Villain's Lair

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  People were shouting.

  Crying.

  It was a doozy of a disaster.

  And then Sticky choked out, “Hopping habañerosl Look!” as he pointed to the very heart of the chaos. “It’s Rosie and Tito!”

  Now, it’s a well-known fact that gravity pulls. There’s the gravity of the earth, which keeps us and our buildings and our bikes and burros all securely on the ground. It’s a very strong force, and the truth is, no one completely understands it.

  A situation also has a pull to it, depending on its gravity. It’s not the same kind of gravity as the gravity of earth, but it has a similar effect.

  People are pulled to it.

  The more grave the situation, the stronger the pull. So in this particular case, in this particular city, this particular metal-munching, windshield-crunching pileup had what might be called extreme gravity.

  Everybody wanted to get a closer look.

  Now, when Dave saw that the nucleus of this pileup, the very heart of this pull, was one badly bucktoothed burro, he, too, wanted to get a closer look. But he was encumbered by his bike. So he backtracked to a basement stairwell, locked his bike against the railing, then returned to the chaos in the intersection.

  Word of the wreck had radiated out quickly, and more and more people were funneling in to see.

  Sirens wailed in the distance.

  People began shoving and bumping.

  And then a familiar voice called through the crowd, “Dave!”

  “Ay chihuahua, not her!” Sticky said, ducking for cover.

  It was, indeed, Lily, who had spotted Dave’s bright red sweatshirt and was now squeezing between people to get to him. “Did you see what happened?”

  Dave shook his head.

  “What’s a donkey doing here? And who’s that guy on it? Why is he wearing a bandolier? Is that ammunition real? Does he have a gun?”

  Dave knew the answers to all these questions (or, at least, he believed he did), but he wisely chose not to answer them. Instead, he did what he usually did when he was around Lily.

  He stood there staring at her, feeling totally dorky.

  And it was while he was standing there, feeling (and, I’m afraid, looking) totally dorky, that something strange happened.

  Something very strange indeed.

  A hat came out of the sky and landed with a loud thwap between Dave and Lily.

  It was a purple ball cap.

  With a diamondback snake design.

  Dave stared, not believing his eyes.

  Was this his hat?

  Lily snatched it off the ground. “Is this your hat?” she asked, understandably confused, as Dave was wearing his bike helmet.

  “N-no,” Dave lied, staring at the hat.

  Then Lily looked up. Up to where the hat had thwapped down from. And then Lily, being a very vocal sort of girl, let out an ear-piercing, heart-spearing scream as she backed away from the building.

  Soon everyone was looking up at the dreadful sight above, talking, pointing, and yes, screaming.

  And that’s when Sticky, who had been slyly watching the exchange between Dave and Lily, looked up, up, up and saw poor Luis dangling down, down, down from the roof of the building.

  “What the jalapeño is that?” he cried. But then, because geckos have keen eyesight, he figured out what the jalapeño it was. “Señor! Ay caramba! Señor!” he said, pulling frantically on Dave’s ear. “It’s Damien Black!” And then, being one smart gecko, he put it all together lickety-split. “The hat! Hopping habañeros, hombrel That evil hombre’s got a boy he thinks is you!”

  Dave looked around frantically.

  There wasn’t a policeman in sight!

  He could hear sirens, so he knew they were coming (or at least trying to), but by the time they got there, it might be too late.

  Someone had to do something!

  Why was everyone just standing around?

  Then, in his ear, he heard Sticky’s voice. “Why are you standing there like a bobo saguaro?”

  “Huh?”

  “You need to move! Ándale!”

  Dave looked at the gecko. “Move? Move where?”

  Sticky blinked at Dave.

  He stretched out his little gecko spine.

  He crossed his little gecko arms.

  Then he gave Dave a stern, hard look and said, “Climb the building, man! Save the boy!”

