“Okay, Henderson,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something now, and I don’t want you to freak out.” He made me promise, dumb though that was, that I would not freak out before he would continue, and of course I promised.
“I hereby solemnly swear that I will not freak out, so help me Satan,” I said.
“I don’t know who killed your dad,” Sam Hellerman continued, “if it was Mr. Teone or someone else, or if he was even murdered at all. I don’t think anyone will ever know, and I don’t know if it’s even possible to figure it out, especially from the Catcher Code. And you should stop obsessing about this because … because it’s going to ruin your life if you keep it up.”
I was taken aback. That was the most earnest thing I’d ever heard Sam Hellerman say. It didn’t sound like him. Since when did he care whether anyone’s life got ruined? I guess our little guy is growing up, was my main thought about that, and I wasn’t at all sure that I liked it. Still, it was just a variation on what Little Big Tom had said, and I wouldn’t say I even disagreed with it. Maybe it already had ruined my life, in a way. But I didn’t see any reason to freak out to any extent over it. I reassured him on that, but I had to point out that I still felt the Catcher Code was important.
“After all, Tit wrote it. It’s the earliest evidence we have for his state of mind at that young age, and of his relationship with my dad.”
Sam Hellerman sighed and rolled his eyes.
“You’re not listening, Henderson,” he said. “Here’s the thing. I’ve been feeling bad about it ever since you started heading off into crazy town on this thing about Tit and your dad and I should have told you a long time ago. Tit didn’t write the Catcher Code.”
What was he talking about? Of course Tit wrote it. It was right there in the code itself, internal textual evidence, the best kind there could be.
“He didn’t write the Catcher Code,” said Sam Hellerman. “I know it for absolute certain.”
“Well, okay, then, if Tit didn’t write it, who did?”
Sam Hellerman laughed.
“I did,” he said.
I looked at Sam Hellerman. Then I kept looking at him. I knew it was the truth as soon as he said it. The whole thing had had Sam Hellerman written all over it from the beginning, really, if I had only thought to think of it. But I kept staring at him, not knowing what to say. He stared back at me, wondering what I was going to say. Then I knew, and so did he a moment later.
“Get out of here,” I said.
THEY CALL IT THAT OLD MOUNTAIN DEW
So the Catcher Code had been a Hellerman forgery. I could easily see how he might have managed it. And knowing Sam Hellerman as I do, it wasn’t that much more difficult to imagine a host of possible reasons why: he had wanted to give me something to focus on as a distraction from his schemes-in-progress, or he had merely wanted to see if he could pull it off, or it could even have just been that presenting his Sherlock Hellerman explanations and stretching them out over time had been a good opportunity to acquire an additional supply of my hospital tranquilizers. I wasn’t going to ask him. I knew that would get me nowhere. But I suppose it did explain why Sam Hellerman had been so negative about the Catcher Code during our lawsuit discussions.
To be honest, it was a bit of a relief not to have to think about the Catcher Code anymore, irritating and embarrassing as it was that running around in circles over it had cost me so much grief over the past year. The only thing that truly irked me, when I really thought about it, was the desecration of my dad’s book. (Look up “desecration.” I just did, and it definitely means what I thought it meant.) There was no excuse for it. Sam Hellerman could have easily accomplished whatever he had wanted to accomplish without resorting to that. I had accidentally beaten up Paul Krebs for the same sort of thing when he had poured Coke in one of my dad’s books, and I knew that if I dwelled on it there was a good chance that the flashing colors of rage would once again start to blot out my vision and I’d wind up accidentally beating up Sam Hellerman. I can’t say for sure I wouldn’t have enjoyed that, on some level. You never know till you try, do you?
As for what I was going to do now, well, we had a show, and I wasn’t about to miss it just because of being pissed off at Sam Hellerman. After that, I didn’t know, but all that meant was that I had to add it to the huge list of other things I didn’t know—as usual, but possibly even more so.
