Текст книги "Shelter"

Автор книги: Harlan Coben

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

So I laughed again—and again she joined me. Myron stared at me with puppy-dog eyes and a small, sad smile. Kimberly wheeled herself away. Confused, lost, I let my laugh fade away. I didn’t know what to do when my phone vibrated. I checked the caller ID and saw it was Spoon. I put the phone to my ear.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

“Mickey?” I could hear the excitement in his voice. Spoon was, in fact, so excited that he skipped his customary non sequitur. “I got something.”

“Got what?”

“Ashley’s locker.”

“What about it?”

“I know who broke into it.”

chapter 11

EMA, SPOON, AND I met up in the parking lot the next morning before school. We sat on the curb. Ema had her laptop. Spoon wore sunglasses today. He had a briefcase, a real, live briefcase like you might see a businessman in a movie use. I can’t remember ever seeing one in person before. Spoon played with the combination lock and flicked it open. I looked inside. There was nothing but a flash drive. Spoon arched his eyebrow above the sunglasses as he pulled it out and locked up the case.

“What you are about to see,” Spoon said with maximum drama, whipping off his sunglasses, “must forever remain with us.”

He handed Ema the flash drive. Ema sighed. “What is this?”

“The surveillance video,” Spoon said. “You see, the school has a pretty extensive security system—eighteen security cameras covering most entrances and corridors. I realized that no one would have broken that lock during the day. Someone would have noticed. I also realized that someone must have broken it recently because a broken lock, dangling like that, would have been reported within a few days. So I used my key to get into the security office. They store everything digitally. I found Camera Fourteen—that’s the one that covers Ashley’s locker—and started reviewing the night before we saw her broken lock.”

“How long did that take you?” I asked.

Spoon grinned. “Almost no time at all. You see, the cameras are motion sensitive, so most nights they just stay off.”

Ema plugged the flash drive into her computer port. We all huddled around the screen when two hands reached in and snagged the laptop away.

“Hey!” Ema said.

“Well, well, well,” a now-familiar, grating voice said. “What do we have here?”

I turned around and saw Troy holding the laptop. Buck was next to him. Behind them were assorted jock-toughs. I think there were five of them, maybe six. It was hard to tell. The varsity jackets tended to blend into one big mass.

Spoon said, “What do you guys want?”

“Well, Arthur,” Buck said, “we just think you’re kinda cool and wanted to hang with you?”

Spoon beamed. “Really?”

“Give me back my laptop,” Ema said.

They ignored her. I debated how to play this.

“Yeah, sure, we wanna hang with you,” Troy said to Spoon. “You got all the right moves. Or movements anyway.”

Spoon pushed up his glasses. “Huh?”

“A movement,” Troy said. “Like in a bowel movement. Because you smell like one.”

Troy raised his hand for a high five. Buck slapped it. The assorted jock-toughs snorted laughter. Spoon looked as though someone had slapped him.

I rose. “Good one. Now give us back the laptop.”

Troy smirked and moved a step closer to me. “Make me.”

“He will!” Spoon shouted, small tears in his eyes. “Next time he goes to the bathroom!”

I looked back at Spoon and frowned as if to say, Come on, we’re better than that.

Troy pointed at him. “You want me to kick your ass, Arthur?”

“My name is Spoon!”

“What?”

“That’s my nickname,” Spoon said. “Spoon.” He pointed at Ema. “Like her nickname is Ema.” Then he pointed at Buck. “And like his nickname is Wee Wee Pants.”

“What the—?” Buck’s face went red again. “I’m going to so kick your ass.”

I stayed between them and Spoon. “Why don’t you deal with me?” I said.

Buck’s head spun toward me. “You wanna die too?”

“No,” I said. “Right now I want the laptop back.”

“You want it,” Troy said, leaning close enough for me to smell his morning scrambled eggs, holding the laptop in his right hand and wiggling it, “take it from me.”

So I did.

When I was in the Amazon studying martial arts, we worked a lot on taking away hand weapons. Naturally I received many lectures on never doing it—in how running away was always far smarter than trying to disarm—but if cornered or forced, I was taught what to do. The key element is surprise. If someone knows you’re going for the weapon, sorry, despite what you see in kung fu movies, it is nearly impossible to get the weapon without getting hurt.

