Nickel Bay Nick (8 page)

How could I be so stupid?

I brace my hands on my knees and sag, panting white clouds of vapor into the gray late-morning air. My eyes dart this way and that. And then I spot salvation. Directly across the street, with a sign in its window that screams
MUST CLOSE!! LAST FOUR DAYS!!
is a branch of Nickel Bay Savings and Loan. Is there any better place than a bank to turn pennies into paper money?

Five minutes later, I stop around the corner from Colodner's Drugstore, ready to complete my shopping list. The thief in me knows that I've got to change my appearance just enough that nobody in the store will wonder why the same kid in the same jacket and knit cap is back buying the same hair dye he bought an hour and a half ago. So I whip off my cap, stuff it in my pocket, and turn my winter coat inside out. Clutching the three dollar bills, three quarters, and two dimes in my right hand, I stride into Colodner's, a man on a mission.

The Red Mission.

THE
BENJAMINS
IN THE
BACKPACK

“Now we just have to let the ink dry.” Mr. Wells sits back in his wheelchair, wearing white cotton gloves. In front of him, stretching down the middle of a long wooden worktable, is a row of fifteen hundred-dollar bills, all of them stamped with a purple phoenix. The sight of all those Nickel Bay Bucks stops me in my tracks, but Mr. Wells snaps me back to reality with, “How'd it go, Sam?”

“Huh?” After my frantic last-minute rescue of the Red Mission, I'm still a little shaken up. “Fine. Yeah, fine,” I mutter, hoisting my knapsack onto the table.

We're in a huge workroom lit by bright fluorescent lights in Mr. Wells's basement. All sorts of tools hang from the walls. Some I recognize, like table saws, electric drills and sanding machines. But there are other contraptions I've never seen before.

From across the table Mr. Wells, Dr. Sakata and Hoko watch intently as I unzip my backpack, pull each item from its shopping bag and place it behind a corresponding Benjamin. I keep waiting for some sort of response, some sign of approval, but Mr. Wells is silent. When I'm done, my purchases are lined up and down the table like little soldiers.

Mr. Wells rolls along, scanning the display, while overhead, the fluorescent bulbs hum. When he gets to the hair dye, he leans forward and tips the box back as if to study the label. “Did you have any . . . problems?” Why he's asking me that while examining the hair dye is kind of creepy, but I shake off the feeling that he's reading my mind.

“Problems? Nope. No problems.”

Mr. Wells wheels back to the head of the table, where he gently touches the purple ink on one of the bills, examines his finger and smiles. He holds it up to Dr. Sakata, who also smiles and nods. I'm feeling left out. “What're you guys looking at?”

Mr. Wells points the clean white fingertip at me.

“Ink's dry!” he exclaims.

After Dr. Sakata slips on his own pair of white gloves, he and Mr. Wells prep the worktable like doctors getting ready for surgery. They lay out an assortment of tools, some with different-size blades, others with curved or corkscrew tips. They line up stacks of tissues, boxes of cotton balls, and piles of sandpaper. Finally they strap magnifying glasses embedded with intense little lightbulbs around their foreheads.

And then they begin.

A few of the boxes I've bought are easy to get into. With the toothpaste carton, for instance, Mr. Wells simply opens the flap, slides a folded Nickel Bay Buck inside and closes it. But most of the items are specially wrapped, and that's where all the equipment comes in.

The box of playing cards, for instance, is sealed at both ends by glued-on paper stamps and encased in cellophane. With a pointed razor blade, Mr. Wells carefully cuts away the cellophane while Dr. Sakata fills an electric teapot with water. When steam starts rising from the kettle's spout, Mr. Wells repeatedly waves the box of cards through the column of steam as he slowly—very slowly—loosens one paper stamp with a blunt little spatula. Once he's able to open that end of the box and slip a folded bill inside, he moistens the stamp in the cloud of steam and reseals the box flap.

Then comes the cool part.

