Chapter 25
The line at Carl’s wound all the way around the patio. The Boys were not looking forward to ice cream nearly as much as Detective Deffenbaugh was. All through dinner, he had talked about it. With the meeting with Franklin looming just over an hour away, Cable felt the pizza churning in his stomach. He knew better than to add ice cream to the mix.
Max and Mr. Glover had joined them for dinner. Jack had returned the file folder to Mr. Glover at Detective Deffenbaugh’s insistence. Also, the boys received the news that Mr. Glover had somehow managed to patch a phone call through to their parents aboard the Queen Mary 2, just arriving in England. Sydney and Sean were arranging to fly home the next day. Paul and Emily and Ellie would continue home by boat.
Although they were not excited to hear that their parents would soon be back on the scene, they were glad that they were no longer candidates America’s Most Wanted, Mr. Glover’s favorite old show.
“If all goes well tonight,” said the detective, “you guys will be in the clear by the time their plane lands.”
“They’ll be so proud,” said Cable.
Deffenbaugh’s partner had arrived in time for dinner. Her name was Catherine Orange. She introduced herself as Cat. She was older than Jack, but not by much. She wore gray pants and fitted black shirt. Her hair was short and black. By the time she’d arrived, she had already arranged for the audio surveillance and she joined them at the restaurant as though she and Deffenbaugh were professional food critics instead of a detective and a special agent tracking down a ring of thieves. Like Deffenbaugh, she acted as though a big meal at a local dive was a crucial part of any operation.
She seemed excited for ice cream, too. As Cable stood on the sidewalk, creeping along with the line of customers, his stomach clenched from nerves, he observed that Jack must have been antsy as well. Though by all accounts, Cat was beautiful, Jack had hardly said a word to her. That was a sure sign that he wasn’t himself.
There were still a dozen people between them and the front window of the ice cream stand, when Deffenbaugh finally turned his attention to their plan for the evening.
“I couldn’t be easier,” he said, “Franklin comes. You talk to him about what he wants from you. With any luck, he offers you a deal. Money for information. Get him to be as detailed as you can. Whatever it is you have that he wants, make it seem important. Is there a specialty of the house, here? It is just chocolate, vanilla, strawberry?”
“What is it that you have that he wants, anyway?” asked Cat.
“Information, I think,” said Jack.
“About where Souvlakis is or where the jewels are?” asked Cat.
“Both?” said Jack.
“But you don’t know, do you?” she asked.
“Know which?” asked Jack.
“Where he is.”
“No.”
“And the jewels?”
“No idea.”
“This may seem like a silly question,” she said, “but you don’t have them, do you?”
“Cat!” said the detective, jokingly, “what kind of question is that?”
She smiled, “sometimes you forget to ask the simple ones.”
“Don’t answer that,” said the detective to Jack.
“Why not?” asked Jack.
“I don’t want you to lie to me,” said the detective. “We’ve got a good thing going here.”
“Even if he’s got the jewels?” asked Cat.
He shrugged, “If he’s got the jewels, we’ll figure it out eventually. But why complicate things, I say. I’m thinking of going with just a vanilla cone. What about you?”
“You’re such a man,” said Cat. “It’s like stopping to ask for directions.”
“I don’t have them,” said Jack, “let me just throw that out there, in the interest of team unity.”
“Do you know where they are?” asked Cat.
“Cat!” said the detective again.
“We’ve got a bunch of clues,” said Jack, “but we haven’t figured them out yet.”
“These are clues left by Souvlakis?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I wouldn’t put too much stock in them, then. He’s suspect number one right now.”
“Cat!” said the detective a third time.
“Well he is,” she said.
“Yes, of course he is,” said the detective. He pointed to the young man in the paper cap behind the counter, “but I’m sure this fellow would be more interested in what you want to order than all that shop talk.”
“Oh,” she said, “vanilla malt, please.”
Jack ordered the same thing, which made Cable think that he must be feeling more himself, because usually Jack hated malts. The detective ordered chocolate ice cream in a sugar cone.
“Wow,” he said after he’d tasted his first bite, “this is the real deal.”
The detective sent Jack and Cable and Quinn back to the bookstore alone.
“It wouldn’t do us any good to have you show up with us,” he pointed out.
The boys let themselves in and turned on the lights. There was a message on the machine and Quinn instinctively pushed the button to listen to it.
“Hey it’s me,” said Chad’s voice, “since none of you bozos answers your phones or checks your messages, I’m leaving another message here. When did that detective need my statement by? Did he say? I’m home working on it and I should have it done later tonight. Does it have to be double-spaced? What did you all make of the thing with the crosswords puzzles, anyway? I want some credit if that turns out to be—“
The machine cut him off.
