The announcer came back. “So, now, the news. The main story of the day is that Shorings Bank, in Manhattan, was robbed today….” Nockman turned the volume up. “The operation was conducted earlier today by a gang of armed robbers. They made off with precious stones and jewelry to the value of over one hundred million dollars.”
Nockman guffawed. It was more than that!
“Experts are trying to ascertain how the robbers managed to secure the building and turn off all the alarms, since Shorings Bank has one of the world’s most sophisticated alarm systems. It is believed that the gang is still somewhere on the island of Manhattan. The robbery was reported immediately after the thieves left, and police were able to set up roadblocks at all the bridges and tunnels leaving Manhattan within five minutes. Police have also been checking boats docked around the island. All water traffic has been stopped. A bank worker who was forced to go with the gang has given accounts of how he was made to unload the stolen goods from a bank truck into different cars, which were driven away. It is believed that the criminals have hidden the stolen property all over the borough of Manhattan. The police have asked people to be on the lookout, and also to be careful, as the gang is likely to be dangerous.”
This was the best news that Nockman had ever heard. He loved this newscaster for bringing it to him.
“Thank you for listening,” said the newscaster.
“Thank you,” said Nockman.
“Great news, isn’t it?” said the newscaster.
“Yeah,” said Nockman. He really liked this newscaster, and especially his voice. It was perfectly pitched and very soothing.
“You must be feeling fantastic,” said the newscaster.
“I am!” laughed Nockman.
“You’re feeling fantastic, the best you’ve felt in years.”
“I am! I am!” agreed Nockman.
“All that effort was worth it. You deserve this, don’t you!”
Nockman nodded. How right the voice was.
“And now you need your well-deserved rest. Take a nice deep breath and breathe out, slowly.”
Nockman breathed deeply in and out and felt much, much better.
“Breathe slowly in and out and, as I count down, you will feel more and more relaxed. Keep driving as I count ten—nine—eight—seven—six—five—four—three—two—one, and now, Mr. Nockman, you are complete—ly under my power. Understood?”
“Understood,” said Nockman stupidly. He felt wonderful. He’d fallen into Rocky and Molly’s trap, and he felt fabulous.
“Now,” said Rocky, “I want you to turn this truck around and drive back to New York, back to the place you left this afternoon. Okay?”
“Fine,” said Nockman. “Fine, just fine.”
As Nockman drove, the tape in the radio/cassette player reeled to its end. The rest of it was blank. Molly and Rocky had had time the night before to record only a short fake radio show. Nockman drove grinning in silence. The fake radio show had been Molly and Rocky’s back-up plan. Rocky had slipped the tape into the truck’s tape deck at the first warehouse.
Molly and Rocky had relied on two things to achieve their ends:
The first thing was a fact—that many adults underestimate the intelligence of children.
The second thing was a design point—if radio/cassette players have tapes in them, when the machine is turned on, the tape automatically plays first.
Thirty
Molly, Rocky, and Petula sat patiently in the warehouse. As the light outside faded, Molly went out to a phone booth. From there she called Rixey Bloomy and told her that she was too upset about Petula being stolen to go through with that evening’s performance of Stars on Mars.
“I’m sorry, Rixey, it’s just I might collapse on the stage.”
“Oh, Molly, the public will understand,” sympathized Rixey. “And don’t you worry—your understudy, Laura, will play your part tonight.”
Molly felt a bit guilty since she knew that the people coming tonight would be disappointed. But then she thought of Laura, the understudy, a girl who was longing to show everyone how she could dance and sing, and Molly felt better. Rocky didn’t need to call anyone since he’d hypnotized the Alabasters into thinking that he’d gone on a Boy Scout trip to New York City. So instead, he ordered pizzas. Then, full of pizza and hope, they waited for Nockman.
Petula, meanwhile, was venting her anger on Nockman by attacking the garden gnomes that stood like a small army in the shadows. She thought they bore a nasty resemblance to the smelly man who had kidnaped her.
Molly and Rocky ventured upstairs, where there was a window looking out onto the dark street.
“Do you think he listened to the tape?” asked Rocky.
