Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street (18 page)

“I’ve got an idea,” I said.

“Girls?” Ms. Kleinberg called over. “That’s only four.”

We began running again.

“How about we make it six?” Ms. Kleinberg said. “Just in case there was anything on purpose about that miscount.”

We met on Saturday at Tut-Tut’s office inside the Sherwood Street warehouse, Tut-Tut, Silas, Ashanti, me. I’d told my dad—Mom had to work—that I was hanging with Ashanti, and she’d told her mom she was hanging with me. All totally true, depending on the precise legal meaning of “hanging with.” Silas had told his brother he was doing some research, and Tut-Tut had no one to tell, unless you included Jean-Claude.

Tut-Tut had found a space heater from somewhere, so it was nice and warm. He also produced two more swivel chairs. We sat around the desk like businessmen.

“Wow,” said Silas. “A real clubhouse.”

Ashanti turned to him. “How old are you?” she said.

“Thirteen-point-two-five.”

“Then act it.”

Tut-Tut laughed. Had I ever heard him laugh before? He had a great laugh, the contagious kind. Soon we were all laughing. Tut-Tut opened the desk drawer, took out his can of purple paint, rolled his swivel chair to the wall, hopped up on it, and above all the faces sprayed
HQ
in his tagging style, a sort of warping, ballooning thing, almost like the letters might move around at any moment.

“Exactly,” said Ashanti. “This is headquarters.”

I had an odd thought:
Tut-Tut is a great communicator.

Now,” said Ashanti, “what are we going to call ourselves?”

“The Brooklyn Krewe?” said Silas. “You know, with a
K,
like the parades? Mardi Gras? New Orleans, anybody?”

Ashanti’s eyes shifted to him.

“Maybe a little too… um?” Silas said.

We sat in silence, swiveling a bit from time to time.

“Let’s think of what we’re trying to do,” I said.

Tut-Tut nodded. The others nodded.

“The Sheldon Gunn Is a Monster Boys?” Silas said. He glanced around the desk. “And Girls?”

Tut-Tut laughed again. Yes, a lovely laugh, with no hesitation or effort. On the other hand, wasn’t laughter, with that repeated ha-ha-ha, kind of like stuttering? I got the feeling that was the sort of idea my dad might have had at a moment like this, and pushed it aside.

“What?” said Silas. “No one likes it? Let’s vote.”

We ignored him.

“How about the New Brooklyn Redevelopment Anti-Project,” Ashanti said.

“Hey,” I said.

Silas jumped up. He was turning out to be more excitable than I’d first thought. “That’s catchier than mine?”

Ashanti glared at him, but the glare faded quickly. “Maybe not,” she said.

We went back to sitting and swiveling. Tut-Tut doodled with a pencil on a scrap of paper. At first I couldn’t make out what it was, and then I did: my bracelet from all sorts of different angles.

“But,” said Ashanti after a while, “is that what we’re doing really, stopping the project?”

“What else?” said Silas. “He’s kicking people onto the street.”

“We can’t let him,” I said.

“No,” said Ashanti. “But I’m talking about our motto.”

“What’s our motto?” Silas said.

“Something wrong with your memory?” Ashanti said. “Robbing from the rich, giving to the poor? Ring a bell?”

Tut-Tut’s eyes opened wide.

“Do you like that motto?” I said.

“Y-y-ye-ye-,” said Tut-Tut, getting so close to yeah
that we all yelled out “yeah!” together. Then we were all laughing again, like this tight little band…a band, in fact, of outlaws.

“Hey!” I said. “How about the Outlaws?”

“Cool,” said Ashanti.

“Dyn-o-mite,” said Silas.

“Y-y-ye-ye—”

“So we’re agreed?” I said. “The Outlaws?”

“I don’t know,” said Ashanti. “Shouldn’t your name be in there somewhere?”

“Huh?” I said.

“The power started with you,” she said. “Maybe it even comes from you.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “It’s in the bracelet.” But was I sure about that? No.

“Yeah?” Ashanti said. “Then how come the bracelet wants to be on your wrist and nobody else’s?”

“Like it’s for a meant-to-be reason—Ms. Robyn Forester?” Silas said.