  Chapter 19

  A TAKE-TEN-PACES-AND-SHOOT-SITUATION

  Dave wasted no time. He returned to the basement stairwell where he had chained his bike, hurried down the stairs, and swiftly stripped out of his helmet, sweatshirt, shirt, and shoes. Then he donned a black shirt, a black cap, slip-on shoes, and shades, and stuffed the rest of his belongings inside his backpack, which he left in the corner of the basement stairwell.

  If you’ve ever seen a gecko move, you know they are quick, assured, and nimble. And although Dave moved quickly and nimbly up the wall, he was not feeling at all assured.

  “I can’t believe I’m up this high!” he said when they’d reached the third floor. “What if the power just stops?”

  “It won’t!” Sticky replied, then mumbled, “At least, it never has for me.”

  “But you’re a gecko! You’re supposed to walk on walls!”

  While he talked, Dave pressed on, moving nimbly on a diagonal across the building toward the side where Damien was dangling Luis from the roof. With each step, he moved more and more in the style of a gecko, holding his arms and legs to the side instead of beneath him. With each step he took, he felt stronger, more agile, more comfortable being on a wall.

  Up the building he darted.

  Around the corner he scurried.

  He could see Damien Black now, could hear him yelling something at the boy.

  And below him? Below him people had stopped screaming and were now gasping and asking each other, “How is he climbing the wall? Can you see a rope? Is he a rock climber? Who is that? What is that?”

  And then came the inevitable moment when Damien saw him.

  He stopped shaking Luis.

  He blinked his dark, disbelieving eyes at Dave, then uttered the only word appropriate in such a situation:

  “Huh?”

  But in a flash, his eyes were back to being deadly and diabolical, and he roared, “BWAA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!” which echoed eerily off the building across the street. “BWAA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”

  You see, in the end, he had found the boy.

  The right boy.

  His actions had ultimately drawn him out.

  (By mistake, perhaps, but to Damien’s mind, the result immediately became part of his master plan. His premeditated, brilliant scheme to flush out the boy and get what was rightfully his! Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! This, you see, is how dastardly villains make themselves feel smart.)

  And now what?

  Dave had no problem with now what. He was filled with a newfound bravery. A power inside of him that made him believe that he could outrun that evil hombre, no problem. A power inside of him that made him believe that he was stronger, quicker, faster, and smarter than evil.

  He had the power of good.

  Luis, at this point, however, thought he had lost his mind. It was, after all, flooded with blood from hanging upside down, and that, combined with the fear of dying, made not believing what he was seeing quite believable.

  But the vision of a boy walking straight up the wall didn’t go away. And then the crazy man who had been dangling him upside down suddenly hoisted him back up onto the roof and dumped him.

  As the blood rushed out of his head, he realized that he had seen what he’d thought he’d seen.

  A boy had walked up the wall to save him.

  The minute Luis had his wits about him and saw that the devilish man was no longer interested in him, he got to his feet and started sneaky-toeing toward the fire escape stairs. But just as he was getting near it, two of the weirdos who had followed him earlier came panting onto the roof.


  “Mr. Black!” they shouted. “We’re here!”

  Damien Black waved them back, as he was crouched and ready to pounce the instant Dave came over the edge.

  But once again, Damien Black was about to be outwitted by a child.

  (With the help, that is, of a gecko lizard.)

  “Careful, hombre, careful,” Sticky whispered in Dave’s ear. “A little to the left, then leap up.”

  So that’s what Dave did. And the instant he was on the roof and saw Pablo and Angelo blocking the emergency stairs, he realized that there was only one way down.

  The same way he’d come up.

  Which he could have turned around and done right then, but there was one little problem.

  The boy.

  Now, dastardly, demented villains like Damien Black understand that people who are good cannot just abandon people who need help.

  Dastardly, demented villains like Damien Black count on this.

  It’s how they lure victims into their lairs.

  How they extract information.

  How they use people to get the things they want.

  And what Damien Black wanted more than anything he’d ever wanted was to get the power-band back.

  So he moved toward Dave and said, “There’s no way out. Give it to me or the boy dies.”

