Mojo (28 page)

“You’re wrong.” Ashton shook her head. “Tres didn’t have me locked up anywhere. I
was
with Beto. In fact, he took me with him to his grandmother’s house the day you came by asking questions. That’s why Oscar hit you. They didn’t want you to find out I was in there.”

That was a stunner. And cut a pretty big hole in my theory. “But what about Hector?” I asked. “Someone killed him, and I know for a fact Beto figured that someone was mixed up in
Gangland. So, yeah, maybe you were with Beto, but not involuntarily. He wouldn’t take you to his grandmother’s if he kidnapped you. No, he was helping you hide from whoever poisoned Hector.”

Just then her phone rang, but she only glanced at it for a second, then muted the ringer. With a sigh, she looked up and goes, “Poor Hector.” That was all for a moment, then she went on. “He had the loveliest brown eyes. So sweet. And ambitious in his own way. He really wanted to have a career doing something for his people. And not just Mexican Americans but working-class people everywhere. He loved that I worked with FOKC. You should’ve heard him talk about our future together. We were going to change the world.”

Her voice trailed off, and I thought she might start crying.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s okay.” I felt pretty proud of myself for finally getting to something that resembled the truth. “Whatever you’re mixed up in, you can tell me about it. I’m just here to help you and Beto.”

“I wish you could.” Her voice was almost a whisper.

I started to tell her what I could do, but someone from behind interrupted me. “She doesn’t have to tell you a single thing,
Nitro
.”

It was Tres. He stood in the doorway wearing a black button-up shirt with a black-leather sport jacket. Like he thought he really was some kind of gang kingpin.

“Look, it’s Casper the Friendly Ghost,” said Randy.

And Ashton goes, “Tres, what are you doing here?”

“I’m just worried about my big sister.” He sauntered into the room. “You know, Ash, you shouldn’t really leave the house. The parents wouldn’t condone that. Especially when it comes to meeting with these two dregs.”

“Why’s that?” I said. “Oh, wait. Let me tell you. It’s because you’re afraid your whole story’s going to come unraveled, aren’t you? Sure, maybe your sister was with Beto, but not because he kidnapped her. No, she stayed with him because she was afraid of you. You couldn’t stand that she fell for this guy you saw as some kind of low-class loser, so you overdosed him with something. I don’t know how, but you did. And she was afraid to tell Beto. After all, you’re still her little brother. How am I doing so far?”

Tres scratched his cheek. He couldn’t look me square in the eye, so he stared over my head. “To me, it sounds like something no one’s going to believe. I wouldn’t have to kill a kid like Hector to keep him from seeing my sister. I’d just pay him off.”

“But Hector wouldn’t take your money, would he?” I said. “He wasn’t that kind of guy.”

“Everybody’s that kind of guy.” Tres leaned against the wall. “In fact, I’ll bet you’re that kind of guy. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t even bother with you and your little guesses about what happened, but I can’t have you start throwing around Hector Maldonado’s name in connection with this. Not that I had anything to do with him. You think I’d ever believe my sister would fall for a nobody like that? But at the same time I can’t have his name out there. It just won’t do.”

He took out his wallet and started thumbing through the bills. “So let me tell you what kind of bargain I’m prepared to make. I have five hundred dollars here. I was going to let you have it all, but it looks like you’ll have to split it with your friend with the pubic mustache.”

Randy leaned forward in his seat. “Hey, buddy, don’t dis the ’stache.”

Tres disregarded that. “Two hundred and fifty apiece—that’s still a lot of money for guys like you. All you have to do is keep your mouths shut about this Hector business, and you can walk out of here a couple of wealthy individuals, and everything will be all right.”

“You have to be kidding,” I said. “You think I’d sell Beto out?”

But Randy’s like, “Wait a minute, Dylan. I could use two hundred and fifty dollars.”

I glared at him. “No, Randy, we’re not taking the money.”

“Think about it,” Tres urged. “You could buy all the stupid retro T-shirts you want. And your buddy—maybe he could get a date for a change.”

“I bet I get more tail than you,” Randy said.

And I’m like, “Forget it. As far as I’m concerned, your money’s no good.”

Tres snapped his wallet shut. “Too bad.”

Then Ashton jumped into the discussion, pleading, “Dylan, you should really think about taking the money. I know how you feel about Beto. Believe me, I do. And I wish there was another way, but this is bigger than you.”