Dr. Sakata plugs in a machine that looks like a miniature waffle iron. While waiting for that to heat up, he carefully measures and cuts a rectangle from a roll of clear cellophane and hands it to Mr. Wells, who centers the box of cards on the transparent film. In a blur of hand movements that I can't even follow, he folds, twists and pleats the cellophane around the box until it fits like a second skin. Then he quickly presses it between the heated plates of Dr. Sakata's toaster, sealing the cellophane . . . spins the box so it's standing on end . . . presses it one last time . . . and I can't believe my eyes! The box of cards looks the way it did when it left the factory.

Mr. Wells catches me watching him with my jaw hanging open.

“Yes, Sam?”

I shake my head in admiration. “You must have been a really great spy,” is all I can think to say.

“I've told you, I wasn't a spy,” he reminds me.

“Well, whatever you were, you must've been real good at it.”

He makes a tiny nod and continues with his work. The first five or six insertions are pretty interesting, but then I start getting restless.

“Do I have to stay for all of this?” I ask.

“Are you expected somewhere else?”

I shrug. “No. But I'm bored now.”

That makes him look up. “You're
bored
?” He pulls off his magnifying spectacles and glares at me. “You are the featured player in one of the most intricate and longest-running mysteries in the history of espionage, and you're
bored
?!”

“I'm not really doing anything,” I mumble. “I don't have white gloves, and I don't really know how to use your tools. Or even what they're for.”

“Then you can tell me a story.”

“A story?” I screw up my face. “What makes you think I can tell a story?”

“Because you're a good liar, Sam.” Before I can object, he says, “You demonstrated that the night you fell from my roof and lied to your father on the phone.”

I shift uncomfortably on my feet.

“So . . . tell me a story.”

“What kind of story?”

“I don't care.” He shrugs. “Tell me about your heart operation.”

“I was unconscious.”

“Okay. Tell me a memory you have of your mother.”

“She left me and Dad right before I turned four, and now she's remarried. End of story.” I fold my arms across my chest and squeeze my lips together. If he thinks he's getting any more out of me, he's mistaken.

“Okay. Maybe not one of your own stories, then,” Mr. Wells says. “Tell me something about this town I don't know.”

I squint in thought before I answer. “You know how Nickel Bay got its name?” He shakes his head. “Okay. I'll tell you that story,” I say, “but on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“You tell me one.”

He studies me before he nods. “It's a deal.”

So I begin.

• • •

“More than a hundred years ago, this area around the bay was called some Indian name that was so long that nobody could pronounce it. All there was at the water's edge were a couple of wooden shacks owned by a fur trapper named Sly Guffson, who also happened to be a sneaky card-playing gambler. Any stranger passing through these parts, Mr. Guffson would challenge them to what he called”—with my fingers, I make air quotes—“‘a friendly game of cards.' And he'd always win. Until the night he invited three travelers to ‘a friendly game of cards' without knowing that one of them was a frontier preacher who also happened to be a card shark. His name was Phineas Wackburton.”

Mr. Wells looks startled. “That was his real name?”

“That's what the history books say.”

Mr. Wells laughs and mutters, “Phineas Wackburton,” as he goes back to work.

“Mr. Wackburton started by letting the other three players win a few deals, but then he stepped up his game and started raking in the cash. When Sly Guffson realized that Mr. Wackburton knew as many dirty poker tricks as he did, he got madder and madder. After playing all night, Mr. Wackburton had stacks of coins in front of him, and the other three players were down to only a nickel apiece. Still, they all insisted on playing one final hand, and to do that, each guy had to toss a nickel into the pot. Four nickels, twenty cents total. Once the cards were dealt, the other two men folded, and that left the fur trader, Mr. Guffson, facing off against the preacher, Phineas Wackburton.

“Seeing his opponent had no money left, Phineas pushed all his winnings into the center of the table, figuring that his bet would force Mr. Guffson to fold. But Guffson thought his hand was unbeatable. Plus, he was hopping mad and kinda drunk, so he did something pretty boneheaded. He wagered his land, his two wooden shacks and a little dock he had built out into the bay.”

“He bet everything he owned on a hand of poker?” Mr. Wells asks.

“Everything. Except the mule that he rode out of town on after he lost.”

Mr. Wells chuckles and continues his work.

