The Zigzag Kid (33 page)

I didn't argue with him. I put on Tammy's clothes. But as I was getting dressed, I began to understand whose clothes they were and chills went up my spine.

Yes, at last I was beginning to understand, lousy detective that I was, not by thinking about it logically, but with my heart—because I had walked the paths my mother, Zohara, once walked when she wasn't much older than I was.

Because those were the rules of the story, the rules Felix had decided on so many months ago while he was planning this operation. And only now did I begin to understand the intention behind our journey: from the moment I met Felix and departed from the merry course Dad and Gabi had set for me, every step I had taken was predetermined, even when I chose it myself. Predetermined by Felix, who had led me here unwittingly. But even more, it was Zohara who had led the way, the Zohara within me, revealing herself.

I rejoined Felix wearing the old clothes, the red skirt and the green blouse. Their colors had faded over the years, the fabric no longer felt strange to me. The clothes caressed my skin, clung to it softly.

“These were her clothes, weren't they?” I asked.

Felix nodded.

“The clothes she wore when she was a little girl.”

“
Nu
, yes, of course.”

I remembered how he had looked when he first saw me on the train. And how his eyes had misted over when I put on her clothes in the Beetle.

“Do I resemble her a little this way?” I asked cautiously.

“Like two peas in pod.”

We divided ourselves into two squads, one squad consisting of me and the other of Felix. First he explained how to get from Lola's house to the Habimah National Theater, and then warned me that detectives were moving in. His instincts told him that the place was crawling with cops. I asked how he knew that. “If I feel tickle like ants up and down my back, that is sign for me that police are near,” he said. I, too, thought I felt a little tickle between my shoulders, as though someone were staring at my back. Maybe I was starting to develop anti-police tendencies myself.

Squad A went to the window to see if the coast was clear. Squad B was still working on his beggar's disguise. Squad A looked through the front-door peephole and reported all clear. Squad B reported that he would set off five minutes later than Squad A.

Squad A and Squad B stood facing each other.

“Goodbye, Amnon. Don't let them catch you. Be smart. You must still to hear story of how Zohara met your father, and also, there is present she gives to you!”

“You be careful, too.”

“Shake my hand, partner.”

Partner! I hadn't felt so proud since the day Dad promoted me to sergeant second-class. I reached out, we shook hands, and on a sudden impulse, the two squads hugged each other.

“See you,” I whispered, thinking, Once this criminal was her partner, and now, years later, he is her son's. We've come full circle again.

“
Nu
, get out of here already,” Felix grumbled, turning away for some reason.

Okay. My last night with Felix, the final chapter of our story begins.

Felix was right: the place was crawling with cops. I noticed this as soon as I left Lola's. Someone had made sure all the streetlamps in the area were turned off, and there were cruisers driving up and down with their dimmers on. Small groups of policemen stood on every corner, holding maps, examining the site of the operation. I could hear the whir of walkie-talkies in the dark, and I thought I saw a plainclothesman retreating behind a water tank on one of the rooftops. Or maybe not. It's hard to spot a lookout on a roof when it's so dark. I still couldn't understand how the police had guessed Felix and I were in the vicinity. Unless they'd found the ear of wheat I threw into the sea the day before, they had no reason to connect the bulldozer with the train hijacking! But the fact of it was that they had guessed something and were gradually closing in on the neighborhood. And maybe, I reasoned, they know something else, something Felix hasn't told me yet.

A young man walked by and plopped down on a bench. He looked too young to be so tired.

I glanced quickly at his feet. Shoes are the last item of a disguise a person will bother with. He was wearing the Palladium shoes issued by the Department of Criminal Investigation.

A little girl sauntered gaily by, her pigtail bouncing off her back. She stared pertly at the man through Zohara's eyes.

“Go away, little girl. Don't bother me,” he snarled.

And she was such an obedient little girl.

