interest, and hung at our father's pants legs, hounding him for some other treat or favor.
When our parents died, I think we both expected the television to stop, at least for a while, if only out of respect for them. It didn't, and I don't think I ever really forgave it for that.
In any case, when we arrived in Texas and were escorted to our new school, my brother and I quickly realized something distressing. The center of the world had moved; or rather, we had moved and left it behind. We found ourselves somehow on the periphery of reality, relegated off to a corner where no one really cared who we were. The marks of status among our new peers were how fast you could run, whether you wore the right kind of jeans, and how many of those little green peppers you could cram into your mouth at once. My brother and I were not much at running, our grandfather (or rather his housemaid) consistently refused to buy us the right kind of jeans, and at three peppers I was tearing up and beginning to wretch. We quickly dropped to the back of the herd.
Left to our own devices, the two of us had to find new ways to entertain ourselves. Our new favorite television shows, starring people we did not and could never know, were the cop shows. Hawaii Five O , S WAT , even, inexplicably, Barney Miller . Anything and everything to do with crime fighting. After a light appetizer of Clayton Moore as The Lone Ranger and Adam West as Batman , we'd settle in for long hours of guns and badges and the letter of the law, all in full color. By the time we were eight, we could both recite the Miranda Rights from memory, though it was years before we knew what they were called.
It wasn't too long before we decided we knew everything there was to know about crime fighting, and only a short hop from there to deciding that we should fight crime on our own. Later, after my adventures in breaking and entering into our grandfather's study, I would resolve to put my lot in with the black hats, but for those brief summers, I was foursquare on the side of the angels.
Realizing early the practical difficulties presented by crime fighting on a large scale, we decided to start small, in our own back yard. In any neighborhood there is petty theft and vandalism that slides in under the radar of the authorities, but which served as more than enough to occupy the attention of two small boys looking for something to do. One neighbor "borrows" another's rake without asking, the newspaper in front of a certain house goes missing every morning, lost dogs and toilet paper-strewn trees. These were as close to larceny as we could come, and we made the most of it.
We started by putting up fliers all around the neighborhood:
FINCH TWINS
DISCREET INVESTIGATIONS
NO JOB TWO BIG
NO JOB TWO SMALL
217 CRESCENT ROW
Despite the spelling errors and the barely legible print, the fliers were noticeable, and within a few days we had our first client. A neighborhood kid had lost two months' worth of lunch money to a schoolyard bully, and wanted our help getting it back. It wasn't exactly the kind of case we were after, but it was undeniably a crime, and so we set to with all our energy. In the end, we dug up some dirt about the bully smoking in the parking lot after school and cowed him into returning the kid's money. As insurance, we wrote up a list of his offenses, made a dozen copies, and had him sign each and every one. Then we distributed a copy of the list to each of the kids he terrorized on a regular basis, with instructions to hand it to the nearest authority in the event that any of them were troubled further. The only real leverage we had, in the end, was that the bully's dad was a coach at the high school, and knew each of his teachers personally, but it proved to be enough.
It verged on extortion, and when it was all said and done, having collected a fee of one day's lunch money from our client, we were a little uncomfortable about our
When our parents died, I think we both expected the television to stop, at least for a while, if only out of respect for them. It didn't, and I don't think I ever really forgave it for that.
In any case, when we arrived in Texas and were escorted to our new school, my brother and I quickly realized something distressing. The center of the world had moved; or rather, we had moved and left it behind. We found ourselves somehow on the periphery of reality, relegated off to a corner where no one really cared who we were. The marks of status among our new peers were how fast you could run, whether you wore the right kind of jeans, and how many of those little green peppers you could cram into your mouth at once. My brother and I were not much at running, our grandfather (or rather his housemaid) consistently refused to buy us the right kind of jeans, and at three peppers I was tearing up and beginning to wretch. We quickly dropped to the back of the herd.
Left to our own devices, the two of us had to find new ways to entertain ourselves. Our new favorite television shows, starring people we did not and could never know, were the cop shows. Hawaii Five O , S WAT , even, inexplicably, Barney Miller . Anything and everything to do with crime fighting. After a light appetizer of Clayton Moore as The Lone Ranger and Adam West as Batman , we'd settle in for long hours of guns and badges and the letter of the law, all in full color. By the time we were eight, we could both recite the Miranda Rights from memory, though it was years before we knew what they were called.
It wasn't too long before we decided we knew everything there was to know about crime fighting, and only a short hop from there to deciding that we should fight crime on our own. Later, after my adventures in breaking and entering into our grandfather's study, I would resolve to put my lot in with the black hats, but for those brief summers, I was foursquare on the side of the angels.
Realizing early the practical difficulties presented by crime fighting on a large scale, we decided to start small, in our own back yard. In any neighborhood there is petty theft and vandalism that slides in under the radar of the authorities, but which served as more than enough to occupy the attention of two small boys looking for something to do. One neighbor "borrows" another's rake without asking, the newspaper in front of a certain house goes missing every morning, lost dogs and toilet paper-strewn trees. These were as close to larceny as we could come, and we made the most of it.
We started by putting up fliers all around the neighborhood:
FINCH TWINS
DISCREET INVESTIGATIONS
NO JOB TWO BIG
NO JOB TWO SMALL
217 CRESCENT ROW
Despite the spelling errors and the barely legible print, the fliers were noticeable, and within a few days we had our first client. A neighborhood kid had lost two months' worth of lunch money to a schoolyard bully, and wanted our help getting it back. It wasn't exactly the kind of case we were after, but it was undeniably a crime, and so we set to with all our energy. In the end, we dug up some dirt about the bully smoking in the parking lot after school and cowed him into returning the kid's money. As insurance, we wrote up a list of his offenses, made a dozen copies, and had him sign each and every one. Then we distributed a copy of the list to each of the kids he terrorized on a regular basis, with instructions to hand it to the nearest authority in the event that any of them were troubled further. The only real leverage we had, in the end, was that the bully's dad was a coach at the high school, and knew each of his teachers personally, but it proved to be enough.
It verged on extortion, and when it was all said and done, having collected a fee of one day's lunch money from our client, we were a little uncomfortable about our
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