Island of Thieves (5 page)

Uncle Harvey was at the door immediately, pulling back the bolt. I picked up his bag as well as mine. His was heavy, but I didn't seem to feel its weight. We ran into the corridor. The elevator was right ahead of us. Uncle Harvey pressed the button. We were lucky; it was there. The doors slid open. We stepped inside and headed for the ground floor.

In my uncle's eyes,
I could see a glimmer of respect that hadn't been there before. “Nice work with the vase, kiddo. Where did you learn to do that?”

“From movies, I guess.”

“You must have been watching some good movies. Once we get out of here, you'll have to tell me the titles. Now, when the door opens and we step into the lobby, don't start running. Wait till we reach the street. Do you understand?”

“Sure.”

We sauntered out of the elevator like two guys without a care in the world. Uncle Harvey nodded to the security guards, who nodded back. We walked through the door and onto the pavement. Once we were out of sight of the guards, my uncle yelled, “Go!”

We sprinted down the street, swerving past surprised pedestrians. My bag clonked against a man's knee. I hoped he wouldn't come after us too. We turned a corner, then another, leaving the sea and Otto's apartment building far behind us.

I could have kept running, but my uncle waved at me to stop. He was doubled over, red-faced, gasping for breath.

I looked back along the street. No one was running toward us.

I said, “Do you think they'll come after us?”

My uncle straightened up, still panting, and nodded. “Otto will be furious. He'll comb the entire country till he finds us.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Get in that cab.” He stepped off the pavement and waved his arm. A taxi on the other side of the street did a neat U-turn and came to pick us up.

As we drove quickly through Lima, Uncle Harvey told me what he knew about Otto Gonzalez. “He's a major criminal. His networks run drugs out of Peru and into Colombia and Mexico, and from there to the U.S. He's famous for torturing his enemies before killing them, and over the course of his long and crooked career, he's apparently committed several hundred murders.”

“But you sold him a picture.”

“I needed the money.”

“Couldn't you pay him back?”

“Sadly, no.”

“Why not?”

“Why do you think, Tom? I've already spent it.”

“A hundred thousand dollars?” I said. “What did you spend it on?”

“Quite a lot went on your plane ticket.”

It was true: my ticket had been darn expensive. Yesterday, when we'd checked on the Internet, there was only one seat left on the flight and it cost $2,200. Which was more money than I'd ever had in my entire life. At the time, Uncle Harvey had told me not to worry and whipped out his credit card. I could pay him back, he'd said, when we found the gold.

“I know twenty-two hundred dollars is a ton of money,” I said. “But even that would leave a lot of change from a hundred thousand dollars. What did you spend the rest on?”

“Mostly paying the guy who did the painting.”

At first, I didn't understand what he was talking about. When I did, I managed to stammer, “You sell fake paintings?”

“I do all kinds of things,” said Uncle Harvey.

“Like what, exactly?”

“A bit of this and a bit of that.”

“What does that mean? What do you actually
do?
”

“When we know one another a bit better, I'll tell you. But not now. Sorry, Tom. It's probably safer if you don't know everything about me.”

“You don't have to tell me everything,” I said. “But you can tell me this, at least. If you knew you'd sold a fake painting to a ruthless murderer, why did you come back to his country? Shouldn't you have stayed out of Peru for the rest of your life?”

“That would have been very sensible.” Uncle Harvey grinned in that irritating way of his, and I thought he was about to say something rude about my dad. “If you recall, Tom, I tried to persuade you to stay in New York, but you bullied and blackmailed me into changing my mind. So don't try to make me feel guilty. And, whatever you do, don't blame me for bringing you here.”

“I didn't know I was going to be chased around the country by a bloodthirsty criminal.”

“If you had, would you have stayed at home?”

I didn't even have to think about that. “No.”

“So stop complaining. Now relax. Otto will never find us. We're much too cunning for him. We're Trelawneys, remember? We're used to trouble. It's in our genes. Don't worry, Tom. Everything's going to be fine.”

