I tried to get up from the ground, but suddenly there was a formidable weight on my back.
“You’re not going anywhere,” one of the mothers said, sit ing on me firmly. “Consider this a citizen’s arrest.” Two more mothers and the eye-patched kid piled on. I almost let go of the leash. Luckily, Boris seemed to have had enough excitement for the day, and was now barking out orders to no one in particular.
“The police are coming!” someone yelled.
The baby’s mother ran over to Lily, who had no idea that it was the baby’s mother. I saw her say, “One sec,” as she tried to get the baby to stop crying. I think the mother was thanking her—but then a few other mothers descended and boxed Lily in.
“I saw this on Dateline,” one of the louder mothers was saying. “They create a diversion, then steal the baby. In broad daylight!”
“This is absurd!” I yelled. The kid started bouncing up and down on my tailbone.
Two police o cers arrived and were immediately besieged with versions of the story. The truth went vastly underrepresented. Lily looked confused as she handed the baby over—hadn’t she done the right thing? The police asked her if she knew me, and she said of course she did.
“You see!” one mother crowed. “An accomplice!”
The ground was cold and slushy, and the weight of the mothers was starting to rupture some of my choicer internal organs. I might have confessed to a crime I hadn’t commit ed in order to get out of there.
It was unclear whether we were being arrested or not.
“I think you should come with us,” one of the of icers said. It didn’t seem like Actually, I’d rather not was an appropriate answer to give.
They didn’t cu us, but they did march us to the squad car and make us sit in the back with Boris. It wasn’t until we were back there, with some mommies calling for vengeance and the ying baby’s mother concentrating on making sure her baby was okay, that I got a chance to actually say something to Lily.
“Nice catch,” I told her.
“Thanks,” she said. She was in shock, staring out the window.
“It was beautiful. Really. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.” She looked at me for what felt like the rst time. We held like that for a few heartbeats. The squad car pulled away from the park. They didn’t bother with the sirens.
“I guess we know where we’re going now,” she said.
“Fate has a strange way of making plans,” I agreed.
Lily had relatives all across the five boroughs, but unfortunately none of them were in law enforcement.
She listed many of them for me, trying to figure out who would be best suited to get us out of this jam.
“Uncle Murray got indicted, which is pret y much the opposite of what we need. Great-aunt Mrs. Basil E. dated someone in the district at orney’s o ce for a while … but I don’t think it ended well. One of my cousins went into the CIA, but I’m not allowed to say which one.
This is so frustrating!”
We weren’t, thankfully, locked in a cell. Instead, we’d been marched into an interrogation room, although nobody had thought to interrogate us yet. Maybe they were just watching through the mirror to see if we’d confess something to each other.
I was surprised by how well Lily was taking our incarceration. She was far from a wee timorous beastie—if anything, I was the one who was jangled as we were ramrodded into custody. None of the police o cers seemed particularly impressed that neither of us had parents who were currently within bailing-out distance. Lily ended up calling her brother. I ended up calling Boomer, who happened to be with Yohnny and Dov at the time.
“It’s all over the news!” Boomer told me. “Some people are calling you heroes and others are saying you’re criminals. The videos are all over the Web. I think you might even make the six o’clock news.”
This was not how I’d seen the day going.
Lily and I hadn’t been read our rights or of ered a lawyer, so I was guessing we hadn’t actually been charged with anything yet.
Meanwhile, Boris was get ing hungry.
“I know, I know,” Lily responded to his whining. “Hopefully your daddy doesn’t have Internet where he is.” I tried to think of interesting conversational topics to bring up. Had she been named after the ower? How long had she been dog walking? Wasn’t she relieved that none of the of icers had thought to use a billy club against us?
“You’re uncharacteristically quiet,” she said, sit ing down at the interrogation table and taking the red notebook from her jacket pocket.
“Do you want to write something down and pass it over to me?”
“Do you have a pen?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It’s in my bag. And they took my bag.”
“I guess we’ll have to talk, then,” I said.
“Or we could take the Fifth.”
“Is this your first time in prison?” I asked.
Lily nodded. “You?”
“My mom once had to bail my father out, and there wasn’t anybody at home to watch me. So I came along. I must’ve been seven or eight.
At rst she told me he’d had a lit le accident, which made me think he’d peed himself somewhere inconvenient. Then I was told it had been
‘disorderly conduct’—it never went to trial, so there’s no paper trail.”
“That’s awful,” Lily said.