Hoot

FIFTEEN

Roy sat cross-legged on the floor, gazing up at the cowboy poster from the Livingston rodeo. He wished he was as brave as a champion bull rider, but he wasn't.

The Mother Paula's mission was simply too risky; somebody, or something, would be waiting. The attack dogs might be gone, but the company wasn't about to leave the new pancake-house location unguarded for long.

In addition to a fear of getting caught, Roy had serious qualms about trying anything illegal-and there was no dodging the fact that vandalism was a crime, however noble the cause.

Yet he couldn't stop thinking ahead to the day when the owl dens would be destroyed by bulldozers. He could picture the mother owls and father owls, helplessly flying in circles while their babies were being smothered under tons of dirt.

It made Roy sad and angry. So what if Mother Paula's had all the proper permits? Just because something was legal didn't automatically make it right.

Roy still hadn't settled the argument between his brain and his heart. Surely there had to be a way for him to help the birds-and Beatrice's stepbrother-without breaking the law. He needed to come up with a plan.

Glancing out the window, Roy was reminded that time was slipping away. The shadows had lengthened, which meant that the sun would be setting soon and that Mullet Fingers would be on the move.

Before leaving the house, Roy poked his head into the kitchen, where his mother stood over the stove.

"Where you going?" she asked.

"Bike ride."

"Another one? You just got back."

"When's dinner? It smells great."

"Pot roast, honey, nothing special. But we won't be eating until seven-thirty or eight-your dad had a late tee time."

"Perfect," Roy said. "Bye, Mom."

"What are you up to?" she called after him. "Roy?"

He pedaled at full speed to the block where Dana Matherson lived, and chained his bicycle to a street sign. Approaching the house on foot, he slipped unnoticed through a hedge into the backyard.

Roy wasn't tall enough to see in the windows; he had to jump and hold himself up by his fingers. In the first room he saw a thin rumpled figure lying prone on a sofa: Dana's father, holding what appeared to be an ice pack to his forehead.

In the second room was either Dana's mother or Dana himself, wearing red spandex pants and a ratty wig. Roy decided it was probably Mrs. Matherson, since the person was pushing a vacuum cleaner. He lowered himself and resumed creeping along the outside wall until he reached the third window.

And there, sure enough, was Dana.

He lay sprawled on his bed, a lazy blob in dirty cargo pants and unlaced high-top sneakers. He wore a stereo headset, and his head was jerking back and forth to the music.

Standing on tiptoe, Roy tapped his knuckles against the glass. Dana didn't hear him. Roy kept tapping until a dog on the porch next door began to bark.

The next time Roy levered himself up to peek into the room, Dana was glowering at him through the window. He had pulled off the headset and was mouthing some words that even an amateur lipreader could have figured out.

Smiling, Roy dropped to the lawn and took two steps back from the Matherson house. He proceeded to do something that was drastically out of character for a boy who was basically shy.

What he did was salute crisply, spin around, drop his pants, and bend over.

Viewed upside down (which was how Roy saw it), Dana's wide-eyed reaction suggested that he'd never been mooned in such a personal way. He seemed highly insulted.

Calmly Roy pulled up his trousers, then strolled around to the front of the house and waited for Dana to come hurtling out the door in a fury. It didn't take long.

Roy broke into a brisk jog with Dana no more than twenty yards behind him, cursing and spluttering vile names. Roy knew he was a faster runner, so he measured his pace; he didn't want Dana to get discouraged and give up.

Yet after only three blocks it became evident that Dana was in even worse shape than Roy had anticipated. Steadily he ran out of steam, the angry curses dissolving into moans of fatigue, the name calling into sickly wheezes.

When Roy checked behind him, he saw that Dana was gimping along in a lopsided half-trot. It was pathetic. They were still a half-mile from where Roy wanted to be, but he knew Dana wouldn't make it without pausing for a rest. The sorry load was about to keel over.

Roy had no choice but to pretend he was tiring, too. Slower and slower he ran, falling back in the chase until Dana was practically stumbling at his heels. Familiar sweaty hands clamped down on his neck, but Roy realized that Dana was too worn out to throttle him. The kid was simply trying to keep himself from falling down.

It didn't work. They landed in a heap, Roy pinned on the bottom. Dana was panting like a wet plow horse.

"Don't hurt me! I give up!" Roy peeped convincingly.

"Unnnggghhh." Dana's face was as red as a pepper and his eyeballs were fluttering in their sockets.

"You win!" Roy cried.

"Aaaarrrgghhh."

Dana's breath was foul, but his body odor was ferocious. Roy turned his head away to gulp some fresh air.

Beneath them the ground was soft and the soil was as black as coal. Roy guessed that they'd fallen in somebody's garden. They lay there for what seemed like forever while Dana recovered from the pursuit. Roy felt smushed and uncomfortable, but it was no use trying to squirm loose; Dana was dead weight.

