Mojo (7 page)

After I got home from the search, I had to come clean to my parents about quitting the grocery-store job. They didn’t care so much that I quit the job, but they definitely weren’t happy that I did it on such short notice. Dad was all about how you never knew when you might need a job reference sometime down the line, and Mom was all, “That’s not how we taught you to treat people. You have to have more respect for others than that.”

They were right, of course, and I did feel bad about the job, but I explained how I had to make a choice between sacking groceries and devoting myself to my investigative journalism. The kids who became editors and got all sorts of articles published had to stay after school, I told them. Sure, it was great to make money for right now, but I also had my future career to think about.

That calmed them down. They were glad to see I was taking something seriously for a change. So they switched the lecture over to explaining how all my other school subjects were also important for a journalist, and then, when they started listing the classes I should take in college, my mind drifted off into a mental movie of me cruising up and down in front of my high school in a red ’69 Mustang.

Next Monday at school, I found out my buddy Randy was even less happy with me for quitting the grocery store, and he wasn’t at all impressed with my new emphasis on being an investigative journalist. Seems that since I left, the store was shorthanded, and the extra workload fell on him. That was something I hadn’t thought about. To make it up, I invited him over to help research the Ashton Browning case with me and Audrey.

We congregated in my bedroom, and like a good host I cracked open some Dr Peppers and laid out a bowl of Chex Mix, the Traditional blend. I really like the Bold Party Blend, except the drawback is it lingers on your breath the rest of the day. No amount of teeth-brushing, mouth-washing, or mint-eating can destroy that taste. It’s nuclear.

Now, when the Andromeda Man did research, he had access to all sorts of records—bank accounts, rap sheets, tax files, even parking-ticket info—but me, I had Facebook. So the three of us sat on the floor with our backs against the bed and began poring over the Facebook profiles of some of the Hollister kids I’d hooked up with. I halfway expected Nash, Brett, and Tres to have forgotten who I was already, but no, they friended me right back when I sent in the request. Trix friended me and Audrey both.

Then I used their friends lists to hook up with quite a few people who’d never met me, including Rowan Adams, Ashton’s latest boyfriend. Every one of them friended me right back too. Really, these Hollisterites seemed to be just like kids at my school. They didn’t care if they knew you or not. They just wanted to add as many names as they could to jack up their friends total.

There wasn’t a whole lot to find out from their profiles, just the usual stuff about music, movies, books, that kind of
thing. But there were a few interesting tidbits like how Nash was a hotshot wide receiver on the football team, Brett was class treasurer, Tres played the oboe, and Trix didn’t say anything about only being interested in girls. That didn’t deter Audrey, though. Right off, she jotted down a list of books and movies Trix liked, I guess so she could work them into their next conversation.

Randy’s like, “This is boring. I thought we were going to scope out some hot rich babes, not a lesbian girlfriend for Audrey.”

“Who are you trying to kid, Randy?” Audrey said. “I’ll bet you’ve had more secret gay sex than a Republican senator.”

To which Randy responded with an extended fart, his usual comeback to anything he didn’t like.

“Real mature,” Audrey said.

But Randy was right. We weren’t getting anywhere with the profiles, especially since we didn’t have access to the most important one—Ashton Browning’s. So we moved on to check out the Hollister kids’ photos instead. It was pretty interesting looking at their sweet rides and houses and bedrooms and whatnot, but that really wasn’t getting us anywhere either. I was after some photos of Ashton and finally found some. Nash had quite a few of him and her, and some of the older ones looked pretty cozy. I couldn’t help imagining myself in his situation—her head leaning against mine, her fingers touching my face, the two of us with our arms around each other.

Maybe someday it’ll be like that
, I thought.
After I find her and bring her home, how could she resist me and my hundred-thousand-dollar reward and my awesome ’69 Mustang?

Surprisingly, Rowan Adams had no pictures of him and Ashton. That was weird. Why wouldn’t you keep her photos? Obviously, Nash did, which meant they must’ve stayed friendly
after the breakup. But Rowan and Ashton? Apparently, not so much.

