Gennifer Choldenko Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1. - THE CREAM OF THE CRIMINAL CROP

  Chapter 2. - THE SECRET PASSAGEWAY

  Chapter 3. - WILLY ONE ARM

  Chapter 4. - MURDERERS AND MADMEN

  Chapter 5. - AUNTIE’S REVENGE

  Chapter 6. - WHAT CAPONE WANTS

  Chapter 7. - ITCHY ALL OVER

  Chapter 8. - ICEBOX FLY

  Chapter 9. - THAT YOUR BOY, BOSS?

  Chapter 10. - A DANGEROUS GAME

  Chapter 11. - A ROOMFUL OF WIND-UP TOYS

  Chapter 12. - THE IRISH WAY

  Chapter 13. - EVERYBODY LIKES MOOSE

  Chapter 14. - DEAD TWELVE-YEAR-OLDS

  Chapter 15. - MAE CAPONE IS A LOOKER

  Chapter 16. - PINEAPPLE UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE

  Chapter 17. - PIXIE GUARD #1

  Chapter 18. - KISSING A DEAD SQUID

  Chapter 19. - DRUNK IN THE GUARD TOWER

  Chapter 20. - WELKUM HOM NADALEE

  Chapter 21. - SHINY BUTTONS

  Chapter 22. - TOILET’S STOPPED UP

  Chapter 23. - SEVEN FINGERS’S CANDY BARS

  Chapter 24. - A DEAL WITH THE WARDEN’S DAUGHTER

  Chapter 25. - THE BAD GUYS ARE LOCKED UP

  Chapter 26. - AL CAPONE IS THE WAITER

  Chapter 27. - THROW, CATCH, THROW, CATCH

  Chapter 28. - PIG HALF IN THE POKE

  Chapter 29. - A SWEET SPOT FOR MOOSE

  Chapter 30. - WHY ARE BOYS SPECIAL?

  Chapter 31. - THE WARDEN’S PARTY

  Chapter 32. - THE GOOD PRISONER

  Chapter 33. - OUTSIDE THE WARDEN’S HOUSE

  Chapter 34. - THE BOSS

  Chapter 35. - THE PIXIE JAILER PLAYGROUND

  Chapter 36. - KIDS ON THE ROCK

  Chapter 37. - THE YELLOW DRESS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  NOTES

  Acknowledgements

  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by The Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2009 by Gennifer Choldenko

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, organizations, and events portrayed

  in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously to lend a

  sense of realism to the story.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-15578-3

  1. United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island, California—Juvenile fiction. [1. United States

  Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island, California—Fiction. 2. Alcatraz Island (Calif.)—History—20th

  century—Fiction. 3. Autism—Fiction. 4. Brothers and sisters—Fiction.]

  I. Title. PZ7.C446265Ap 2009 [Fic]—dc22

  2009004157

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To my brother,

  GREY CATTELL JOHNSON,

  who is every bit as kind as Moose

  1.

  THE CREAM OF THE CRIMINAL CROP

  Monday, August 5, 1935

  Nothing is the way it’s supposed to be when you live on an island with a billion birds, a ton of bird crap, a few dozen rifles, machine guns, and automatics, and 278 of America’s worst criminals—“the cream of the criminal crop” as one of our felons likes to say. The convicts on Alcatraz are rotten to the core, crazy in the head, and as slippery as eels in axle grease.

  And then there’s me. Moose Flanagan. I live on Alcatraz along with twenty-four other kids and one more on the way. My father works as a prison guard and an electrician in the cell house up top. I live where most of us “civilians” do, in 64 building, which is dockside on the east side of Alcatraz—a base hit from the mobster Al Capone.

  Not many twelve-year-old boys can say that. Not many kids can say that when their toilet is stopped up, they get Seven Fingers, the ax murderer, to help them out, either. Even simple things are upside down and backwards here. Take getting my socks washed. Every Wednesday we put out our dirty laundry in big white bags marked with our name: FLANAGAN. Every Monday our clothes come back starched, pressed, folded, and smelling of soap and flour. They look like my mom washed them for me.