I turned right, following Felix's directions. I could just imagine Dad organizing a search party now, hunched over a big street map of Tel Aviv, sending various teams out to wait in ambush. He had a real flair for ambushes. He always seemed to guess the criminal's escape route and where he would try to hide when pursued. Once he hid a detective inside a huge garbage bin, a kilometer and a half away from where an ambush was in progress outside a jewelry shop. The thief, who managed to slip by the detectives near the shop, streaked past three other detectives waiting along the route—the exact route Dad had anticipated
when he plotted the chase—and dived into the stinking garbage bin, wearing a self-satisfied grin, when, much to his alarm, he heard the cuffs click shut on his wrists.

“A good detective thinks like a criminal.”

But I was no longer certain which of the above pertained to me.

It was so dark out. And the whispers, the shadowy movements.

I had to keep reminding myself that from a purely professional standpoint Dad could count on me not to let him down. True, I was only thirteen, but I had nearly ten years of training behind me. From the age of three. That's what Dad wanted, because Mozart's father taught him how to play the piano at the age of three. He started off by training me how to describe people accurately. Sometimes he would play memory games with me: What color shirt was the bus driver wearing? Who was wearing glasses in the shop we just left? What had every child worn to nursery school that morning? What color dress was your nursery-school teacher wearing at your birthday party?

With a perfectly straight face. In dead earnest. Red with rage if I made a mistake. And whatever I didn't know one day, I had to make up the next. And there were punishments. But the worst punishment of all was his sneer of contempt when I failed.

And at the age of five: What's the license-plate number of the car parked in front of the house? How many traffic lights do we pass on the way to Grandma Tsitka's? In which hand does the new mailman carry letters? What kind of accent did the person who came to the door collecting for charity have? How do you jump-start a car? Why did you pull your blanket over both ears again last night, where's your vigilance? You're not going to get your allowance this week. Don't cry. One day you'll thank me for this.

I was running too fast, afraid I might give myself away.

For my tenth birthday, as I already mentioned, Dad gave me an IdentiKit. When I was twelve, he took me to the police firing range, for target practice, not with live ammo yet, only blanks, but from a real gun, a .38-caliber Wembley. Once a month we'd go there alone at night, just him and me, with warm leather flaps over our ears and a cold gun in our hands, the weight of it, and the blast that made me recoil, and
Dad's warm breath on my cheek as he guided my hand, and the tall green targets in the shape of a human body. “Aim at the head! Aim at the heart! Go on! Draw! Fire!”

A hundred times. A thousand times. Draw! Fire! You're walking down the street and somebody holds a knife to your back—draw! You're asleep in your bed and somebody breaks in and creeps into your room. Draw! You witness somebody snatching a boy and trying to shove him into a car. Draw! He tries to escape? Stand straight, spread your legs for balance, steady your right hand with your left, close one eye and aim, now fire! No good, by the time you moved, he could have killed you twice! Now draw! Always be the first to shoot and you'll live to tell the tale! Go on, draw! Let your instincts work for you! Time's a-wasting! You don't have so many years left to learn, pretty soon you'll be on the job yourself! You're twelve, kid! Draw! Fire!

When Gabi said I was spending too much time at the police station, “playing cowboys” and seeing things it wasn't good for a boy my age to see, Dad answered that this was the only way I would ever learn to overcome my weaknesses and develop into a strong and serious man. Because by “playing cowboys,” as she so derisively called it, I was learning the most important lesson of life, the lesson about the eternal war between order and chaos, between law and the lawlessness that tried to tear everything down. Gabi listened patiently and said, yes, children make excellent detectives, because for them the world is one big riddle to solve, but every age has its riddles, and at his age there are other mysteries, including several about his own life; and Dad started blaring that she wasn't going to teach him how to raise his child, and okay, he may have made some mistakes with me, but to his mind, his greatest duty as a father was to train me for real life, for the war of survival. And Gabi said, “He'll turn out exactly how you're training him to be, and then you'll regret it.”

