Concrete Underground, Moxie Mezcal [best books to read for teens .TXT] 📗

into it, but they couldn't find any substantial connection between the two of you since your falling-out after high school. I mean, you really had everyone fooled into thinking you guys hated each other."

"We do hate each other," I said. "Brian only gave me those e-mails because he overheard the Mayor badmouthing him to the chief of staff. They didn't realize he was in the next room listening in."

"Ahh, well, the Commedia strikes again," Max said with palpable satisfaction. "Even in this age of technological wonders, it still boils down the the same base passions."

Max pulled off the mask, revealing Brian's bloody face with two empty eye sockets.

I felt light headed and nauseous. "So how did you figure it out?" I asked Max, managing to somehow keep from getting sick.

"It was Garza actually. He poured through days of surveillance footage to figure out how you coordinated the hand-off."

I looked scornfully back to Garza, who was still skulking in the back of the room, tugging up on his turtleneck nervously, and I wondered what his deal was. "Don't say much, do you?"

"Yeah, what's the matter, Ben? You usually never shut the fuck up." Max chimed in.

Just then something clicked in my head, and I realized that I had in fact never heard Garza speak. I walked over to him and clamped a hand on his shoulder, just at the base of his neck in mock-congratulation, saying, "Nice detective work, asshole."

It was a simple, innocuous gesture, not violent or forceful at all, but Garza winced in pain as my hand touched his neck,

"Sorry," I said, pulling my hand back. "Did you hurt yourself?" I turned back to look at Max, who was wearing an expression of curiosity. "So what's the score? Is this the end of the road for me and Brian?"

Max shook his head. "I think your friend has sufficiently learned his lesson. And as for you - I hope you have learned something as well. I have been indulgent of you up to this point, but there are consequences for going too far."

35. Just Like in the Movies

After Max let me go, I waited across the street until I saw Garza emerge from the alleyway. I followed him on foot down to the nearest major road, where he flagged down a cab. I flagged down another and told my driver to follow the first one, just like in the movies.

Garza got dropped off in front of the building right next door to the Casa Salvador. It was an old tenement that had been condemned. I followed him inside and up the stairs, taking my shoes off and treading lightly to avoid making any noise.

He was squatting in a number of different units on the top floor. The place was filthy - the floor was almost completely covered in laundry, fast food containers, soda bottles, old mail, and other assorted trash.

One of the rooms had a bare futon mattress, so I took that to be where he slept and started snooping around.

There was one window on the far wall of the room, and through it I could see across into the windows of the flophouse next door. I grinned when I realized that the hallway telephone on the third floor was plainly visible from this vantage point.

Under one of the piles of the dirty laundry strewn about was a cheap metal lock box. After popping the lock open with my knife, I found two interesting things inside - a smooth, featureless gunmetal mask and a Browning 9mm with a silencer. I checked the latter to make sure it was loaded, then took it with me.

I walked into another room and found Garza sitting at a desk that housed six monitors of various shapes and sizes hooked up to a stuffed server rack beside the desk.

I raised the gun and trained it on the back of his head. His eyes shifted over to look at me in the monitors' reflections.

"So what, are you going to shoot me?" he asked in a gruff voice that I instantly recognized.

"There's a good chance."

"Then why don't you stop wasting my time and just get it over with?" he said as he shuffled some papers around on his desktop.

"Because first you have to give me something in exchange for doing you this favor?"

"Favor?" he repeated as he fidgeted with a heavy glass pyramid paperweight.

I nodded, fixing my eyes on his hand. "Compared to what Max would do if I turned you over to him, a quick and clean bullet to the head is a favor."

Suddenly Garza lobbed the pyramid at my head. Thankfully, I anticipated his move and was able to duck out of the way in time. The paperweight flew past, missing only by inches, and put a hole in the drywall behind me. Garza made a move for the door, but I was able to squeeze off a shot from the Browning, which tore right through his midsection.

He doubled over and collapsed to his knees, clutching at his stomach as blood seeped through the front of his shirt. I walked over to him and pressed the muzzle to his temple.

"As I was saying, you are going to repay me for this favor. I want you to tell me who your partner is, the one who drives that blue Chevy."

"Why do you care?" Garza spat derisively. "He's a pawn, a rube. Just like that Lynch bitch and your girlfriend with the purple hair."

"Whose pawns? McPherson's?"

