Amos Gets Famous Read Online Free

and the letter was P. Which doesn’t mean anything.”
    “I was up half the night thinking about that. It might be the Dewey Decimal code for a book, only split up.”
    “You mean like 154.20?”
    “Yeah. Let’s go check it out.”
    They hurried back toward the aisles.
    “This could be kind of fun,” Amos said.
    Dunc ignored him. “Here’s the one hundreds. Follow me.”
    A moment later Amos stopped. “You’re wrong, Dunc.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because here’s 154.20. It’s a book about achieving higher consciousness.”
    “Hm.” Dunc tapped his chin. He thought hard.
    “Don’t overdo it, Dunc.”
    “Leave me alone.”
    “There’s smoke coming out of your ears.”
    “If you don’t let me think, I’m not going to be able to help you. You’ll be on the run the rest of your life.”
    “All right, I’m sorry. Go ahead and think. Can’t even take a joke.”
    Dunc snapped his fingers. “I have it!”
    “Have what?”
    “Follow me.” Dunc led Amos back toward the newspaper section. He stopped at the first bookshelf.
    “What was the first number?”
    “Fifteen.”
    “Start counting bookshelves.” Amos followed Dunc as he strode away from the newspapers. He stopped at shelf number fifteen.
    “What was the second number?”
    “Four.” Dunc counted down four shelves from the top.
    “What was the third number?”
    “Twenty.” Dunc counted books in from the end of the shelf. When he reached the twentieth book, he stopped and sighed.
    “What’s the book?”
    “
All About Bears
. I’m wrong.” He collapsed back against the shelf behind him. “How could that be? It just isn’t possible.” It was hard on Dunc to be wrong, and he chewed his lower lip.
Someday
, Amos thought,
he’ll chew that lip off
.
    “I guess we’ll have to find some way of smuggling you out of the city,” Dunc said.
    “Dunc …”
    “Maybe we can find a cabin up north in the woods you can hide in. You’ll have to snare rabbits for food. Do you know how to snare?”
    “Dunc …”
    “It doesn’t matter. The police will catch us before we get there anyway.”
    “Dunc, if you were a very small man, wouldn’t you start counting at the bottom shelf?”
    Dunc smiled. “Could it be—” They hurried to the end of the aisle and started over.
    “We’re still wrong,” Dunc said. “Twenty books in is
The Wonderful World of Leeches
.”
    “But we’re close.
Parasitic Nematodes
is only three more books.”
    “It’s not close enough. If we put the fake note in the wrong book, we’re no better off than we were when we started.”
    “I suppose it’s impossible to be accurate with people checking books out and the librarian reshelving them all the time.” Amos scratched his head. “Wait a minute. What about the letter?”
    “The letter?”
    “The P.” Amos snapped his fingers. “I got it. Mr. Zipzoo put that on the end in case the numbersdidn’t come out quite light. P—
Parasitic Nematodes
. Get it?”
    Dunc smiled again. “Why are you so smart today?”
    “It must be the pressure of being a fugitive from justice.” Amos took the glasses off for a moment, but a man reading the paper, looking at the front page, seemed to stare at him for too long, and he put them back on. “Let’s find the book for the next burglary.”
    Thirty aisles in, five rows up, sixty-three books from the end. Dunc stopped and stared at Amos.
    “What?” Amos asked.
    “The book’s called
Early French Erotica of the Nineteen Thirties
.”
    Amos’s mouth dropped open. “Erotica? Does that mean dirty stories?”
    “That’s exactly what it means.”
    “My mom and dad would kill me if they knew I looked at a book like that.”
    “Mine too,” Dunc said.
    They stared at the book.
    “Still,” Amos said, “it’s for a good cause.”
    Dunc nodded. “It’s not as if we’d normallylook at a book like this. We have to. I certainly don’t
want
to.”
    “Me either.”
    “Right. Let me see it.” They both