Sam Hellerman had been startled enough by my “Get out of here” that he had fled from me like a cat from a jar of clinking pennies. Maybe I had reminded him of his dad and struck momentary terror into his soul. I hoped so. But in the interests of show business and rock and roll, I knew it would be a good idea to tell him I was still planning to show up and play the next day. I called him on his holster phone and had to listen to him fumble with it, drop it, scamper after it, and finally pick it up to answer.
“Tomorrow we rock” was all I said.
“Good man,” said Sam Hellerman.
And I had to hand it to Sam Hellerman. He had managed to produce a fake Mountain Dew–sponsored show to benefit recycling that was almost exactly like you might imagine a real one would look like, if your imagination was a bit gullible and your natural skepticism a bit leaky. Along with the CARING, HEALING, and UNDERSTANDING banners from school, he had painted banners that said MOUNTAIN DEW PRESENTS, complete with logos and everything. Unless you examined them close up, they looked almost unquestionably authentic, and no one, that I knew of, ever thought to question them. He had also enlisted some of his classmates from MHHS to staff tables and sell what was apparently Mountain Dew from big fountain tanks, wearing little Mountain Dew uniforms of Sam Hellerman’s own design. It was the hats that made it work: they looked too stupid to be fake. It wasn’t genuine Mountain Dew in the tanks, Sam Hellerman told me, but similar-tasting discount generic soda he had managed to acquire somehow at a fraction of the cost. He also had placed free pretzels and other salty snacks in little buckets around the room to make people thirsty enough to buy the soda, and had set the thermostat at a high temperature for the same reason.
“If this sells out,” said Sam Hellerman, “we’re going to make a fortune in concessions alone.”
He had arranged for a back line too, drums and amps as well as the PA and monitors, to make the set changes go more smoothly and also because, as I’ve explained, our own equipment was total crap. And he had instructed the sound guy, who was basically his employee for the night, to reduce the volume of the opening bands’ mixes and to sabotage their sets subtly to make us look better, just like they do to the opening acts at real professional rock and roll shows.
Finally, he had had pamphlets printed up extolling the virtues of recycling and asking for donations to the International Ted Nugent Center for the Promotion of Recycling, along with envelopes to put the money in and slotted boxes in which to deposit them.
“How’d you pay for all this?” I asked. It must have cost a fortune.
But Sam Hellerman told me not to worry my pretty little head about it.
“We’ll make it all back and then some,” he said confidently. And I believed him. Sam Hellerman had always claimed he had assets, and it looked like by the end of the night, he was going to have even more.
If nothing else, Sam Hellerman’s elaborate preparations had impressed and successfully deceived their primary target. Shinefield was over the moon.
“I can’t believe this is really happening,” he said.
I wasn’t sure how to answer because, one, I couldn’t believe it either, and two, it wasn’t actually really happening.
When Sam Hellerman gave the signal for the doors to open at eight o’clock, it was clear that while he might have overestimated in his claim that half the Mission Hills students would attend, he hadn’t overestimated by nearly as much as I’d figured. There were hundreds of paying customers. We were out of the red on the hall within the first ten minutes, he gloated.
By this time, Sam Hellerman had gone backs
tage to change and had reemerged wearing an ill-fitting suit and tie, and he was acting very much the host and master of ceremonies, greeting many of the people as they came in and pointing them toward the concessions and donation bins.
“Salvation Army,” he said out of the side of his mouth, repeating his advice that I should try wearing a suit sometime. “Chicks love it.”
It was clear that whatever methods Sam Hellerman had been using to bump up his popularity and status at MHHS, they had had some success. His fellow students all called him Sammy and were high-fiving and fist-bumping him, and he responded in kind, calling them “my man” or “young lady” as the case warranted. If you’ll recall, Sam Hellerman had predicted that in two months he’d be running the place. Well, I didn’t know about that, but he did indeed appear to be “respected by his colleagues at work or school,” which was borderline amazing. However, there did not seem to be any hint of an actual girlfriend, or even any obvious romantic interest that I could see. The girls he was talking to were friendly, but they seemed to be treating him more as a sort of mascot than as a man who was in command of the situation. I believe I even saw one of them reach out to pat him on the head. Which, honestly, is something I’ve been tempted to do from time to time myself.
