothes cop with POLICE on the back of his blue jacket leaned into the car, taking pictures. Without a word between us, we all moved beyond the farthest reach of the crime scene tape, stepped up on the grass and walked toward the car.

  Everyone was so busy that we went unnoticed. I didn’t know what was drawing Ashanti and Silas, but as for me, I was hoping not to see things—terrible things like blood, for example, or clumps of hair, or bullet holes in a cool red leather jacket. I saw none of that, nothing bad at all, just a car sitting where it shouldn’t have been; and no driver.

  Then came a booming voice, real angry. “Hey, you kids! What do you think you’re doing?”

  I whipped around.

  A huge cop was coming toward us, waving his arms. “Can’t you stupid kids even read?”

  We started to move away.

  “Hold it right there!”

  I paused, so close to taking off. But running away from cops didn’t seem like a plan, certainly not when one of the runners was Silas. The cop came right up to us, towering enormously, his face all red, rain dripping off the bill of his hat.

  “We, uh, were just looking,” I began, “and—”

  “Saw it on the news, officer,” Silas broke in. “Any sign of Dina DeNunzio? We’re big fans. What happened here?”

  I’d heard of faces turning purple before but never actually seen it. Now I did for the first time. “Shut up!” the cop yelled. “Let’s see some ID.”

  “We don’t have any ID,” Ashanti said.

  “We’re kids,” I added, one of the feeblest remarks of my whole life.

  “Don’t feed me that,” the cop said, adding another word I won’t repeat. “You’re all school age, meaning you’ve got student ID.” He held out his hand.

  The truth was I didn’t have my student ID on me; no reason to, with my MetroCard pass. And what if he wrote down our names, contacted our parents, or even Thatcher? “Um, it’s vacation,” I said.

  The cop turned his full attention on me. “Oh, a smartass, huh? Maybe somebody should teach you some—”

  He paused. Silas had reached into his pocket, was taking out what looked like some kind of plastic ID cards.

  “I happen to be carrying the IDs, officer,” he said, handing them to the cop.

  The cop peered at the first one, then eyed Silas. “Brock McCool?” he said.

  “That’s me,” said Silas.

  The cop nodded, checked the next ID, turned to Ashanti. “Tiffany Strong?”

  “Uh,” said Ashanti. “Um, yeah.”

  And then it was my turn. “Maxine Rumble?”

  “Call me Max,” I told the cop.

  He handed the cards back to Silas. “Okay—now get lost!”

  We backed away on a sort of tide of relief. As soon as we were out of the cop’s hearing distance, Ashanti and I rounded on Silas.

  “Whoa,” he said. “I thought we might need fake IDs one day, so I made some. And I was right! So what’s the problem?”

  “Tiffany?” said Ashanti.

  “Maxine?” I said.

  “Yes,” Silas said. “What am I missing?”

  I didn’t know where to begin. And even if I had, there was no time. Where was Dina? She’d been on her way to meet us. What had happened to her? This—I took one last quick glance—didn’t look like a car accident: her car was undamaged. The whole situation looked more like—

  Whoa! What was that I saw low down on the driver’s-side rear door of the Dina’s car? I took a few sideways steps, got a better angle. A muddy footprint, half washed away by the rain, but the kind of footprint left by a boot with deep treads, was just visible on the lower part of the rear door. How would a footprint get left in a place like that? What if some guy was bracing himself against the car while he tried to force open the front door, a front door that was stuck for some reason? One more thing: the mud was a strange sort of mud, very darkish. A mud I knew. A sickening idea began forming in my mind, an idea that seemed to come sneaking back from the near future.

  • • •

  We walked away from the sculpture park, crossed the street, and stood under the awning of a wine shop. Through the foggy window I saw a few people swirling glasses, sniffing at them, wrinkling up their foreheads in deep thought. What a world—on the far side of that window, just a few feet away, there was nothing to worry about except the taste of wine.

  “Kolnikov’s got her,” I said. I explained about the boot mark and the mud.

  “Where?” Ashanti said.

  “Could be anywhere,” said Silas.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” I said; my mind was on one word: detonation.

  Inside the wine shop, a fat guy in one of those Irish fisherman sweaters spat a thin red stream into a bowl.

  “What’s with the whole wine thing?” Silas said.

  “Never mind that,” I told him. “We have to think.”

  “All right. Here’s a thought. Let’s call the cops.”<
br />
  “No way,” Ashanti said.

  “Why not?” said Silas.

  “First, we don’t know anything about Kolnikov, even if that’s his real name. Second, they’ll never believe us about Sheldon Gunn. Third, he’ll find out and then . . .”

  Ashanti was right. I didn’t even want to let number three play out in my mind.

  “Then we need a plan,” Silas said.

  “You keep saying that—it’s not helpful.” I glanced around. It was getting dark: night had snuck up on us, the way it sometimes did in the city. “Supposing,” I began, and then my cell phone rang. I checked the screen: Silas. I showed it to him. “Someone’s calling me on your phone.”

  “My phone?” He patted his pockets. Silas had a lot of pockets, so it took some time. “Where is it?”

  “Maybe if I answer, we’ll find out.” I pressed the green button. “Hello?”

  A voice spoke, a voice that wavered somewhere between kid and man. “Hey. Silas there?”

  “Thaddeus?” Silas said, hovering in close. He snatched the phone from me. “You stole my phone?”

  Before Silas clamped the phone to his ear, I could just make out Thaddeus’s voice on the other end. He sounded like Silas, except older and not as nice.

  “More like borrowing it,” he said.

  Silas had a roundish kind of face on which you hardly ever saw anger, but it was visible now. “Why? Where’s Mom? I want to—”

  He went silent, seemed to be listening very hard. His eyes opened wide. “Oh, my God,” he said. “All right—we’re coming.” He pocketed the phone in a dazed sort of way.

  “We’re coming?” Ashanti said. “Where?”

  “My place,” Silas said. “Dina’s hiding out there. She wants us.”

  23

  What’s she doing there?” I said.

  Silas shrugged.

  “She must have escaped,” Ashanti said.

  “But how would she even know where I live?” Silas asked.

  “She knows where I live,” I said. “She’s a reporter—she finds things out.”