  “Don’t say a word,” Sticky whispered into Dave’s ear. “He will remember your voice.”

  So Dave didn’t say a word. Instead, he circled away from the treasure hunter, trying to maneuver closer to the boy.

  “It’s no use!” Damien hissed, circling, too. “Give it up and you’ll both go free.”

  It would seem they were at an impasse. Dave would not give up the powerband, and Damien would not set Luis free without it. There was no escape, nor were there helicopters flying overhead on their way to rescue them.

  And yes, Dave could have just disappeared down the face of the wall, but he felt responsible for the predicament that Luis was in. After all, it was his shoes and hat that had gotten Luis nabbed in the first place.

  So this was a showdown.

  A face-off.

  A take-ten-paces-and-shoot situation.

  And Damien Black, for his part, did not feel he could lose. Even if police swarmed the roof or helicopters arrived, he planned to escape undetected.

  You see, the villain had brought along the Invisibility ingot.

  All he needed was the powerband, and poof, he would simply disappear.

  But what Damien Black had neglected to figure into his evil equation was the Sticky factor. For while the treasure hunter was keeping pace with Dave (the two of them moving round and round like figures on a deadly carousel), Sticky had whispered, “See you at home, hombre,” in Dave’s ear, and had snuck off of one ride and onto another.

  In other words, he had sneaky-toed his way onto Damien Black!

  Now, when Sticky made it up to Damien’s collar, he wasted no time. With a wide-mouthed gecko CHOMP, he bit that evil hombre on the back of his neck.

  “Aaaaghhh!” Damien Black cried, flailing backward and stumbling around like a madman.

  For a moment, neither the Bandito Brothers nor Dave nor Luis thought anything of this behavior.

  Damien Black was, after all, a madman.

  But then Sticky shouted

  “Run!” at Dave, then deepened his voice and bellowed, “Get back to the mansion, you fools!” to the Bandito Brothers before chomping down on Damien Black’s neck again.

  To the Bandito Brothers, the voice sounded for all the world like it had come out of the mouth of Damien Black. But they knew that the boy in the sunglasses had something very valuable, so while Damien Black was screeching and flailing in pain, they charged Dave, thinking they could get whatever it was for themselves.

  Dave looked around quickly but could see only one way out.

  He grabbed Luis and simply said, “Piggyback.” And, hoping desperately that the gecko power of Wall-Walker would hold their combined weight, over the edge they went.

  Chapter 20

  THE CAPPED CRUSADER

  Dave did several smart things as he took Luis down the building.

  First, he didn’t go down the wall facing the pileup or the walls that faced the other streets. He went down the fire escape wall. The one that led to the narrow alleyway (where, if you’ll recall, there were trash cans and mangy cats and broken bottles and not much else).

  He also didn’t take Luis all the way down.

  He dropped him off at the fifth-floor fire escape landing.

  “Wait!” Luis cried. “Where are you going? Who are you? How come you can walk on walls?”

  Dave just flashed him the peace sign and scurried away.

  The minute he was on the ground, Dave tore off his hat and sunglasses and stuffed them inside a trash can. Then he hurried back to the basement stairwell, whipped on his red sweatshirt, clipped on his helmet, and slipped back into the crowd.

  He had two things on his mind.

  First and foremost, Sticky.

  Had Damien Black caught him?

  Would he ever see his sticky-footed friend again?

  But second, an alibi. He needed an alibi.

  So he searched the crowd for Lily, and when he saw her, he went up behind her and stood like he’d been standing there all along. “Do you think he’s going to come back down?” he asked.

  “I hope so!” Lily said, glancing over her shoulder at Dave. “Wasn’t that the most radical thing ever?”

  “It sure was,” Dave said.

  So Dave established an alibi with Lily, but he didn’t stick around. He went back to his bike and rode home. Home, after all, was where Sticky had said he’d meet him.

  But the little lizard didn’t return.

  Not that hour.

  Or the next.