At any rate, Sam Hellerman the entrepreneur and rock concert impresario was in full effect; Sam Hellerman the womanizer had yet to be demonstrated.
Still, seeing him in action in his little suit, frolicking with his little Mission Hills friends, provoked an unsettling thought: this was Sam Hellerman’s “prom.” How cute. Someone should have taken some photos for the mantelpiece.
I noticed my mom and Amanda drift in and was disturbed to see my mom head straight for the donation boxes and start writing a check.
“Mom, don’t,” I said. But she shushed me, saying it was for a good cause, so … Well, I guess it was a good cause—that is, Sam Hellerman and, kind of, me.
Little Big Tom came in a bit later, easy to spot because he was accompanied by Flapjack, who was wearing cutoff overalls, big rubber boots, and an enormous cowboy hat. And if you think you have seen a weirder sight in your life than the two of them winking and shooting finger guns, I would humbly submit that you cannot possibly know what you’re talking about. I couldn’t resist responding by flashing them “the shocker,” because I’m mischievous and vulgar like that.
I was still in a melancholy mood, however, and I was having difficulty getting into the spirit of the affair. Sam Hellerman kept gliding past and saying things like “She’s just a chick” and “Plenty more out there, my man” that were meant to be encouraging and, I didn’t doubt, to take the focus of my agitation off him, but in fact, they were really just depressing. It wasn’t like I was going to see some Jeans Skirt Girl and walk up and kiss her. Some guys, including even Sam Hellerman, as I’d seen with my own eyes, can do things like that, but I sure wasn’t one of them. I suppose I had this secret hope that I’d look up and see Pammelah Shumway and the Robot walk in and all would be forgiven and we could go outside and drink spiked fake Mountain Dew and talk nonsense like we used to do back in the beginning. But of course, practically nothing was less likely to occur, so I wasn’t genuinely hoping for it: rather, I was just imagining it in a “what if” and “wouldn’t that be weird” kind of way that would, just by coincidence, have been really nice too. I guess my fantasy from the Halls of Innocence night had never really ended, sad as that is to admit.
One person I did unexpectedly run into was my old secret girl … associate, Deanna Schumacher, whom I hadn’t seen since before Christmas vacation. Deanna Schumacher said she only had a minute to talk because her boyfriend and her dad were there, and it probably wouldn’t be good for my health to be seen talking to her. But she wanted to say hi, because, well, some things never change, I guess.
“I’m sorry this is so weird,” she said, like they all do, though she didn’t look all that sorry.
“Thanks,” I said.
“What happened to your forehead?”
“Tuba,” I said.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “I remember. What happened to your nose?”
“Fist,” I said.
Now, during this conversation, I have to admit, I was pretty distracted by what Deanna Schumacher was wearing. And what I mean is, well, it’s not like I wanted to stand there staring at the great big penis embroidered in bright gold thread on the front of her short, navy-blue jeans skirt, but once I noticed that it was there, it was impossible to unnotice it. Trying not to look at it with all my strength just seemed to make my eyes stray back to it against my will, with the result that I spent most of this brief exchange staring at Deanna Schumacher’s crotch with what I can only imagine was a fairly distraught expression on my face.
“Oh, Tom Tom,” she said wistfully, noticing my anguished gaze but clearly misinterpreting it. She raised her hand to touch my cheek and said, “I’m sorry, but it’s not going to happen.”
Well, as that made it quite clear she wasn’t going to invite me somewhere for some discreet oral sex like she might once have done, and as I certainly didn’t want to risk another “this the guy?” incident by prolonging the conversation, and as I was still haunted by her disturbing jeans penis, there didn’t seem to be much more to say.
“Say hi to your mom for me,” said Deanna Schumacher, flouncing away. Somehow, I’d known she was going to say that.
