Sammy Keyes and the Cold Hard Cash (19 page)

THIRTY-FIVE

I hear the Sandman saying, “What now?” but it sounds like it’s underwater.

“Whaaaaat naaaaaaooooooowwwwww…”

The Jackal says something to Sandman, but I can’t quite make it out. It has to do with killing me, though, I just know it. And since the world isn’t spinning quite so much now and I definitely don’t want to die, I take a deep breath and
focus
while they argue back and forth. Then, when I feel like I’ve got enough strength, I concentrate every ounce of energy I have, whip my left foot in front of the Sandman’s ankle and my right foot behind his knee, and—
whack—
I scissor-kick him as hard as I can.

Trouble is, it’s like scissor-kicking a rock. My ankle screams at me, my shin goes into shock, and while I’m busy having spasms of pain, the Sandman just sort of teeters above me—he’s off balance, but he’s not exactly crashing to the ground.

So I grab his ankle and
yank,
and all of a sudden he takes a complete nosedive.

All of him except his leg.

I’ve somehow broken it off his body.

“Aaaaaaah!” I scream, ’cause there I am with a
leg
in my hand—the shoe, the sock, and a big ol’ calf.

Only the calf’s got no hair.

Or veins.

Or skin.

It’s, like,
plastic.

“Aaaaaah!” I scream again, ’cause I’m plenty freaked out by the leg, and the one-eyed Jackal is coming at me like he’s gonna kill me.

So I twist up onto my knees and do the only thing I can think to do.

I swing that fake leg like a baseball bat and hit the Jackal in the head as hard as I can.

He staggers, and his
eye
pops out and lands in my lap.

“Aaaaaaah!” I scream again, ’cause now there’s a glass eye staring up at me from the skirt of my granny dress, and I am totally freaked out about everything—the eye, the leg, these old guys who are falling apart in front of me…everything!

And falling apart or not, these geezers are
tough,
and they’re not giving up. The Sandman’s crawling toward me, and the Jackal’s pushing up from the floor, where he fell when his eye popped out—they’re like old-geezer ghouls, and they’re definitely out to get me!

So I start bashing on the Sandman with his own leg.
Whack! Whack! Whack!
But as he’s rolling away from me, the Jackal’s coming
toward
me.

“Stay back!” I yell. “Stay back or I’ll…I’ll…” I pick up his glass eye. “Or you’ll never see your eyeball again!”

He comes at me anyway, but the Sandman’s not blocking the door anymore, so I dive for the knob, yank the door open, and stumble into the hallway. “Help!” I shout. “Help!” And I run to the inside stairs and start bounding up to the fifth floor, hauling the leg and the eyeball with me.

When I get to the fifth floor, I go flying down the hallway, skid to a halt in front of Grams’ apartment, and dive for cover inside. “Grams! Call the police! Call Officer Borsch!”

So there I am, in my granny disguise, holding a fake leg and a glass eye, panting like mad, when all of a sudden I see that Officer Borsch is already there.

Sitting in our living room.

With a picture in his hands.

A sketch, actually.

Of
me.

“Samantha?” Grams asks, coming toward me. “Sa
man
tha?”

“Uh, yeah, it’s me,” I say, my eyes darting from her to the sketch, then back to her. And then I just blurt it all out. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m really, really sorry. I had no idea it was fake. But we’ve got to do something to stop them quick! Do you have a gun, Officer Borsch? ’Cause you’re gonna need it. They’re
tough.
That’s why I took their leg and their eye…to slow them down! How can you run with only one leg, huh? How can you see with only one eye? Well, I suppose you
can
see with only one eye, but your depth perception is totally whacked. Of course, his depth perception is probably
always
totally whacked ’cause it’s just a
glass
eye and he can’t really see out of it anyway and—”

“What are you
talking
about?” Officer Borsch says, coming toward me.

“The counterfeiters! Their headquarters is apartment four-two-seven. They have rolls of paper and printers and boxes of…stuff! Their names are Tommy Egbert and Jack Allenson and—”

“Tommy Egbert?” Grams says. “That’s Tommy Egbert’s leg? Oh, Samantha!”

“You know him?”

“Yes! He’s a very nice person! And he lost his leg serving our country!”

“What?” I shake my head. “No. He is not a nice guy. He’s a counterfeiter! I checked the paper with a counterfeit pen! I…I…The pen’s at their headquarters ’cause the Jackal snatched it away from me. But I did have one! And the paper stayed yellow!”

Grams is looking very worried. “The Jackal? You are making no sense, child! What paper?”

“The rolls of paper they’ve been using to make counterfeit money! It doesn’t have starch in it!”

“Starch?” But then she’s off and running with a new batch of questions. “Why in heaven’s name are you dressed like that? That was
you
coming out of Rose’s the other night? What were you
doing
there?” She shakes her head. “And where did you get those
shoes
? They are the ugliest shoes imaginable!”

Well. I’m obviously getting nowhere with her, so I turn to Officer Borsch. “They’re bustin’ out of here! They’ve got everything packed up! Probably ’cause you visited them before and they thought you were onto them. They’ve got a van parked on the lawn by the fire escape. You’ve got to do something quick or they’ll be
gone.
”

Officer Borsch pinches his eyes closed. “You’re telling me there’s a counterfeiting ring inside the Senior Highrise?”

“Officer Borsch! You
know
me! I’m not making this up.” I shake the fake body parts at him. “Why else would I have this leg and this eye?”

He holds his forehead and takes a deep breath. “I’m afraid to speculate.” Then he adds, “The reason I’m here is because someone’s been spending counterfeit money around town—”

“I know!”

“But the composite sketch they came up with looks like
you.
”

“I know!” I pull a face. “It could also look like Grams.”

