Greatest Power

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  “Shut up, Evie. I was not!” Dave snapped (as there’s nothing like an annoying little sister to make a boy snap).

  “You’re bleeding!” Mrs. Sanchez gasped, and suddenly she was on her knees, inspecting his neck and the back of his head.

  Dave simply said, “Topaz attacked” as he picked himself and his bike up off the floor.

  “That cat!” Mrs. Sanchez huffed, and inside those two words were volumes of other words. Words like Why don’t those people control that beast? And What kind of people let their cat tear up a boy and disappear? And They haven’t heard the end of this!

  Words that meant trouble between neighbors.

  Trouble that could get as nasty as a clawing cat.

  But for now, Dave rolled his bike inside the apartment and let his mother clean and disinfect his neck. And in truth, he was secretly glad Topaz had attacked. It had, after all, distracted his mother from asking questions about where he’d been.

  So in the end, Dave lucked out.

  Got off easy.

  Hit the cat-scratch jackpot.

  And as he drifted to sleep that night, he was able to put other things out of his mind and imagine ways of returning the bank’s money and, of course, Ms. Kulee’s ring.

  How would he do that without giving himself away?

  How would he let them know it was Damien Black who’d done the heist?

  These were, I’m sure you’ll agree, perfectly rea-sonable things for him to be imagining.

  Especially since he could not begin to imagine what had followed him home.

  Dave slept uneasily that night. He kept hearing sounds. Pittery-pattery sounds. Like footsteps, but not.

  They didn’t seem to come from the apartment above.

  Or the apartment next door.

  Or the other apartment next door.

  It wasn’t Evie doing another one of her pesky pranks (Dave checked, and she was fast asleep in the room next to his), and snoring was the only sound coming from his parents’ room.

  He stuck his head out a window to see if perhaps Topaz had escaped the Espinozas’ kitchen window again and was bounding between the two apartments’ hanging flower boxes. He looked high and low but saw no ill-tempered, squooshy-faced cat (which was, as you might imagine, something of a relief).

  He also checked on Sticky (who was sacked out in his usual spot behind Dave’s bookcase), but Sticky gave him a groggy “What’s up, hombre?” to which Dave replied, “Nothing.”

  It wasn’t until about four in the morning that Dave at last fell into a sound, glorious sleep.

  Unfortunately, this sound, glorious sleep lasted only two hours.

  At 6:07 a.m., an ear-splitting, heart-skipping scream rang through the apartment.

  Dave shot out of bed, stumbling over his sneakers as he made for the door.

  Sticky came flying across the room like a shot, grabbing on to Dave’s hair for dear life, gasping, “What the jalapeño was that?”

  “My mother!” Dave said.

  “Ana! Are you all right?” Dave’s father called as he ran across the apartment.

  Suddenly they were all assembled in the kitchen (except for Evie, who was still, unbelievably, sacked out). And what they saw was something that Dave’s parents would never, I promise you, ever have expected.

  “There’s a monkey,” Mrs. Sanchez whispered, “making coffee in my kitchen.”

  There was, indeed, a monkey making coffee in her kitchen.

  A monkey with a terrible headache.

  One that needed a good, strong cup o’ joe.

  Now.

  And it was a monkey with (as you might imagine) zero tolerance for anyone interfering with his coffee brewing (despite the fact that he was dealing with coffee that smelled decidedly inferior and a machine that was nowhere near as slick as the one he was used to).

  “How on earth …?” Dave’s father asked, gaping as the hairy beast scurried across the counter, got water from the faucet, and poured it into the coffeemaker.

  “Eeeek-reeeek,” the monkey replied, baring his teeth in Mr. Sanchez’s direction.

  “Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky said from his position on Dave’s shoulder. (And in this case, “Ay-ay-ay” meant Hopping habañeros! I can’t believe that fur ball followed us! We’ve gotta get rid of him!)

  “What was that?” Mr. Sanchez asked. (And from the way his head snapped around to look at Dave, it seemed that he had heard Hopping habañeros! I can’t believe that fur ball followed us! We’ve gotta get rid of him! instead of a simple “Ay-ay-ay.”)