“What are you talking about?” Ashanti said.

“Forester?” said Silas. “Robin Hood? I mean, how obvious can you get?”

“Zip it,” Ashanti said.

Silas reddened, a strange look on his particular face, with the freckles actually getting lighter. “Maybe more surreal, when you come down to it,” he said.

Tut-Tut raised his hands, pretended to shoot an arrow at Silas. Ashanti gave him a long look, possibly starting to realize how smart Tut-Tut was, something I already knew.

“Okay, Silas,” she said, “How about this? The Outlaws of Sherwood Street.”

Perfect.

Ashanti laid her hand on the desk. Silas laid his on top of hers, then Tut-Tut, then me. Four hands, very different, but there was something powerful, seeing them stacked up like that.

“Aren’t we leaving someone out?” Silas said.

“Who would that be?” said Ashanti.

“Pendleton’s paw should be in here somewhere,” Silas told her.

“Can we rely on Pendleton, Robbie?” Ashanti said.

Rely on Pendleton? That didn’t compute in any way. “The big problem is we can’t even really rely on the power,” I said.

“What power?” Silas said. “I don’t have it.”

“Yeah, you do,” I said. “When you handed me that sheet of paper, the one about Heinz Mott, and it burst into flames? You felt an electric ball thing in your head, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you’ve got the power.”

“But I can’t do anything! You’ve got the laser, and Ashanti can fly, for God’s sake—”

“It’s more like soaring,” Ashanti said.

“But what can I do?” Silas said. “Or Tut-Tut, for that matter?”

Tut-Tut frowned, like he’d just been insulted. “I c-c-c-c—”

“When the power’s in him, he talks better than all of us put together,” I said.

“Say what?” said Silas.

Ashanti separated Silas’s hand from the others and gave it a smack.

“Ow,” he said.

“My guess,” I said, “is that Silas’s power is still out there somewhere.”

“But when will I get it?” Silas said. He glanced at Ashanti, and even though she wasn’t watching him, stuck his hands in his pockets, real quick.

“The point is,” I said, “what have you got for us today?”

“Huh?”

“The app, Silas. Didn’t you tell Ashanti it was ready?”

“The one-point-oh is ready,” Silas said. He wagged his finger. “That’s an important caveat.”

“Keep it to yourself,” Ashanti said.

I laid the briefcase on the table.

Silas peered at it. “Where’s the combination lock?”

“Right there,” I said, pointing. “Those thingies.”

“But I’ve been working on the other kind,” Silas said. “You know—that hang on lockers and stuff.”

“A combination lock is a combination lock,” Ashanti said. “You’re wasting time.”

Silas took out his cell phone, pressed a button or two, then pointed it at the briefcase. He checked the screen and smiled that huge metallic smile of his. “Eureka moment, everybody,” he said, and showed us the screen. Four numbers: 7, 3, 9, 1.

“Who wants to do the honors?” Silas said. When no one spoke up in the next microsecond, he went on: “How about the inventor himself?”

The inventor himself reached out and clicked through the numbers on all four dials until they came up 7391. “And presto,” he said. The two brass snaps stayed where they were. He frowned, pressed some more buttons on the phone, again pointed it at the briefcase, and checked the screen. “These are the right numbers.”

“Maybe give the briefcase a little tap,” I said.

“You call that science?” said Silas. He turned all the dials, set them back at 7391. Nada.

“Hmm,” he said. “Wonder if…” He pressed more buttons. The space heater made a sudden sizzling sound and then cut off. “Hmm” Silas said again. He repeated
the whole button-pressing, phone-pointing routine again. A beeping sound came from the direction of the elevator and then it shuddered and started going down. We all jumped up, hurried to what was now just a hole in the HQ floor, and watched the elevator until it touched down on the warehouse floor below—quite far below, I realized for the first time.

“We could hang from each other,” Silas said, “kind of a chain with the…” He felt our gazes and went silent.

A moment or two later, the elevator started back up. It reached our level, shuddered again, and stayed put.

We returned to the desk.

“Nothing to be alarmed about,” Silas said. “Quite typical for a one-point-oh version. Give me a few days to work out the bugs and—”

Tut-Tut tapped the side of the briefcase, not very hard. It sprang open.

