I prayed in silence. Dear God, let this be a bad dream.
“But I got the dough,” Uncle Al said. “And none of it is yours. You didn’t earn it.”
“I know.”
“You can’t earn a living, straight or crooked.”
“I will. Angela’s helping me. That’s why — that’s why I couldn’t do it today.”
“So you stand by a fifteen-year-old kid and let down the family! I taught you everything, and you let me down.”
“Angela’s my kid! She has faith in me. She wants to be proud of me. I pull a job and it’ll wreck everything. She trusts me ...”
“Save it,” Uncle Al barked. “Now I’m a wanted man — thanks to you, Weasel. You’re good for nothing, you know that?”
The table cracked! I heard a grunt, a slap, and then another followed by a punch. I screamed, but no one heard me over the sound of someone hitting the floor and the loud, manic singing of my canary.
Jumping up, I flung open my door. But I didn’t take another step. I was looking down the barrel of a .38 Special.
21
Bird Man
I screamed, and then I must have fainted because I came to on the floor. Dad was kneeling beside me, and Uncle Al was staring down.
“Geez, sorry, kid, you nearly bought it,” Uncle Al muttered. He swiped a handkerchief over the blood on his chin. I wondered where it had come from, and then recalled the sounds. Dad must have hit Uncle Al!
Dad helped me to a chair. He ran cold water over a towel, wrung it out, and laid it on my forehead. “I’m sorry, Angela. That was a bad scene for you to witness.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s all over.” Uncle Al’s voice was muffled as he held a handkerchief to his bleeding lip. “The Wroboskis are kaput. The Weasel has joined the chickens.”
I noticed the gun lying on the table, and it gave me a cold, edgy feeling as if a ghost were in the room. Dad followed my look and reached to push the gun away, but Uncle Al quickly snatched it.
“Just tell me one thing, Weasel,” Uncle Al said as he stuck the gun beneath his coat. “Why’d you run?”
Dad glanced at the floor.
“What happened, Weasel?” Uncle Al’s voice was regaining its power. “You had it all planned out, even on a computer.”
He didn’t seem to care that I was there listening, but I barely heard them, anyway. I must have been in shock.
“Why, after all our planning, did I have to do the job myself? I’m not the front-runner of these operations — I’m the brains!”
Dad remained silent.
“So where did you go?”
“To the café.”
“To the café?”
“I walked over to the New Day Café and bought a burger to get an alibi. Saw some guys I knew in there. They’ll vouch for me.”
“With that black coat on that I lent you, and shades, you leave the balaclava in the car and take off for a burger on a Friday morning? A Catholic isn’t even supposed to eat meat on Fridays!”
It seemed a weird time to bring in religion, but I guess an alibi had to be tight. Theirs was anything but.
“Well, I had money!” Dad protested.
Like Felix the Cat, my eyes shifted from Uncle Al to Dad and back again. Both faces were stony, stubborn, and resentful.
A knock sounded on the front door. Uncle Al was out of his chair and through the back door quick as a racehorse from the starting gate.
I couldn’t believe it. There stood Mrs. Singer, Hannah’s mother, peering through the screen.
“Good morning, Angela!” she said brightly. “I hope I’m not disturbing anything. Would this be a good time to view your father’s artwork?”
I was speechless.
Dad heard and came to the door. He was deathly white, but more in control than usual. “I’m sorry, Julia. I think I’ve got the flu. Angela, can you get down some of my sketches?”
“Sure.”
I reached up, robot-like, and removed some taped pictures from the wall around the computer area. Dad gave me a bag, and I stuck them inside, along with some other ones from the trunk. Mrs. Singer thanked him and turned to go.
“I hope you feel better soon, Nick,” she said. “Hot lemon and Aspirin!” Then she added, “Oh, I hear you’ve arranged for some private tutoring! When I return these, I’ll bring you some of the boys’ books that might help. Education is certainly a step in the right direction. Good luck!” She waved cheerily and returned to her car, just as Mom strode up the walk.
