“Shhhh!” He pointed upstairs.
I lowered my voice. “Are you saying your parents don’t know about all this computer stuff? Come on Theodore!”
“Of course they know about it. They just don’t know what it’s used for. They think I’m interested in computers.”
“Interested? You probably have better equipment than the FBI.”
“Not better,” he said calmly. “But some of it is just as good.”
“Seriously, Theodore,” I continued, trying to give him a way out. “What do you do with all this stuff?”
“Seriously, Briggs. I’m a Private Investigator, or Private Eye if you like. I’ve solved a lot of cases in the past two years. In fact, one of the reasons we had to move here was because of the death threats.”
“Death threats?” Now I was beginning to understand. His legs weren’t his only disability. He’d also gotten banged in the head and there was permanent brain damage. “What death threats?”
“I got someone arrested and they started hassling me and my parents. When I have time i’ll tell you the whole story.”
I figured the only reason he couldn’t tell me the whole story was because he hadn’t made it up yet.
“That’s why I don’t want anyone to find out about what I do down here,” he continued.
“Didn’t the death threats make your parents a little suspicious about what you’re doing with this equipment?”
“Absolutely! But they never quite figured out what happened. Like you, they didn’t believe that a kid was capable of all this.”
“All of what? What is it you do exactly?”
“It’s a little hard to explain. I gather and sort information, then analyze it. Everyone in the world leaves a shadow on the information highway. You just have to know where to look and what to look for.”
“You’re parents must have a lot of money,” I interrupted, trying to get him off subject before he lied his way into a corner he couldn’t get out of. “This stuff isn’t cheap.”
“My parents didn’t pay for any of this,” he said, obviously hurt. “I paid for it with proceeds from my work.”
“Proceeds?”
“Case fees,” he explained.
Settlement fees, I thought. He probably got a pile of insurance money after his accident.
“You don’t believe me do you?”
“I don’t know, Theodore. This is just—”
“Too bad,” he interrupted. “I wanted you to be one of my Operatives.”
Before I could react, the phone rang again. Theodore snapped it out of the holster before the second ring and started talking. It looked like it was going to be another long conversation. I stood up to leave.
Theodore covered the mouthpiece and said, “I have to take care of this. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay,” I said, but he didn’t hear me because he was already back on the phone.
Uncle Willy
~
As soon as I got home I went up to my bedroom to think things over.
I wanted to believe that Theodore was telling the truth, but I couldn’t quite get there. There was no way a kid could own a detective agency. The only explanation for this fantasy was that he had read too many private eye books and somehow this had driven him over the edge. I decided to cut back on my visits to Theodore’s and get serious about football again. This didn’t last very long.
The next day after practice I found myself staring out the window at his house wondering what he was really doing in the basement with all that electronic equipment. If he wasn’t a private eye, what were all the phone calls about?
I went into our backyard and threw the ratty tennis ball a few times for my Australian cattle dog, Spike. On the forth throw I intentionally tossed the ball over the fence into Theodore’s backyard. I walked over, opened their gate, and started looking for the ball in the bushes.
Behind me, I heard the patio door slide open and Theodore roll outside. I turned around and faced him. “So what does an Operative do?”
“Come on in and we’ll talk about it,” Theodore said as if he was expecting this question all along. He turned his chair around and I followed him inside.
It seems like Op’s did just about everything.
“They gather information, follow people, do surveillance, ask questions, set up telephone taps...”
“Aren’t taps illegal?” I asked.
“Only if you get caught,” Theodore answered. “That’s why you have to be careful.”
“What other illegal things do Op’s do?”
“Nothing serious. In order to solve cases rules have to be bent and laws have to be tweaked from time to time. We can do things the police aren’t allowed to do.”
“But what if you get caught tweaking the law?”
“Have you ever heard of a kid going to prison for trying to catch a crook?”
I had to admit that I hadn’t.
“So, are you interested?” He asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I pay ten bucks an hour plus expenses.”
“Ten dollars an...
“I know it isn’t much, but it’s all we can afford right now.”
To me ten dollars an hour was a fortune. “Who’s we?”
“I have a partner. Well...sort of a partner. My Uncle Willy.”
“What do you mean, sort of?”
“You still don’t believe me do you?”
It all seemed too fantastic, but I didn’t want to tell him this and hurt his feelings.
“Why don’t you go down and talk to Uncle Willy?” Theodore proposed. “You can pick up the package he has waiting for me. Our office is at Union Station.”
I told him I’d go, figuring that when I didn’t find Uncle Willy it would put an end to Theodore’s fantasy detective agency and I could quit thinking about it.
***
I took the bus down to Union Station, which is in an old train depot on the other side of the river. When I got there I rode an old creaky elevator up to the third floor to look for the mythical Uncle Willy and Theodore’s detective agency.
