“Can I help you?” he says. His accent is southern. Probably from one of the Carolinas.
“Maybe,” I say.
Look, I’m no fool. F-Matt said I watch too many cop shows, and he’s half right. I watch just enough cop shows to know how to keep the upper-hand in a situation like this.
I purse my lips and pick through a few items in front of me.
“I’m looking for something specific.”
The guy smiles with all his teeth. “We have lots of specific things here.” He keeps in step with me as I walk along, keeping a table in between us. “Is it a gift, or...?”
“A friend sent me here, actually.”
“Ah, I see,” he says. “And this friend, does he or she have a name?”
I look up at him. “What does that matter? You think you know them?”
He chuckles breezily. “If it’s one of my regular customers, I just might.”
I consider giving up the name, but decide against it. Maybe I don’t trust this guy yet, or maybe I’m just having fun playing hard-boiled detective.
“You know a lot about your customers, do you?”
“Mr. Burke,” he says. I blink at him. “Donovan, please. Let’s not beat around the bush.”
I let out a breath of air. “Yuni Perralto?”
“Greetings,” he says, and pumps my hand. “At your service.”
I wipe his sweat against my pants leg.
“I’m sorry about all that, I just—.”
Yuni waves his hand in the air. “Don’t mention it, don’t mention it. I completely understand. You never know who you can trust.”
I shrug and slap my hands against my thighs. “You said you had something to give me.”
He nods happily. “Ah, yes, I did, of course.”
Silence follows.
He squints. “Did I tell you what it was? I’ve got a lot of things here and sometimes it slips my mind, you know.”
Now the red flags start going up in my brain.
Run.
Resist.
But I pull a trick, something I learned from watching those detective shows on TV.
“A book,” I say with as much confidence as I can muster.
He snaps his fingers. “Yes! Of course. The book! I’m sorry. It’s right over there.” He points to the sagging shelf of paperbacks and old leather-bound books, and I walk over to it. I keep an eye on him over my shoulder, and I can tell he’s watching to see what I do.
“I’m sure you’ll find it right there.”
Something feels wrong here.
Something feels very wrong.
Run.
Resist.
Survive.
I grab a suitably mysterious-looking book and wag it in the air. “Here it is, thanks,” and then I make a quick bee-line for the door.
Suddenly three men whom I recognize immediately as the motorcycle Russians come out from behind a couple of clothes racks. One grabs me, the other grabs the book and tosses it to the man who had been pretending to be Yuni Perralto.
He flips through the book expectantly, but when he gets to the end his expression drops to anger and disappointment.
He tosses the book on the floor. “You lied,” he says in a thick Russian accent.
“So did you.”
The guy sucks his teeth, all his many teeth, and then orders the men to take me to the back with “him.”
I have a guess as to who “him” is, and I’m right. They toss me into a dressing room, and I land on top of a young woman, about twenty-five, who has long black hair and huge eyes.
“Perralto?”
She holds up a finger to her mouth, and then points to the ceiling, and then her ear. She’s telling me they’re listening.
Then she speaks, and when she does it’s loud and theatrical, clearly meant for the benefit of our captors.
“Mr. Burke. Thank you so much for finally coming. I’m sorry it took you so long. Perhaps if you had heeded my first invitation, we could be meeting under better circumstances.”
I know she’s basically blaming me for the situation we’re in, but I’m kind of distracted, because as she’s talking she’s pointing to her feet and making strange gestures with her eyebrows.
“I’m...sorry...” I say, trying to go along with the conversation.
“I told you there’s an item you needed to get here. I assume that’s why you finally came.” She points to my feet now, emphatically, like I should already get the point.
She shakes her head, and points to her eyes as she says, “It’s very important that you do exactly as I say.”
This is so confusing.
“There is a watch, near the front of the door.” Outside we can hear feet scuffling across the floor. I can just picture the goons heading to the spot she mentioned.
She grins deviously, and I suddenly am onto the con. She’s faking them out!
“What does it look like?” I say it with big exaggerated lip movements and even hand gestures even though nobody is watching us.
“It’s blue and green,” she says. “With little lights on the side.”
As the rustling continues outside, I picture the clueless Russian gangsters frantically digging through everything at the front of the store looking for the nonexistent watch.
But Perralto gets my attention with a wave of her hand. She leans in close to my ear and whispers so quietly it’s almost not even a sound.
“Find the shoes.”
I lower my eyebrows at her, and now I’m thinking this woman is just plain crazy. Great, I’ve wandered into the mad conspiracy scheme of a crazy person.
But if she really were crazy, then what’s with the Russians?
Clearly there’s something worth looking into here. Clearly there’s something real going on.
Real reality.
Fake Matt’s words echo in my head.
I decide to nod, even though I’m not sure what I’m agreeing to. I just want her to know that I get it, I take her seriously, I know she’s telling me something even if I don’t know what it means.
She looks at me and in a voice that isn’t too quiet for them to hear, but isn’t loud enough to seem like she’s lying for their benefit, she says, “The Meanwhile is counting on you.”
