The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin (16 page)

My footage starts to run together, the same answers to the same questions. No one saw anything, no one left their buddy, no one knew nothing ‘bout nothing. Ebony taps me on the shoulder. “I hate to admit that I am having trouble here,” she signs. “But did that girl just say her name was
Purple?”
I look up and see Miss Phimmul’s cocky sneer on Ebony’s screen. I laugh. “Public school girls are strange birds,” I sign. “Her name really is
Purple, Ebony.”
Ebony shakes her head, apparently not noting the irony.

Then A. J. Fischels appears on my screen. Am I going to be the one to crack the case? But he literally says nothing. He just keeps shaking his head no, no, no. Then he says, “Are we done here?” which seems impressively ballsy, and in the blink of an
eye, he slides out of the frame and is gone. Ebony is doing the interview with Leigha. I guess she feels me leering over her shoulder.

“I do not need your help,” she signs. And then adds, “OK, I do need some help.” The tape just shows Leigha crying, crying, crying. If she is saying any actual words, they are unintelligible.

“I don’t know if I can help you with this,” I sign.

“Not from you,” she signs. “From Smiley.” I make my quizzical-eyebrow face. She explains, “Obviously, she is crying hysterically. But she was not at first. I’m trying to figure out what they asked that set her off. I cannot quite see the question.”

“The detective was off camera. Nobody can help you with that,” I sign.

“Look closely,” she points. “See the reflection in the window?” I see. Hawley’s reflected gaze is fairly clear. I had missed it. Ebony
is
a freaking girl detective. What else don’t I know about her? “Does it zoom in?” she asks. I indicate that I will get Devon.

I go out into the hall and find him keeping watch through a little pair of binoculars that totally aren’t necessary. The hall is empty. I tap him on the shoulder, and he jumps about four feet in the air and then tries to play it off like he hadn’t just shrieked, though even I know that he did. His eyebrows tell me he is asking if I found anything. “W-E N-E-E-D Y-O-U-R H-E-L-P,” I sign. He darts into the room. Ebony has paused the footage and is pointing at the reflection of Hawley in the window at the corner of the screen.

She then says something out loud to Devon. He looks shocked. I am sort of surprised too. I had forgotten that she actually can speak and that she isn’t afraid of “sounding deaf” like I am. But her back is half turned, so I can’t see what she had said. I tap her on the shoulder and make an angry gesture. “I said,” she signs, “zoom in.” Then she adds, “Don’t get your panties in a twist, Will Halpin.”

Devon picks up his handkerchief and works the controls to zoom in on Hawley’s face. It is blurry and Hawley has that stellar mustache, but, amazingly, we can see his lips pretty clearly. Devon plays the footage. And when we realize what Hawley says, Ebony and I stare at each other, gaping at the screen, rewinding a few times to be sure, gaping some more. Devon’s eyes grow huge. “What?” he signs. “What? What? What?” Ebony and I both write in our notebook the question that it really seems Hawley asked: “The baby that you are carrying—is it his?”

Devon’s jaw basically falls on the floor. And then he starts pressing buttons like a madman, shutting the units off as fast as he can. He indicates that we should duck down by violently motioning to the floor. We dive against the wall by the front door while he shuts off the lights.

We sit in the dark in a collective three-part panic. I put my beard on in case I need to be disguised. (Maybe I just like the beard?) Ebony and I are elbow to elbow, hunched by the front door, while Devon cowers a few feet away. There is only a tiny bit of light showing through the window in the door. I have a sick sensation like I had at the mine, like a chunk of time is
being torn from my life. Neither Ebony nor I have any idea what is happening. We have to put all of our trust in the Smileyman, and I have the odd, unbidden thought that maybe there really is no noise out there and Devon has just crafted this as an elaborate ruse to see how
much
we trust him.

I almost jump out of my skin when I feel a sudden vibration against my thigh. I am getting a message on my Crony. Devon and I had been trying to include Ebony in the conversations all day, so we hadn’t been using them. It is, however, the perfect way to communicate stealthily in the dark. The pale light of the tiny screen illuminates the words just enough so I can see what he writes:

Before I can even process what this could mean, Ebony reaches over and grabs the Crony from me. She reads the screen and wrestles me away while typing. I end up reading over her shoulder.