I walked down the long hallway reading the names off the doors. Dave’s Import Export. Smither’s Talent Agency. Then, to my surprise:
William Last
YS Detective Agency
Confidential Investigations
Last But Not Least - Since 1937
Which meant that the fantasy wasn’t quite over yet. But 1937? If this were true, Theodore’s detective agency was started before his grandparents were born. Not likely.
I knocked on the door and heard a woman call from inside, “The door’s open!”
I walked in. The woman sitting behind the reception desk was in her early twenties and looked like she belonged in one of my sister’s glamour magazines. I started to feel nervous, which is my usual response in the presence of a pretty woman.
She smiled and I started sweating. Other than a phone, the only thing on her desk was a computer.
“You must be, Briggs,” she said. “I’m Margaret. Willy’s expecting you. You can go right in.” She pointed to a door to her right marked: Private. I walked through the door.
An old man with long, swept back, white hair and a dark tan was resting his feet on a huge desk watching a soap opera on a big screen TV.
“Make yourself comfortable, Briggs,” he said without looking away from the screen. “With any luck this thing will be over in a moment.”
This couldn’t possibly be Theodore’s uncle, I thought. He was way too old. The guy had to be at least eighty. He wore a carefully knotted red tie and yellow suspenders over a starched white shirt. Hanging on the hall tree behind him was a blue, double breasted pin-striped suit jacket, a tan trench coat, an old fashioned hat, which I think they used to call a Fedora, and a black cane with an ivory handle. He looked like he had just stepped out of one of my parent’s black and white detective movies. Grampa Philip Marlowe.
The office was sparsely furn
ished. In front of his desk were two chairs and against one wall was an old overstuffed sofa. There were no filing cabinets, no computer, no books, and nothing hung on the walls. The only thing on top of the desk was a yellow legal-sized note pad, a telephone, a paper coffee cup, and an ashtray filled with thick, disgusting cigar butts, which accounted for the sour smell that was beginning to make my eyes water.
I waited. Uncle Willy didn’t take his eyes off the television. He seemed to be as hypnotized by the soap as my older sister was every afternoon after school. When the show finally ended he switched it off and turned to me shaking his head.
“Pitiful,” he murmured.
I wasn’t sure whether he was referring to me or to the soap opera he just finished watching. He opened one of the desk drawers and pulled out a thick manila envelope and set it on the desk.
“So you’re the new Op,” he said.
He had to be kidding. “I’m not sure,” I said.
He stood up, stretched, then limped around to my side of the desk. The limp was pretty bad, which explained the ivory handled cane. He leaned against the desk with his arms folded across his chest and looked at me for a long time without saying a word.
When he saw that I was about ready to bolt from the office in terror he continued, “Theodore says that you’re the new Op and that means you are whether you believe it or not.” He picked up the envelope and handed it to me. “You ought to find this case interesting. Everything I have on it is in here. Tell Theodore to give me a call if he has any questions.”
Either Uncle Willy was as crazy as Theodore or he was just playing along with him. I figured that he must make up cases so Theodore would have something to do. Theodore’s parents probably knew all about it. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they paid Uncle Willy to do it.
“You’re not Theodore’s uncle are you?”
He gave me that hard stare again, then said, “No, I’m not.”
“Then who are you?”
“Just an old detective.”
“Have you really been in business since 1937?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said. “I was born in 1937.”
“I see.”
He looked at his watch. “I have an appointment in about forty-five seconds,” he said.
Probably another soap opera, I thought. I stood up and started toward the door.
“Hey,” Willy said. I turned around. “Theodore’s a good kid. He needs your help.”
I nodded and left his office.
***
So the whole thing was a giant fantasy, but Theodore wasn’t alone. Willy was helping him. As I rode the bus home I wondered how Theodore could fall for something like that. He seemed way too smart. But I guess he didn’t have much else to do. Aside from me, he didn’t have any friends—at least he hadn’t mentioned any. He was probably pretty lonely “glued” to that chair of his, as he put it.
I have to admit that when I saw the sign on Uncle Willy’s door I thought that maybe, just maybe, there was something to all this. But I was kicking myself now for believing, even for a second, that Theodore was actually a Confidential Investigator and that I might be an operative and make ten bucks an hour. I was too old to play games like this, but I didn’t know how I was going to tell Theodore. If I didn’t go along with him, our friendship would probably be over before it really got started. And I really liked Theodore, despite this little glitch in his personality.
When I got back to Theodore’s he was waiting for me on the patio with an odd smirk on his face. I gave him the envelope.
“So what did you think of Uncle Willy?” He asked.
“Seemed like a nice guy,” I said, vaguely.
“What time did you get there?”
“A little before three.”
“Then you caught him watching a soap opera?”
“Yeah.”
Theodore laughed. “Old Willy has a real thing for soaps.”
“So does my sister.”
“Well,” he said patting the envelope. “I better get to work. We’ll start tomorrow morning at eight sharp.”
“Start what?”