Looking at the photos of him, I couldn’t figure out what she saw in him in the first place. For one thing, he was a little too flamboyant in the attire department. Definitely a hat guy. And an ironic-blazer wearer. By that, I mean these blazers were outrageous—red, orange, even chartreuse—so you had to figure they were some kind of joke.

But that was nothing. The real thing that irritated me was his eyes and smile. It was like he had small dark eyes and a good-sized beak that made them look even smaller. Not that he was ugly, but he had this smug expression in almost every picture that told you he thought he was hot stuff. You’ve seen that little smirk. It made you want slap him in the face with a cold fish.

Audrey’s like, “Put a blond wig on that kid and he’s Draco Malfoy all over again.”

“Definitely prime Slytherin material,” Randy added. Next we moved on to eyeball the posts and comments, hoping they might reveal some tasty clues and that Ashton might have some stuff on there too. Like the profiles, though, the posts weren’t much different from the tidbits kids at my school cluttered their walls with.

It’s weird—reading posts like that, you only get one small side of people’s personalities. One’s always griping, another’s impossibly upbeat, and yet another’s always coming with the jokes. You could get the idea that’s how they are all the time if you don’t know them outside of cyberspace.

One word that kept coming up did spark my interest, though—
Gangland
. As in:
Gangland this Saturday
. Or:
Gangland, baby, Gangland
. Or simply:
Gangland!
What that meant was anybody’s guess.

There were no comments from Ashton since her disappearance, of course, and in fact, we had to go back a couple of weeks before we found anything from her at all. Nothing looked suspicious. Actually, she seemed like a pretty positive supportive-type friend. Except for one comment she made in response to Rowan’s post.

That was her only response, just the frowny face.

Audrey’s like, “Maybe that has something to do with why they broke up.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Yeah,” Randy added. “He probably broke up with her because he didn’t like her putting a frowny face on everything he said.”

“You would blame the girl,” Audrey said. “I bet she broke up with him because she couldn’t stand his little smirk.”

I started to scroll back even further into the past, but just then a private message showed up. It was from Nash. Admittedly, I felt a little rush. I mean, this guy was top-of-the-heap material, and here he was sending me a private message.

He’s like,
Hey, master detective! Good to meet you the other day! We should hang out and talk about the case! I have a game going on at my favorite pool hall this Saturday! You should come!

Besides the correct grammar and overuse of exclamation points, there was something else odd about the message—the address of his favorite pool hall was smack-dab in the middle of the Asian District, not at all the kind of high-rent place you’d
expect a Hollister kid to hang out in. But that was okay. This was just the kind of opportunity a good investigator needed to take advantage of. Maybe I could even find out what Gangland was. Plus, it would be pretty cool getting to hang with a guy like Nash.

“Hmmm,” Audrey said. “This is interesting. Very interesting. I wonder what he wants out of this.”

I’m like, “Hey, is it so impossible that the guy just wants to hang out with me?”

She shrugged.

Randy goes, “But
pool
? Who plays pool anymore?”

And I’m like, “I guess I do.”

Saturday night I put on my newest old jeans and my retro Iron Maiden T-shirt. I’m not sure I’d ever heard an Iron Maiden song, but the shirt was pretty awesome, and besides, they say black is supposed to be slimming. Audrey picked me up about seven, and then we swung by to get Randy. He was wearing a cheesy collared shirt that was unbuttoned far enough to expose his pale bony chest. I should also point out that he’d been trying to grow a mustache for about a month, but it only had about twenty whiskers—twelve on one side and eight on the other—which had the texture of armpit hair. Apparently, he thought it was suave. I wasn’t so sure I wanted him along on this mission, but I still owed him for the tough spot I’d put him in at the grocery store.

As we headed into the city, he started asking about Trix, wondering if maybe she’d be at the pool hall. That possibility was the main reason Audrey wanted to go, but Randy, always up for meeting a new girl—any new girl—figured if Trix turned out not to be a lesbian, he might have a shot at her.

I’m like, “No way. If she’s not a lesbian, then I’m first in line in front of you.”

