Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street (25 page)

F
ootsteps sounded from the direction of the disco. Tut-Tut and I ducked into the sculpture garden or whatever it was and hid behind a steel structure that looked like a flattened-out bear. The waiter, or maybe a different waiter, appeared, bearing an empty silver tray. He walked past the porthole we’d just been looking through and paused before a door. Beside the door was a touchpad, like the one on the safe. The waiter touched it; the door swung in; the waiter entered the room where Borg and the Middle Eastern man had met. The door closed in a slow and automatic way.

Twenty or thirty seconds later, the door opened again and the waiter emerged, now carrying the espresso cups on his silver tray. He headed back toward the disco, the door closing behind him. I didn’t think for a moment, just sprinted toward that shrinking space and dove through, Tut-Tut, so skinny, squeezing in behind me. The door closed and made a little click.

It was nice and warm inside. Tut-Tut and I exchanged a glance. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I said.

He nodded, opened the closet, and took out the fancy suitcase, the one filled with clothes. Tut-Tut carried it through the archway and into the bedroom, a very fancy bedroom with a big round bed and mirrored walls. Our images moved back and forth as we searched the room, the movements growing more nervous as time passed. We ended up finding the second suitcase in what should have been the first place we looked, under the bed. Tut-Tut opened it just to be sure. U.S. greenbacks, nothing but hundreds that we could see, a small fortune—or maybe even a big one. We shoved the first suitcase, the one full of clothes, under the bed and took the second one, full of money, back into the main room.

Tut-Tut raised his chin in a now-what look. A good question. The only answer that came to mind—making off, or trying to make off, with
Short Sail
—was one I’d already rejected.

“Um,” I said. “Well…” And gazed at the suitcase, waiting for an idea. We had all that money, and Silas had the list of all the people who needed it, but how were we—

I felt a tiny pressure in my head, barely there. The silver heart fluttered the tiniest flutter. And then came
Hey!

I glanced around, my own heart thumping, looking
for the source of that
hey.
It was so clear! But there was only me and Tut-Tut.

“Did you say hey?” I asked him.

“I didn’t say anything,” Tut-Tut said. “And keep your voice down.”

I lowered my voice. “You’re talking again,” I said, touching his shoulder. “That must mean—”

And then again—
Hey!—
this time followed by another burst of static so loud it hurt my ears, but coming from inside my head, for sure. Then I felt it fully: the power, surging through me. I felt it surging through Tut-Tut, too, could also even see it in a way, just from the expression on his face. I put my glasses away.

Hey!
The volume went down on the sound in my head, but the clarity rose, like a radio station tuned in properly.
Hey! Robbie!

The voice was calling my name?

Do you read me? Come in. Over.

The voice: a dweeby voice, capable of saying dweeby things like
over.

“Silas,” I said. “Yes, I hear you.”

Tut-Tut looked at me, amazed and worried, like I was flipping out.

“Don’t you hear Silas?” I said.

“No,” said Tut-Tut. He glanced around: no Silas in view.

Robbie? Do you read me? If you read me, don’t say you read me. Think it! Over.

“Huh?” I said.

Silence.

Huh,
I thought.

What do you mean, “huh”? Over.

“What’s going on?” Tut-Tut said. “You look funny.”

“You don’t hear Silas?”

Tut-Tut glanced around. “Silas?”

“He’s not here,” I said. “But somehow he’s—”

What do you mean, “huh”? Over.

Huh means huh. Stop screwing around, Silas—this isn’t a good time. What’s happening?

Mental telepathy—that’s my power! It just came to me. I can communicate by thought and thought alone—who’s cooler than me? Oh, yeah—we’re on our way. Over.

Who’s on their way?

Me and Ashanti. And think “over.” You have to think “over” when you get to the end. Like this: over. Over.

I’m not thinking “over.” And you don’t even know where we are.

How come you’re so stubborn? And we don’t have to know where you are—we can’t go anywhere else.

What do you—

Over. I forgot “over.” Over.

For God’s sake!

Ow! That hurts my ears. Over.

What do you mean you can’t go anywhere else?

There’s no steering! Over and out.

Silence.

Silas? Silas?

Nothing.

I turned to Tut-Tut. He was watching me strangely. “They’re coming to get us,” I said. “Silas and Ashanti.”

“Yeah? How?”

“I’m not sure, but Silas can do mental telepathy now.”

“And you can do it back to him?” Tut-Tut said.

“I guess so.”

“Oh.”

Just a little “oh.” The idea—a crazy one—came to me that Tut-Tut was jealous. It made no sense, and this was not the time. If they were really coming—but how?—we had to find a safe place to—

The phone rang in the room, same phone that had summoned the Middle Eastern man. It rang six times and then went silent. That expression—danger in the air? I felt the truth of it at that moment.

I picked up the suitcase. Tut-Tut opened the door that led to the deck and the sculpture garden. We stuck our heads out for a quick peek. The coast was clear, maybe the wrong expression, since we were so far from shore. We stepped out, returned to the sculpture garden. Snow
fell; wind blew. We sheltered behind the flattened-out bear, sitting together on the suitcase.

“I hope the power stays for a long time,” Tut-Tut said.

“Me too.”

“Do you think it could stay forever?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Why not? The look in Tut-Tut’s eyes made me wish I hadn’t said no about the power—especially since I couldn’t think of an actual reason. I was fumbling in my mind for some quick fix when I realized we were on the move. Not over the surface of the ocean—that was hard to judge,
Boffo,
so solid and enormous, being more like an island than a ship, plus we had nothing to gauge motion against except snow falling in the night. No, the movement that caught my attention was up. We were rising, no doubt about it, not just Tut-Tut and me, but the whole sculpture garden and the deck beneath it. Up we went, as though on an enormous elevator, slow and silent.