Eventually he stirred, tightened his hold on Roy, and said: "Now I'm gonna kick your butt, Eberhardt."

"Please don't do that."

"You mooned me!"

"It was a joke. I'm really sorry."

"Hey, you moon somebody and that's it. You get your butt kicked."

"I don't blame you for being p.o.'ed," Roy said.

Dana slugged him in the ribs, but there wasn't much muscle in the punch.

"Think it's funny now, cowgirl?"

Roy shook his head no, faking like he was hurt.

Dana grinned malevolently. His teeth were nubby and yellow, like an old barn dog's. Kneeling on Roy's chest, he hauled back to hit him again.

"Wait!" Roy squeaked.

"For what? Beatrice the Bear ain't here to save ya this time."

"Ciggies," Roy said in a confidential whisper.

"Uh?" Dana lowered his fist. "What'd you say?"

"I know where there's a whole case of cigarettes. If you promise not to beat me up, I'll show you."

"What kinda cigarettes?"

Roy hadn't thought of that detail when he was cooking up the phony story. It hadn't occurred to him that Dana would be picky about his brand of smokes.

"Gladiators," said Roy, remembering the name from a magazine advertisement.

"Gold or Light?"

"Gold."

"No way!" Dana exclaimed.

"Way," Roy said.

Dana's expression wasn't hard to read-he was already scheming to keep some of the cigarettes for himself and sell the rest for a tidy profit to his buddies.

"Where are they?" He climbed off of Roy and yanked him upright to a sitting position. "Tell me!"

"First you gotta promise not to beat me up."

"Sure, man, I promise."

"Ever again," Roy said. "For all time."

"Yeah, whatever."

"I want to hear you say it."

Dana laughed in a patronizing way. "All right, little cowgirl. I'll never, ever, ever pound on your sorry butt again. Okay? Swear on my father's grave. That good enough for ya?"

"Your father's still alive," Roy pointed out.

"Then I swear on Natalie's grave. Now tell me where those Gladiator Golds are stashed. I ain't kiddin'."

"Who's Natalie?" Roy asked.

"My mother's parakeet. That's the only dead person I know."

"I guess that'll do." Based on what Roy had seen of the Matherson household, he had an uneasy feeling that poor Natalie hadn't expired of natural causes.

"So, we cool?" Dana asked.

"Yeah," said Roy.

It was time to turn the big dummy loose. The sun had dropped into the Gulf, and the streetlights were coming on.

Roy said, "There's an empty lot at the corner of Woodbury and East Oriole."

"Yeah?"

"In one corner of the lot there's a construction trailer. That's where the cigarettes are stashed."

"Sweet. A whole case," Dana said greedily. "But how come you know 'bout it?"

"'Cause me and my friends hid 'em there. We swiped 'em off a truck on the Seminole reservation."

"You?"

"Yeah, me."

It was a fairly believable yarn, Roy thought. The Indian tribe sold tax-free tobacco products, and smokers came from miles away to stock up.

"Where'bouts inside the trailer?" Dana demanded.

"You can't miss 'em," Roy said. "You want me to, I'll show you."

Dana snorted. "No thanks. I'll find 'em."

He placed two fingers in the center of Roy's chest and gave a stiff shove. Roy flopped back into the flower bed, his head coming to rest in the same soft indentation. He waited a minute or so before getting up and brushing himself off.

By then Dana Matherson was long gone. Roy would have been disappointed if he wasn't.

Curly made it through Friday night, though not without personal inconvenience. First thing Saturday morning, he drove to the hardware store and bought a sturdy new seat for the toilet in the trailer, plus a dozen jumbo rattraps. Then he stopped at the Blockbuster and got a movie in case the TV cable went out again.

From there he headed home, where his wife informed him that she would need the pickup truck, since her mother was taking the other car to the bingo hall. Curly didn't like anyone else driving his pickup, so he was sulking when his wife dropped him off at the trailer.

Before settling down in front of the television, Curly took out his gun and made a quick tour of the property. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed, including the survey stakes. He began to believe that his presence was indeed keeping intruders away from the construction site. Tonight would be the true test; without the pickup truck parked near the trailer, the place would appear deserted and inviting.

As he walked the fence line, Curly was pleased not to come across a single cottonmouth moccasin. That meant he could save his five remaining bullets for serious security threats, though he didn't want a repeat of the nerve-rattling fiasco with the field mouse.

Determined to discourage uninvited rodents, Curly carefully baited the rattraps with peanut butter and placed them at strategic locations along the outside walls of the trailer.

Around five o'clock, he nuked a frozen dinner and popped the movie into the VCR. The turkey potpie wasn't half bad, and the cherry strudel turned out to be surprisingly tasty. Curly didn't leave a crumb.