I didn't believe him for a moment. I wondered if he even believed himself. Or was he just trying to make me feel better? And what did he mean about our having trouble in our genes? As far as I knew, I came from a long line of shopkeepers and bank managers. That was what Dad had told me, anyway. But now wasn't the time for a family history lesson. I had a far more important question for my uncle: “If Otto's such a big crook, why isn't he hiding? How can he live in the middle of the city? With a tattoo like that, he's not exactly invisible. Why don't the police arrest him?”

“The police only arrest little criminals,” said Uncle Harvey. “They can't touch the big ones.”

“Why not?”

“That's just the way the world works.”

“What do you mean?”

“Haven't you ever heard of bribery and corruption?”

“He pays them?”

“Of course! Otto slips the chief of police a few million dollars. The cops leave him alone. Simple as that.”

The taxi stopped outside a high-rise apartment building. We retrieved our bags and went inside. A porter in a peaked cap was slouched behind a long wooden desk, half asleep, a crumpled newspaper on his lap. The sound of the door woke him up. He gave a funny little salute. “
Buenos días,
Señor Harvey.”

“
Buenos días,
Felipe.”

Felipe led us across the hallway and ushered us into the elevator. He pressed the button marked eight and dodged out as the doors slid shut.

I said, “Where are we?”

“A friend of mine lives here.”

“Who?”

“Just a friend. We're going to borrow her car. If she'll lend it to us. So smile nicely, Tom, and try to look trustworthy.”

On the eighth floor, the doors opened and we stepped out into a long corridor lined with a shabby old carpet. Uncle Harvey walked to apartment 83. He rapped his knuckles loudly on the door. A voice came from inside, calling out in Spanish, and then the door was opened by a tall woman with long black hair. She was wearing a white bathrobe and a pair of pink flip-flops. She stared at my uncle as if she couldn't believe her big black eyes. “Arvee? Is it really you?”

“Hello, Alejandra.” My uncle darted in and kissed her three times, once on each cheek and then once more on the lips.

Her name, by the way, was pronounced Allay-handra. I didn't know the spelling till later. Apparently it's the same name as Alexandra in English.

“I want you to meet someone.” Uncle Harvey brought me forward. “May I present my nephew, Tom Trelawney.”

Alejandra smiled at me. She had gleaming white teeth. “I am happy for meeting you, Tom.” She placed her thin hand in mine. I could feel the bones through her skin. “My name is Alejandra Catalina, and I am a friend of Arvee. Welcome in Lima. Please, you will enter?”

Compared to Otto's magnificent apartment, Alejandra's apartment was like a cupboard. There were just two main rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen, plus a tiny, cramped bathroom. If you sat on the toilet, your knees jammed against the bath. It was cozy, though. I slumped on a sofa and thought,
Yes, this is nice—I wouldn't mind staying here for a couple of days.

Of course, we couldn't. I knew that already. We'd told Otto much too much about our plans. His thugs would be out looking for us. The police, too. All the people that he'd bribed. He probably had spies everywhere. They'd be searching the whole city for us. The whole country. Hunting for Harvey Trelawney and his nephew Tom.

Alejandra's car was small, red,
and smashed to pieces. It looked as if it had been in a fight with a bigger, nastier car and stumbled away, clutching its nose. The body was covered in bumps and scratches. Rust had eaten away at the metal. One of the back windows was cracked. I wondered if it would pass an inspection and then I wondered if they even had inspections in Peru.

Uncle Harvey wasn't complaining, so I kept quiet too. If you're in a strange city and you need a free car, you take whatever you can get. Especially if there's a murderous international criminal on your tail.

Uncle Harvey loaded our bags into the trunk. I wondered if Alejandra would be coming with us, but she kissed me on both cheeks and said, “
Adiós,
Tom.”

“Bye. Thanks for the car. We'll bring it back in one piece, I promise.”

I don't think she heard me. She'd already turned her attention to Uncle Harvey. I looked the other way. Eventually my uncle freed himself from her clutches and took the key from her hand. We got inside and drove off.