“Forget that, Dylan,” Audrey said. “You can’t ever ask her out.”

“Why not? If she’s not into girls, why would you care?”

“Because we’re best friends, and you don’t ask out somebody your best friend already likes. The gay thing doesn’t make any difference.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but she was right. It wouldn’t feel so good to see her going around with some girl I liked. And I would never—never—in a million years want to make Audrey feel like that. Besides, I didn’t think it was a good idea to date a suspect.

Anyway, the Asian district is a cool part of town. There’s a healthy Vietnamese population in Oklahoma City, and they’ve opened up all kinds of interesting restaurants and shops. If you’ve never tried
pho
, which is this super-hearty Vietnamese noodle soup, then you need to. They have whole restaurants devoted to it. In fact, even though I’d already had dinner, I voted to stop in for a quick bowl, but Audrey and Randy vetoed me.

Trang’s, the Vietnamese pool hall, was on a little out-of-the-way side street in a building that I think used to be a carpet store. Although a lot of the Vietnamese places were all spruced up, Trang’s was pretty dingy on the outside, not a total dump, but not exactly welcoming either. I was pretty sure we weren’t going to fit in.

“Are you guys sure you want to go in here?” I asked.

“Why not?” Randy said. “My dad used to take me into worse places than this when he was still around.”

I looked at Audrey.

“We’re here,” she said. “We might as well check it out. Besides, how bad can it be if a Hollister boy hangs out here?”

I’m like, “It’s times like this I wish I had a derringer or something.”

“Oh, sure,” said Randy. “Someone would take that away from you in about five seconds and let the air out of your big belly with it. Now come on, let’s go in.”

That Randy. He sure knew how to reassure a guy.

My hope was that the owners had put all their money into decorating the inside. I pictured gold Buddha statues, fake exotic plants, a couple of big-screen TVs, maybe even a snack bar made out of bamboo. No luck. I guess all their money went into used pool tables. There were ten of them, each with plastic-shaded lamps, which were pretty much the only sources of light in the room. The walls might have been another color at some time, but now they were pretty much a shabby slate gray, except for the cue racks and a few signs with Vietnamese writing on them. Cigarette smoke hung over everything. Either this place was exempt from smoking laws or nobody bothered to enforce them here.

It wasn’t hard to spot Nash, being tall and blond and all. He and a buddy of his were the only non-Vietnamese guys in the room. Emphasis on the word
guys
. Not a single female in sight, except for Audrey. Nash looked up from the pool table where he was playing and waved. “Hey, Dylan, my man, I’m glad you could make it.”

He introduced me to his playing partner, another blondstatue Hollisterite, whose name was Holt, and to the two Vietnamese guys they were playing against, Huy and Tommy. I thought that was pretty gentlemanly of him to introduce everybody like that, so I introduced them all to Randy and Audrey.

Nash chalked the end of his cue and leaned over the table to take a shot. “Five in the side,” he said. He made the shot and looked up at me. “Ahhh, I’m on a hot roll.”

He missed the next shot, and Huy and Tommy laughed.

“Can’t make ’em all,” Nash said, smiling. He walked around the table and stood next to me. It was weird. In the dingy atmosphere, he seemed almost to glow. But I wasn’t so sure it would be a good idea for him to win the match. The regulars around here might not like that.

“So I guess these two are your detecting partners, huh?” He nodded toward Audrey and Randy.

“Something like that.”

“What’s the word? You found out anything new?”

“Not really. I was hoping maybe you had something to tell us.”

“Need a little info for your newspaper articles, huh? How about the one you were going to write about the search party? I thought you were going to send me a copy.”

“Yeah, I’ll send it to you. It doesn’t come out in the school paper till next week. The teacher liked it. Said maybe I might make an investigative reporter after all.”

“Oh, I have no doubt you will. That’s what I like about you—you have a passion for something interesting.
Investigative journalism
” He said it like it was the title of something grand. “Too many people are bland, but not you.”

I have to admit I swelled a little at that. It felt good to have somebody of Nash’s stature recognize that I wasn’t just another member of the herd.