Burning Midnight (15 page)

“Don't we need passports?” he asked.

Mandy shook her head. “I read up on it while we were at the hotel. We can get tourist cards at the border inspection station. Twenty dollars each.”

Sully nodded. “I guess we keep going.”

A nervous laugh escaped Dom. “We're going to Mexico. Cool.”

“Sully. Wake up.”

Sully opened his eyes. It took him a moment to remember why he was sleeping in Dom's car.

He sat up, looked around. They were parked on a street crowded with vehicles, the sidewalks teeming with people. Across the street, people were lined up at the window of a mobile food stand with a red-and-white awning. Its sign read
TACOS LOS GUICHOS
. He spotted Dom standing in line.

Sully ran his tongue over slimy teeth. “Where are we?”

“Mexico City.” Hunter raised her eyebrows. “The Gold is rolling
north.
It's
rolling.
Keeps on going until you pick it up.”

A laugh escaped Sully. They were past the spot the Gold was pulling toward. It wasn't on the other side of the Pacific, and it wasn't just some quirk of the sphere. It was moving toward something. Something close.

Dom appeared with a handful of tacos. Climbing out of the car, Sully eyed them suspiciously. “What time is it? Isn't it breakfast time?”

“Huevos.”
Grinning, Dom offered a taco to Sully. “That means ‘eggs.' They're filled with scrambled eggs.”

They were good. Really good. Eggs, tomato sauce, and chili peppers inside a big, crunchy corn chip.

“What's the plan?” Sully asked as he ate.

“The traffic is bad, so we're going to leave the car and walk,” Mandy said.

Sully nodded. “Good plan. Let's go. I need to find a bathroom, though.”

“Don't we all,” Mandy said as they headed down the busy street.

The buildings were colorful—lots of red, yellow, and green—with striped awnings. The colors were faded, though, the buildings old. A lot of the store signs were homemade, painted right on the facade or strung up on banners.

“You think we can just go into one and ask to use the bathroom?” Dom asked.

Up ahead, a row of old bicycles stood outside one of the stores. The painted sign over the door read
BICIMANIACOS
. Sully didn't need to know Spanish to figure that one out.

He led the way into the store, trying to think of a way to ask if they had a bathroom, and to say they wanted to buy four cheap bikes, without knowing Spanish. There was also the small detail of having only U.S. dollars on them.

The shop was tiny, with more bikes lining the walls. A thin, small woman was behind the counter.

“Do you speak English?” Sully asked.

She shook her head.

“Bathroom? Restroom?” He mimicked flushing a toilet.

Hunter stood watching, arms folded, trying not to laugh.

“If you think you can do better, you're welcome to try.” Sully swept a hand toward the counter.

“Yeah, why don't I give it a try?” Hunter turned to the woman behind the counter and said,
“¿Por favor, dónde está el baño?”

“Ah,” the woman said, then answered in Spanish while swinging open a half door.

Hunter turned to Sully, grinning. “It's in the back. You know, the—” She mimed flushing a toilet. “Why don't you go while I buy us some bikes?”

Dom and Mandy were laughing so hard there were tears in their eyes.

“Your mom was Puerto Rican,” Sully said.

“My mom was Puerto Rican,
sí,
” Hunter said. She pointed to the bikes in front of the store, began speaking rapid-fire Spanish to the shopkeeper as Sully slid into the back to find
el baño.

Hunter counted
ocho
twenty-dollar bills onto the counter as a kid who looked about twelve unlocked bikes and set them by the door. After setting up three, he walked away, hands in his pockets.

“There are only three bikes,” Sully said to Hunter as she was accepting change in pesos.

“Funny story,” Hunter said. “No one ever taught me to ride a bike.” She shrugged, breezed past him, slid onto the seat of one of the bikes as Mandy and Dom claimed the other two.

“Can't ride a bike, fluent in Spanish.” Sully squeezed in front of Hunter, placed his foot on the pedal. “Got it.”

They rode slowly, single file, with Mandy in the lead. With their phones disabled, Sully assumed Mandy had no idea where she was heading. She was heading north; at the moment that was probably all that mattered.

“Did you and your mom speak Spanish to each other?” Sully asked as they rolled along, hugging the curb. A bus roared past, spewing a cloud of exhaust that burned Sully's eyes.

“She spoke Spanish. I usually answered in English,” Hunter said.

Sully tried to imagine that.

An image came into his mind unbidden: Hunter's mom, saying in Spanish,
Take my coat. Here. Let's wrap you tight.
And Hunter, a little girl, answering in English,
Thanks, Mommy.

Mandy and Dom were a dozen feet ahead, talking.

“Can I ask you something?” Sully said.

“Yeah.”

“I feel like there's no way to ask this without it coming out wrong….”

“If it comes out wrong, the worst that'll happen is I punch you in the kidney.”

“I know you were just a kid, and maybe you don't know the answer, but why didn't your mother take you to a shelter that night?”

