The Sexiest Man Alive (28 page)

“How much does it cost?” Ben asked.

“A bundle,” Lester said simply. “I don’t really need it for my business—I just think it’s
cool. So if we find a property that might belong to the Yatts, we feed the coordinates to the drones and zoom in. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe we’ll see Mazie waving her arms.”

Ben slapped Lester on the back. “Good work, Bogie. Let’s get cracking.”

The hours sludged by. With the windows open and a breeze blowing, it was chilly in the tower room. The rain drizzled on and an early dusk fell. Mazie and Shayla huddled together for warmth, nibbling the last of their packaged peanut butter crackers, sharing them with Muffin, and drinking sparingly from the rainwater they’d collected, careful not to swallow the debris at the bottom of the paint cans.

To pass the time, Mazie told Shayla about her time in prison, the tricks of the trade she’d picked up to survive. Like how to talk your way out of a fight—but if you were forced to fight, how to pinpoint the most vulnerable spots on your opponent’s body. How to turn a pencil into a deadly weapon. How a flaming bundle of paper could also be used as a weapon. How to get your enemy in hot water without her ever realizing you were responsible. How you could startle a man into temporary immobility by flashing your breasts.

Outside the room, they heard the elevator cage rattle.

“They’re coming!” Shayla shot to her feet. “Oh, God, Mazie—I’m so scared. Plan A or Plan B?”

Mazie gave Shayla’s hand a squeeze. “Play it by ear.”

“Right,” Shayla said, her voice shaking. “Schmooze or bruise.”

The heavy bolt was thrust aside, the key rattled in the lock, the door burst open, and Brimstone stood there in the doorway, eying them as though they were dinner.

“H’lo, ladies—you bored up here all by your lonesomes?”

He turned to relock the door. Shayla looked at Mazie, who tensed. Rush him now, while he was off guard? Even with the two of them, it would be risky. He weighed more than both of them combined, and there was solid muscle beneath the fat.

Brimstone turned and weaved toward them. They’d lost their chance to bruise, Mazie realized with sinking heart. Okay, schmooze it was.

“C’mere, you two,” Brimstone ordered, drunk but, unfortunately, not drunk enough.

Mazie went into flirt mode. She moved toward Brimstone and teasingly tugged his beard. “Hey, big fellow—you’ve been partying.”

“Hell, yeah. Me and Jacky Daniels. Nothing else to do in this stinkin’ bughouse except drink. More I drink, the uglier the other dudes look.” He giggled, drew Mazie in to him, tried to plant a kiss on her lips, and ended up slobbering in her ear. “But
you
look real cute.”

His stink made Mazie want to gag. She had to grit her teeth against it, force herself to touch his biceps. “Ooh—I like muscles.”

He gazed at her through hooded, glazed eyes. “Pretty,” he said thickly. “Wonder if you’re this pretty with your clothes off?” He tried to grope Mazie’s breast.

“Quit hogging him!” Shayla shoved Mazie away from Brimstone. “You can’t have him all to yourself. I want me some Brimmy, too.”

“You I like,” Brimstone said, grinning at Shayla. “Young. What’re you, seventeen?”

“Sixteen,”
Shayla lied, keeping just out of reach of the pillaging hands.

“Skinny. Young. That’s how I like ’em. Hardly nothing to you except them nice knockers.” He grabbed the zipper of Shayla’s hoodie in his sausagelike fingers and yanked it down, a string of drool actually dribbling from his mouth. “Always thought you was wasted on that pencil dick Ricky Lee,” he said. “Prolly wished you had a real man to love you up.”

“Oh, I did!” Shayla squealed.

“So what are we waiting for?” Brimstone began to unbuckle his belt. “Let’s get it on, sugar pants.” He turned to Mazie. “You just watch, old lady. Don’t worry—I’ll get to you.”

“I got to be in the mood,” Shayla said.

Brimstone’s face darkened. “Well, you better get there, fast.”

“I’ll get there faster with a little happy juice,” Shayla said. “It’s not fair that you had Jacky and we don’t get any.”

“Yeah, no fair!” Mazie used a kittenish tone that made her want to rinse her tongue in Lysol. “Don’t you have a little Jacky for us?”

“I’m thirsty.” Shayla gave a playful poke at the roll of fat around Brim’s middle. “I wanna get high. Hi-i-gh as the sky-y! I’m a lotta fun when I’m high!” She lost her balance, giggled, clutched at Brimstone for support. “Come on, Brimmie. Give Shayla a little Jacky.”

