MORTAL COILS (8 page)

Welmann
opened the computer’s disk drive, grabbed the CD, and snapped it in half.

“Hey!
What gives?”

Welmann
turned to Robert, and his face set in a cast-iron mask of
nocrap-listen-to-me-kid seriousness.

“I
want you to get back to the boss and report everything: Crumble, these kids,
give him their address. Do it in person. No phones.” Welmann stood. “We got
trouble two steps behind us. You drive and don’t stop. You got to eat, drink,
or piss—you suck it up and keep going.”

“Okay.”
Robert wasn’t sure what had just set Welmann off, but he wasn’t about to
question orders when they had gone to DEFCON 2. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ve
got to get to those kids . . . before they do.”

“You
mean Crumble. This other side, right?”

Annoyance
flickered over Welmann’s wide face and he got out Mr. Uri Crumble’s business
card.

“Yeah.”
Welmann turned his head and blinked as if it hurt to look at the card so
closely. He fished out his lighter, struck a flame, and touched it to the
paper.

The
flame caught. Welmann dropped the card.

Fire
licked up the lines, flickered around the angular writing, and covered the logo
on the back; white blackened to char, edges curled and glowed with embers; the
pattern wriggled in the heat as if it were alive.

Five
seconds it burned. Then ten seconds, and it continued to burn. The lines looked
like heated metal and glowed brighter, and Robert found himself wanting to
touch it . . . let it sear into his skin.

Welmann
stomped it flat, and ash plumed over the floor.

Nothing
remained except a sneaker imprint of pulverized cinders. Try as he might,
Robert couldn’t remember the curious design, even though he had just seen it.

“Freaky,”
Robert whispered.

Welmann
reached into his pocket and got his car keys, hesitated, then handed them over.

Robert
stared at them. No way was Welmann handing him the keys to the Maybach.

“Go
on,” Welmann said.

He
didn’t have to say it twice. Robert snatched them up. “You want me to drive?”

Welmann
looked slightly nauseated, but nodded.

Robert’s
elation faded. Welmann wouldn’t let him drive unless it had really hit the fan,
as in, Welmann didn’t expect to be able to drive the thing again—ever.

“Take
me with you,” Robert whispered. “You’ll need backup.”

Welmann
nodded. “I bet I will. But you’re not coming.” He exhaled and looked Robert
square in the eyes. “You got twice the balls that I had when I was sixteen.
You’re going to make a great Driver.” He set a hand on Robert’s shoulder and
squeezed. “But if you don’t do as I told you, I’m going to kick your ass.”

Robert
wanted to say a lot of things: how Welmann was a son of a bitch, that he never
liked him . . . and that the last thing he wanted was to leave him the way he
had the string of replacement dads since he was a kid.

He
fought to keep his eyes from watering. He was going to cry? Like a baby? In
front of Welmann? He fought back the tears and nodded.

Robert
moved to the door and paused.

Welmann
flashed him a crooked smile and gave him a little wave that turned into a
“shooing-away” motion.

Robert
wondered when he’d see the guy who’d been the closest thing he’d had to a
father . . . or even if he’d see him again. He sprinted down the hallway to the
stairwell and didn’t look back. He had a feeling they were both on their own.

5

BIRTHDAY
SURPRISES

Eliot
reviewed his escape plan: When he got paid today, he’d head to the bus station
instead of home. He’d get to Santa Rosa and hitchhike the rest of the way to
San Francisco, where he’d arrange to work on a freighter to Shanghai . . . and
from there maybe find his way to Tibet.

He
glanced at the clock on his dresser: almost nine thirty. Time for the real
world.

There
was no escape plan. Eliot didn’t have the nerve to hitchhike or con his way
onto a freighter. He wished he did, though.

He
got angry. Jeez, if he couldn’t even escape in his daydreams, what was the
point of anything?

He
marched over to the milk crate by his dresser, stood on it, and looked in the
mirror. He winced. Today he had to wear his “special” clothes. The ones Cecilia
had spent considerable time and energy sewing for his birthday. As with her
cooking, Cecilia’s heart was in the right place, but the results could almost
kill you.

Eliot’s
shirt was a collection of stripes that had once been in style, come back, then
forever died the fashion death they richly deserved. Avocado, almond, and burnt
orange had been put on this planet specifically to clash. He wouldn’t have
minded so much, but the alignment was off, so they offset midway on his chest.
The pants were no better. Cecilia had decided pleats were “in,” and these
permanent creases bunched together around the zipper so it looked as if he wore
a diaper.

He
sighed, closed his eyes, and hoped he’d be invisible at work today . . . or
that Mike would be too busy to harass him.

His
daydream of escape returned, and for a moment he tasted salt air on the Indian
Ocean—the start of a great adventure.

The
clock on his dresser pinged.

He hopped
off the milk crate and went to grab his homework, halting at his desk. There
was no homework.