Here, of course, there was no weapon danger. So I went for it. When Troy wasn’t prepared, I simply snatched the laptop from his rather weak grip. There was also something else working in my favor here: my genetics. I don’t take credit for this. It was an accident of birth. My father was a good natural athlete, though he never liked the competitive aspects of sports. My uncle was a pro-caliber basketball player. My mother was a pro-caliber tennis player. So I get it from both sides of the gene pool. I was born with good handeye coordination and quickness. Much as you might work on that and parents might try to push it, you can’t really teach that stuff.

For a moment, Troy and Buck didn’t move. I quickly handed the laptop back to Ema, never taking my eyes off my adversary—another lesson drummed into me. I turned and prepared for whatever they might do. I knew it had to be something. Troy was the cool senior. I, a lowly sophomore, had shown him up.

Man, it was going to be a long basketball season.

He was about to reach out for me when Ema said, “Troy?”

“What?”

“I know the real reason you’re always bothering us.” Ema batted her dark eyelashes at him. “Do you maybe, I don’t know, have a little crush on me?”

“What? You crazy?”

“Stealing my laptop like that—such a flirt move.” Ema batted her eyes at him some more and feigned coquettish. “Rachel Caldwell isn’t into you, but who knows? Maybe I’ll be. True, I’ll have to lose my sense of vision, not to mention smell, to find you attractive, but . . .”

Troy grabbed me by the lapels. I went with it, making my body a little slack as though scared. “You better stay out of my way, Bolitar. You hear me?”

“Hey,” I said, putting my hands up in mock surrender. “I’m not the one who came over here to hit on your friend.”

That was enough for Troy. Keeping one hand gripping my shirt, he cocked his fist way back, almost like a windup. It was a classic move and when he bullied guys like Spoon, it probably worked. But it was dumb. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. You snap for the weak zones—nose, throat, groin, eyes. You don’t take your time and pull your fist back.

There were several moves I could make here, but I decided to go with the one that would leave the least damage. I quickly trapped the hand on my chest with my forearm, grabbing on to the fingers. I jerked to the right, knocking him slightly off balance. The final part of the move—actually this all took less than a second—was to sweep the leg.

Troy went down on the pavement.

I didn’t know what would happen next, if he’d be dumb enough to try to stand or dive for my legs, but I was ready.

“What’s going on here?”

It was Ms. Owens. I let go of Troy. He jumped up with as much dignity as he could muster, trying to give off an I-was-just-about-to-beat-your-butt attitude. I didn’t challenge it.

“I said, what’s going on here?”

There were loads of nothings muttered. Troy and Buck and the assorted jock-toughs seemed to fade away. Ms. Owens glared at me for a moment and then she left too.

Ema stood next to me. “Getting in a fight with a popular senior. Pissing off a schoolteacher and the local chief of police. Hanging with two major-league losers.” She slapped my back. “Welcome to high school.”

We still had time before the bell rang.

The three of us were back huddled around Ema’s laptop. She clicked the video icon. The B corridor at school appeared on the screen. I expected the feed to be grainy or black-and-white, but it looked high-def. Ema hit the Play button, and a man came into view. He wasn’t a teacher. He wasn’t a student. He wasn’t staff.

He looked like a pure hoodlum.

He wore a sleeveless T-shirt, low-slung jeans, and bad facial stubble. Thick gold chains hung from his neck. In his right hand, he carried a crowbar.

There was also a tattoo on this face.

I looked over at Spoon. “Tattoo on the face. Isn’t that what Mrs. Kent said the man who broke into their house had?”

Spoon nodded. “It has to be the same guy.”

What could this hoodlum have to do with Ashley?

The video didn’t come with sound, but the silence was kind of deafening. Tattoo Face stopped walking in front of the locker. Using the crowbar, he smashed Ashley’s lock. He opened the locker and stepped back. Tattoo Face looked inside and then, even without sound, you could tell he was angry and probably cursing.

The locker was empty.

A moment or two later, Tattoo Face stormed away. “That’s it,” Spoon said.

Ema stopped the tape.

“So now what?” I asked. “Do we show this to the cops?”

Spoon pushed the glasses up his nose. “You’re kidding, right?”

“This guy probably broke into the Kent household. We have video of his face.”

“Video I stole from the security room at school,” Spoon said. “How would we explain that? I don’t trust cops.” Spoon turned to Ema and puffed out his chest. “See, I have a police record. Is it true that chicks like dangerous men?”

“Men maybe,” Ema said. “But he’s right, Mickey. You can’t go to the cops. Spoon here will get in trouble, for one, but also, hey, remember who’s police chief in this town.”

Troy’s father, Chief Taylor. Oh boy, did I remember. Not only did I have a problem with the Taylor clan, but clearly Uncle Myron didn’t get along with them either.

