Sticky watched patiently as Dave tried on every combination of hat, shirt, and sunglasses. But at last he said, “If you ask me, hombre, it’s the shoes that give you away. Those are what that evil hombre will recognize. And that backpack. And you should never wear that snake hat again.”
Dave blinked at his feet, then at the gecko. The shoes were his only pair, but Sticky was right. The red trim made them distinctive. He had to get rid of them. And the backpack. And especially the hat!
So the next day Dave bought more shoes.
A different backpack.
And (because they were right there at the checkout stand) bandannas.
Then he ditched his old shoes, the hat, and his old backpack in a garbage can, went home, locked himself in the bathroom, and tried new ways of disguising himself.
He cut holes and made a mask out of one of the bandannas.
“This looks so lame!” he moaned.
Sticky nodded. “Mucho lame-o.”
He tied a bandanna across his nose and mouth.
“Now I look like a bank robber!”
“Sí, señor, you do.”
Now, to his credit, Dave had never considered using his wall-walking power for evil. Or even just bad. It had never even crossed his mind that he could scale buildings, sneak in through windows, steal things, and leave. Dave may have been an all-knowing thirteen-year-old boy, but he was a hardworking, good thirteen-year-old boy. Going into other people’s houses to steal things was just not something he would do.
(Hmm. Yes, he had been persuaded to sneak into a monstrous mansion by a kleptomaniacal talking gecko lizard, but that was an exception.)
Sticky, on the other hand, enjoyed scaling walls at night, finding sparkly things in other people’s apartments, and adding them to his secret treasure stash behind the bookshelf in Dave’s room. The thrill of bringing something new home (regardless of its actual value) gave him great satisfaction.
But the more he was around Dave, the less Sticky ventured out at night. Sticky was almost puzzled by how Dave was nothing like the Bandito Brothers or Damien Black. He wasn’t deceptive or double-crossing. He wasn’t nice one minute and mean the next. He wasn’t crazed for power or consumed by greed. He was just a boy. A good, hardworking boy.
So it was with a deep breath and a puffy-cheeked sigh that Sticky finally said to Dave (who was still playing around with his robber bandanna), “Look, señor, the idea is to cover up, not stick out like you’re going to stick ‘em up.” Then he added (almost hopefully), “Unless you’re thinking you might do a stick-’em-up?”
Dave whipped off the bandanna. “No!”
Now, right on the other side of the bathroom door was an ear. A big ear attached to the head of a little girl with a big mouth. And suddenly the fist attached to this little girl’s arm pounded on the door, and the big mouth cried, “Who is that? Who are you talking to ?”
“Me, myself, and I,” Dave shot back. “Now leave me alone!”
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“No, you don’t! Leave me alone!”
But Evie, pesky little sister that she was, did not know how to leave her brother alone. What she did know, however, was how to tattle.
“Mo’Om! Dave’s talking to himself again! Mo’Om! Dave won’t get out of the bathroom! Mo-om!”
So Dave muttered, “Forget it!” and shoved everything inside his backpack.
Still, something about having a disguise (lame as it might have been) made Dave feel safer. He had no idea when he would ever need it, but there it was, in his new backpack, ready to conceal him at a moment’s notice.
Meanwhile, across town, a truly poor boy named Luis happened upon a pair of tennis shoes while digging through garbage cans. He turned them over, not believing his luck. The shoes were worn but wonderful, with red piping and fat red laces.
He turned back to the trash bin.
There was a backpack, too!
A perfectly good (although well-worn and somewhat soiled) backpack!
And a super-cool ball cap with a radical diamondback snake design.
In his entire life, Luis had never felt this lucky.
He put on the shoes and the cap and strutted down the street feeling happy and extremely hip.
Poor, unlucky Luis.
He now looked just like Dave.
Chapter 16
MARIACHI SPIES
Luis, of course, did not look just like Dave. He may have had the same dark hair, but he was smaller and younger, with a broader nose, more closely set eyes, and rather large, floppy earlobes.
But to the Bandito Brothers (who saw no value in children) and Damien Black (to whom children were like cat-sized rats—vermin that were both interchangeable and expendable), Luis could easily be mistaken for Dave.
And that is exactly what happened one afternoon as the Bandito Brothers were strumming and strolling near Luis’s neighborhood (working their way, day by day, ever closer to Dave’s).
“Look!” Pablo gasped, reining back Rosie. “It’s him!”
Angelo stopped mid-strum. “Finally!”
Tito, though, being quite childlike himself, studied the boy walking along the street and said, “That’s not him. His earlobes are too big.”
“Earlobes?” Pablo asked with a squint. “Earlobes?”
“You idiot!” Angelo said, thumping the back of Tito’s head with his guitar.
“Ow!” Tito complained, but Pablo was already pulling a walkie-talkie out of his holster.
Now, when I say “walkie-talkie,” I don’t mean the sort of slick model an ordinary person might purchase at an ordinary store. No, this particular walkie-talkie was a strange-looking contraption made by Damien Black himself. It was fashioned out of odds and ends, bits and pieces, and, of course, gizmos and gadgets and thingamajiggies.