“Because she was crazy,” Hunter said matter-of-factly. “She was a good mother, but she was crazy. She thought Michael Jackson was trying to kill us.” Glancing back, Sully could see Hunter studying him, seeking a reaction.

“Was she always that way?”

“It started when I was about four. That's why she lost her job. She was a nurse. We were doing fine until then.” She put a hand on the back of his shoulder. “Can we talk about something else?”

“I'm sorry. Sure. The other thing I keep wondering is, now that there's no reason to dive in water towers, when will I get to see you in that dry suit again?”

She slapped his back. “Try another topic.”

“Can you speak Korean?”

“Not really. My Korean mom taught me a few sentences, names for some Korean foods. Mostly we spoke English.”

Mandy turned right, onto a relatively quiet one-way street of colorful two-story attached houses.

She slowed to a stop. “Let's see how we're doing.”

Hunter had emptied her backpack of everything but the Gold. Acting as if she needed to find something in the pack, she set it down flat on the sidewalk.

An instant later, she snatched the pack off the ground, zipped it, and pointed toward what looked to be the heart of the city. Tall, modern glass skyscrapers loomed in the thick smog.

No one paid Sully, Dom, or Mandy any notice as they stood admiring a towering monument that rose in the center of a busy traffic circle on the Paseo de la Reforma, the long, straight road that cut through the center of the city. Hunter squatted behind them, one hand in her pack as she checked which way the Gold was pulling.

The monument had to be a hundred feet high; on top was a stunning gold statue of a winged woman holding what looked like a hat.

“I want to come back here sometime,” Dom said.

“To this spot?” Sully asked.

“To Mexico City, I mean. It seems like a cool place. I'd like to look around when I'm not in a hurry.”

It wasn't Sully's idea of the perfect vacation spot, but he could see what Dom was saying. It was so different from New York, kind of wild and exciting.

Hunter zipped her pack, straightened. “Straight across.”

“We've got to be close,” Hunter said as they waited for the light. “It rolls like crazy as soon as I put it down.”

The light changed and they crossed to the center of the roundabout, then climbed two dozen steps leading to the base of the monument, which was ringed with statues of lions and women on thrones. They circled the monument, continued down the steps on the opposite side, and waited for the light again before crossing to the far side of the massive traffic circle.

Once there, they took up the same positions: Sully, Dom, and Mandy acting like tourists admiring the monument, Hunter squatting behind them, looking in her pack.

“What if it's hidden in someone's apartment?” Dom asked.

“I guess we offer them a cut,” Sully said. “In which case we're going to be mighty glad Hunter speaks Spanish.”

Hunter stood, slung the pack across her shoulders. She was staring at the monument, frowning.

“Which way?” Sully asked.

Hunter pointed at the monument. “That way.”

Sully's heart went from zero to sixty. Back the way they'd just come, which meant it was between the two points. Just to be sure, they went a quarter of the way around the traffic circle and tried again, working in silence.

Once again, the Gold pulled right toward the monument.

“What
is
it?” Dom asked, staring up at the tower.

Hunter looked around, approached a woman carrying a shopping bag.
“Perdóneme. ¿Qué es eso?”

The woman answered at length. When she finished, Hunter thanked her and turned back to them. “It's called
The Angel of Independence.
There's a spiral staircase in the column that takes you to the observation deck. The angel on top is Nike, a Greek goddess, and she's holding a wreath directly over the spot where a dude named Hidalgo is buried. He's the father of Mexican independence.”

Sully had no idea whom Mexico had fought to gain independence. He couldn't remember being taught much of anything about Mexico in school. He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up. A man and a woman were on the observation deck, which was a small, fenced area.
The Angel of Independence
was perched on one foot atop the spire, her arms and other leg outstretched. Now that there were people on the observation deck for comparison Sully could see the statue was huge—four or five times as tall as the people. Unlike much of the city, she was bright and clean. She looked like she was made of gold.

“How are we gonna search a public monument?” Dom asked. “I doubt they're going to let us stop every couple of steps to feel around in the cracks.”

“Maybe it's hidden around the base, in a hollow part of one of those statues, or a drainpipe,” Hunter said.

There were six statues ringing the base: four women sitting on what looked like thrones, each clutching a sword and a book, and two lions being led by boys. The statues were black, maybe two-thirds the size of the angel at the top, and set about ten feet off the ground. Sully and his friends would have to scale the monument to get to those statues. There was no way they could do that in the middle of the day; they'd have to wait until dark.

“We're gonna look like terrorists, poking around that thing,” Dom said, shaking his head. He was right. It was a national monument; four teenagers weren't going to spend hours combing it without drawing attention from the police, day or night.

They'd come all this way, and now it was beginning to look like they'd be stopped a hundred feet from their goal.

Sully's gaze rose and fell as he scanned the monument from top to bottom, trying to imagine where the sphere might be. Maybe one of the stone steps leading up to the monument was loose, and the Gold was wedged beneath it?

The Gold. It was interesting that the statue at the top was gold-colored. From this distance Sully couldn't make out many details, but there didn't appear to be any nooks or crannies on the angel where a sphere could hide. It looked to be all one piece.

