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  Maple brought it to my attention that there were pet psychologists in New York, and we thought about sneaking Rumpy to one of them. Unfortunately that would involve giving out our names, address, and phone number. Bills would only form a trail that would lead to our fish tank. Boucher would have no trouble tracking down our pig.

  We were at a loss about what to do. In the meantime, I had overheard Murray telling the crew on the roof that although they had been working straight through since the boiler blew, on Sunday there was a big VIP checking in, and security wanted no workers on the roof that day. I couldn’t wait to tell Maple and Rumpy. We would roll the next morning as soon as Mom left for work.

  When the sun finally rose, we were ready to move. As we descended, the fresh air seemed to exhilarate our pig. She raced down the stairs, slashing the air with her snout as she picked up all the scents of the city.

  We followed our now-familiar plan and dashed through the storage room to the hidden table. Maple helped Rumpy get her hooves through the holes as if she were trying on a new pair of shoes. I did my usual hall patrol and returned with the dirty breakfast dishes we needed.

  I peeked inside the table. “All set?” I asked.

  Rumpy wiggled with excitement, making the dishes above rattle.

  “Whoa, big girl,” Maple added.

  Since our last trip out, Maple had lined the box with a bit of carpet to make the escape vehicle more comfortable for Rumpy. We had also modified the peephole, enlarging and covering it with reflector tape on the outside so Rumpy would have a better view. The only problem with the box under the table now was the thickness of our pig’s winter coat. It was a tight squeeze, but Maple and I agreed it was worth it.

  Maple checked the first leg of the trip to the elevator while Rumpy and I waited for the “all clear” signal.

  “Let’s go,” Maple whispered happily from the first corner.

  We were off and rolling. Maple was about ten yards in front of us, and although the escape vehicle maneuvered like a grocery cart with a bad wheel, Rumpy had come to master steering anywhere she wanted to go. She could move surprisingly fast, slow down at a moment’s notice, and even spin it around. It was like watching a mini– carnival ride.

  Maple slipped ahead to check out the final turn before the elevator, and we were just about to start the last leg when her hand poked around the corner like a traffic cop’s, signaling me to stop.

  Someone was coming. This was not unusual. It was part of the drill. Rumpy knew to position herself against the wall next to a room door. I always had a soccer magazine in my back pocket, and I would pull it out and act as if I were a typical self-involved New Yorker heading for an elevator.

  This time, Rumpy made her move to the nearest door, and I brushed past the table to join up with Maple. I smelled trouble before I even got there.

  The vile traces of Turkish-cigarette smoke came from only one source — Boucher. Suddenly I heard the crackle of voices coming from walkie-talkies. Could it be the police, too?

  Maple and I did an abrupt about-face and headed back past Rumpy’s table, hoping to get to the nearest emergency exit. We didn’t make it.

  “Stop!” I heard Boucher shout, and we did. We were quickly surrounded by four very large men in black suits with guns on their belts and headphones in their ears. Uh-oh.

  The Hunchback from Hackensack stood among the men. He was talking with a tall, skinny man dressed in jeans and a long fur coat — obviously not an animal lover. One of the big men spoke into a microphone on his lapel. “Hold the package. I repeat, hold the package.” Something told me he wasn’t the FedEx guy.

  “Do you know these kids?” the skinny man snapped at Boucher.

  The chef clearly did not like the man’s condescending tone, but he was nervous. “They live in the hotel. They belong to my help.”

  Help? What a jerk. Mom was one of the main reasons the restaurant was so popular. I started to get hot under the collar and had a brief fantasy of grabbing the table, accelerating Rumpy to ramming speed, and sending Boucher on an unscheduled flight back to France or New Jersey or wherever he came from. However, this was not the time or place to defend my mother’s good name.

  “Well, get them out of here.” In a nasty voice, the skinny man added, “I told you this passageway from the elevator to the Presidential Suite was to be sealed and cleared, especially of pesky little fans. Royal T has no contact with anyone in this hotel. What about those instructions? Did you not comprehend, Monsieur Boucher?”