“What?” she says, finally tearing her eyes away from my shoes.

“You know that money you found in your coat and checkbook?”

Her eyes got really big behind her glasses. “Yes…?”

“
I
put it there.”

She gasps. “You slipped me counterfeit money? Samantha!”

“I didn’t know it was counterfeit! I was trying to be nice!”

“But…where did you
get
it?”

I look down. “It was Buck Ritter’s.”

Grams gasps again. “The man on the fire escape? You didn’t—”

“Stop!” Officer Borsch cries, covering his ears. “I don’t want to know any more. I
can’t
know any more! I’m an officer of the law, for cryin’ out loud!”

“Officer Borsch, really,” I plead. “I didn’t know it was fake. He told me to get rid of it, but I didn’t know why! So I was getting rid of it by
spending
it.” He’s just staring at me, so I say, “You’ve got to get
moving,
and you’ve got to be careful! They thought I was a cop and—”

“They thought
you
were a cop? Dressed like
that
?”

“An undercover cop! And I swear they were going to kill me! They’re probably making their getaway right now!”

He frowns at me. “Two seniors. Making a getaway. One with one eye, one with one leg…”

I stomp one rubbery tan foot. “Officer Borsch! They’re counterfeiters! And they’re
good.
They’ve got the watermark and the security thread and the…and the everything! Everything except color-shifting ink.”

He studies me a second, then gives me a pained squint. “You look like Tweety Bird’s granny, you know that?” He looks at my feet. “And those
are
amazingly ugly shoes.”

“Officer Borsch!”

“All right, all right!” he grumbles. “I just can’t believe I’m talking to a Tweety granny look-alike about one-eyed, one-legged counterfeiters.”

“Just
do
something!”

“I’m goin’, I’m goin’,” he gripes, “but this whole thing’s unbelievable.”

So he radios for backup, tells Grams and me, “Don’t leave this apartment!” and heads out.

The minute he’s gone, Grams turns on me and says, “You have some explaining to do, young lady.”

“I know,” I whimper. “And I’m really, really,
really
sorry. I was just afraid you’d make me give it back! I’d never had money before—it was really
fun
to have money. I could buy anything and
do
anything…. And it’s not like I was being selfish! I gave you money, I bought stuff for Marissa, I bought Hudson a surprise…. If I wanted a pretzel at the mall, I could just buy a pretzel at the mall—”

“How much did you
spend
?” Grams gasps, sinking into a chair.

I look down. “About a thousand.”

“Dollars?”

“Well, Hudson’s present was over five hundred—”

“Five hundred dollars? Five hundred dollars? No wonder the gallery was able to give a description of you.”

“The gallery did?”

Her head wagged from side to side. “It’s a lot of cash for a young girl to hand over.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling suddenly very stupid.

“Oh, Samantha! How are we ever going to pay all of it back?”

“Maybe they won’t make us?” I asked, but my voice sounded really small. Like I was talking from way down at the bottom of a big muddy pit.

“And if those men get away…”

“They won’t!” I gave a halfhearted hoist to the fake leg and the eye. “They can’t see, and they can’t run.”

Grams held her forehead like she was holding back a migraine. “I can’t believe Tommy Egbert is a counterfeiter!” She looks at me. “Are you sure you’ve got this right?”

I pull off my wig and set it on the coffee table along with the leg and the eye. “Yes! And he and Jack Allenson both have angel wing tattoos on their necks. With letters arching over the wings.”

“They do?”

“Do you think they’re in some kind of counterfeiting cult or something?”

“A counterfeiting cult? Samantha, really!”

“So why would they all have the same tattoo in the same place? Maybe they’re in some kind of underground moneymaking association, or something! Like the winged-neck Mafia!”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” She thinks a minute, then shakes her head. “But why would two seniors in their condition, living
here,
counterfeit money? Were they expecting to start living the good life?”

I blink at her as this queasy feeling slowly tide-pools in my stomach.

“What’s the matter, Samantha? What are you thinking?”

“Buck’s daughters said something about him living in a trailer—that he deserved better. And he was a war vet, too!”

“Buck’s daughters? When did you talk to Buck’s daughters?” Her brow pinches down. “What
else
have you not told me? How long has this been going on?”

“Uh…sorry, Grams, but I have to make a phone call.”

“To whom? Samantha, get back here!”

I race over to the phone. “I promise I’ll tell you everything, but first I’ve got to call André.”

“André? At the Heavenly? What does
he
have to do with this?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute!”

I whip out the phone book, look up the number for the Heavenly, and dial. “André?” I ask when he answers the phone. “It’s Sammy. Do you still have Buck Ritter’s daughter’s card?”

“Uh, I might….”

Through the phone, I can hear sirens wailing in the distance. “Can I, uh…can I have the phone number?”

“Is this another one of those don’t-ask-questions situations?” he growled.

The sirens are getting louder—I can hear them in one ear through the phone and also kinda muffled through the apartment. “It’s actually an extension of the same one,” I tell him. “And I really need to come over and explain a bunch of stuff, but it won’t be for, you know, a while.”

“Hmm. Well, I got the card right here. You ready?”

So I scrawl down the information, get off the phone, and get right back on again.

“
Now
who are you calling?” Grams asks.

The phone’s already ringing, so I hold up my finger, and when a woman answers, I say, “Hi. Is this Buck Ritter’s daughter?”

“Why, yes. Who’s this?”

The sirens are suddenly quiet.

“A friend of Jack Allenson and Tommy Egbert’s.”

“Oh my!” she says. And after a short eye-opening conversation with her, I get off the phone feeling totally shaken. And now I don’t know
what
to do.

So I do the only thing that seems to make any sense—I run back to the coffee table, wrestle on my granny wig, grab the leg and eye, and race for the door.