The Boxer and the Spy (12 page)

That night both of them made many phone calls.

The next day Abby typed up the whole plan on her computer and ran off a bunch of pages and stapled them together. She liked organizing, being neat, getting everything in order.

That afternoon, when school was over, they gathered, eleven of them including Terry and Abby, at the rocks by the town beach, away from everybody, where no one could hear them or approach them without being seen. It was the inner circle of the spy ring. Otis was there, looking worried, and Tank, and Nancy, who seemed ill at ease with the other kids. Perry Fisher was there and Bev, and Suzi, the wind ruffling her big hair. Steve Bellino stood with Mitchell and Carly Clark, who was taller than the rest of them, and darker.

“Okay,” Terry said. “Like I said on the phone, we’re gonna make our move on this whole thing we been spying. We’re gonna do it today, and Abby and I will do all the hard stuff. Abby will give you your letter packets. Hang on to them. And we need you to stick around with us in case somebody gets nasty. It’s pretty hard to be too bad in front of eleven eyewitnesses.”

“Might be able to do better than be a witness,” Carly Clark said.

“You got that right,” Tank said.

“We’re not looking for trouble,” Abby said. “If we’re together, nobody much is going to give us any.”

“We don’t want people thinking we’re a bunch of hooligans,” Otis said.

Everybody looked at him.

“Hooligans?”
Steve Bellino said. “What kinda word is that?”

Otis shrugged and looked at the ocean.

“Hey,” Carly said. “We all in this together. Otis wanna say ‘hooligan’ he can say ‘hooligan,’ you know?”

“You’re right,” Bellino said. “Hey, Otis, I’m sorry. I was only kidding you.”

“It’s okay,” Otis said, and smiled.

“We need to stay together as much as we can,” Abby said. “I got a sort of plan in with the letters packet about where to meet so we can walk to school together, and where Terry and I are going to go, and where to meet us, stuff like that.”

“I know,” Terry said, “that all eleven of us can’t be together all the time. But several of us can.”

“And we all got cell phones,” Suzi said. “One phone call and we all come running.”

“You’re each, like, sort of team captains,” Abby said. “And you each got your list of people you call, you know, like in a snowstorm.”

“You bet,” Suzi said.

Suzi looked like she was planning for her wedding. Her eyes were bright. She was excited. Suzi was adventurous, Terry knew. For Suzi this was fun.

Terry felt a tightness in his throat as he stood in front of them, with the quiet ocean moving behind him, and the mild breeze blowing past. He felt like he loved all these people, some of whom he barely knew, and in other circumstances might have been scornful of. He knew he wasn’t a very scornful guy, but these people covered a pretty good spectrum. Perry was probably queer. Otis was a nerd. Carly was a basketball star. Tank was very big. Suzi was a sex-pot. Bev was some sort of goody-goody. Bellino was mainstream. Mitchell was ... hell, he didn’t know anything about Mitchell.

“So if we really have to,” Abby continued, “I figure we can pull about forty people together.”

“Easy,” Tank said. “Everybody likes Abby, and nobody likes Kip Carter. It’s a no-brainer.”

“Anyway,” Terry said. “I just want to thank you for standing up for us.”

“And Jason,” Perry said.

Terry nodded.

“And Jason,” he said.

“Hell, Terry,” Tank said. “This is fun.”

“Yeah,” Carly said, “and who you rather have fun with than Carter and Bullard.”

“And maybe Old Lady Trent,” Bev said.

Everyone turned and looked at her.

“Bev?” Suzi said.

“Well, I don’t like her,” Bev said.

He knew they were right. For most of them this was like a war game, like cops and robbers, but maybe it wasn’t for Perry. And for him and for Abby it had kept getting more serious. But for the rest ... cowboys and Indians ... Didn’t matter. It was a good feeling to have them there.

Terry smiled.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s saddle up.”

E
veryone knew it was an election ploy. But Mrs. Trent kept open-door office hours at her campaign headquarters on Main Street, from three to six every day. The office was in a storefront a block up the street from the Coffee Café. At 4:10, Terry and Abby arrived with seven other kids. The seven others waited outside. Across the street, standing inside the entrance to the movie theater, Kip Carter watched Terry and Abby go into the storefront. There was no one in the office but Mrs. Trent and some staff. A Cabot police cruiser was parked outside. The outer office was plastered with campaign posters that said:
and showed a big picture of the candidate in a white blouse and some pearls.

“Do you kids want to see our next governor?” a young woman said to them. She was seated at a table behind a bank of telephones.

“Yes ma‘am,” Abby said.

“Are you supporters?” the young woman said.

“Of course,” Terry said.

“That’s great,” the young woman said. She turned to a young guy in jeans and a plaid shirt who sat with his feet up at the next table and said, “Get some pictures of this, Harry.”

She stood and went to the inner office door and spoke. In a moment she nodded and turned back.

“Come on in, kids,” she said. “Mrs. Trent would love to see you.”

As they walked to Mrs. Trent’s office, Harry the camera guy stood and came in behind them.

Abby murmured to Terry, “Let them take their pictures first.”

Terry nodded. They went in.

Sally Trent’s office was smaller than the outer one. Just a desk, two guest chairs, and a phone. On the walls were more campaign posters, including some that said:
As they came in, she stood and walked around her desk. She was wearing a tailored gray suit and a French blue shirt with a long collar. The collar was open over the pearls at her throat. Abby already could see that the pearls, which Terry probably hadn’t noticed, were Mrs. Trent’s trademark. She glanced at Harry, then smiled at Terry and Abby.

“Young supporters, how lovely,” she said.

She glanced at the camera, saw that it was ready, and put out her hand.

“Tell me your names,” she said.

