Lost Boy (10 page)

“Easy, kid, you'll blow out a lung.” A middle-aged man in a dirty leather jacket with a binder notebook full of playing cards took a step away from him.

Then Ryder saw Thomas Trent step down off the bus.

The relief pitcher wasn't wearing headphones.

Ryder's heart hammered against his ribs. The sight of the man who he now knew must be his father choked him so that nothing came out. Thomas Trent turned and headed for the doorway. He had a duffel bag over his shoulder, like the rest. His leather coat was dark brown, smooth and buttery looking, and he wore matching cowboy boots beneath designer jeans. Just as his front foot hit the threshold of the entrance, Ryder erupted.

“TRENT!”

Thomas Trent stopped and turned, looking right at Ryder from across the lot.

Under the spell of seeing his father, Ryder wasn't even aware that the guards had swung the gates in again, opening them wide. He heard the rumble of the bus and smelled its foul exhaust, but it meant nothing to him compared to the sight of his father and the bright green eyes looking back from beneath an eave of curly black hair that reminded him of his own.

“I'M YOUR S—”

When the bus drove between them, the switch went off. The spell was gone and so was his father.

“Thomas Trent!” Ryder howled and waved the note in the air, but the moment was broken.

One of the security guards, an enormous man with a small, round head, began to wander over toward the fence with his eyes on Ryder.

“Easy, kid.” The man with the dirty leather jacket and
binder took another step back. “Get yourself a ticket and go inside. You might get him by the dugout. Sometimes, if you're lucky, the players will sign things there.”

“I don't have a ticket!” Ryder's voice sounded hysterical.

“Scalp one. It's the Braves, kid. You can probably get a nosebleed seat for twenty bucks.” The man tilted his head.

“They took my money!” Ryder screamed in frustration at the man, startling himself because he couldn't remember ever just screaming at anyone.

“Hey. Kid.” The security guard barked at Ryder and kept coming his way. His unblinking eyes were locked on Ryder. It was trouble. Ryder backed up and turned and ran. When he looked back he saw the security guard talking into his radio. Ryder saw some police up ahead and—without thinking—he darted back across River Avenue. A car he didn't see jammed on its brakes as he ran by, squealing sideways, its tires smoking and poisoning the air with burned rubber.

Ryder bolted forward. Another car streaked past, blaring its horn. He made it to the far curb and shot right back down the street he'd been robbed on. Halfway down, he turned and saw no one was following him. There was a steady stream of fans now, but all going the other way, heading toward the stadium. Ryder leaned his back up against the concrete of the parking garage and felt everything crumple. His legs folded and he slumped down until he sat on the concrete with his back against the garage wall.

He hung his head between his knees so no one could see him and began to sob, certain now that he had missed his chance to meet his father, but more important, the chance to
save his mother's life. He was no quiet hero. He was a chicken and a flop. He sat for five or ten minutes and cried himself out, aware that people were passing him, and that no one stopped. When he felt a kick against his sneaker, he flinched and looked up through blurry eyes.

It was Orange.

“Hey, you're too old to be cryin' about twenty dollars, boy. Twenty dollars is like three Happy Meals. Ain't no big deal.” Orange grinned down at him like they were old friends.

The rest of the gang circled around him.

“Big baby,” Buddha muttered, and spit on the sidewalk.

“Twenty bucks?” Ryder screamed up at them, possessed by hopelessness and despair. “I could've gotten a ticket for twenty bucks! You stole my money!”

Ryder hopped to his feet and Attack Dog was on him, smothering his mouth with one hand and the other an iron lock on the back of his neck as the others crowded in, looking around and nervous, even though the stream of people going by all turned their heads the other way.

“No, you don't do that.” Orange spoke soft and calm and shook his head. “You wanna get into the stadium? That's what you want?”

Ryder glared at him and nodded and grunted a yes through Attack Dog's hand.

“Well, just say so.” Orange smiled at him, talking low, with his freckles mashing together at the seams of his dimpled smile. “We can get you in and you don't need twenty bucks.”

Attack Dog removed his hand from Ryder's mouth and loosened the hold on his neck.

“Okay?” Orange spoke quietly.

“You got tickets?” Ryder asked.

Orange snorted and smirked all around. “When you're with us, you don't need a ticket to get into Yankee Stadium. We got a VIP entrance.”

The others laughed and exchanged knowing looks. “Yeah.”

“VIP?” Ryder wrinkled his forehead.

“Not really VIP. It's more like a
tunnel
.” Orange turned and began to walk the other way, against the flow of the crowd. “Come on.”

“C'mon, kid.” Buddha gave him a light shove. “We'll get you in.”

“Yeah.” Attack Dog laughed. “We're goin' that way anyhow. You're welcome to join.”

Something didn't feel right about this, and every bit of good sense told Ryder to turn and run, but he couldn't. He stood frozen there on the sidewalk as the gang started up the street against the flow of the crowd, but then Orange stopped and winked at him and motioned his chin to follow.