  Except she didn’t.

  My laundry man is Alcatraz #85: Al Capone. He has help, of course. Machine Gun Kelly works right alongside him in the laundry along with thirty other no-name hit men, con men, mad dog murderers, and a handful of bank robbers too.

  They do a good job washing the clothes for us and most everyone else on the island. But sometimes they do a little extra.

  The cons don’t care for Officer Trixle, so his laundry doesn’t return the same way as everyone else’s. His shirts are missing buttons, underwear is stiff with starch or dyed pansy pink, pants are missing a cuff or the fly is sewn shut so the guy can’t even take a leak unless he pulls his pants down like a little girl.

  I can’t say the cons are wrong about Officer Trixle. Darby Trixle is the kind of guy who only his wife likes—and not that much either. Last Saturday my best friend Jimmy Mattaman and I were looking for a barrel for Jimmy’s fly menagerie, and Janet Trixle, Darby’s seven-year-old daughter, just happened to see we were walking by the Black Mariah, the Alcatraz paddy wagon. That was all we were doing—walking by it. But when Darby saw the Mariah had a flat tire, who do you think got the blame?

  Yours truly.

  It couldn’t have been Darby drove over a nail. Oh no. It had to have been us. We had to go with him to San Francisco and carry a new tire down Van Ness Avenue, to the ferry and up the switchback, to where the Mariah was parked up top. Darby wouldn’t even let us roll it on the road. Didn’t want it to get dirty. It’s a tire! Where does he think it usually goes?

  My father wouldn’t help us with Darby either. “I know you had nothing to do with that flat tire, but it won’t hurt you to give Darby a hand, Moose,” is what he said.

  When I first moved here, I thought all the bad guys were on one side of the bars and all the good guys were on the other. But lately, I’ve begun to wonder if there isn’t at least one officer on the free side who ought to be locked up and maybe a convict who isn’t half as bad as he’s cracked up to be. I’m thinking about Al Capone—the most notorious gangster in America, the worst guy we have up top. How could it be that he did me a good turn?

  It doesn’t make sense, does it? But Al Capone got my sister, Natalie, into a school called the Esther P. Marinoff where she’d been turned down twice already. It’s a boarding school for kids who have their wires crossed up. It’s a school and not a school . . . a place to make her normal.

  I don’t know for certain it was Capone who helped us. I mean the guy is locked up in a five-by-nine-foot cell
. He’s not allowed to make a phone call or write a letter that isn’t censored word for word. It doesn’t seem possible he could have done anything to help us, even if he wanted to.

  But out of desperation, I sent a letter asking Capone for help and Natalie got accepted. Then I got a note in the pocket of my newly laundered shirt: Done, it said.

  I haven’t told anyone about this. It’s something I try not to think about, but today, the day Nat’s finally leaving for school, I can’t keep my mind from going over the details again and again.

  The thing that stumps me is why. I never even met Al Capone . . . why would he help me?

  I watch Nat as she sits on the living room floor going through our books one by one. She looks almost like a regular sixteen-year-old this morning, if her mouth wasn’t twitching right and right and right again and her shoulders were just down where they’re supposed to be. She opens a book, fans her face with the pages, then sets the book back on the shelf, just exactly as it was. She has been through one entire shelf this way. Now she’s working on the second.

  Normally, my mom wouldn’t let her do this, but today she doesn’t want to take the chance of upsetting her.

  “You ready to go, Natalie?” my mother asks.

  Nat moves faster. She fans the pages so quickly each book sounds like one quick ffffrrrt. All I hear is ffffrrrt ffffrrrt ffffrrrt as I look out our front window down to the dock. Sure enough there’s Officer Trixle. He’s supposed to be off today, but Trixle can’t keep his nose out of our business. He’s almost as much trouble as Piper, the warden’s daughter—only not half as pretty. When you look like Piper does, people forgive a whole lot of things, but never mind about that. What I think about Piper is kind of embarrassing, to tell you the truth.