“If he didn’t, I’m in big trouble,” said Molly, wincing.
“If he did listen, I hope the tape worked,” said Rocky. “I hope my voice was up to it.”
“We’ll just have to wait and see.”
While they were waiting, Molly and Rocky snooped around Nockman’s warehouse. They discovered two more rooms on the second floor: a tiny kitchen and a bathroom. The kitchen had a sink, with Bubblealot dishwashing liquid and gloves on its drainboard, a dirty stove, and a fridge that smelled of sour milk. And everywhere were boxes. Boxes of perfume, jewelry, ornaments, antiques, and expensive watches. “Wow,” said Molly, “these must be worth a fortune!”
“I don’t think so,” said Rocky, pointing to a stamp on one of the boxes that read MADE IN CHINA. “These are fakes, but I expect Nockman sells them as if they’re the real thing.”
In another room they found boxes full of leather handbags. “Fakes too,” said Rocky. “They’re copies of posh designer handbags. If you look closely, you’ll see they’re glued, not stitched … They’d fall apart in seconds. I’ve heard about crooks selling these.”
“Bet he sells them for a mint,” said Molly.
“Yeah, you bet he does.”
Downstairs were boxes of precious old porcelain, again every piece a modern fake. Other boxes were full of anything Nockman could lay his hands on: hair dryers, cat baskets, hammers, mops, TV sets, and stereo equipment. There was even a box full of cuckoo clocks.
“I bet all of this is stolen,” said Rocky.
“‘Fallen off the back of a truck,’ as they say,” Molly agreed.
Shortly after midnight headlights lit up the street by the warehouse.
“It’s him!” Molly and Rocky said in unison. They bolted downstairs to open the huge metal door. Nockman drove in and parked, his truck’s tires crushing a box of teapots. Molly and Rocky opened the driver’s door and found him staring straight ahead with an idiotic expression on his face, clutching the wheel.
Driving in a semi daze had been quite an experience for Nockman. At one point, he had driven off the highway and around a cloverleaf sixty-two times before hitting the main road again.
“You can get out now,” Rocky said. Obediently Nockman stepped down. Petula growled at him, and Nockman blew his cheeks out until they were full of air. When his eyes began rolling in their sockets, Petula backed off. This was not the tough man she had known. This one looked like he might suddenly explode. Petula decided to leave him and to attack another garden gnome instead.
Molly rescued the hypnotism book. “Pheeew,” she whistled.
Then she and Rocky walked around Nockman. “With the right outfit,” Molly said, “he’d be perfect as a scarecrow.”
“Mmmmm,” said Rocky. “You,” he ordered Nockman, “will be under this person’s power too. She is called …” Rocky looked about. “Hair Dryer.”
“I’ve had worse nicknames,” Molly said.
“And I,” continued Rocky, “am called Cat Basket.” Nockman nodded seriously, and Molly and Rocky started to giggle.
“Who am I?” asked Rocky.
“Cat Basket,” said Nockman as if he were saying “God.”
“And this person is?”
“Hair Dryer. I will do—whatever Miss Hair Dryer
—and Mr. Cat Basket—say.” Petula’s barking disguised Rocky and Molly’s stifled laughter.
“Sshh, Petula,” said Molly. Turning to Rocky, she whispered, “What next?”
Rocky pulled at the hairs in his eyebrow. They had talked about what they might do should Nockman return hypnotized, but they hadn’t come to any decisions.
“Let’s just leave the truck here, dump Nockman in Manhattan with his mind blanked, and call the police anonymously. Once they’ve got this address, they can sort everything out.”
“No way,” whispered Molly hoarsely. “I told you … when the police come here, they’ll probably trace the truck back to Nockman, and then when they investigate him, maybe they’ll find out he’s been hypnotized and maybe they’ll undo all the hypnosis we’ve done and they’ll eventually track us down.”
“Couldn’t we just park the truck somewhere?” asked Rocky.
“No, because they’d find it. It’s too risky. No, what we should do is put the jewels somewhere else, like in garbage bags. We could put them in garbage bags outside the bank.”
Rocky looked doubtful.