Her blue eyes went watery, and I started to feel a little dizzy looking into them. But I couldn’t do what she wanted. “I’m sorry, Ashton. Maybe a few weeks ago I would’ve just taken the money, but not now.”

“That’s okay,” Tres said. “I have an alternative plan.” He walked to the open doorway, leaned out, and called, “Hey, Dickie, get in here, will you?”

Dickie?
The name sounded familiar, but with the way my mind was racing, I couldn’t slow my thoughts down enough to grab hold of where I’d heard it before.

Then in through the doorway walked Sideburns himself, grinning maliciously. I bolted to my feet so fast my head went light. Randy stood up too. I didn’t know if he was scared, but he was sweating so much you would’ve thought he just took a hot shower.

“You have your switchblade with you, Dickie?” Tres asked, and Dickie’s like, “Sure do.” He pulled the knife from his pocket and flicked out the blade.

Ashton got up and walked to the side of the desk. “No, Tres, you can’t be serious.” Then to me, “Dylan, you have to take the money. Please, take it.”

“I can’t,” I said, but the words sounded weird coming out, like someone else was saying them.

Then Randy looked at Dickie and goes, “Are you one of those Wiccans? I heard they had a coven here. Is it true they know magic and stuff? I don’t believe in the whole broomstick deal, but I figured maybe they made potions and charms, that kind of thing.”

It was Randy’s dumb-ass routine all over again.

“Shut up,” Dickie told him. “Or I’m gonna work on you first.”

Randy backed away, but his routine did buy me just enough time to catch hold of how I knew Dickie’s name—Dancin’ Dan mentioned it the night we drove home from Gangland. Dickie was the one who fought Robo-Troy before Dan.

Now Dickie stood right in front of me, swishing the knife blade in the air. “Here we are—you and me again. Looks like I’m gonna have to do that nose job on you after all.”

“So, you’re Dickie,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. “Yeah, what of it?”

And I’m like, “Dan told me about you.”

The knife stopped swishing. “You know Dan?”

“Do I know Dan? Are you kidding? Dan and I are tight. We fought in the rumbles on the same night. He told me all about you and Robo-Troy, said you came the closest of anyone in the history of the rumbles to beating Troy.”

Dickie smiled. “Dan said that?”

“Sure.”

“Well, I guess I done pretty good. A lot better than Dan, that’s for sure. Old Dan sure got a faceful, didn’t he?”

“Not as bad as me,” I said. “I almost got my nose broken.”

Dickie gave me a playful punch on the shoulder. “Well, how do you like that? You’re buddies with Dan.”

“Would you shut up,” Tres ordered. “Forget whether he knew some stupid guy named Dan. We have a little persuading to do here, remember?”

Dickie glared at him. “Dan’s not stupid. He’s my main man.”

“That’s okay,” Tres told him. “Marry him if you want to, but I’m the one who’s paying you.”

Dickie folded his knife shut. “I don’t believe I like the way you’re talking.”

“Look,” Tres said. “I have a hundred extra dollars here if you’ll just forget about how I’m talking and get back to doing your job.”

During this, my heart pounded so hard I thought it might crack a rib. You never know how you’ll react in a situation like this, but I was beginning to think there was something more wrong with me than just stress. Randy didn’t look so good either.

“I don’t know,” Dickie said. “If you got an extra hundred, I’ll bet you got an extra two hundred.”

Tres pulled out his wallet. “Okay, two hundred.”

The switchblade flicked open again, and Dickie’s like, “Or maybe I’ll just take everything you got.”

Tres reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a black pistol. That’s Oklahoma for you—even the rich kids are packing. But he wasn’t exactly Mr. Cool about it. His hands shook so badly he fumbled the pistol and couldn’t catch it before it clattered onto the floor.

Dickie’s like, “Ha! Looks like I got the advantage in this deal here.”

Tres looked panicked.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Ashton strode around the desk. “Do I have to do everything?” She had a pistol of her own.

“Drop that knife,” she ordered Dickie. “And get over there with those two idiots.”

All in a moment her softness had hardened into steel. She pointed the gun with the barrel turned sideways the way gang-bangers in movies do, which struck me as a kind of reverse pretentiousness.

