The Big Splash (5 page)

“It's not like that, Nicole. You know my reputation. He sent me as a white flag. He wants the trinket back, but only if you don't want it anymore. In fact, part of him hoped that you'd want to keep it, as a reminder of what you once had together.”

Her hand stayed poised over the squirt gun, twitching a little as if itching to pop someone after months of inactivity. My chest thumped, and I wondered offhand if it was possible for a twelve-year-old to have a heart attack. Suddenly, her hand relaxed and dropped to her side. She
smiled a sly little smile that made my heart beat even harder—something that hadn't seemed possible a moment earlier. I managed to recover before my knees buckled, but only just.

“The surfer girl,” she said. A light danced in her eyes. She was pleased to remember something that represented the past she obviously missed.

I nodded and smiled back. The crowd behind me let out a sigh of disappointment, then resumed their regular routines. The show was over with no casualties.

“He always used to say it was my good luck charm,” she said, “the real reason I made it out untouched.”

“I think your quick hands had more to do with it than a good luck charm.”

“Maybe, but there's always someone whose hands are quicker.”

“True,” I said.

She turned to her locker. The move was smooth and graceful, her hair swishing like a rain shower. When she turned back, she was holding a small statuette, no bigger than a pack of gum. It was a hula girl clutching a surfboard. The hula girl was smiling, as if she thought that all she needed was her surfboard and a wave and everything
would be right with the world. Nicole was also smiling, but sadly, as if she knew better.

“This is it,” she said.

“If you want to keep it, keep it,” I said. “I get paid either way.”

Her smile remained, but her eyes crinkled in surprise.

“He was pretty adamant about not pressuring you into a decision,” I continued. “He only wanted it back if you didn't want it anymore.”

Her smile got a little wider as she looked at the little figurine in her hands. She had placed all the memories of her past life into that little smiling surfer girl, and now she was trying to decide if she wanted to part with it. It was the only thing she had left.

“Sometimes I think about the kids I took out, and I really feel bad for them,” she said, a note of sweetness in her voice that I had never heard before. Then her eyes hardened. “And sometimes I think of all the kids I
should
have taken out before I quit.” I shivered. It was like having a conversation with two different people trapped in the same body.

“Maybe if I give you this, Nikki will go away completely,” she said, more to herself than to me. “Then I
can just be Nicole.” I couldn't tell if the thought thrilled or horrified her. Either way, I knew it wasn't true.

She grabbed my hand and put the surfer girl in it. I felt a jolt when she touched me, like holding a toaster in the bathtub.

“Take it,” she said softly. “I don't want to be who I was anymore.”

I nodded and closed my hand around the figurine. “Okay,” I said. I heard a quick two-pump behind me. Before I could turn around, two giant bursts of water caught Nicole square on the front of her pants, right below her waist.

The blasts were so big, they sounded like watermelons hitting the sidewalk after a ten-story free fall. The surprise and force of the water jolted her backward, causing her head to slam into the locker doors. She slid to the ground butt first, legs splayed, eyes glazed over in shock.

I hit the ground and rolled away, trying to orient myself to the direction of the blasts. The crowd in the hall thickened almost on cue, like a storm cloud blotting out the sun.

“Nikki peed her pants!” someone yelled. Suddenly, I felt the weight of the crowd's eyes, even though they
weren't directed at me. I turned back to Nicole. The ominous wet spot stood out clearly on the front of her pants, impossible to miss.

The first peal of laughter came from someone in the back. Like a spark on a pile of old newspapers, the laughter liked what it tasted and started to spread. Soon, the whole crowd was laughing hard. A full year of fear and hatred was fueling it, giving it power. Nicole cringed. She had always known this day would come, and now that it was here, it was worse than she had expected. She let out a soft whimper.

“PEE-PEE PANTS! PEE-PEE PANTS!” the crowd chanted, over and over again, each chant gaining in volume and strength. “PEE-PEE PANTS! PEE-PEE PANTS!”

“Nicole!” came a single cry, only audible because of its difference from the chant. I turned in the direction of the voice and saw Jenny Finnegan fighting her way through the crowd. As she made her way toward her sister, another kid pushed past her in the opposite direction. That kid was the only person moving away from the scene.

“PEE-PEE PANTS! PEE-PEE PANTS!” The roar was deafening.

Jenny sat down next to her sister, tears welling up in her eyes. Nicole was too shocked to move. “Stay with her!” I yelled. I jumped up and started pushing kids out of the way, trying to get to the lone, fleeing figure. It was like trying to dig out of quicksand with a teaspoon. By the time I made it to the outer fringes of the crowd, the kid was gone. I grabbed the boy closest to me. He was chanting with a fervor that bordered on maniacal.

“A kid just passed here!” I yelled in his face. “Who was it?”

“PEE-PEE PANTS! PEE-PEE PANTS!” was his response.

I pushed him aside and ran to the intersecting hallway. The assassin was gone.

I ran back to the scene. The crowd was chanting even louder now, pushing closer. From inside the semicircle, Jenny cried, “Get away from her!” As I was trying to figure out what to do, a hall monitor came around the corner. It was Kelley Diana, a third-year badge who I had met last year while working a case. She was even-tempered, but could get nasty in a hurry. She was going to need to. “Hey! Break it up!” she shouted. The crowd kept chanting, pretending not to hear her.