  But the fact that he had heard anything at all meant that Sticky had, once again, slipped up. Dave was now left to rack his brains for a way to explain away the gecko’s commentary.

  “I said, I can’t believe my eyes!” Dave said, relieved to have thought of something that sounded at least close to “Ay-ay-ay.”

  But his father’s inquisition was not yet over.

  “So you have nothing to do with this?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Me? You think I brought home a monkey? Without asking?”

  Mrs. Sanchez was shaking her head. “That monkey is making coffee, Ernesto. He’s making coffee.”

  They all watched the monkey remove a coffee mug from the dish drainer and place it under the stream of hot (and very black) brew. When there was a drinkable amount in the cup, he took another mug from the drainer and, lickety-split, switched places. And then, with a great, happy aaaaah on his face, he gingerly sipped from the first.

  Mr. Sanchez shook his head. “He must be somebody’s pet.”

  “But he’s making coffee,” Dave’s mother said. “And how did he get into our kitchen?”

  The monkey kept one eye on the stream that was filling the second mug and one on Dave’s parents. When the second mug was half full, he put a third cup under the black, steamy stream and held out the second mug to Dave’s father. “Eeeeeek!”

  Mr. Sanchez just stood there.

  “Eeeeeek!” he said again.

  “Take it!” Dave’s mother whispered.

  At last, Mr. Sanchez stepped forward, took the mug, and sipped (all under the watchful eye of the monkey).

  “There’s a monkey in our kitchen making coffee,” Dave’s mother whispered again (as she was obviously still flabbergasted).

  “Strong coffee,” Dave’s dad said between gritted teeth.

  “He must’ve come in through the window,” Mrs. Sanchez whispered.

  “How? We’re seven floors up!” Mr. Sanchez replied.

  “He’s a monkey!” she whispered. “They climb things!”

  Dave’s father turned a suspicious eye on his son. “But why our window?”

  “I didn’t let him in!” Dave said. “I swear. I didn’t let him in!”

  “What are we going to do?” Mrs. Sanchez asked.

  “Keep him?” Dave asked hopefully.

  “Are you loco-berry burritos?” Sticky whispered in his ear.

  “Are you crazy?” Dave’s father asked, then turned back to the monkey (who was already on his second cup of coffee). “I should probably call animal control.”

  “No!” Dave cried.

  “Sí!” Sticky hissed in Dave’s ear. “He is trouble, señor. Big, big trouble!”

  Fortunately for Dave, a new presence in the kitchen caused Sticky’s frantic whispering to go unnoticed.

  “A monkeeeeeeeeey,” Evie squealed, then charged past her parents and brother (and, of course, Sticky) toward the counter.

  “No, mi’ja, no!” her mother cried.

  But the monkey (who was, I’m sure you’ll agree, no dummy) took one look at the little girl and realized real trouble had just entered the kitchen. “Eeeeeeeek!” he cried, then gave her his fiercest, hissiest look and scurried across the counter to the kitchen window.

  And like a thief escaping into the night (although, yes, it was daylight), he hefted open the window, snatched his coffee mug, and swung out onto the flower box.

  Dave Sanchez wasn’t the only one w
ho’d had a fitful night.

  Damien Black hadn’t slept a wink.

  This was not because his prized Himalayan monkey had bitten him when he’d tried to recapture it and then made an eeeky-shrieky escape.

  Oh no.

  And it wasn’t because those blasted Bandito Brothers had wormed their way out of a devilish demise and were, once again, eating everything in sight (as three days in ropes had given them quite an appetite).

  It was the boy.

  That pesky boy.

  That tricky trespasser!

  That infuriating infiltrator!

  The nettling, meddling nuisance of a boy!

  Into the night, Damien Black ground his grizzled teeth.

  He sneered his snarly lip.

  He paced the floorboards of his mansion.

  From the counting room to the map room to the collections room he walked, stewing, brooding, scheming (and, yes, muttering about the boy).

  What bothered him most was the thievery.

  The boy had stolen from him!

  Never mind that he had stolen the money (and the ring) from someone else.

