Zap!

by Martha Freeman

  Maura was still for a minute. “I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe tell the police but skip the part about how my grandpa might be involved?”

  Luis nodded. “But if they investigate? If they find the bald guy and there’s some connection between him and your grandpa?”

  “How could that be?” Maura asked.

  Luis shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know who the hunter even is. But we need to think before we say anything.”

  Maura nodded. “I guess you’re right.”

  “Anyway, what did you want to tell me?” Luis asked. “When I got here, you looked like you’d seen a ghost—freaked out, you said. What is it?”

  “Maybe I’m being a girl the way you always say,” Maura said. “But here it is. I rode in the backseat with my grandpa when Mom brought him home. Mostly I thought he was asleep, but all of a sudden about halfway home, he opened his eyes and looked right at me. You said I looked scared? He really looked scared—like having a nightmare only awake.”

  “Did he say ‘zap’ again? Or a number?” Luis asked.

  Maura shook her head. “Nothing like that. What he said was: ‘Be careful. You and Luis both. Promise me.’ ”

  Luis felt a pang in his chest. Was he freaking out a little too? “Did you ask him what he meant?”

  Maura nodded. “Yeah, but he didn’t say. He just said, ‘Promise me,’ again. So I did.”

  “Your mom was there. She was driving. What did your mom think?” Luis asked.

  “She couldn’t see his face, how scared it was. She didn’t think it was that important. She said it was maybe his meds.”

  Luis and Maura were speculating about what Mr. O’Hara might have meant when the sliding doors from outside opened, and Mrs. Brown came in.

  “How’s he doing, Mom?” Maura asked.

  “Sleeping,” Mrs. Brown answered. “Hey, Luis. How are you? I came back to get some decent coffee. The stuff my dad keeps in his apartment is swill. Isn’t it glorious to have electricity again?”

  “And another day off school,” Luis said.

  “Speaking of which, I hope they call me back to work soon.”

  “I hope so too, Mom,” said Maura.

  “Nate said yesterday that he’d put in a good word if I needed him to. He still has connections at NJL—even though he hasn’t worked there in years.”

  “Now he works for that lady who’s running for mayor?” Luis said.

  “The woman, yes,” Mrs. Brown said. “She’s not my candidate, though. She got people even more riled up over this blackout. It made things worse.”

  Luis remembered seeing her truck at the mall.

  “Hey, Mom,” Maura said. “Do you think it’s okay that Grandpa stays over at his place by himself? I could give him my room.”

  “You’re a good kid, Maura,” Mrs. Brown said. “But I set up his phone so he can dial me with one keystroke. That he can manage. Like Nate said, ‘Pops was always good with technology.’ ”

  Maura smiled. “I think it’s funny that Uncle Nate calls Grandpa ‘Pops.’ ”

  “I don’t know where he got that. No one else uses it,” her mom said.

  Something poked Luis’s brain—something that had to do with the hospital yesterday. Mrs. Brown had been telling him about the smart meters, and Uncle Nate kept interrupting—said Luis would get in trouble if he kept asking questions. Hadn’t it almost seemed like a threat? Then he said that thing about Pops and technology.

  And later—last night—a big guy driving a nice car had gone hunting for Luis.

  What if there was a connection?

  “Maura,” Luis said. “What’s your uncle Nate’s last name?”

  “Bridgewater,” she said.

  “That’s right,” Luis said. The nurse had said it at the hospital. “Nate Bridgewater,” he repeated, “NB.”

  Maura looked puzzled. “Uh, sure. So what?”

  Luis took a breath. He might be crazy. But he didn’t think so.

  “Mrs. Brown,” Luis spoke slowly, “do you happen to know when Mr. Bridgewater’s birthday is?”

  Maura’s mom made a face. “That’s an odd question, Luis, but I do, actually. My birthday’s on Valentine’s Day, and we used to talk about what a pain it is to have a holiday birthday. His is New Year’s Eve.”

  “Why—,” Maura started to ask, but Luis was on his feet.

  “We gotta go,” he said. “I mean, that is—Maura, can you come with me? Is that okay, Mrs. Brown? We’re not going far, just to the mall. And our phones are charged. You can call us if you need help, or if Mr. O’Hara does.”

  “Are you okay?” Mrs. Brown asked. “You have a strange expression on your face.”

  “It’s his fierce face, Mom,” Maura said.

  “Sorry,” Luis said. “I’m fine. Muy bien. Never better.”

  “If you say so, and I guess I can spare Maura for a while. Maybe later you can take a shift with your grandpa? For now—provided I get a cup of decent coffee—I think I’ve got it covered.”

  Luis pulled out his phone as he and Maura headed for the door.

  “What is the big hurry?” she asked. “Who cares when Uncle Nate’s birthday is? Who the heck are you texting?”

  “Backup,” Luis said. “Because if Julia Girardo is still at the mall, we are going to need it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It was ten o’clock when Luis and Maura rode their bikes into the mall parking lot. Only three TV trucks remained. Deprived for two days of their retail fix, desperate shoppers had begun to stream in and fill the lot. The lights were on, and soon the cash registers would be too.