Unfortunately, the movie was a disappointment. It was called The Last House on Witch Boulevard III, and one of the co-stars was none other than Kimberly Lou Dixon.

A clerk at the Blockbuster had helped Curly find the film, which had been released several years earlier, before Kimberly Lou Dixon signed on for the Mother Paula TV commercials. Curly guessed it was her very first Hollywood role after retiring from beauty pageants.

In the movie, Kimberly Lou played a pretty college cheerleader who got hexed into a witch and started boiling the star football players in a basement cauldron. Her hair was dyed fiery red for the part, and she wore a fake nose with a rubber wart on the tip of it.

The acting was pretty lame and the special effects were cheesy, so Curly fast-forwarded to the end of the tape. In the final scene, the hunk college quarterback escaped from the cauldron and threw some sort of magic dust on Kimberly Lou Dixon, who turned from a witch back into a pretty cheerleader before collapsing in his arms. Then, as the quarterback was about to kiss her, she morphed into a dead iguana.

Curly turned off the VCR in disgust. He decided that if he ever got to meet Kimberly Lou Dixon in person, he wouldn't mention The Last House on Witch Boulevard III.

He switched to cable and found a golf tournament, which made him drowsy. First prize was a million dollars and a new Buick, but Curly still couldn't keep his eyes open.

When he awoke, it was dark outside. A noise had startled him from his nap, but he wasn't sure what it was. Suddenly he heard it again: SNAP!

Instantly a cry rang out-possibly human, but Curly wasn't sure. He muted the TV and grabbed for his gun.

Something-an arm? a fist?-thumped against the aluminum side of the trailer. Then came another SNAP, punctuated by a muffled profanity.

Curly crept to the door and waited. His heart was thumping so hard, he was afraid the intruder might hear it.

As soon as the doorknob began to jiggle, Curly went into action. He lowered a shoulder, let out a Marine-style roar, and crashed out of the trailer, snapping the door off its hinges.

The intruder let out a cry as he hit the ground in a heap. Curly pinned him there with a heavy boot on the midsection.

"Don't move!"

"I won't! I won't! I won't!"

Curly lowered the gun barrel. By the light from the trailer, he could see that the burglar was just a kid-a large, lumpy kid. He had accidentally stumbled upon the rattraps, two of which were attached crookedly to his sneakers.

That has to hurt, Curly thought.

"Don't shoot me! Don't shoot me!" the kid cried.

"Aw, shut up." Curly stuck the.38 in his belt. "What's your name, son?"

"Roy. Roy Eberhardt."

"Well, you're in deep doo-doo, Roy."

"Sorry, man. Please don't call the cops. 'Kay?"

The boy began to wiggle, so Curly pressed down harder with his boot. Looking across the lot, he noticed that the padlock on the gate had been broken with a heavy chunk of cinderblock.

"You must've thought you was pretty slick," he said, "sneakin' in and outta here whenever you pleased. You and your smart-ass sense of humor."

The boy raised his head. "What're you talkin' about?"

"Don't play dumb, Roy. You're the one yanked out all the survey stakes, and put them gators in the port-o-johnnies-"

"What! You're crazy, man."

"-and painted the cop car. No wonder you don't want me callin' the police." Curly leaned closer. "What's your problem, boy? You got a gripe with Mother Paula's? To be honest, you look like a kid that enjoys a good pancake."

"I do! I love pancakes!"

"Then what's the deal?" Curly said. "Why you doin' all this stuff?"

"But I never even been here before!"

Curly removed his foot from the kid's belly. "Come on, kid. Get up."

The boy took his hand, but instead of letting Curly pull him to his feet, he yanked Curly to the ground. Curly managed to get one arm around the boy's neck, but he twisted free and hurled a handful of dirt into Curly's face.

Just like in that stupid movie, Curly thought as he clawed miserably at his eyes, except I'm not turning into a cheerleader.

He cleared the crud from his vision just in time to see the boy run off, the rattraps clattering like castanets on the toes of his shoes. Curly attempted to give chase but he made it only about five steps before tripping in an owl hole and falling flat.

"I'll get you, Roy!" he hollered into the darkness. "You're outta luck, mister!"

Officer David Delinko had Saturday off, which was fine. It had been a hectic week, culminating in that weird scene at the emergency room.

The missing dog-bite victim still had not been found or identified, though Officer Delinko now had a green shirt to match the torn sleeve he'd found on the fence at the Mother Paula's construction site. The boy who'd fled from the hospital must have left the shirt on the antenna of Officer Delinko's squad car, obviously as some sort of joke.

Officer Delinko was tired of being the butt of such jokes, though he was grateful for the fresh clue. It suggested that the emergency-room runaway was one of the Mother Paula's vandals, and that young Roy Eberhardt knew more about the case than he was admitting. Officer Delinko figured that Roy's father would get to the bottom of the mystery, given his special background in interrogations.

