Magic Street Page 0,91

to phone people. We got to go places and try to stop things."

"You got a phone here that works?" Ceese asked Yo Yo.

"No," said Ceese. "But my mom does. Look, I'll go home and we'll start calling. Find out about Sherita. Where she is. I can get a patrol car to go there and stop it if it's really happening like you think. A gang rape."

"What about Sabrina and her nose?" asked Mack.

"I'll call her family. Maybe she's cut herself. Maybe they can still get her to a hospital - reattach it."

"Then why you sitting here, boy?" asked Yo Yo.

"Mrs. McCallister won't answer the phone," said Mack. "She turns it off at night."

"Then you two go there while I go home. We had... who was it?... Sabrina, Mrs. McCallister, Sherita Banks, Professor Williams, and then you woke up. I'm calling everybody and you're going over to McCallisters' house."

By the time Mack got up from the couch and outside the house, he could see Ceese already going around the bend in the road on his way down the hill to home.

Then Yo Yo brought the motorcycle out of the garage and revved it up while Mack got on behind her.

Across the street, the back of the Joneses' house looked out over the street at the bottom of the hairpin - and Yo Yo's house. Now Moses Jones was out on the back deck stark naked yelling down at them. Mack couldn't hear what he was saying because the motorcycle was so loud. But he could see how he nearly had a fit, jumping up and down and screaming after Yo Yo raised one finger. It wasn't even the bad finger. But maybe in the dark old Moses Jones couldn't tell. He was still jumping up and down when they roared on up the hill to McCallisters'.

Ophelia McCallister lived in the house she had shared with her husband before he died. It was right at the top of Cloverdale, just a couple of houses from where the road dead-ended at the always-locked and often-climbed gateway leading into Hahn Park. Mack got off the bike before it even stopped, pushing himself up like in a game of leapfrog and hopping up so the bike kept going underneath him. But of course he still had a lot of momentum, so he staggered forward and since Yo Yo had just brought the bike to a stop, he crashed into her.

She switched the motor off.

Across the street two neighbors had come to their windows to look at the motorcycle and they didn't seem too happy. Though at least they weren't naked and jumping up and down like Moses Jones had been.

They got to the door and Mack rang the bell and then he knocked loud and started shouting,

"Mrs. McCallister!"

Now the neighbors were out of their houses. "What are you doing?" demanded Harrison Grand, the next-door neighbor on the park side. "Do you know what time it is?"

"I don't know," said Mr. Grand. And then he looked at Yo Yo and suddenly his face brightened.

"She keeps a spare key."

"Where?" asked Mack.

Harrison Grand immediately jogged to the juniper next to the front door and lifted up a rock that turned out to be a fake. He took out a key and within a few moments he and Mack and Yo Yo were searching the house.

"She isn't here," said Grand.

"I thought she would be," said Mack.

"Well she was," said Yo Yo. "Her bed's been slept in. But she's not in it now."

"Why would she leave?" asked Grand.

"Mr. Grand," said Mack, "you know where Mr. McCallister's buried?"

"Well you can bet it ain't Forest Lawn," he said.

Again he glanced at Yo Yo, and again he was suddenly enlightened. "I remember she has a cab come and drive her there every week but I took her once a few years ago and it's... it's..."

He walked to the calendar on the wall over the phone. He pointed to the name and address of the cemetery that had given it out to their customers, including Mrs. McCallister. "But you don't think she's gone to visit her husband's grave in the middle of the night."

Mack knew what would probably happen but he tried to explain anyway. "I know this sound crazy but I think she's with her husband now."

"Dead?"

"No, alive. But with him. You know where his plot is?"

"I don't think so."

Yo Yo touched his shoulder. "Yes you do."

"Yes," he said. "I do."

"Can you take me there?" asked Mack.

"Right now?" he asked.

"You saying she's down