You want to pour the whole job again?
GUY #1: Noway.
GUY # 2: Me either. Besides, it ain’t a problem.
GUY # 1: Yeah. Once this stuff sets, nobody will ever know.
look it up
EVERY MEMORY AFTER that moment when I got shot in the neck was a fractured piece of a fever dream. Fragments and snatches. All in that same room I’d just escaped from. I pushed the past from my mind and turned my attention to my present problem. I couldn’t face the bank. At first, the guy at the news stand wouldn’t give me change. I finally got him to give me three dollars worth of coins for a five dollar bill.
When I got back to the phone, I called 411.
“What city?” the operator asked.
“Spencer.” I was glad I remembered that.
“Name?”
“Martin Anderson.”
“We have no listing for that name.”
Shoot. I realized the phone wouldn’t be listed under his name. “Are there any Andersons in Spencer?”
There was a pause. Then she said, “Thirty-five.”
“Thanks.”
As I started to hang up the phone, I heard another voice from behind me.
“Move the marble, Eddie.”
I dropped the phone and spun around. The gorilla threw a shower of sparks in my face. “You’re starting to displease me.”
I blinked hard and he vanished, leaving behind the smell of cinnamon. Even though my head was clearer, I still wasn’t completely a citizen of the real world. I needed to get off the street and rest for a little while. Somewhere safe. Somewhere quiet where I could think. And I needed information.
I knew my way around Philly well enough to find the library. It was just a couple blocks north, and then across Logan Circle. There were people at all the computers, but that wasn’t a problem. I spotted one guy who was obviously just killing time playing an online game, so I pressed some random keys. Then I made the mouse stick on the mouse pad. After that, I pressed a couple more keys. I was just about to play with the monitor’s brightness controls when the guy muttered something and walked away.
I slipped into the empty seat, pulled up a white-pages search site, and got a list of phone numbers for anyone named Anderson in Spencer. Then I did a similar search for the last names of my other Edgeview friends—Woo, Grieg, Dobbs, and Calabrizi. I tried Dad’s name, too, just in case my parents had gotten a different phone number, but nothing came up.
It was dark by the time I left the library, which made me feel less like a target. I wasn’t going to try to get any more change. I had way too many calls to make to be pumping a pocketful of quarters into the phone. So I swung into a cornerstore and bought a phone card. Then I went back to the pay phone and got busy. I called each Anderson on the list and had pretty much the same conversation.
“Hi, is Martin there?”
“Who?”
“Martin.”
“I think you have a wrong number.”
“Sorry.”
About halfway down the list, calling a Richard Anderson, I got a different answer.
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m a friend of his. Is he there?”
“He’s grounded. No calls.”
“Can I leave a message?”
“I told you, he’s grounded.”
“Please? Can you just tell him that—”
The guy slammed the phone down before I could say anything more. At least I knew I’d found him. Maybe there was more than one kid named Martin Anderson in Spencer, but the man on the phone was such a jerk I figured that pretty much proved I had the right number. Martin rarely talked about his parents, but from the few things he’d let slip, I got the feeling he had a rough time with his dad.
So did I. But I didn’t care if I had problems with my dad. I wanted to go home. I wanted to put on my own clothes—my own broken-in sneakers and my own worn-out sweatshirt from the Dali Art Museum. I wanted to sit on the couch in the living room and watch television, or pull apart the paper just for the comic section. I even wanted to hear Dad talkabout his business deals, or listen to Mom make