Walking a very fine line here, Mazie thought; cross it and this tub of blub was going to whip out his personal Jacky and that would be awful beyond imagining.

“Okeydokey, Miss Fenokee.” Brimstone gave a gurgling snort that sounded like a drain being unclogged. There was a bad moment when he slapped his pockets and Mazie was terrified
that he’d brought a bottle with him.

“Shit. I gotta go back down, see if them pigs left anything. You two hotsy-totsies just wait right here.”

They traipsed behind him, all girly and coquettish as he ambled to the door, hoping they could somehow thrust past him and into the hall, but Brimstone was not yet sufficiently stewed and he immediately closed and locked the door. “When I get back,” he called from outside, “you both better be naked.” They heard him stumping across the hall, then getting into the elevator.

“
Uckk
—I thought I was gonna hurl,” Shayla said. “His reek!”

“Oscar-winning performance, though.”

Shayla laughed. “You ain’t seen nothing yet. Plan B?”

“I think so. Rubble-filled pail ready?”

“Check. Who’s taking Muffin?”

“Whoever is closest.”

“If this doesn’t work, Mazie, I just—well, thank you for—”

“It’ll work.”
It had to
.

They took a last look around the room, argued over whether to leave the red T-shirt in its signal-of-distress position, and finally decided to leave it. They barely had time to get in position before they heard the elevator returning. It stopped with a groaning thump. Brimstone’s heavy footsteps sounded outside.

They tensed, looking at each other across the room. Mazie tightened her grip on her weapon, realizing she was holding her breath. The bolt slid back, the key scraped in the lock …

And Shayla screamed. Screamed as though her intestines were being ripped out by Freddy Krueger.

“She jumped!” Shayla screamed, pointing at the wide-open window. “Mazie jumped!”

Brimstone ran to the window. Shayla kept up a shrieking, hysterical babble.

Hidden in the shadow of a radiator, Mazie leaped from her crouch, swung back with all her might, and hit Brimstone in the back of his knees with her homemade blackjack.

Panty hose were hot, expensive, and restricting, but when one pantyhose leg was pulled inside the other and it was filled with chunks of plaster, old nails, and the accumulated dirt and debris of a century, it created a lethal, two-foot-long sap. Brimstone, whose weight was all in his upper body but whose legs were like pretzel sticks, toppled over backward with an astonished
grunt, flailing his arms and falling with a thump that shook the floor. Shayla was on him instantly, smashing him in the face with a gallon paint can filled with debris. Brimstone’s arms jerked up to cover his face. Mazie swung her blackjack down on his crotch. The nylon tube split, spraying shrapnel consisting of nails and plaster chunks. Howling in agony, Brimstone curled up like a shrimp. Shayla hit him in the head again with the paint can, and he went limp and silent.

Then they were flying, Muffin cradled in Mazie’s arms. Out the door. Into the hall. Mazie locked the door and slid the heavy board that acted as a safety bolt into place while Shayla wedged one of the paint containers between the elevator’s doors. With the doors unable to close, the elevator would be effectively out of service.

The fire stairs were adjacent to the elevator, access to them blocked by a rusted bed frame. Shoving it aside, they stepped cautiously into the stairwell. It was dark and cobwebbed and apparently hadn’t been used in years. The wooden steps creaked ominously and Mazie had a horrible image of them giving way, sending them plunging to their deaths.

“Where are we going?” Shayla whispered, her voice echoing eerily in the enclosed space.

“Dunno.” They’d never planned beyond getting out of the tower. The first-floor stairwell was only a few yards away from the elevator and came out in the building’s central hall, which was practically Grand Central Station for the gang members, and thus to be avoided. “If we get out on the second floor, we should be able to find another set of stairs that leads outside.”

It was hard not to make noise on the stairs, which were warped by years of heat, cold, and neglect. Some steps were quiet, and some screeched like lumber being pushed through a buzz saw. They finally reached the second-floor access door and Mazie turned the knob. It wouldn’t give. Shayla tried it, too, then they both pushed on the door, but nothing happened.

Locked.

Shit.

“We can’t get out on the first floor because they’ll see us,” Mazie said. “That leaves the basement.”

Tired of being carried, Muffin struggled to get down and walk, but Mazie didn’t dare let him. “Just a little while longer,” she whispered to him, feeling his small heart beating against her chest.