It had the handle of a flashlight (so it fit quite nicely into the six-shooter holster), but other than that, it wasn’t like anything you’ve ever seen before. It had wires and glowing tubes and antennas, a rubbery ear on the side, and a mouthpiece in front with lips.
Pablo switched on the power.
He extended a long, spirally antenna.
Folded out a grid-shaped doohickey.
Spread out a fan-shaped thingamabob.
Dialed a frequency knob until it was lined up with a picture of the mansion.
And at last he whispered into the rubbery ear.
“Mr. Black,” he hissed. “Come in, Mr. Black!” He waited a moment for a reply, and when there wasn’t one, he tried again. “Mr. Black! Come in, Mr. Black! We have found the boy!”
Suddenly there was a snap.
A crackle.
A pop!
And then the raspy voice of Damien Black came (quite eerily) through the lips. “Are you certain?”
Tito rolled his eyes and shook his head, but Pablo hissed, “Yes!” into the ear. “Come quickly! He’s walking toward downtown.”
“Follow him!” Damien’s voice commanded. “I’ve got your coordinates. I’ll be right there!” Then the lips shouted, “And leave the communicator on, you fools!”
Now, when Damien Black says he’ll be right there, trust me, he’ll be right there. Not in a car or a plane or a helicopter, and certainly not on a buck-toothed burro. No, the way Damien Black moves from his monstrous mansion on the top of Raven Ridge to anywhere in the city in a lickety-split get-there-quick sort of fashion is on his motorcycle.
Now, again. This is a Damien Black contraption, not one made by, say, Harley-Davidson. It’s small, like a moped, but with gadgets galore and ape-hanger handlebars (because even dangerous, demented villains have their sense of style). It’s black (for stealth in the night) and has a wicked rocket fuel-injected motor that can propel it from zero to one fifty in four point six seconds while sending bright orange flames out its twin exhaust pipes.
It is, in a word, bad.
And although most motorists would take the road to get to or from Raven Ridge, Damien Black was not most m
otorists. He was a diabolically demented villain, and diabolically demented villains prefer shortcuts when hurrying to perform diabolically demented deeds.
Damien Black had such a shortcut.
He hadn’t built it himself. He had just connected to it via a ramp beneath the dungeon.
It was a shortcut that went under the city.
A shortcut that was wet.
And stinky.
A shortcut that most people would never consider taking themselves.
A shortcut known to the rest of the city as…the sewer system.
Now, because Damien Black lived among bats and rats and Komodo dragons, he did not mind the stench. He also did not mind the wetness, as he could tear right through it on his motorcycle when it was shallow, and if it got too deep, the wheels of his motorcycle turned sideways, transforming the machine into a sewage-spewing Jet Ski (which had the tendency to put the kibosh on anyone chasing him).
So it was with great speed that Damien Black left his mansion and traveled under the city toward the Bandito Brothers.
It was, however, not with great speed or stealth that the Bandito Brothers followed Luis down the street. They were, after all, on foot, dragging along guitars and a bucktoothed burro.
But even without the guitars or the burro, they were just not that sneaky.
In fact, they were bumbly.
Stumbly.
And they said “Shh!” to each other so many times that Luis finally noticed that he was being followed.
Now, if you were being followed by bumbly, stumbly banditos with a bucktoothed burro, you would, at first, think the same thing Luis thought:
What a joke.
But if those bumbly, stumbly banditos and that bucktoothed burro tailed you up one street and down another, across a park, and over a bridge, you might start to get nervous and wonder, as Luis did, what the heck was going on.
“Hey, you weirdos!” he finally called out to them. “Why are you following me?”
“We are just going the same way as you!” Angelo called back.
“And we are not weirdos!” Pablo shouted.
Tito nodded. “We’re a mariachi band!”
This made Luis snort and roll his eyes, and for a moment he felt better.
But then he turned around and saw a manhole cover in front of him wobble and scrape to the side.
A dark-haired man with a twisty mustache and dangerous eyes emerged from underground.
The man sneered at him as he leapt to the street.
And in that instant, Luis understood.
He was in deep, diabolical doo-doo.
Chapter 17
OVER THE EDGE
Being in deep, diabolical doo-doo causes the same reaction in all young boys.
They run!
But (after a short delay caused by his ape-hanger handlebars getting tangled in the manhole opening) Damien zoomed after him.
The Bandito Brothers piled onto Rosie any way they could, then joined the hot pursuit with Angelo shouting “Giddyap!” as Pablo mercilessly slapped the poor burro’s behind with his guitar.
And Luis might have escaped, but he made the mistake of thinking he’d escaped. (And if there’s another thing you should never do, it’s think you’ve escaped while you’re still escaping.)
Around one corner he flew, breathlessly checking behind him for the devilish moped man or the weridos on the bucktoothed burro.
They were nowhere in sight.
Around the next corner he flew, and again, no devil on a moped or bucktoothed burro.
Around the third corner he flew, and it was here that Luis, gasping for breath, finally believed he was safe.
Poor, poor Luis. He didn’t realize he had circled the block!
And when he stopped looking over his shoulder and instead looked ahead, he bumped right into the devilish moped man.