I stood with my back against the closed door, hardly daring to breathe, while Dad hurriedly filled Mom in. She was pretty calm, considering.
I’d never before heard such a sure tone in Dad’s voice. “Then that art lady, Julia, came. Boy, did Al run!”
“Julia?” is all she said.
He grinned lopsidedly. “We got talking at Sports Day. Artists don’t call each other mister and missus. Come on, I’ll make some tea. We’re all pretty shook.”
No kidding.
When Uncle Al saw that the coast was clear, he edged back into the kitchen. He was nervous, and for good reason. To them Mom was scarier than a judge.
“I gotta blow this joint,” he said. “The whole place is gonna be lousy with cops. Armed robbery!” He gave Dad a disgusted look, which came off more funny than sinister with his swollen lip. In fact, Uncle Al seemed to have lost his fierceness.
“It was you or me,” Dad said quietly. “If I’d gone in there to rob that bank machine the way we planned, I would have gotten caught. I’d be just like Burt Lancaster.”
Uncle Al squinted. “Huh?”
“Burt Lancaster in that movie, Bird Man of Alcatraz. Burt’s sitting there in jail with nothing to do. He thinks about his mother, and that woman who wants to marry him. But he’s not part of their scene no more. So he goes off by himself and raises canaries.”
We looked over at Patsy, who was strangely quiet following his recent burst of song.
“I’ll be raising those things now,” Uncle Al said. He turned to head out the back door. “So long, bird brain — and bird brain’s kid.”
“Hey, just a minute!” Dad followed him to the door. “You told me if I got some dough together, you’d let me buy my own cab and drive for Dial-a-Dream. Buy into the business. You said just this one job would get me the cash ...”
“Yeah, and you turned cold! Deal’s off!”
“Deal’s on,” Dad said. “You owe me, from all those other jobs. You set me up as the patsy — I did time twice on account of you! And I didn’t sing. So you owe me big time.”
Dad and Uncle Al glared at each other.
“Who’s gonna run Dial-a-Dream while you’re hiding out?” Dad demanded. “You’re hotter than a two-dollar pistol! You’ll have to cool off in Mexico or someplace.”
“Good idea,” Uncle Al said.
“I’ve been learning computers, Connie can do bookkeeping and have a car to drive, and Angela can keep the place tidy and answer phones after school and on weekends when most of the calls come in,” Dad said. “We’ll run the business for you.”
“No chance. You’ve got to have my signature to do that, and I’m not giving it.”
“Yes, you are,” I said. Mom and I pushed a piece of a paper at him. “You can sign right here that Dad’s part owner and manager of Dial-a-Dream. Or I’ll send you a yellow canary.”
“You’d what!” Uncle Al said as he and Dad turned shocked faces toward me.
“My dad has a jail record because you made him your patsy,” I said to Uncle Al. “So you owe him, just like he says.”
“Sign!” Mom demanded.
There was a bang outside. We all jumped, but though it was only a car backfiring, it was enough to make Uncle Al seize the pen and scrawl his signature, “Alvin Wroboski,” under where I’d written the date, and “Nick Wroboski is manager of Dial-a-Dream until I return.”
Uncle Al stuck out his hand to Dad. “Never thought I’d shake the paw of a weasel, but I worked too hard to let the business go. And there’s no one else to carry on.” He glowered at Mom and me. Then he tossed the Caddy keys to her. “Here, Con, in memory of the good old days.”
She caught them. “Thanks, and here’s to some good new days.” Oddly, she smiled at Uncle Al, a brilliant wide grin.
He nodded curtly, and then he was gone.
22
Fugitive!
Newspaper headlines the next day said it all: bank employee wounded in line of duty, and in smaller letters fugitive still at large. I was afraid to read the article, but of course I did, feeling like Gemma who read detective magazines to look for relatives’ names. But unlike Gemma, I was hoping I didn’t see any.
