Chapter 19
Eddie sighed as they pulled back into the plant parking lot.
There would be a lot of cleaning up to do. It would take the whole day, maybe more.
The most important thing was to resume garbage operations. There were planets all along the shoulder of the Rah Galaxy who would be expecting the garbage ship.
Letting them down would be the same as letting the family down.
He couldn’t do that. But he also couldn’t forget what mattered.
He helped Alma out of Ted’s SUV.
“I guess I’ll start cleaning up,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I just can’t wait.”
Eddie walked around to the driver’s side of the car where Ted sat.
“Hey, Ted. Thanks for your help.”
Ted shook his hand. “My pleasure, amigo. Glad it turned out the way it did. Too bad we never got to the bottom of the murder. We took the body off your hands so no need to worry about that.”
“Some cosas,” Eddie said, “are better left unknown.”
“Guess you’re right,” Ted said. “You take care of yourself, Eddie.”
Ted saluted and drove away.
The family stared after the car until the dust cleared.
“Mucho que hacer,” Xiomara said tiredly. “Much to do.”
“Well, I’m taking a nap first,” Delfino said.
“Me first,” Mama Tonia said. “Wake me up when everything’s clean, will you, mijo?”
They walked into the pod.
The place was in shambles. Just like when they left.
Eddie picked up the purple stroller and pushed it against the wall. He clicked his tongue and put his hands on his hips as he looked at the kitchen.
He left the refrigerator door open.
“Oops,” Eddie said.
“Never mind,” Alma said. “Start throwing everything away. Eddie, take the kitchen. I’ll take the porch. Don Delfino and Doña Xiomara, can you take the living room?”
Everyone got to work. Alma disappeared into the porch and Dylan followed her.
Eddie moved around the kitchen, tossing food into the trash can.
“Yikes,” he said, tossing spoiled queso fresco into the garbage.
“Hey, babe,” he said, grabbing a head of lettuce, “think the lettuce is still good?”
Alma didn’t answer.
“Babe?” Eddie said.
The door to the porch opened.
“Estás bien?” Eddie asked.
Xiomara screamed.
Delfino dropped the couch cushion he was holding and went pale.
And then Eddie saw it.
A man dressed in a white suit with a diagonal stripe across the chest stepped out of the porch. He wore a black knitted beanie cap, white spandex over his entire head and white leather gloves. He wore blue sunglasses. He covered Alma’s mouth, and with another hand, he held a handcoil to her head.
Papa Ito’s handcoil.
From the curio that Eddie broke last night.
Alma shook with terror.
Then, two more men dressed like the first, without hats or sunglasses, emerged from the bedroom. They had guns and looked like living mannequins with no facial features.
Eddie glanced outside—through the window in Papa Ito’s pod, there were two men. Mama Tonia was screaming.
“Eyes on me, Eddie,” the mysterious man in white said.
That voice.
Raspy. Weird. Almost crazed.
It was the guy who chased him. He knew that voice anywhere.
“I thought you were dead,” Eddie said, putting his hands up.
“Let’s talk about what’s going to go down,” the man in white said. He motioned for Eddie to sit on the couch.
Slowly, Eddie walked to the couch and sat next to his parents. Dylan ran to him and jumped into his lap.
Alma began to cry. The man in white shifted his hand into a chokehold.
“Shut up!” he yelled.
Alma whimpered.
“If you want me, take me,” Eddie said. “My wife has nothing to do with this.”
“I told you I wanted the body, Eddie,” the man said. “I wanted the goddamned body. But you went and ratted to the cops. Now the body is gone.”
He dragged the handcoil across Alma’s temple.
“And now,” the man in white said, inching a test tube with yellow liquid out of his suit pocket, “it’s time to replace the body I lost with another.”
Chapter 20
“Leave my wife alone!” Eddie shouted.
The man in white laughed.
“This is what happens when you try to be a hero, Eddie,” he said.
“What do you want?” Eddie asked. “Money? Revenge? Or—”
The man in white shushed him long and loud.
“I’m the one who will be asking questions.”
One of the henchmen cleared his throat.
“Sir, we’re running out of time.”
“We’re in need of a ship,” the man in white said.
“If it’s a ship you want,” Delfino said, “we have another garbage ship. You want it, it’s yours.”
“Thank you, my good man,” the man in white said. “But here’s the thing: you don’t have to offer it. I was going to take it anyway.” He glanced at Eddie. “But what I really want is the pendant. Where is it?”
“Pendant?” Eddie asked.
“The dead body had a pendant. A golden pendant. What did you do with it?”
Eddie remembered the pendant. Dylan had taken it while Eddie was eating dinner. In the scuffle he’d lost track of it, forgotten all about it.
The damned thing could be anywhere.
“Ask the cops,” Eddie lied. “They have the body. I never saw any pendant.”
The man in white shot the handcoil at the living room window, shattering it. Xiomara screamed.
“Where is the damned pendant?”
“I don’t know!” Eddie said.