“So are we being listened to right now?” asked Quinn, deleting the message. “The GPS audio thing they were talking about? I’ve never heard of that. Detective, can you hear me?”
The boys looked around, waiting for they knew not what.
“I’m not sure it works both ways,” said Jack, eventually.
As he spoke, the phone rang. Quinn picked it up.
“Try not to get in the habit of doing that,” said Detective Deffenbaugh. “But yes, I can hear you. I can see you too.”
“How?’ said Quinn, looking up at the ceiling and at the sky through the front window that wasn’t broken.
“I’m sitting in the tattoo parlor across the street.”
“Oh, so that’s not a satellite thing?”
“Goodbye Cable.” The detective hung up.
A few minutes before eleven, a box truck with Franklin & Rogers logo pulled up in front of the store and double parked.
“So much for him being able to see us,” said Cable.
A pickup truck pulled up behind it and backed into a parking space. Franklin got out of the pickup and came to the front door. Seeing the boys inside, he came in without knocking. He looked with a quizzical glance at the plywood repairs Quinn and Chad had made. “That’ll do in a pinch, I suppose,” he said.
Franklin looked around the front of the bookstore. It was clear that the books were not of any interest to him, but it was not a paranoid examination either. His thumbed were hooked in the front pockets of his jeans. He made a short circuit of the displays of books, before saying, “I love books. I could read books all day every day. When I go on vacation, you can ask my wife, all I do is read.”
“Is that right,” said Jack drily. This was a conversation he had twice a day when he was working in the store.
“Do you ever get any of those books by what’s her name? You know. The whozzit? Won the thing a couple years ago?” He stopped and leaned on one of the tables facing the boys.
“It’s hard to say,” said Jack, “can you be more specific?”
“Yeah,” continued Franklin, rocking back on his heels now as he went through the motion of perusing titles. “Spanish sounding name. Jean-Marie something.”
“That sounds French to me,” said Quinn.
“Nah, it was Gustave or something like that,” said Franklin.
“Jean-Marie Gustave le Clezio?” said Cable, unable to mask his surprise, “winner of the Nobel Prize in 2008?”
“Yeah, that’s her,” said Franklin, “I can’t get enough her.”
“Actually,” said Cable, entirely discombobulated, “He’s a she, and I think we did just get something of hers not long ago. I thought I remembered putting it out somewhere.” Cable started scanning displays.
“I’m just fooling with you,” said Franklin, “I read the name off this book right here. I’ve never heard of him before in my life. I haven’t read a book since high school.” He laughed loudly as his own joke. “Had you going there for a minute though, didn’t I? Right?”
Cable blushed and retreated to the front counter.
“Eh? Just goes to show, doesn’t it?”
There was a loud knock at the front door. The boys jumped. It was Franklin’s goon. Franklin motioned for him to come in.
“Vincent,” said Franklin, to the boys. “I never introduced him. He mentioned that to me on the drive down here today. Vincent, this is Jack, Quinn, and Cable. Fellas, this is Vincent.”
“Can we get started on the window,” said Vincent.
“You fellas are in luck,” said Franklin. He walked over to the front of the store and glanced at the opening where the window was. “We’ve got some glass that’s perfect for your window. Museum quality, you might say. Once we get this plywood off – what did you do, put a screw every four inches? – we can install it and trim you out in no time. Interested?”
“What’s it going to cost?” asked Quinn.
“No charge, buddy,” said Franklin. “You know how it is. You see a person who has a need. If you’re lucky enough to be able to help them out, it’s a blessing both ways. Like if I wanted that book, that Anne-Marie book, you’d probably give it to me, am I right?”
“Jean-Marie,” said Cable. “And it’s five dollars.”
“There’s one in every crowd,” said Franklin. “But it’s business. I can respect that. Go ahead Vinnie, get started.”
The big man ducked back out the front door. A moment later two more guys from got out of the cab of the box truck. They immediately went to work removing the plywood. The screw-guns squealed as they removed the screws. Vincent set up a sawhorse and began pulling wood out of the back of the truck. By the time the boys could consider what was happening there was a power saw roaring and hammers pounding. They could scarcely hear themselves think, let alone speak. And they were sure that no GPS audio device however sophisticated, could penetrate the din.
Franklin watched it all with a foreman’s cautious appreciation. Then he turned to the boys and said, in a tone that somehow pierced the din without rising above it, “What do you say we get down to business?”
No comments:
Post a Comment