He looked just like hundreds of other people.
Within the city, debates sprang up as to whether the Gecko was a man or a boy, an executive or a field worker. There were even some who thought the Gecko might be a girl.
Damien Black, however, had seen the Gecko up close and knew:
The Gecko was a boy.
A nasty, nettling nuisance of a boy.
He had also seen Dave up close, but (fortunately for Dave) Damien’s diabolical mind had derailed before the singularly crucial connection between Dave and the Gecko had been made.
Regardless, Dave knew it would be foolish to go up to Damien Black’s door as himself, or wearing a ball cap or bandanna or even dark shades.
And since Sticky was (as you know) a klepto, there was often (to Dave’s annoyance) a veritable treasure trove of pilfered items rattling around inside Dave’s backpack.
(Well, some of them, like, say, grapes, didn’t actually rattle. They more squooshed and oozed.)
Dave tried to return things like rings and keys and watches to their rightful owners (when Sticky could identify who they were), but his attempted good deed often led, instead, to a great deal of trouble.
And so things accumulated.
Rattled ’round.
And sometimes (to Sticky’s extreme glee) came in handy.
“Hey, hombre!” Sticky said as Dave scouted out a safe spot to stash his bike in the forbidding forest that bordered Damien’s property. “You need to dress gangsta, man. He’ll never recognize you. Slick back your hair, wear some bling….”
Dave stopped in his tracks. “Gangsta? Bling? When’d you start using words like that?”
Sticky shrugged and went a little shifty-eyed. “You pick things up.”
“Stickyyyy,” Dave warned, but Sticky was already rummaging through Dave’s backpack.
“Here, hombre,” Sticky said, handing out an earring. Then a chain. Then another earring. And another chain. And dog tags. (Canine, not military.) Next came a pendant with a two-inch rhinestone “M,” three rings, and a set of teeth.
Silver teeth.
With sparkly blue stones.
“You stole someone’s grill?” Dave gasped, staring at the teeth. “Where did you get this?”
Sticky shrugged.
“Sticky!”
“Look, señor. If you put on some bling and I draw some tears by your eye and you wear your pants real low and walk like this”—Sticky strutted along Dave’s shoulder with great attitude—“that evil hombre will think you’re a scary matón, not a dorky delivery boy.”
“Hey!”
Sticky stopped strutting and shrugged. “I’m just saying….”
“I don’t care what you’re just saying! I’m not putting someone else’s grill in my mouth!”
But even in Dave’s state of shock and revulsion, he was aware that he needed a disguise more elaborate than a service station shirt. And then it occurred to Dave that he could rinse the grill with water from the bottle he always carried.
And sterilize it with the hand sanitizer that his mother forced on him.
And then rinse it again….
And so it was that Dave (not having a better idea) transformed into a gangster named Vinnie, with slicked-back hair, flashes of bling, teardrop “tattoos,” and sparkly blue and silver teeth (that didn’t fit right and tasted terrible).
“Morrocotudo!” Sticky said, greatly pleased with his handiwork. “You look crazy good, señor!” Then he added, “I could put some more tattoos on you. Maybe some on the knuckles?”
“Stop it, Sticky!” Dave’s eyebrows knit together. “Have you been hanging out with thugs, or what? Is that why you don’t want to come to school with me anymore?”
“Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky grumbled. “You worry too much, señor.” He dropped down on all fours and cocked his head. “So what are we waiting for? Ándale! You have a package to deliver!”
So Dave stashed his bike, backpack, and helmet, then took the mailing tube and his delivery folder and strutted out of the forest toward Damien Black’s fearsome front door.
Chapter 7
A TERRIFYING TUG-O’-WAR
Imagine tall, heavy oak panels fashioned in the shape of a great, ghastly skull. Imagine hefty brass clackers for eyes and a menacing mail drop for a mouth. Imagine creepy cobwebs and spiders scurrying into darkened corners.
Now you know what I mean by “fearsome front door.”
So it’s no surprise that Dave’s heart was hammering as he clanked an eye-clacker against the whitewashed oak. Especially since he didn’t feel at all confident (or, for that matter, thug-like) in his low-slung jeans, teardrop tattoos, and gangster grill.
