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lips were pulled back so that you could see his teeth gritted tight.
    Jim took the soldier out of Franky’s hand, looked at it for a second, said, “Sergeant Rock,” and then put it into his pocket.
    Franky’s brow furrowed. “Give it back,” he said. His hands balled into fists, and he took a step forward as a challenge.
    Jim said, “Let me ask you a question. When the prowler saw your mother’s ass…”
    â€œStop saying my mother’s ass,” said Franky, and took another step forward.
    â€œâ€¦did it look like this?” asked Jim, and he flipped the magazine so that the centerfold opened.
    Franky saw it and went slack. He brought his hands up to his cheeks, his fingers partially covering his eyes. “Oh, no,” he said, and stared.
    â€œOh, yes,” said Jim. He ripped off the bottom third, the page containing the big ass, and handed it to Franky. “This is your reward for bravery in the sewer pipe.”
    Franky took the torn page in his trembling hands, his gaze fixed on the picture. Then he looked up and said, “Let me see the magazine.”
    â€œI can’t,” said Jim. “It’s Exhibit A. Evidence. You’ll get your fingerprints on it.” He rolled it up and put it under his arm the way Mr. Mangini carried the newspaper as he walked down the street coming home from work every evening.
    We spent another couple of hours looking for clues all around the school field and through the woods, but George lost the scent, and we eventually headed home. At every other driveway we passed, Franky would take his piece of centerfold out of his back pocket and stop to stare at it. We left him standing in front of Mrs. Grimm’s house, petting the image as if it were flesh instead of slick paper.

Botch Town
    When we got home, Jim made me go in first and see if the coast was clear. My mother wouldn’t be home for about two hours, and Nan and Pop were in their place. I didn’t see Mary around, but that didn’t matter anyway.
    Up in his room, Jim slid the loose floorboard back and stowed the magazine. Then he got up and went to his desk. “Here,” he said, and turned around holding a black-and-white-bound composition book. “This is for the investigation.” He walked over and handed it to me. “Write down everything that’s happened so far.”
    I took the book from him and nodded.
    â€œWhat are you gonna do with the soldier?” I asked.
    Jim took the green warrior out of his pocket and held it up. “Guess,” he said.
    â€œBotch Town?” I asked.
    â€œPrecisely,” he said.
    I followed him out of the room, down the stairs, through the living room, to the hallway that led to the first-floor bedrooms. At the head of this hall was a door. He opened it, and we descended the creaking wooden steps into the dim mildew of the cellar.
    The cellar was lit by one bare bulb with a pull string and whatever light managed to seep in from outside through thefour window wells. The floor was unpainted concrete, as were the walls. The staircase bisected the layout, and there was an area behind the steps, where a curtain hung, that allowed access from one side to the other. Six four-inch-thick metal poles positioned in a row across the center of the house supported the ceiling.
    It was warm in the winter and cool in the summer down there in the underground twilight, where the aroma of my mother’s oil paints and turpentine mixed with the pine and glittering tinsel scent of Christmas decorations heaped in one corner. It was a treasure vault of the old, the broken, the forgotten. Stuff lay on shelves or stacked along the walls, covered with a thin layer of cellar dust, the dandruff of concrete, and veiled in cobwebs hung with spider eggs.
    On Pop’s heavy wooden workbench, complete with crushing vise, there sat coffee cans of rusted nuts and bolts and nails, planes, rasps, wrenches, levels with