“Do you have any idea how much work it is going to take me to start over?” the man in white said. “This is a tax on my time, my energy and my patience—to be outdone by a garbage man! I’m going to ask you again, and if you don’t tell me, you’re not going to like what I’m going to do next. Where. Is. The. God. Damned. Pendant.”
“I swear to God I don’t know.”
“Where is it, Eddie.”
“I told you, I don’t know!”
“Okay,” the man in white said. “All right. I guess I am going to have to start over.”
Eddie had second thoughts about lying. Should he told the truth.
This guy was crazy. He was going to kill them regardless of what Eddie did. And if Eddie told him that Dylan had had it, he might do something to Dylan.
Eddie’s hands jittered. He wondered why he wasn’t more nervous. He found himself growing calmer by the moment.
“Up, everybody up,” the man in white said. “Line up in a single file line. Speak any Spanish, you get shot. Step out of line, you get shot. Try to pull anything? SHOT! Understand?”
The family walked single file outside.
The sky was brown, clear brown. The sunlight was sad—Eddie glanced up at Reader IV and realized he might not have much time left to live.
He’d be a dead man soon.
The entire family would be dead.
Xiomara walked ahead of him, quiet and calm. Ahead of her, Delfino sniffled and grunted.
God.
They’d brought his dad to tears. Papá must have been thinking the same thing as Eddie.
Two men met them in the plant, holding Mama Tonia and Papa Ito at gunpoint. They joined the front of the line.
They passed a key rack and the man in white snatched a pair of keys off the rack, jangling them as he stuffed them in his coat pocket.
The second garbage ship, the Cariñoso, waited for them, gray and sullen among the bales of cardboard and aluminum.
“It really stinks in here,” the man in white said, scrunching up h
is nose through his face mask. “How do you stand it?”
No one answered.
The man in white laughed. “I suppose no one wants to answer because you’re following directions. Ha. I like you guys. If only Eddie here had followed directions from the beginning. You wouldn’t be in this mess now, would you?”
The man in white held the keys up in front of Eddie.
“Yes or no answers, or you die right now: are these the keys to the garbage ship?”
“Yes,” Eddie said.
“Do you have any tracking devices onboard?”
“Yes.”
“Can they be disabled?”
“Yes.”
“Are they above deck?”
“No.”
“Below deck?”
“No.”
“Cockpit?”
“Yes.”
The man in white motioned to one of the men and tossed him the keys.
The henchman man climbed into the garbage ship and disappeared.
“Now, a couple more questions,” the man in white said. “And these are short answer questions, so speak quickly and concisely. Who is going to know that you’re gone?”
Eddie stammered.
“I’m waiting, Eddie.”
“Answer the questions,” Delfino said. “Just answer them, Eddie.”
“Our family.”
“Give me names and titles,” the man in white said.
“I’m not giving you names,” Eddie said. “If you’re going to kill us, do it already. I’m done playing games.”
“Then give me titles,” the man in white said.
“Never. You’ve already put my family in danger.”
The man in white shrugged.
“Ah, so it comes out. You’re a family man. Eddie Heriberto Puente, a man of honor. Loyalty! I know you probably believe that.”
Eddie frowned. The insult stung.
“I can respect your wish,” the man in white said. “I’m really quite compassionate when it comes to these things. If you knew me outside of this context, my present actions would shock you.”
CRASH!
A hunk of metal landed near the man in white’s feet, and he laughed.
A tracking beacon.
Macalestern had installed it for the garbage ship’s safety.
“Can I make a comment?” Eddie asked.
The man in white nodded.
“Those tracking beacons are for our own safety. If we encounter radiation—”
“We won’t need it where we’re going,” the man in white said. “Or, maybe we will.” He whistled to his henchman. “Hey, good work! You’re learning nicely!”
The henchman bowed jokingly.
“Get on board,” the man in white barked.
The men led Xiomara, Alma, Dylan, Delfino, and Mama Tonia onboard.
“Take your grandpa,” the man in white said.
Eddie took Papa Ito’s wheelchair and began to wheel him up the bay door into the garbage ship airlock.
Alma looked back at him with frightened eyes. He pursed his lips and patted Papa Ito on the shoulder.
“Gonna be okay, Papa Ito.”
Then Eddie felt a crack on the side of his head and everything went dark.
Chapter 21
Eddie woke, his eyes blurry. A metal ceiling buzzed in and out of focus.
Steel rafters.
He blinked.
Something was under him.
Concrete.
Cold concrete floor. The grit rubbed against the back of his head.
He groaned and sat up. Styrofoam fell off his body in a great wave.
“What the?”
Several of the pellets had black eyes drawn on them.
They reminded Eddie of maggots.
He shook off the rest of the styrofoam.
Something wet dripped onto his hand.
Blood.
His entire hand was covered in blood.
He brought his hand to his head. He was bleeding.
His sight focused and he spotted bales.
Aluminum.
Cardboard.
The recycling plant.
He was still there.
The man in white must have hit him on the head…
He remembered Alma, the handcoil against her head.
He scrambled up but stumbled and fell forward face-first into the concrete floor. Crawling to a nearby bale, he pulled himself up and used to it support himself.
The garbage ship!
He looked around.
The garbage ship was gone.
