by Graham Marks
Chapter Three
Gabe woke early and in a cold sweat. He felt as if he hadn’t slept at all, even though his head was still full of dark, graphic dreams … unreal, yet at the same time sharp images, which went way beyond the worst horror movies he’d ever seen. Every time he closed his eyes he could see, clear as day, right in front of him, the whole gore fest playing out in an endless loop. It was like his own personal triple-X-rated movie.
He was looking at a boy, younger than himself, who had jet black hair and olive skin. The boy was stripped to the waist and being held down, splayed out on a block of grey stone. There were six people, faces patterned with blue, red and green paint, dressed in vivid-coloured costumes, arms, necks, ears, hands all decorated with gold, their skin glistening with sweat. Two were holding the boy’s arms, two his legs and one had a rope around his neck. The sixth man’s face was hidden by a gold mask shaped like a skull and he was wearing an elaborate headdress with gold snakes entwined in feathers. Standing with his arms raised above the boy, in both hands the masked man held a gold knife inset with some kind of light blue stone, which gleamed in the setting sun.
The knife’s arc-shaped blade slashed down into the boy’s narrow, heaving chest and Gabe could hear his high-pitched scream and the crunch of shattered bone. The skull-faced figure roared as he pulled out the knife, a fountain of blood pulsing from the jagged wound, then plunged his hand into the boy’s chest. The boy was still screaming when his heart was ripped out and he collapsed like a rag doll. The skull-faced priest turned towards the sun, hands held high and blood running in thick rivulets down his arms. The boy’s blood was everywhere, so much it seemed impossible it could have all come from that one small body.
As the sun finally dipped below the horizon, an owl flew across the purple sky and landed beside the boy’s head…
Gabe forced his eyes open and stared at the ceiling of his room, then the whole scenario, so close he could have almost reached out and touched it, blanked. The disturbingly real visions might have evaporated like mist, but they left behind a smell like someone had just lit a joint. And a malevolent sense of being watched.
Gabe sat bolt upright. He was sure he was going to find that the owl had somehow managed to get into his room during the night and was there at the end of the bed, glowering at him.
It wasn’t.
In the silence his gaze wandered here and there across the untidy landscape of his room until it fell on the backpack in the corner, over by the dresser. In one of its zipped-up pockets was the object he’d found the night before. A gold bracelet, inset with light blue stone. Like the jewellery the people had been wearing in his dream. Similar, anyway. Weirdly similar.
Gabe remembered holding the bracelet in his hand, the heat of it. How it had made him feel, the way it seemed to want him to hold it tight. The thought made him shiver and he looked away.
The last thing he’d done before crashing out was to go online and try to get some information about what he’d found. The kind of stuff it would be useful to know when you’re going to sell something. He’d been tired and not especially focused on what he was doing, but he had seen a couple of pieces that looked like the one he’d dug up. Aztec relics. But the Aztecs were from Central America, so what would one of them be doing buried in a canyon in LA?
Whatever. Gabe rubbed his eyes and yawned. The only thing he could say, with any kind of certainty, was that what he’d found definitely looked like gold. It felt heavy enough to be gold. And, if he was lucky, that was what it would turn out to be. If he was lucky.
Not that he felt in any way lucky this morning. He felt beat up, dog tired and even less like going to school than he did most mornings. But what had to be done had to be done.
Gabe peeled off the damp sheet, got up, yawned so hard he thought his jaw was going to break, and then realized he had one of those low-grade headaches that cling like dirt to a bathtub. Today was going to be a trial, no doubt about that.
“You look bad. Worse than cat puke, man.”
“Thanks…” Gabe squinted at Anton and frowned. For breakfast he’d had a slice of toast and half a cup of cold black coffee with an Ibuprofen chaser. He did not feel up to the witty banter and repartee that was his best friend’s default mode quite yet.