A cricket chirred from a bush somewhere. A breeze blew in from the sea, and I happily inhaled the salty smell and drew strength from it. I stood up straight, with my head held high. This would be the night of my big test. I had to be as smart as he is, if not smarter. To try to think
the way he does, and then to trick him. Knowledge is power, knowledge is powerrr! I understood his thinking and how he would go about such an operation. But he didn't know who I was anymore. He lacked up-to-date information on me. The Nonny he knew was a different boy. He was certain I would try to escape from Felix the first chance I got. He himself had taught me how to escape from kidnappers. But he didn't know me anymore. I felt strangely regretful for having run so far away, and I realized that maybe, for the first time in my life, I stood a fair chance of surprising him.

I started walking faster, attended by the fresh, caressing sea breezes. I could tell from the tingling in my back that very soon he would finish spreading his nets. I tried to imagine how he would present the situation to himself and to his detectives:

A Felix kidnapped Nonny and is holding him against his will. B. Felix is hiding somewhere in the vicinity. D. Felix must be apprehended before he hurts Nonny.

But there was also a point C. which he couldn't say aloud, a most important point for him: they had to catch Felix before he told Nonny the story of Zohara.

I, in any case, was eager to hear the story from beginning to end. It was the story of my life and I had a right to know it. No one was going to interrupt this time if I could help it, not even Dad. Especially not Dad. No more secrets! No more cover-ups!

I felt like a knight striding bravely off to battle, ready to fight for Zohara and her story.

And if he tries to stop me, I'll run away.

And if he fights with me, I'll fight back. Once and for all, I've got to find out who I am.

Seems strange: I need the man who kidnapped me and I'm running away from the one who came to my rescue.

I was so nervous I forgot my disguise and walked briskly, holding my clenched fists out, not the walk of a sweet little girl. But Zohara was no sweet little girl either. I could just imagine her at my age. A pretty face, if a little sharp-featured, with flashing eyes. The kind of girl other girls hate and whisper about and the boys are a little scared of,
too, and whom her teachers would try to transfer to a school more suitable for someone of her zigzag temperament.

And her mother?

Who was her mother? Of course she had a mother. And a father. Who were they? Why was I trembling?

I forced myself to slow down again. What was going on? How did Dad know Felix would hide in this neighborhood, of all places? What did everyone else know that I didn't? What did they understand that I didn't? It took every bit of strength I had to keep up my cover. Only years of training kept me sane. I walked past a police car parked at the curb. The policeman sitting inside it ignored me. With my eyes I followed a bird in flight from a cypress tree, say, to the power lines. Little Zohara taking an interest in our feathered friends. I look to the right, straining to see through the darkness. I knew it! There they were, those two men wearing dark shirts. They were standing on top of the highest roof on the street with a tripod set up for an infrared telescope.

Dad was tightening the ring around me. This was a manhunt, just like in the movies. A manhunt for Felix and me. He would search from house to house until he found us. I felt a chill up my spine. As though a strong, invisible net were hovering around me, waiting to swoop down and haul me off. I shuddered but kept walking. Please don't let them see the fear on my face. How did Dad think to look for me and Felix here, of all places? Why couldn't I break through the cement wall in my brain? The answer always seemed to be fluttering right in front of my eyes, yet I couldn't… Go on, keep moving, don't blow it now. In a couple of minutes the police will be everywhere. They'll spread out to every possible observation point. No one will be able to escape their scrutiny. All they had to do was sit tight, knowing that even an ingenious kidnapper like Felix will have to leave his hideout at some point, if only to buy food, or to move you, the victim of the kidnapping, somewhere else.

Dad's here already, I thought to myself. Of course he was. He wouldn't be holed up in some office at a time like this. He was here for sure, in a patrol car, reading a street map by the pale glow of his flashlight.

I could sense his presence. Stalking me. His muscular body bursting with energy. He was very close now. Watching. Waiting. I could feel him in the air, I could smell him there. Perhaps he was staring at my back this very moment. Those penetrating little eyes. Had he begun to wonder what really happened between me and Felix? Did he already suspect that for the past two days I had been purposely ignoring the silent cries his heart sent out to me? Did the furrow between his eyes grow suddenly deeper, as though someone had gouged it with a knife?