Al Capone Does My Homework (8 page)

Saturday, January 25, 1936

The next day I peek in at the cockroaches in their cardboard home on top of the bookshelf
in Jimmy and Theresa’s room. I can’t believe I’m relying on ten greasy bugs.

“Don’t do anything without me,” Theresa warns Jimmy, Annie, and me as we hover around
the cockroaches.

Jimmy squints at Theresa. “Where are you going?”

“I got to work for Piper this morning,” Theresa reports.

“We’re doing this now,” Jimmy informs her. “You want to be a part, you have to stay.”

Theresa crosses her arms and stamps her foot, her bottom lip puckered out. “Nuts,”
she says.

“Why isn’t Piper coming down, anyway?” Jimmy asks. “Doesn’t she know we’re running
the cockroaches today?”

“She said to let her know if it got interesting,” Annie says.

“Not everyone thinks cockroaches are as much fun as you do,” I tell Jimmy.

“Their loss,” Jimmy tells me as a cockroach crawls up his arm.

“What’s the plan, anyway?” I ask.

“We got to watch the dock guards, first thing. We can’t do this when they’re paying
attention,” Jimmy says, moving the cockroach from his armpit back down to his wrist
again.

“Or we’ll get in trouble,” Annie says.

“Right.” Jimmy nods.

“Is Trixle on duty?” I ask.

“Yeah. My dad is too, for part of the time,” Annie says. I give Annie a second look.
It’s hard to get used to tall and thin Annie when she’s always been squat and sturdy
Annie.

“What are we watching for?” I ask Jimmy.

“We got to see when the guards turn their backs,” he says, taking a second cockroach
out of the box and letting it scamper up his other arm.

“I don’t know, you guys. Maybe we shouldn’t . . .” Annie says.

“What’s the harm?” Jimmy asks. “We aren’t getting near the cons, the cockroaches are.”

Annie crosses her arms in front of her chest and raises her blond eyebrows. “It’s
not your dad working today.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Jimmy asks.

Annie frowns. Her eyes focus on the bottle cap curtain, which separates Theresa’s
side of the room from Jimmy’s.

“Annie,” I say, “if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.”

Jimmy and I exchange a look. Annie doesn’t like to do things that might possibly be
against a rule the adults haven’t thought to make yet. We wait for her to say something
else, but she doesn’t.

“So where should we go?” I ask.

“Best view is from the balcony,” Jimmy says, capturing both cockroaches and putting
them back in the box.

“And remind me why exactly we’re doing this?” Annie asks.

“We’re hoping the cons won’t be able to resist the opportunity to brag,” I say.

“But we can’t just stand on the balcony gawking at the cons,” Annie says.

Jimmy takes the cockroach box under his arm. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it all figured
out,” he says as we head through the Mattaman living room to the front balcony.

Annie stands watching us, her mouth open, ready to object. I think she’s not going
to come, but when I look back, there she is.

Jimmy heads for the balcony right outside his apartment. We sit cross-legged in a
semicircle by the railing. Jimmy takes out a piece of paper and folds it up into a
triangle and we play a lame game of flick the paper football. “We have to pretend
to be busy,” he whispers.

It doesn’t take long before Indiana, the guy with no eyebrows, notices us.

“Morrrrrrrrning Annie, Jimmy, Mooooooose,” he calls out, waving with both hands, like
he’s washing windows with two hands at once.

We don’t answer.

“Who wants to say good morning to someone that creepy?” Annie whispers.

“It’s his eyebrows,” I say. “He must shave them off.”

“I wonder what he does with the eyebrow hairs?” Jimmy asks.

“Seems like you need a special place for eyebrow hairs,” I say.

“An eyebrow hair receptacle,” Jimmy adds.

“Exactly,” I laugh.

“You know, this really isn’t something I want to think about,” Annie says.

“The problem is his chin, anyway,” Jimmy says.

“He has no chin,” I say.

“That’s the problem,” Jimmy agrees.

“Never trust a man with no chin.” Me again.

“Even if he had eyebrows and a chin, he’d still be creepy,” Annie decides.

There’s no way the cons can hear us, but something about how they’re watching is disturbing,
like they’re better at this than we are. “C’mon you guys, we have to move. We’re too
visible,” Annie mutters.

“Let’s try the corner by the stairwell,” I say.