  My father comes out of the bathroom. The toilet is running again. The plumbing in 64 building is held together with bubble gum and last year’s oatmeal stuck hard and solid. But luckily for us, Seven Fingers, our very own felon plumber, fixes it for free. Not exactly for free actually. We pay him a chocolate bar every time, but no one is supposed to know that.

  “Time to go, Natalie,” my mom says.

  Natalie is wearing a new yellow dress today. My mother cut the pattern, but the convicts in the tailor shop sewed it. The cons did a pretty good job. Only the belt is bugging Nat. She pulls at it, weaving it in and out of the loops. In and out. In and out. Nat’s mouth puckers to one side. “Moose school. Natalie home,” she says.

  “Not today,” my mother says brightly. “Today is your big day. Today you’re going to school.”

  “Not today,” Nat tells her. “Not today. Not today.”

  I can’t help smiling at this. Natalie likes to repeat what you say and here she’s repeating my mom’s exact words with a change of inflection that makes them say what Natalie wants them to say and not at all what my mother meant. I love when Natalie outsmarts Mom this way. Sometimes Nat is smarter than we are. Other times, she doesn’t understand the first thing about anything. That’s the trouble with Natalie—you never know which way she’ll go.

  The first time Nat went to the Esther P. Marinoff School she pitched a fit the size of Oklahoma and they kicked her out, but I don’t think that will happen this time. She’s getting better in her own weird way. I used to say Nat’s like a human adding machine without the human part, but now she’s touching down human more days than not. And each time she does it feels as if the sun has come out after sixty straight days of rain.

  “Tell her, Moose. Tell her how wonderful it’s going to be,” my mother says.

  “Tell her, Moose. Tell her how wonderful it’s going to be,” Nat repeats, picking up her button box and holding it tight against her chest.

  “You get to take your buttons, Nat. Mom said,” I say.

  I almost think I see her smile then—as much of a smile as you ever get from Natalie anyway. She peeks inside her button box, checking to make sure all of her precious buttons are exactly where they’re supposed to be.

  When we head down to the dock, my mom’s step is light on the stairs. She’s so sure that the Esther P. Marinoff will be the thing that fixes Natalie. My dad’s feet are moving to the beat of an Irish jig. Natalie is taking each step carefully and methodically as if she wants each foot to make a lasting impression on the stairs.

  When we get down to the water’s edge I see Trixle walking across the dock, bullhorn in hand.

  “Two hundred yards back please! All boats must stay two hundred yards off the shore!” Officer Trixle booms through his bullhorn to a tour boat that has come too close to the island.

  “Warned him before, that one. Mac’ll put a bead on him. Fix ’em good,” Trixle tells my father.

  Natalie hates loud noises. Once they shot a warning blast into the water when we were in our apartment and she curled up in a ball in the middle of the living room and stayed that way for the better part of the afternoon. Another time she didn’t seem to hear a gun go off ten feet away. It’s impossible to predict what Natalie will do.

  “Darby, hey Darby . . .” my father wheedles. “Please—not today, okay, buddy?”

  “Got to learn to straighten up and fly right,” Darby mutters, “if she’s coming back, that is.” His eyes are bright with the unasked question.

  Before the tower guard can get the boat in his gun sights, it turns starboard and hightails back to the city, and the tick in my mom’s cheek relaxes.

  Officer Trixle gets a happy little bounce to his step. He motions to the guard tower anyway, and the guard tower officer pelts the bay with a showy spray of firepower that pounds like fireworks exploding inside your head.

  Natalie shrieks high and piercing like the escape siren. She closes her eyes, wraps her arms around her head, and begins to rock.

  The bullets don’t get anywhere near the tour boat, but it roars forward, sinking low behind as it struggles to gain speed.

