Sammy Keyes and the Search for Snake Eyes (25 page)

And I know I can't leave Tigertown.

Not yet.

“Marissa!” I called as quietly as I could. “Come here!”

She turned around, looked around, then shook her head.

“Please!” I called and waved her over like crazy. “Please!”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head, but came my way as I snuck along the cul-de-sac and tucked behind a van parked at the curb. “You're never going to let me out of here, are you?” she asked as she scooted in beside me.

“Look!” I said, pointing to the garage door at the end of the street.

She sighed. “What
are
you seeing in that mess?”

“In the middle. In royal blue.” I waited. “Don't you recognize it?”

She cocked her head. “CZR?” “Yes! Caesar. And next to it? Same color, on the diagonal? The PLZ?”

She read the letters slowly. “Puh-luh-z?”

“Right! Palace!”

Her mouth dropped and she whispered, “Caesar's Palace! Like the place in Las Vegas!”

“What place in Las Vegas?”

“Haven't you ever heard of Caesar's Palace?”

I shook my head.

“It's this big gambling place—people from all over the world go there. It's really gaudy, with this huge statue of Caesar on a horse and …” She eyes the house down the street. “It looks
nothing
like that.”

My heart was beating like a jungle drum. “But that makes sense! That makes a
lot
of sense. His hood ornament, the dice on his tattoo, his street name, what Joey's brother said about him coming from Las Vegas … it all fits together!”

“But he can't
live
there. The windows are all boarded up, the
door's
nailed over … that place has got to be condemned.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We are
not
going over there, Sammy.”

“I agree.”

“Then let's get out of here, okay?”

I nodded and was just getting up to race to the police station when something scary happened.

The door to Caesar's Palace swung open.

I yanked Marissa back behind the van.

“Ohmygod!” she gasped as Snake Eyes' car inched out of the garage. “Do you think he saw us?”

“No. But come this way a little farther, would you? I want to keep it that way.”

We became one with the van's back fender and sneaked peeks as Snake Eyes lowered the garage door. He was moving faster than he had at the 7-Eleven, but even
so, he took time to sniff the air before getting back in his car.

We scooted around the van to stay out of sight as he bumped down the driveway and zoomed up the road. And when he hung a right at the top of the culde-sac, Marissa whispered, “Wow… if we'd kept on walking…”

“He'd have seen us,” I finished for her.

“Sammy, aren't you scared? If that creep's really looking for you… what's going to happen when he finds you?”

And that was the moment I realized this was a race. If I could find Pepe's mom before Snake Eyes could find me, I'd make it out of Tigertown in one piece. But if he found me first—well, I'd probably do like a real bullfrog and croak.

I stood up and headed for the Palace.

“Where are you
going
?”

“I have to check it out.” “Oh, Sammy, no! Please,
please
don't do this.”

I stopped and faced her. “Marissa, he's not here. It's not going to get any safer than this.”

“But what if someone
else
is inside?”

“That's exactly what I'm hoping.”

“You think she's here?”

I nodded. “I think there's a real good chance.”

“So let's go to the police!”

“
He
just went down that way.”

“But Sammy…”

“Look, why don't you go to the police station and get somebody over here? He doesn't really know what you
look like—especially with your hair in your hat like that. You'll be all right.”

“Sammy, I'm not going to do that!”

“Okay, then wait right here on the curb. Whistle or something if he shows up. I just want to take a quick look inside. If I'm not back in five minutes, go to the police.”

She covered her face with her hands, then plopped down on the curb. “Five minutes. That's all I'm waiting. Five minutes.”

I made a beeline to the Palace. There was a dirt path between the garage and the house, and I went right down it without looking over my shoulder. I passed by two small windows on the side of the house. They weren't boarded over, but still, I couldn't see inside. They were up too high.

I hurried around the house and looked in a back window. There was a table with a pile of fast-food wrappers and some edible-looking French fries. Okay, I told myself.
Some
one's been using the house.

The next window was up higher, but there was a wide wooden ramp built onto the house that made it easy to peek into the kitchen. The faucet was dripping, and one of the handles was broken and lying sideways on the counter. I could see empty beer bottles and cans, a couple of big potato-chip sacks, empty salsa tubs, super-size soda cups, a couple of cookie packages—junk-food wrappers were everywhere.

Through the kitchen I could see into the room up front. It was pretty dark because the windows were
boarded up, but I could make out a television and the arm of a ripped-up couch.

The TV was off, and I hadn't seen a soul, so I came off the ramp and tried the back door.

Locked.

So I
banged
on the back door, then hid along the far side of the house, spying around the corner to see if someone would answer. No one did.

There was one last window, right above me. It was up too high to see inside, but I used the rickety fence running along the property line and a sorry-looking tree growing against it to get some height. Then I leaned against the house, cleaned off the window, and looked inside.

And what did I see?

A dresser with clothes hanging out of it.

An open bathroom door with the light on.

A mattress on the floor, and on the mattress was…

Nobody.

“Darn!” But if she wasn't here, where
was
she?

I knew I was about out of time, and the last thing I wanted was to freak Marissa out by not coming back. So I hopped off the fence, only on my way down these two scrawny cats come shooting across from the neighbor's yard, flying right in front of me.

I about had a heart attack. And in one totally klutzy move, I landed off balance, sort of twisted my ankle, and choked on a cry.

The cats never slowed down. They dashed along the wall, then dived through a small vent under the house.

I caught my breath, rubbed my ankle, and started back toward the street. And I was on the path between the house and the garage when I heard
clank-thump-rowwwwwr
!