Ryder thought of the major league player inside that stadium—his father—and the pleasant look on his face when their eyes met across the parking lot. Following Orange and his gang was a huge risk, but if Ryder could just have one word with his father, hand him the baseball, and deliver that note, it had to be worth the chance.

Orange turned away, and Ryder yelled, “Wait up!” as he started off after them.

Just around the corner, a dirty and crumbling apartment building rose up above the storefronts on either side. They circled to the back of the building and went in through a rotten wood door. Ryder clutched the iron pipe railing as they descended into the dark. Where are we going? he thought to himself as the steps wavered beneath him. He followed the gang down into a basement that stank like nothing Ryder had ever smelled before. Toilet water gone bad mixed with puke and dog poop was all he could think of as he forced air from his throat up into his nose to keep the smell from getting in. Still, he could taste it as he breathed through his mouth. He had to breathe. The older boys in front of him talked and laughed like it was nothing, and he remembered learning in science class that if you smelled something long enough, you stopped smelling it at all.

His feet hit the cool concrete floor. Up ahead, one of them flicked on a flashlight. Ryder heard small splashing sounds.
Above, cobwebs thick as spaghetti hung limp from stained and moldy wooden beams. White plastic pipes and rusted iron ones crisscrossed each other, some hung by coat hangers and others by plastic collars. Ryder tried to step carefully through the shallow pond of bad water, the maze of hulking boilers and discarded appliances, and up through a broken brick wall into a man-sized black hole. The tunnel turned to dirt packed so tight it looked gray in the flicker of yellow light up ahead.

It was impossible to believe, but the smell got worse, thick and hot so that Ryder had to concentrate hard to keep the cereal he'd had for breakfast in his stomach. They stepped out of the tunnel onto a concrete walkway and turned left. Below the walkway, a river of filth slogged silently along the bottom of a bigger tunnel. With every step, Ryder's imagination haunted him with the idea that he was headed to his own grave. He heard the squeak of a rat that scurried over the top of his shoe before skittering along crumbling concrete. He looked at the empty blackness behind him, thinking that by now they must be under the stadium, or even past it, approaching the Harlem River.

The walkway suddenly ended at a metal door and the five of them crowded up to it while Attack Dog held the light and Orange stuck something into the rusted keyhole, then cranked the handle. They slipped through and their voices became hushed. Orange held the door, looked back at Ryder, and mashed a finger to his lips. Ryder nodded that he understood, and followed Orange through the door.

They came to a metal ladder and up they went with only the sound of their feet dinging the rungs as they passed through a concrete tube and stepped up onto the floor of a room crowded
by a maze of piping thick as tree trunks. A steady hum filled the space and Ryder swallowed the fresh air that poured in from somewhere above. Orange worked on the lock of another metal door that led into a vault where a pump the size of two city buses churned and growled.

Halfway across a narrow metal bridge, Orange stopped and turned back, holding out a sports headband for Ryder.

“What?” Ryder whispered.

“Put this over your eyes. This is a secret. Don't worry, I'll lead you.”

“What do you mean?” Ryder asked, scared to death.

“Don't worry. We just can't have anyone knowing how we do this. No one's gonna hurt you. Come on.”

Ryder swallowed and nodded, knowing he had no choice. He was too far in. He pulled the band over his eyes and followed the rest of the way. Someone spun him around and led him through a few bends and doorways before Orange pulled the band off.

“See? Easy.”

They piled into the bottom of a stairwell and when Orange closed a massive door, the pumps became nothing but a hum. The five of them started up the metal stairs. On the floor above, huge fire doors tattooed with red warning signs stood ready to burst open in an emergency. They went up another flight, then Orange jimmied that door and motioned for Ryder to come forward.

With a hand on the back of Ryder's neck, Orange leaned close enough for his lips to tickle Ryder's ear. “See how this tunnel goes?”

Ryder nodded because he could see through the crack that
the big, wide hallway went about twenty feet before turning a sharp right.

“So,” Orange whispered, “you go down that way and make the right. Then go down two more doors on your left, and take that second door, and when you get through there you'll be in the concession area and no one will even see you in the crowd.”

“Where are you going?” Ryder's insides trembled like Jell-O.

Orange chuckled softly. “We got some business. You just get on and go give your cousin a kiss for me.”

“What if someone stops me?” Ryder asked.

“No one's gonna stop you,” Orange said. “Now get going before I change my mind about being so nice.”

Orange tightened his grip on Ryder's neck, widened the crack, and shoved him out into the cinder-block tunnel. Ryder looked back but the door had already been closed. He didn't trust the people who'd just robbed him. He knew something was wrong, but it looked like the tunnel truly was inside the stadium, and maybe he really could get into the crowd where he'd be safe. He started cautiously down the hallway, got to the corner, and peeked around it, seeing that there were two doors on the left. He grew hopeful that the second door really would take him where Orange said it would.

He stepped carefully around the corner and started walking softly down the hall. He was halfway between the two doors on the left when a door farther down on the right swung open and two men dressed in baseball uniforms burst into the hallway.

Ryder froze.