“What’s going on? That’s what you wanted to ask, right?” said Dana softly.
I merely nodded, still feeling rather dazed.“Let me get this straight,” I began, but that’s as far as I got. Nothing was straight.
“You’re on candid camera,” said Stevie, who was crouching low and holding onto the steel girder with a death grip. Together with the old Stevie, his fear of heights had also made a comeback. Probably being plunked on the back of the head by yours truly hadn’t helped.
“Am I?” I said, searching around for the cameras.
“Shut up, Stevie,” said Dana. “No, you’re not,” she said to me.
I looked down, where Zack and Barbara had left the stage, and a wise stage manager had drawn the curtains. Barbara, who was supposed to be dead by the end of act 1, was still very much alive. I could hear her screaming all the way from her dressing room. I briefly wondered how the play would start act 2 without a murder to investigate or a dead body to examine.
“Huh?” I said, for I perceived that Dana was addressing me.
“I said, this must all be very confusing for you.”
I said she was right.
“It was all a test,” said Stevie blithely. He clapped me on the back. “We all go through it.”
“Huh?” I repeated.
Dana gave Stevie a look of disapproval.“Shut up, Stevie.”
“Oh, all right,” said Stevie, rolling his eyes. “Just saying.”
“Huh?” I said a third time.
“Stevie’s right,” said Dana. “Everything you’ve experienced these last couple of days has been one big recruitment exercise. And I’m glad to say that you’ve passed the test with flying colors, Tom.”
I didn’t even have the oomph to say ‘Huh’ again, so I merely goggled.
“The FSA stages these exercises for every recruit. Just a way to make sure we’re not inducting anyone into our ranks who doesn’t justify the expenditure.”
I cleared my throat with some difficulty.“Expenditure?” I said.
“Sure,” said Dana. “Now that you’re cleared for admission, we’re starting up your training.”
“And I’m going with,” said Stevie. “Finally.”
“Stevie was inducted a little over a month ago,” said Dana. “But we’ve been waiting for a fifth recruit before organizing training camp. You’re number five.”
“There’s four more like—” I glanced over at Stevie. “—him?”
“Don’t be so shocked,” said Stevie, grinning. “You sound as if you don’t like me.”
“Oh, I like you all right,” I said. “I just don’t know if I can trust you.”
He slung an arm around my shoulders.“Oh, bro, don’t be that way. I was just playing along with Dana’s little scheme.”
“Were you now?” I said frostily. I still hadn’t forgiven him for lying to me. “Partners should have no secrets from one another,” I reminded him. “They should tell each other everything.”
He looked at me in mock reproof.“But Ido tell you everything. Just not the part about this all being one big training op.”
“Just that part, huh? You’re quite the actor, you know that? Stringing me along like that, while all the time you knew exactly what was going on. No fair.”
He beamed.“You think so? About the actor part? That was part of my training.”
I made a face, and he held up his paws, palms up.
“Stevie’s right,” said Dana. “Part of being a secret agent is to be able to convincingly construct an entirely fictitious persona and present it to the world. I think Stevie did a great job.”
“You mean I will have to do… this… as well?” I said, incredulously.
Dana smiled.“You’ve already begun.”
“Me? No way,” I said.
“Sure you have. Don’t you remember your little t?te-?-t?te with Brutus?”
“Brutus is going to be an FSA recruit?” I said, aghast.
“You’ll have a ball,” said Stevie. “That cat is so gullible, you wouldn’t believe it. He actually thought Dollo Rosso was a Southridge gangster. Can you beat it?”
He laughed heartily. I didn’t join him. The prospect of having to team up with Brutus didn’t appeal to me, and I said as much to Dana.
She shrugged.“That’s part of the job description, Tom. If you want to be a feline spy, you can’t always choose the people you deal with. Some of them will become great friends, like Stevie here—”
I gave Stevie a look that indicated his friendship status was temporarily on hold.
“—while others will be really nasty specimen.”
“James Bond wasn’t buddy-buddy with Goldfinger, was he?” said Stevie, stung that I hadn’t acknowledged our great friendship. “Or those guys from SPECTRE? Well, then?”
I decided to change the subject.“What happened to Lucy Knicx? And Jamie Burrow?”
Dana smiled.“Lucy’s in bed with a cold. Lying on the park ground that night didn’t do her much good.”
“So the ‘ghost’ we heard…”
“Was in fact Frank,” said Dana. “He’s getting better at this stuff. As far as Jamie is concerned, she has a new boyfriend and decided spending time with him was more important than playing the part of Zoe Huckleberry.”
“But what about the body I saw in the park yesterday?”
“That wasn’t a body,” said Dana, “but a lifelike doll. Every year the Brookridge police department, in cooperation with the Red Cross, teaches a refresher course in CPR for drowning victims and other first aid techniques. I made sure the exercise was over by the time we got there. All the members of the public had gone home and the people you saw were about to pack up and leave with the ‘body’.”
“So that’s why they didn’t seem interested in the victim,” I said, understanding dawning. “But what about Rick Mascarpone and Norbert McIlroy? Weren’t they supposed to be here tonight?”
“Rick Mascarpone doesn’t exist,” said Dana.
“I came up with that name,” said Stevie proudly.
“And Norbert McIlroy decided to stay home with Lucy and the kids. He’s Lucy Knicx’s husband, by the way. That’s why they were in the park that night. They’d gone to see a movie together—Jamie Burrow was babysitting if I’m not mistaken—and decided to take a stroll through the park and practice their lines.”
“But you couldn’t have possibly known all that,” I said.
Dana shrugged.“Part of the job is perfect planning, and the other part is knowing how to improvise. When I saw Lucy and Norbert that night, I figured it was a good way to start you on your process. The rest worked itself out as we went along.”
The three of us sat in silence for a spell. On stage the curtains had opened once again, and Zack and Barbara were repeating the murder scene. Good idea. Without a murder, they could just as well throw out the whole play and call it a night.
I tried to read Dana and Stevie’s minds as we sat watching Zack stumble through his lines, but they wouldn’t let me. Blocked. I really wanted to know how to do that.
“You’ll learn,” said Dana.
Cripes. I wish she would stop doing that.
“All right,” said Dana. “I won’t do it again.”
This raised yet more questions. For instance, how could I be certain she wouldn’t? It was not as if I had a way of knowing who was taking a peek inside my brain.
“You’ll know,” Stevie said.
Aargh!
Stevie merely giggled.
[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_2]
So there. That’s my life. The life of a junior feline spy. Having to team up with bullies. Having my mind read by Ragamuffins, Siamese and—now that I come to think of it—probably Poodles as well. Being snarled at by extremely disagreeable Peterbalds. Seeing dead bodies everywhere that aren’t dead bodies after all. And saving humans that don’t need saving.
If you ask me what I learned from all this? Well, that even though those humans didn’t need saving, lending a helping hand mademe feel good. Looking back at the Brookridge Park horror, I guess I went from being an egotist and a little bit of a fathead—