Number 8 (28 page)

Asim waits.

“I remember RO, is all.”

“What was the manager's name? The one who threatened Valerie?”

“Tony.”

“Oh.”

I feel almost glad he's disappointed. What did he expect, another perfect piece of evidence? But those letters flash up again behind my eyes. It's like a scene from a dream, a memory you keep carefully trying to bury under real life.

“Tony employed a security guard.” I give this to him with an effort. “He was there the night Valerie discovered the drug money.”

“What was his name?”

“Rocky. Sometimes they called him The Rock.”

“R-O-
C
,” he spells out. “Do you think it could be that? Could it be a C?”

A wave of sickness floods me. “Or a K.”

“I think it is this Rocky who drives the Mustang.” Asim sits up on his haunches. “Rocky has been watching you and Valerie, showing you his boss has not forgotten. Valerie must not have given them what they wanted. So they hurt the thing most close to her.
You
. Maybe he came here to … to take you away.”

I stare at Asim. There is a sinking feeling in my chest, as I swallow something I can't digest. Slowly, as if wading through wet sand, I see that if this is true, they will have known all our habits. That Mom works nights.

“They came when they thought I would be home alone.”

“But Badman was here—”

“And Esmerelda. Remember we said—”

“Yes, I remember. And that's the whole picture.”

We're both standing at the gate, looking at all the different pieces in our minds. I don't like this common denominator. I realize I've been trying
not
to find it for weeks. I remember Mom's strained face, her weariness, the look of fear every time the phone rings. The way she bear-hugged me last night because she couldn't find me for three seconds. She's been living with this common denominator ever since we moved here. She's been hoping it would go away.

“We have to tell the police,” Asim says. “We can go back
to school. I bet they are still interviewing. We can show them the matches.”

“No!” My voice comes out in a shout. Asim jumps. “You don't understand. Mom has a
phobia
about the police. She'd die if we did that. You don't know what it's like. See, her friend Bev went through this last year. Tony blackmailed her, threatened he'd hurt her mother—she's old and sick. So Bev gave in and did what they told her. I think she took part in some deal at the casino, and they gave her a ‘bonus' as a reward, to pay for a nursing home for her mother. So then they could say she was involved in their dirty work, see?”

“But the police could fix that! Here it is different from my country—”

“No, Mom
did
go to the police to help Bev. Well, the guy she saw was an ex-cop. He used to visit the casino. He acted like her friend and so she asked him for help but all he did was rat her out to Tony!”

“But that was only one cop. Not all police are like that.”

“You try telling Mom that. She thinks the Blue Moon has an advance warning system about police raids. She could be right. If we tell the cops and Tony hears about it, he might—he might get rid of them.”

We sit in silence. Asim starts zipping and unzipping his jacket. It makes a horrible grating noise.

Suddenly I know exactly what I have to do. The dread is still pounding through me but with every second I feel more sure. It's as if I've been trying to hold back the sea. We've been running, Mom and I, running like people trying to outrun a tidal wave or an avalanche. You keep pretending you can't hear it behind you, see it. But some things are so big you can't escape. Sometimes you just have to turn around and face them. Maybe you'll get swallowed up, but
at least you'll see what you're afraid of. The shape of it. The truth. And just maybe, even if the odd numbers are against you, you might strike lucky and come out even.

I'm suddenly dying to tell Mom this, make her see it's the only thing to do.

I can't now, but I'm going to do the next best thing.

“We're going to the casino,” I tell Asim. “I know exactly where Tony will be hiding Esmerelda. We're going to rescue them.”

Asim does this weird thing. He laughs out loud. It's the loudest laugh I've ever heard him give. “Now
you
are the one who is crazy,” he says. “Even if we do find them, how are we supposed to fight off Rocky the strong man? Or Tony?”

“Well, it's like this. We'll get Mom's cell phone, it's probably still on the kitchen table with the shopping list she always forgets to take. We'll bring it with us and call the police on 911 just as we get there. We'll tell them it's an emergency. That way they'll come right away, no delay, no advance warning, and I can take them to Esmerelda.”