Anton made a pantomime act of sniffing at Gabe. “But you appear to have showered and do not smell like cat puke, which is good. What’s the deal, bro? You got the plague or something? Or worse – maybe you are in love. You’re not in luurve, are you? Because if you are, whoever she is, she is going to run a mile when she sees you. That relationship will be over, man…”
“Cut it out, Ant, will you?” Gabe took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’m fine, just had the worst night’s sleep is all. Bad dreams like you would not believe. So cut me some slack, OK?”
It was Anton’s turn to frown. “Why’d you even bother coming in today, bro? You surely coulda swung a day off.”
“I know this is gonna sound weird to you, Ant, but my house these days is so not a fun place that being here –” Gabe nodded down the street at the gates of Morrison High – “is my preferred option.”
Anton made an ‘I-am-puzzled-and-frankly-shocked’ face.
“Said you were gonna think it was weird, Ant, but if I wasn’t here and I wasn’t at my house, what would I do? I got no money, and nowhere to go with no money. May as well be here, man, get the grades and learn my way out.”
“You are such a poster boy for edja-kay-shun, Gabe.”
“Like I care if I am.”
This was a day that had to be got through. A series of time slots and modules – social studies/world history; math/algebra II; science/chemistry; economics; etc, etc, etc – all ticked off one after the other, at the end of which the prize was you got to go home with a bunch more work to do.
Gabe kept his head down and managed to make it from registration to release with his presence hardly being noticed. It wasn’t a lot to be proud of, but there were times when a low profile was going to be the high point of the day.
He was out now, free to head over to the antique store and get himself that valuation. Wheeling his bike down the sidewalk, thankful his headache had finally gone, he sensed someone come up behind him. He turned, expecting to see Anton’s crooked grin, and his heart sank.
“Benny, right? He wants a word. Like, now?”
Sean McRay, aka Scotty, Benny Gueterro’s right-hand bozo, wasn’t really asking, but the last thing Gabe felt like doing was having ‘a word’ with Benny.
“I have—”
“He’s round the corner. In his … office.”
Scotty, looking like Big Foot’s second cousin with his long hair and beard, didn’t quite put quote marks with his fingers round the word ‘office’, but the slight pause was enough. Because the office was a five-or-six-year-old long wheelbase Chevrolet Savana cargo van, which had an actual desk and swivel-and-tilt chair, along with a small filing cabinet, bolted to the carpeted floor in the back. Anyone else wanting a seat had to make do with foam-rubber cubes.
It was Benny’s big idea. He’d seen all the TV shows where the cops raided places, and as he liked to point out: ‘If you don’t got a place, they can’t raid it, right?’ Scotty, and Nate Kansky, Benny’s other right-hand bozo, both thought the big idea was not so big, but knew it was not for them to comment. Or point out that he did have a place, it was just on wheels. Right now the van was a pale grey colour, but it was resprayed on a regular basis, and also had its plates switched, part of Benny’s plan to further confuse any law enforcement officers who might be paying him some unwanted attention.
Benny, himself an ex-student of Morrison High, had left before they could throw him out for his many rule infringements, not to mention sundry criminal acts. A large part of the market he catered to went to his old alma mater, but he liked to keep his distance from the place, so ‘round the corner’ turned out to be a couple or more blocks away. As they approached the van, the side door sli
d open and Scotty nodded for Gabe to go in.
“My bike…”
“I’ll be here.” Scotty put a meaty paw on the saddle. “It’ll be here.”
“You been avoiding me, Gabriel, my friend?”
For some reason Benny was just about the only person, apart from his long-dead grandma, who ever called Gabe by his full name.
“No, why would I do that?”
“I have no idea.” Benny tilted back in his chair. “I make you an offer, I hear nothing.”
Gabe shifted nervously on the red, nylon-covered foam cube. At any moment it felt like he was going to slide off. He leant back against the side of the van to steady himself. It was stuffy and smelled of cigarettes, dope, beer, sweat and some kind of cloying deodorant that had failed to do its job.