“Aaaaaaah!” Luis screamed.
“Bwaa-ha-ha!” Damien Black laughed, grabbing the boy by the nape of the neck. “Gotcha!”
“Let go, let go!” Luis screamed, kicking and flailing his arms and legs.
It was then that Damien realized that nabbing a boy by the nape of the neck on a busy street in broad daylight was maybe not such a swift move to make.
So he dragged him, kicking and screaming, across the street to a narrow alleyway between tall buildings. An alleyway with trash cans and mangy cats and broken bottles and not much else.
Unfortunately for Luis, people in the vicinity were distracted by a bucktoothed burro attempting to gallop up the street with three grown mariachi men on its back. And so they were unaware that a young boy was being abducted.
Luis was indeed in danger.
Terrible, mortal danger.
Struggle as he might, he could not free himself from the devilish man’s clutches. “Help!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, but Damien just clamped a cruel hand over his mouth and whispered, “Help yourself, you fool. Where is it?”
“Wrar wrar wrar!” Luis cried from behind Damien’s hand.
Damien released his grip on Luis’s mouth.
“Help!” Luis screamed. “Somebody h—”
Fwap went Damien’s hand over his mouth, and this time he shook poor Luis’s face as he demanded, “Where is it?”
“Wrar wrar wrar!” Luis cried from behind Damien’s hand.
“I’m through playing games!” Damien fumed. He tried to frisk the boy’s arms, but with all the flailing Luis was doing, it was impossible to tell anything. So he hauled Luis to a set of fire escape stairs that zigzagged up, up, up for eight floors.
He dragged him to the second level, where he felt it would be safe to slam Luis against the wall and frisk him.
“Hey, you!” someone cried from a window in a building across the alley. “Let him go or I’ll call the police!”
It was just the distraction Luis needed to break free. And since Damien was blocking the steps that went down, Luis ran in the only direction he could.
Up.
With each flight, the furious treasure hunter tried to nab him.
With each flight, the boy had only one place to go.
Up.
So up, up, up, up, up they both ran, until at last they were on the roof.
“Where are you fools?” Damien screamed into the ear of his communicator. “I need your help!”
But the Bandito Brothers were in no position or condition to help. At that moment, they and their bucktoothed burro were causing a metal-munching, windshield-crunching pileup in the street.
SCREECH!
BAM!
CRUNCH!
WHAM!
One car after another collided, until the whole intersection was blocked.
“Uh-oh,” Pablo said.
“Not good,” Angelo agreed.
“Should we maybe play a happy song?” Tito asked, looking around at the wreckage that surrounded them.
Pablo and Angelo exchanged looks, then jumped off of Rosie and scrambled through the jumble of bumpers and broken glass, leaving Tito and Rosie to fend for themselves.
Meanwhile, Damien had chased Luis around the roof of the building until at last he had him cornered. “Now!” he panted. “Give it to me or die.“
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Luis cried.
Damien grabbed him by the neck and gave him a diabolical sneer. “What do you take me for? A fool?”
“NO!” Luis choked out. “I take you for a crazy man!”
Damien pinched the boy’s neck tighter and ripped off his shirtsleeve.
No powerband.
He ripped off the other sleeve.
Again, no powerband.
“Where is it?” he shouted.
Then a giant lightbulb went on over his devious, diabolical head.
“Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” he cried, then grabbed the boy by the ankle, dragged him onto the ground, turned him onto his stomach, and sat on him while he inspected his ankles.
His pockets!
His armpits!
“Where is it?” he finally screeched. “Where have you hidden it?”
“I don’t know!” Luis said into the gravelly roof.
“Well, let’s see if we can’t make you remember !” Damien snarled.
And with that, he grabbed the boy by his ankles, hung him upside down, waddled him across the roof, and did something only a desperate, diabolical demon of a man would do.
He dangled him over the edge.
Chapter 18
EXTREME GRAVITY
Since the day that Dave had first seen the Bandito Brothers in town, he’d watched for them while he was out making his Roadrunner Ex-press deliveries.
Each time he found them, they had moved closer to his neighborhood.
Each day he saw them, he grew more and more nervous.
And each time Sticky had to tell him, “You would be safer to ignore them, señor. They are looking for a boy in red and white sneakers and a snake hat.”
But Dave seemed unable to ignore them. He couldn’t help wondering if they were asking about a boy with a pet gecko. Sticky had been lying low, but a lot of the kids at school knew he had a pet gecko. A lot of his neighborhood knew it.
What if the Bandito Brothers found out where he lived?
What if Damien Black came to his apartment?
What if that demented villain hurt his family?
Well, his sister, that would be one thing. But his parents?
Then one day Dave was racing through the streets on his bike, making a delivery to a business on the outskirts of the city, when he heard the metal-munching, windshield-crunching pileup of cars.
“Ay caramba! What was that?” Sticky cried, jolting awake from his siesta.
Dave coasted for a moment, then turned down a side street toward the sound. He could hear people shouting, and everyone on the sidewalks seemed to be funneling toward the commotion.
“What a mess!” Dave said as the intersection came into view.
It wasn’t just a two- or three-car crash.
There were cars crunched in all directions.
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