I swallow. That sounds serious.
With a deep breath, I decide to take action.
Now or never, as they say.
Plus the school day is already half over and I have a feeling there’s more of this nonsense ahead of me, so I’d better keep to a tight schedule.
“Excuse me,” I say, trying to get somebody’s attention.
A few moments later a pair of feet approach and the door to the dressing room opens. The guy with all the teeth is looking down at me. “What?”
“I have to use the bathroom.”
Classic.
He looks at the woman next to me like he’s trying to decide if this is a trick or not. I guess he decides its not, so he steps aside and lets me step out. He nods to one of the other men, who are up at the front of the store picking through overturned VCRs and camcorders and alarm clocks, looking for the watch they overheard Yuni talking about.
The taller of the three men comes over to me and takes me by the shoulder. He walks me back toward the bathroom, but before heI step inside I turn and whisper to him conspiratorially, “Hey, she told me where it is.”
The guy hesitates a moment, so I add, “The watch,” just so he knows I know what he’s looking for.
“Where is it?”
I peek over his shoulder, pretending to be cautious about speaking too loudly. “By the shoes.”
Now, this may seem like a dangerous proposition. Encouraging the bad guys to look in the very place the item is that I don’t want them to get.
But I have a plan, don’t worry.
“Go piss,” he says to me after a moment. “And then we’ll talk.”
I chortle. “I don’t really have to go, man. I just used that as an excuse to get away from
her. That girl’s crazy.”
The tall Russian grins and squeezes my shoulder. It hurts, quite a bit, but I gather that it’s a gesture of appreciation, not of anger, so I smile and take it in the spirit it’s offered. He hooks his chin towards the store, and we walk together that direction.
I see the shoe section up ahead, and there’s about two dozen sneakers, pumps, sandals, and weird rubber shoes with holes in them. I have no idea what I’m really looking for, but I hope I’ll know it when I see it.
“Where is it?” the guy asks me. The other two Russians have joined us now, leaving one behind to guard the dressing room.
“It’s inside a shoe,” I say, “but I don’t know which one.”
Now we’re really getting dangerous. If I’m able to tell which shoes are the ones Yuni wants me to find (which, by the way, I have no idea why), then it stands to reason that these fellas would be able to tell just as easily.
Maybe more easily, since they already know what the item in question is supposed to do. My only hope was they’d be too distracted looking inside the footwear to notice much about the outside.
The tall guy holds me in place while the other one goes over and starts turning over all the sneakers and throwing them on the floor behind him.
“I’ll help you look,” I say. “I know what I’m looking for better than you do.”
Not entirely a lie, actually.
The guy flipping through sneakers checks with his boss, who gives him a silent nod, and then I’m sent over to help. I kick a few of the downed sneakers as I walk, trying to casually look at them and see if I can find anything notable.
Crouching down next to the other guy, we’re both picking up shoes and looking inside. Obviously we’re not finding anything, although he doesn’t know we’re looking for two different things.
Then I pick up one pair of sneakers that seems oddly heavy, like they’re weighted strangely. I look them over, and I can’t find a brand marking anywhere.
But they’re blue and green, just like Yuri’s imaginary watch.
With lights on the side, in a blue band that goes around the outside.
A blue band just like the sunglasses have.
These are them.
These are they?
Them.
The other guy hasn’t noticed me holding them yet, and I drop them to the ground in front of me quickly so he doesn’t grow suspicious. As I flip through a few other shoes, I keep thinking about the grey sneakers and wondering what to do.
And all at once it hits me. I make a show of being tired and plopping down on my butt to keep looking.
“Bad knees.”
The Russian does the same, and we keep looking.
“Here it is,” I say finally, holding up a tattered old Converse. I hand it to him, and he tips it over. A wind-up McDonald’s toy falls out—a little item I picked up while poking around earlier. It’s a little car with an oversized cartoon character sticking out the top of it. I grabbed it because I was nostalgic. Who says sentimentality doesn’t pay?
No one says that, actually. I don’t think that’s a phrase.
The Russian picks up the toy and turns it over in his hand.
The Boss comes over, baring his many teeth, and examines it as well. They’re both wondering how the time works. Neither of them have noticed that the shoe it fell out of was the same one I was just wearing when I came in.
“She said watch,” the boss Russian says to me. I just shrug.
“She lied.”
I get back up to my feet and step closer to him, keeping one eye on the toy and the other on the front door.
“Let me see it,” I say. “I may know how it works.”
The Russians all laugh at me.
“You’ve got some balls, kid,” Big Teeth says.
I give a half-hearted laugh. “You want to know how it works or don’t you?”
He scrapes his teeth on his lower lip. “Fine. Do it.”
He nods to the tall Russian, who points a gun at my chest.
I take the toy in my hand and pore over it. It looks to them like I’m trying to figure it out.
What I’m really trying to figure out is how long it would take me to get out the front door.
