Spy Mom (53 page)

When we moved into our house, Will set about hiring all sorts of people to expand things like our closets and bathrooms.

“Grown-ups don't share a single closet, Lucy,” Will told me. I looked at my lone duffel bag of belongings and said nothing. In truth, I required little more than a cardboard box but I wasn't raised as Will was. His expectations were different.

“My own closet would be nice,” I said, trying to project confidence that someday I might actually have something to put in it.

Of course, the closets are made of bamboo, sustainably farmed by a family in Southern Oregon. I suggested that Will go all the way and carry the wood down here on his back but he didn't think that was funny.

Along the bottom of the closet is a shelf specifically designed for shoes, of which I own three pairs. Theo used to use the shelves as a ramp for Matchbox cars. Now it's a cave for LEGO men and plastic dinosaurs.

It's not that I don't want to wear beautiful clothes and shoes. I'm hopeful my destiny includes wearing something other than a fleece jacket every single day for the rest of my life. But the truth is I haven't figured out how to make it work. Avery once defined my sense of style as “survivalist” and I don't think she meant it as a compliment.

Right now, I need an outfit that can do double duty for a ball game and a breaking-and-entering. Good thing I don't have a dinner date to follow or I'd be facing a serious fashion dilemma. I pull on a pair of jeans but they feel too tight. I leave the top unbuttoned until they have time to stretch out. I refuse to consider the idea that the pants are fine but my body is getting bigger. No. Not today. If I need to go on a diet, it will just have to stand in line with all the other unpleasant things I need to do and wait its turn.

Near the top of the unpleasant things list is chaperoning a preschool class trip to a Giants baseball game. A few weeks ago, Teacher Wendy announced that a Happy Times family had donated enough tickets for the entire class plus chaperones to attend today's game. Did I mention it's a play-off game and this is the point in the season when riots tend to break out over a single available ticket? No? Well, don't be too surprised because this is San Francisco, where money apparently grows on trees.

After her joyous announcement, Teacher Wendy put on her sad face and said we couldn't go without parent volunteers. My hand, apparently embarking on a solo career and no longer taking orders from my brain, popped right up and I was rewarded with a big Teacher Wendy smile. I'm a reliable volunteer. I have visited fire stations, zoos, museums, and aquariums. I can find a clean public restroom in any San Francisco neighborhood. Honestly, the idea of Theo and twenty of his closest friends wandering around the city with nothing more than a bunch of overtired parents for protection is a bit more than I can handle.

“You are so involved,” Teacher Wendy will say to me as I sign up for yet another chaperoning gig. “It's super and so are you.”

There's no point in explaining that I'm motivated by fear rather than an overdeveloped sense of altruism. It seems harmless to let Teacher Wendy continue to believe in my overall superness. And there are benefits, such as one less day I have to hang out with Leonard at the Java Luv and watch him lose IQ points. However, when I raised my hand last week, the day was empty. How was I supposed to know I'd need it free to continue my rogue agent crime spree?

Theo wanders into my room with his Giants baseball hat and T-shirt on. Theo's wardrobe, in contrast to my own, is worth a small fortune. His grandparents don't see why a child, particularly their only grandchild, should wear a pair of jeans from Target when he can just as easily wear a pair of jeans from Ralph Lauren. When I bring Theo's hand-me-downs to the consignment shop, they treat me like royalty.

“When are we going?” Theo asks, shaking his head back and forth so fast his cheeks go slack. “I'm getting so bored.”

“There are kids who never have a chance to be bored,” I say, “because they're out scavenging for food all day long.”

“Why would I do that?” he asks. “I have the refrigerator.”

This is the perfect opportunity for a lesson on world hunger and excessive consumption but I'm not up for it. Besides, Will provides a far more dramatic delivery of this one than I do.

“We'll leave soon. We need to pick up Henry at his house, run a quick errand, and then we'll go meet your class at the ball park. Sound good?”

He sighs as if this plan causes him great emotional stress.

“How long?” he asks, dragging the words out for emphasis.

