The Amazing Adventures of Aaron Broom

by A. E. Hotchner

  “You think Catfish still runs his outfit outa Dannemora through Grace?” Augie asked.

  I was replacing the picture’s backing and putting it back on the table. “And through Pringle. She probably takes the train every month to visit Catfish and he passes to her what Pringle needs to do.”

  “And they run the whole thing through J & J.”

  “Yeah, and those diamonds that were swiped from the case probably belong to Catfish.”

  “The whole thing as tangled as a bowl of spaghetti. You’re A-OK, Aaron. You’ve really got it going.”

  “But I don’t see how any of it will help me catch the killer and get my poor father out of the clink. I don’t have much time. Last night I had horrible nightmares with Freda Muller chasing me all over Forest Park.”

  The sharp sound of a key unlocking the door sent us flying toward the open window. Augie dived out headfirst and so did I, landing right on top of him. A noisy group of teenagers were singing and dancing on their way to the park and we quickly joined up with them. A very pretty girl grabbed my arm and offered me a swig of her bottle of beer. I don’t much like the taste of beer or any of that gunk but I like pretty girls so I took a swallow and sort of danced with her all the way to the park. They had a basket of peanut butter sandwiches and tamales and we sat in a circle and sang songs and watched the moon come up.

  Happening 28

  Sitting in the tenth row at the eleven-thousand-seat Muny instead of the free seats at the very top when I went with my mom was like the difference between very hot and ice cold. Ella, Augie, and I were handed printed programs and ushered to our seats. Eleven thousand is a really lot of seats and they filled one entire hillside of the park. I looked back over the huge number of people slanted up behind me and felt kind of special, a way I hadn’t felt for a long, long time.

  We turned the pages of our programs. Up front was The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare, followed by the cast of characters. At the top was Sir John Falstaff…Roy Delray, followed by a long cast. On separate pages marked Meet the Actors, there were real-life pictures of the actors, not in costume, and short biographies. There was a picture of Roy Delray in a spiffy suit and necktie, slim, very handsome, looking sort of like the movie star Ronald Colman.

  There were musicians in the pit in front of the stage but this wasn’t a musical so I guessed they were there to play backup while the actors spoke their parts. The music was playing now as the audience came to their seats and I could feel the air of excitement that gets stirred up at the start of all theater I’ve seen.

  It was dark now and the stage lights came alive, the audience applauded (the three of us included) as the players in fancy Elizabethan costumes began to come onstage. Big fat bloated Falstaff entered with a jeweled sword at his side, a giant buckle above his huge legs, boots up to his knees, a mountain of a belly, and his fat body covered with gaudy robes, plus a stout beard and a whopping halo of hair. When he spoke his voice was heavy and rumbly.

  Ella and I looked at each other. It was hard to believe that this actor was the man we had seen on Bonnie’s piano or the one in the program. Or in the scene where Falstaff disguises himself as the wise woman of Bradford, a mountain of a woman in a colorful billowing dress, her fat legs bouncing off each other as she waddled across the stage.

  At the finale the audience gave the cast a big ovation with lots of bows and special bravos and whistles for Falstaff. Roy had fumbled his lines and his accent a couple of times but it didn’t seem to matter to the audience.

  * * *

  —

  AFTER WE filed out of the Muny, Augie suggested we all go to the park’s pavilion for root beers, “On me—I did pretty good today.” I said no because I said I had some things I had to attend to. The zoo with its animal sounds was not far away and I headed in that direction. I knew it really well. At the Westgate Hotel I often escaped the severe heat of our room, my parents’ angry quarrels, the loud music of the Good Times ten-cents-a-dance hall with its three-piece band, by making my way to the zoo. I spent most of my time outside the cages of the big cats and developed a good pal-ship with an old lion named Fritz who had a black mane and soulful eyes.

  When I got to the zoo I sat down on a bench under a lamp and started to write things down in my notebook. It was time to do some honest-to-God detectifying, to put two and two together the way Mr. Holmes did and Miss Marple did and Inspector Poirot.

  My mind was going this way and that, revisiting events and conversations: the tangle of Justin and Joel, Catfish Kuger, Pringle who was really Anthony Aravista, Pete’s, Bonnie and her big-shot father, Grace Dorso who was really Graciella Borsolini married to Catfish, the Marmon flapper, Sol Greenblatt and his bunch of ex-jeweler poker players, Roy Delray waddling around the stage, all that mysterious stuff about the Veiled Prophet.

  After scribbling for a while, trying to work things out, my stomach began to growl, the way it does when I put off eating to save my fading money, but from the way it was growling and carrying on this was definitely a time to dip into my leaky treasury. I went over to Fritz’s cage and he came over to see me. I talked to him and he sent a few purrs my way.

  There was a bus stop just outside the zoo and I grabbed a bus to Gino’s, that little restaurant in Dago Hill where a steaming five-cent plate of their spaghetti will certainly answer my stomach’s call.

  * * *

  —

  I SAT DOWN at the counter and two slices of warm Italian bread were put on my plate while I waited for the spaghetti. The restaurant’s tables were lively and pretty full.