Staying wasn’t an option anymore, or at least it won’t be once these guys figure out this toy is bogus and that I was lying the whole time. And once they start asking why I would lie about it, they’ll start wondering why I picked the shoes. Eventually, they’ll figure out what I did and that will be the end of it all.
No, my only chance of survival now was to run as fast as I could.
Luckily, the blue-banded shoes I was now wearing were extremely comfortable and provided excellent arch-support.
I held up a finger, watch this, and then proceeded to twist the nob on the side of the McDonald’s car. I twisted and twisted until it wouldn’t turn anymore, and then I set the car down on the floor. The Russians all took a nervous half-step back.
I let go, and the wheels of the car spin out on the linoleum, and then the car shot down the aisle, drawing everyone’s gaze as it did.
And that’s when I bolted.
I ran for the front door, leaping over a table that was in the way as a bullet whizzed past my head. I could hear the Russians shouting to each other, and I thought I heard Perralto shout something from the back room—activate?—but the whole scene was just a cacophony of shattering glass and shouts.
I was outside on the street in a fraction of a second and made the sharpest turn I could to run along the front of the building.
Smashing glass behind me, crunching bits under fast moving feet. They’re gaining on me, I don’t even need to turn around to know it.
I can feel them about to reach out for me.
The street next to us is busy, but people aren’t even slowing down to see what’s going on.
The cars coming towards me are moving fast, and I dash out into the street to cut between two of them. I don’t look back, going on blind faith that luck will be in my favor. Heck, even if I get hit by a car it’s probably no worse than what will happen if these Russian guys catch me.
Tires screech and horns blare and I hear shouting, and I’m across the street onto the other sidewalk before I so much as glance over my shoulder and see that my plan worked about as well as it could. I’ve managed to put some extra space between me and the baddies.
That glance will cost me, though, because it’s the fraction of a second required to lose sight of the fact that there’s someone walking toward me, and I collide shoulder-to-shoulder with them.
I hear a young woman yell out as her purse flies through the air and the contents go everywhere. We both pivot and fall to the ground.
I apologize as I’m getting back on my feet, and I keep running.
And then I notice a new sound following me.
No, not following me. It’s on me. It’s under me.
My shoes are lit up. The blue bands around the ridges are glowing, and there’s a whining sound like an electronic charge coming from them.
The blue ridges blur as my feet pound the pavement.
Run.
Resist.
Escape.
Defy.
Survive.
Gotta hide, I think. I glance back and the guys are just passing the woman who’s still picking up her things. She takes a couple of swipes at them as they run by, yelling obscenities.
There!
An alley. Good old trusty alleyways, always there when you need a quick exit.
I duck into it and there’s a door at the far end.
As I haul ass towards it, I pray to God it’s not locked. I also pray to God that he really exists, because otherwise I might be screwed.
Shouting from behind me lets me know the Russians are in the alley, too.
So does the gunshot and the bullet pitting into the brick on one side of the door.
And then I feel a bite on my left arm, my tricep, harder than any bite I’ve ever felt. It
feels like a Doberman pincher just took a chunk of flesh. But I know it wasn’t a dog; it was a bullet. I grab the wound with my other hand and it’s wet and hot, but it’s going numb already.
Remind me to thank God when this is over because the door is unlocked! I pull it open, cursing those valuable extra moments it takes that allows the Russians to catch up to me, and as I turn and pull it closed they are reaching out for the door at the same time.
The door is only closed as long as it takes to blink before it’s pulled open again, and I prepare my body for annihilation. (Read: I cower into the fetal position.)
“You alright?” someone says.
I open my eyes and now I’m staring at the haggard old face of a Middle-eastern man wearing a dirty apron.
He’s looking at me with confusion, which makes sense because that’s also how I feel.
CHAPTER SIX
The Russians are gone. Like, vanished. Not a trace.
The guy in the apron is holding his hands out to me.
As he helps me back out into the alley he gets a look at my arm.
“Oh, baby, that’s a bad one. What happened to you?”
I glance at the wall and notice the bullet hole isn’t there, by the door. Small detail, but nearly getting killed kind of makes you hyper focus on a few things.
The guy’s name is Malik. According to him, he was standing in the alley taking a piss when he heard a sound like a lightning strike coming from behind that door.
I heard the same sound.
Malik and his wife Sarah run a food truck, which is parked around the corner. That’s where he takes me to help me with my bullet wound.
There’s a line of people waiting on the sidewalk. The most notable thing about all of them is that almost all of them are wearing these clear, thin visors in front of one eye. A few people turn and look at us as Malik and I, leaning on his shoulder, head around behind the truck.
Sarah is inside and sees us through the service window.
“What’s going on?” she asks while handing a customer their change.
She hustles to the back door to open it for us, and Malik pushes me up and inside the kitchen. The place is roomier on the inside than you would think, but it’s still a cramped kitchen built into a cargo van. The smell of chili peppers and cinnamon is thick.
Donovan Meanwhile: Kings of Sparta Page 4
