Alfie set his bowler hat back on his head and then held one of the bills up to the light. “I don’t see any watermark,” he said.
“Of course not,” Nilly said. “It’s made of water.”
“What kind of nonsense is this?” Mama Crunch said. “Monopoly money is play money whether it’s fake or real.”
“That’s actually a very common misunderstanding, Mrs. Crunch,” Nilly said, holding up a toenail chip. It was yellow and white and looked exactly like a . . . well, an old, well-used toenail. “But when they created the game of Monopoly, they copied the money used in Monopolynesia.”
“Monopolynesia?” Mama Crunch repeated, lowering her arms to her sides in a way that allowed Nilly to see her bulging biceps.
“Yup,” Nilly said, crunching a toenail chip between his teeth and smiling quickly.
“There is no country called Monopolynesia,” Alfie said quietly.
Nilly chewed and chewed. Then he said, “If the Monopolyppians could hear you now, they would be really insulted, Alfie.”
“Oh yeah?” Alfie said. Then he lifted his chin and pulled his knife across his throat, making a scraping sound. Short, black crumbs of stubble sprinkled onto his fish like pepper. “And what would they do about that?”
“Probably not that much,” Nilly said with a shrug. “Because they’re shy, you know, the Monopolyppians. And so small. Their country is just a small atoll in the Pacific somewhere between Togaparty and Danish Guano.”
Just then Nilly felt something big, heavy, and warm settle around the back of his neck. Mama Crunch had taken a seat in the chair next to him, and the arm she wrapped around him made Nilly think of an enormous anaconda snake he had once encountered.
“Listen up, Mr. Sherl. My boys might not be the brightest geography students. But unfortunately for you, I went to middle school and housewifery school. And I’ve never heard of Monopolynesia! So I’m going to chop you up into little pieces and put you in the birdcage. Alfie, give me the knife. . . .”
“With all due respect, Mrs. Crunch,” Nilly said, laughing hysterically as his heart pounded like a piece of cardboard in some bicycle spokes. “Remember that Monopolynesia is so small that the country doesn’t even have a seat at the UN. They just have a standing spot all the way in the back. Without any voting rights and no key to the restrooms. And if any army attacks Monopolynesia, no other country would help them, because what good could possibly come from being on the same side as such a small, insignificant country? That’s how it’s always been for those of us who are small in stature.” Nilly looked up at Mama Crunch with his most sorrowful expression. “And that’s why the Monopolyppians hide and pretend they don’t exist. There’s hardly any information about the country anywhere.”
Mama Crunch took the knife Alfie handed her and squeezed her arm around Nilly a little more tightly. “I see, Mr. Sherl. You’re claiming that a whole country is managing to keep itself a secret?”
“You guys don’t believe me?” Nilly asked, his voice sounding a little choked up. “Try Google, then! If you find anything on there about the country of Monopolynesia, I’ll give you my share of the loot. And that’s not small potatoes, because last time I checked the exchange rate, one Monopoly was worth thirteen point one nine English pounds.”
Mama Crunch placed the tip of the knife against Nilly’s throat. Nilly gulped and felt his Adam’s apple scrape the tip of the knife on its way up and down. He shut his eyes and waited to be turned into bird food.
“Check it, Charlie,” the dragon voice commanded.
Nilly heard fingers tapping on a cell phone while Mama Crunch’s arm squeezed even harder around his neck. He was going to lose consciousness soon. The room went completely silent. Nilly opened his eyes. Everything was black. Had he passed out already? Had he been strangled? Kaput, finished, finito? It smelled weird. This couldn’t be heaven, unless heaven smelled like wet socks that had been sitting in a plastic bag for a long time.
“Sherl’s right,” he heard a voice say from far away. “Not one hit for the country of Monopolynesia.”
The pressure let up. And Nilly realized his whole head was being pushed up into Mama Crunch’s naked armpit. Then the arm was gone, it got light again, and Nilly started gasping for air.
“There, you see?” he wheezed. “Do you believe me now?”
“Hmm,” Mama Crunch said, using the knife as a toothpick. “We’ll find out soon enough if the money is worth anything. Come on, let’s take it to the bank and see if we can exchange it for proper English pounds.”