They descended the last flight. The stairway ended in a steel door with no knob or handle. Shayla pushed on it and it scraped open. A foul odor whooshed out, a stench of decay, mold, and
something much fouler—did the Skulls bury their victims down here? They halted. Shayla took the lighter out of her sock and flicked it on. They were in the building’s boiler room. Moving cautiously, coal fragments crunching beneath their feet, they edged around an ancient furnace with duct pipes like monstrous metal tentacles.

Beyond the boiler room was a large room that seemed to run the length of the entire building. Faint evening light sifted through barred windows, providing enough illumination to see by, and Shayla put away the lighter. The walls were damp, covered with great patches of moss and mold. Water dripped from overhead pipes, making the rough stone floor slippery. Barred cells flanked both sides of a central aisle, and most of the cells had chains dangling from the walls. Someone had written
I WAS NEVER CRAZY
in white chalk on one of the cell walls. The letters seemed to hang there accusingly in the dark and Mazie shivered, imagining the poor, tortured soul who’d written those words. If you weren’t insane before being locked up in here, you soon would have been.

At last they reached another door, framed in light, at the far side of the cellar. Ears pressed against the door, Shayla and Mazie listened, but they could hear nothing on the other side. Shayla pulled on the handle, opened the door a hairbreadth, and peered out.

“Empty,” she whispered.

They tiptoed in. This area of the basement had been remodeled. It had electric lights and tiled floors and was filled with exercise equipment, treadmills, and weight machines. How nice: these murderous thugs believed in keeping their bodies in shape. A quick scan of the room revealed a door on the opposite side of the room.

The door opened to a short passageway, at the end of which were stairs going up.

Mazie’s heart leaped at the smell of fresh, rain-swept air. Just a few more steps and they’d be free. Once outside, they could melt away into the grounds. She set down Muffin, who immediately scampered up the steps, then she and Shayla dashed after him, forgetting to be cautious, because it was not possible to have come so far, to have worked so hard, and to not have earned their freedom.

A man suddenly loomed at the top of the stairs. Backlit, with caved-in cheeks and deep eye sockets, he looked like a walking skeleton. Mazie and Shayla froze, stunned and speechless.

It was Reaper. He grinned, looking even more skull-like than usual.

“Hey, ladies, where do ya think you’re going?”

The hours hurtled past. One moment it was two o’clock; the next it was five in the evening. Ben started out with high hopes. It seemed so simple—just find a likely-looking property, then Terra-Cog it. But after hours passed with no leads, he began to lose hope, wondering why he’d allowed himself to believe in Lester’s voodoo cybernetics. His eyes burned, his body ached from sitting so long, and he cursed himself for not having followed his original impulse to drive out into Skulls territory and start kicking down doors.

Magenta stuck a steaming cup of coffee into his hands. Ben had so much caffeine in his system that his nerves were jangling and his stomach was sour. “Eat,” Magenta ordered, handing Ben a ham-and-cheese sandwich. “You have to keep up your strength.”

Someone hammered at the shop door.

“Go away,” Magenta yelled. “I’m closed.”

The pounding continued. Magenta slammed down the plate of sandwiches and stomped to the door. Ben heard voices at the front of the store, and a moment later Eddie Arguello and Rico Del Toro swaggered in, all ripped denim, adolescent machismo, and Hombre cologne fumes.

“What’s up at Mazie’s place?” Rico asked. “Cops all over the place. She get busted for dope?”

He quailed under four pairs of glaring eyes.

Juju filled the boys in on what had happened. She introduced the boys to Lester, who explained how they were using property listings and drone images to find the Skulls’ possible hiding places. Although they seemed skeptical of Lester at first, the boys listened carefully as he explained how they were working, and both of them grasped the idea with the mental agility that only tech-savvy teenagers were capable of.

“Know what would speed up your search?” Rico asked, staring intently at Eddie’s screen. “Cross-hatching it with the federal criminal database.”

“Well, yes,” Lester said. “But that database is off-limits to the general public.”

Rico made a
pfft
sound. He gently eased Juju out of her chair, sat down at the computer,
and began tapping keys.

Ten minutes later they were in business. The junior-grade felons were right, Ben discovered; now all they had to do was type someone’s name into the criminal records database and they would know immediately whether the person had ever been busted for so much as a parking ticket. Alarms were probably going off at cyber cop stations all over the nation right now, Ben thought, but he didn’t care—just as long as they didn’t nab him before he’d found Mazie.