Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen (19 page)

“Maybe the stereo?” Then I thought of something. “Hey. Do you know where Vera's camera is?” I knew she had an old manual one with a killer telephoto lens.

Holly glanced at me, then charged out of the kitchen. A few seconds later she was back. “There are two shots left.”

“Do you know how to use it?”

“Yeah.” She held the camera up, then zoomed in on him. There were no windows or doors on the side of Tony's van, so El Gato was now behind it, trying the back doors.

I whispered, “Is there enough light?” because he was sort of in the shadows.

“It's gonna have to be kind of a long exposure.” She tweaked some knobs quick, then focused again, and
cl… ick
, the shutter opened and closed.

She'd barely taken the shot when El Gato went around
the van and out of view. Then a few seconds later
Tony
came out the back door of Slammin' Dave's. And I wanted to open the window and shout, “Hey! That El Gato creep is casing your van!” but Tony seemed to be looking for him, anyway. So I whispered to Holly, “Can we open the window a little?”

Very quietly she unlocked it and turned the crank. It made a little squeaking sound, but Tony didn't seem to notice. He was busy calling, “Hey! Hey, Cat Dude! Dave wants you inside. Where'd you go?”

El Gato's raspy voice came from down the alley. “Just havin' a smoke.” He appeared from behind the van, then flicked the cigarette down and ground it out with his foot. “Thinkin' there's got to be a better way to make a buck.”

“Amen to that.” Tony laughed. “You wrestlers are nuts.”

“Yeah, well, so are you. You work too much, you know that?”

Tony unlocked his van. “I'm not into power or glory. I just want the cash.”

El Gato snorted. “Well, if you hear of any way
I
can make some quick cash, let me know about it, would ya?”

“Will do.” Tony got inside his van and fired it up, then called out the window, “So you gonna quit wrestling?”

“Not until I figure out a better way of scoring some green.”

“But you've gotta have a day job, right?”

“Yeah, and it stinks.”

Tony nodded and started backing up. “Don't they all.”

When they were both gone, I said, “What a jerk! First he tries to break into Tony's van, then he acts all chummy with him. How can people be like that?”

Holly closed the window and said, “Obviously, he's a criminal. And I think criminals just don't care.” She held up the camera. “So? What do you think we should do with the picture? Give it to Tony? Give it to Dave? Give it to Officer Borsch?”

“Forget Officer Borsch. He'll just say, So the guy's hand was on the door—so what?”

“Okay, then Tony or Dave?”

“Maybe both?”

She nodded. “Maybe we should tell Dave, and he can warn Tony.”

“Sounds good.”

She let out a huge sigh. “I feel better already. I have a witness and at least
some
evidence as to why El Gato creeps me out.” She smiled at me. “Thanks for coming over.”

“Sure.” Then I said, “Hey, I've got to go to the Heavenly for a minute. Want to come?”

“To the Heavenly?” She looked at me like I was asking her to eat slugs. “Why?”

I pulled my birth certificate out of my pocket. “I need to deliver this to Gina.”

She saw what it was and laughed. “You're finally gonna let her do your birth chart?”

“Yup.”

She hesitated a minute, then said, “You know, I've never actually been inside the Heavenly.”

“It's no big deal, really. It's seedy, but André is cool and it's definitely worth the experience.”

She laughed. “Well, okay then.”

The worst thing about the Heavenly is the people who live there. They're like month-old produce at a farmers' market—they're shriveled and smelly, and believe me, nobody wants to take them home.

Which I guess is why they live at the Heavenly. I've heard that in the old days the hotel used to be
the
place to stay in Santa Martina, and the inside
is
pretty cool, especially the furniture. Carved feet. Pointy backs. It would actually be fancy furniture except the wood's all nicked and the upholstery's totally worn through, especially on the seats. You see those seats and you can't help wondering how many people have sat in them.

How many farts have been cut in them.

Which is maybe why the place stinks so bad.

“Pee-yew,” Holly whispered when we walked through the door. “That's one serious smell!”

“Uh-huh.” I headed for the reception counter, saying, “Don't worry. This shouldn't take long.”

André grinned around the cigar that was clamped between his front teeth. “Hey, Sammy. How's life?”

“Better'n it was yesterday. How about you?”

“Can't complain. And what was yesterday?”

“Don't even ask.” I pulled my birth certificate out of my pocket and said, “Gina home? I've got to give her this.”
He started to reach for it, but I pulled back. “In person.”

He rolled the cigar to the corner of his mouth. “She expecting you?”

“As a matter of fact, she is.”

He dialed 4-2-3 on the desk phone, and when Gina picked up, he said, “Sammy and her friend are here with a personal delivery. You wanna come down, or you want me to send them up?”

A few seconds later we were heading for the elevator.

Now, the Heavenly's elevator is basically just a metal cage on pulleys. It's dank and musty, and you definitely want to keep your hands inside the cage. Holly looked around as we clanged and clattered up to the fourth floor. “I would hate to get trapped inside this thing! You think it's gonna make it?”

“Yeah,” I laughed. “And it's probably less scary than taking the stairs.”

“You've got to be kidding.”

The elevator lurched, then thumped to a stop. “I'll show you on the way down.”

Gina was waiting for us, leaning against her doorway, one hand on her hip, the other holding a cigarette. “Hey, girl,” she said, blowing smoke in the air. “Deliverin' the goods?”

