"Hello?"

"Hi, can I speak to Arnold, please?" asked the sweet-sounding voice of a young lady.

"What? Who is this?"

"It's a friend of his. Please…I need to speak to Arnold."

Helga handed him the phone.

"It's for you," she said annoyedly.

"Uh, hello?" said a somewhat bewildered Arnold.

"Arnold! How's it going? How'd you like to go for a boat ride?" asked Bridget.

"Uh, a boat ride?"

Bridget's voice changed.

"Arr, yes, I think a boat ride'd be just the thing f'r ye."

"OK, sounds great!" said Arnold.

"Good," said Bridget, "I'll be seeing you soon. Of course Helga can come too." She hung up. Arnold handed Helga her phone and started looking around for a person in a yellow raincoat.

"Who was that?"

"Oh, it was Bridget," said Arnold.

"Who the HECK is Bridget?"

Then Arnold (as the saying goes) figured something out.

"Oh, Helga," he said, "I thought everyone knew Bridget. She's the girl who gave Gerald and I our fancy utility belts and stuff. She's also the one who played that tape on the big screen after the bus crash."

"Oh…that Bridget. So you're going for a boat ride?"

"You're invited too. Actually, I spoke to her yesterday and she's going to try to help us. Oh look, I think that's her."

Arnold pointed at a small boat which was turning into shore.

"Isn't that Sheena's uncle Earl?"

"No, I think it's Bridget in disguise."


They walked to the edge of a short unused pier and waited for the boat to come in. Helga had some questions for Bridget, if that was her real name.

"Hop in," said Bridget in her usual voice. Arnold went first, and Helga followed. As soon as the boat had got clear of the dock, Bridget turned to them.

"Helga! It's a pleasure to finally meet you. I'm sorry I didn't get to introduce myself at the crash site; I'm Bridget."

"So…Bridget, I don't mean to be rude, but who are you? And why the disguise?"

"Well, Helga, I'm a senior at the Hillwood high school of science. I moonlight as a manufacturer of spy equipment, though I have been known to dabble in the art a bit as well. As for the disguise, well, after my face was blasted all over the evening news, I wanted some privacy. Plus we had to move our headquarters recently and I need to do a lot of water travel, so it fit."

Helga's mood softened a bit.

"And how did you end up calling my phone? Were you patrolling up and down the shore waiting for us to show up? And how did you get my phone number?"

"Well, Helga, I looked up your phone number because I thought there was a good chance you and Arnold would be together, I mean, from the way you two were looking at each other at the crash site…anyway Helga, I promised to try to find Arnold some help with his legal problems, and although I had his number, I preferred not to call him on his house phone. It's tapped, you see."

"What makes you think that?" asked Helga. She also thought so, but it made sense to pick Bridget's brain while she was there.

"It was just a guess, really. They probably tapped it a day or two before the demolition, to see if Arnold's grandpa would try anything illegal. But, Helga, we've been spying the crap out of the district attorney's office, and now I'm sure they're doing it. They have their reasons: first, Arnold's Grandma is on the run and she might try to call them. In fact, that's the only reason they need, although I know they suspect him of organizing the blowing up of the overpass."

"So it was true," said Arnold, "what the paper said? They really think the overpass was Grandpa's fault?"

"Well, I'm not sure if they really think that, but for now they're trying to pin it on him. Really, they'd like to get him for either explosion, but the overpass is the one that makes sense in terms a motive."

If Arnold was crestfallen, he hid it well enough.

"Bridget," he asked after a short pause, "you were at the scene of the bus crash. Can you tell me something? Grandpa says that, even though some people saw Harold sit on the plunger, and even more people saw the building come down, well…he still thinks he'll get away with it. He says that after he started running, no one was chasing him. It was really empty, and he disappeared with the wire before anyone could get it on film. Do you think that's really possible?"

And Arnold remembered with painful suddenness that the news media had arrived on the scene almost immediately after he did, well before Harold set off the bomb. How could they fail to record Grandpa's guilt? Arnold wasn't sure what he was more afraid of: the cold, hard truth, or that Bridget, whom he trusted, would lie to spare his feelings. She, meanwhile, gave Arnold a long, tender, sympathetic look. Her face suggested (or would have suggested, had she not been wearing a large fake beard) a strange mixture of knowing sadness and regret.