Clank-thump-rowwwwwr?
The
rowwwwwr
was a mad cat—I knew that from the times I'd accidentally stepped on Dorito. But the clank and thump? It sounded like something
falling
.

Then all of a sudden here come those cats again, pushing through another vent right in front of me, the screen pivoting on diagonal corners as they squeeze out and zoom off.

It didn't make sense. Where's there to fall in a nine-inch subfloor? I got on my hands and knees and pivoted the vent. And at first I couldn't see anything but light from the other vents around the house. But then I started making out pipes. Pipes going
down
. Down to a water heater. Which was next to a wheelbarrow.

A wheelbarrow? How'd a wheelbarrow get down there? Or a water heater, for that matter? The more my eyes got used to the darkness, the more I could see that I was looking into a basement.

Then I saw the cement steps leading up to my right. I backtracked and realized that the ramp I'd walked all over wasn't just a ramp—it was the basement door!

There was a latch that folded over an eyebolt on the side of the door, and through it was a stick. No lock, just a stick.

I yanked the stick out, flipped the latch back, and pulled the door open.

It was heavy and it creaked, but when daylight flooded
down the steps, it seemed to flood my heart, too. There she was! Lying on her side on a skinny old mattress, her arms and legs tied with wide bands of something gray. It had to be her!

“Lena?” I whispered.

No answer.

“Lena?” I said louder.

She didn't budge.

“Oh, no!” I whimpered. And really, I didn't know what to do. I wanted to race down the steps and see if she was alive, but I also wanted to run to Marissa and tell her to go get the police.

I decided to do the smart thing. I let the door down, then ran to where I'd left Marissa.

Trouble is, she was gone.

Okay, I told myself, trying to calm down. She's gone for the police. She'll have them here in no time. Get back and help Lena.

So that's what I did. I hurried back to the house, propped open the basement door, and worked my way around some super-sized black widow spiders as I went down.

“Lena?” I whispered as I knelt beside her. It smelled awful all around her. “Lena?”

I reached out and touched her skin. It was warm!

“Lena!” I shook her, and this time she moaned. “Yes!” I whispered. “You're alive!”

The bands around her hands and feet were duct tape. She also had a strip of it from cheek to cheek across her mouth.

“Lena!” I shook her again. “Can you hear me?”

I pulled at the tape on her mouth and she whimpered.

“I'm sorry!” I whispered. “Here. Let me get your hands free and then you can do it.”

The tape around her wrists made an awful ripping noise as I worked the layers off. He'd wrapped it around five or six times, and it seemed to take forever to get it off. And when I finally had her hands free, she just lay there. Like she wasn't even conscious.

“Lena!” I said, shaking her.

One hand moved up to her mouth, but a second later it flopped back down.

“Do you want me to do it?”

She nodded. Barely, but she nodded.

So I worked the tape off, cringing the whole time, trying to sound convincing as I told her that everything was going to be all right.

Her cheek was red and raw where the tape had been, and she kept moaning something I couldn't understand. Not until I got a corner of her mouth free—then I knew what she was saying.

“Water …”

I looked around madly. There was a water heater, but even if I could get water out of it, it would be hot. I was out of the basement in a flash, and I thought about busting open a window and filling one of those Big Glug cups from the leaky kitchen faucet, but then I saw a hose by the garage. It was kinked and looked brittle, but it was connected to a spigot, and when I turned it on, water came gushing out.

Trouble is, it didn't reach around to the basement door, let alone down the steps. So I ran the hose through the basement vent. It would reach. It had to reach! Then I charged back down the steps, kinked off the flow, and worked it over to Lena.

“Lena, here. Can you sit up? I've got some water.”

She didn't budge.

I unkinked the hose a little and trickled some water on the corner of her mouth. “Lena! You've got to try. Come on!”

I propped her head up on my lap, then tried again, letting the water run across the opening in the tape. Her tongue came out the side of her mouth. And slowly she started lapping in water. “That's it,” I whispered.

“Can you pull the tape off ?” I asked after a minute. “You've got to get the tape off.”

Her eyes fluttered opened for the first time, and I whispered, “Remember me? Don't worry—we'll get you out of here.”

She said something, but I couldn't understand it. “What?”

She blinked at me, then pulled on the tape. Just pulled like she didn't care if her whole mouth came off with it. And when it was dangling from her other cheek she gasped, “Joey.”

I just stared at her. Then it hit me that she might be hallucinating from dehydration. “Here,” I whispered, holding the hose up to her mouth. “Drink.”

“Is he … dead?” Her words came out sounding thick.

Like her tongue was swollen.

“Lena, please just drink. We've got to get you
out
of here.”

Her face crinkled up and she collapsed in my lap.

“Please! Just a few swallows.”

She shook her head and moaned, “I don't want to live.”

I held her head up and tried to unkink the hose so it didn't blast her right in the face. But she clamped her mouth shut and shook her head. I pinched the hose off again and said, “Lena, that was a long time ago. I don't know what happened, but there's nothing you can do about it now. You've got to get better for Pepe. He needs you!”

“Pepe?” Her lips stuck together as she said his name. Like they were tacky with glue.

Then all of a sudden it hits me—Pepe's not his name! Not his real name, anyway. “Your baby, Lena. Your baby needs you!”

She sits up, gasping for air, teetering from side to side. “He's okay? Joey's okay?”

“His name's
Joey
? He's fine!”

She takes the hose, leans over, and starts guzzling. And I'm smiling, thinking, Yes! She's going to be just fine! when I hear footsteps crunching along the side of the house.