“Okay, so we don’t go to the cops,” I said. “So what do we do next?”

Ema clicked on the screen again. The video feed came up. She clicked an arrow and the feed started going backward in slow motion. She stopped it and then zoomed in so that we had a pretty clear look at the side of Tattoo Face’s cheek—the one with the tattoo.

“I have a thought,” Ema said, “but it’s probably a long shot.”

Spoon and I signaled that we were anxious to hear it.

“I know a guy. A tattoo artist named Agent. He did my stuff.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Anyway, the tattoo community is a pretty tight one. Everyone knows everyone. These guys are artists, and this looks like pretty special work. So what I’m thinking is, we show this photograph to Agent. Maybe he can tell us who the artist is.”

I looked at Spoon. He nodded that he liked the idea. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

“One problem,” Ema said. “There really is no public transportation to get there, and it’s too far to walk. We need to get someone to drive us.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

Ema frowned. “What does that mean?”

“I can drive us.”

“You’re not sixteen yet.”

“Don’t worry about that either,” I said. And then the bell rang.

Mrs. Friedman had a surprise for us in history class.

“We are going to do a project on the French Revolution,” she said. “Everyone will need a partner, so please choose one.”

I didn’t know anyone in the class, so I figured I would wait until the end and take whoever was left. Everyone else in the class moved in a flurry, joining up with friends, afraid to be left out. Everyone, that is, except Rachel Caldwell. She stared at me and smiled. Even though I was sitting, I felt my knees go a little weak. People tapped Rachel on the shoulder, called her name, tried to get her attention. She ignored them and continued to meet my gaze.

“Well?” she asked me.

“Well what?” I said.

I just keep stunning her with the great one-liners.

“Do you want to be history partners?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said.

Mrs. Friedman clapped to get everyone’s attention. “Okay, people, if you have your partner, move your chair next to theirs so I can tell you the assignment.”

I rose and grabbed my chair. I stopped for a moment, feeling shy, but Rachel slid over and signaled for me to move next to her. I did. She smelled like, well, a beautiful girl. I started to feel warm. Rachel Caldwell gave Mrs. Friedman her undivided attention. She took lots of notes. Her notebook was pristine. I tried to pay attention—Mrs. Friedman was indeed giving us an assignment—but the words swam by in a murky haze.

When the bell rang, Rachel turned to me. “When do you want to meet up?”

“Soon,” I said.

“How about after school today?”

I remembered that we were going to visit Agent, the tattoo artist. “I can’t after school. Maybe tonight?”

“Sounds like a plan. Why don’t you call me?”

“Okay, sure.”

Rachel waited. I didn’t know what for. Then she said, “You don’t know my number.”

“Oh. Right.”

“You’re probably going to need it,” she said. “I mean, it’s going to be hard to call me without the phone number.”

I nodded sagely. “You make a good point,” I said.

She laughed. “Give me your phone.”

I did as she asked, handing over my cell phone. She started typing. “Here’s my number.”

“Thank you.”

“Talk to you later.” She handed me back the phone and started to leave.

“Bye.”

Five minutes later, I was at the lunch table with Ema. Ema studied my face and said, “What’s with the stupid grin?”

“What stupid grin?”

She frowned. “I called Agent. He can meet us after school.”

“Good.” Then I said, “You’re not even fifteen yet, are you?”

“So?”

“So how did you get tattoos? I thought you had to be eighteen.”

“You can be younger if you get your parents’ permission.”

“So that’s what you did?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ema said with a little edge in her voice. “How are you going to drive us there without a license?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, mimicking her tone.

Ema took a bite of her submarine sandwich. She finished chewing and tried to sound nonchalant. “How was your trip to Los Angeles?”

“Fine. But after you left the other day, I saw our friend from Bat Lady’s house.”

I told her about it. Ema was so good at zeroing in on me when I spoke, making it easier to talk, making the rest of the world sort of fade away. She didn’t just show you that she cared—you felt it.

When I finished, Ema said, “We have to go back to Bat Lady’s house.”

“I don’t know.”

“And they told you not to tell anyone, right?”

“Right.”

“Yet you told me.”

“Yeah, I guess I did. But wait, they said don’t tell anyone about us. You already knew about them.”

She smiled. “I like the way you find loopholes.”

Spoon came over and slammed his tray down next to us. “Every day in the United States, two hundred new jail cells are constructed. I don’t want one of them to have my name on it.”

“I told you,” I said. “We won’t go to the cops.”