"Arnold," she began, "I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but the truth is…your Grandpa's escape from the cameras was no coincidence. What I'm about to tell you," she added firmly, receiving in response expressions of assent, "must never leave this boat. I'm not proud of what we had to do.

"You might have wondered how I showed up so quickly after the bus crashed. In fact, my teammates and I were already there; we were watching the whole scene since well before the overpass blew up. We were more than watching, Arnold. We were prepared-or at least, as prepared as anyone can be-to intervene. We had a few different plans for getting involved, and ample equipment on site. I don't just mean spying equipment, but equipment for creating a disturbance, for getting away unpursued, the destruction of evidence, even"-her face was white and grave-"for certain types of fighting. I'm only saying this...so you'll be able to believe what's coming next.

"Of course, we saw your Grandpa in the foxhole, with his plunger. Let's just say, Arnold, that how to swoop in and save him was a subject of serious discussion. In fact we realized it was basically all we could do, since it would have been crazy to try to stop the bulldozers on our own."

"If you were watching everything," suggested Arnold, "you must have seen Nick blow up the overpass."

"Yes, Arnold, we did. It was terrible to watch it knowing that we were capable of stopping him, but we didn't dare do it. I'm…I'm really sorry, guys."

"Oh, don't worry about that Bridget," said Helga. "We don't care about the bus jump, it was cool…but did you get video of them doing it?"

"Why, actually, yes I did. I had a small camera, and from my position on the back of Scheck's great monitor, I recorded them setting the charges, and I even got footage of Nick pushing the button. I recorded the bus jump too, which you totally need to explain—I thought you were going to die! Anyway, after you cleared the overpass I put the camera down and we talked for a bit.

"What happened next is history. I ziplined down to the bus with a VCR—don't ask what we were planning to put on if you didn't show up!—and we played the tape. But when I came down, I left the camcorder under the monitor. I never went back up there, and when the building came down I'm sure it was crushed beneath the wreckage."

"Ahh," said Arnold, "I guess my Grandpa's luck is pretty bad. He blew up his own proof of innocence!"

"I'm afraid so," said Bridget. "But, I was about to explain why the TV people weren't around to watch the second explosion. And when I'm done," she added firmly, "you won't think your Grandpa's luck is as bad as all that."

"Bridget," interrupted Helga, "Where are we going?"

Indeed, Bridget appears to have been so absorbed in the conversation as to utterly neglect her steering duties. The boat had been heading straight out from shore into the wide river, in a pretty straight line, and was just now passing the tip of Elk Island. After uttering a minor expletive ("crap") and thanking Helga, she turned left about 135 degrees, setting her course towards a distance multi-arched bridge, visible in the clear weather.

"So, Arnold," she resumed, "there I was. The cameras had taken some striking footage of me ziplining down onto the bus; the Mayor had arrived and made her statement. When the mayor left, one of the news crews followed her. There were two left. I remembered your Grandpa's plunger, which he seemed to have left totally exposed. I had…a premonition of doom. Somehow, I just knew that something terrible was going to happen. I had to distract those cameras, somehow. So, even as Scheck's car drove up to the scene, and the dramatic arrest was about to begin, I walked up to the remaining journalists and started yapping away like I was the Encyclopedia Britannica. I don't think it hurt that I walked a certain way, smiled a certain way, batted my eyelashes, and winked at some of the cameramen. Typical males. Anyway, even as the drama with Scheck was happening, I managed to hold the attention of those news crews.[1] And not by looks alone! I was talking my head off, and I told them I had to get going, let's walk and talk. So there I am, walking briskly down the street backwards, smiling sweetly at the press, acting like I know everything about you kids, just telling them every BS thing that comes into my head, starting with the true stuff. I told them I gave Arnold and Gerald their equipment, taught them everything they know, and so on, I described the things I supposedly taught you. It was the most insane thing I had ever done, I was just talking and talking and talking, dragging those cameras away from the scene.

"I kept talking. Someone shouted a question about Helga. I made up this ridiculous but endearing story about her, that she secretly loved Arnold since kindergarten but always hid it by taunting and bullying him, but her secret love inspired her to help Arnold find the document (of course he was looking for a document originally and not a tape). She gave him information about where to get the document, anonymously at first, but finally she went to the building with the two of them, and she was inspired by Arnold's heroism to finally confess her love to him and together they found the tape and escaped and came here and how super sweet it all was…"

Here, Bridget trailed off. She found Helga's face a bit, shall we say, distracting. Apart from its color (red), I will not attempt to describe how it looked.