“Let's go!” Kelley pushed kids out of her way, sucking energy out of the crowd. “I said, break it u—” Kelley froze in mid-shout when she finally shoved her way to the center of the circle and saw Nikki Fingers lying on the ground, the front of her pants splattered with liquid. Kelley's mouth hung open. “Holy mother of God,” was all she could muster.

Kids stuck around, hoping that the law could be forgotten just for today. They were about to be disappointed. Kelley turned around, a new ferocity in her eyes, as if she felt guilty for something she had been thinking and needed to make up for it. “Everybody get the hell out of here! NOW!”

Usually when a mob of kids gets broken up, you can see the shame on their faces as they disperse. It's like they get caught up in the madness of the moment, and once that moment passes, they're all embarrassed by their loss of control. There was no shame on these kids' faces, only pure joy. I waded back to Nicole and Jenny. Kelley was still there, calling in backup.

Nicole was completely out of it, as if her mind had hopped on a bike and fled the scene. Jenny, holding her sister's head in her lap, looked up at me with tear-filled
eyes. Her voice was thick with sadness, anger, and disbelief: “Who did this? who's responsible?”

A bitter laugh slipped out before I could stop it. “She is,” I answered, nodding toward the girl who used to be Nikki Fingers.

a few minutes, we were surrounded by hall monitors securing the scene, making their reports, doing all the official business they do when it's too late to do anything else. I was asked by five different monitors to give a statement as an official witness, an old trick they used to try to catch kids in a lie. I told them the truth of what happened, leaving out the parts about why I was there, partially to protect my client, partially to protect myself. All the while, Jenny was cradling Nicole in her arms, like the world's biggest newborn. I was replaying
the event in my head, trying to recall any clues I might have seen, when Jenny looked up at me. “You're Matt Stevens,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“I want to hire you.”

“Sorry. I don't take revenge cases.”

“I don't want revenge.”

“What do you want, then? Justice?”

“I don't know,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Let me clue you into something, kid … Justice is a snack,” I said. “You get justice, and five minutes later you realize you're still hungry. Revenge, on the other hand, is a full meal.”

Jenny looked at me blankly. She was too young, too innocent to get what I was saying. Nicole would have gotten it, but she was no longer taking in information from the outside world. Her eyes resembled the eyes of a stuffed animal; they reflected the overhead lights with no indication that they saw them.

“Please,” Jenny said, fresh tears flowing down her cheeks. “Please. I'll pay whatever you want. Just find the kid who did this.” I left without responding. I couldn't
negotiate a price for finding the criminal when I felt somewhat responsible for the crime. Maybe I wasn't in on the plot, but I should have known something was up. Stupidity doesn't make you innocent.

I walked through the halls toward Vinny's locker. Nikki's figurine was in my pocket, the little plastic surfboard scratching my leg with each stride, a constant reminder of what happens to people dumb enough to think there's such a thing as easy money. Kids were buzzing around, spreading the news of Nikki's downfall.

My anger ratcheted up with each step. Most of it was directed at myself, but I felt like I had enough to share with a special someone. Vinny was standing at his locker, getting ready to go home. Brian, a bodyguard roughly the size of Australia, was putting books in a backpack for him. I broke into a sprint. They must have heard me coming because they both turned toward me. Vinny looked nonchalant, as if I were coming to bring him a cup of tea. Brian, whose hands were still full of books, wore an expression of indecisive panic. I hit Vinny at full speed and pinned him against the row of lockers.

“You set me up.” I spit the words out, my face half an
inch away from his. I wanted to make sure he knew exactly how I felt.

“That's okay, Brian,” Vinny said to his bodyguard. “Don't feel like you have to do anything.”

This woke Brian out of his stupor. He plucked me off Vinny like a ripe grape. He only used one hand and I still slid ten feet down the hall. Brian was embarrassed at his previous lack of action, and was about to overcompensate to make up for it. I prepared to get stomped.

Vinny raised his right hand, palm out. Brian stopped in his tracks.

“Now, what was your problem, Matthew?” he asked.

I got to my feet. “You know my problem. You've known it since lunch.”

“If you mean Nicole, then you have the wrong idea. I only just found out about it.”

“Bull.” I reached into my pocket to grab the surfer girl. Brian froze, his eyes as wide as dinner plates. If I had had a squirt gun, I could have taken them both out and been relaxing at home before Brian even moved. Vinny still looked calm.

“Matthew—”

“Why today?” I asked. “Why, after two months, did
you decide you needed this back today?” I tossed him the figurine.

He caught it with both hands. A tear fell slowly down his cheek. “I don't know,” he said. “I really didn't think she needed it anymore. I guess I was wrong. I'm sorry, Nikki.” Two more tears followed the first.

“Save the act for the Oscars,” I said, “because I'm not handing out any awards. You knew this was going down, and you sent me in as a decoy, a distraction so your man could take her out.”

“I understand why you feel that way, so I'm not going to hold your accusations against you—”

“How big of you.”

“But ask yourself this, Matthew. If I was really so intent on taking Nikki out, would I
really
be that concerned about covering it up?”