“Why not?” insisted Molly. “The bank doesn’t need security guards now that there’s nothing left to steal, so it would be safe. No one would expect the robbers to come back to the bank. We could call the police and tell them where to go.”
“We can’t put it in garbage bags,” whispered Rocky. “What if the garbage collectors think it’s trash? And we can’t dump it all at once—there’s tons of it. It would take ages to get it all out of the truck. Someone would see us.”
Petula, sensing the tension in the discussions, was barking ferociously at a pink-faced gnome as if it were all his fault.
“Yes, you’re right, garbage bags are bad. How about those handbags then, from upstairs?”
“They’re too small,” whispered Rocky. “And anyway, people would steal them. I mean, handbags almost always have money in them, don’t they?”
“Hmm, we need big bags that won’t be stolen or picked up.”
Petula was leaping at another gnome, trying to bite his nose. Finally, she knocked him over. His hat hit a concrete step and his head smashed open. Petula looked up proudly as if she’d just killed a gorgon.
“The gnomes!” Molly gasped. “I don’t believe it— they’re hollow! Look, they’ve got screw-on bases so that you can fill them with sand and they don’t fall over.”
“Perfect,” said Rocky, picking up the gnoms’e pipe. “Thanks, Petula.”
“Raoof raoof,” barked Petula, feeling pleased with herself.
Over the next two and a half hours, Molly, Rocky, and Nockman, all with Bubblealot rubber gloves on to avoid leaving fingerprints, set to work transferring the envelopes of stolen stones and jewels into twenty-five gnomes. They gave each gnome a mixed stuffing: delicate, lighter jewelry in the heads and upper parts of the gnomes so that they wouldn’t be crushed, and the heavier packets of jewels in their bottom parts to weigh them down. Once their bases were screwed on, the garden statues looked as innocent as before.
Eventually Nockman, sweaty and smelling like a dirty sock, pushed the last of them into place in the truck.
Molly and Rocky, holding Petula, admired the lineup of smiling gnomes, all ready for action, and watched as Nockman descended on the truck’s electric platform.
“Shall we leave him here?” asked Rocky.
“No, he’s too dangerous,” whispered Molly. “He knows too much. He might have a bank-robbing map or something that would jog his memory.”
“But—but that means he has to come with us,” moaned Rocky.
“Sorry,” said Molly, “but he could be useful to us. Look how he helped us load up. Anyway, Rock, for starters, we can’t drive.”
“I know,” said Rocky, yawning.
“Come on, we’d better deliver these things before everyone in Manhattan wakes up.”
Molly and Rocky checked the warehouse for any incriminating evidence. Then, with Rocky and Nockman in the cab of the truck, and Molly and Petula in the back, they drove away from the warehouse toward Manhattan.
As they crossed the Manhattan Bridge, Rocky noticed that all the vehicles coming out of Manhattan were being stopped and checked by police. There was a long traffic jam. But the road into Manhattan was empty, and they headed straight over the bridge.
Once in Manhattan, “Operation Plant a Gnome” began. They had decided to drop the gnomes in different places over the city. That way they didn’t have to stop the truck for too long and so reduced the risk of concrete step and his head smashed open. Petula looked up proudly as if she’d just killed a gorgon.
“The gnomes!” Molly gasped. “I don’t believe it—they’re hollow! Look, they’ve got screw-on bases so that you can fill them with sand and they don’t fall over.”
“Perfect,” said Rocky, picking up the gnome’s pipe. “Thanks, Petula.”
“Raoof raoof,” barked Petula, feeling pleased with herself.
Over the next two and a half hours, Molly, Rocky, and Nockman, all with Bubblealot rubber gloves on to avoid leaving fingerprints, set to work transferring the envelopes of stolen stones and jewels into twenty-five gnomes. They gave each gnome a mixed stuffing: delicate, lighter jewelry in the heads and upper parts of the gnomes so that they wouldn’t be crushed, and the heavier packets of jewels in their bottom parts to weigh them down. Once their bases were screwed on, the garden statues looked as innocent as before.
Eventually Nockman, sweaty and smelling like a dirty sock, pushed the last of them into place in the truck.