"You told them WHAT?" she bellowed.

"Uh, look Helga," said Bridget (having blushed a bit and nervously adjusted the alignment of her beard), "I mean, I was making this stuff up on the spot. I was under a lot of pressure! I had to keep talking, it was the only thing I could think of right then, and you have to admit, it's a pretty cute story…"

"You mean...you told the TV News that I secretly loved Arnold for years, while they were FILMING YOU?" Helga was shaking with rage.

"Relax, Helga, it's not as bad as it sounds. Just let me finish."

At this point Helga had two options. She could leap upon Bridget and beat her to a bloody pulp, or she could keep the lid on and follow her suggestion. After a sharp internal struggle, she decided on the latter.

"So," continued Bridget, "I was leading the press people on, and my own teammates were following me at a distance, two on foot, and two on the rooftops. I think one of the reporters actually started to suspect I was making stuff up, because there was physically no way you could have told me all that since the bus crash. So by this time I had turned into a narrow alley. The media were still with me. I'm not sure exactly what point I got to in the story when BOOM! The second explosion went off.

"The press was distracted for a second. So was I of course, but not as long. Now comes the part I'm ashamed of. At that instant, the ambush was sprung. We actually attacked the press! Although it was exquisitely done and no one was hurt, I feel terrible about it…anyway, the alley was instantly filled with smoke. No one could see. My teammates ran right up to the cameramen through the smoke and degaussed their tapes with electromagnets. At the same time, we deployed a heavy chain-link reinforced tarp across the alleyway, so they couldn't get back to the street except by going out the other side. We threw some more smoke and disappeared. Just before I fled I left a bouquet of roses for the press party, with a note expressing my sorrow and hoping that they wouldn't bear me any hard feelings."

"Hold up a second," said Helga, who, though still livid, was no longer trembling, "you did what to their tapes?"

"We degaussed—I mean, we erased them. Did you know that if you rub a strong magnet next to a tape, you can completely erase its contents?"

Helga didn't know that. (She was, after all, only in the fourth grade.)

"You might even be able to do it at home, if you have one of those rare-earth magnets. Anyway, Helga, as part of our spy-equipment inventory we make a hand-held, pistol-like electromagnet with a steel core. You pull the trigger, and some big capacitors dump enough current to make a huge magnetic field for a few seconds. This thing can degauss a tape even without taking it out of the camera; we've tested it. And we know how to use them, too!"

"So…what you're saying is, you erased ALL the tapes?"

"Yes, Helga, I'm quite sure of it. Anyway, if any part of my 'interview' actually survived, I'm sure the whole world would have heard of it by now. That said, I still thought it was a good idea to disguise myself for a while."

"Bridget," asked Arnold, "even if all the tapes were lost, why didn't they complain about it and try to track you down?"

"Basically, Arnold, I think it's too embarrassing for them to tell anybody, and also…not criminal enough. First of all, we didn't really do anything violent to them, only slightly damaged their property. And I think the cameras would be OK, which means we really only erased some tapes. So I think they don't have much of a criminal complaint to go on. Secondly, it's their own fault because, honestly, they were only following me because I was hot. Thirdly, they have absolutely no video evidence at all. And their reputation for resourcefulness would suffer if they told anyone what happened…and, maybe the flowers helped."

"Wow," said Arnold, taking it all in. Bridget was right about one thing: Arnold thought his Grandpa was one lucky son of a gun. Helga glared. But she shared Arnold's respect. Actually, Helga had never really considered a career in science before, but some of this stuff was kind of cool.


Bridget adjusted the course of the boat a little, re-aligning on the arched bridge. They sat there for a bit, thinking their thoughts.

"I don't mean to be pushy, guys," said Bridget, "but I'd really like to know how you guys ended up jumping the overpass. Who was driving that thing, anyway?"

Helga and Arnold had each told this story once at home. They started to speak at the same time; then they stopped, each one preferring to let the other tell.

"Do you want to tell it?" asked Arnold.

"Not really. But if you'd rather have me tell it, I could…"

"No, I guess I'll do it…"

"You don't have to, Arnold."

"OK, we'll both tell it. I guess I'll start." Arnold began at the time when he and Helga had gotten to the bottom of the building with the tape, and found Gerald in the bus. But Bridget, having noticed the tenderness between them, interrupted.