  Whoa. I looked beyond Boucher and saw Maple mouth the words “Royal T!” So that was who was checking in. Royal T was a former child star on the Disney Channel who had blossomed into one of the biggest pop stars in the world. I knew she was one of Maple’s favorites, and I had seen her videos. Maple said she didn’t sing that well, but her outfits were outrageous. She had taken to dressing in wigs and long dresses from the old days, which were ripped and cut in some pretty revealing places. I didn’t know much about Royal T, but I did know that her boyfriend was the star rookie goalie for the New York Rangers. I wondered if he would be coming to see her.

  Recoiling from his tongue-lashing by the man in the fur coat, Boucher snarled at us. “You must leave here at once!”

  “At the Grammys, Royal T wore a House of Wu dress! How cool is that?” Maple cooed.

  “Who said that? Who mentioned her name?” the skinny man shrieked. The men in black suits pointed at Maple. “Out of here. N-O-W!”

  The guys in black weren’t cops. They were bodyguards for the young diva. As they made their way toward us, they were followed by an odd procession of hotel workers who were rolling a big, round awning down the hallway. It looked like one of those tubes the players run through at the beginning of a football game. It was very strange to have one in the hallway of a four-star hotel.

  Two of the men took up positions on either side of us. They stopped right next to the room-service table and began inspecting the dishes. Uh-oh.

  Please, Rumpy! Try to be cool, I prayed.

  “What is that doing here?” the skinny man yelled.

  Boucher immediately shouted at one of the hotel workers to get rid of the room-service table, and the next thing I knew, we were being escorted to the stairs.

  Rumpy was moving at high speed in the opposite direction.

  CHAPTER 31

  A Roomful of Room Service

  RUMPY

  I MUST SAY that although the room-service table was hard to maneuver, I had come to master steering it on my unscheduled trips to the park. Now it was like a runaway go-cart as I moved my feet as fast as I could down the hallway to keep from being run over by my own escape vehicle.

  Everything went so fast. Amid the clamor of the rattling dishes above my head, I only had a moment to catch a glimpse of the shocked looks on the faces of Barley and Maple as I whizzed by them. I wound up in a roomful of room-service tables just off the kitchen, where several busboys were removing the dishes and cleaning the tabletops with disinfectant. It almost made me sneeze, but somehow I held it back.

  As I caught my breath from the mad dash down the hall, I could hear all the noise coming from the kitchen. Every now and then Ellie’s cheerful drawl rose above the din of a dozen different languages that were being spoken at once. I could hear her, but she couldn’t help me. If I gave away my hiding spot, she could be fired.

  To add to the misery of my confinement, I was surrounded by the succulent smells of fresh-baked bread, simmering sauces, and steaming vegetables. I was getting hungry — really hungry. As I reveled in the scents and watched the action out my window, my survival instincts fortunately kicked in to show me the very dangerous, even life-threatening, situation I was in.

  My table was in a line of tables, and as room-service orders were put together, each table was filled and whisked away to waiting diners. This was not good — because whoever tried to put an order of pancakes or a cheeseburger into the warming oven of my table would be met with the rump of Rumpy
. I could just imagine the hysteria that would cause in the kitchen.

  Now I was really starting to sweat — because my table was only two from the front of the line. With my luck, once I was captured, I would be taken to Boucher, who would send me right to that dungeon filled with chilling carcasses. I would be dressed out with an apple stuck in my mouth and probably fed to Royal T’s bodyguards.

  As I was envisioning my own demise, I felt the table moving. Oh no — this was it. But I was moving backward, away from the front of the line. What was going on? I saw the line of tables disappear, and soon I was around the corner. Then, through my peephole, I saw Barley’s face.

  Tears streamed down my cheeks. I had been rescued!

  Barley and Maple steered me down an alternate route back to our hiding place, then covered me with a tablecloth and sped me up to the fish tank. I was never so glad to see my four-star cell.