As Tres plucked his pistol from the floor, Dickie warily followed Ashton’s orders. Now the three of us stood with our backs to the desk, and Tres stood next to Ashton. She had all the beauty of a well-polished missile.

I’m like, “What’s going on?”

“It really is too bad you had to know about Hector Maldonado,” she said, her hard blue eyes fixed on me. “Things would’ve been so much easier if you had never found him in that Dumpster.”

I tried to speak, but suddenly my mouth wouldn’t work. My thoughts had sped to a blur. Then something strange happened—it was like a bottle rocket exploded in my mind. Everything around me glowed, especially Ashton.

My whirling thoughts lined up in order, and it was like I could turn them over one by one in rapid succession and inspect them from all sides. I knew what’d happened—the liquid-rubber aftertaste in my drink hadn’t come from some diet sweetener. It came from the drug Ashton added. The same drug she killed Hector with. Of course. There was no doubt. But how long would it take to kill me?

“You expect me to believe you’re gonna shoot us?” said Dickie. His voice rang like a gong. I felt like I could hear his whole life in it. “You don’t have the guts.”

She smiled. “You might ask your two compadres about that. I can see they’re starting to feel the effects of the deadly little cocktail I mixed for them.”

“I think I’m getting ready to puke,” Randy said. “You’d better let me out of here.”

“Sorry,” she said. “You should know by now I was never going to let you out of here, not even if you took the payoff. I just had to buy enough time until I was sure the drug was working. And you know what the beauty of it is? It’s not an illegal drug at all. They call it Dragon Ice. You can order it online. The company pretends it’s a type of bath salt, but it gives off a lovely little semi-hallucinogenic buzz if you take the right amount. There’s just one tiny problem—if you take too much, you die.”

“Just like Hector did,” I said. The words came out perfectly now as if my mouth was a mold forming them from silver. “You were just using him all along, weren’t you? Making him think he was your boyfriend, making him deliver meals for FOKC with you. He was the one the Ockle ladies saw you with. But that whole charity thing was an act. You only did it so you could dig up some poor guy like Hector to drag to Gangland,
just like Nash did to me when he pretended to be my friend. Maybe you even wanted Hector to do some crime for you. Like rob a pharmacy. Rowan chickened out on that, so you dropped him and went looking for someone of your own to do it.”

“So you know about Rowan and the pharmacy, do you?” With her free hand, she flicked her hair away from her face, and waves of color wafted from her fingertips. “He was always a bunch of flash and no substance. It was so ridiculous that his father owned Gangland and Rowan and Nash paraded around as godfathers. They thought they were quite the pair of rulers, but they were wrong. If you want to rule, you have to be ready to do anything. And I mean
anything
.”

“I’m not kidding.” Randy leaned over and clamped his hands to his knees. “I’m going to puke any second now.”

I chuckled at that. Somehow, the idea of puking struck me as funny. I wondered if I might have to puke too. At the moment, it seemed like an interesting topic to explore, but I had to squeeze it out of my head and get back to the situation at hand.

I fixed my gaze on Ashton’s eyes. The blue in them vibrated to the tinkle of invisible wind chimes. “You were just playing with people’s lives, weren’t you? Everybody was a chess piece that you moved where you wanted so you could beat Nash and Rowan.”

She sneered. “They were small-time.”

“Sure,” I said. “Small-time. They only wanted to humiliate people and steal from them. They didn’t have what it took to actually kill someone.”

“Wait a minute,” Tres cut in. His little turtle face appeared to be melting into his shirt collar. “We didn’t set out to kill anybody. That was just a side effect of the plan. We were just about the pharmacy thing. That’s all.”

“Right,” I said. “But Hector didn’t want to go along with it, did he? He thought he was in love, but he was too honest to pull something like that, so you drugged him.”

“Hey,” said Ashton. “I just thought if I got him a little high, he’d loosen up and see we were just having fun. But he kept insisting he couldn’t go through with any kind of robbery, not even for me.”

“Then you kept on dosing him with that Dragon Ice crap.”

“Everything would’ve been all right if he’d just gone along with the plan,” Ashton explained. “But he started freaking out, said he saw the devil in my eyes. It was pretty funny until he started turning blue. They really should include better instructions with that stuff. But when you’re playing to win, sometimes you end up with a little collateral damage along the way.”