The garage doors to the plant were wide open, letting in bright sunshine.
“No,” Eddie mouthed. “No!”
He started to run but then noticed something clapping across his chest.
A string of twine was tied around his neck. Attached to it was a pendant made from notebook paper, roughly but elaborately folded to look like the pendant that Eddie found on the dead man. The front of the paper was scribbled blue with a colored pencil, and Eddie gulped when he realized it was Dylan’s coloring.
Eddie unfolded the pendant.
A paper photo of his family was inside. Alma, Dylan, Delfino, Xiomara and Mama Tonia, all standing at gunpoint in the airlock of the garbage ship. They had forced smiles on their faces, as if the man in white told them to smile or die.
Eddie ripped the photo off. There was a message on the back written in cursive handwriting.
Eddie.
Eddie, Eddie, Eddie…
This is what happens when you screw up, Eddie.
You’ve got such a wonderful family…
They’re going to make such great specimens.
Don’t even think about following. Oh wait, you can’t…
But thanks for the ship.
Oh, and P.S….be sure to take care of grandpa. He’s got some serious health problems, Eddie. Should have stayed on top of that, you think?
Toodles…
Eddie crumpled the piece of paper and screamed.
Then he heard a moan.
Not too far away, Papa Ito lay on the floor. His wheelchair was overturned and he couldn’t speak.
Eddie threw the pendant aside and ran for his grandfather.
Chapter 22
Eddie turned Papa Ito’s wheelchair upright and hoisted him into the seat.
“I’m okay, Eddie,” Papa Ito said.
Eddie felt Papa Ito’s legs and arms and tested for breaks.
“They just flipped me over, that’s all,” Papa Ito said. “They’ve been gone a long time. About thirty or forty minutes.”
“Which way?” Eddie asked.
“Hard to tell. They used the auto-exit. Shot right out of the atmosphere. What the hell did you do?”
“I messed up,” Eddie said. “I really messed up, Papa Ito.”
Papa Ito sighed. “Well, you’ve got to go after them.”
“The letter said not to. I don’t know what to—”
He couldn’t leave Papa Ito. He wouldn’t be able to take care of himself. He would barely be able to make it to the pod by himself.
“Don’t worry about me,” Papa Ito said. “I’ll call your cousin Rafi. I can get someone here soon.”
“I can’t leave you,” Eddie said. “I…”
He kicked a nearby bale of aluminum.
“What do I do?” he screamed. “Dios! Strengthen me. Tell me what to do!”
He wished the ceiling would open up, that God would say something, anything to him for guidance.
But the silence of the plant crept in, and he felt more alone than he’d ever felt in his life. His stomach sank and churned.
“I told you, I’ll be fine,” Papa Ito said. And then he coughed long and hard. Eddie braced his shoulders as he fought through a paroxysm.
“You’re not okay,” Eddie said. “Are you sure they didn’t hurt you?”
“Now that you mention it, I feel a little dizzy.”
Eddie glanced around. Fumes.
The fume
s in the plant were probably getting to him.
Eddie wheeled Papa Ito out of the plant, into the fresh air.
“Let’s get you back to your pod,” Eddie said.
Inside Papa Ito’s pod, Eddie poured Papa Ito a glass of water and helped him lie on the couch. Papa Ito covered his head and with a remote, he turned off the lights.
Eddie grabbed the phone.
He had to call his cousin Rafi.
He put the phone to his ear.
No dial tone.
He hung up and tried again.
No tone.
He picked up the cordless phone base. The wires were cut.
Damn.
He felt his pockets.
His cell phone was in his pod. He’d left it on the dinner table.
“Be back!” he said, dashing outside.
In a few quick strides he burst into his pod and ran for the kitchen.
His phone lay on the table.
But it was smashed. The glass was cracked and the battery was in pieces.
He wanted to cry.
Those bastards had thought of everything.
He stood in the living room, the lonely sunlight streaming down on him as he decided what to do next.
Then he ran into Papa Ito’s pod.
“Did you call?” Papa Ito asked.
“Change of plans,” Eddie said, grabbing his grandfather’s coat. “We’ve got to make a road trip.”
Chapter 23
Eddie wheeled Papa Ito to the family car—a blue sedan parked outside the pod.
The tires were slashed.
“Ah, come on!” Eddie shouted.
Papa Ito coughed. “Boy, they really thought of everything, didn’t they?”
Eddie beat against the trunk of the car and tried to fight back a sob.
Papa Ito tapped him on the back.
“Get yourself together, Eddie.”
“What am I going to do, Papa Ito? He’s going to kill them.”
“Maybe,” Papa Ito said. “Or maybe not.”
Eddie didn’t reply. He was shocked at Papa Ito’s suddenly lucidity.
“When I left Traverse II, the Zachary Empire captured me,” Papa Ito said. “They hated everything I stood for—they demonized me in the press and my death was all but certain.”
“I remember that.”
“But they let me go. Turns out I was more valuable to them alive than dead. Didn’t want others rising up out of anger. Would’ve been a human rights debacle.”
Garbage Star (Galaxy Mavericks Book 4) Page 9