But a Hollywood type was in the cab, and the bells I’d heard had been real ones, to warn the train’s cast and crew that Baby Eloise was going to try to get things moving. George fell down, and the gun went off. The train paused to consider this and moved a little more. I crawled over to George, keeping one eye on the machinery.
Better to have kept that eye on George. The gun came up at my face. Blood was slipping down the ice, but George had some acting blood in him. He’d played dead.
“You’re not going to hit any more kids,” he promised me, just before the gun went off again.
But in the middle of the sentence, the train jerked him aside, spoiling his shot. I grabbed his gun arm and, holding it down, pulled on him. This was stupid because the other arm was under a train. Anyway, he didn’t want any help from me and jerked back, throwing his head up to where nobody’s head was supposed to go.
The resulting mess took a lot of tidying up, what with the gun, me in my stocking feet and splattered with bits of George, and that odd arrangement of ropes in the caboose. Between Jim’s advice and the brakeman’s testimony about George’s working on something secret all through the trip, they finally decided to explain it by labeling poor George an Axis operative. This pleased the fans more than telling them George had just been a fan gone wrong.
None of this was decided in an afternoon, of course. Laszlo sent off a string of cables from French Willow to report the problems. We had to make our afternoon date in Woodridge, where we found cables waiting for us. These were not in answer to Laszlo’s laments, though. We found out what they were when the show was over and men started taking the train apart. Mammoth Titan had made a deal with Schukraft-Mauro, a slightly larger competitor, to combine resources and maybe extend the bond drive as far as Rockford, Illinois, maybe even Chicago. Half the Mammoth Titan people would be going east on this patriotic caravan; the rest would hook up to some freight cars headed back to California.
I was grateful for the freight cars. Without them, I’d’ve had to walk home. The half headed east was the marketable half: Bevis, Lorenzo, Jewell, and, of course, Baby Eloise. We ornaments were expendable. Schukraft-Mauro, having specialized in B musicals, had more of them, with better wardrobes.
“Don’t worry,” Jim told me. “You took out a Nazi spy! You’ll see; they’ll use this to lever you into the female lead in Night of Dr. Jekyll.”
“Ya eedmo Ob-Ararat,” I said. Jim had perfect faith in my agent. So had I. In Cal’s hands, the whole business would probably lever me into a role as fifth girl on the right, second row back, in Andy Hardy’s English class.
Jewell was so giddy at finding herself on the credit side of the ledger that she tried a little joke on Sissy. “Knock knock.”
Sissy blinked, thought about it, and remembered to say, “Who’s there?”
“Toodle,” said Jewell.
Sissy blinked again. “Toodle who?”
Jewell kissed her on one cheek. “Toodle-oo to you, too, darling. See you around.”
Sissy kissed her back but frowned. “Yes, goodbye. But weren’t you going to do a joke?”
I saw Lorenzo hug Olivia goodbye. He should have. He’d talked her into joining the poker game and now owed her four hundred thousand dollars, which, even in stage money, amounted to something. (Velvet had joined the game, too, trying desperately to lose to Bevis, but it hadn’t worked out.)
In the midst of all these touching fadeouts, we heard applause: Laszlo, as it turned out. “Come on, people,” he yelled, banging his hands together some more. “Let’s move it out. You and you and you: you packed? Okay, you know where your car is. Let’s go. Let’s go.” He had to do this before his counterparts from Schukraft-Mauro showed up and opened up a competing shop.
I started to haul my suitcase back to the car I’d started this trip on. I passed Baby Eloise on the way: she was sitting on a bench, leafing through a sheaf of paper. A couple of cables sat on her lap; they’d been waiting for her, along with the paper. I’d heard a little of what was in them. A new relative, a Miss Marr this time, was coming to take up the vacancy as Baby Eloise’s mother.
“Know her?” I’d asked, after Laszlo broke the news.
“A little,” Baby Eloise had told me, face perfectly still. “She uses her hand.”
I paused in front of her now until she looked up from the pages she was skimming. When I raised an eyebrow to inquire, she said, “Script. They want me to be ready to start a new project when I get back. Baby Eloise and O’Toole over Tokyo.”
“That’ll go over big,” I told her. “Who’s O’Toole?”
“Mr. Flint.”
I glanced back to where Bevis was posing for a couple of photographers, a girl wrapped around each arm. “Bevis?” I said. “What will you do?”
She gave me that same look I got when I failed to whack her with the bath brush. “What they tell me to do,” she said.
I reached out and patted one little hand. She didn’t know what to make of that.
“I’ll write you,” I promised.
I did, too. Not fan mail, you understand, because she couldn’t ever be The Child Star to me now. She was one of us.
The Cardinal’s Cross
by Mary Amlaw
It was the smooth way the long black car closed in on the little priest that scared Zebulon. Two muscular men in dark business suits stepped from the vehicle and neatly put the priest between them. Undaunted by the retreatants spilling onto the narrow sidewalk through the gates of the convent of the Daughters of Elias, the two men swept their startled prey into the rear of the car and drove off toward Washington Street. Before they turned the corner, something arced from the limo’s window and glittered briefly in the afternoon sun on its trip to the gutter.
A pickup in broad daylight, and the innocents who had just come from their prayers at the convent didn’t even realize it.
Zebulon realized only too well. Life in a high-crime area taught its survival skills even to nine-year-olds, and Zebulon was a fast study. He clung to his perch in the maple that overlooked the convent grounds and considered his options.
What had happened was none of his business. He didn’t know the priest who’d been taken. Maybe he’d been scooped up for something innocent — to hear a deathbed confession, for instance. Maybe he was friends with the men in the car, and they were just giving him a lift home.
Even Zebulon Williams, nine years old, couldn’t make that one wash. The little priest was in big trouble; the wrong people wanted to talk to him. The smartest thing Zeb could do was pretend he’d seen nothing. He should definitely keep his mouth shut. He should definitely not pick up whatever had been tossed into the gutter.
Zeb was many things, but coward wasn’t one of them. He dropped from the tree by his hands, wiped his nervous face with the end of his T-shirt, and ambled casually to the corner. He tried to look innocent as he reached down and swooped up the thing that had been tossed from the car.
It was a small brass cross, polished until it shone like gold. A legend was engraved on the back: Gift of Theresa Lynch.
The unfortunate priest had come from the Daughters of Elias, the province of Mother Mary Dominic and the unworldly community of nuns Zebulon considered his own special responsibility. Mary Dominic should be told what had happened.
Kindly Clare Francis, the convent cook, beamed when she saw Zeb at the door. “You might have to wait a while. Mother’s speaking with the cardinal,” Clare informed him.
Zeb considered the wisdom of reappearing on the street with his errand undone. If the men in the limo came back for the cross, Zeb didn’t want to be found with it.