E
mpty?” Ashanti said. “How can it be empty?” She turned to me. “I thought you said—”

“But it was,” I said, voice rising, heart sinking. “It was full of money. Stacks and stacks.”

Ashanti turned the briefcase upside down and shook it. No money fell out, not a single stupid bill. Then all eyes were on me. Wasn’t I supposed to be some sort of leader? Not that I’d ever wanted to be a leader—class president, team captain, any of that. I was happy not being a leader. But without pushing or scheming to be the leader, I’d kind of fallen into the role and, in my very first act, blown the whole thing.

My instinct was to apologize to everybody, tell them I didn’t want to be the leader, withdraw into the background. Were instincts usually right? Go with your gut: that was what my dad always said. Check everything and then check it again: that was my mom. On this one, I went with her.

“I saw what I saw,” I said, keeping my head up.

There was a pause. Then Ashanti said, “I believe you.”

Silas bit his lip, gazed at the ceiling, scratched the side of his nose, and then nodded.

Tut-Tut took the briefcase and felt around inside, like he believed me so much that the money had to be there, despite what we’d seen with our own eyes. Suddenly his hand went still. The rest of us leaned closer. He’d found a very narrow zipper in the briefcase lining. Now he pulled it open, revealing a tiny compartment. And in the compartment: a folded-up sheet of paper. Tut-Tut unfolded it and laid it on the desk.

It was a handwritten list of surnames, fifteen or twenty, the top one being Schleck. I scanned the names, recognized none.

“What’s this all about?” Ashanti said.

Silas reached into his jacket, pulled out a big sheaf of papers, tire tracks visible on the top one, meaning these had to be the papers that had gotten away from him out on the street. He started riffling through them, glancing once or twice at the list from the briefcase. I could feel Ashanti’s growing impatience, foresaw Silas losing his grip on the papers once more, and held up my finger to keep her quiet. Somewhat to my surprise, she remained silent.

“Any thumbtacks?” Silas said.

Tut-Tut found a box of thumbtacks. Silas went to one of the blank walls and began tacking up some of his papers, which turned out to be map printouts. He arranged them, rearranged them, and eventually we were looking at a map of the entire borough.

“Voilà,” he said, stepping back. “Brooklyn.” He stood there as though waiting for applause. When none came, he went on, “See where I’ve made little red circles? Each one is an address from the Monster blog, which no longer exists except at the end of one tiny trail I happened to track down in deepest cyberspace.” The reality of this was Silas alone at the computer in his bedroom until all hours, but at that moment I understood it was like a real expedition in the wild to him, and I caught some of his excitement.

“Now,” he said, picking up more papers from the desk and passing them around, “here’s a whole bunch of names that Heinz Mott had in a separate file. I’ve started matching them up to the addresses. For example, Your Thai is right here”—he jabbed at the map—“and here’s the place that burned down the other night, and the name of the people who go with it, which happens to be”—he checked a sheet that Tut-Tut was examining—“Tim and Maria Schleck.”

“Schleck?” I said.

“Correck,” said Silas.

Silas had a way of making your eyes roll, which mine and Ashanti’s were doing, but Tut-Tut was laughing one of his delighted laughs.

“But Schleck is the first name on the list,” I said.

We all checked the list Tut-Tut had found in the briefcase:
Schleck.

“So, therefore?” Ashanti said.

“All we know is that the Schleck address went up in flames,” I said. I thought of the man and woman in tears—Tim and Maria?—both in long coats and barefoot, tears streaming down their faces. “What’s the next name on the list?” I asked.

“Rewind Enterprises,” Ashanti replied.

“What’s that?” I said.

“No clue,” she told me.

“But,” said Silas, turning to the map, “it’s right here.” He pointed to a little red circle.

“Hey,” said Ashanti. “That’s just two blocks away.” Everybody jumped up.

REWIND,
read the sign.
SATISFYING ALL YOUR VINYL NEEDS SINCE 1963.

We stood outside this tiny hole-in-the-wall store with no display windows and a glass door so dusty you couldn’t see inside.