Chapter 15
“What happened?! Are you alright?” shouted Quinn. He sprinted to where his brothers had fallen off the ladder at the feet of the great bear, sliding beneath the moose on his knees. He skidded to a stop beside his brothers. Jack was on the ground. Cable was upright.
“I’m OK, I’m OK,” moaned Cable. He’d landed on his feet but still clutched the ladder for balance. Quinn knelt next Jack, who was holding his knee. He eyes were squeezed shut..
“Owww,” Jack grimaced.
“What is this?” said Quinn. Both Jack and Cable were covered in a sticky, smelly goop. It stained Quinn’s hands too, when he touched it, “Paint of some sort?”
Cable tried to wipe it out of his eyes but it left dark smudges.
“Oh it stings!” complained Jack.
“Here, use my shirt, it’s clean,” said Quinn. He tore off his t-shirt and handed it to Jack. “Let me.”
He wiped Jack’s face and neck. The paint was dark purple and goopy. It did not wipe off. “We’ve got to get you to some water,” said Quinn. “there’s got to be a bathroom around here somewhere.”
“I can’t,” said Jack, “I did something to my knee.”
He sat up and squeezed his eyes shut again. “Ow!” he shouted.
“Hang on Jack, it’s going to be OK,” said Quinn. “I’m going to get some water and some towels or something.”
Quinn dashed off. Cable managed to get the paint out of his eyes. He tried to wipe it on his shirt, but came away with more on his hands than he already had. Holding his hands out in search of somewhere to wipe them, he looked up at the polar bear. Its entire front was stained purple, ruined by the spray. In the dim light it looked like blood, as though the huge predator had just devoured a walrus. It’s eye had slid back into place.
Jack wiped his face as well as he could with Quinn’s shirt.
“We’re screwed,” said Jack, looking up at his brother.
Cable nodded. “A trap?”
“We walked right into it,” said Jack.
Quinn came racing back. He was carrying an armload of paper towels and a janitor’s bucket sloshing with water. Cable and Jack tried wiping off the paint with that, but the water didn’t lift the paint at all; it only spread it around.
“It must be oil based,” said Jack, “we need paint thinner or turpentine.”
“What happened?” asked Quinn again. “I wasn’t even looking.”
“I pushed a button in its eye,” said Jack, “and it triggered a camera with a flash and then this spray. From his mouth, I guess.”
“It was a trap,” said Cable. “A trap to catch whoever was reading Souvlakis note.”
“Which was us,” said Jack, “when it was supposed to be who-knows-who.”
With soaked towels, the boys got the paint washed out of their eyes, but it left purple streaks running down their clothes and puddled on the floor. No amount of wiping by Quinn succeeded in getting the stain off the floor. And the more water he used, the more it spread around.
“What are we going to do?” said Cable.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Jack.
“But all this,” said Cable. “Where did you find that bucket, Quinn? What else is in that janitor’s cart?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look,” said Quinn. “You want me to?”
“There won’t be any paint thinner,” said Jack. “We’re busted, guys. I’ve heard of paint spray like this that they use in banks and in armored transport trucks. It sprays if someone tries to open the money bags. It marks the money and whoever was standing nearby. And it doesn’t wash off. Ow – my knee.”
“Can you stand up?” asked Quinn.
Jack got gingerly to his feet. Quinn helped him up. Jack couldn’t straighten his leg all the way, but favoring his left leg he was able to hobble to the bench. Once there, his brother huddled around him. None paid much attention to the tracks of purple paint they left or the smudges on the bench.
They discussed their options for getting out of the building. All of them were worried that using an emergency exit would trigger an alarm. It was either that or call the police and turn themselves in.
“I’d be scared to call the police,” said Cable, “honestly. I mean, this looks bad.”
“Oh, it is bad,” agreed Jack. “Even I would have a hard time putting a good spin on this.”
“How did we get to this point?” asked Cable.
“We’ll talk about that later,” said Jack. “For now, let’s go.”
They made their way to the emergency exit nearest Constitution Avenue, where they’d left the car. They left all the filthy paper towels on the floor, left the ladder in place, and carried with them only intense and strange feelings of fear and guilt.
When they slipped out the steel door, no alarm sounded, or if it did, it was a silent one, ringing only in the police station. If it stirred up a nest of hornets, the boys would not know it for many minutes yet. They made their way to their car, smeared with paint. Jack hopped with an arm around the shoulders of both of his brothers. They thought of their images flickering on the surveillance screens in the guards station. They wondered where the photos that were snapped from the camera hidden in the bear’s eyes were transmitted, or if they were waiting there to be discovered by the next patrol. The last light of the long day had given way to the glow of the city, preventing a darkness that each of the boys craved. They headed the car back onto the highway. The glare of oncoming headlights was like a reminder of the terrible strobe. Darkness lurked at the horizon; they felt it deep in their souls and longed for it. Cable was driving. He felt an instinct to flee, to turn the car towards the west and drive till there was no gas in the tank. He thought of all the movies he’d seen where the heroic thieves turn a profitable string of heists into a suicidal tragedy. For the first time Cable felt that there might be some truth to that progression beyond the director’s need to wrap thing up inside of two hours. There was a tugging in his chest towards something he did not understand. If he could just drop off the map, he thought, maybe his head wouldn’t hurt as much as it did. Maybe the weight would be lifted from his mind.