He felt ridiculous.
“Maybe he’s down in the dungeon feeding that killing machine,” Sticky whispered from his sneaky-peeky spot inside Dave’s service station shirt.
“Shhh!” Dave commanded (partly because Sticky had an uncanny habit of piping up at the wrong time, and partly because he didn’t want to think about Damien Black’s cantankerous, carnivorous Komodo dragon).
But after another half minute of waiting, Dave grabbed the eye-clacker, and—THUNK…THUNK…THUNK—he clomped on the door again.
Almost immediately, the mail drop mouth swung back and a furry face peeked through. (Well, the face itself wasn’t furry—it was dark with curious brown eyes and a narrow nose bridge—but there was definitely fur surrounding the face.)
“Eeek!” came the animal’s voice through the slot.
Dave stooped down to get a closer look, and when the animal shrieked again, Dave caught a distinct whiff of coffee.
“No!” gasped Sticky. “It’s that java junkie monkey! He came back?”
Ah, yes.
The monkey.
Dave, you see, had once freed this very same rhesus monkey from a caged existence as Damien Black’s personal coffee boy. Damien had (quite cleverly) taught him to brew wickedly good espresso from his rare reserve of outlandishly expensive Himalayan blend, but over time the monkey had developed a taste (or, more accurately, an all-consuming craving) for the coffee himself.
“I guess addiction is a powerful thing,” Dave muttered.
“But to come back here? That’s loco-berry burritos, man!”
“Eeeek! Rrrrreeeeeeek!” the monkey shrieked through the mail drop, baring his teeth at Dave.
Dave laughed and flashed his grill right back at him. “Hey, buddy, remember me?” he said (as he had been quite fond of the little imp).
“Are you loco-berry burritos, man?” Sticky cried, yanking hard on Dave’s ear. “Are you trying to get us trapped and tortured? He’s on that evil hombre’s side now!”
Ah, but (despite evidence to the contrary) Sticky could not have been more wrong. The little monkey despised Damien Black and had only returned to kipe the cappuccino.
Make off with the mocha!
Escape with the espresso!
(In other words, he was simply there to jack some joe.)
Unfortunately for the reckless rhesus, he had gotten disoriented inside Damien’s maniacal mansion (which is, for the record, an easy thing to do) and had been spotted by Damien Black’s resident trio of block-headed bozos, known as the Bandito Brothers. These petty thieves—Angelo, Pablo, and Tito—were not actual brothers but a band of miserable mariachi musicians who went by that name.
Having (in their view) moved up in the world, the Brothers had put music aside and now thought of themselves as Damien’s helpful henchmen.
His indispensable assistants!
Or, in moments of deluded sophistication, his protégés.
Damien Black, on the other hand, thought of the Brothers as unrelenting pests. They were like fleas burrowed deeply into the thick, comforting fur of his dark and demented world, and no matter how hard Damien scratched, he couldn’t seem to rid himself of them.
And yet the Bandito Brothers were the ones who had spotted the monkey.
They were the ones who had sounded the alarm.
“Boss! Boss, come quick!” Pablo had shouted as they’d tailed the long-tailed intruder.
“Mr. Black!” Angelo had hollered. “Your monkey is back and he’s stealing your coffee!”
“Here, monkey-monkey-monkey,” Tito had said, holding out a trinket for the rascally rhesus.
But the monkey wasn’t interested in sparkly things.
He was interested in coffee.
And so a chase through the mansion had ensued. Out of one room and into another the monkey had raced, with the Brothers in hot pursuit. Up rope ladders and down chutes, along a rail in pulley carts, through a trapdoor, into secret passageways, down one corridor and up another, past rooms with skulls and rooms with maps and rooms with big, dusty books and quill pens, until at last they’d raced round and round and round a combination of confounding corridors where the monkey had finally ditched the Brothers and found his way to the mansion’s great room. And this is when he heard something klonking on the ghastly front door.