  “You must be starving,” Maple said, and pulled a frozen pizza from the freezer. Twenty minutes later, I was stretched out on the couch with a pizza in my belly and my two best friends beside me. I wasn’t even annoyed by Syrup, who was coiled on the pillow next to my head. I was just glad to be in the fish tank and not in a box or an oven.

  The kids told me the story about how they saw Royal T. As they had been roughly escorted along the hallway, down the stairs, and out to the street, a huge limousine had pulled up, and Royal T got out. She was dressed like a French queen in the era of Louis XIV, but she was a lot smaller than she looked on TV, even in nine-inch heels. There were paparazzi everywhere, and she waved once to the cameras, not to her fans. Then she disappeared into the hollow awning, which snaked through the lobby of the hotel to the elevator, down the hall where we had been spotted, and right to the door of the Presidential Suite, where she was now lounging.

  “I am not a big fan anymore,” Maple said. “You don’t treat your fans like that.”

  As a pig somewhat familiar with fame, I couldn’t have agreed more.

  CHAPTER 32

  A Pilot to the Rescue

  RUMPY

  THE FOLLOWING week was not a good one for me. After Royal T’s party, the boiler-repair brigade returned to the roof. The family went back to their respective busy lives, and I went back to the couch. At first, I was just cranky, but then I got depressed. It wasn’t the workers who were weighing on me; it was my own failures. They were piling up like dirty laundry. I had failed to keep out of the way, I had failed as a loving pet, and, most of all, I had failed to find my brother. I decided it was time to quit endlessly sniffing the wind for traces of Lukie. And it was time to quit hiding. I was coming out of the closet, and I was going home to Tennessee. I needed a break.

  I decided to have one last walk around the roof. Frankly, I didn’t care who saw me, or if I got caught. I was done hiding. Heck, if they found out a pig had been living for weeks on end in one of the most elegant hotels in New York, it would surely become a hot story or even a front-page headline in the tabloids, with a photograph of me being led out the revolving door in hoof-cuffs. Lukie would be bound to see that, and the more I thought about getting caught, the more I liked the idea — but then what would happen to Ellie and the twins?

  I regained my senses and decided to remain hidden, but I was still taking a break. All I needed was one last look at the way out of town, and then I would hit the streets and head south. Sure, it was a crazy idea, but I had heard stories about dogs that had walked across the country after being left behind at a rest stop on the interstate. If a dumb dog could walk halfway across the country, a pig could get to Tennessee. I would just smell my way back to Vertigo.

  I carried my Lukieball with me to the front door of the fish tank and left it there. I was done with it. I couldn’t believe that the men working on the boiler did not see me as I walked outside into the freezing wind. If the Butcher happened to show his twisted face, I would attack him, viciously sink my teeth into his skinny butt, and leave them there until uniformed men stormed the roof, pried my jaws apart, tied me down, and threw me into a transport van. It would dump me far away, where I’d be left in exile or made into sausages.

  But that didn’t happen. Although I almost wanted to get caught and release my anger on somebody, nobody saw me, even as I climbed up on that scary icy ledge to get my bearings. The wind howled, and I shivered.

  As usual, the street was filled with strangers. They were trapped inside this loveless city, but not me. Not anymore.

  Suddenly I slid. Now I was much too close to the edge. That was when I heard the voice. “Don’t jump,” it said, and I struggled to keep my balance.

  “WHOA DERE, sweetheart,” a crisp voice snapped from nowhere. “Jumping could be hazardous to your health, not to mention dat of the poisens you might squash like pancakes down dere. We can’t let you do dat.”

  Two pigeons dropped from the air above and landed right beside me. In an official tone, the first one said, “Not often dat we see your kind up here, ma’am. We’re the Pigilantes. You know about us, right?”

  They were the pigeons, my pigeons — that squadron I had chased and wanted to meet for so long! I was surrounded by my pigeons! I was so happy to see them.

  “Lady, like I told ya already, we can’t let you do dis.”

  “Do what?” I asked. I was shivering as I tried to get a foothold.

  “Jump,” the pigeon replied.