Mandy had pulled a camera from her bag, was snapping photos of the monument, fiddling with the focus. It was a nice camera, and she seemed to know how to use it.

“Can I see that?” Sully asked her.

She handed him the camera.

At full zoom, the statue just about filled the viewfinder. The angel was gorgeous. Sully could see the individual feathers on her wings; each had a wispy texture. Her skirt was creased a thousand times, making it look like she was walking into a stiff wind. She was holding the crown high, her arm fully extended. The crown was slightly lopsided.

Sully lowered the camera. “Wait, didn't you say she was holding a wreath? Did you mean a crown?”

Hunter shook her head. “The woman said a wreath.”

Sully moved a few steps to the right, squinted, and strained to make out the thing in the angel's hand. It did look like a wreath; he could see leafy edges, which gave it a jagged look. He could just make out something smooth and round partially blocking the hole in the center….

Sully nearly dropped the camera. “Holy crap. Oh, my God.” It was right there, in plain sight. Thousands of people saw it every day.

Hunter's face was suddenly two inches from his. “You found it. Tell me you found it.”

He held out the camera, his hand trembling. “Look at the wreath.”

Dom took a few steps back, stopped at the curb, squinting up. “The wreath? You mean way up there?”

Hunter lowered the camera, her gaze still raised toward the angel. “We found it.”

“How are we going to get it, though?” Mandy asked as she took the camera from Hunter.

“I'll get it,” Hunter said. “Or die trying.”

Sully studied the photo of Nike, Greek goddess of victory, aka
The Angel of Independence,
in the glossy souvenir booklet. Among the many other things Sully had learned in the past hour, he now knew where a shoe company had gotten its name. Outside the hotel room window vehicles honked and engines rumbled.

When anyone stepped out onto the tower's observation deck,
The Angel
was directly above, reaching out, perched on one foot atop the domed roof of the tower. The observation deck was maybe a dozen feet below that domed roof.

“How far do you think it is from the observation deck to the wreath?” Sully asked. “Can we buy an extension pole, like the kind painters use, and poke the Gold right out of it?”

Mandy studied the photo over his shoulder. “The statue is twenty-two feet tall. Plus you have the top section of the tower she's standing on. That's at least another ten feet. I doubt they make extension poles that long.”

No, probably not.

“There's no other way,” Hunter said. “I have to climb up.”

“But everyone will see you,” Sully said. They kept circling around the same problem. “You'll get arrested and they'll take away the sphere.”

In the United States there were laws that said if you found a sphere it was your property, unless you did something illegal to get it. They were assuming the laws were the same in Mexico, and by climbing the statue—which was illegal—they'd risk having the Gold confiscated. They didn't dare activate their phones to make sure. If Holliday located them, he could jump in his private jet and be in Mexico City in a few hours.

“As soon as I get the sphere, I toss it down,” Hunter said. “Somebody catches it and runs like hell before anyone knows what's happening.”

“You drop it a hundred and eighteen feet—” Dom began.

“A hundred and
forty,
” Mandy corrected. “The
tower
is a hundred and eighteen feet. The statue is another twenty-two.”

“A hundred and
forty
feet,” Dom went on, “and one of us
catches
it? That's going to be quite a trick. And if we miss, it's going to hit the steps”—Dom ran a finger down the twenty-five or thirty steps that ringed the base of the monument—“and bounce out into traffic.”

Hunter took a breath, locked her hands behind her neck. “Then I stash the marble in my pack. I let them arrest me, and hand off the pack to one of you as they're taking me away.”

“Will they let you do that?” Mandy asked.

No one answered. They knew a great deal about
El Ángel de la Independencia
now, but not much about Mexico City police procedures.

“There's no other way,” Hunter said. “The tower's locked at night. We have to do it during the day.”

“You can't climb up there. You'll kill yourself,” Sully said, still eyeing the photo of the statue.

“I'm a ninja, remember? I'll tie off on the statue's planted foot, so if I fall, I won't fall far.”

Assuming the knot held.

“I'll do it,” Mandy said. “I mess around on the climbing walls at the gym all the time.”

“No, I'll go,” Sully said.

“No!” Hunter's shout startled them. She looked from face to face, her nostrils flared. “This is what I do. You all go to school, you have jobs, you play sports. I hunt marbles. I've been in tunnels six stories under New York City. I've climbed the rafters over factory floors. I dove into six hundred water towers in the middle of winter.” She chopped her palm with the edge of her other hand. “This is what I do.”

Sully hated the idea, absolutely hated it, but he knew Hunter was going to do it whether or not he supported her. Plus, she was right. He'd watched her go down into that mine in Doodletown like it was nothing, and jump from one eight-story-building roof to the next. She had the best chance of pulling this off. He tried to convince himself that if she was tied off, the worst that could happen was the police confiscated the Gold, and he and the others would have to bail her out of jail. But he'd learned things rarely went the way you planned.