“Zany? Zany? Those guys are crooks, Wheat! Didn’t you hear what they were saying? That they knocked over this place and that? Those guys are robbers.”
“Well, for robbers they’re a couple zany guys. They weren’t such bad company.”
“I for one am glad I’m not going to be seeing either one of them again.”
“But we are gonna see them again, Kitch.”
“What d’you mean?”
“They’ll have to come around in a week, when they get out, to collect the money we owe ’em. We’ll see ’em then.”
“Yeah. I suppose you’re right at that. They’ll come for their fifteen bucks a piece we owe ’em is right. What the hell. Maybe they’ll stay for some cards.”
Chapter 13
There was a police car waiting for us. Pulled in behind Wheaty’s dust gathered Volks in the Nizer driveway. It was a very familiar-looking police car. So were the two cops sitting inside, motor running, windows rolled up, enjoying the air-conditioning. Friendly was driving this time, and Burden, who had spotted us walking up, rolled his window down and leaned his head out and said, “Get in.”
For a moment I thought Wheat was going to make a break for it.
He had this panic-stricken look in his eyes and I caught his elbow and whispered take it easy.
I said to the cops, “What do you guys want?”
“Just get in,” Burden repeated.
“This is Sycamore,” I said. “Do you have jurisdiction here?”
Wheaty said, “We want to see our lawyer, you guys.”
“Just get the hell in the car!” Burden said. “It’s hot out, and the longer I got to talk to you smart asses with the window down, the hotter it gets!”
We got in.
“We haven’t done anything,” Wheat said. “We just got out of jail.”
“Don’t get so excited,” Friendly said. “Keep your shirt on.”
“We’ll keep our shirts on,” I said. “We shower with our shirts on these days. We’re reformed. So why don’t you just tell us what this is all about?”
Burden turned and looked at us — at me, in particular, wilting my burst of tough guy courage — and put a disgusted sneer on his face and said, “Shut your smart-ass traps. The Chief wants to see you.”
“The Chief?” I said.
“The Chief?” Wheaty said.
“The Chief,” Burden said.
“The Chief,” Friendly said.
The DeKalb Chief of Police whose, daughter’s wedding reception we had nakedly disrupted wanted to see us?
Burden said, “You don’t have any objections, do you? To seeing the Chief?”
“I want to see my lawyer,” Wheat said. “I want to see my mom.”
I said, “We don’t have to go with you. We haven’t done anything. We’re getting out of this car, right now.”
Burden flicked something on the dash that locked our back doors, and then proceeded to back out of the alley and drive toward DeKalb.
We didn’t go to the police station. We went to a residential area, a nice, quiet, upper middle-class neighborhood, with a lot of shade trees lining the streets and big houses with big lawns. Not mansions, but not exactly prefabs. We pulled up in front of one of them, a white one with black trim. A heavy-set guy in a yellow sportshirt and tan shorts was watering the grass in the front.
At Friendly and Burden’s bidding, we got out of the car and walked across the big green yard.
The Chief was not a good-looking man. His head looked small for his body; his facial features looked big for his head. Receding gray-black hair, bushy eyebrows over rather bulging gray eyes, fat round nose and a wide mouth, the sort that smiles all the time but never really does, really.
“So,” he said.
His voice was low. Rumbling bass.
“So,” I said.
Wheat said nothing.
“So you’re the boys who took their clothes off at my daughter’s wedding reception.”
“I guess so,” I said.
Wheat said nothing.
“Got some publicity out of it, didn’t you?”
“We didn’t do it for publicity, sir,” I said.
Wheat said nothing.
“What did you do it for?”
“What did we do it for?”
“What did you do it for?”
So I told him briefly, of our gambling debt to Shaker and how we’d paid it off, and that thirty days in jail, the hundred dollar fine and losing out on summer school had been punishment in spades for what seemed to us a relatively harmless prank.
“I agree with you,” the Chief said.
“What?” I said.
Wheat said nothing.
“That’s why I asked you boys here today.”
I didn’t point out that we hadn’t been asked: that we’d been brought.
“Come on inside and sit on the porch with me and have some ice tea.”
It took a few moments for the invitation to sink in.
That low, rumbling voice of his sounded sinister even when he was being friendly. Finally, we followed him to his porch, took tall glasses of lemoned, faintly sugared iced tea and sipped tentatively, half expecting the drinks to be spiked with something lethal.
“You pulled a bad judge, boys,” the Chief was saying, sipping his own iced tea. “A real hardnose and I want you to know the harshness of that sentence wasn’t any of my doing.”
“That’s... that’s nice to hear, sir,” I said.
Wheat said nothing.
“As a matter of fact,” the Chief said, “I really brought you here to tell you thanks.”
“Th... thanks?”
“Yes. What I’m going to say now is strictly confidential, you understand... but actually I’m grateful to you boys for streaking through that reception. It made my little girl’s wedding a wedding to be remembered. She thought it was wonderful!”
“Wonderful?”
“Great sense of humor, that little gal. And how many girls have their wedding reception written up in papers all over the country? The President’s daughter, but who else? So, we’re delighted, my little girl, her mama and me. Of course, officially, I have to be outraged. I hope you can understand that. For example, because the wedding photographer sold that picture of you to that wire service, I threatened to sue him... since that picture legally belongs to me, having paid him to take pictures, after all... and he settled out of court. Gave me back all the money we’d paid him to take pictures, and that thousand bucks he made, too. He still came out good, from the publicity. Anyway, I wanted to thank you. I can only say I’m sorry that you boys couldn’t have fared as well as we did in this affair. At least you can have the peace of mind to know that as long as you’re in this area, you don’t have to worry about the police chief bearing a grudge for what you did. I feel bad about the thirty days. It’s a crying shame. More tea?”
“Uh, no thanks,” I said.
Wheat said nothing.
“If you boys ever need anything,” he said, “just holler. And thanks again. You can find your way out, can’t you?”
We found our way out.
The cops took us back to Sycamore.
Friendly and I chatted about the weather, politics, baseball. Burden grunted an opinion now and then. Wheat said nothing.
Finally, after we were back to the Nizer place and the cops had gone, Wheat turned to me and said, “Thanks?”
Chapter 14
So everything seemed to be falling into place for Wheaty and me, for a change. First, there was the DeKalb Police Chief not being mad at us, which had initially stunned us, then relieved us, and finally amused us. Second, Wheat’s father had come through with the furniture store job, meaning we’d make enough money during the month of August to come back to the University and finish up those few courses in the fall. And third, the Nizers, who were going on vacation to Colorado, gave us the key to their lake home in Wisconsin, in return for doing some minor, menial repairs and painting and such around the place, after which we’d have plenty of time to pursue our visions of sun and fun.