  I had just taken a bite out of the warm, crusty bread when the door banged open and a tall man with a cap pulled down to his eyes and a gun in his hand came in and went straight to the counter. I choked on my bread, positive he was in cahoots with the guy who grabbed me at the Hooverville and was coming to finish me off, but he walked right by me and aimed his gun at a man sitting at the other end of the counter who was yelling, “No, Joe! No, Joe!” But Joe shot the man who fell from his chair with blood oozing out of him. A man at one of the tables stood up with a gun in his hand and fired two quick shots at the shooter who spun around and dropped to the floor two seats away from me. The whole restaurant was now in an uproar, guns came out all over the place. All I knew was to get out of there fast before the police came. My heart was thumping something awful and I had trouble getting my legs to move with two dead men in my way. Sirens were already in the air and there was a mob of eaters pushing and pulling to get out the front door, probably types who were better off not having to deal with the cops.

  I somehow managed to squirm my way out the door and onto the sidewalk, getting myself as far as the corner when the first police cars sirened up. It wasn’t until I got on the trolley and showed my pass that I noticed my hand was clutching the pieces of bread from my plate, so I didn’t have to go to sleep on an empty stomach after all.

  Happening 29

  My sleep that night was overrun with nightmares, blazing guns and spurting blood, hard-fisted killers chasing me from one end of the Muny to the other with me jumping over the seats and the hammock pitching as if in a hurricane.

  I woke when the sun turned on its St. Louis furnace. I took my towel and soap from its hiding place and went to the showers. The cold water gave my hot body a real good boost as I tried to wash away the night’s misery with an extra-good soaping.

  Outside the Hooverville I stopped for a slice of toast and a glass of milk and looked at the to-do list that I had written in my notepad. First off was a visit to Scruggs Vandervort and Barney. I saw Augie busy at his corner and went to talk to him.

  “What’s doing, Aaron?”

  “Checking out some things at Scruggs. How’d you like the show?”

  “Well, honestly, I’m not much into Shakespeare. But I sure liked meeting Ella. She’s neat, isn’t she?”

  “You
bet she is.”

  “We got along just great. She has a wonderful voice. You ever hear her sing? I’m going to see her again on Friday.”

  “Swell.”

  “Told me about her epilepsy.”

  “She has a medicine for it.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ve all got something,” Augie said.

  * * *

  —

  IT’S NOT easy finding your way around Scruggs but with help I found the departments I was looking for—leisure clothes, hats, gloves. Not to buy anything, of course, I was just looking for information.

  After Scruggs I went to the headquarters of the Veiled Prophet Society. I pushed the outside button and received a response from the squawk box.

  “Password please.”

  “I don’t know it, but—”

  “Are you a member?”

  “No. I just want to talk to your costume and makeup people.”

  “Sorry, we are a secret society and we do not divulge anything.”

  “Yes, sir, I know but I’m going to a costume party and I just want to find out from your costume—”

  “Only members have access to our costume people. We don’t disclose anything to anyone who isn’t a member of the Veiled Prophet Society.” With that, he turned off the squawk box.

  * * *

  —

  I HAD much better luck with the Muny because it was owned and run by St. Louis. The wardrobe mistress walked me around all the costumes which filled a special building, rows and rows and rows of everything you could imagine from pirates to cowboys to kings, princes, queens, jesters, knights in armor, Gypsies, generals, cops, monsters, animals, doctors, judges, and on and on and on.

  I said, “I guess costumes are being borrowed all the time, aren’t they?”

  “Not anymore,” she said. “A lot of our costumes went missing, borrowed and never returned, so a few years ago all these costumes were attached and can only be released by me and my master key. No costume has gone missing since then.”

  The makeup keeper was just as nice as the wardrobe lady, showing me drawer after drawer of noses, ears, eyes, feet, hands, chins (double and sunken), beards, necks, foreheads, legs, hunchbacks, endless stuff all in drawers under lock and key.

  * * *

  —

  AS LONG AS I was in the park, I decided to go to the tennis courts where I knew people and felt comfortable. There were picnic tables outside the Drop Shot where I could sit and look over the pages of my notebook and do some serious detectifying. The pages went all the way back to when I was trapped in the Ford, watching the cops take my father away. But the only pages I wanted to deal with now were the ones about the J & J people, Catfish and his gang, everything that happened that had anything to do with the diamonds stolen from the J & J glass case. I thought about all this very hard. I don’t know if you can hurt your brain with overthinking, like when a candle burns out way before its time because the wick is much too big.

  So with my head crammed to overflowing, I know the time has come to do something to free my father, and I’ve made up my mind as to what I can possibly do, and if right now is the time to do it.

  I was closing up my notepad and putting it in my back pocket when Buddy Silverstone called to me from the Drop Shot.

  “Hey, Aaron, come help me carry.”

  I went over to where Buddy was fixing two trays with plates of hot dogs in buns and mounds of baked beans plus glasses of lemonade.

  “My birthday today,” Buddy said, “and I’d like you to celebrate with me.”

  Buddy was an old guy, fifty or something, with a short neat beard and muddled black-and-white hair. He had a riotous laugh that burst out of him and caused many a double fault; he was convinced that everyone should be having some fun, no matter what. Perfect guy to run the tennis courts. He had the beginning of a potbelly but he still played nifty doubles.

