Rich and Famous (18 page)

And
then suddenly he stopped and turned away from the window. “Who is it?” he shouted. “Go away, I'm busy.” There was a kind of heavy bumping noise, and then another, and then a splintering crash of wood. “What the hell is this?” Superman shouted. I slipped in from the window, and sat on the window sill, my legs dangling into the room. There was another splintering crash, and the door broke and swung inward, and all of a sudden the room was full of cops, swarming all over the place. Behind them was Woody, and behind him was Barbara Feinberg. I slipped off the window sill, my legs and arms trembling so much I could hardly stand up, and then Woody and Barbara were sort of holding me up. About two minutes later the cops had got handcuffs on Superman and were leading him out of the room; and then Barbara was giving me a can of soda she'd got from the machine in the hall, and the cops were asking me a million questions, most of which I didn't know the answers to. And then finally we went downstairs to the bottom floor, and there was the television news crew with their cameras, and the story all came out.

When I hadn't come home Barbara had got worried. She'd found Woody's phone number in my address book and called him, and of course he said that we'd all got back from the shooting in Pawling hours before. That worried her even more, and so she spilled it all to Woody about the cocaine. And suddenly Woody remembered that Superman had asked me to see him; and that was when everything began to add up, and he and Barbara came up to Camelot looking for me.

“The crazy thing is,” Barbara said, “we came up here practically an hour ago. The door was locked and we figured whatever had happened, Superman had left. We started to leave, and then I saw your teddy bear key chain lying on the floor in the reception room. That was when we figured you were in there, and we called the cops.”

So I told my story on television, not trying to make myself out a hero or anything, but as usual they got it wrong, and it came out in the news that I'd discovered Superman was dealing in coke, and I tracked him down in his lair. I was trying to explain that I didn't track Superman down, when Woody Woodward burst in and said, “This is no ordinary kid, he's one of the country's most talented young vocal stars, he's hot as a jet of live steam.”

“He's what?” one of the reporters asked.

“He's just signed a Camelot recording contract. He's moving like a fire engine.”

And that's the way it came out on the television and in the newspapers—”Young Singer
Outwits
Dope Mobster.” I felt sort of guilty about everybody thinking I had out-smarted Superman, but I'll admit it, not guilty enough to say anything about it. When the kids asked me about it later, I just said, “Oh well, it sort of happened.”

Finally they let us go, and Woody and Barbara and I rode down to our apartment in a taxi cab. It was about midnight. “Oh boy, George,” Woody said.

“Why was it my fault, Woody?”

“Whosever fault,” he said, “The Boy Next Door is down the drain.” Frankly, I was just as glad. “Woody, how come it was my fault that Superman tried to kill me?”

“I don't know, George. It just seems that every time something gets hot, you get into one of these crazy things.”

“Well, it wasn't my fault.”

He sighed. “I guess not.” He was quiet for a minute. We were passing through Times Square and I looked out the window at the lights and the people hustling and bustling around. Then Woody said, “Well, let's look on the bright side. Maybe the publicity will help. Maybe I can think of something.”

“What's worrying me is, what am I going to tell Pop?”

“Tell Pop? Doesn't he know about this?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

He put his head in his hands and began laughing. “Oh George, what are we ever going to do about you?”

I didn't think it was very funny though; and as we went on downtown in the cab, I began to work on my story. I figured it had better be a good one...

THE END