"I'm sorry guys, but, if you don't mind, I'd like to go back even further. Helga," she asked, "you know I equipped Arnold and Gerald with their spy stuff. You, on the other hand, I never gave anything to, and yet Arnold tells me that without your help, including some serious hands-on stuff towards the end, they would have totally failed. Helga, I have to ask—though you don't have to answer if you don't want to—how did you do it?"

Helga told the tale. She started three days before when, sitting in a chair at home, Nick Vermicelli's phone rang. The overheard conversation contained everything they needed: The fact that the document was hidden, and where, that Nick had the key, and, most important of all, that a "football-headed kid" was looking for it. So, Helga took her voice disguiser and called Arnold at the boarding house, and told him everything. That was the easy part.

The next day, Arnold and Gerald went to Bridget for the gear, and Helga planned her next moves. She found Nick's address easily enough, and made a map of the surroundings including all the pay phones and their phone numbers. Then she waited for Arnold and Gerald and watched them from a distance. Once they had the key, she called them again.

Helga took a cab to FTI, beating the boys by a bit. She waited outside and followed them in. After they distracted the guards with that car (nice work, Arnold), she ran up, opened the drawers of their desk, grabbed all the documents she could find, and ran down to the parking garage to study them. She quickly found a list of the public phones and their numbers, and a floor plan. It was in the parking garage that she saw Arnold again, and called him for the third time.

He went up to the surveillance room; she followed at a distance. The alarm went off. Arnold retreated into a maintenance area, which she had reached before him. He seemed about to go inside when Helga, needing to preserve him from certain capture, and having looked up that phone's number, called Arnold a fourth time.

"And here," said Helga, her tone of voice both regretful and rapturous, "is where my plans basically fell apart. Arnold must have suspected that I was close; I guess he saw me. While I was talking to him on the phone he walked right up to me and demanded to know who I was. I tried to hide, but my disguise fell apart, and there I stood." Helga paused.

"Bridget," she continued, "what comes next 'can never leave this boat.' Arnold asked why I would have done so much for him. I gave some lame excuses, but then I broke down and told him…told him…"

Bridget was deeply moved. Arnold clasped Helga's hand; her voice hardened a bit.

"…well, that's none of your business. But after we were done talking, we rappelled down the side of the building with Arnold's grappling hook and rope—thanks Bridget—and boarded the bus. Arnold played it cool, and no one knows what happened up there on the tower."

Bridget, of course, was touched, and Arnold knew it was his turn to talk about the bus ride. When he got to the overpass jump, Bridget started sobbing. Arnold stopped.

"Oh," he said sadly, "everyone I tell this to ends up crying!"

Bridget, still sobbing, explained herself.

"Oh, it's so horrible. I could have stopped Nick from doing it, and I didn't, and you were racing towards certain death, and I just let it happen!"

Helga reached out and touched her hand.

"Bridget, what were you supposed to do? When they were setting the charges, you couldn't know that he would actually do it. No one could have known that. And I don't think you could have stopped Nick after the charges were set. If he was holding the detonator, he could just have pushed the button in the struggle. And he was surrounded by burly construction workers. I think you would have gotten yourselves hurt for nothing."

But Bridget (who had dried her tears), didn't buy it. She had learned to be strict with herself, if not with others, and her memory was pretty clear.

"You don't understand, Helga. Nick was afraid to blow those charges; I think Scheck had to order him to do it over the walkie-talkie. There's no way he would have blown it up on his own, just because we were attacking him. As for the workers, what were they fighting for, their right to blow up a bridge full of innocent people? They wouldn't have stopped us. No, Helga, we would have won if we tried. But… we didn't."

"Bridget," said Arnold sadly, "I'm sorry. We forgive you, anyway."

Of course nothing could make Bridget feel much better, but this was about as good as anyone could do.


...


[1] Unfortunately Bridget's tale is not quite consistent with the unedited film. Although the media was noticeably absent during Scheck's arrest (which absence IMO demands a more credible explanation than that they all followed Mayer Dixie out of the area), the fact is that just before Bob assaults Nick, Bridget can be briefly seen silently standing next to him, looking satisfied and doing nothing in particular. To make Bridget's story possible, we further edit to the movie by removing her from that camera shot.

You have my firm assurances that no further exculpatory edits will be made.