I tried to keep my distance as I handed over my birth certificate. “Right here.”

“Whatsa matter? You're actin' like I bite.”

“No, you smoke.” Now, it came out sounding kinda mean, especially since she obviously thought she looked cool, standing there with a burning tube of toxic weeds
between her fingers. So I added, “My, uh, my mom can smell it a mile away”

Gina held the cigarette back inside the room. “Oh, sorry,” she said.

“So we'd better get going.”

“Okay, then.” She looked over my birth certificate. “Give me a week.”

“A week? I was hoping—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, waving me off. “First you think it's bogus, now you want it yesterday.”

“But—”

She smiled at me. “I'll do what I can, girlfriend.”

“Thanks.” We started to leave, but I turned back and said, “Oh, and Gina?”

“Yeah?”

“Uh… that's my only copy.”

“Got it.”

Like I promised, I took Holly to the stairs. But when we turned into the stairwell, she pulled back and said, “Eeeegh.”

I laughed and said, “Told you,” because the Heavenly has the pukiest stairwell known to man. There are old, warped mirrors lining both sides from top to bottom, which makes weird reflections that go on for ever and ever in both directions.

Holly started down, saying, “It's making me seasick!” But once she got the hang of it, she said, “What a trip!” and moved a little faster.

So there we were, thumping along, joking about what drugs some interior decorator must've been on to actually
do
this, when all of a sudden me and my mutant reflections stopped dead in our tracks.

“What?” Holly asked. But then she saw him, too, coming
up
the stairs. “Who's that?” she mouthed.

“The Bulldog,” I mouthed back.

“Who?”

He was close now, so I waited until we'd passed each other to whisper, “The guy I followed into Slammin' Dave's. When I hid under the ring, remember?”

“Oh right. But I thought you said that psycho cat lady said the guy who snatched her cat looked like a pit bull, not a bulldog.”

“I know.”

“So? Why'd you freeze up when you saw him?”

“I don't know. Something about him seems… off. Plus, I wasn't expecting him. It's like he disappeared inside Slammin' Dave's, and now
poof
, here he is walking up the steps of the Heavenly.”

“Carrying a gym bag.”

“And smelling like a shower…”

We both stopped and stared at each other.

“No … !” Holly whispered.

“Same build, same, you know,
demeanor.
.”

“It's gotta be him!” she whispered.

I grinned. “El Gato is the Bulldog—kinda ironic, huh?”

“It fits, though.”

“And it explains why he's at Dave's so much—he lives right next door!”

“Well!” she said. “Now we know who we're dealing with!”

I nodded. “And the cool thing is, he doesn't know
we
know.”

Holly grinned. “He probably thinks we're just a couple of stupid kids.”

I grinned back. “Ha!”

By the time I got back to the apartment, the bat had swung past the ball, but not by much.

“I was just starting to worry,” Grams said when I slipped through the door.

“Hey, I'm home on time,” I said, and tapped my watch. “It's not a home-run watch—it's a run home watch. And when it was time to run home, I did.”

She laughed and said, “Well, good!”

So I buckled down and did my homework while I ate a giant slab of leftover birthday cake. And by the time I'd taken a shower and put some more anti-itch stuff on my flea bites, it was way past time for bed.

The next morning started normally enough—I had to gobble down breakfast and ride like crazy to make it to homeroom before the tardy bell rang, Marissa waved at me, Holly waved at me, and Heather gave me the evil eye.

Definitely a typical morning.

But after that strange things began to happen.

First, I aced a math quiz. I got
none
wrong. And believe me, when it comes to pop quizzes, I never get 100 percent. Now, if everybody had done great on it, that would
have been one thing. But half the class totally bombed it. Rick Lopez was the only other person to ace it, and as a reward Mr. Tiller gave Rick and me homework passes. That's like a get-out-of-jail-free card. Math homework is the worst.

So I left Mr. Tiller's classroom in a great mood, which only got better in history. Mr. Holgartner was absent. Absent! You have to understand—Mr. Holgartner is like the Noise Nazi. He sends you to the office for breathing too loud, which is a real hazard, seeing how his class is always a total snooze. But he was absent, and the substitute turned out to be a laid-back guy who let us work in groups. Marissa and I talked the whole class period.

Then after history I found a five-dollar bill on the ground. There was nobody around it or I might have said, Hey, is this yours? But it was all by its little lonesome, and since a five-dollar bill isn't exactly something you turn in to the Lost and Found, I stuck it in my pocket alongside the two twenties.

And as if that wasn't enough to keep me smiling for the rest of the day, Mr. Pence caught Heather copying homework during science and sent her to the office. I was so jazzed that he'd nailed her that I actually paid attention to his lecture on the anatomy of an amoeba.

So I had the most awesome day in junior high history. If every day could be like that, I would
love
school.

Then after school Holly went to work at the Humane Society, Dot went home with her dad, and Marissa and I went to the mall to buy me a CD player. And when I found a really great one on closeout, and the CD I
wanted in the “Like New” section for half off, Marissa just shook her head and said, “You are having the luckiest day ever.”

Up to that point we had used the words
awesome
and
amazing
and
unbelievable
, but no one had said
lucky.
But when Marissa used that word, we both stopped what we were doing, looked at each other, then looked at my shoe.

“Ohmygod!” Marissa whispered.

“It… it's just a coincidence.”