He glanced at Jack in the passenger seat. Jack was rubbing his knee. Cable felt jealous of him. At least he has an injury to occupy his mind, he thought. Cable replayed the day in his mind. It had seemed during the day that the course of events that had been set in motion when they left the bookstore had been of their devising. Looking back on it, Cable saw only interconnectedness. Only a building towards the present moment that was unavoidable. Why couldn’t they have done things differently? Why the secrecy? Why the prying? Why get involved at all? What was there to gain from it? Cable’s heart beat fast but his hands on the wheel glistened with a cold sweat.
“Watch where you’re going there,” said Quinn from the back seat. “You’re kind of drifting between lanes.”
“Sorry,” said Cable. “Just thinking.”
“I know you are,” said Quinn, “I can see the look in your eye.”
“Uh-huh,” said Cable. He didn’t want to talk.
Many miles passed. They passed the sign that said 36 miles to Fredericksburg. A long way to go. Cable had the chills. He turned on the heat.
“What are you doing?” snapped Jack. “it’s hot in here already.” He cracked his window. The sounds of the highway broke the shell of silence in the car.
“Can I ask a question?” said Quinn, “because it seems like I still don’t have all the information. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I had no idea that this is what we were getting into. Is that just me?”
Jack resisted his first instinct, which was to lay the blame for their whole predicament at Cable’s feet. Cable said nothing.
“Can I tell you what I’m thinking, then?’ said Quinn. “This might sound weird to you guys, I but I still feel like I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“As opposed to us, you mean?” Jack retorted, “because that’s not going to fly.”
“Actually, it is, sort of,” said Quinn. “It’s like this got incredibly serious without anyone telling me what the deal was. You guys said ‘let’s go’ and I went. Right?”
“Where are you going with this?” asked Jack.
“I didn’t – we didn’t steal anything. We didn’t kidnap anyone. We didn’t break anything—“ Quinn began.
“Where have you been?!” snapped Cable, “we ruined the polar bear. That’s an endangered species. And how did we do it? When did we do it? After hours in the Smithsonian. After we had already been chased out once by the security guards.”
“Yeah but—“ began Quinn again.
“How can there still be a ‘yeah but’?” barked Cable, “we’re on tape. We’re covered in this purple whatever!”
“But we weren’t trying to do anything wrong,” protested Quinn.
“But who is that going to matter to?” asked Jack.
“It matters to me,” said Quinn. “I hope it matters to you.”
Jack shook his head, but it wasn’t a gesture of disagreement. Cable’s outlook was darker and he growled, “I wish my conscience were as clear as yours.”
Another quarter of an hour passed in silence.
“Do you still think that Otis was trying to help us? Or did we get set up?” asked Quinn.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” said Jack. “It’s like we got caught in a trap what wasn’t meant for us, but no one seems to know it yet.”
“That’s what I was saying,” said Quinn.
“But we’re still caught in it,” continued Jack. “We’ve got to hope that whoever set the trap will realize that when they come check it.”
“If they do,” said Cable, “and that’s a big if.”
“If Otis were trying to help us – and it must have been he who put the ladder and the flashlight there – then maybe he can still help us,” suggested Quinn.
“Or else he put them there for the same reason that you put cheese in a mousetrap,” said Cable.
“There’s one way to find out,” said Jack.
“What?”
“The note said that the answers were in Berkeley. We’ve got the stupid squirrel. Let’s go break it open.”
“Do you really want to bust open another animal tonight? Are you that dense?” blurted Cable. “It could be a pipe bomb, Jack. Look at us! We’re not dealing with one of Uncle Paul’s scavenger hunts here! Why can’t you get that through your head!”
Jack and Quinn exchanged a glance. Neither said anything. They drove the rest of the way to Fredericksburg in silence. Cable took them down along the River Road and across the bridge downtown. Instead of turning right and heading back to their house, he turned left towards the bookstore.
“What are you doing?” asked Jack.
“Going to the store,” said Cable.
“What about this mess? Don’t you want to clean up?”
“I want to – Geez – I have no fracking idea what I want. I want this all to be gone,” said Cable.
He drove along the quiet riverfront street that ran behind the bookstore and then turned up one the side streets to get to the front. They turned onto Caroline Street.
“What’s that?” said Quinn. There were two police cars and a fire truck , with their lights flashing, double parked in front of the store.
“That’s impossible,” said Cable. “How could they be here already?”
“But there’s a fire truck, too,” said Quinn.
“What do I do?” asked Cable.
“What do you mean?”
“Should I keep driving?”
“They couldn’t have found us already,” repeated Jack.
They drove up behind the rear police car and stopped. From there they could see two police officers standing in front of the bookstore. The glass front door of the store was smashed in. One of the big plate glass windows that faced the sidewalk was smashed, too. Jack covered his face with his hands.
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