“How are we going to get there? By bus? It'll take forever!”

“I have my month's paper route money. We'll get a cab. We'll travel in style.”

Asim has turned as pale as his shirt.

I cuff him on the shoulder like some cowboy in a movie. Maybe I have gone crazy. But I'm so full of energy I feel like I'm hooked up to a power plant and electricity is running through my veins. “I'm going to bust that casino wide open,” I yell, “and save Esmerelda. Are you coming?”

Asim picks up his bag and sighs. “I cannot let you go alone.”

Daniel waves at me through the window. He's holding something in his hand. It's a teddy bear, with only one eye.

I try to lift up the glass but the window is locked. Now Jackson appears behind Daniel. He's waving a teddy, too.

I fiddle with the lock, trying to heave up the glass but it's stuck fast. Panic is rising in me. I press my hands against the glass. I'm shouting, telling them I can't get out but they just keep smiling and waving their teddies. I start to bash the window with my fists, and suddenly there is a loud crack…

My eyes snap open. I look around the room at the filing cabinets and the woman with the eye in her forehead. There's no window. No Jackson. Then I see Badman in the corner. He's just smashed his fist against the drawer of guns.

“Do you think it's morning yet?” I ask.

He whips around. “Yep. You've been asleep.” He walks over to the table. “Must be daylight out there, but we can't see with these damn fluorescents. You know, sometimes in casinos there's no natural light at all because they don't want people to know how long they've been playing.”

I shudder. The memory of a window, a way out, is shrinking fast. “Did you sleep?”

He shrugs. “Probably a few minutes.” He sits down. “I've been trying to
think
, think how to get out of here. I can't believe we're still trapped, like…”

“Bugs in a jar.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, everyone must know we're missing by now. And Jackson'll be racking his brains—”

“That'll take a while—he's got so many. Pity you're not in here with
him
.”

I ignore that. “Look, there's nothing we can do here. But I know Jackson will figure it out. He's probably telling the police right now. He'll work out exactly where we are—he told
me
all about this place: the office, the trapdoor … As long as Tony keeps us here, I figure we're safe. Jackson will find us and bring the cops.”

“Your faith is very touching, Ez.” He doesn't look “touched.” He looks scared. “Never thought I'd be pleased to see the cops,” he adds, getting up.

I watch him pacing the length of the room. It doesn't take long. The cellar seems even smaller when he does that. “Can you
stop
it?” I ask.

“I gotta keep moving.”

“We just have to wait it out,” I say. “Try to distract ourselves … Are there any more drinks?”

“No. I tried to open the fridge door but that's locked, too. Stingy as well.”

“I'm so thirsty.”

“Same. There's a tap in the bathroom but the water tastes strange. It's sort of brown.”

“At least it's water.”

When I come back I ask Badman if he's thought anymore about our song.

“No.” He clicks his tongue with annoyance. “How can you think about that now?”

“Well, I think it's what we need to do. Valerie says when she's in a bad situation it helps her to write about it. Songs are mostly about bad situations aren't they? The blues and all.”

Badman shakes his head. “You're crazy. The tragedy stuff in music is about love, not being trapped in a gangster's cellar.”

“It can be about anything you want it to be.”

Badman stands with his hands in his pockets. He's fidgeting with his lighter and firecrackers. I know he's dying to pace.

“What's your favorite song ever?” I say to take his mind off things.

Badman clicks his tongue again. “Don't know, got too many.” He smiles for a nanosecond. “My dad's is probably a song by Jimi Hendrix. ‘Purple Haze,' you know it? It's about a dream he had, that he was walking under the sea. How cool would that be, to put a dream to music?”

“I had a dream like that once. Only I wasn't walking under the sea, I was drowning.”

“I have a lot of dreams about falling off cliffs. Sometimes I wake up before I die, and sometimes I don't.”

