The Lost Gate (26 page)

“You sure did,” said Danny. “Where does this asshole keep his money?”

“The store safe is right behind the counter out front.”

“No,” said Danny. “The
real
money.”

“He'll kill me,” said José.

“With no arms?” asked Danny.

Rico groaned and wailed. “Let go of me!”

Danny went behind the desk and opened drawers. Nothing. Then he looked carefully at the jumble of cabinets, shelves, papers, and salable goods against the wall. He started gating his hands into every cabinet and feeling around. Finally he brought his hands out clutching several stacks of bills. Some were stacks of hundreds, some of twenties.

He reached back into the same cabinet and came out with a pistol and a box of bullets. He slapped those down on the desk and said, “Time for you to shut up, Rico.”

Rico shut up.

Danny counted out ten hundreds. “Here's what I expected to get for the stuff I brought. A thousand.” He counted out twenty more hundreds. “I'm betting this will cover George's medical bills.” Then Danny picked up the rest of the money and carried it to José.

“No, man, I don't want none of that.”

“Think again,” said Danny. “You just saw this asshole get humiliated. You think he's not going to kill you first chance he gets? Take this money, get yourself out of DC, out of this part of the country, out of the United States. You get it? This is unemployment here. Severance pay.”

“I got to stay here, I got family to support.”

“This isn't enough to take care of them for a while?”

“Eight kids,” said José. “It takes that much to get me back into the States. I can't go.”

“Tell you what,” said Danny. “There's the gun. There's a box of ammo. You want to be safe from him, you get some of those rubber gloves from the janitorial closet, you do what you got to do. I'm not going to kill him, but I don't care if you do.”

“No, man, no,” said Rico. “Come on, José, I've got your back, man, I'm not going to hurt you, just put the money back, take that gun, shoot this kid. You save my life, see? I know how to treat my friends.”

“We brought him a bunch of jewelry and electronics to sell,” said Danny, “and you saw how he treated us.”

“We're friends, José!” insisted Rico. “Pull me back into the room, kid. I mean it, you can have all that money, you can take back the stuff, just get me my arms back.”

Then Rico's eyes grew wide. “Who's got my hands!” he demanded. “Something's grabbing my hands!” Then he screamed.

Danny had no idea what was happening to Rico's hands. Was Eric doing something? Or was there a dog out there? Or a raccoon? Or was Rico just faking it? Danny needed to get back to Eric in case there was something hurting him outside.

“I'm going now,” said Danny. “I'm taking only the fair price for the goods and George's medical bills. I'm leaving the goods. I didn't cheat Rico, I didn't steal from him. When I get out there I'm going to count to ten, then I'll push his arms back into this room. You can take the money here and get out. Or you can shoot his ass. Or both. I recommend both.”

José stood up and walked out of the room.

“I guess he doesn't want the money
or
you dead, you lucky bastard,” said Danny to Rico.

Then José came back into the room, pulling on a rubber glove.

“No! Oh, no, no, man!” cried Rico.

Danny gated back out to the garden.

Eric had twisted himself into position to gnaw on Rico's right thumb. It was spouting blood, which was pouring out of Eric's mouth. He had a feral look in his eyes, like one of Zog's hawks, hyper-alert but utterly soulless.

“You got to stop that,” said Danny. “If I touch you while you're touching him, he gets free. Let go of him. Stop it.”

But it was like Eric didn't hear him. He was growling like a dog, like a bear. Then he fell backward and spat out the thumb. And spat again and again, trying to get the blood out of his mouth.

“That was ugly,” said Danny. “But fair.”

Then he heard a gunshot. It was muffled and faraway, on account of having taken place inside the store a couple of doors down.

Danny didn't touch Rico's arms. Instead, using his newfound skill, he pulled the gate away, drawing it over the arms until no part of them remained visible.

“I made it through the gate,” said Eric with a grin.

“Yeah, so I see,” said Danny.

“And I feel a lot better.”

