The Seal of Solomon
“I like you.”
My chest tightened and I got out of the car, then turned back and leaned close.
“Listen, I get it. You’ve taken me on as a project. Poor, big, stupid Alfred Kropp. Well, I don’t need your pretty . . . I mean pity. Find some other loser to feel sorry for.”
I turned away before she could say anything, jogging across the yard to the front door. I missed seeing the gnarled old oak root sticking up in front of the sidewalk, tripped, and sprawled flat on my face in the cool dirt. Could it get any worse? I had been waiting for a sign and, as I pushed my big slobbery bulk from the ground, I realized this was the sign I was waiting for.
It was time to leave.
7
Horace was standing in the entryway holding a gray suit on a hanger.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Your suit, Alfred.”
“I don’t own a suit.”
“You do now. You need to try it on to see if it fits. Tomorrow afternoon is the hearing. And you gotta look nice for the judge, Al,” he said.
I brushed past him, went into the bathroom, and proceeded to floss. After a second there was a soft knock and Horace whispered from the other side.
“Hey, Al, I think you forgot the suit. I’ll just hang it here on the knob. We’re having fried chicken for dinner. Isn’t that your favorite?”
I didn’t answer and Horace went away.
I went into the bedroom and pulled my old duffel bag from the closet. It took about five minutes to pack because I didn’t have much. The door opened and Kenny came in.
“What are you doing, Alfred Kropp?”
“Packing,” I said.
“You’re leaving!”
I looked up at him. He started to cry.
“Don’t do that, Kenny. I don’t want Horace and Betty to know.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”
“Take me with you.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I just can’t, okay? Look, it’s going to be all right. I can’t live here, Kenny. Horace is plotting to adopt me and take all my money and I can’t let that happen.”
He climbed onto the top bunk and refused to come down for dinner, but I ate to keep up appearances, plus I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from. I planned to slip out the window as soon as Horace and Betty went to bed.
Around eleven I heard the Tuttles go to their room.
“Alfred Kropp is leaving me to die,” Kenny muttered in the top bunk.
I sighed. “Look, when I get to wherever I’m going, I’ll call you to make sure everything’s okay. And if it’s not okay I’ll come back and rescue you. How’s that?”
“You’ll rescue me? You promise?”
“I promise.”
I guess that satisfied him, because he quieted down. It was time to go, but I didn’t move. What was I waiting for? I had thought Ashley’s pity was the sign I needed, but now leaving was the last thing I wanted to do.
Looking back now, I wonder what would have happened if I had gotten off my big butt and left that moment. If I had snuck out ten or even five minutes earlier would the horrors I was about to unleash on the world have been averted?
I’ll never know, because I didn’t leave that moment. I was waiting for Kenny’s breathing to even out. It must have been close to midnight when he yelled, “What’s that? I heard something, Alfred Kropp, outside the window.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“I heard it. I—” He stopped himself, then hissed: “There’s someone outside our window.”
“Look, Kenny,” I said. “There’s nobody outside the window.”
But he wouldn’t settle down until I checked the window. I pulled up the blinds and squinted through the glass, resting my hands on the sill. I turned my head toward the top bunk.
“See, Kenny? There’s nothing—”
Suddenly, the window exploded inward, just like it would in a horror movie, when the teenager turns and says, “See, there’s nothing there.” Two large, black-gloved hands shot through and grabbed my wrists. I was dragged through the broken window before I could even make a sound.
8
I saw a flash of night sky, a swaying tree branch, and the lawn as it rushed up to meet me. I landed face-first in the grass and something hard pressed into my lower back. I heard someone screaming; I guessed it was Kenny. I had fallen with my mouth open, and now I could taste grass and dirt as a voice whispered hoarsely in my ear.
“Don’t fight me.”
I twisted to my right, bringing my left elbow up and back, a glancing blow to the guy’s head as he leaned over me. He fell away and I pushed myself up, and then he was back on me, throwing his forearm across my neck, pulling back hard, cutting off my oxygen. Black flowers bloomed before my eyes.
He dragged me toward the back corner of the house and whipped me around.
“Settle down!” he hissed. “Settle down!”
He held my arms behind my back and pushed me toward a dark convertible sports car parked by the curb.
He threw me into the passenger seat and brought his face close to mine. I got a heavy dose of spearmint.
“Hey, Al,” Mike Arnold said.
I couldn’t believe it: Mike Arnold, the OIPEP agent who had betrayed the knights and nearly gotten me killed. Abby Smith had told me they fired Mike for turning double agent. So this wasn’t an OIPEP operation. And if this wasn’t an OIPEP operation, what was it?
He raced around the front and leaped into the driver’s seat of the Porsche Boxster. The car gave a throaty roar and Mike punched the gas. My head snapped back against the headrest. He whipped the car into a U-turn, the back tires locking up and squealing, sending plumes of smoke boiling into the air.
“What’s going on?” I yelled. He swerved into the right-hand lane, making for the on-ramp to the interstate.
“This is what’s known in the trade as an ‘extraction’!”
Mike had cut his hair since I last saw him in Merlin’s Cave, wearing it now in a buzz cut, like a marine. He still dressed like a frat boy, though: Lacoste shirt, Dockers, the New Balance running shoes. I could see his 9mm Glock tucked into his belt.
There was hardly any traffic in the westbound lanes of I-40, and Mike pushed the car up to ninety, his eyes darting between the road and the rearview mirror. I glanced behind us. Somebody wearing a black jumpsuit was pacing us on a motorcycle.