“Then, as the town started to grow, Phineas Wackburton framed the four nickels he won in that poker game and hung them in the first saloon he opened here. That's when people started calling the place Nickel Bay. And those nickels became famous.”

“Are they still around?” Mr. Wells wonders.

“A few.” I count on my fingers as I talk. “One was given to President William McKinley when he came through Nickel Bay back in 1900. But a couple days later he mistakenly mixed it in with his pocket change and used it to buy a hot dog in Philadelphia.”

“A hot dog!” Mr. Wells barks. “Imagine.”

“The second nickel was sent away to some ginormous museum in Washington, DC . . .”

“The Smithsonian?”

“Yeah, probably,” I quickly agree. “The third coin is on exhibit in a bulletproof case at the Nickel Bay Historical Society. And the fourth one . . . the fourth nickel is . . . I mean
was . . .”

My voice cracks, and I suddenly stop talking. Mr. Wells, Hoko and Dr. Sakata all look to me.

“What is it?” Mr. Wells asks.

Everyone else in town knows where the fourth nickel went, so I've never had to tell this story before. I don't know why I'm choking up, but I cough like I've got something in my throat and continue.

“You remember I told you how Dad saved all those people in the fire, and everybody was calling him a hero?”

Mr. Wells nods.

“Well, to honor him, the town council threw a huge ceremony. Seriously, thousands of people were there, and the mayor gave my dad the fourth nickel. All framed and everything.”

“You must have been very proud.”

I shrug. “I was too little to remember.”

“So this fourth nickel,” Mr. Wells says, “where does your father keep it? In a safety deposit box, I bet.”

“He lost it.”

“
Lost
it?”

“Let's just say: It got lost. After Dad was laid off by the fire department, and after the divorce and after my operation, Dad and me, we kept moving as the money ran out. And somewhere along the way . . .
poof!
” I explode my hands. “Gone.”

“Well, I'm sorry to hear that,” Mr. Wells says before slipping a Nickel Bay Buck between the pages of a popular novel I bought at Brandt Brothers Bookstore. He slides the book to the middle of the table, and I can see that he and Dr. Sakata have finished hiding all fifteen one-hundred-dollar bills inside my purchases.

He removes his magnifying-glass headgear and says something foreign to Dr. Sakata, who leaves the room. Mr. Wells pushes his wheelchair back from the table and stretches his arms above his head.

“Time for lunch, don't you think?” he asks.

“What about your story?”

“My story will have to wait, Sam,” Mr. Wells says. “After lunch, you've got a full afternoon of pickpocket training.”

The good news is that Hoko no longer seems focused on eating me. During lunch, he sits attentively at my elbow, watching every spoonful of soup travel to my mouth, but he doesn't growl once.

The bad news is that I still suck at pickpocketing.

“We should have begun this training at Thanksgiving,” Mr. Wells finally grumbles in the late afternoon, shaking his head. Then he turns to Dr. Sakata, and I know he's repeating himself because the sentence he speaks ends with “Thanksgiving.”

Dr. Sakata glances my way and nods gravely.

I shout, “I'm in the room, you know!” and the frustration that's been building bubbles over. “Maybe I'm not an expert pickpocket yet, but don't forget—this morning I got you
every
item you asked for! But do you appreciate it? Apparently not. Do I get one word of encouragement? Not one that I heard!”

Mr. Wells lets my anger subside before he speaks softly.

“Forgive me, Sam, if I don't throw a parade every time you do the work you've been assigned. This morning, you did your job. No more, no less. When you go above and beyond what's asked of you—if, for instance, you ever demonstrate that you've mastered the skill of pickpocketing—then Dr. Sakata and I will be the first to applaud.”

I chew on my bottom lip, still steaming, but Mr. Wells changes the subject abruptly.

“All right, then! Tomorrow's the fourth day of Christmas. And that's
especially
important because it's what?” He looks to me.

I answer automatically, “The return of Nickel Bay Nick.”

“Precisely. Now, my housekeeper comes tomorrow, and I don't want to take the chance of her seeing you here. So . . .” He rolls back to the worktable and indicates the store-bought items in front of us. “You'll take these with you this evening and leave from your home in the morning. Do you understand?”