Amos Gets Famous (4 page)

Dunc smiled again. “Why are you so smart today?”

“It must be the pressure of being a fugitive from justice.” Amos took the glasses off for a moment, but a man reading the paper, looking at the front page, seemed to stare at him for too long, and he put them back on. “Let’s find the book for the next burglary.”

Thirty aisles in, five rows up, sixty-three books from the end. Dunc stopped and stared at Amos.

“What?” Amos asked.

“The book’s called
Early French Erotica of the Nineteen Thirties
.”

Amos’s mouth dropped open. “Erotica? Does that mean dirty stories?”

“That’s exactly what it means.”

“My mom and dad would kill me if they knew I looked at a book like that.”

“Mine too,” Dunc said.

They stared at the book.

“Still,” Amos said, “it’s for a good cause.”

Dunc nodded. “It’s not as if we’d normally
look at a book like this. We have to. I certainly don’t
want
to.”

“Me either.”

“Right. Let me see it.” They both reached at the same time.

“I grabbed it first, Dunc. Let go.”

“No, you didn’t. I did. You can see it after I’m done. I—”

Dunc stopped in midsentence. His hands dropped to his sides. A policeman had just stepped into the aisle behind Amos and was staring at them.

.8

“I knew you’d see it my way,” Amos said.

Dunc didn’t say anything.

“I just want to see if there are any pictures. After that you can have it.”

Dunc still didn’t say anything.

“Rats, no pictures. What kind of a book is this? Do you think we have time to read some before the burglar gets here?”

“Burglar?” A deep voice came from behind Amos’s shoulder, and he turned and dropped the book. “Did you say something about a burglar?” The policeman picked the book up and handed it to Amos. He didn’t look at the cover.

“Thank you,” Amos answered. His voice
squeaked. He looked at the policeman’s name tag.
OFFICER CLARK
.

“Your voice changed,” said the policeman.

“Did it? I mean, it did.”

“He has a cold,” Dunc said.

“Yes, that’s it,” Amos said. “I have a cold. The school is so drafty.” He coughed and held the book behind his back.

“What’s this about a burglar?”

“Oh, nothing. We’re just talking about all the burglaries that have been going on.” Dunc shrugged. “You know, just talking. Kind of just—talking. About the burglaries. Talking.”

“What’s the book you’re reading?” The policeman asked.

“What book?”

“The one behind your back.”

Amos took the book out. “This? Uh … uh—”

Officer Clark glanced at the cover. He eyed Amos suspiciously. “What are two young boys doing reading a book like this?”

Amos said nothing. He suddenly realized that he was wearing a pair of pink sunglasses with flowers on them and holding a dirty book and looking up at a policeman and that he was a
fugitive from justice, except that he thought of it as a FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE, all in capitals, and his tongue had stuck to the roof of his mouth as if it were covered with Superglue.

“It’s research,” Dunc interrupted. “We have to do a paper on the evils of the world.”

“Yes. All the evil, so much evil.” Amos found his voice. “Lots of it out there, evil. Just about waist deep, evil. I never saw so much evil.”

Dunc pinched him, and he shut up. The policeman eyed them both suspiciously, but after what seemed like hours to the boys, he handed the book back to Amos. “You’d better put the book back and move on to another aisle, don’t you think?”

Amos and Dunc both nodded. They were still nodding while Officer Clark turned and left them standing there.

“That was close,” Dunc said. He took the book down, opened it, took out a piece of paper, and put his own piece of paper inside.

“What’s that?” Amos asked.

“Instructions telling the burglar to go to Melissa’s house and steal a toilet. Let’s go.”

“Already?”

“The burglar could be here any minute.”

“We have a few minutes, don’t we? I’d kind of like to look at that book.”

“There’s no time. Let’s go.”

On their way out, they passed the same short, roundly built man with long arms and coat and hat they had seen the first time. Dunc had his face behind Amos, and Amos had turned to say something, so they didn’t see him. The short man didn’t see their faces clearly, but he heard their voices, and he turned and watched their backs as they moved down the library steps and onto the sidewalk.

Then he made his way into the library and to the shelf with the book about early French erotica.

.9

“So tell me the plan again,” Amos whispered. They were in the bushes near Melissa’s house. It was dark, and they had been waiting for over two hours—long enough for Amos to lose his patience.

“You already know it.”

“I just want to be sure.”

“This is the last time,” Dunc said. “We hide here until the burglar goes inside. I run and call the police. The police arrive, and we tell them the reason we’re here is that we’re trying to warn Melissa. The burglar is arrested, and your name is cleared. Simple.”

“I hate that word.”

“What word?”

“
Simple
. You use it with everything, but nothing ever turns out to be that way.”

“Amos—”

“I hate it, too, when you say my name that way. ‘Amos.’ As if you’re talking to a lamp pole. You always say
simple
and it isn’t, and you say
Amos
when you really don’t expect …” He trailed off and turned.