Molly and Rocky, holding Petula, admired the lineup of smiling gnomes, all ready for action, and watched as Nockman descended on the truck’s electric platform.
“Shall we leave him here?” asked Rocky. being noticed. Every time they came to a quiet grassy area, where there were no prying eyes, Rocky, sitting in the front, told Nockman where to stop and banged on the partition behind him, signaling to Molly. Molly then opened the back of the truck from the inside, rolled a gnome out onto the electric platform, and lowered it down to the ground. Petula acted as watchdog as Molly rolled each gnome into position. Rocky wrote down exactly where each gnome was.
They left gnomes under trees, beside bushes, and on tiny triangles of grass. They decorated playgrounds with gnomes and put gnomes by fountains, by sidewalk benches, and beside park benches. One looked very brave laughing beneath the statue of a horse and rider outside the Museum of Natural History. Another looked pleased that his pond had frozen over, as he sat on a ledge overlooking the Rockefeller Center skating rink. They put two gnomes by the gates of the zoo, and two at the Strawberry Fields entrance of Central Park.
Each gnome took five minutes to plant.
Each hair-raising five minutes was a window for them to be seen, and there were a few tense moments when Molly thought they might have been. At Riverside Park Molly halted the electric door halfway open, since she saw a police car approaching. As it coasted by, like a hungry shark, she crossed her fingers that it wouldn’t stop. At Gramercy Park Petula ran off into the darkness to investigate a stray dog, and Molly had to call quietly for her until she returned.
One by one, they got rid of the twenty-five brightly colored gnomes. The last two were placed teasingly outside Shorings Bank.
“They look great!” said Molly, climbing into the front of the truck with Petula, Rocky, and Nockman.
Then they drove back to the warehouse by the docks on West 52nd Street to ditch the truck. Rocky took his tape out of the radio/cassette player.
They left the dockside and walked quickly back to the main streets. At a phone booth they telephoned the police and held the receiver to Nockman’s mouth. “The—Shorings—jewels—are—safe. Look—for—twenty-five gnomes—on—the—streets—of—Manhattan,” he said. And then they hung up. They flagged an early-morning cab and, by six o’clock, before the December sun came up, they were back at the Waldorf.
Thirty-one
The
hotel receptionist was tired from his night shift. Molly easily used her powers to persuade him to give Nockman a room, just for that day, and to bring him a clean outfit, whatever outfit the hotel had that would fit him, and a shaving kit. The receptionist nodded.
“Lastly,” Molly instructed him, “you won’t remember seeing this man after you have delivered his outfit. Understood?”
“Under-stood—-madam.”
“You may go.”
Then, to Nockman, Molly said, “Sleep in your room until one o’clock, then have a bath, wash your hair, shave off your mustache and your beard, and make yourself smell nice. At two thirty, when you are dressed in your new outfit, come to the Royal Suite.”
Molly and Rocky went upstairs and, peeling off their jackets, flopped onto the bed. Petula made herself a bed on Molly’s old jacket and fell asleep too.
Molly slept until her alarm went off. For a minute or two she lay on the bed looking at Rocky’s ink-stained hands and listening to the rain, which was starting to pelt down outside. Their early-morning adventure already seemed like a dream. Molly smiled and called room service to order some food.
Rocky woke to the smell of eggs and toast, and then he and Molly sat down for a TV brunch.
The news channels were full of reports about the gnomes, and the TV reporters were going bananas. This was a fabulous news story. On channel thirty-eight a reporter, under an umbrella, was talking excitedly into a furry microphone outside Shorings Bank.
“Amazingly, the Shorings’ jewels have all been returned. The bank has verified that every last pearl has been accounted for. Every diamond, ruby, and gem! In fact, goods to the value of a hundred million dollars! And the method of delivery adds a bizarre twist to what was already an incredible story. Twenty-five garden gnomes stuffed full of the stolen property were discovered dotted about Manhattan in the early hours of this morning, after an anonymous phone call. The male caller had a Chicago accent, but apart from that, nothing else is known about him. Police have released these pictures of the gnomes as they found them.”