A holdup at First Trust on Seventh Street and Fourth Avenue yesterday has sent one man to hospital with a bullet wound to his leg and netted a loss of over $10,000 to the bank.
A man, posing as a customer, followed one of the young bank clerks into the room located behind a wall of bank machines. Once inside, the bandit slipped on a balaclava, locked the door, and told the employee to keep quiet and do as he was told.
“I felt a gun at my back!” said the shaken employee. “It was poking right between my shoulder blades.”
He was then ordered to open a metal suitcase he was carrying, which was filled with cash to replenish the bank machine money bins.
The employee complied, “shaking like a leaf.”
Wow! I scanned the article quickly, hoping my dad or Uncle Al weren’t mentioned.
The newspaper said the robber stuffed the money into a black leather briefcase. Noticing a wall-mounted video camera in a metal casing, and thinking it had recorded the action, he fired a shot at it. The bullet ricocheted off the camera and a granite wall and hit the bank clerk in the leg. From his hospital bed the employee said he was lucky to be alive.
A full-scale search was underway for the robber. No suspects. He had his face covered, and witnesses’ descriptions differed, but police would be questioning local people known to have criminal records.
“They’re on a canary hunt for singers,” Dad said disgustedly. “Well, they won’t find one here — except for that thing.” He pointed an accusing finger at Patsy. “Angel, you’ve seen nothing. You’ve heard nothing.”
“Right.”
“It’s family business.”
“Right.”
So far Uncle Al was in the clear. The newspaper added that the suspect could also be the person responsible for ripping off bank machines throughout the city over the past couple of months. Since June. Since Dad’s arrival home.
The scam was called bank-machine stuffing, with the culprit covering the cash-dispensing slot with a metal plate so a customer’s money would get stuck. When he left, the criminal would go in, remove the plate, and snatch out the money. The security cameras had fuzzy images, but it looked more like a woman than a man, so it couldn’t have been Dad. That was a relief, but I didn’t want to think about it anymore. The suspect had blond frizzy hair and wore fancy dark sunglasses.
When the police arrived at our house, we were drinking tea like a normal family. They asked Dad to come out to the car with them for some questions. He returned in fifteen minutes and gave us a thumbs-up sign. “No one here is going to ‘sing’ except that little squawker,” Dad said, gesturing at Patsy. Family business.
The next day Dad and I walked downtown to the Dial-a-Dream office. The Cadillac was parked behind the office building. We entered the office, with Dad using his handy-dandy door opener.
I couldn’t believe the shape the office was in. My image of Uncle Al as a rich businessman crashed pretty fast. Bundles of receipts had been carelessly thrown into shoeboxes, and handwritten invoices into others. The desk was a mess of unopened letters and bills and overflowing ashtrays. Dozens of voice-mail messages waited unanswered.
“Okay, where do we start?” Dad asked.
“Do what Uncle Al would when he gets in a fix — hire a lawyer!” I said.
“Good idea.”
It took us several weeks to sort stuff out, including having Dad’s name registered as manager. We convinced him to hire a real accountant, who discovered that Uncle Al, like his hero, Al Capone, had never paid taxes, or many other bills. In short, the place was a mess, with the phone ringing constantly with people wanting service.
“Ryan, we need you to help set up Uncle Al’s computer,” I said.
Then I made another phone call. “Hannah, remember you said we could install some computer programs that you have? Well, I need them. Can you bring them to the Dial-a-Dream office?” I gave her the address, ignoring her questions. “I’ll tell you all about it when you get here,” I said, and hung up.
It was Gemma, though, who offered real help. “Hey, how about hiring me part-time as the driver?” she asked Dad.
“On one condition,” Dad said. “You dump Jerry.”
He and Gemma stared at each other. “Yeah, sure. I was thinking of it, anyway. He’s a loser.”
So the Wroboskis were in business! And as Uncle Al once said, “It’s even legal, Your Honour!”
