The Zigzag Kid (25 page)

Suddenly I stopped in my tracks. There was a police cruiser parked on the sidewalk ahead. Like a flash I dropped down and disappeared into a nearby garden. Seconds later I peeked out. There were two policemen in the cruiser, leaning back in their seats and talking together. A bored blue light revolved on the car roof. The radio was tuned to the music station. Two overgrown patrolmen, shooting the breeze. Bad cops. But there was no way I could get by without their noticing me. I glanced right and left. The streets were bare. I looked up. In case there was a sentry on a roof somewhere. The coast was clear. I emerged from the garden, edging close to the fence. I ducked past them, a fugitive from justice. So easily. Like a dark shadow I whisked by them—lazy shlubs.

Idiots, I chuckled inwardly.

At the corner I stood and walked normally, with my hands in my pockets. Felix, too, appeared out of the darkness. We'd both used the same method of slipping past the policemen. I whistled quietly to myself, feeling great all of a sudden. “Exhilaration,” our Gabi calls it.

It was almost as if Felix and I were the only two real people in the world now and everyone else was an actor in our play. We ordered them to sleep and they obeyed. Even the ones who weren't asleep weren't actually awake, either, maybe just hallucinating. Or dreaming they were awake. Whereas Felix and I were sharply watchful as we skulked through the streets like shades of night. To them we were strangers, a different breed, with only a fine line separating us from each other. A child waking up just then, in his pajamas, looking out the window at me, might have thought he was dreaming, or that I was Batman. Or a navy frogman. I stepped lightly. I kicked the tire of a parked car. For no particular reason, my leg just kicked out at it. So what. Now everything was mine, the streets, the city. I lurk in the darkness while you sleep, dangerous and unpredictable. If I get a mind to, I'll destroy half your city, burn it right to the ground, and who will know? You poor innocent babes. Good night. Don't worry. I'll do you no harm. I'm good and kind.

But say I took a nail and scratched my name on a whole row of cars—“Nonny was here last night”—you'd be absolutely horrified.

Maybe I ought to have a special signature. Like Felix's golden ear of wheat.

Sleep, sleep in peace, little families with a daddy and a mommy and two children. What do you know about real life, and how easy it would be to crumble your world? What do you understand about the struggle for survival, and the everlasting war between law and crime? Hush, go to sleep now, pull the covers over your ears.

I stole along like a spy behind enemy lines. Whenever I heard approaching footsteps, I would duck into a yard or building entrance and wait there patiently. People brushed by me unawares. Once, in a darkened stairwell, a woman stood only a few centimeters away, groping in her purse for her keys. She looked right through me at a couple of bicycles and didn't see me there.

Slow down. You're always running.

About a year ago I happened to be present one time when a kid like me got arrested. Dad and I were on our way home from a special dinner at Gabi's, I don't remember what the occasion was, maybe she'd succeeded in one of her diets. As we were driving home that night, we heard over the police radio that two boys were attempting to break into a car parked near the Ron Cinema. Dad swerved around and headed there directly. He shouldn't have taken me with him, but he was afraid that if he dropped me off at home first he'd miss the collar, and God forbid Dad should ever miss a collar.

We zoomed away so fast I was glued to my seat. Then we were held up behind a long line of cars, and Dad huffed angrily and pounded on the steering wheel. We didn't have a siren or a revolving beacon, so we just had to sit there, stuck in the traffic. I was keeping my mouth shut because I could see the veins about to pop on his neck and forehead, when suddenly he took off from behind the line of cars.

The tires screeched, the motor groaned, and Dad wheeled around and charged head-on against the traffic! He cut between lanes, drove up a safety island, and just about crashed into an oncoming car … All I could do was sit there, mute and frozen with fear. I was sure we'd both
be killed on the spot, but what frightened me most was the look on his face, and the power he had to break all laws at once, even his own sacred laws, and though I knew his motto, “A bodyguard doesn't apologize to the Prime Minister for knocking him down when an assassin is pointing a gun at him,” it was scary nonetheless to see him change so abruptly, like some huge steel spring coiled up so long that the second it's released, it goes berserk.