In back of them, in the bushes, there was a rustling sound, and a small figure with long arms appeared. It walked with a rolling gait across the lawn and stopped below a different second-story window from the last time. With an easy jump the figure leaped up to hang from the windowsill by one arm. He used the other arm to reach up and open the window. Then easily he swung up and into the house.

“The burglar,” Dunc whispered. “He’s in.”

“Dunc …”

“I’ll go call the police.”

“Dunc …”

“You keep watch, and I’ll be right back.”

“Dunc …”

“What?”

“That’s Melissa’s room. The one he climbed into. That’s her room.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I come by here sometimes. Well, lots of times. It’s only twelve blocks out of my way in the opposite direction on the way to school, and I know it’s her room because I’ve seen her in the window. It’s about a hundred and thirty-six point four feet from the street to her room.”

Dunc stared at him. “ ‘About’?”

“Well, exactly. I used a tape measure one time when they were on vacation.”

Dunc shook his head. “That doesn’t change anything. He’s still in there, and I still have to run for the police.”

“No. There’s no time for the police. We have to get in there and save her.”

Amos turned to run for the house and promptly stepped on the rake, which was lying in exactly the same place that it had been lying last time. The handle came up as it had before, perfectly, and caught him vertically exactly between the eyes. The damage might not have been so bad except that he was still wearing the pink sunglasses and the glasses were driven
solidly into his forehead, while the side pieces slammed back and into his temples. It was about like having a vise close instantly on his head, and he stopped dead, his mind blown completely blank.

Dunc moved around him. “Come on, Amos. You’re right. Let’s get in there.”

Amos nodded. “In there.”

Dunc stopped next to the wall below the window.

Amos walked toward him, a half-smile on his face.

“Come
on
.” Dunc grabbed him and jerked him up against the wall, turned him to face outward, climbed up his front side by stepping in on Amos’s belt, which pulled his pants halfway down, then on his shoulders and head and up to grab the sill. Amos stood smiling peacefully the whole time.

Dunc clambered into the window, reached back and down, and caught Amos by the back of his T-shirt. With a heave he pulled Amos up backward into the room. Amos stood in the darkened room, smiling quietly to himself, his pants around his knees.

Melissa slept quietly not six feet from him. Amos had no idea she was there.

He had no ideas at all. The inside of his mind was totally blank.

.10

Time has a way of being elastic. Candy goes like lightning, and a math test can take a whole lifetime, and the time that Amos stood smiling in Melissa’s room could have been two minutes or two weeks. It didn’t matter.

Amos was unconscious.

His eyes were open, but they didn’t focus. They stared out and out and out, and he was smiling, but it meant nothing, just a reflexive lift of the sides of his mouth.

Dunc, on the other hand, was acutely aware of where he was and what was happening.

He looked around the darkened room, heard Melissa’s even breathing, and saw her form in
the shadows. He did not see the burglar, but he could see light from a nightlight in the hall coming through the partially opened door of Melissa’s room, and he guessed that the burglar had gone into the hallway.

The house was silent.

Dunc started for the door, then realized Amos wasn’t following him. He turned to see him apparently staring at Melissa.

“Come
on!
” he whispered, and grabbed Amos by the hand, jerked him out of the room and into the hallway. “You can stare at her later.”

Amos followed happily, his feet trudging automatically.

It was just as well that Amos was unconscious. If he had known what was coming at him, there was a fair chance the shock would have come close to killing him.

In silence the boys entered the hallway. Dunc looked left and right, saw a glimmer of movement in a door to the right, and held out his hand to stop Amos. He put his mouth near Amos’s ear and whispered softly, “You wait here. Guard Melissa, and I’ll try to find the burglar. Got it?”

Amos smiled vacantly and moved his head in
what Dunc took to be a nod. Dunc moved off to the right down the hallway, while Amos stood near the door.

It was precisely then that a horrendous sound of cracking porcelain and splashing water came from the bathroom. The sound was barely over when the door across from Melissa’s opened, and a huge frame filled the opening.

Rocko.

“What happens?” he said. His voice sounded like a speaker inside a steel barrel. “What happens bad?”

His eyes were like the ends of two rifle barrels, little holes of darkness swiveling to find whatever had caused the noise.

And he saw Amos.

Standing next to Melissa’s door with an idiotic smile on his face.

It was still possible for Amos to have emerged safely, except that at the same instant that Rocko saw Amos, a small form came boiling out of the bathroom carrying a toilet on its shoulder. The burglar came out just as Dunc came in, knocking Dunc down and tripping him. Here timing became critically important.

Melissa’s brother could have handled one
surprise fairly well, even one and a half, but two things happening at once confused Rocko.

And a confused Rocko was a bewildered Rocko.