“No, no, are you crazy?!” Nilly yelled. “If we exchange it now, Scotland Yard will trace the money back to us. What we have to do is put the money into a bank account here in London and then order money laundering through Switzerland. Then we can change it back into English pounds when the money comes back, freshly laundered, in a few days.”
“LAUNDER the money?” Charlie exclaimed. “Are you crazy? It’ll shrink!”
“There, there, Charlie,” Mama Crunch said. “Money laundering just means confusing the stupid police by sending the money on a little goose chase so they can’t figure out where it originally came from.”
“Exactly,” Nilly said, even though he wasn’t totally clear on how money laundering actually worked. “How did you guys think I was still on the loose, anyway? I launder myself from head to toe every other Friday. It’s recommended for all robbers.”
“Hmm,” Mama said. “The stuff the little one is saying might not be so dumb after all. We’ll go deposit the money at the bank. But if there’s anything fishy at all, then we’re not feeding you to the birds, Mr. Sherl.”
“You’re not?” Nilly said with a gulp.
“No, you won’t get out of it that easily. We’ll take you straight to the poker table,” Mama Crunch said.
“Blood knuckles.” Charlie chuckled.
“Come on, let’s go to the bank,” Alfie said.
“Hey there, not so fast!” Mama Crunch said, holding up her hand. “First we have to eat the Birmingham pudding.”
She went to the kitchen.
“Nice try, Alfie,” Betty whispered, and then sighed heavily.
Then the kitchen door opened again and Mama Crunch came back in with a big serving dish of something quivering and trembling, like a moon jellyfish that someone had inflated with a bicycle pump.
“Dig in!”
Nilly looked at his plate, where the dragon had placed a large dollop. There was no way out. He picked up his spoon and scooped up a little bit. Closed his eyes. Stuck the spoon in his mouth and thought about Jell-O with all his might. He thought about it so hard that he could not only taste the Jell-O taste, but he could hear the birds singing in Doctor Proctor’s pear tree and his friends chatting, the sun warming his face, and the joy of knowing there was still at least five feet of Jell-O left on the serving platter. He took another spoonful, larger this time. And another.
“Glglm,” Nilly said with his mouth full. “What a delightful pudding, my lovely Mrs. Crunch! You simply must give me the recipe, otherwise I’m afraid I’ll have to steal it from you.”
Nilly looked up at Mama Crunch, who was standing over him with her arms crossed. He watched the vigilant expression on her face change first to disbelief. And as he took yet another bite, how it sort of cracked, and you could—if you really looked closely—see a tiny little smile in between all the folds of skin in that dour, pinched face.
It lasted one second. Then it was over.
“Enough eating!” she said. “We’re going to the bank now!”
A Crazy Deposit
THE TIME WAS . . . I’m not actually quite sure what time it was, but it was kind of late in the day. And we’re still in London. An old, rusty Hillman Spitfire Roadster was parked on Newscorphamtonshire Street, across from Midclay Barkland Gordon Banks. All right, that’s plenty. There won’t be any more of those long English names in this chapter.
Charlie Crunch was sitting behind the wheel and Nilly, aka Sherl
, was next to him.
“Thanks for letting me borrow your gun,” Nilly said.
“It’s just a water pistol,” Charlie said. “What do you need it for, though? You’re just going to deposit the money.”
“Old habits, you know,” Nilly said, peering down into the bag with the Monopoly money. “We robbers feel naked in a bank without a gun.”
Nilly took a deep breath and tried not to think about hungry birds or blood knuckles. Then he pulled on his Maximus Rublov mask, opened the car door, and jumped out. He looked around and ran across the rain-wet street. He checked his reflection in the glass door before entering the small, almost empty bank.
“How can I help you, sir?” the lady behind the counter asked when Nilly walked up and stood on his tiptoes in front of her to be seen.