  “I gave your hot dog the Silverstone works,” he said. “Mustard, ketchup, relish, and fried onions. Also Tabasco in the beans.”

  “Boy oh boy, happy birthday, Buddy,” I said, my mouth peppery from the Tabasco.

  “The fried onions are my invention,” Buddy said. “I made one for the Cardinals’ food guy at Sportsman’s Park and he said he’s listed it on the menu board as a Buddy Dog.” He roared his laugh, causing a player on the nearby court to whiff on an overhead.

  “Haven’t seen you around much, Aaron. Something wrong? I know about your mom, but besides?”

  I told him about my father and the Ford and getting locked out while I was mopping up the juice of the beans with the heel of my bun.

  “You mean you’re living out of a hammock in the Eads Bridge Hooverville?”

  “Really not bad, showers and everything.”

  “Sure and a laundry and electricity and a grocery and a refrigerator,” he said sarcastically. “Look, Aaron, all the years you’ve played here, I’ve seen what a great kid you are. If you had some lessons you could play competitive tennis, the tournaments. Tim would swap you his pro lessons for your book reports—he’s at Washington University and his grades need help. What about it? It’s time you had fun like a kid your age should have.”

  I told him how much it meant that he cared about me, especially in a bad stretch like this. But there were a lot of kids like me having to take their lumps and either you ride out the storm or you get swept up and drowned. “It’s great to have someone like you around, ready with a life preserver. The ship is taking on water but I’m bailing fast as I can. I have resilliance.”

  “Resilience.”

  “Right. I have a lot of that.”

  “Good, but don’t confuse movement with action.”

  Happening 30

  So I decided all my running around, interviewing, breaking in, and all that was ready to be put into action. I got permission from Buddy to make a local call on his tennis-court phone. I fished the lawyer card out of my pocket to find the number for Lawyer Appleton. His secretary answered.

  “This is Aaron Broom,” I said, trying to sound grown-up, “may I please talk to Mr. Appleton.” I felt good saying “may” instead of “can” as Hilda Levy had taught us.

  “He’s with a client right now but please give me your number and he’ll return your call.”

  Just hearing her say “return your call” made me feel like I was somebody. I gave her the tennis-court number. Then I sat down next to the phone which was on a glass counter that sold sweatbands, Spalding balls, tennis shirts and caps with St. Louis logos, and socks. Tim Storch, the tennis pro, came over and asked whether I’d like to hit some with a player who was looking for a partner. Tim offered to lend me a racket.

  I did, and it felt wonderful stretching my legs and hitting full out on both forehands and backhands.

  When the call came from Lawyer Appleton I was pretty sweaty. “I’ve been working hard Mr. Appleton and I’d like to tell you about it—I hope it’s enough for you to maybe get my father out of jail.”

  “Well, Mr. Broom, I’m pretty tied up tomorrow, but perhaps at the end of the day…how’s five o’clock?”

  “Oh, that would be peachy. Thanks so much.”

  I was really amazed that he would see me and so quickly. I feared that maybe the time before he was just being nice to me, a needy kid off the street, but giving me this appointment really lifted me way up.

  * * *

  —

  I WENT to Augie’s corner to share the good news but he wasn’t there. An older kid had taken his place.

  “Where’s Augie?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Is he sick or something?”

  “Dunno.”

  “You know where he lives?”

  He picked up a Post-Dispatch sales book from the newsstand and handed it to me. On the cover was Augie’s name and address.

/>   “You can keep it,” the new kid said. “I got one of my own.”

  “You mean he’s been fired?”

  “Dunno.”

  “What do you know?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “For good?”

  “Dunno.”

  I felt a rise of something like panic. In this short time Augie had become an honest-to-God buddy, someone I could count on and he on me. I felt in my bones that something had struck him down.

  It was an address on Union Boulevard, a large squat building, apartment 3R. The door was half open. There was no sound from within. I pushed the door button and a ring sounded.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s me, Augie—Aaron. Can I come in?”

  “Sure, oh, sure, A. I’m in the bedroom.”

  It was a small affair, bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom. Augie was putting his things into an open suitcase on the bed.

  “Augie! What the dickens this? Where you going?”

  He stopped packing, took my arm and led me into the living room where we both sat down on the couch.

  “My bed,” he said, punching up the pillows.

  He was having a hard time so I just sat quietly and let him travel through his feelings. He went to the kitchen and got us two glasses of water. I wasn’t in a mood to drink. He sipped at his.

  “I came home yesterday and found my father sitting in that chair over there. He had a package in his lap with my name on it. I talked to him: ‘Something for me?’ He didn’t answer. I touched him and he leaned to one side. The package fell on the floor. He was dead.”

  My body went cold all over, and my breath backed up on me. I felt guilty. I wanted to say something but this was not a time for words. We just sat there, the two of us, sharing the pain. Augie had his head cupped in his hands. There were outside sounds of passing cars and streetcars and people. The life that would go on but Augie’s father would no longer be a part of it now and Augie would have to live with a hole in his heart.