3.
WILLY ONE ARM
Same day—Monday, August 5, 1935
Alcatraz Island is shaped like a wedding cake with three tiers and lots of paths and stairs and switchbacks that lead from one level to the next. The parade grounds where we play baseball is a big, flat parking lot-size cement area in the middle tier of the island. It makes a pretty good field except for the wind. I can’t tell you how irritating it is to hit a good ball and have the wind make it a foul.
Annie and I are playing catch right now, which gets my mind off of Capone, but it doesn’t seem to distract Annie one bit. Every other throw she’s walking up to whisper another suggestion. I should wash my own laundry, so Capone won’t have a way to communicate with me. I should talk to the people at the Esther P. Marinoff School. I should come with her to church. The priest will know what to do.
“I’m not even Catholic,” I tell Annie as Piper flies down the steep switchback on her roller skates, her long hair streaming behind her, her dress flowing back so you can see the outline of her—okay, never mind what you can see. She goes so fast sparks fly from her skates. She shoots up in the air over a crack in the road and lands with a graceful clickety-clack-clack.
We’re not supposed to race down the switchback, but most of the grown-ups look the other way when it’s the warden’s daughter who’s breaking the rules. No one ever races Piper, because she always wins . . . either fair and square or the other way. My mom says Piper is twelve going on eighteen and not a good eighteen either.
When Piper stops, she gives us her full movie star smile. “Hi.” She runs her hands through her hair and whispers to Annie.
We throw the ball a few times. Me whipping it hard and Annie gutlessly tossing it. She’s too upset to concentrate on what she’s doing.
The count bell rings like it does every hour on the hour to count the cons and make sure none have escaped. No one pays any attention. It’s like the gulls carping and complaining and the deep rumble of the foghorn. These are the sounds of Alcatraz—the ticking of our own island clock, I guess you could say.
“Hey . . . what’s going on with you two?” Piper asks, looking at me, then Annie, then me. “You aren’t insulting each other.”
“Nothing,” Annie and I answer in unison.
Piper looks back and forth between us again. “No, really.”
“Nothing is going on,” Annie says, louder this time.
Piper laughs. “Annie, you’re such a bad liar,” she says.
Piper is right. Annie is a terrible liar. It’s only been five minutes and Piper already knows something’s up. Of course, I’m not much better.
“Well stop it.” Piper shakes her finger at us. “Just, you know, kiss and make up.”
Annie snorts. “I’m not kissing him.” She throws the ball hard for once, her cheeks flushed. “That’s your job, Piper.”
“Are you kidding, I wouldn’t kiss Moose if you paid me a hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, a million . . . ” Piper says as she skates by me.
“Sure you wouldn’t,” Annie mutters, throwing the ball so hard it practically blisters my hand.
“I wouldn’t,” Piper insists. “Can you imagine kissing Moose? It would be like kissing a . . . a . . . bagpipe.”
“A bagpipe?” I say. “Thanks a lot.”
“Hey Moose, did you know Piper’s got cons working in her house?” Annie asks.
“Right, Annie.” I roll my eyes.
“Actually, I do.” Piper smiles brightly like her daddy just bought her a new puppy. “Buddy Boy is a confidence man—you know, a con artist—he’s our houseboy, and Willy One Arm is a thief. He’s our cook.”
I stretch up to catch Annie’s fly ball, stop it with my glove, then turn and face Piper full on. “What are you, crazy?”
“Her mom needs extra help. She’s in a family way,” Annie explains.
“Did you have to bring that up?” Piper snaps.
“It’s not a secret. One look at her and you can see. Besides, your father has been telling everybody in the universe.”
“You don’t know the half of it so just shut up okay, Annie?” Piper growls.
“Wait . . . Piper’s mom needs extra help from a thief?” I ask.
“He’s not going to steal anything.” Piper snorts. “Being a passman is the best convict job on the whole island. Why would he risk losing a job like that?”
I shake my head. “Why would you break the law and get yourself locked up for life? You think these guys are logical?”
Piper puffs up her chest. “Cons won’t mess with the warden. They wouldn’t dare.”
“So what then . . . your mom’s going to hand her baby over to a one-armed felon? Hands up.” I pretend to aim a pistol. “I have a loaded diaper right here.”
Piper laughs. I like the sound of her laugh. I can’t help it, I do.
“Rock-a-bye baby, in the cell house up top,” I sing. “When the wind blows the cradle will rock. When the cons make a break, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, handcuffs and all.”
I pretend to carry a tray with one hand, the other arm tucked behind my back. “Where’s Willy One Arm’s other arm? Think about that after he serves you your supper.”
Now Piper is doubled over laughing.
I strum an imaginary guitar and sing, “Where, oh where, do the stray arms go? Where oh where—”
“Moose, stop it, okay? We have to talk,” Annie barks.
“Uh-oh. She’s serious.” Piper mimics Annie, waggling her head.
Annie glares at Piper, then her eyes find me.
“Oh by all means talk, then,” Piper says, her voice heavy with sarcasm.
“We don’t need to talk,” I tell Annie.
Annie glowers at me. “Yes, we do.”
Piper’s laugh turns raspy again. “You guys sound like Bea and Darby Trixle when Darby forgot their anniversary. Remember how she locked him out of the apartment and he had to stay in the bachelors’ quarters?”
Annie and I stare at each other, ignoring Piper.
Piper shrugs her shoulders. “Okay, fine, don’t tell me what’s going on, I don’t even care.” She pauses as if she’s waiting for us to fill her in.
Annie and I continue to stare at each other, like we’re in a competition and we lose points if we blink.
Piper flicks at the cement with her skate. “You want to have secrets, go right ahead,” she says as a bullhorn booms across the parade grounds.
“Moose Flanagan! ”
Uh-oh . . . not Trixle again. He’s got Janet with him too. She’s carrying her own bullhorn—a small one, but it works. There’s no separating either of them from their bullhorns. They probably use them at the dinner table. “PLEASE PASS THE POTATOES! ”
I grasp the ball in my glove and run across the parade grounds. “Yes, sir,” I say. Janet has her hair braided so tightly it gives me a headache to look at her. She stands behind her father, holding the bullhorn at the ready. Theresa says whenever they play together and Janet doesn’t like something, she bellows into her bullhorn and her parents come running.
“You have a friend visiting today?” Darby asks.
“Yes, sir.”
“His name?”
“Scout McIlvey.”
Trixle takes out his handkerchief and blows his nose. His jacket is too small. It pulls across his back, making his muscles bulge and his shoulders pinch together. He puts his handkerchief back in his pocket and looks down at his clipboard. “Supposed to be on the one o’clock boat. You understand that you must get a signed permission for the exact boat a visitor is on?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you must meet the boat your visitor is taking?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And keep your visitor with you at all times?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m not sure who let him on—”
“What do you mean, sir, who let him on? He’s here now?” I ask.
“Not now. No. Without the correct paperwork, I had to send him on his way.”
“You sent him away?”
Janet can’t cover her smile now. It’s popping off her face. She lives for stuff like this.
“He’s not supposed to be on the ten o’clock. What did I just explain to you?”
“Mr. Trixle, please . . . Scout was here and now he’s gone?”
He nods his pin head. “Without the correct John Hancock I had no choice but to—”
I’m practically flying down the switchback, my feet barely making contact with the road. But I don’t need to get too far before I see the Coxe, our ferry, on its way back to San Francisco.
The boat was in the dock for twenty whole minutes before it headed out again. Trixle had waited until they weighed anchor to come find me. Of course he did.