“Oh, nothing much,” Nilly said, pulling the water pistol out of his belt and putting it on the counter as he pushed a note through the glass window. It had taken him a long time to decide what it should say, and it occurred to him now that maybe he could have spent a bit more time on it. What it said was:
THIS IS A DEPOSIT! Accept this money, open an account, and give me a real receipt for 150,000 Monopolies. Yes, I know this currency doesn’t actually exist, but just do as I say, otherwise I will shoot this gun, which you must not think is a toy. Read the rest of this note only if you’re farsighted. Thank you.
Since you are still reading, that means you ARE farsighted and MAYBE you saw that it says “Made in Taiwan” on the gun. But you must know that they make real guns in Taiwan too, and this is NOT a toy gun. Cross my heart. Or cross my legs, anyway. Have a nice day.
She took a long time reading the note. Then she read it again. Then she shook her head and started typing on her keyboard.
Nilly looked around nervously and tried to smile casually at the surveillance camera on the ceiling and the guard who was standing over in the corner, half-asleep.
“Here you go, sir,” the woman said, handing him a receipt. “And thank you for your business.”
“THE MONEY IS in the account and everything is fine,” Nilly said, digging into the fresh batch of Birmingham pudding Mama Crunch had placed before him.
“Wonderful,” Betty said, reading the receipt. “We’re rich!”
Betty laughed and elbowed Alfie and Charlie, who were sitting on either side of him at the dining table inside the Crunch family’s living room with the blackout curtains drawn. Outside it had started and stopped raining three times and also gotten dark.
“Well, there’s rich and then there’s rich,” Mama Crunch said, grabbing the receipt. “We’re not exactly millionaires. The rent and the heating bills don’t exactly pay themselves, Mr. Sherl. London is superexpensive, almost as expensive as Tokyo. In a few days I’m going to be forced to send my boys back out to do some basic pickpocketing. Otherwise it’s right back to Mr. Dickens’s poorhouse for us.”
“Well, we’re monopolaires, anyway,” Nilly said, shoveling in the Birmingham pudding. “And this is even better than Doctor Pro—uh, I mean Doctor MacKaroni’s Jell-O, Mrs. Crunch. You wouldn’t by any chance happen to have a little more, would you?”
Mama Crunch laughed, slapping Nilly hard enough on his back that his pudding almost came back up again, and then disappeared into the kitchen.
“Here!” Alfie said, holding out an enormous lit cigar for Nilly. “This is yours!”
Nilly accepted it and took a puff while making the V-is-for-victory sign with his fingers.
His face slowly turned blue.
“Well?” Alfie said.
And then bluer.
“Well?” Betty said.
Then a dark navy blue. A drop of sweat rolled down to the turned-up tip of his nose.
“Talk to us, Sherl,” Charlie said, worried.
And when Nilly finally spoke, he did it while inhaling, so it sounded like a death rattle: “I like to live dangerously, so I’m going to smoke the rest of this at home in bed.”
Nilly put the cigar out on his pudding plate and leaned his forehead lightly against the top of the table.
“Now that we’re discussing danger,” he said as the blue hue in his skin gradually faded. “Did you guys read about that diamond that was stolen in South Africa?” He raised his head and looked at the brothers. “Now those are robbers who like to live dangerously! I really wonder who could have done that, because that was impressive. Yes, yes . . .” Nilly helped himself to more pudding. “I suppose the world will never know who those super robbers are. . . .”
“Heh, heh,” Charlie laughed, looking at his brothers. “Super robbers, did you guys hear that?”
“Heh, heh,” Betty said. “We’re not exactly small potatoes, huh?”
Nilly’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. “What?” he said. “You’re kidding. You don’t mean that—that you guys—”
“Heh, heh,” Alfie said. “And it wasn’t just the diamond we stole either, eh, boys?”
“Not just the diamond?” Nilly exclaimed, astounded.
“Nope,” said Alfie, putting out his own cigar. “Brazil’s gold reserve. Norway’s gold reserve. We struck in three different parts of the world in three weeks.”
“You above-average hoodlums!” Nilly exclaimed. “You guys are my idols! Who’d you guys do all these jobs for?”
“Why are you asking about that?” Alfie said.
Nilly stuffed his spoon into his mouth. “You guys aren’t smart enough to do this on your own, so . . .” Nilly stopped eating. Looked up. Found all three of them staring at him. “I mean dumb enough to do this on your own, heh-heh.”