“The case of course,” he said impatiently.
He actually thought there was a real case. I felt sorry for him.
“Eight o’clock is kind of early,” I said, trying to come up with a way out of this.
“You’re telling me,” he continued. “i’ll probably be up half the night figuring out what we’re going to do. But there’s no way around it. Cases don’t get solved unless you work on them.”
I wanted to tell him that I didn’t think I’d be able to help him, but before I could say anything he turned his wheelchair around and zipped through the patio door.
“See you tomorrow morning,” he yelled, as the door slid closed behind him.
Op-portunity
~
I tossed and turned all night thinking of different ways to tell Theodore that I thought he was out of his mind. By the time the sun came up I was so desperate that I actually considered asking my parents what I should do.
I went downstairs and found my parents in the kitchen. They were sitting at the table talking excitedly, which wasn’t normal.
My parents aren’t exactly at their best in the morning. Their usual routine is to sit at the kitchen table and say nothing to each other or to us. They read the newspaper and suck down coffee for about a half an hour and by the time they’re ready to leave for work they can usually manage a few simple sentences like, “Take the garbage out.” Or, “Mow the lawn after school.”
But this morning was definitely different. They were both smiling and chattering like happy parrots.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“We won a trip!” Mom exclaimed happily. “I went out to get the newspaper and there was a package sitting on the porch. Two first class tickets to San Francisco, hotel accommodations...”
“The whole ball of wax,” Dad chimed in.
I don’t know where he came up with these phrases, but he had hundreds of them.
“It’ll be like a second honeymoon,” Mom said. “We spent our first honeymoon in San Francisco.” She raised her eyebrow at my father.
Yuk!
“How did you win?” I asked, changing the subject.
“I don’t know,” Mom said. “It must have been one of those contest forms I filled out somewhere.” I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t remember. She was a sweepstakes addict. If she won half the contests she entered every year we’d be billionaires.
I looked at the tickets. “When do you leave?”
“Tonight,” Dad said. “Right after work. They don’t give you much warning, but we can’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“We’ll be back Monday evening,” Mom said. “You and Teri will have to fend for yourselves for a few days.”
Teri was my older sister. She was seventeen and this would be the best news she had heard all summer.
“I want you to do whatever Teri tells you to do,” my father added, which he couldn’t possibly mean.
Teri didn’t like me very much. She was constantly telling me to do all sorts of things like go jump in a lake, or play football on the freeway with my friends during rush hour traffic.
I was happy for my parents and glad they were going to get away for a few days, but none of this would help me deal with Theodore’s insanity. I ate a quick bowl of cereal, then went into the backyard to throw the ball for Spike and consider my options.
I could always disappear for the day. There was a chance that by the time I got back, Theodore would have forgotten about the whole thing. I’d heard that insane people have very short attention spans. But Theodore seemed to be pretty focused.
I thought about telling Theodore that I was sick and couldn’t leave the house. But if I did this and he or his parents happened to see me leave the house I’d be sunk. And I sure didn’t want to be stuck in the house with my sister’s friends, who I knew would move in as s
oon as my parents left on their trip.
I even thought about asking my parents if I could go with them to San Francisco. If I begged them they’d probably let me, but I knew they wouldn’t be thrilled about it.
By eight o’clock I still didn’t know what I was going to do. I waited a few more minutes hoping that something would come up. But nothing did, so I walked over to Theodore’s.
I found him in his computer room. He was so busy he didn’t even notice me walk in. I watched as he typed on two different keyboards at the same time. Names, numbers, and people’s photographs appeared for a split second on each screen, then disappeared replaced by new information and photos. One of the printers was rattling out a long string of paper. Every once and awhile he checked the paper, then looked back at the screens. His red hair was sticking straight up in the air and the dark bags under his eyes were magnified by his thick glasses. He looked like some kind of mad scientist.
I was just about ready to sneak out and forget the whole thing when the phone rang. As he drew it from the holster, he turned and saw me.
“You’re late,” he said.
“Yeah, I....”
“Just a second,” he interrupted. “I have to get this.” He answered the phone. “Oh, that’s great. Good. We’ll get it then. Okay. Bye.” He looked back at the computer screen. “i’ll be done here in about five minutes. I’m just double checking some stuff.”
I waited and watched while he printed out some more things. He gathered them together and put them into a folder.
“That about does it,” he said, wearily.
“What’s going on Theodore?”
“Have you done much backpacking?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”
“You’re going to Montana.”
“I’m what?” I shouted.
Legwork
~
“So I fly to Bozeman, Montana. Take a tour bus to Yellowstone National Park. Hike into the wilderness. Infiltrate a religious cult. Find out if a little girl named Belinda is there. And hike back out?”
“That about sums it up,” Theodore answered, like he was asking me to go to the mall. “But don’t forget about taking a photograph of Belinda at the commune. We need concrete proof that she’s there.”