He looks as if he's falling now, into a dark and gloomy pit. I try to steer the conversation out of the dark. “Have you ever really listened to Patti Smith's lyrics? She's dreamlike too, a bit surreal. She makes you see strange pictures in your mind—like those paintings where ordinary things look weird because they turn up in unusual places. Like that painting at Jackson's house—”

“Haven't seen it. I've never been invited, in case you hadn't noticed.”

“Well, there's a painting of a boat in the sky. It's a normal fishing boat but you notice every detail about it because it looks so foreign up there in the sky.”

Badman comes and sits down. “Music does that. Makes you look at things differently. When you get into a song,
really
into it, it's like a way out.”

“Yes!”

“If Mom's been yelling at me or shouting down the phone at Dad or something, I just go and plug in. About four bars, it takes, and I'm away.”

“‘Smoke on the Water?'”

“And ‘Highway to Hell' ain't bad.” He grins.

I'm smiling, too. My head feels light, as if I could float away, away out of this cellar. “It's the best escape from real life—but don't you think it helps you find your way back in, too? Through a different door. You know, back into yourself.”

Badman is staring at me. “When I'm playing, that's the only time I'm, you know, happy. I don't think about anything else. There's just me and the music.” He looks at his hands. “I like that part of myself. Just that part.”

I nod.

Badman taps out a rhythm on the table. “That different door thing. Is that a line from a song?”

“I don't think so. But it's hard to tell sometimes—”

“You walked in through a different door,” he raps under his breath, “one I'd never seen before…”

“Open the door, let me out, I wanna feel the fire…”

“… of your desire…”

“Hah! That's not bad!” Then, over our table rapping, I hear something else. “Ssh!” I hiss. “What was that?”

We sit stone still, holding our breaths. Voices, deep male voices. They're right overhead. We can hear their feet as
someone tramps across the trapdoor and back again, making it creak.

A new light floods in from above as the trapdoor is flung open. A pair of shoes, then trouser legs appear. Rocky peers down at us.

“You gotta come up now,” he says. “We're going on a journey.”

“Where?” says Badman.

“Just do what I say,
now
.”

We look at each other. I glance around the room for the hundredth time. The cellar looks almost cozy. At least it's familiar. And isn't it the only place Jackson knows where to find us?

“Move!”

Rocky's voice is so loud we both jump up and scramble up the stairs. My heart is thudding in my ears.

Tony is standing at the top, sipping a glass of whiskey. He smiles at us. The corners of his mouth turn up, but his eyes don't move at all. “I don't usually start so early,” he says, pointing to the whiskey. “But these are, how shall I put it, trying circumstances.”

He yawns, and walks over to the dark red table. “I trust you slept well,” he continues in that fake friendly voice.

“Where are you taking us?” I ask. “What time is it?”

“Such big questions for such a little girl,” says Tony shaking his head. “You're going on a vacation, to the seaside.”

“It's Tony's secret beach house,” Rocky puts in. “You should see it, swimming pool, spa, all set in rainforest country. You're so lucky,
I've
never been invited.”

“Shut up,” says Tony. “Why don't you keep your trap shut? The whole point of the exercise is that this place is supposed to be anonymous.”

“A-non-y-mouse,” repeats Rocky. “Having an unknown name or withheld authorship.”

Tony gulps the last of his whiskey. “Idiot,” he mutters into his glass. Pouring himself another he turns to Rocky. “Well, now you're invited. You'll look after these two charming children until the heat dies down. Then we'll think what to do. If the police trace them here, they'll come to a dead end.” He grins nastily at Rocky. “Just like you, if you mess this up.”

A loud knock at the door wipes the smile from his face.

“Quick, get those two back downstairs,” he hisses at Rocky.

But before any of us can move, the door opens. A man with a chest like a beer keg strides into the room. “Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Sereno,” he says in a low voice, “but there's been some trouble upstairs at the blackjack table.”