  That was irrelevant.

  Immaterial.

  In short, who cared?

  (The bank did, of course, as did Ms. Kulee, but in Damien Black’s dastardly mind, they didn’t count.)

  The pointy-point was that the boy had waltzed into his house and stolen from him.

  How dare he steal his stolen money!

  And so it was that Damien worked himself into a loathsome lather, entering the great room of his mansion shortly before midnight. He continued his pacing, first in front of the large stone fireplace (brimming with cold white ash), then in front of a hulking bookcase (three layers deep with tattered books). He then moved across the room and began pacing beneath a large cuckoo clock.

  By cuckoo clock, I do not mean a cutesy-wootsy clock with forest-friend carvings around it and a little door where a tiny bird cuckoos each hour and half-hour.

  Oh no.

  By cuckoo clock, I mean something a little more cuckoo than that.

  This one was made of black ironwood instead of walnut.

  The weights running the clock were not brass pinecones.

  They were cement-filled squirrel skulls.

  The cuckoo bird’s house was not trimmed with acorn-adorned wood carvings. There were, instead, blackened bird bones.

  And it was not a cuckoo bird that sang out each hour and half-hour.

  It was a crudely carved cawing crow.

  But as Damien s cuckoo clock tickety-tocked its way toward midnight (lowering the squirrel skulls slowly toward the floor), the gears in Damien’s diabolical brain began turning at a frightening speed.

  “Bwaa!” he hiccuped (for a wickedly delicious plan was bubbling up, causing him mini fits of laughter).

  “Bwaa!” he hiccuped again, only this time, the clock began to strike midnight.

  “Caw!”

  “Bwaa-ha!”

  “Caw!”

  “Bwaa-ha-ha!”

  “Caw!”

  I should pause here for a small word of advice: You should never, and I mean ever, interrupt a deadly, diabolical villain when he begins bwaa-ha-ha’ing. It is both dangerous and dumb and will, in the end, get you killed.

  Or, in this case, smashed beyond repair.

  Damien’s laughter sputtered to a halt. And as the crudely carved crow continued cawing, Damien ripped the clock off the wall and proceeded to crush it with his black-booted feet. Up and down he jumped, smashing, crashing, until, at last, the clock quit cawing.

  “Bwaa!” Damien laughed, feeling better (and quite in control, now that he’d quieted the crow). “Bwaa-ha!” And as the plan came back into his (no longer distracted) diabolical mind, a feeling of felonious glee blossomed inside him. “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” he chortled. “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  This brought the Bandito Brothers running.

  “You got a plan, boss?” Pablo asked.

  “A plot to catch the boy?” Angelo said (for they had all heard Damien’s mutterings).

  “I wanna help! I wanna help!” Tito cried.

  Damien gave them a dark, withering look, but the Bandito Brothers didn’t wither. They instead tried to do the look themselves.

  “Stop that, you fools!” Damien shouted, but his plan did, in fact, include the Brothers.

  And what made it so wickedly delicious was that it would, he hoped, take care of two problems at once.

  The Brothers.

  And the boy.

  If you were brave enough to tippy-toe past the wrought-iron fence of Damien’s property and venture between his maniacal mansion (on the left) and the foreboding forest (on the right), you would do so on a wide, long-neglected path that was more mossy dirt than gravel.

  And if you were brave enough to continue along that path and make it past the dual front doors (which are, I must tell you, thick white-washed oak, carved in the shape of a great, ghastly skull, with heavy brass clackers for eyes and a menacing mail drop for a mouth), you would round a corner and come upon a drawbridge.

  The drawbridge extends across an enormous hole (dug by Damien because he really, really, really wanted a place to put a drawbridge and didn’t, at the time, have one). And if you were, indeed, brave enough to make it this far, you would almost certainly discover that the drawbridge was drawn.

  Now, by drawn, I do not mean drawn with a pencil, or colored in.

  I also do not mean haggard, drained, or tired-looking.

  By drawn, I mean upsy-daisied.

  Horizontally neutralized.

  Pointing toward Pluto.

  In a word, up.

  The drawbridge, you see, serves as both an exit ramp and a door.