  “Natalie, it’s all done now. It’s all over. No more guns, okay? No more,” I tell her as my mother digs in her bag for the emergency lemon cake.

  “They were leaving already,” my mom whispers to my father. “That was completely unnecessary.”

  “He’s just doing his job, Helen,” my father says, but his face is pinched like his belt is a notch too tight.

  Nat’s arms stay wrapped around her head like a bandage. She rocks from foot to foot, still making her little shrieks.

  Trixle hitches up his trousers and walks toward us. He stares at Natalie. “Got a problem here, Cam?”

  “No problem. We got it under control.” My father’s voice is confident and commanding like a Boy Scout leader’s.

  Trixle sucks on his lip. “Don’t look that way to me.”

  “Just scared her is all,” my father tells him.

  Trixle clears his throat. “Gonna have to do an incident report on this, Cam. Warden’s orders.”

  My father frowns and lowers his voice as if he’s letting Trixle in on a secret. “Nothing to worry about here, Darby.”

  Darby makes a juicy noise with his spit. “Anything out of the ordinary, I got to report.”

  My mom picks up Nat’s suitcase, hoping to distract her and get her away from Darby. “Let’s go, Nat,” she says.

  “But what about Jimmy and Theresa?” I ask. “They wanted to say goodbye. Couldn’t you wait? I can run get them. It will only take a minute.” Theresa is Jimmy’s little sister and she’s really good with Natalie.

  My mom shakes her head. Nat’s shrieking has subsided. Now it’s more like the hum of a radio gone haywire. But my mom clearly wants to get her out of here.

  I don’t think Nat will go, but she does. She’s still humming, still holding her head, but she’s walking along behind my mother, yes she is.

  “Bye, Nat.” I wave stiffly.

  “Moose bye. Moose bye,” she says as she toe-walks across the gangplank.

  I take a step forward. I know better than to try to hug her. Nat hates to be touched, but I want to go get the Mattamans at least. I prom
ised I’d let them know when she was leaving.

  My father puts his hand on my arm. “She can’t take much more hullabaloo,” he murmurs, his eyes on Darby Trixle, who is deep in conversation with the buck sergeant.

  My mom waves to us from the starboard side, scooting Nat’s suitcase under the seat. Nat sits down, her eyes trained on her lap. The motor roars to a start and the Frank M. Coxe pulls out fast, carving a white wake in the stirred-up brown water.

  We watch until the boat is so small it could fit in the finger of my baseball glove. And then it’s gone.

  2.

  THE SECRET PASSAGEWAY

  Same day—Monday, August 5, 1935

  There’s nothing like baseball to get your mind off of things you’d rather not think about. The smell of the glove, the feel of the ball, that thwack the bat makes when you crush the ball. . . . It’s enough to cure anything bad that could ever happen. And today is a baseball day, because my friend Scout from school is coming to Alcatraz this afternoon. Scout is Mr. Baseball. He has his own team and he can really play.

  I tell Jimmy all about this inside the crawlspace under 64 building that runs beneath apartment 1D, a vacant apartment, to 1E, Mrs. Caconi’s place. The crawlspace is in what we like to call Chinatown because it looks like the alleyways in Chinatown in San Francisco. Normally, the crawlspace is locked, but last week Jimmy saw the screws in the door hinge were loose, so he took off the hinge and we opened the door. When we leave, we put the hinges back and the door seals up tight like no one has ever been inside.

  The only problem is it’s dark in here—everything is coated with an inch of dust and you have to crawl on your hands and knees, avoid the ant holes, and watch the beams so you won’t clonk your head. The cobwebs alone could kill you the way they descend like gauze over your mouth and you breathe ’em in and hope you haven’t sucked a spider down your throat. Still, it’s a good place to talk things over. In our secret passageway, we say things we wouldn’t say anywhere else. I like that no one knows about this place except Jimmy and me.