It
felt good, but somehow wrong, not to have fallen asleep at his desk last night.
Grandmother always meant exactly what she said, though, and last night she had
said “no homework.” Yet, everything about last night seemed wrong: Cecilia
acting jumpy; him and Fiona sent to bed early; that broken teacup.

Maybe
the change was because of their birthdays. Grandmother had to realize that
they’d soon be too old for homeschooling. What was she going to do when they
went to college? Grandmother and Cee would be left alone to rattle around in
this book-lined tomb of an apartment. He felt sorry for them.

Eliot
moved to his door.

The
List was taped there, 106 rules that might as well have been 106 feet of
chain-link fencing and concertina wire. Every bit of the sympathy he had just
felt for Grandmother evaporated.

He
wanted to tear the List down, rip it into confetti . . . but the rules would
still be there—invisible and ever present, essential to life in Grand-mother’s
house, like oxygen in the air.

And
such tantrums did nothing. Last year Eliot had wanted a radio for his birthday,
just for news he’d claimed. He promised there’d be no music. He had tried
pleading, logic, and finally he had told Grandmother that he would buy a radio,
and he didn’t need her permission.

Grandmother
didn’t say a word. Instead, she halted his tirade with a single “sharp” gaze.

It
was the same look she had last night. He’d forgotten that he had been on the
receiving end of that look. It had felt as if his heart had stopped . . . not
literally, but he recalled that he’d forgotten to breathe he’d been so absorbed
by her fathomless gray eyes.

After
what had seemed like minutes, Grandmother blinked, and he inhaled.

The
“discussion” about his radio was over. Forever.

Angry
all over again—Eliot yanked open his bedroom door.

In
the darkened hallway Fiona’s door yanked open at the same time, with exactly
the same force, spilling another dim parallelogram of light into the shadows.

They
stared at one another, then she said, “Happy birthday.”

She
was doing it again: that pretend twin synchronicity thing to bug him. One day
he’d figure out how she did it.

Eliot’s
anger dimmed a little, though, as he recalled her present last night: the
chocolate. Now that he thought about it, it was twice the gift that he had
realized. He liked chocolate as much as the next person, but Fiona loved the
stuff. How could one person be so nice one moment, then a total brat the next?
Guess that was the short definition of a sister.

At
least she hadn’t escaped fashion disaster, either. Fiona also wore her
Cecilia-made birthday outfit: a pink dress, misaligned at the seams, tight
across the chest, and loose at the waist. A pink bow and sash about her middle
cinched it awkwardly together. And a pair of white sneakers from the secondhand
store had been colored with lavender marker in an attempt to make them match.
She looked like a crumpled bubble-gum wrapper.

Fiona
tried to smooth out the wrinkles and bunches in the fabric to no effect. She
shot him a glare and said, “What are you staring at? Are you feeling okay?
Hypoxia? Or anoxia?”

“I’m
getting plenty of oxygen to my brain.”

Fiona
had been favoring medical terms in her openers for vocabulary insult. Good
thing he had reviewed the premed texts on the bathroom shelves recently.

“You
should switch from angiology to a field of study closer to your mental
consistency,” Eliot retorted. “Limacology.”

Fiona’s
dark brows scrunched together.

He
had her with this one. The ology part—“study of”—was a give-me. The lima though
. . . that would get her. Even by their standards it was obscure. This would be
one of the shortest games of vocabulary insult on record.

Eliot
left her there to ponder his riddle and strolled down the hall, practically
walking on air.

Behind
him, Fiona whispered, “A lubricious puzzle from your equally slippery gray
matter.”

Eliot
stopped. The grin on his face faded. She got it? So quick?

He
turned. “How?”

Eliot
closed his mouth, but it was too late. The damage had been done. He’d committed
the one foul in vocabulary insult: asking for an explanation.

It
was Fiona’s turn to smile. She tilted her head and explained, “You had me for a
second. I thought it was lemma as in the Greek for ‘proposition,’ as in
dilemma, the decision between two propositions.”

She
was lecturing him. He loathed this but it was her right to claim—the only real
prize in their game.

“But
it was your clue about ‘mental consistency’ that really helped. I figured it
had to be something slimy or sticky . . . which made me remember that Limax
maximus is the leopard or common garden slug. After that it was easy.” She
snapped her fingers. “Limacology, the study of slugs. Good one. I hope you weren’t
saving it for a special occasion.”

“Whatever,”
Eliot mumbled. “Score’s still nothing to nothing.”

She
caught up to him, and together they walked into the dining room. They stopped
on the threshold, however, stunned by what they saw.

The
table, normally obscured with a layer of papers and books, had been cleared.
The wood surface was polished to a dark mirror finish and draped with a lace
tablecloth (that didn’t fit). Four china plates were set out with linen place
mats, napkins, and silver forks.

Across
the picture window, a banner hung between the bookcases. It had been taped
together from newspaper strips. On it, a laundry marker had been used to print
HAPPY BIRTHDAY. The last few letters, though, shrank at the end as the
calligrapher had run out of room.

Only
there weren’t supposed to be decorations in Grandmother’s apartment.