“Seven and a half minutes,” I say.

He's happy with that. This kid deals in absolutes. No gray areas for Theo.

Henry Coen lives two incredibly steep hills away. We pull up to the curb in front of his house and he springs from the front door, a small brown-headed jack-in-the-box.

Judy Coen follows her son out, shouting about jackets and hats. Judy Coen's life project is maintaining herself to such a degree that she never seems to age. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to discover she sleeps in a jar of formaldehyde. I've known her now for close to three years and the expression on her face hasn't altered in the slightest during this time. She always looks surprised. Me, I'm waiting for a team of archeologists to show up and begin excavating the wrinkle developing between my eyebrows. I'm not saying my way is better, but it certainly takes less time.

“Hi, Judy,” I wave. Judy scans the Prius. I think she would like to arch her eyebrows in a rather wry way but the eyebrows don't do that anymore. They are frozen in place.

“You're so
good
, Lucy,” she says. “Making up for the rest of us and our naughty habits.” She laughs, a wineglass dropped on a tile floor.

“Well, you know, someone has to save the planet,” I say.

“Better you than me,” she says. “I have no
time
for anything. I am
so
stressed out about the kindergarten decision I can barely sleep. What are
you
going to do?”

This topic must be peaking because I cannot seem to meet an adult and not discuss the kindergarten issue. It's beginning to make me tense and when I'm tense I bite my cuticles. It's disgusting. I know this because Theo tells me so.

“I'm going to look at some public and some private and then make some decisions,” I say, which is more or less true.

“You seem so
calm
,” she says. “How can you be so calm about something this
enormous
?”

I think Sam is right about everybody in this city being crazy. Choosing a school is big, yes, but not enormous. Nuclear war is enormous.

“Drugs,” I say with a perfectly straight face. “They work wonders.”

“Oh, I know,” she says with a wink. “My doc will do almost anything to get me out of his office. It's great.” She laughs again although I consider what she just said to be rather alarming. Mental note: Monitor all playdates at Henry's house with more than the usual level of paranoia.

“Do you mind if I take Henry out to the Sunset with me before the game?” I ask through the open window. “I have to pick something up.”

“Sure,” Judy says, strapping Henry into the booster seat next to Theo. “The Sunset is so
ethnic
. I love it.” I'm confident that Judy could not find the Sunset neighborhood on a map if someone held a gun to her head. It's too “over there” for her. She leans in and tries to give Henry a kiss. He, in turn, leans as far toward Theo and away from her as he can with a seat belt on.

“Yuck,” Henry says.

“Kissing is so gross,” Theo concurs.

“Forget it,” Judy says, retreating. “Have fun at the game. Thanks for driving and everything, Lucy. I have an appointment with my dermatologist today that I can't miss or I'd have gone myself.”

Botox, apparently, waits for no one.

There are those who say the sun never shines in the Sunset. The fog rolls in off the nearby ocean and just stays, settling in like melted butter on an English muffin. We drive through the mist over a couple of hills and head down Judah, a wide avenue cluttered with Muni tracks and bad parallel parking that runs clear to the Pacific Ocean. In front of the house I'm looking for, just outside the green garage door, sits a sparkling clean Chevy Malibu.

And much to my surprise, Richard Yoder is climbing out of it. He holds a new Adidas duffel bag in one hand and a big plastic cup with a logo for the Luxor Las Vegas on it in the other. Under his worn leather jacket he sports a Luxor Las Vegas T-shirt that matches the cup.

There are times when I consider myself unlucky, when I feel as if there's a worldwide conspiracy meant to keep me down. This is not one of those times. This is a time when I realize that if I wasn't sprinkled with just a little fairy dust, I would have been dead long ago. Richard Yoder was in Las Vegas for the weekend and Simon Still had no idea. Simon's crew has been patiently watching the house for three days, waiting for the missing Yoder to turn up, and as soon as he does, there I am. I can't help but smile. This is really going to make Simon mad. I place a quick phone call as I pull up in front of Yoder's driveway.