“Terry Novak.”

“Abby Hall.”

Mrs. Trent shook both their hands. The camera clicked and flashed as she was doing it.

“Terry and Abby,” she said with an even bigger smile. “If only you could vote.”

“We will in a while,” Abby said.

“Yes,” Mrs. Trent said. “You are the future.”

They stood uneasily for a moment. Mrs. Trent glanced at the young woman assistant, who nodded slightly toward the two chairs. She made a talking gesture with her thumb and fingers.

“Do sit down,” Mrs. Trent said. “Give me how things look from your perspective.”

The woman stood beside the door. The cameraman stood on the other side.

“Excuse me, ma‘am,” Abby said. “But we have to speak with you in private.”

“Uh-oh,” Mrs. Trent said, and smiled harder. She looked at the assistant. The assistant nodded.

“Come on, Harry,” the assistant said. “Give them a little privacy.”

The assistant and the camera guy left the room. Mrs. Trent sat back down behind her desk, crossed her legs, smoothed her skirt over her knees, folded her hands in her lap, and leaned back slightly in her chair. She smiled at them brightly.

“Okay, what secrets do you have to tell me?” she said.

Here it was. The moment. Terry could feel, in the center of himself, the jagged thump of its arrival. They had rehearsed it twenty times. They had agreed that Abby would start off. It would be easier to hear, they thought, coming from Abby. And Abby was more socially graceful than Terry. She could talk better.

“We need you to help us,” Abby said.

Mrs. Trent was warm.

“I will if I can,” she said.

“We think something bad is going on in town, something to do with Jason Green and the construction near the Eel Pond Woods, and maybe something to do with steroids, and with Kip Carter, and Mr. Bullard.”

Mrs. Trent’s face began to stiffen.

“And,” Abby said, “we know you’re having an affair with Mr. Bullard.”

Mrs. Trent’s face went gray-white. She stared at them. The stiff and pointless smile began to fade away. Terry felt as if he might not be able to breathe. He looked at Abby. She seemed calm and friendly and perfectly able to breathe. Mrs. Trent’s face was now the color of sea ice, the way it got sometimes when it was really cold and the harbor froze along the edges. Her mouth was open as if she were going to speak. But she didn’t speak.

“Could you help us with this?” Abby said.

She stared at them some more, and as she stared, the color in her face began to reverse itself. The blood came slowly back until her face was actually flushed, and she looked almost like she might have a fever.

“How ...” She stopped and took a breath. “How dare you come in here and say such a thing.”

“We need your help,” Terry said.

They had rehearsed this, too. The first time she responded to Abby, Terry would answer. After that they’d have to play it by ear.

Mrs. Trent was outraged.

“Everything you have said, everything, is a huge and disgusting lie. I cannot imagine how you think you can get away with taking my time to come in here and behave like this.”

“We saw you and Mr. Bullard making love,” Abby said.

Again the stare, the color shifting in her face. The sense that she might be fighting for oxygen.

“That’s not possible,” she said. “And the accusation is disgusting.”

“You have a small blue butterfly tattooed on your butt,” Terry said.

Again the long awful silence. Mrs. Trent looked at her office door. No help there. She looked at the campaign poster that said, LET’S RALLY BEHIND SALLY. Then she seemed to brace herself.

“Is this what you do?” she said finally. “You sneak around in the night like little rats and peek in windows?”

They waited.

“That kind of behavior is disgusting,” she said.

Neither of them said anything.

“It’s also illegal,” she said. “Do you realize there’s a police cruiser right outside? If I call them in, they’ll arrest you right here.”

They waited.

“Who would believe you?” she said.

Terry shrugged. Abby looked blank.

“It would simply be the word of two idiotic children against mine,” she said.

Abby took her cell phone from her school bag and held it up.

“Why are you showing me that?” Mrs. Trent said.

“Takes pictures,” Terry said.

Abby kept holding it up. Mrs. Trent kept looking at it.

After what seemed a long time, she said in a hushed voice, “You took pictures?”

“Why not,” Terry said.

Again she seemed silent forever.

Then she said, “What do you want?”

“We need you to help us,” Abby said, with a nice smile. “We need you to help us figure out what happened to Jason, and what’s going on at the tech arts construction site, and what’s up with Mr. Bullard....”

“Besides you,” Terry said.

Abby smiled at his remark and kept talking.

“... and Kip Carter, and steroids, and, things like that.”

She smiled.

“That seems a pretty big order,” she said. “And I don’t see how I can be much help. But if I could help, and did, what happens?”

“All we know disappears forever,” Abby said.

Mrs. Trent nodded.

“And if I can’t help you?”

“We have a letter,” Terry said. “Telling everything we know and suspect. It goes to a whole bunch of newspapers and TV stations.”

Terry glanced at Abby. She looked at her notebook in her lap and read aloud from her list.

“The Globe,” she said. “The Herald. The New Bedford Standard Times, Salem News, Lynn Item, Lowell Sun, Lawrence Eagle- Tribune, Worcester Gazette, Springfield Republican,
Channels 4, 5, 7. You get the idea.”

“And,” Mrs. Trent said kindly, “where are these letters now?”

“A bunch of our friends have them,” Abby said. “Sealed, stamped, and addressed.”

“Do they know the contents?” Mrs. Trent said, as if it didn’t really matter and she was just curious.

“No,” Terry said. “But they know to send the letters if anything happens to us.”

Mrs. Trent widened her eyes.

“Happens to you?” she said. “My dear boy, aren’t you getting a little overheated?”

She shifted in her chair.

“Something happened to Jason,” Abby said.

Nice legs, though,
Terry thought,
for her age.

“I understood that was suicide,” Mrs. Trent said.

Terry looked at his watch.