  Despite the cold, I began snorting and laughing. I guffawed so hard I almost slipped off the ledge. “I’m not trying to kill myself. I’m trying to find my brother.”

  “Looked like you were about ta break da law, so you got some ’splainin’ ta do. Anyways, we got ya blocked in . . . for your own protection.”

  It was true — four more pigeons hovered in the air just below, blocking my view with their feathers. I had to admit they were impressive, with their matching wings and aviator helmets. They looked very informed and sure of themselves — comforting, too, since I was stuck on the ledge.

  I told them everything. I explained how I used to be so popular back in Vertigo, and now I was just an outcast city pet. How nobody had warned me that I wouldn’t be welcome in New York, and how ashamed I had been of having to hide. I described how my very own humans had gotten new lives and how I had failed to find Lukie, my lost brother. Just saying his name made me suddenly start sobbing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath.

  The Pigilantes shook their heads and looked away politely, waiting until I got a grip on myself. One hovered nearby, extending his wing to divert the flow of my tears from the ledge to keep my precarious footing dry. Then the squadron leader landed gingerly on the gutter, inches from my face.

  “Captain Frostbite, at your service,” he said, introducing himself by his call sign. He went on to explain that, like me, he was not from Manhattan originally but had learned to live here. He had been carrying a message from Greenland and had been blown off course by a winter storm. He had come to like the city and the duty he performed. “New York is a big and sometimes frightening place, ma’am. And I don’t want ya ta take dis da wrong way, but you’re not da only pig in town. Dere’s three or four we know of dat keep outta sight. And dere’s one exactly like you. We fly over dat pig every now and den. Maybe he’s your bruddah.”

  Frostbite’s words made my heart jump. I longed to see his eyes, to know if he was serious, but my footing was too shaky for me to spin around. All I could do was try to keep my balance.

  Half the squadron immediately landed around my feet and began pecking and pushing the ice off the ledge. The remaining pigeons stayed near my head and directed my feet in reverse until my hind legs found stability. I was so grateful, but I didn’t know what to say. There was a pig who looked just like me in New York City!

  Once I was safe and had caught my breath, Captain Frostbite continued his story. “Mind you, nobody suspects dat your look-alike is a pig. He’s out dere every day in da middle of tings, in one locale or anodder. But he dresses for da job, so to speak. Seeing from above,
we always know it’s him. But doze people ’round him don’t have a clue — he’s a cool cucumber, dis guy. Dey smile and nod when he passes, and he nods right back. Tirty minutes ago, we buzzed him at da zoo.”

  An excitable gray pigeon broke in. “Yeah, when da polar bears get all laddered up about da heat, dat pig, he chills ’em right out. Den da seals, dey love ta tell him jokes, so when dey see him comin’, dey start wid da stories, and he’s laughin’, and dey’re clappin’, and . . .”

  Frostbite broke in, waving him off to the side. “We been keepin’ an eye on ya since ya got here. It ain’t hard, since ya live in dat fish tank dere.”

  “But I thought all the birds had gone south?” I said.

  “No, not us.” Frostbite laughed. “We’re just hard to see against da gray sky. We ain’t snow boids. We are always on duty. Speakin’ a which, it’s my duty to ’splain da rules here. Let’s start wid fallin’ objects. See, ma’am, dey are a hazard for us boids — and for da walkers and drivers and city morale. Where ya lived before, dere probably wasn’t deez skyscrapers, but here, we’re on patrol 24-7, just keepin’ da airspace clear. So stay back from da ledges, and we’ll tell ya more tomorrow. We got lotsa weenies to roast up here, but . . .”

  Captain Frostbite saw the horrified look of the other Pigilantes and realized the offense he had just uttered. He stuttered for a few seconds, but then he regained his composure as any good commander would. It was simply the way flyboys talk, and besides, I was too happy with the news about Lukie to take anything these birds did or said as an insult. “Excuse me, ma’am. I sincerely apologize for dat weenie ting.”

  “Apology accepted,” I said immediately.