Hannah came down with the program discs, and Ryan installed them. Then we went over to the New Day Café to have a real good talk.
“Angela, I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Do you think your family knows anything about that robbery at our bank? Or stealing from the ATMs?”
“Your bank?” I said. I could barely breathe.
“Your bank, that your dad runs,” Ryan said.
“Yes, the bank that my dad’s manager of. Didn’t you know? You must’ve heard it on the radio or TV or in the papers. It’s big news.”
I sipped my Coke. This was tough. Hannah’s dad’s bank!
Truth or lies? I recalled Dad’s words when Mom brought my canary home for my fifteenth birthday: A canary is a sign of a squealer. That’s the lowest form of life. And a patsy’s a fall guy, someone set up to take the rap.
I glanced across the table at Hannah and Ryan. What would they do if they knew the truth? Would Ryan help us anymore? Would Hannah go to her father? Their parents would all freak, just as I was now. The police would come, maybe charge Dad with being an accomplice, even though he didn’t actually do the crime. Might Gemma be a suspect in the machine-stuffing thing, or charged with knowing about the bank robbery? All these problems just as everyone had the opportunity of a lifetime? It would ruin forever our chances for success. Truth or dare? What were more important — friends or family? I needed both!
“I don’t know anything about this bank robbery or the ATM stuff except what I’ve read in the paper,” I said, amazed at how calm my voice sounded. “And I’m sure my mom and dad don’t, either. You can’t go around accusing people of things like that, you know. In this country a person is innocent until proven guilty. And it’s the courts that decide, not kids.”
“I’m sorry,” Hannah said. “I feel awful about this whole thing. I just thought ... oh, never mind. Can we just forget it?”
“Sure. Uh, how is the guy who got shot?”
“He’s fine. The bullet just grazed his leg. He’ll be back at work next week.”
“Good. Well, I’ve got to go, now. I’ll leave you two here to discuss — computers! I have a business to run.” I laughed, and they laughed a little, too.
“By the way,” Hannah said, “Mom thinks your dad’s artwork is quite brilliant. She’s teaching a still life art class in September and wants to hire him to give talks and workshops. Th
ink he’d be interested?”
“He probably would,” I said. “Have her call him — at his office.”
Wow! That sounded good. I was going to ask Mom to buy Dad a briefcase.
23
Dial-a-Dream
At lunchtime on Saturday Mom and I were thinking of walking down to the Dial-a-Dream office to take Dad a sandwich when we heard a car pull up. We looked out through the open door. It was Gemma and Grandma, driving up in the big black Caddy.
“My baby!” Grandma oomphed out of the leather seat and held out her arms to me. I became instantly smothered in a bear hug, but this bear smelled of perfume, which she got as samples from Gemma. Then she opened her arms to scoop Mom inside, too, and we were squashed against her big bosom.
“I brought you something,” Grandma said as she released us. She fumbled in her shopping bag and came out with black T-shirts with dial-a-dream printed across the front in bright pink neon letters. “You girls wear them all over town. Be good advertising. We gotta be proud of our business.”
“Our business?” I said with a smile.
“Yes, our business! Al never finished paying me for the car, so the lawyer says I own it. How do you like that?”
We pulled on the T-shirts, laughing as we took turns in front of the mirror to admire our new uniforms.
“I never did have much use for Al,” Grandma continued, “but he’s family, and I can’t wish ill of him. Now he’s gone on some big holiday and given us the business to run, and a Cadillac car. No, I can’t hold a grudge.”
“Coffee’s ready,” Mom said, setting out four mugs.
“Maybe he’s down in Toronto working the horse-racing track like Nick did,” Gemma suggested.
“Poor Nicky,” Grandma said. “I remember that trip. He went down there like a big shot on an airplane and everything. Got arrested. They brought him back like cargo.”
“That’s past,” I said. “Dad’s a businessman now.”
“It’s funny that Al would leave town so quickly,” Grandma said. “I wonder if he had anything to do with that bank robbery?”