We reached the next deck. Before us stood another glass wall, a glass wall of the smoky kind, that might front a nightclub, for example, not that I’d had any nightclub experience. But what we were gazing into was a nightclub, with little round tables, champagne, cigars, and a jazz combo—piano, bass, guitar, and a beautiful
singer in a sparkling gown—on a small stage. She was singing a song I sort of recognized, possibly some old song by Frank Sinatra; my dad was a big fan. Not much of an audience: only two tables were occupied. At one, near the back, sat a few tough-looking guys in black uniforms; some sort of rifle or machine gun—I knew pretty much nothing about guns—hung on its strap from the back of an empty chair. At the other table, front and center, smoking the cigars and drinking the champagne—and not paying any attention to the band, even though they sounded great, the
thump-de-dump-dah, thump-de-dump-dah
of the bass seeming to vibrate through the whole ship—sat two older men in white robes, plus Sheldon Gunn in a black tuxedo. My uncle Joe wears shorts and flip-flops on his boat.

All that, I saw in passing, because we were still going up. The next deck, one from the top, came in view. It was dark, except for one light showing in a long rectangular window. On the other side of the window lay a bowling alley with a single lane. Borg was alone in the bowling alley, sitting at the desk where you keep score. He looked to the side. Someone was coming from that direction: the Middle Eastern man we’d seen in his cabin below.

The Middle Eastern man was carrying the suitcase. He laid it on the scorer’s table. Borg made an impatient
gesture. The Middle Eastern man started to open the suitcase. From our angle, we couldn’t see into it, but had a good view of their faces as they got their first glimpse of the contents.

A good view, but a brief one, on account of how we were still rising. All we caught was initial dawning of their shocked reaction—stunned puzzlement mixed into the Middle Eastern guy’s, Borg showing something much uglier—and then they passed from view. The sculpture garden reached the top deck and came to a stop.

Two helicopters sat on the top deck. There were antennas and rotating things, and all sorts of other equipment. Also: no shelter, except a squat steel hutlike structure with tiny windows, through which flowed the only light around. Snow flew sideways; the wind howled; Tut-Tut and I huddled behind the flattened-out bear.

A man emerged from the steel hut wheeling something big on a dolly. Leaning into the wind, he came toward the sculpture garden. He was headed our way! Tut-Tut and I slid around the sculpture, trying to keep it between us and him, but he drew closer and closer. For an instant, he seemed to look right at us. Tut-Tut and I backed quickly out of sight, and kept backing until we were out of the sculpture garden and on the deck. The man stopped by the flattened-out bear and stood the
dolly up. Because of the darkness, or all the snow, he hadn’t seen us. We ducked behind the steel hut.

And then the sculpture garden was on the move again, going down. At the same time, the lights in the hut went out, and the darkness deepened. Tut-Tut was shivering inside his hoodie, snow all down his neck. I was cold, too, that strange warm period long past.

“Tut-Tut?”

“Y-y-y-yeah?”

My heart went
bang-bang
in my chest. “Are you all right?”

“Could be warmer,” he said.

Whew. That last little stutter was just from the cold: for a moment I’d thought we were losing the power.

“How about we go inside?” he said.

With a grunt, he opened the thick steel door of the hut. We went inside. The only light came from an instrument panel. I saw another dolly, some boxes, and a steep metal staircase descending into darkness. What choice did we have? I got a good grip on the suitcase, put my foot on the first step; and as I did a horrible
bwa-da bwa-da
alarm went off, very loud, like in a prison movie when they find out that what’s sleeping on the inmate’s bunk is a bundle of clothes.

I froze.
BWA-DA! BWA-DA!
Then a radio crackled over by the instrument panel. “All hands! All hands! Suspected intruders on board! All hands!”

“Hurry!” I said. We had to get down the ladder, find some hideout deep inside the ship. I felt with my foot for the next step. A light went on down below, followed by the sound of running footsteps.

I jumped back up to floor level.

A man’s voice rose up the staircase. “Whoever it is, we want them alive.”

BWA-DA! BWA-DA!

I threw open the door of the steel hut. We raced outside. The wind was shrieking. The snow blinded me now; I could barely see the dim shape of the nearest helicopter. We ran to it, hoping for a hiding place. Lights flashed back on in the hut and then men came pouring onto the deck.

Hey! You guys around? Over.

Silas?
Silas! Silas!

A searchlight went on, the beam sweeping toward us. Tut-Tut and I were holding hands; I wasn’t sure when that had started. In my other hand, I still gripped the suitcase. We scrambled away from the searchlight beam, which almost reached us as it swept by. The men were coming, big dark shapes behind the screen of flying whiteness. Tut-Tut and I backed away and backed away until we had nowhere to go.

We stood on the edge of
Boffo
’s top deck—a top deck that had no rail—high above an ice-cold ocean we couldn’t even see. I peered into the storm.

Silas! Silas!

No response.

Silas! Silas! Over!

But nothing.

On deck, a man shouted. “Do you see something?”

And another shouted, “Where?”

“There!”

A machine gun fired.
Ack-ack-ack. Ack-ack-ack.
And a stream of hot light shot through the night, but nowhere near us. Then another gun joined in, much closer, firing on and on, shooting another stream of bullets aimed in an arc just like the searchlight, coming closer and closer. We darted sideways, or tried to, but we lost our footing on the slippery deck, losing it at the same instant that the wind rose up to a whole new level. With one enormous gust, it blew us right off the deck and into the night.

For a long moment, we seemed to hang there, hovering in the air, actually above deck level. Through the scrim of snow, I could even make out Borg and Sheldon Gunn yelling at each other by the hut. No one on deck was looking up.

I still had the suitcase. The thought of taking all that money to the bottom was kind of comforting. We started our plunge.