Page 114 of Now or Never

“I drove the truck through a bunch of muck to get to the homeless camp and it got to be a mess,” Herbert said.

“I’m thinking that you had a crew by then. You had a videographer and someone flying a drone.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to get them involved,” Herbert said.

“Okay, so tell me about the fingerprints.”

“I didn’t want to give the truck back to UPS in bad condition, so Eugene met me at his friend’s father’s garage, and Eugene took the truck through the car wash. We never thought about his fingerprints. The rest of us were wearing gloves.”

“So you let him get accused of being Robin Hoodie.”

“It was his idea. If he told the police about the car wash, it would end the adventure. No more drawing attention to the homeless, and no more fun videos. So we kept it going for a while longer. Eugene knew I wouldn’t let him go to prison. In the meantime, he was sort of enjoying it. He really liked when he was rescued out of your car by all the homeless guys. Anyway, it finally became obvious that our time was running out, so I hijacked the food truck with the cops in it.”

“You knew they were cops?”

“It wasn’t much of a secret,” Herbert said.

I brought Herbert back to Connie and Lula. “We’re good,” I said. “We’re ready to leave.”

“I don’t know how any of this works,” Herbert said. “What do I do now?”

“Now we take you home, and you give up being Robin Hoodie,” I said.

“I imagine you’re going to be upset to have to stop being Robin Hoodie,” Lula said.

“It’s okay,” Herbert said. “It was a lot of work, and I was having a hard time finding new things to give away. And I have a lot of irons in the fire. That’s the way it is with us entrepreneurs. I have an exciting project going with Edna. We’ve already made some reels.”

“Who’s Edna?” Lula asked.

“Grandma,” I said.

“And I just got a phone call from a big publisher in New York, and they want me to write a book. And they said they’d give me two million dollars for an exclusive. I wouldn’t have time to be Robin Hoodie anyway if I’m going to write a book,” Herbert said.

We walked him down the hall to the front door of the municipal building, and when we stepped outside a cheer went up. There were easily two hundred women waiting to catch a glimpse of Robin Hoodie. The police had stretched crime scene tape to keep the women at a distance.

“Oh gosh,” Herbert said. “Are they expecting someone important?”

The women started chanting,“Robin, Robin, Robin.”

“They’re here to see you,” Lula said. “You’re famous. It’s like you’re a rock star.”

“A rock star?” Herbert said. “Really? Me? Do I look okay? Is my hair okay? I didn’t have a comb.”

“You look great,” I told him.

“Yeah,” Lula said. “You look like Robin Hoodie.”

The women were throwing bouquets of flowers and panties at Herbert. They kept chanting “Robin, Robin,” and they weretaking pictures with their cell phones. A clump of professional photographers stood to one side and a satellite TV news truck was parked behind the women.

“What should I do?” Herbert asked. “Should I pick up the panties?”

“No, dude,” Lula said. “Just wave and smile and back up. We need to take you out the back door or we’ll get trampled.”

We dropped Herbert off at his parents’ house and returned to the office.

“Now that we have Robin Hoodie put to rest, I’m going to take my time off,” I said to Lula and Connie.

“What are you going to do?” Lula asked. “Shopping?”

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