Sinister Substitute (4 page)

Now, because Dave and Sticky had had
frightening and life-threatening experiences with Damien Black in the past, they would most certainly have recognized him should he have appeared in his usual black boots, black pants, black coat (and brutally black twisty mustache).

Especially if he’d been wielding his double-bladed axe.

But he was wielding a pipe!

(Still not the clonking kind.)

And wearing a brown tweed suit!

(A very un-Damien fashion statement if there ever was one.)

And he had no mustache!

Not even a stubble!

What gave Damien Black away was his single gold tooth. One right behind the pointy canine tooth on the top left, visible only in the rare and fleeting moments when Damien smiled.

But there it was, a quick flash of gold.

And with that flash, Sticky knew the truth.

This was no teacher!

This was the deadly, diabolical Damien Black!

Now, if there’s one thing Damien loves to twist (besides the truth), it’s his long, sinister mustache. It’s like a good-luck charm.

A twin-tailed talisman.

A hairy amulet.

(Or, if you will, a soft and soothing security blanket for his tight upper lip.)

So what would possess him to shave it off?

Well, aside from the comforting thought that it would, indeed, grow back, Damien was willing to sacrifice the mustache to get something he really, really wanted:

Dave’s powerband.

Which had, at one point, been
his
powerband.

To make a very long story short, Damien (at this point in time) still possessed every ingot that went with the powerband save one:

Wall-Walker.

Dave, on the other hand, had only Wall-Walker, but he did, in fact, possess the one and only powerband.

Having owned it (and Sticky) at one point, Damien was desperate to get his maniacal mitts back on the powerband (and maybe Sticky, too, so he could get rid of that yakkity-yakking trouble-making lizard once and for all). So, as run-ins with Dave (as the Gecko) occurred, Damien slowly gathered clues about Dave’s identity.

He did not know Dave’s name or where he lived, but the last time they’d clashed, Damien had seen an eagle insignia on the boy’s T-shirt.

An eagle insignia that had GMS underneath it.

It did not take a diabolically devilish brain to decode this, but (as demented villains are prone) Damien felt extremely clever when he’d worked out its meaning.

“Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” he’d laughed. “Geronimo
Middle School! ‘Home of the Eagles’! Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

And so he had paced and pondered and plotted. And after countless hours of fine-tuning and finessing, he had, at long last, hatched a plan.

A plan that was now in full sinister swing in Ms. Veronica Krockle’s science classroom.

As Damien towered above Fons Soto (or, according to his seating chart, Dave Sanchez) and confronted him about owning a gecko, he knew he was close to getting what he wanted.

He could just
feel
it.

This boy was definitely hiding something.

And the whole class was obviously helping him!

The air was positively charged with lies!

Sneaky, snotty, bratty-faced lies!

“Uh, not me,” Fons said with a nervous laugh. “Actually, I’ve
never
owned a gecko.” Then he added, “Maybe someone’s just messin’ with your head?”

Messing, indeed!

Unfortunately for Damien Black, he misinterpreted just
how
these students were messing with his head, and as he sneered at Fons Soto, his dark, deadly eyes danced with laughter.

This Dave Sanchez boy was no match for him!

After school, he would follow him.

Corner him!

Once again the powerband would be his!

Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

After school, Damien Black did, indeed, follow Fons Soto (who he thought was named Dave Sanchez).

And Dave and Sticky followed Damien Black.

Dave had slipped into his own (not-so-elaborate) disguise: black shirt, dark shades, ball cap. He’d also clicked in the Wall-Walker ingot and was making full use of his ability to move quickly along roofline shadows, unnoticed.

Damien, on the other hand, had done a speedy job of disguising his disguise by dumping the glasses, pocket watch, pipe, coat, and vest. Instead of an eccentric professor, he now looked like a tall, lanky, narrow-nosed nerd.

“Are you
sure
that’s Damien Black?” Dave whispered to Sticky. “It doesn’t look anything like him!”

“Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky grumbled. “Trust me for once, would you,
señor
?” He cocked his head at Dave. “Why else would he be following that boy?”

“Maybe they’re just going the same direction?”

Sticky rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a
bobo
dingo. It’s him.”

“Okay, so if it
is
him,” Dave said after shadowing the sinister substitute for another minute, “what are we going to do?”

“Hmm,” Sticky said, tapping his little gecko chin as he and Dave moved along a good twenty feet above Damien. “You really want my advice,
señor
?”

“Uh, yeah,” Dave said (in a drawn-out, all-knowing-thirteen-year-old way).

Sticky eyed him. “And you’ll
take
my advice this time?”

“I always take your advice.”

“No,
señor
, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do!”

“No, you don’t!”

“Yes, I do!”

Sticky thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Never mind. Just do whatever you want.”

“But I don’t know what I want to do!”

“So you’ll take my advice?”

“Sticky! Just tell me!”

“Okay,
señor
. I think you should do this.” And before Dave knew what was happening, Sticky was up on his hind legs with his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting, “HEY, DONKEY BREATH!” down at Damien.

Dave froze. “What are you
doing
?” he said through gritted teeth, but it was too late.

Damien looked up.

“YEAH, YOU!” Sticky shouted down at Damien (although Sticky’s amazingly loud voice sounded for all the world like it was coming from Dave). “YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE, YOU BLACK-HEARTED BOZO?” Then Sticky dropped his voice and said to Dave, “There you go,
señor
. Our work here is done.”

Sticky, of course, was quite right. Why would Damien follow Fons Soto when “Dave Sanchez” was obviously not the one with the powerband? “Dave Sanchez” couldn’t possibly be the Gecko.