“I’ll explain it one more time, OK?” Benny picked up a cigarette pack, opened it, shut it again and carefully put it back down on the desk. “Trying to give the damn things up… Anyway, it’s like this: you need money and I need a little extra help around the place. A few errands running, that kind of thing. Simple. I tell you what to do, you do it and I pay you. Cash money. Like I said, simple.” Benny picked up the cigarette pack again and began opening and closing the flip top. “So?”
“But—”
“But!” Benny leant forward, slamming the cigarettes on the desk. “What in hell’s name is ‘But’?”
“But why me, Benny? I don’t get it. How’d you even know about me, know who I am?”
“Well, I do know who you are, Gabriel. And ‘why you’ is because you are not the kind of person anyone’s gonna think works for me.” Benny jabbed a finger at his chest, then sat back. “It’s called misdirection, Gabriel, kinda like what magicians and suchlike do.”
Gabe didn’t know what to say. Misdirection? What was Benny talking about?
“It’s like when people kind of expect to see one thing, that’s what they look for and that’s what they see,” Benny went on. “People – and here when I say ‘people’ I mean cops, right? – well, they will take one look at you and think, ‘nice, clean-cut type’. They will not straight-off-the-top think, ‘here’s a person works for Benny Gueterro’. They won’t. And that’s what I want.”
“What if I get caught?”
“Doing what?”
“Running dope.”
“Who said you were gonna be running any dope? I said ‘errands’…”
Chapter Four
Gabe watched the van drive away down the tree-lined street, a cloud of dark brown exhaust belching out from the back. If Benny ever bothered to get the thing smog tested, which seemed highly unlikely, guaranteed it would not pass.
As the van disappeared round a corner the realization finally sank in that he was screwed. Totally screwed. There was no other way to look at it; no bright side, no ‘glass half full’ to this situation. Benny had made it clear as crystal that he wasn’t in the mood to take no for an answer. In fact his final words had been, “Come on board, do what’s asked, take the money. Or else.” Had the man really said ‘or else’, like this was some playground deal? Gabe shook his head in disbelief. What he had ever done to deserve this he did not know.
“Hey…”
Gabe glanced over his shoulder. He saw a girl he’d only recently become aware of at school… Stella, he was sure that was her name. She was standing a few metres behind him; shoulder-length dark hair, pale skin, not much make-up, wearing skinny jeans and a light blue, v-neck T-shirt. Around her neck Gabe saw she had a thin gold chain with a gold crucifix. Slung over her shoulder she had a black bag, like a camera bag, not the stuffed-to-bursting tote most of the girls hauled round with them.
He remembered thinking when he’d first seen her that she was kind of pretty but he hadn’t done anything about it. Being low on funds didn’t make you a ‘first choice’ kind of guy and he could do without being turned down flat. In fact, having seen her a few times now, he had to admit she was more than quite pretty. Kind of hot, for sure. Although right now she looked puzzled, maybe even a bit angry.
“Yeah?” Gabe assumed this Stella must be lost. “Can I help you?”
“Are you insane?”
“Huh?” Gabe turned to look at the girl properly. “What did you say?”
“I said are you out of your mind?” The girl stood her ground and kept eye contact. “What other reason would there be for hanging round with a moron like Benny Gueterro?”
“What’s it to you who I hang with?”
“I had you down as someone with some smarts, that’s all, Gabriel. Must’ve been wrong about that.”
Gabe could not believe it. Two people in the space of fifteen minutes, both of whom called him Gabriel and thought they had him all figured out! What was he, some kind of open book?
“Now you do look sorta stupid –” Stella cracked a half grin – “with your mouth hanging open like that.”
“Look… I mean, how…?” Gabe stopped, leant his bike up against a tree and took a few steps towards the girl. She didn’t move. “Are you following me?”
“I don’t think so, Gabriel.”
“My friends call me Gabe.”
“So I’m your friend now?”
“I didn’t say that.” Gabe couldn’t work this girl out, none of the signals made any sense. “If you weren’t following me, why’re you here?”
“I was following Benny. You were an added extra.”