But the Black Rose is already peeking out the window at the pacing Dwight Carlson. When his back is turned, she takes a deep breath and makes her move. In a sudden, powerful motion, she tears open the door and leaps on Dwight’s back. She then busts out a move somewhere between a judo throw and a hockey check. I watch in stunned amazement as Ebony pulls Dwight’s jacket over his head and pushes him to his knees. The jacket covers his eyes, effectively blinding him. She grabs the fingers of his left hand and pulls them backward while placing her knee in between his shoulder blades. Then she gives the signal. Devon grabs “the fat one” and pulls me out the door.

We are running—running as fast as our feet can carry us—up the stairs, down the hall, and out of the building. Like a real-life cartoon character, I almost literally run out of my clothes. The button on my pants has helpfully popped off, so I have to hold them up with one hand while chasing after Devon. Everything is a blur. We sprint across the parking lot, cruise past the teachers’ cars, cut through the soccer fields, and have never been so happy to see the Smileywagon. There Devon and I stand with our hands on the hood, trying to catch our breath. It is all quite beyond comprehension but, once we
stop to think about it, sort of hilarious. Devon cracks a smile between heavy breaths and then, seeing me grinning through my fake beard and busted pants, lets out an uncontrollable guffaw. I immediately find myself laughing until tears—literal tears of chubby, wet joy—run from my eyes. A beautiful moment. Is there anything more sublime than two friends sharing a laugh at the absurdly weird and dangerous world? I know Devon is thinking the same exact thing. And then our moods change as suddenly and ominously as a clock striking twelve. At once we both realize that Ebony is nowhere to be found.

What happened to her?
Is she caught? Lost? Is Dwight Carlson a secret karate master who was able to reverse her hold and now has her pinned to the ground in the school basement? Everything unlikely seems to be happening. I want to send Devon a text, but Ebony still has my Crony. I can’t find my notebook. Did I leave it in the janitor’s office? Surely someone will find it. We will get busted for trespassing and hacking into the surveillance system. Worse: someone could be reading all my notes! I had little comments about everyone. It is extremely embarrassing to imagine it falling into the wrong hands. Which is to say, anyone’s hands other than my own.

I am going to try to finger-spell all this to Devon when suddenly his face lights up. He grabs his Crony. Ebony is sending him a text! I squeeze in next to him so I can read the tiny screen.

Before Devon can type “!?!?!?!” yet again, he looks up like he has heard something. He makes a sheepish face and points. There is Ebony, laughing and typing as she saunters across the parking lot. I sign a few pointed words at her. She signs back that I shouldn’t “slow her roll” and explains that she was only a minute behind us because she went back to retrieve our notebooks. “Nancy would never have left anything behind,” she signs. She then takes my notebook out of her pocket and begins flipping through the pages. “Some pretty weird stuff in here, Halpin,” she signs. I tell her to mind her own business while I reach to grab it from her. “Leigha equals hot?” she signs. “Scuzzy guy loves his fingers? And why would you want to stay away from Devon?” I sign a few more choice threats before she tosses the book to me. Then I go to grab my Crony back when it starts vibrating. Ebony doesn’t let me answer it. She keeps typing while somehow avoiding my attempts to grab the device. Freaking karate master.

Ebony signs, “Shotgun,” then throws my Crony to me. She climbs in the front of the Smileywagon while I clump into the back, exhausted and dazed. I finally get my pants to stay on. Must nap soon. Devon’s lurching driving is worse than normal as he tries out all the new swear signs. Ebony signs it first, then he repeats.

“Bastard.”

“Bastard.”

“Piss off, wanker.”

“Piss off, wanker.”

I hope a deaf person drives up next to us and looks in the window. They would die.

“ Man love! Man love!”

“ Man love! Man love!”

“Eat shit, fat cow.”

“Eat shit, fat cow.”

Hey!

Then she starts teaching him a few weird ones, which he does wrong. He keeps accidentally signing “Lesbian Jew” for some reason. “Lesbian Jew! Lesbian Jew! Lesbian Jew!” I lean back and doze off with a smile on my face.

I am startled
by the vibrations of my Crony and wake up feeling lost. I slowly recognize my surroundings as the backseat of the Smileywagon. Devon is sitting in front like my chauffeur. Ebony is gone. We are parked somewhere I don’t recognize.