The real Dave, however, was having a little trouble processing this. And so (as is usually the case when one is stunned, shocked, or just plain mentally zapped) Dave stayed there, frozen (in this case to the wall).

Damien, too, was shocked, and although the rest of him stayed put, his jaw dropped.

His eyes caught fire.

His mind spattered and sputtered until sparks seemed to fly from his dastardly ears.

“Ándale, hombre!”
Sticky whispered to Dave. “Unless you still don’t believe me … ?”

So, lickety-split, Dave scurried over the roof and out of Damien’s view, but he was not happy. Not happy at all. “I can’t believe you did that!” he said to Sticky. “That was crazy! What if he comes after us?”

“Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky grumbled. “This is the thanks I get for sizzly-quick thinking?”

“Sticky! It was crazy!”

Sticky shrugged. “But it worked, right?”

Dave had to admit that yes, it had worked. And after he got over the shock of Sticky’s brash tactic, he had one big worry remaining. “What if he’s back tomorrow?”

“Hmm,” Sticky said, the wheels in his brain clickity-clacking like crazy. At last, he asked, “Uh … you say that scary
señorita
has never missed a day? Ever?”

“That’s what I’ve heard. And she’s been there
for
ever.” Then Dave grumbled, “I never in a million years thought I’d wish she’d come back, but I do.”

“Hmm,” Sticky said again.

Now, while Dave was ditching Damien Black and changing into his Roadrunner Express sweatshirt and racing around town making his delivery-boy deliveries, Sticky’s brain continued to clickity-clack, thinking about something he really didn’t want to be thinking about. Not only did he not want to be thinking about it, he didn’t want to be thinking about what might happen if he told Dave about it.

But still, he was thinking about it.

And still, he was thinking about telling Dave about it.

Sticky, you see, wasn’t sure who was more evil: Damien Black or Veronica Krockle.

Damien, on the one hand, had caught him and caged him.

Ms. Veronica Krockle, on the other, would be
happy to catch him and
kill
him (and then cut him into little science-project pieces).

That is, if she were after him.

Which she was not.

Damien, however, most certainly was.

So to Sticky, this was a stalemate.

Gridlock.

A fifty-fifty hate-hate lose-lose situation.

But in the end, Sticky felt he had to do something, so he cleared his throat.

He took a deep breath.

He looked at Dave (who was relieved to finally be pedaling home to dinner after his long, stressful day) and said, “Uh,
señor
?”

“Yeah, Sticky? What’s up?”

“Uh … I don’t think that scary
señorita
is sick.”

“Huh?” Dave glanced down at the gecko, who was creeping out from inside his sweatshirt. “You’re talking about Ms. Krockle?”

“Sí, señor.”
Sticky took another deep breath and then blurted, “I think that
loco
honcho has her.”

Dave nearly collided with a car as the significance of Sticky’s words sank in. He swerved to the curb, then stopped and stared at the gecko. “You think Damien Black
kidnapped
her?”

Sticky’s head bobbed solemnly. “If I know that evil
hombre
, he’s got her locked up inside that crazy
casa
. And,
señor
, there’s only one way to stop him from coming back to school.” He looked directly at Dave. “You have to rescue her.”

Damien Black did not live alone in his maniacal mansion on Raven Ridge.

Oh, he would have
liked
to, but three men (who were known in their hometown as the Bandito Brothers) had, at one point, bumbled their way into his house, and try as he might to get rid of them, they always seemed to come back.

The Bandito Brothers—Tito, Angelo, and Pablo—were not actual brothers (although they fought like they were). They were a mariachi band.

A
bad
one.

They screeched out songs.

Played out of tune.

And (as it was their real purpose in forming the band) they stole stuff.

Yes, the Bandito Brothers played at being a band, but they were actually a band of thieves. And in all their crooked years, these out-of-tune crooners had never met another thief, another swindler, another
anyone
as clever as Damien Black.

They were, it’s fair to say, awestruck by the treasure hunter. And, despite the fact that Damien called them bumbling bozos and had, on several occasions, come close to killing them, the Brothers were sure that deep in his dark, dastardly heart, Damien Black liked them.

And so, time after time, the Bandito Brothers returned to the monstrous mansion from which they’d been banned, in hopes that someday they, too, would be clever and crafty and rich like Damien Black.

Now, the simple truth is, Sticky was right:

Damien had, indeed, abducted Ms. Veronica Krockle.

And Damien had (to his sinister surprise) discovered that he couldn’t handle her alone.

Oh, he’d had no problem clonking her over the head (with the smooth, appropriately twisted, and remarkably dense humerus of a pygmy hippo—a bone he’d acquired while on a hippo safari in the forests of Tiwai Island).

He’d had no problem blindfolding her and transporting her up to Raven Ridge (in his devilishly dandy 1959 Cadillac Eldorado).

And he’d had no problem hoisting her like a rag doll up ninety-nine steps to a remote, windowless tower in his maze of a mansion and locking her up.

But after she came to?

Oh my.

Damien discovered (to his horror) that he’d abducted a mad cat.

An angry alligator!

A wild and wicked wasp of a woman!

And what a stinger that voice of hers was!

And so, once again, he’d turned to the Bandito Brothers for help.

“Tie her up and
shut
her up!” he’d commanded.

“Who
is
she?” they’d asked.

“Just do it!” he’d snapped, and shoved them inside the tower room with a fat roll of duct tape.

Damien was not, I should point out, a coward. He simply did not want Veronica Krockle to see him, or to know where she had been taken (hence the windowlessness of the room). His plan was neither to keep her nor to kill her. Oh no. She was not nearly important enough for
that
. He just needed her out of the way until he’d tracked down the boy and snatched back the powerband.