Leon and the Spitting Image Read Free

his neck toward the street and looked for an available taxi.
    Since the middle of third grade, Leon had been taking taxis by himself. He had no choice. The school bus didn’t stop near the hotel, and his mom almost never finished work early enough to make the trip with him. After accompanying her son to school on a few trial runs, Emma Zeisel had handed Leon a blank notebook.
    “What’s this for?” he had asked suspiciously. He disliked anything that involved writing.
    “It’s to register the drivers’ names,” said Emma Zeisel. “You can get them off the hack license.”
    “Hack license?”
    “The driver’s picture ID,” she explained. “It’s always posted. It’s the law. And if you start getting goosey, just ask the cabby where he comes from and add that to your notes.”
    Leon took the assignment seriously. He returned from his maiden voyage proudly announcing, “I got a guy named Cesar Viana. And you know what? He’s from the Philippines!” A few seconds later Leon said, “Where exactly
are
the Philippines, Mom?” Almost before Leon finished asking the question, Emma Zeisel whipped out the atlas she stashed behind the reception desk and showed him.
    On his second taxi trip, Leon flagged down Juan-Pablo Zapata from Mexico. And on his third, he hailed Push Singh from India. Each name and nationality went straight into the travel book.
    And so began the taxi-driver collection.
    For Leon’s ninth birthday, Emma Zeisel bought her son a huge foam-backed map of the world and a box of pushpins tipped with colorful plastic banners. From then on, Leon recorded every country he “visited” on the map that hung above his bed as well as in his travel book. By the time fourth grade rolled around, he hadcollected thirty-seven nations and nineteen states.
    * * *
    Leon lifted an arm and expertly extended one finger toward the oncoming traffic. Despite the downpour, he managed to nab a taxi almost at once. (Drivers generally picked him over businessmen urgently waving briefcases.) He gave the cabby the address of his school, then squinched and clucked, hoping for an Alaska, or a Botswana, or—best of all—a Suriname. Suriname was the one country he still needed to complete South America.
    Leon opened his eyes and looked at the name on the driver’s photo ID: Ladislo Szekacs.
    He recorded the name in his travel book and said, “Excuse me, Mr…. uh … ”
    “It is pronounced ‘say catch,’” said the driver. “Like in your American baseball.”
    “Thanks,” Leon said. “Could you tell me where you come from, Mr. Say Catch?”
    “Why should you know?” the driver asked suspiciously.
    “It’s for my collection,” Leon said.
    “What collection?” the driver demanded.
    Leon had his routine down pat. “Some kids collect baseball cards. I collect taxi drivers.”
    The cabby hesitated.
    “Please,” Leon said. He held up the travel book. “It’s important.”
    “Hungary,” the driver mumbled.
    “Yes!” Leon exclaimed.
    “Why are you so happy? This is good?”
    “This is
great,”
said Leon. “You’re my first Hungary.”
    “And you, little boy,” said the now smiling driver, “you are my first taxi-driver collector.”
    Leon closed the travel book and gazed out the window. A mail truck, idling at a traffic light, made him think of envelopes, which in turn made him think of the confidential report he had uncovered the night before. The memory prompted a sudden uncontrolled shiver. The assessments from Sloat, Toothacre, and Joost seemed so unfair. And it didn’t help that the identity of his fourth-grade teacher was a total mystery.
    Leon tried to forget about school, but he couldn’t. When he struggled to break through the red string on the pastry box, a phrase from the home report popped back into his head.
Nimble fingers make for nimble minds
. What lamebrain thought that one up?
    The only good thing about the first day of school was that Leon would see his two best friends, P.W. and