He could have found some old, weathered graph paper somewhere and used it for the code square, then folded it up and applied pressure for an extended period of time to make the creases look real, and possibly treated it with something like lemon juice to create the brownish age spots. He could have consulted a French teacher or other French speaker to help with the translation. He could have found out details about Tit and my dad by discreetly interviewing my mom.…
I shook these thoughts from my head, knowing there was no point in dwelling on them, and as I was doing so, I spotted the one and only Jeans Skirt Girl with a group of friends leaning against a wall at the back.
“Cinthya with a Y, X above the I?” I said.
She gave me the look that says: “The same.”
I could tell she was trying to place me, and I was about to reveal my identity with a suave “Tom Henderson, guitar and vox,” but before I could get it out she said:
“Oh, you’re the guy! The guy from the mall.”
Yes, I conceded. I was indeed the guy from the mall.
“Well, how did you like the show?” she said.
I was puzzled because the show hadn’t yet started, and as I was playing in the band it wouldn’t have been appropriate to say whether I’d liked my own show, but obviously she was talking about some other unspecified show. She said I’d sure looked surprised, and I realized the “show” she was referring to was one in which she was the costar, that is, the notorious incident where Sam Hellerman had brought weeks of dedicated fieldwork to completion with an unlikely kiss. So it had been a show?
Well, folks, I can smell a rat as well as most people, and this had the definite odor of some variation of the subfamily Murinae. So when I came across Sam Hellerman during one of his laps around the floor, I pulled him aside and said I’d bumped into Jeans Skirt Girl.
“Cinthya with a Y, X above the I?” he said. “Good, I’m glad she made it.”
I looked at Sam Hellerman with narrowed eyes, thinking about the Aladdin Arcade kiss in all its particulars.
“You gave her twenty bucks, didn’t you?” I said finally.
“Ten,” said Sam Hellerman.
Well, I might have known.
He had done it, he said, partly to impress me and to persuade me to give the tapes a try myself because he thought they could help me. But mostly it was a ploy to enhance his reputation by being seen kissing a girl above his status by other MHHS students. As my own experience had shown, this can work, and it seemed to have worked for Sam Hellerman, if his evident popularity among the student body of MHHS was any indication.
He had told Jeans Skirt Girl and her friends that he wanted to impress me and play a practical joke, and that he had made a bet that he wouldn’t be able to get a kiss in front of the arcade. It was kind of pathetic, it’s true, but I also had to acknowledge that on some level it had indeed taken genuine self-confidence and real social skills to pull it off. I couldn’t have done it.
Another group of girls walked by and called out “Sammy!” Sam Hellerman was looking sheepish, if not guilty, and I knew him well enough to make a pretty good guess as to why.
“Jesus, Hellerman,” I said. “You paid those girls ten bucks too?” I asked him how much money he had spent on artificial status enhancement through hired kisses.
“No more than a couple hundred,” said Sam Hellerman, adding that that was one reason we needed the concessions to do well.
“You’re never going to get a girlfriend that way, Hellerman,” I said. And he gave me the look that says “I know.”
Well, I didn’t know what to think. On the one hand, it was funny and maybe even almost cute, these antics meant to create the impression, but not the reality, that Sam Hellerman was a success with girls. On the other hand, it was genuinely reassuring to learn that the magic of the tapes hadn’t managed to bend the laws of nature in Sam Hellerman’s favor after all. I was back on the solid ground I knew so well, though it must be admitted, it was ground I pretty much hated.
But on that third hand growing out of my forehead, well, it went something like this: the arcade kiss was fake; the tapes were, if not fake, certainly not what they were cracked up to be; the Catcher Code was fake; love was fake; even the very show at which all the fakeness was being revealed was itself fake. I felt pretty fake myself. Was anything real? Only Todd Dante’s fist and my own melancholy, as far as I could see. Beyond that, I just couldn’t say.
CARNAGE
So how did the Stupid Eyeball set go, in the end? If you’re halfway intelligent and have been paying attention, I think you know the answer already. But if not, just imagine the worst show you can possibly imagine and then try to imagine it being around ten times worse.
King Dork Approximately Page 28
