Dragonfly by Jaxn Hill

Sully was getting tired and fussy. Torstein consented to catch the bus the rest of the way downtown. In fact, he sent everybody home when we got into the city. Franz said he would go report to Nikolai and find us the next day. My brother Peter and I went with Torstein to get Sully back to Angel’s place.

There were police cars outside the building. Peter said, “If the police are busting Angel, they’ll take Sully away.”

Torstein thought it over and said, “She’ll be out in a day or two if they do arrest her. Can you guys look after Sully ’til then?”

“I can, or Maggie will, I bet,” I said. I didn’t know what Pete’s wife would think if he brought Sully home. She wasn’t home that much herself, but you never know. “You guys stay here with Sully a minute. I’ll go check.”

I had never actually been to Angel’s apartment, but Sully told me what number it was, and I went into the building. What a dump! It smelled bad in the dark hallways, but there was nobody in them — the people who usually peed in the stairwell must have disappeared at the arrival of the police, who were in Angel’s little two-room apartment. The door was open, so I stuck my head in, and Angel started shrieking at me:

“Have you seen Sully?! Sully’s gone!”

I guess she’d come down sometime that afternoon, remembered that she had a kid, realized she hadn’t seen him in a while, and called the police — something none of us would ever have expected her to do.

I said, “Yeah, he’s downstairs with Torstein. We took him to the beach.”

Angel started cussing a blue streak at me, and the police grabbed me by the arms. One of the officers said, “You know where the little boy is?”

They hustled me down into the street, and Angel came along behind us, screaming that we were kidnappers, and, I think, murderers, but she didn’t mean that, I’m pretty sure. She was really worked up. Torstein and Pete brought Sully over, and Angel grabbed him and held onto him while she kept screaming at us about kidnapping, and the police arrested us.

Sully got really scared when he saw them cuffing us — he started screaming then for them to let us go, and he squirmed free from Angel and started kicking at the policemen and hanging onto Torstein. It was a bad scene. When Angel saw what Sully was doing, she started screaming at him to get back and shut up, and that made him more frantic than ever.

Finally Torstein knelt down — with his hands cuffed behind him — and Sully wrapped his arms around Torstein’s neck, just sobbing. Torstein kept saying to him “It’s OK, Sully, it’s OK. Everything will be all right in the morning. Just go on with your mom. I’ll be back tomorrow ...”

They put us into an interrogation room together. A detective named Waverling was pretty sure we were kidnappers, and worse. “What’d you guys want with that kid?” he demanded. “Are you perverts?”

We’d put in a call to Vic Mondino, one of Torstein’s friends who’d been a lawyer. He’d been with us on the trip to the beach — in fact, he’d barely gotten home when we called. He’d told us to say nothing until he arrived, but Torstein answered the detective anyway:

“We just took him to the shore. He wanted to see the Dunker.”

“Another pervert?” the detective sneered.

“My cousin. You’ve heard about him. He dunks people in the ocean?”

“Torstein,” I said. “Vic said not to say anything until he gets here.”

“It’s OK,” Torstein said. “Detective Waverling understands.” He turned to the detective and offered him some sunflower seeds.

Waverling didn’t accept any seeds. His next words surprised me. “I hear in addition to being a pervert, you’re mixed up with Nikolai, too. Got some of his muscle working for you.”

Torstein shook his head. “I got nobody working for me,” he said. “And I never met Nikolai.”

“I hear things,” the detective said. “Big guy named Bruiser running with you now. Nikolai’s wondering what you’re offering that he’s not.”

“Oh, well, that’s easy,” Torstein said. “It’s a lot more fun being with me than strong-arming people. You should try it.”

The detective got mad then. “Who am I strong-arming?! I didn’t strong-arm any one of you. I never touched you at all.”

Vic arrived then. He’d called Maggie and sent her to Angel’s apartment, where the officers were still taking her statement. Vic said he was pretty sure once Maggie explained things, Angel wouldn’t be pressing charges. He allowed us to answer a few questions, but 20 minutes later, we were released. Angel hadn’t filed charges, and Sully hadn’t been molested, so they had no reason to hold us.

As we were leaving, Torstein invited Detective Waverling to come visit us sometime. I was hoping he wouldn’t. I didn’t know if he was on the take, or what, but I didn’t like how we kept running into Nikolai.