  Or the next.

  That night, Dave’s parents (like everybody else in the city) tuned in to the news. When footage of Dave scaling the wall came on, Dave held his breath, hoping his parents wouldn’t recognize him.

  It was all so strange to watch.

  Like it had happened in a dream.

  Or to somebody else.

  Then the newscaster said, “All through the streets, people were calling this capped crusader the Gecko. He scaled the wall like an enormous gecko lizard, rescued the boy, and enabled the police to capture his assailant.”

  “They caught him?” Dave asked.

  “Of course they caught him,” his father replied. “How did he ever expect to get away?” He pointed to the image of Damien Black, handcuffed and furious. “Look at that lunatic! I hope he spends the rest of his life behind bars!”

  “Amen,” Dave’s mother murmured. So Dave’s parents didn’t show any hint of recognition, which for Dave was an enormous relief.

  Evie, however, was another matter. First she stared at the TV. Then she stared at Dave. She stared at the TV.

  She stared at Dave.

  And although (for the first time in her life) she didn’t point a finger or tattle, Dave could tell she was making plans.

  Big, long-range, torturous plans.

  But even that barely bothered him. All he really cared about was Sticky.

  Where was Sticky?

  He didn’t sleep a wink all night. Every time he heard a tiny noise, he hoped it was Sticky. He checked the flower box outside the kitchen window over and over and over.

  Sticky was never there.

  In the morning, he left for school at the very last minute and even rode home at lunch to check the flower box.

  Sticky had not come home.

  “Where are you?” he whimpered, and in his heart of hearts he feared the worst. He even (for the first time) asked Mr. Kelly to please let his customers know that he was sick and couldn’t do his deliveries (because he did, in fact, feel sick and didn’t know how he’d make it through the afternoon).

  He went straight home after school, and even Lily being friendly to him in the foyer couldn’t rai
se his spirits. In fact, she depressed him all the more. “Everybody was talking about the Gecko today!” she said. “He’s like a real-life superhero!”

  A superhero?

  He didn’t want to be a superhero!

  He didn’t want to be the Gecko.

  He just wanted his gecko.

  Dave trudged up to his apartment, checked the flower box, then flopped onto his bed.

  What was he going to do?

  But then from beneath his pillow he heard, “Hey, hombre, you’re squooshing me!”

  “Sticky?” he gasped, whipping the pillow away.

  “No, señor” Sticky said with a scowl. “You’ve got a talking pillow.”

  “Sticky!” Dave squealed, scooping him up. “I was so worried about you!”

  “Easy, hombre, eeeeeasy! It was a long way, you know. And I was carrying something that slowed me down.” He jumped back onto the bed and burrowed under the covers, and when he emerged, he had a coin in his hand.

  A shiny coin.

  With special notches.

  He handed it over to Dave and said, “Here, hombre.”

  Dave blinked at the coin. On it was the design of half a man. “Is it…?”

  Sticky gave a little gecko shrug and a little gecko grin. “Pop it in. See how you like it.”

  And so, with shaking hands, Dave did.

  And disappeared completely.

  Now, I could tell you what happened next. And I could explain how anyone who thinks that a simple cage is enough to hold a devilish villain like Damien Black has a lot to learn. But those are stories for another day.

  For this story, for today, the time has come to say…

  Adiós!

  A GUIDE TO SPANISH AND STICKYNESE TERMS

  adiós (Spanish / ah-DEE-ohs): goodbye, see ya later, alligator

  amigo (Spanish / ah-MEE-go): friend, buddy, pal

  andale (Spanish / AHN-duh-lay): hurry up! come on! get a move on!

  asombroso (Spanish / ah-sohm-BRO-so): awesome, amazing

  ay-ay-ay (Spanish and a Sticky favorite): depending on the inflection, this could mean oh brother, oh please, or you have got to be kidding!

  ay caramba (Spanish and a Sticky favorite / ai cah-RAHM-bah): oh wow! or oh brother! or I am not believing this!