Gabe looked away to give himself a moment to think, then he checked his watch to make sure he still had time to get down to Studio City.
“Oh, sorry – am I keeping you?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
“Wouldn’t want to do that, Gabriel…”
“What I don’t get –” Gabe went over to his bike – “is if I’m mad for hanging round with Benny, what does that make you for following him? Possibly even taking his picture, if that’s a camera bag you’ve got there. If you know a single thing about Benny, it would be that he is no publicity hound.”
“I have my reasons.”
“Yeah? Well, me too.” Gabe shifted his backpack and got on the bike. “Thing is, Stella, I don’t have a lot of choices right now, OK? But I’m not stupid.”
“Oh, good. I’m glad about that.”
Gabe shot a look at the girl; it sounded like she meant what she’d said, wasn’t being ironic, but there was no way he could tell. “Yeah well, I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Me?” Stella laughed, but she didn’t smile. “I know exactly what I’m doing…”
“Man…” Anton said under his breath, shaking his head and frowning. “What the hell is going down?”
He and Gabe had been friends since forever; they were blood brothers. There were the pictures, and the scars, to prove it. Anton knew Gabe almost better than his own brother, certainly understood him a whole lot more as Milo was an off-the-curve, antisocial dweeb.
He’d had a feeling there was something up with Gabe, if his recent behaviour had been anything to go by, and in Anton’s opinion it definitely was. It was also his opinion that it likely had something to do with Gabe’s dad and his no-work situation, which Gabe just did not want to talk about. Up till now there hadn’t ever been anything they hadn’t talked about, which had made Gabe’s clamming up a tad odd; what he’d just witnessed shot the whole situation up into crisis territory.
Coming out of school late, Anton had seen Gabe disappearing round a corner, walking with some tall, long-haired guy with a major beard he thought he recognized; Gabe’s body language said he was not so happy about the situation so Anton made the snap decision to follow his friend. Sure, he could be poking his nose in where it wasn’t wanted, but Gabe might need some backup. If nothing happened, Gabe need never know.
Staying well back, but keeping the pair in sight, Anton had just caught a glimpse of the tall dude waving Gabe into the back of some skanky old van, then staying outside with the bike. And then the penny dropped. What the hell was Gabe doing hanging with Benny Gu
eterro?
Anton knew all about the creep from Milo, who had attended Morrison High the same time as Benny did and had been the occasional target of his harassment. Now Benny was the go-to guy for all the stuff you were supposed to just say no to, and he was not someone you wanted to be seen with. And there was Gabe, in his freaking van! Could things really be that bad for his friend?
Walking past on the other side of the street, Anton made like he was deep in conversation on his cell. Some way from the van he finally managed to find somewhere he could keep watch on the situation without being seen himself. When Gabe reappeared and the van drove off, Anton had been about to call out to his friend when the girl appeared from out of nowhere. Stella Grainger. Cute girl.
She was new to Morrison, kind of an unknown quantity. Anton did a couple of the same classes as Stella, but all he had gathered was that she mostly kept herself to herself and some of the other girls thought she was kind of stuck up. So was Gabe hooking up with her? Was this something else he hadn’t been talking about?
Watching out for Gabe when he could have been in trouble was a whole different ball game to watching him while he talked to a girl. That felt bad. Anton slipped away. The last thing he wanted was to be seen and have to explain to his friend why he was spying on him. Because that’s what it felt like he was doing. He had to trust that Gabe would eventually tell him what was going on. It was all about trust.
Gabe rode almost on autopilot. There was so much to think about, so many things happening all at once. Why did life have to be so damn complicated? He felt as if everything was beginning to spiral out of control. It had been hard enough to juggle the home and school situations without Benny walking in and acting like he had the right to make demands. Although, if the man was telling the truth and all he really wanted was an errand boy, then the money might help ease the pressure at home. And if the gold bracelet he’d found was worth something, and there was more like it to be dug up, that would be even better. But the overriding feeling he had was that at any moment he was about to fumble and drop something.