  The garage door.

  Now, perhaps your garage is a hodgepodge of bikes and boxes and holiday doodads. Or maybe there’s a drum kit and other band equipment keeping the cars out. Or perhaps it’s stuffed with fishing gear or hiking packs or Jet Skis or (let’s be frank, shall we?) a giant jumble of junk.

  If this is the case, then your garage (and, for the record, mine) is nothing whatsoever like Damien Black’s.

  Damien Black’s garage is there for one purpose and one purpose only.

  The care and comfort of his 1959 Eldorado Biarritz.

  Originally manufactured by Cadillac, the Eldorado was a long, sleek shark of a car with radical tail fins (designed to produce lift and thrust); broad, curving chrome molding (because, hey, it looked good); air suspension (for a smooth, velvety ride); and three two-barrel Rochester carburetors (because such a vehicle deserved more oomph than any conventional four-barrel jobbie could provide).

  It also had, to Damien’s delight, whitewall tires.

  Damien (of course) customized the car to meet his unique (and decidedly sinister) specifications, until it was rigged and jigged and loaded with gizmos and gadgets that Cadillac would never (trust me, ever) have thought to provide.

  Damien also painted it (in a moment of sheer frivolity) not black but the deepest, darkest purple imaginable and installed a fold-back ragtop to match.

  The car became his pride and joy.

  His coolest, most marvelous treasure.

  His devilishly dandy delight.

  It was, without question, his baby.

  So it was with sentimental sadness that Damien now realized that it had been much too long since he’d driven the Eldorado.

  His Sewer Cruiser had somehow usurped his Eldorado. Sure, the Cruiser was functional, fast, and bad (for a souped-up moped, anyway), and it did use very little gas (a definite plus), but it wasn’t the Eldorado!

  How had so much time gone by?

  How had life become so tangled that he couldn’t just take the Eldorado out for a spin once in a while? Top down, wind in his oily hair, whitewall tires purring on the open road … you know, just get out and cruise.

  What doubly annoyed him was that he was thinking about the Eldorado now because he was saddled with those blasted
Bandito Brothers. For his double-edged plan to work, he needed to get them into town.

  Damien considered the possibilities:

  It was too far for them to walk.

  He couldn’t trust them to get downtown on their bucktoothed burro (which was, in fact, the means by which they’d arrived at the mansion).

  And they’d never all fit on the Sewer Cruiser. (Besides, he didn’t want them knowing about his secret speedway under town—they already knew way too much.)

  So after spending the night in his workshop (muttering and brooding and devising diabolical devices needed for his plan), he realized he had no choice.

  They would take the Eldorado.

  It would, after all, be worth it.

  If they caught the boy.

  As you may recall, the Invisibility ingot does not make you inaudible (which is why it was important for Dave to be, shhhh, quiet when he was moving among people toward the manhole cover after the bank heist).

  It also does not make you non-odiferous (which is why the monkey could smell Dave, even over the aroma of freshly ground Himalayan coffee).

  And unfortunately, it does not make you disappear physically (which is why Damien’s coat snagged as he whooshed by Dave in the convoluted corridor).

  I say “unfortunately” because it was this solid little fact that gave Damien Black his bwaa-ha-ha moment in the great room (interrupted as it was by the caw-caw clock). It was this solid little fact that had him working feverishly through the night in his workshop.

  And in the end, it was this solid little fact that had him dig through his den of dastardly disguises and make the Bandito Brothers remove their absurd bandoliers and sombreros so they could, instead, dress up as blind men.

  “I feel naked,” Pablo complained, for although Damien had stripped them of their six-shooters when they’d arrived, they’d still been wearing their bandoliers of ammunition, and the weight across his chest had given Pablo a real sense of security.

  “I feel bald,” Angelo complained (which was, I assure you, more than just a feeling).

  “Wheeeee!” Tito squealed, running around in circles with his arms spread wide. “I can fly!”

  “Stop that, you fool!” Damien snapped. Then he took a deep, demented breath and hissed, “You said you wanted to be my … assistants.” (Even saying the word caused him to shudder.)