Harriet the Spy, Double Agent Read online

  Mrs. Welsch turned, one cheek deep rose and the other still pale. She looked at her husband as if for permission and said, “I suppose….”

  “Thanks!” exclaimed Harriet, and clattered upstairs before they had a chance to discuss it. She grabbed hold of the phone in the upstairs hall, twining its long cord around her hand as she placed a call to a number she knew by heart.

  Sport and Kate were making a big pot of two-alarm chili, a favorite from back in the days when Sport had to fix his dad dinners of rice, beans, and pasta six days out of seven. It was still Matthew’s favorite, though Kate had upgraded the recipe with big chunks of beef browned in onions and olive oil.

  “Texans never use hamburger meat,” she told Harriet, who was helping her chop the cilantro. “It’s chunk beef or chicken, or if you want to be really authentic, roadkill armadillo.” Kate’s ex-husband was from Lubbock, so she was a fount of such lore.

  Harriet always enjoyed eating dinner at Sport’s. The kitchen was cozy, and Kate and Sport elbowed each other good-naturedly, jostling for counter space. Matthew never 31

  emerged from his desk till the food hit the table. He still used an old-fashioned typewriter that dinged at the end of each line, and the pauses and bursts of staccato behind his closed door were a comforting sound track to life at the Rocques’. He’s a real writer, thought Harriet, admiring the audible rhythms of Matthew’s new novel. Sport arched to one side, still circling his spoon in the chili pot, as Kate opened the oven and took out a skillet of corn bread.

  “Better than ever.” Matthew beamed, leaning back on two legs of his chair with his hands splayed out over his stomach. “Who wants some ice cream?”

  “You finished the ice cream last night,” said Sport.

  “I did?”

  “Around three in the morning,” said Kate, scraping plates. “You told me it gave you a second wind.”

  “I forgot about that. What a crime. You’ve got to have ice cream with chili.” Harriet looked at Sport. She’d been hoping to catch him alone; it didn’t do to interrogate people in front of two witnesses. “Why don’t we go to the deli and pick some up?”

  “Excellent,” Matthew said. “I vote for coffee.” Sport frowned. “It’s my turn to do dishes.”

  “I’ve got ’em,” Kate said. “You two scat.”

  Harriet waited till Sport had bought two quarts of ice cream, one coffee, one butter pecan, before popping the question. “Who did Yolanda like at your school?”

  “Like?” Sport turned. “You mean like like, or—”

  “Crush. Did you ever notice her looking at anyone that way? He might have been older,” she added offhandedly.

  Sport shook his head. “I would have punched the guy right in the nose.” He put change in his pocket and picked up the bag. “Does she still wear those green shoes?” he asked in a reverent tone.

  Harriet groaned inwardly. I’m in for it now, she thought. I brought up the subject, and now I’ll be stuck with it. “Waterproof boots,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Boots,” echoed Sport in a dreamy voice.

  I don’t get this at all, thought Harriet. They’ve all gone wacko.

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  After they ate their ice cream, Harriet helped Kate dry the dishes while Sport and his dad watched a hockey game on TV. She looked at the wedding band shining on Kate’s left hand. Maybe she can explain this in-love stuff, Harriet thought. Kate and Matthew are newlyweds, just like Ole Golly and Mr. Waldenstein.

  “Kate?” she asked.

  “What?” Kate stretched up to stack bowls in a cabinet.

  “How did you first fall in love?”

  Kate looked at her, eyebrows arched. “With Matthew, you mean? Or when I was sixteen?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “Well,” Kate said thoughtfully, “it’s kind of like running a fever. You don’t always know when it starts, but at some point you realize that you’re unusually warm.

  Does that make any sense?”

  “I guess,” said Harriet, sounding unsure.

  Kate smiled. “Is he someone you know?” she asked gently.

  “Who?”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” said Kate. Her eyes twinkled. “Sometimes it’s more fun to keep it a secret. Especially if he’s a friend.” Harriet stared at her. “You don’t think that I—”

  “No, of course not,” said Kate, just a little too quickly. Her voice was amused.

  “I wouldn’t be caught dead,” said Harriet, so loudly that Matthew and Sport turned from the hockey game to stare at her.

  Harriet stood in the bathroom, brushing her teeth till the toothpaste foamed. She spit into the sink. How could Kate even think such a thing? The idea that Harriet M.

  Welsch, writer and spy, would develop a crush on anyone, much less on Sport, was appalling. Sport was her friend.

  True, he had changed a lot in the last year, and not just because of his crush on some fake name of Annie’s. He’d gone through a growth spurt that had suddenly made him a head taller than Harriet, so her gaze fell between Sport’s lumpy Adam’s apple and his wispy-haired chin. His manner was different too: gruffer, as if he were trying to fit with the older, more streetwise boys on his new baseball team. He still enjoyed cooking, but he no longer talked about cleansers and recipes without any self-consciousness the way he had back in the days before Kate had moved in. If somebody thought it was weird that Sport cooked and cleaned for his father, well, that was their problem.

  He wants to be normal, she thought, shutting off the cold-water tap. What a weird thing to want.