Yoder stretches and yawns, popping off his sunglasses and rubbing his eyes. He probably drove all night to get home after losing his last penny. But that's not my problem. My plan has changed. It now includes kidnapping Yoder and arranging the trade with Chemical Claude, making sure I take time out to shoot the aforementioned Claude in the head at the first opportunity. Now my plan has three steps. I feel much better.

“You boys stay here, okay?” In the backseat, Theo and Henry argue about what happened after Darth Vader cut off Luke Skywalker's arm in the seventh
Star Wars
movie, which is really the second movie, but that point is lost on these two.

“Hey,” I say, vying for their attention, “neither of you have even seen the movie so why the big debate?”

“Well, we will someday,” Theo says.

“Probably true but for right now I need you to stay put for a minute, okay?”

They nod and immediately return to arguing about Luke's missing arm. Yoder is too tired to have noticed me yet, focused entirely on finding his house key on an overloaded key chain. He's about my height with thick, dark hair that sticks up in the back in the same way Theo's does when he rolls out of bed. Theo's teacher calls it “Good Morning Hair.” The fact that Yoder has Good Morning Hair makes me squirm. Whatever this turns out to be, Yoder is too young for it.

As I draw closer, I see the sharp bones of his clavicles sticking out from beneath his thin shirt as if his body has not yet finished filling in all the empty places. In five years' time, age will make him thicker but right now he's nothing more than an overgrown child. Which, of course, complicates things but doesn't change them.

Finally, he looks up and sees me coming toward him from the curb. It takes a split second for fear to register in his eyes. He's had the sort of life where the odds are against me being a random stranger asking for directions. The way I walk toward him, he knows.

“What do you want?” he asks, his voice hoarse from long smoky nights at the slots.

Without breaking stride I grab him. His upper arm is so thin I can almost close my thumb and forefinger around it.

“You,” I say. “I want you.”

“You can't do this to me,” he says, clutching the big plastic cup to his chest. “I'm an American.”

Why do people always say that? Citizenship doesn't come equipped with an invisible force field. Maybe it used to back when everybody liked us, but not anymore. In fact, these days you might consider holding your passport face down and pretending to be, say, Swedish. Nobody seems to want to kill the Swedes while everyone seems to want to kill the Americans.

“I don't care,” I say. “Mr. Yoder.”

He hasn't heard his real name in a while and it has the intended effect.

“I have friends, important friends,” he stammers. “They won't allow this to happen.”

“The same friends who put you down in that dungeon for twelve months?” I ask. “Those friends?”

He physically recoils at the thought. Whatever Simon did to this man in the name of peace, love, and the American way, it sure stuck with him.

“If you want to live, come with me,” I say. It's the worst line ever. I'm embarrassed for myself.

“Why would I do that?” he asks.

“Because I'm armed,” I say, which is a complete lie but effective.

“Where are you taking me?” he asks. “Where are we going?”

This is a question I should have answered in my planning stage, perhaps under the heading of “contingencies.” The truth is, I'm far more afraid of what would happen to me if I were to blow off my chaperoning responsibilities than I am of what will happen if I bring a known terrorist along on a preschool field trip. I have four Giants tickets burning a hole in my pocket.

“We're going to a Giants game with twenty five-year-olds,” I say. “It's a play-off game but try to stay calm.”

Yoder smiles grimly.

“You people and your codes,” he says. “Why can't you just say what you mean?”

“I'm not kidding about the baseball game,” I say. “Put your bag back in the car and let's go.”

As I escort Yoder to the waiting Prius, I feel the eyes on us. They watch from the roofs, the sidewalks, the cars parked across the street. But they can't do anything. Three San Francisco Police cruisers provide my cover and while I feel a little guilty for calling 9-1-1 about nonexistent gunshots at the bodega across the street, the alternative somehow seemed much worse.

I shove Yoder into the front passenger seat, taking a second to stick the stolen cell phone I used to call the police under the front wheel of the car. The boys stop trying to stab each other with light sabers long enough to register the scene unfolding around them.