The policeman spent the afternoon watching baseball on television, but both Florida teams got creamed-the Devil Rays lost by five, the Marlins by seven. Around dinnertime he opened his refrigerator and discovered there was nothing to eat but three individually wrapped slices of Kraft processed cheese.

Immediately he embarked on a trip to the minimart for a frozen pizza. As was his new routine, Officer Delinko made a detour toward the Mother Paula's property. He still hoped to catch the vandals, whoever they were, in the act. If that happened, the captain and the sergeant would have little choice but to take him off desk duty and put him back on patrol again-with a glowing commendation for his file.

Turning his squad car onto East Oriole, Officer Delinko wondered if the trained Rottweilers were guarding the pancake-house site tonight. In that event, it would be pointless for him to stop; nobody would mess with those crazed dogs.

In the distance, a bulky figure appeared in the middle of the road. It was advancing in an odd halting gait. Officer Delinko braked the Crown Victoria and peered warily through the windshield.

As the figure drew closer, passing through the glow of the streetlights, the policeman could see it was a husky teenaged boy. The boy kept his head down and seemed to be in a hurry, though he wasn't running in a normal way; it was more of a wobbly lurch. Each step made a sharp clacking sound that echoed on the pavement.

When the boy came into range of the squad car's headlights, Officer Delinko noticed a flat rectangular object attached to each of his sneakers. Something very strange was going on.

The police officer flipped on the flashing blue lights and stepped out of the car. The surprised teenager halted and looked up. His pudgy chest was heaving and his face was slick with sweat.

Officer Delinko said, "Can I talk to you for a second, young man?"

"Nope," answered the boy, turning to bolt.

With rattraps on his feet, he didn't get far. Officer Delinko had no difficulty catching the boy and hustling him into the caged backseat of the police cruiser. The patrolman's seldom-used handcuffs worked splendidly.

"Why did you run?" he asked his young prisoner.

"I want a lawyer," the kid replied, stone-faced.

"Cute."

Officer Delinko put the squad car into a U-turn so he could take the boy to the police station. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he spotted another figure hurrying up the street, waving frantically.

Now what? thought the policeman, stepping on the brakes.

"Whoa! Wait up!" shouted the approaching figure, his unmistakable bald head glinting under the streetlights.

It was Leroy Branitt, a.k.a. Curly, the foreman of the Mother Paula's project. He was huffing and puffing when he reached the police car, and drooped wearily across the hood. His face was florid and smudged with dirt.

Officer Delinko leaned out the window and asked what was the matter.

"You caught him!" the foreman exclaimed breathlessly. "Way to go!"

"Caught who?" The policeman turned to appraise his prisoner in the backseat.

"Him! The little sneak who's been messin' up our place." Curly straightened and pointed accusingly at the teenager. "He tried to bust into my trailer tonight. Lucky I didn't shoot his fool head off."

Officer Delinko fought to contain his excitement. He'd actually done it! He'd caught the Mother Paula's vandal!

"I had him pinned and he got away," Curly was saying, "but not before I wrung his name outta him. It's Roy. Roy Eberhardt. Go ahead and ask him!"

"I don't need to," said Officer Delinko. "I know Roy Eberhardt, and that's not him."

"What!" Curly was fuming, as if he'd expected honesty from the young burglar.

Officer Delinko said, "I assume you want to press charges."

"You bet your shiny tin badge I do. This creep tried to blind me, too. Threw dirt in my eyes!"

"That's an assault," Officer Delinko said, "to go along with the attempted burglary, trespassing, destruction of private property, and so forth. Don't worry, I'll put it all in the report." He motioned to the passenger side and told Curly to hop in. "You'll need to come down to headquarters."

"My pleasure." Curly scowled at the sullen lump in the backseat. "You wanna hear how he got those ridiculous rattraps on his tootsies?"

"Later," said Officer Delinko. "I want to hear everything." This was the big break that the policeman had been waiting for. He could hardly wait to get to the station and pry a full confession out of the teenager.

From training films, Officer Delinko remembered that delicate psychology was necessary when dealing with uncooperative suspects. So in a deliberately mild voice, he said: "You know, young man, you can make this much easier on yourself."

"Yeah, right," the kid muttered from behind the mesh partition.

"You could start by telling us your real name."

"Gee, I forget."

Curly chuckled harshly. "Puttin' this one in jail is gonna be fun."

Officer Delinko shrugged. "Have it your way," he told the teenaged prisoner. "You got nuthin' to say, that's cool. You're entitled under the law."

The boy smiled crookedly. "What if I got a question?"

"Go right ahead and ask it."

"Okay, I will," said Dana Matherson. "Either of you dorks got a cigarette I could bum?"