At this point, the monkey’s little heart was pounding in his little monkey chest. He wanted out of that house, and he wanted out now. And although he recognized that the enormous skull was, in fact, a door, he was neither large enough nor (despite the double shot of caffeine in his system) strong enough to open it himself.
Then he noticed a smaller door inside the large, ghastly one.
A door he could open.
The mail slot.
“Eeeek!” he’d cried through it, and this “Eeeek!” had, in fact, meant “Help!”
Or, “Open the door!”
Or (more accurately, perhaps), “Get me the heck out of here!”
The hairless primate on the other side had not responded, and so the desperate rhesus had put on his most threatening monkey face and tried again.
It was then (by recognizing Dave’s scent) that he realized he knew the person on the other side of the door.
This same boy had rescued him before!
“Eeeek! Rrrrreeeeeeek!” he’d cried, reaching frantically through the mail slot.
So! Now you see that Sticky was, in fact, completely wrong about the monkey. But at that moment it didn’t matter, because the eeeking and shrieking had alerted Damien Black (and his trailing trio of cohorts) to the monkey’s whereabouts.
“There he is, you fools!” came the evil treasure hunter’s voice through the mail slot. “Get him!”
Dave’s heart stopped mid-beat, for although he could not actually see Damien through the solid oak door, he knew whose villainous voice that was. And in his state of brain-freezing fear, he thought for a moment that the “him” in “Get him!” was him.
“Eeeeek! Rrrrreeeeeek!” the monkey implored, reaching out and latching on to Dave’s pant leg. “Eeeeek! Rrrrrrreeeeeek!”
This created a through-the-door tug-o’-war, with Dave on one side, a Bandito Brother on the other, and (you guessed it) a monkey in the middle.
“What’s he holding on to?” Damien demanded from inside.
“I don’t know, boss,” Pablo cried, “but he’s holding on tight!”
So Dave (wanting to both create a diversion for the monkey and prevent Damien from thinking he had any part in this monkey business) grabbed the eye-knocker and clobbered it against the door. WHACK, SMACK, THWACK! it thundered. “IMPORTANT DELIVERY!” Dave shouted.
There was a split second of hesitation, and then the door whooshed open. (Well, it whooshed as much as four hundred pounds of solid oak can whoosh, anyway.)
Dave (being indirectly attached to the door via a monkey arm) was pulled forward and, in a moment of rash impulsiveness, pretended to fall against the door, shoving it hard. This caused Pablo to lose his balance (and his grip) and allowed the monkey to regain his balance (and release his grip).
Damien had, of course, lost both his balance and his grip ages ago, so he simply screeched, “Catch that monkey!” as the little rhesus escaped the mansion with a small satchel filled with Damien’s coveted premium blend slung across his chest. “Get my coffee back!” he commanded the Bandito Brothers. “NOW!”
So while Pablo, Angelo, and Tito charged outside to capture the monkey, Dave stood up and found himself grill to grizzled grimace with Damien Black.
“That’s mine,” Damien hissed, reaching for the cardboard tube.
“Yo! Not so fast,” Dave said, trying to project some thug swagger even though he was feeling quite jelly-kneed. “Wha’s yo’ name, man?”
“Damien Black,” Damien said, taking in Dave’s appearance with a disapproving sneer. “Wha’s yo’s?”
“Vinnie,” Dave said with a lip curl, flashing his grill. “Ya need ta sign fo’ da delivery.” He flipped open the folder and slapped a pen on the delivery order.
Damien hesitated, then grabbed the pen and (with great flourish) signed the paper, then snatched the tube.
Damien took one look at the return address and chortled. Soon little hiccups of laughter were bubbling out of him until, at last, he threw his head back and released a devilishly diabolical laugh. “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! BWAA-HA-HA-HA—”
“Hey, YO!” Dave said, flipping his hand out. “Delivery charge is ten bucks! And it’s a long way up here, so a little extra would be nice, huh?”
Damien’s demented laughter came to an abrupt halt as he took in the source of this impudent interruption.
Then, with a sneer and a snort, he simply shut the door in Dave’s face.