“So . . . ,” Alfie said slowly. “Thaaaaat’s what you meant?”
“ ’Course,” Nilly said, gulping. “It’s a lot smarter to just do the job and get paid for it than to be the idiot who has to store the diamond and all that gold while secret agents from at least three countries are trying to track it down. Right?”
“Oh,” Charlie said. “The guy we did it for isn’t as dumb as you think.”
“Who was it?” Nilly quickly asked.
“You don’t need to be sticking your peanut nose into that,” Alfie said. “But it just so happens that he’s storing the gold somewhere where no one can find it.”
“Pooh,” Nilly said. “Then it must be locked behind three thick armored doors in a bank vault so well protected that not even I could get in there.”
“Heh-heh,” Charlie laughed.
“Heh-heh,” Betty laughed.
“Heh-heh,” Alfie laughed.
“You don’t mean,” Nilly said, his eyes opening wide, “that he actually has a vault like that?”
“You wouldn’t get in there, no way, little guy,” Alfie said. “It’s widely considered the world’s safest vault. Pick-proof, atomic-bomb-proof, even Crunch-Brother-proof.”
“Yup,” Betty said. “It will withstand absolutely everything. Impossible to break into. It has infrared and outfrayellow rays that are impossible even for a guy your size to get past.”
“Yup,” Charlie said. “And even if some invisible ghost who knew all the codes got to it, the innermost vault has motion detectors that go off the instant the diamond or any of the gold is moved.”
“Ugh,” Nilly said. “Where is this vault—OW!”
A strong thumb and index finger were pinching one of his ears, lifting him off his seat. The fingers belonged to Mama Crunch, who had just walked in and was now whispering into Nilly’s aching ear, “You have very big ears for such a little guy, pipsqueak. Too big, if you ask me. And you know what they say: Curiosity killed the cat.”
“Do they say that?” Nilly moaned, his eyes brimming with tears from the pain.
“So if you don’t want to end up like that cat, maybe you should concentrate on eating.”
“Good suggestion, Mrs. Crunch,” Nilly said. “Brilliant suggestion, actually.”
She let go, and he dropped back down into his chair.
Nilly looked around. It was eerily quiet in th
e dark room, and he was surrounded by creepily staring eyes.
“Well, well,” he said, brushing his hands together. “Would you look at the time! I think I really ought to thank you for a lovely meal.” He hopped down from the chair, walked quickly toward the door, and hoped that no one would yell “Stop” or “Freeze.”
“Stop!” Alfie yelled.
“Freeze!” Betty yelled.
Nilly’s feet froze on the floor. He wasn’t looking forward to whatever was coming next.
“You forgot this.”
Nilly slowly turned around and saw that Charlie was holding something out.
“Oh that, yes,” Nilly said, grabbing his cigar. “I’ll see if I can’t manage to set my bed on fire tonight, heh-heh!”
Exactly three seconds later he was out the door.
Her Royal Highness’s Even More Secret Service
THE FOG HAD settled like thick pea soup over the streets of London, and Nilly hurried back toward his hotel through the London darkness. The streets and alleys that had been so crowded and lively in the daylight were now a labyrinth, devoid of people, lit only by a few streetlights wearing gray fog hats. And the few sounds Nilly could hear weren’t cozy or homey in the least. Trickling and rattling and rustling, the deep sighs of a few drips falling from gutters and eaves and windowsills. Muffled complaints and wailing from behind walls and doors. A sudden, chilling shriek from nowhere.
“Wasn’t it here?” he mumbled to himself, and turned left.
Walked a little ways.
“Wasn’t it here?” he mumbled, and turned right.
He said this mostly to hear his own voice. And a little to convince himself that he knew where he was, because he had no idea. And the alleys seemed like they were just getting narrower, darker, and more deserted.
“Wasn’t it here?” he mumbled again.
“No, it most certainly wasn’t.”
He was just going to keep on moving when it occurred to him that that last answer hadn’t come from him. The voice had come from somewhere just behind him.
Nilly turned around. And a figure in a hat and trench coat stepped out of the darkness.