He sat down and started eating. Two minutes later, I heard Spoon mutter, “Oh. My. God.” His eyes widened as if he were witnessing the dead being brought to life. I spun toward where he was gazing and saw Rachel Caldwell heading toward us. She was carrying a plate of cookies.

“Hi, guys,” Rachel said with a smile that didn’t just dazzle. It picked you up and shook you hard and then just dropped you back in your seat.

Ema frowned and crossed her arms. Spoon said, “Will you marry me?”

Rachel laughed. “You’re so adorable.”

A swoon. A Spoon swoon, if you will.

“I don’t want to bother you guys,” Rachel said, “but we were just having a cheerleader bake sale. Lame, right?”

“Very,” Ema said, arms still crossed. I shot her a look.

“Anyway, my cookies are pretty awful, so no one bought them, so I figured before I threw them out . . .”

“Thank you,” I said.

She quickly put them down on the table and shyly walked away.

“The future ex–Mrs. Spoon,” Spoon said. Then, thinking about it, “Or would she be Fork? I must work on that.”

“You do that,” I said. I picked up a chocolate chip cookie and took a bite. “Not bad,” I said.

Ema rolled her eyes into the back of her head. “Of course you like her cookies. They could be made from baby powder and wood shavings and you’d still like them.”

“No, seriously, try one.”

“Pass,” Ema said.

“You know,” I said, chewing the rather dry cookie and wondering what to wash it down with, “disliking someone—anyone, really—based on his or her looks is shallow.”

Ema rolled her eyes even farther back in her head. “Yeah,” she said, “I feel so bad about that. Rachel must be crushed.”

“I think she’s nice,” Spoon said.

“I’m shocked,” Ema said. Then looking back at me, “Do you know she used to date your buddy Troy?”

I made a face. “Eew.” Then: “Used to, right?”

More eye rolling. “Talk about shallow. The hot cheerleader going for the basketball captain? Only one thing you can conclude from that.”

“She’s right,” Spoon said, looking at me solemnly. He put his hand on my shoulder. “You got to figure a way to become basketball captain.”

chapter 12

AFTER SCHOOL, Spoon, Ema, and I walked to Myron’s house. I grabbed the car keys from the kitchen, and we got into the Ford Taurus. I flashed back to my father teaching me how to drive. We were in an old stick shift in South Africa. I kept flooding the engine and Dad kept laughing. “Ease up on the clutch,” he told me, but I had no idea what that meant. I had just turned fourteen. When we traveled in certain remote parts of the world, we would use other names and identifications. The one in my pocket right now was Robert Johnson. It was best, Dad had said, to use fairly common names when going with a fake ID, something people wouldn’t really remember or, if they checked, they’d be overwhelmed with information. Robert Johnson was twenty-one years old, a solid six years older than me. I didn’t look twenty-one but when you’re my height, you can often pass.

The IDs were also impeccable. I don’t know how. I asked my father why we needed them, but he was always a little vague about it. “The work we do,” Dad said. “We make enemies.”

“Aren’t we helping people?” I asked.

“We are.”

“So how do you make enemies?”

“If you rescue someone, you’re often rescuing them from someone.” Dad looked off, bit down on his lower lip. “If you’re doing good, it’s often because someone else is doing evil. Follow me?”

“Yes.”

“And those that are doing evil,” Dad continued, “aren’t afraid to hurt anyone who interferes with their plans.”

Ironic, I guess. He was a humanitarian, my father. He survived going against the wishes of despots and dictators in some of the most dangerous and war-torn jungles in the world. He finally settled back in the relative safety of the United States and dies in a car crash driving me to a basketball game.

It was hard not to be angry.

I thought again about Bat Lady telling me my dad might still be alive. Maybe that was what this was all about—finding Ashley, the bald guy in the dark car, Bat Lady herself. Maybe I was doing all this because of the one chance, the one in a zillion, that she meant it. That it was true.

“Make a right,” Ema said. “It’s on Route Forty-Six.”

As we approached, Spoon started sniggering.

“What?” Ema asked him.

“The name of the tattoo parlor,” he said.

“What about it?”

“Tattoos While U Wait,” Spoon said. “What kind of name is that? While U Wait? Like, how else would you do it? Rip off your arm and say, ‘Here, put a snake on the shoulder, I’ll pick it up in the morning’? Of course you wait.” He sniggered some more.

Ema looked at me. “We have to leave him in the car.”

I nodded. Spoon agreed to be our “lookout.”