And in the midst of this joyride he explained to me curtly, in an official-sounding tone of voice, what I wasn't allowed to do, like make noise, or leave the car, or act conspicuous in any way. As if I didn't know. Glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, I thought he was a stranger, somebody new who had suddenly popped out. He faced tensely ahead and licked his lips. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes: as though he was enjoying this crazy game of defying death and continuing the wild games of his youth, now, albeit, within the confines of the law. Over the radio we heard details from the detectives lying in wait near the movie theater. They said the smaller boy, the lookout, was casually standing in the middle of the street, making sure no one spotted his friend, who was about to break into a car. Little did he suspect there was a detective posted on the roof, reporting his every move over a walkie-talkie.

Sounds like I had a pretty wild childhood, right?

Actually I didn't. But I don't feel like interrupting the current case in order to describe how my childhood really was, police operations and guns aside.

Some other time, when I get around to it.

We pulled up at the corner, where a lot of other cars were parked. All at once the dangerous stranger with the glint in his eyes disappeared. I could feel the spring coiling up again inside him. He threw a civilian sweater on, took out a small pair of binoculars, and peered through them at what was happening. I knew that look on his face. He turned to me as though suddenly remembering that I was there with him and that I wasn't a fellow policeman but only his son, and he gave me a sad little smile, a smile from the heart, and touched my cheek.

“I'm glad you're with me, son,” he said, and I was completely dumbfounded
to hear something like that from him, in the middle of an operation. What on earth made him say it? My cheek burned at his touch, and wanted more.

The detective on the roof reported that the car thief had just walked by the yellow Fiat for the third time and peeked inside. Whenever a pedestrian passed, the thief would hide behind the car, while the lookout studied the movie posters.

“Seventy-two to seventy-five, over,” Dad whispered into the radio, the consummate pro once more.

“I read you, seventy-two,” answered the voice on the radio.

“Nobody make any unnecessary moves until he's actually inside the car. So he won't try to run for it, and so we'll get plenty of FP's, is that clear?”

“Roger,” answered the voice. FP's was short for fingerprints.

Several moments of suspense followed. A couple walking down the street stopped to embrace next to the Fiat. They must have wanted to be alone, never guessing how many pairs of eyes were upon them. The whole world was abuzz with binoculars and walkie-talkies, and those poor innocents didn't even know it.

“Okay, they've finished,” reported the detective on the rooftop.

“Like an outdoor movie, eh?” a detective hiding in the bushes jested over the walkie-talkie.

“Shhh!” scolded Dad. “No joking on the job!”

Another minute went by. Dad tapped nervously on the steering wheel. His eyes squinted narrowly. He was ready to pounce.

“He's taking out a screwdriver,” reported the detective on the roof. “He's opening the lock.” And a few seconds later: “He's in.”

“On the count of ten go after him,” Dad whispered into the radio. “I'll grab the lookout. Seventy-five, you go after the thief. Seventy-three, block the escape route. Let's move!”

He said it so perfectly, just like a movie cop.

Then he quickly slid out of the car, forgetting all about me, he was so involved in the operation. I watched him, studied him. The way he casually walked down the street with his hands in his pockets. The lookout also studied him out of the corner of his eye and decided he
was okay. He appeared to be an ordinary passerby on his way home after a tiring day at work. His shoulders slumped as he trudged along, just as Dad's did when he left the precinct building every evening. Maybe he didn't look forward to going home. I was there—but the house must have seemed pretty empty to him. And the person he wanted to see was gone.

Thirty more steps, twenty more steps; my mouth went dry. There were just fifteen meters between them now, and still the boy suspected nothing.

And then suddenly Dad rushed at them. Like a raging bull he bellowed, “You dirty bastards!,” wildly flinging his arms. Even I knew he had made a big mistake, that he should have waited till he closed in on the boy and only then pounced on him!

But he just couldn't wait; he hated criminals so much he would have torn them to pieces with his bare hands.

“Your war against criminals is getting too personal,” said Gabi in the kitchen one night. “And that's why you louse up your investigations.”

What did she mean by getting too personal? What did he have against them personally?