“You shouldn't have moved. He probably broke your ribs, he might've broken your back.”

“I don't think so,” said Eric. “I mean, that's how it felt right after he did it, but now I feel kind of better.” Eric got to his feet. “In fact, I feel great. Except maybe I hurt my jaw taking off his thumb.”

“I can't believe you did that.”

“I don't want that asshole ever holding a baseball bat again,” said Eric. “You hadn't got rid of his hands, I was taking the other thumb, too.”

Danny held out the three thousand dollars. “I think I cheated him, if you're okay. I mean, a thousand of this was for the goods we sold him, but the other two thousand were for your medical expenses.”

“You kidding? He owed us at least five. So you gave him a discount. Let's say his thumb was worth a thousand. He's still a thou ahead.”

“I think he's dead,” said Danny.

“You killed him?”

“No,” said Danny. “I was just an accomplice before the fact. I think José just shot him.”

“None of our business,” said Eric. “And you saved my ass, man. You're the one who told me he'd do that, and I didn't believe you. I'm the streetwise guy, right? And you're the one who knew.”

“You knew, too,” said Danny. “You just didn't want to believe it.”

“My life as a burglar is over,” said Eric.

“Glad to hear it,” said Danny. “Now let's take the money and get out of here.”

“Um,” said Eric.

“What?”

“Maybe after that gunshot we shouldn't be seen walking down this street away from the store.”

“Well, I'm not going
toward
the store,” said Danny. “Who knows but what José would shoot us, too, if he saw us? If he hasn't already got himself halfway to Union Station.”

“Get your head in gear,” said Eric. “You just proved you can get me through one of your gate things alive. So let's get back to Stone's house.”

“No,” said Danny.

“What do you mean? You can do it, it's easy.”

“You're not going back there,” said Danny. “And neither am I.”

“The hell I'm not!”

“You're covered in the blood of a murdered man,” said Danny. “You're not tracking any of it into Stone's house. You've got three thousand bucks, you're going to get yourself into a restroom and wash up as best you can and then you're getting out of DC and back on the road.”

“My stuff's in Stone's house!”

“So is mine, and it's all worthless, you can replace all you left behind for a hundred bucks,” said Danny.

“I'm going back there whether you take me or not,” said Eric. “You tell me I'm not the boss of you? Well, you're not the boss of me, either.”

Danny sighed. “Okay, fair enough. I'll take you back there, and
then
I'll go. Because I'm not bringing any of this down on Stone's head.”

“Fair enough. Once I get my stuff and wash up and all that, I'm going too. I promise.”

Danny figured he probably meant it. For the moment. But then he'd decide to stay a few more days. And he'd start bragging about taking a man's thumb in a fight. And since the cops would be looking for whoever bit off Rico's thumb and left it in a garden a couple of doors down, there was a better-than-decent chance it would lead the cops to Stone's door sooner or later.

“Give me your hand,” said Danny. “Hold tight so you don't get stuck in between like Rico did.”

Eric got a sudden look of fear in his eyes. “You're not going to leave me partway, are you?”

Danny rolled his eyes. “You hold on to
me,
then,” he said. “Hug me like your mama so you go through when I do.”

“I think I'll walk,” said Eric.

“I saved your life,” said Danny. “You think I'm going to hurt you now?”

Eric thought about this. “How come you gave me all the money? How do I know you aren't going to kill me and take it back?”

“The money was always for you,” said Danny. “Don't you think I could gate my way into any bank vault in the world and get all the money I want?”

Now Eric got angry. “Why didn't you say so! Why did we go through all this burglary shit and this crap with Rico if you could just get nice clean money!”

“Dye packs,” said Danny. “Serial numbers on FBI lists. I've seen cop shows. Come on, I did
your
plan and I got you paid and I got you out of there before he could beat you any more than he already did. Come on.” Danny held out his arms like he was going to hug a long-lost brother.

Eric stepped into his embrace and wrapped his arms tightly around Danny. “You're the best thing ever happened to me, kid,” said Eric.