He laughed, "What? You really have no fucking clue what's going on, do you?"

His eyes locked on mine with a gleeful, mischievous twinkle. I didn't respond but instead just kept staring him down. Finally, he looked away and added, "They were all my pawns. It was my plan all along."

I scoffed, "I'm not sure you wanna go around broadcasting that too loudly. Seemed like a pretty dumbass plan to begin with, even before I went and let the cat out of the bag on your secret little flash drive. Which, incidentally, Max doesn't seem to be that bothered by anyways."

Garza bristled at this. "Max is an ass. He's all bluster and bravado, trying to hide how scared he really is. You read the documents, right? Ask him what he's keeping hidden under the Asterion facility, then see how fucking cool he acts."

We were interrupted by the squeak of an opening door and both simultaneously looked up see the ruddy-faced man standing in the doorway, dressed in his usual trench coat and hat. As soon as he saw me, he bolted. I leapt up and chased after him, leaving Garza bleeding on the floor.

I hurtled out into the hallway just in time to see the other man disappear behind a door at the far end. I sprinted across and flung open the door, revealing a flight of stairs leading up.

As I emerged onto the roof, I watched him take a running start and launch himself off the edge, leaping over to the Casa Salvador. Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself to make my own attempt, leaving a trail of profanities in my wake as I jumped the thankfully narrow chasm between the two rooftops, landing just as my quarry began descending the fire escape on the other side of the roof.

I ran and looked over the side of the building, but didn't see him anywhere on the fire escape or the ground. I surmised that he must have gone into the building and, as I flew down the first flight of steps, noticed the third story window was open.

I lunged into the building right as the door of Room 313 slammed shut. Bursting through that door, I found him standing just inside the room with his back to me, and I tackled him onto the bed.

But when I looked down at the man struggling under my weight, I saw that it wasn't a man at all. It was Stella, dressed in the man's coat and hat. Her face was white with shock, and she held out her hands, which were clutching Columbine's Queen of Hearts Russian doll.

"He told me to give this to you," she said.

"Who did?"

"The man in the hallway."

I ran back out through the door and found myself staring down the business end of a can of mace.

He fired, and I howled in pain. I dropped to the floor and writhed in blind agony while the mace seared my eyes.

Finally, I felt hands gripping me and turning me over to lie on my side.

"Open your eyes," a voice barked.

I obeyed and immediately felt some kind of liquid splashing into them.

"Now blink," the voice said again.

When my vision finally cleared, I saw Stella standing above me, sans the disguise and holding a carton of milk. "Get up, and be careful not to touch your eyes."

She helped me up and guided me to the bathroom down the hall, where she had me wash my hands and face thoroughly.

When I finished, I followed her back to her own room, 309, and sat on the bed with her.

"How are you feeling?"

"Peachy," I replied as I blinked my eyes obsessively and grimaced.

"The effect should wear off gradually, but in the meantime you're gonna want to keep your eyes moist," she said and handed me a small plastic bottle of Visine.

I leaned back on the bed and squeezed a couple drops into each eye. "Thanks. You've done this before, I take it."

"In my line of work, macing's the least of our worries," she replied, shaking her head. "You should see some of the sick shit that happens. Girls are cut up, bruised, burned, broken bones, you name it. But then, you probably don't want to be listening to all this, given the state you're in right now."

"No, it's fine," I replied, still blinking my eyes furiously. "Keep talking; it helps to have something to focus on other than the burning."

Stella shrugged, "If you say so. Myself, I've been knocked around a few times, few bumps and bruises, but I'm lucky.

"I saw one girl with her cheeks sliced open from her mouth like a smile, like in that movie," she continued, drawing invisible lines extending from each corner of her mouth, like a giant smile. "And the little Vietnamese girl down the hall, she's missing part of her nose that a rat chewed off after some guy left her handcuffed to a bed in a flea bag motel. Then another girl I know has scars all over one side of her body, covering her almost from head to toe, from chemical burns."

"Wait," I interjected. "Who's this?"

"The girl from the shelter, Knossos Sanctuary, down on 32nd Street."

"You've stayed in that shelter?" I probed.

"Yeah, a couple times. That's where I first met Isabel, as a matter of fact, she was in and out of there a lot. But anyways, back to this girl who showed up with the burns, that was several years ago, back when she hardly spoke any English and you couldn't understand even the little bit that she did on account of her accent. Not Russian, but something like that. Smart