“Too far away. We won’t be able to see the cockroach from there,” Annie says.

“Let’s just stay here. They’ll forget about us,” Jimmy says.

Jimmy’s right, they get bored of us and go back to work. Which is the good news and
the bad news, because now watching them is as exciting as observing the currents in
the bay. Who cares?

But then slowly I begin to notice little things. Lizard, Indiana, and Count Lustig
are friends and they’re always nodding to each other, sweeping next to one another,
and saving each other a place in line. When Indiana is in the back of the pickup,
Lizard is the one tossing laundry bags to him. When the Count is planting flowers
by the switchback, Lizard is carrying the potting soil.

Indiana is the weirdest of the three, but Lizard is a close second with his big fleshy
face and skinny legs. The Count looks perfectly normal. Normal height. Normal posture.
Normal brown hair. He blends in. You would never pick him out of a crowd.

When the count bell rings, the cons line up. Then Trixle comes by and counts them
himself or sometimes he has them count off. This is to make sure no prisoner has escaped.
He reports the count to the dock officer, the dock officer writes it on a slip of
paper, then he attaches the paper to a guy-wire at the bottom of the dock tower. The
tower officer operates the pulley, and the message zips up the fifty feet to the tower.
Then the tower officer calls in the count to the control room in the cell house.

The whole transaction takes five minutes, sometimes longer—depending on who is on
dock duty. If it’s someone Trixle likes, he takes a cigarette break and they discuss
the Seals game or some boxer guy like Baby Arizmendi.

“Jimmy, let’s send our bug man out,” I whisper as the balcony shakes with the clickety-clackety
of high heels.

“Mr. Mattaman,” Bea Trixle shouts down.

Jimmy’s head pops up. “Yes, ma’am.” He swivels toward the sound of Bea’s voice.

Clickety-clackety
.
Bea appears. She’s breathing hard, teetering on her high heels, which, so far as
I know, she never takes off. Even her slippers have high heels on them. She shakes
her finger at Jimmy. “How dare you?”

“How dare I what?” Jimmy asks.

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“Wouldn’t notice what, ma’am?” he asks politely.

“Fifty dollars has up and gone.
Fifty
dollars!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am,” Jimmy says.

“Don’t lie to me, Jimmy. The money is gone and you’re the only one who could have
touched it.”

“That’s nuts,” Jimmy says, looking her straight in the eye. “I’ve never stolen one
penny in my whole life. Not from you. Not from anyone.”

Her face softens with doubt, but then she revs up for a second round. “I took you
into my store because your folks needed money. I gave you a job and this is what you
do to me?”

Jimmy stands firm. “I’m not a thief.”

“Moose here probably put you up to it. I’m going to tell the warden and call the police.
Let them sort it out. You watch me!”

“Mrs. Trixle, ma’am, I didn’t take your money.” His voice doesn’t waver.

“And I didn’t put him up to it,” I say.

“The least you can do is be a man and fess up.” Her eyes are trained on Jimmy.

“Nothing to confess. I—didn’t—take—your—money,” Jimmy repeats slowly, as if she doesn’t
speak English.

“I will expect you to pay it back, do you hear me? But not from working at my store.
No sirree, buster.
You
are fired.”

“That’s crazy talk, ma’am. You can’t accuse me like this.” Jimmy looks at her, his
face full of defiance.

“Oh yeah? You watch me.” She turns on her heels and clickety-clacks back across the
balcony.

My mouth hangs open. Annie’s eyes pop out of her head. “What was that all about?”
she asks.

Jimmy flaps his hand like it isn’t a big deal.

“Are you kidding me? She accused you of being a thief,” I say.

He shrugs. “She does it all the time. She makes mistakes with her bookkeeping, then
she claims I’m stealing from her.”

“But fifty dollars . . .”

“It’s never been that much before,” he agrees. “Once it was two dollars. Once eleven
fifty. Another time twenty. She’s a barrel of laughs to work for, I’m telling you,”
he says, though his voice has a catch in it—like what just happened is starting to
sink in.

“You lost your job,” I say.

He shrugs. “She always hires me back. She can’t run the place without me.”

“Does she ever apologize?” Annie asks.

“She brings me up a piece of pie, then mumbles about there being a mistake in the
books. Never that she makes the mistake. The books were mistaken.” He smiles. “Then
she says: ‘See you tomorrow?’”