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  She watched Annie closely for clues throughout the next day. As Cassandra D’Amore, making dramatic pronouncements to classmates, she might leak some key information. But Cassandra confined herself to a few airy glosses on Romeo and Juliet, vis-à-vis “certain occurrences witnessed at family events in my previous walk of life.” Mr. Grenville seized on the chance to paint the Montagues and Capulets as rival Mafia families or street gangs and even broke into a couple of bars of the Jet song from West Side Story.

  Annie wanted to walk past the Christmas tree stand after school. Harriet thought they should lie low for a while. “We were in their bedroom,” she said. “There’s no way we can do any serious spying.”

  Annie rolled her eyes. “You’re so predictable.”

  “Let’s check on the rest of the route. It’s been eons since we watched the Birdlip Twins. And what about Fabio and Naima?”

  “They kiss too much.”

  “True. And he smokes besides. Wouldn’t he taste like a furnace?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Annie said primly. “I’d never consider a smoker.” Nonsmoker, thought Harriet. Might be a clue.

  In the end they decided to spy on the Birdlips. The Belgian embassy was a narrow white building with several flags. There was a strip of reserved parking at the curb, which usually boasted a town car or two with red, white, and blue diplomatic license plates.

  Sometimes drivers lounged in their front seats, wearing brimmed hats or dark sunglasses, listening to foreign radio stations.

  The ambassador and his wife had a ground-floor apartment next to the embassy building. They had three young children, a toddler girl and twin infants, and not one but two English nannies. The Birdlip Twins weren’t actual twins—they might not have even been sisters—but they were both pale and chin-less and moved with an eerie sameness, like synchronized swimmers. Even their names were close to identical: Maggie and Megan. When Harriet spotted the pair of them wheeling twin strollers through the pathways of Carl Schurz Park, she had tailed them back home to the embassy and added them to her spy route.

  The Birdlips shared a bedroom/sitting room just off the nursery, whose tall casement windows made warm-weather spying a cinch. But today all the windows were closed, and Annie and Harriet couldn’t hear anything. They quickly got tired of watching Maggie and Megan sort toddler socks into pairs and stack diapers. “Let’s check in on Harrison and his ni
ne kittens,” said Harriet. “They must be getting big.”

  “My fingers are freezing,” said Annie. “Let’s check in on cocoa.”

  “How about tomorrow?” said Harriet, watching her closely. “Have you got any plans for the weekend?”

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  “Um, I’m free on Sunday.” Annie turned her head, watching a pigeon soar skyward. She’s hiding something, thought Harriet.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” she pressed.

  Annie’s eyes stayed on the pigeon as it landed on top of a row of brick chimneys on one of the neighboring buildings. “I wonder if that’s where they nest.”

  “Something with your aunt and uncle?”

  Annie’s nod looked a little too grateful. “Aunt Barbara insisted. It’s some kind of Hanukkah thingy they do at their temple.”

  “You celebrate Hanukkah?” Harriet asked, surprised. Smith didn’t sound very Jewish, though now that she thought of it, Feigenbaum did. Was Annie Smith’s “real” name fake, then?

  “My mother is Jewish, my dad grew up Methodist. We kind of made up our own blend: Christmas tree and menorah, latkes with Easter eggs. Aunt Barbara and Uncle Morris never approved. I guess now it’s their chance to straighten me out.” This was far more than Annie had ever told Harriet about her family, but Harriet couldn’t help thinking that something was off. Her friend hadn’t met her eyes yet.

  “What time is this temple thing done? We could meet after that.” Annie flushed. “I don’t know exactly. I’ll call you.” Bingo, thought Harriet. Caught you.

  The next morning, Harriet rushed through her breakfast and took a position right next to the living room window, where she could watch the Feigenbaums’ house through the slats of the blind without being seen from the street. She held an open copy of Romeo and Juliet in her lap, in case her parents happened to wonder why she was glued to the beige brocade wing chair. Her spy belt, flashlight, and notebook were in her school backpack. An outgrown ski parka that Annie had never seen hung within easy reach, along with a pair of lensless glasses frames she kept on hand as a disguise. Stakeouts were dull, but Harriet relished the heightened sense of awareness that came with a long observation. She passed the time by trying to come up with the right succinct phrase for every person who walked down the sidewalk: a jogger with legs like a greyhound; a flat-footed West Indian nanny waddling after a plastic-swathed stroller.

  It was almost eleven a.m. when the Feigenbaums’ door finally opened. Harriet straightened at once. She peered through the blind slats as Morris, wrapped in a bulky tweed coat and Russian-style rabbit-fur hat, held the door open for Barbara, whose wide-belted trenchcoat made her look even tinier than usual. Then he turned back and locked the front door with a key. They walked down the stoop arm in arm. Annie was nowhere in sight. I knew it, thought Harriet, feeling triumphant. She looked at her wristwatch. I give her five minutes, she thought. As soon as they’re out of range.

  A short-haired blond woman with two springer spaniels walked past, but Harriet 35

  couldn’t be bothered with finding apt phrases. She pulled on the navy blue parka, shouldered her backpack, and stared at the Feigenbaums’ door. Six minutes passed. Then she saw something move in the alley alongside the brown-stone, where they kept the trash cans, and caught a quick glimpse of a red beret.