Chapter 8
STICKY FEELS THE HATE
Dave and Sticky kept their eyes peeled and their lips zipped as they hurried back to the bike, but neither saw any sign of the Bandito Brothers or the monkey.
Once at their hiding spot, Dave quickly removed his bling, grill, and Vinnie shirt, spit-washed off his teardrop tattoos, clipped on his helmet, and skedaddled.
“Yo! I’m Vinnie!” Sticky mimicked as they zoomed down the road. He laughed. “You were asombroso, señor!”
Dave laughed, too, and said, “Thanks,” but he was still feeling a bit shaky about the whole operation. And after barreling along for a few more minutes, he shouted over the wind, “What if he figures it out? What if he can tell the potion isn’t the potion?” He glanced at Sticky. “What do you think that stuff does, anyway?”
“I think it does something evil, señor. So you did a good thing, okay?” Then he grumbled, “It’s that monkey you should be worried about, not the potion.”
Now, perhaps you’re wondering why the monkey should be of any concern to Dave. After all, the rascally rhesus was surely racing through the forest focused wholly and solely on escaping the Bandito Brothers, right?
The answer is quite simple: The first time Dave freed the monkey from Damien’s diabolical clutches, the animal had somehow tracked Dave and scaled seven floors (via drainage pipes and hanging flower boxes) to slip him a strange key (and to brew himself some wickedly strong coffee). What the key unlocked was a mystery to Dave, and, of course, the monkey couldn’t tell him. But it was, without question, a gift of gratitude.
So it wasn’t the monkey himself that worried Sticky (although Sticky did not find him to be cute or funny or in any way endearing). What worried Sticky was that the monkey might return and inadvertently lead Damien (or those bumbling, backstabbing Brothers) to Dave’s family’s apartment.
That evening, as the Sanchez family ate dinner, Sticky worried.
That night, as Dave sweated over his regular homework and his social studies project, Sticky worried.
All night, as Dave snoozed and snored and drooled, Sticky worried.
By morning, however, there’d been no eeeking or shrieking (or mysteriously brewed coffee). And so, as the Sanchez family went through their usual get-to-school-on-time routine (involving gobbled food, spilled milk, hastily packed lunches, and a lot of hurry-it-upping), Sticky fell fast asleep.
“Psst!” Dave whispered behind his bookshelf when he was ready to go. But try as he might, he could not convince Sticky to get up, so, at last, he
gave up. “Just stay out of trouble, then, okay?” he whispered, and raced off to school.
Now, had Sticky slept through the day, this would not have been such a tall order. Unfortunately, at around noon, Sticky woke up hungry.
Very hungry.
And so he went outside through the kitchen window (which was, for ventilation purposes, always left open an inch or two) and spent an hour or more hunting down such delicacies as meaty-legged grasshoppers and mealworms.
Then, feeling fat and quite happy, he scaled back up the wall to the Sanchezes’ flower box and settled in for a nice, bone-warming bask in the afternoon sun.
Next door, Topaz the cat sat inside on the windowsill and watched.
“Hey, uuuuugly,” Sticky called with a stretch and a yawn, for he was safe from the squooshy-faced terror, as today the Espinozas’ window was also only open about an inch.
Topaz’s long white tail twitched, and her tiger-like eyes zeroed in on Sticky.
She began pacing along the windowsill.
Back and forth, back and forth.
She added mewing.
Pitiful, plaintive mewing.
Topaz was, by nature, an ill-tempered cat. And being on house arrest day and night did nothing to improve her disposition. She had little to do but sulk on the windowsill wishing for something to do. (Or, more precisely, something to stalk and kill.)
Mice in the building would have been nice.
Instead, there was a lizard.
A teasing, taunting, exasperating lizard.
One with a big, fat (and decidedly delicious-looking) tail.
Ah, poor Topaz.
She hated her plight.
Hated the monotonous (and often stale) kibble Lily left out for her.
Hated being alone all day.
Most of all, though, she hated the lizard.
Now, this was not because she understood “uuuuugly” when Sticky called her that. She was, after all, a cat, and cats don’t actually understand words.
Tone and sound, yes.
Words, no.