“And you say yes?”

“You see a lot of jobs on this island for kids? I earn half my mom’s grocery money,”
Jimmy says as Mrs. Caconi wheezes past us on the balcony. The smell of baking powder
and sweat fills the air.

I shake my head. “Still,” I whisper, “you’d better go talk to your mom. Bea said she
was calling the police.”

He sighs. “She’ll never do it. It will make her look like a fool when they discover
it’s a bookkeeping error. I’ll tell my mom as soon as we’re done. Let’s get our cockroach
out there.”

“Jimmy,” I whisper, “you don’t think the missing money could be related to the fire
in some way?”

Jimmy jumps up. “She probably added wrong. That’s what she always does. C’mon, if
we’re going to do this, we better get on it before they go to lunch.”

“So what are we going to ask them? The cons, I mean,” Annie asks.

“What they know about the fire,” Jimmy explains. “My dad says they know everything
that happens on this island.”

“People always say that, but I wonder if it’s true,” Annie says.

“You have another idea?” Jimmy asks.

Annie shakes her head.

“Let’s just ask flat out,” I say.

What do you know about the fire?
Annie writes because she has the best handwriting.

I roll the note into a tight cylinder. Jimmy takes thread and ties the roll, like
a diploma, then secures it to the cockroach’s back. It’s amazing how good he is at
this, like he’s been tying messages to cockroaches his whole life. “We need to target
one of the convicts. Which one do you think?”

“The Count,” Annie says.

“He’s the most normal,” I say, rearranging my legs, which are cramped from sitting
for so long.

“Okay, Count Lustig, then,” Jimmy says. “When Trixle finishes with the convict count,
I’ll give the sign and we’ll go.”

I keep one eye on Trixle moving through the men and one eye on Jimmy. When Jimmy nods,
I spring into action, fast-walking across the balcony and down the stairs. On the
dock level, I toss a chunk of cookie. It lands near Count Lustig. He glances at the
cookie, but doesn’t reach for it. He goes about his business scrubbing the deck.

I run across, sticking close to the front of 64, then toss another cookie chunk between
Jimmy and the Count. Jimmy releases the cockroach. The cockroach stands still.

We hold our breath, looking from the cockroach to Trixle and back again. Then our
cockroach scuttles forward.

Lizard has the soapy water bucket against his big chest. The Count motions toward
the bug. The cockroach zigs and zags toward the Count.

Darby pats his pocket for his cigarettes, then digs his fingers inside. He takes the
cigarette out and strikes the match, inhaling deeply.

The cockroach darts out to the first cookie crumb.

Most of the cons are watching the cockroach. Do they see the tiny scroll on its back?

The cockroach seems content with one cookie crumb. It scoots toward the shade of 64
building.

I run back up to Annie. Jimmy is already there. His lip is twisted, his face full
of disappointment. This isn’t going to work and he knows it.

Trixle and Annie’s dad reach a lag in their discussion. Trixle turns to check on the
cons. “Get to work,” he barks, then he’s back talking to Bomini again.

Lizard dunks his scrub brush in his bucket, then crawls on his hands and knees toward
the cockroach.

Annie darts a hopeful look at me.

Lizard is rapidly overtaking the cockroach. His hand hovers and then shoots out, snatching
the brown bug.

“Yes!” I whisper as Lizard dangles the cockroach in front of his face, then pops it
in his mouth, note and all, his Adam’s apple slipping up and down his throat.

“Oh my God! He ate the cockroach,” Annie says.

Lizard smiles up at us, then he rubs his belly as if he’s just eaten a satisfying
meal.

Indiana’s laugh cuts through the air.

Trixle whips around, dropping his cigarette before he’s half done and grinding it
out with his shoe. “What’s your problem, 141?” he asks.

The entire work crew is looking at us.

“All right . . .” Darby barks. “What’s going on here, folks?”

Nobody answers.

“Moose.” He motions me to come down.

Why is it always me? I glance back at Jimmy and Annie as I trudge down to Darby.

“What have you guys been doing up there for so long?” Darby demands.

“Catching cockroaches, sir,” I tell him when I’m down on the dock, careful to stay
on my side of the white line.

“Catching cockroaches, my foot.” Darby has his bullhorn now, his voice amplified.
“You kids are up to no good. You think the rules don’t apply to you, well, I got news
for you.”