At the end of the street, I looked back. Alejandra was still waving. I glanced at my uncle, wondering if he would wave back, but he didn't seem to notice her. Then we turned the corner and she was gone.

I said, “Is she your girlfriend?”

“Yes and no,” replied Uncle Harvey.

“What does that mean? Is she or isn't she?”

“These things are complicated. You'll understand when you're a bit older.” He punched his hand on the horn. “Are you blind?”

That last bit was addressed to a car driving toward us on the wrong side of the road. The car didn't change direction, so Uncle Harvey took evasive action, skidding up onto the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians, and then bumping down onto the road again and lurching onward.

As we drove through the city, I searched the faces that we passed, looking out for Ricardo, Miguel, and Otto's other thugs. I didn't see them, but that didn't mean that they—or their friends, or their spies, or their closed circuit cameras—hadn't seen us.

On the outskirts, we passed through miles of slums. Little kids stood by the side of the road, dressed in rags, waving their hands. Some of them were selling sticks of chewing gum or sweets wrapped in foil. Others were just begging for coins. Behind them, I could see their homes, one-room shacks with a single sheet of corrugated iron for a roof and a few old boxes for furniture. I remembered my bedroom and my bike and my computer, and I felt very grateful to have been born when and where I was. I tried to express this to my uncle, but he just laughed.

“Welcome to the world,” he said. “Connecticut might not look much like this, but most of the rest of the planet does.”

The air cleared as the road climbed. By midday, the gray mist had gone. When the road twisted, I could see for miles down a long valley.

We stopped for lunch at a ramshackle café, where we ate cheese pies and boiled potatoes. Uncle Harvey drank yet another cup of coffee and tried to persuade me to have one too. For about the fourteenth time, I told him I don't like coffee, but he didn't seem to believe me.

Throughout the afternoon, the road got steadily worse. It clung to the edge of a steep hillside and the surface wasn't even paved. Soon we were skidding and scrambling along a muddy path that would have been a farm track at home. Out here, it was the main highway from Lima to the backcountry, the only route for cars, trucks, and buses.

There was no barrier marking the side of the road. If Uncle Harvey lost concentration for a second, we'd slither straight over the edge. If that happened, survival wasn't an option. It would just be a long drop and then the end of everything.

You might think I'm being melodramatic, but we saw burned-out wrecks of cars and trucks all along the route, smeared over the hillside or lying upside down at the bottom of a valley like dead beetles on a carpet.

My phone beeped. I had a look at the screen. There was a text:

 

Hello, darling. How is New York? It's very
hot and sunny here. We're having a lovely
time swimming. Loads of love from Mom.

 

Mom's texts are always like that. Every word spelled out and all the grammar perfect.

I texted back that New York was cool and so was Uncle Harvey and we were having a great time together.

What would Mom and Dad say if they knew where I was right now?

They wouldn't say anything. They'd just jump on a plane and come and get me.

Would I ever tell them where I had really spent this week?

Maybe, maybe not. It might have to stay my little secret forever. Anyway, there was no need to worry about that now. It could wait till I got back to Connecticut. If I ever got back to Connecticut.

I settled back in my seat and stared out the window at the sun dipping behind the snow-tipped mountains. The sky turned a deeper shade of gray. The air was suddenly chilly. Along with the change of weather, the road seemed to be getting even worse, narrower and wetter and more slippery, and I wondered what would happen if we were stuck out here all night.

It was almost dark when we finally arrived on a shabby little street in a shabby little town. The junk shop didn't just look shut; it had the appearance of a place that had closed down many years ago. We got out and peered through the dark windows, but there was no sign of life inside.

Uncle Harvey nodded to a group of men sitting in a café across the street. “Let's ask them where the shopkeeper lives.”

He sauntered up to the table.
“Buenos noches.”

“Buenos noches,”
replied a couple of the men. They were old and toothless. Some of them were drinking beer and others had tiny glasses of some colorless liquid. There was a pile of dominoes on the table.