“You're in such a rush for revenge that you end up giving yourself away.” Revenge for what? What was she talking about?

The lookout gave a cry that sounded like an animal howl. He tripped over his feet, recovered almost instantly, sprang up, and then ran away so fast he barely touched the ground. He got past Dad without any trouble at all, dodging him like a nimble-footed soccer player. I saw Dad turn, looking heavy, angry, clumsy, hurt, waving in a fury. The buddy who had broken into the car saw what was going on and immediately fled in the opposite direction. I saw the detective in the bushes come out of hiding and spread his hands in anger and frustration. The lookout, who had slipped away from Dad, was running toward me now. A hundred meters separated us, and I knew exactly what to do. Slowly I got out of the car and walked nonchalantly toward him. I wasn't even nervous. My body acted like a well-greased machine and did the thinking for me. I didn't look at the boy, and he didn't look at
me: a kid like me was nothing to worry about. He was afraid only of grownup detectives. In less than a minute he had run all the way up the street and was about to pass me, I could see his eyes nearly pop, and I lunged at him just right, the way Dad had shown me so many times at the gym—I threw myself on the ground and tripped him.

It happened in a fraction of a second. He was moving with so much momentum that when he fell he rolled into a parked car and lay there, stunned. A moment later two detectives were handcuffing him.

“Is that Feuerberg's kid?” said Detective Alfasi, and recognizing me, he added, “Isn't he the mascot?”

“What are you doing here, Nonny?” asked the second detective, the one with the beard.

All the detectives in the district knew me.

“I saw him running away, so I tripped him.”

“Hey, you did great! You saved the day!”

Dad came running over, huffing and puffing.

“Sorry. I misjudged the distance,” he grumbled. “I jumped him too soon.”

“Never mind, sir.”

“Never mind, sir.”

The two detectives busied themselves with the boy's handcuffs so Dad wouldn't see what was plainly written on their faces.

“The other one got away, sir, but your son caught this kid, and he'll help us write out a nice invitation to his friend. Right, buster?”

The detective, whose nickname was “Blackbeard,” gave the kid a swift kick in the butt, but we all knew who it really was he wanted to kick.

We stood there awhile longer. Dad was waiting for the forensic unit to arrive and dust the car for prints. A small crowd gathered nearby, and the detectives ordered them to move along. People were pointing at me, some of them whispering to each other. I stayed cool, walked around with my hands in my pockets, checked for FP's, searched for any other bits of evidence that might help the investigation, did just what the situation demanded.

The kid I'd caught was lying on the sidewalk with his hands cuffed
behind his back. The streetlight shining on his face made him look like a small hunted animal. I dared not look into his eyes. His whole life was probably about to change, and I had been his doom.

Yet his eyes were seeking mine. He squirmed on the sidewalk, trying to get a look at me. I didn't move. Let him look. I thought I saw an expression of disdain on his face, disdain for the brat of the law. He gave me a smile, a hateful smile, but it was also a kind of bitter salute to me for having apprehended him.

You see, that's how we are, we professionals: we always acknowledge our opponent's skill. It's part of the professional code of honor. Like Felix and Dad shaking hands that time, or reaching an agreement for my sake, which strikes me as pretty incredible now, though I'm sure they did, because what if they didn't?

Dad said goodbye to the other detectives and we drove home in silence. It was downright embarrassing that he almost blew the whole thing and that I was the one who came to his rescue. I wanted to say it was just a coincidence, that my success had been unintentional, that a kid my age has faster reflexes, but that he was clearly much smarter and more experienced as a detective. I decided to keep quiet in the end. The worst part of it was that I was afraid he might take back what he'd said to me earlier in the car, before the bust.

I hadn't thought of that incident for a whole year. I didn't even discuss it with Micah. I just wanted to forget that terrible silence in the car. Neither Dad nor I had ever referred to it again. And Gabi, who learned what happened from the report she typed, also kept mum about it. It was only tonight that it all came back. The vicious smile on the kid. Maybe he'd grinned at me that way to show his contempt for brats. Maybe he'd sensed something about me even then.