My first thought when entering Tattoos While U Wait was a surprising one: cleanliness. I expected something gritty and grimy, but this place looked more sterile than a doctor’s office. It gleamed. The actual workers and patrons appeared rough around the edges, dressed in jeans and T-shirts and, well, loaded up with piercings and tattoos. Tattoos While U Wait could have been a banquet hall holding the Ema family reunion.

“Hey, Ema,” the woman at the front desk—classic biker chick—said. She and Ema pounded fists. I was surprised that they would know her as Ema here. I assume that she told them her nickname. More irony. Ema clearly liked a nickname given to her by that ass-tard Troy Taylor.

We found Agent in the back. There were posters of various Hindu gods on the wall, many in states of meditation. Incense burned, tickling my nose. There was soft music playing, a woman repeating the “So hum” over and over in what I guessed was some kind of mantra.

Agent had just finished a huge back tattoo, an eagle with a shoulder-to-shoulder wingspan. His client was using two mirrors to look at it, like a guy checking the neckline at a hair salon.

“Beautiful work, Agent,” the man said.

Agent put his hands together in prayer position. “Don’t get it wet for two weeks. Make sure you keep the cream on it. You’ve done this before.”

“I have, yeah.”

“Wonderful.” When Agent spotted us, his face broke into a smile. “Ema!”

They embraced. “Agent, meet my friend Mickey.”

Agent shook my hand. His grip was strong, his hand callused. He had long red hair pulled back, and his long beard had a ponytail holder in it. Naturally he was overloaded with tattoos and piercings. “So nice to meet you, Mickey,” he said a little too earnestly.

“Same here.”

He looked back at Ema. “Do you have a picture of the tattoo?”

Ema nodded. With the quality of the video feed, Ema was able to get a good, clear close-up of the tattoo. She handed the still shot to Agent. He looked at it for maybe two seconds and said, “Eduardo.”

“What?”

“That is definitely Eduardo’s work. He has a shop in Newark. Would you like me to call him and see who commissioned this?”

“He’ll tell you?” I asked.

Agent smiled at me. “If I request the information, yes, Eduardo will tell me. We aren’t attorneys, Mickey. There is no tattoo artist–client confidentiality. There is merely trust. There is a reason you are here, Mickey. There is a flow to the universe, a path it has to inevitably follow.”

Oookay, I thought.

“Ema came into this shop for a reason. She ended up asking me to be her tattoo artist. That has led to you being here. Do you understand?”

No, I thought, while saying, “Sure.”

“Plus, well, Ema has a pure spirit. A delightful chakra. If Ema tells me you need to find this man, you need to find the man. It is that simple.”

Ema blushed. “Thanks, Agent.”

He winked at her. I again wondered how they knew each other and how, at her age, she could have so many tattoos, but hey, I had my secrets too.

“Please wait here,” Agent said, “whilst I call Eduardo.”

Oookay, I thought again. The woman kept singing “So hum.” Man, that was getting annoying. I looked out the window. Spoon sat in the car. Ema said, “Maybe we should have left the window open a crack. Like with a dog.”

I smiled. A man in front of us was getting a wrist tattoo, the needle scraping the skin. He had his eyes squeezed shut, but tears still leaked out. I thought again about Ashley with her pearls and sweaters and wondered how I had gone from searching for that preppy beauty to a New Age tattoo artist named Agent.

More irony?

“Here you are,” Agent said, appearing with a flourish. He handed Ema a slip of paper. The name on it was Antoine LeMaire. The address was in Newark.

“Thank you, Agent,” Ema said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I would join you on this quest,” Agent said, “but I have another engagement.”

Ema said, “Work?”

Agent shook his head. “Yoga class.”

“Are you still working with Swami Paul?” Ema asked.

“No. The heat of that Bikram was messing with my red chakra. It was making me angry all the time. I’m all about Kundalini right now. You should try it, both of you. I mean, look at me.” He spread his arms. “I’m all white lately.”

Oookay.

We started for the door when Agent called out, “Mickey?”

I turned.

“You, like Ema, have a pure spirit. You have blessed energy centers and true balance. You are a protector. You look out for others. You are their shelter.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“And because of that, you have a certain wisdom. You understand that you know nothing about this man you seek. You should be careful before bringing others into his space.”

Agent met my eye and I caught his meaning. I nodded. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

He gave me a little bow. “You should consider a tattoo. It would look good.”

“I don’t think they’re for me,” I said.

“Yes,” Agent said with the most knowing smile on his face. “You are probably right.”