“I know,” said Danny.

Then he gated them back to the place where they had met, behind the shops near the Lexington Wal-Mart. It was just starting to snow.

It took Eric a moment to realize where they were. By then Danny had pulled free.

“You got your three thousand bucks,” said Danny. “And you're in your home town. Go home, wash off that blood. Get seen by witnesses. Nobody's going to be looking for the mysterious thumb-biter around here, but if they do, you've got an alibi—you can't possibly have done the thumb-biting because fifteen minutes later you were seen two hundred miles away.”

“You lying sack of shit,” said Eric. “You tricked me.”

“It's what I do,” said Danny. “Just remember that when you're spending three thousand bucks of my trickery.”

Eric still looked furious, but he was calming down. “I can't let my family see the money or it's gone.”

“How about if you let them see a thousand bucks of the money because you want to help them live a little better for a while.”

Eric grinned. “They'd just drink it up.”

“What'll
you
do with it?” asked Danny.

“New clothes. A bus ticket. And then I'll eat and drink the rest till I have to start begging again.”

Danny admired his self-knowledge. “Then thanks, Eric. For watching out for me for a few days. I learned a lot from you.”

“And you're a freakin' Houdini. I didn't learn shit from you.”

Danny grinned and waved and then he was gone.

He had gated himself to Parry McCluer High School a couple of miles away on a hill overlooking Buena Vista. He had come to the woods above the school several times in his ventures out of the Family compound and watched all the drowther kids—the teams practicing in the ball field, the kids coming to and going from the buses and cars in the parking lot. The faculty. He knew the place would be empty this time of night. And it was full of computers.

He gated himself inside the foyer, and then into the office. The computers were off. Danny turned one on, waited for it to boot up. Then he googlemapped the address of Marion and Leslie Silverman on Highway 68 near Yellow Springs, Ohio, where it was called Xenia Avenue. He used the satellite mode to zero in on their house. It was a good-sized farm, surrounded by fields, but with housing developments close by to the east.

Danny tried to imagine a ground-level view of what he was seeing. Could he really do this—jump somewhere that he had never been, just from a Google Maps satellite picture? What if he only gated himself inside the computer and everything blew up?

He had made a lot of jumps to places he had never seen before during his jaunts outside the Family compound, but they had only been jumps of a mile or two or five. And he had made them without thinking, without even knowing he was doing it; it was all just part of running to him, running really fast and wanting to get places, see things. He didn't even know what he wanted to see. That's how he first got to Parry McCluer High School, skipping clear over Buena Vista itself. But come to think of it, he probably
saw
the hillside where he ended up before he ever jumped.

Well, if I can't get there in one gate, I can get there in a few dozen. Or a few hundred. It's not as if I have to
pay
for these gates.

He closed his eyes, picturing the tree-lined driveway leading from Xenia Avenue up to the house. Thinking of the address. Thinking of the names.

Then he made a gate, and he was there. In the driveway in the middle of the night. Snow everywhere that hadn't been shoveled, but the sky was clear. Danny walked to the street. Brookside Drive should meet the other side of Xenia just a rod or two north of the Silvermans' driveway, and there it was.

Danny walked back to the gate he had just made and returned through it to the office at Parry McCluer. He zeroed out the browser history and then cleared out all the cookies and all the temp files. Then he uninstalled the browser itself. It took a while, but he figured he had done all he could to make it so nobody could find out that the last thing the browser had shown was a certain address in Ohio.

Then he was back through the gate to the Silvermans' driveway. He wasn't going to wake them up in the middle of the night. He made his way to the barn, which was heated by the bodies of a couple of dozen cows, and curled up in a corner to sleep.

11

S
ERVANT OF
S
PACETIME

Marion and Leslie Silverman were old enough that all of their own kids were grown and gone. The day Danny arrived there, Leslie—Mrs. Silverman—proudly showed him the pictures of five little families on the top of the upright piano. Danny was inept enough to ask, “Are any of them Orphans?”