  Annie looked up and down as she opened the wooden gate, letting herself onto East Eighty-seventh Street. Harriet froze, holding her breath, even though she knew full well there was no way she could be spotted behind the closed blinds. She waited till she could see Annie’s back heading west. Then she put on her glasses frames, pulled up the hood of her parka, and slipped out the door.

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  Harriet stayed on the shady side of the street, keeping her distance from Annie.

  Even with her unfamiliar ski parka zipped up to her nose, she was careful to alter her walk so that she wouldn’t be recognized if Annie happened to glance her way. She was grateful that Annie had worn her bright red beret—it would be hard to lose sight of, even in the crush of holiday shoppers along Eighty-sixth Street, the neighborhood thoroughfare.

  Annie went west along Eighty-sixth till she got to Third Avenue. After crossing, she paused at the corner, took a deep breath, and entered a brightly lit, glass-fronted stand with giant signs trumpeting PAPAYA KING—FRESH JUICES—HOT DOGS. Harriet crossed the street quickly, before the light changed, and positioned herself right outside the big window, where she’d be obscured by a Drink to Your Health! poster.

  There was no place to sit, just a take-out counter and high, round tables where people could rest their cardboard trays while they ate standing up. There were several customers sipping juice drinks out of tall yellow cups. One of them smiled, dropped his empty cup into the garbage, and went to meet Annie.

  Harriet stared. He was older, all right—he appeared to be in his mid-twenties. He was dressed in a handwoven jacket that looked Guatemalan, and wore his blond hair hanging over his collar. He even had sort of a beard, a small goatee patch beneath his lower lip. He looks like an off-season surfer, thought Harriet.

  What happened next startled her even more. The window glass muffled the sound, but she clearly saw the blond surfer type mouth the word “Annie?” as if he were asking a question. When she nodded, he held out his hand (woven hemp watchband on right wrist; attention to detail) and shook Annie’s hand. It seemed they were meeting each other for the first time. I don’t get it, thought Harriet. Did she fall in love with an older-man pen pal?

  Before she could wonder too long, she realized Annie was turning in her direction. Harriet dipped her head lower, pretending to read the small print on a price list, and let them walk past her. The surfer guy’s words drifted to her ear as they went through the door.

  “… didn’t want you to take any chances,” he was saying to Annie.

  Chances? thought Harriet. What kind of chances?

  “So I’ll bring you right down to the restaurant,” he finished. Annie nodded, her hands jammed down deep in her pockets, her shoulders held rigid.

  They walked up the sidewalk to Lexington Avenue. Harriet didn’t dare to stay 37

  close enough to overhear what they said, but the blond guy seemed to be doing the bulk of the talking. When they got to the corner, he craned his head uptown and Harriet heard him say, “Perfect. There’s our bus.”

  Not so perfect for me, thought Harriet. She couldn’t very well get on the same bus—Annie would certainly recognize her in so close a space—and she wouldn’t be able to keep up on foot. Nor had she brought enough cash for a cab, even if she’d been willing to wheedle the driver into stopping at every bus stop and waiting.

  Harriet scanned the bus as it pulled to the curb and opened its doors with a pneumatic hiss. Every window was jam-packed with passengers standing back to back in the aisle. There was plenty of traffic on Lexington. With all these holiday shoppers forcing the bus to stop every two blocks, Harriet might stand a chance if Annie wasn’t going far. What do I have to lose? she thought.

  She crossed Eighty-sixth Street and started downtown at a racewalker’s clip. It would take a few minutes for that long bus line to file on board; she could get a jump start. The bus overtook her at Eighty-fourth, but sure enough, four people were waiting at the next stop, and the bus groaned its way to the curb to make room for them.

  Harriet kept pace for twelve more blocks, first getting ahead of the bus, then nearly losing it, then barely catching up at the next stop. The navy blue parka was making her sweat, and she longed to unzip it. I hope they’re not going much farther downtown, she thought. I need a breather.

  As if in answer, the surfer and Annie got off the bus just below Seventy-second Street. Annie glanced around nervously, touching her red beret. Harriet stepped to the side of a newsstand just in the nick of time, hiding behind magazine racks and cheap winter scarves. “Ready?” she heard the man say. Annie mumbled something she couldn’t make out. He patted her shoulder—not, in Harriet’s rather inex
pert opinion, the way a boyfriend would touch her—and opened the door of a seafood restaurant with dark wooden columns and elegant tablecloths.

  Harriet sidled up to the window’s far corner. Facing the street, she craned her neck over her shoulder to look inside. A uniformed headwaiter stood at his station, arching his eyebrows expectantly. A tall man with curly brown hair got up from the bar and went straight to them, pumping the surfer guy’s hand and stepping back to look at Annie. He opened his arms and she went to him dutifully, letting him fold her into an embrace.

  Harriet practically screamed with shock. The first guy was old, but this one was older—a bona fide grown-up, nearly her parents’ age, his sandy curls starting to thin at the temples. Had Annie gone out of her mind?