  Meanwhile, Julia Girardo’s political extravaganza in a pickup had moved to a plot of asphalt near the highway. Now that the people had other diversions, the candidate had attracted only a small crowd, but her amplified voice carried everywhere.

  On the short bike ride from her house, Maura had asked Luis at least five times what was going on. “You’ll see,” Luis kept answering. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

  “Of course it’s gonna be fine. The lights are back on. Why wouldn’t it be fine?” Maura sounded worried.

  “You’ll see,” Luis said.

  Less than five minutes after Luis and Maura rode into the lot, Tony and his squad arrived too, and they were noisy about it. They were not on bikes but on motorcycles and in old cars. For night birds who usually woke up at noon, their efficiency was impressive.

  “Is this what you meant by backup?” Maura asked.

  Luis nodded.

  With one exception, the guys looked remarkably alike—they wore tight jeans and black jackets embroidered with skulls and other symbols. Their hair was pulled back and shiny. They had scruffy goatees on their chins. Only one kid looked different. He emerged from the backseat of a Ford Galaxy. He had a baby face and wore khakis and a Phillies cap.

  It was Carlos.

  Carlos did not ordinarily run with Tony’s crowd, but Luis had asked Tony to pick him up on the way. Now Carlos spotted Luis across the hood of the car and gave him a wordless, What gives?

  Luis answered with a shrug that meant “You’ll see.”

  But Luis’s cool was 90 percent for show. This is my chance to be a hero, he was thinking, or to mess up big-time.

  Meanwhile, Julia Girardo droned on: “Carnage . . . strength . . . losers . . . take back . . .” It was the same stuff she’d been saying right after the blackout began. Now Luis wondered if Uncle Nate—Nate Bridgewater—had written these words for her.

  “Are we ready, boss?” Tony came up.

  Maura’s eyes widened. Luis knew what she was thinking and tried not to gloat. Tony had called him “boss.” Sure, it was partly a joke. But there was some truth to it too. Not that this was going to last, but for now at least the big kid was taking orders from an eleven-year-old.

  “It’s the guy driving the truck.” Luis indicated with his chin. “Don’t let him see you yet. It’s fine if he sees the crew, though.”

 
; “We are on it.” Tony made a sharp, almost military gesture. His troops fell in behind. Together they began a slow and apparently casual advance toward the pickup truck. Carlos, after a last baffled look at Luis, went with them.

  “What—,” Maura started to ask for the millionth time.

  Luis suppressed a nervous grin. “Come with me,” he said.

  Julia Girardo by this time had cycled into the question-and-answer portion of her spiel, the part that gave her the slogan that made her popular. Had this been Nate Bridgewater’s idea too?

  As Luis and Maura approached the truck, Julia called on a woman who looked like one of Luis’s tías. “What are you going to do for my community?” the woman asked. “We have been spat on for years, and we are ready for some dignity.”

  “I’m glad you asked that question,” said Julia Girardo. “What your people have to understand is that handouts are not the answer. Lower taxes that will create jobs. That is what your community needs. . . .” She kept talking. Luis wasn’t listening. He was rehearsing what he was going to say. He had to get the words right.

  When Julia Girardo paused, he raised his hand.

  “Yes!” She pointed and smiled so broadly her cheeks must have hurt. “Isn’t that nice? A question from a young person. Go ahead, mijo. What do you want to know?”

  “Señora Girardo, I have evidence—,” Luis began, but she cut him off.

  “Call me Julia. Por favor,” she said.

  “Julia, I know that you caused the blackout,” he said. “I have definite evidence. So my question is, how are you going to pay people back? My parents lost wages for three days of work. Many more people lost money too. Many businesses will have to close down for a while. The news says it will be millions of dollars. Also, Señora, many people have been hurt. How do you pay that back?”

  Luis’s words took a moment to sink in. When they did, Julia Girardo’s smile faded and her face assumed the expression from the crying-baby ad. The quiet lasted long enough that the TV guys, who had been packing up, realized something was going on, something worthy of their viewers’ time, and re-aimed their cameras and microphones toward the candidate for mayor.

  A particularly enterprising TV reporter beelined for Luis. “Hey, kid, what’re you talking about? What do you know?”

  At the same time, Tony’s guys positioned themselves in a loose ring around the truck. Unless the hunter wanted to run over a kid on live TV, the truck would not drive anywhere soon.

  Up till now, Luis had not noticed Nate Bridgewater, but someone must have alerted him that his candidate was in trouble because he hopped up to the truck bed beside her.

  “Luis?” He looked into the crowd, his smile as bright as ever. “Is that you, amigo? Julia, never mind that kid. He’s my homie. This must be his idea of a joke, but it’s not funny.”

  “No joke,” Luis said, aware that three video cameras were now pointed at his face. “It was a cyber crime. The attack surface was the network of ITREX meters in every NJL customer’s home or business. Your hacker dropped malware into the server that communicates with the PLC, only maybe you should’ve paid him more because he made some mistakes with the suicide script. A blind guide dog could’ve followed the trail he left.”

  Blind guide dog? Luis thought. Did I really say that? Did it even make sense? He hoped he’d said that PLC thing right. He hoped no one asked him if he remembered what it stood for.

  “Your driver there,” he continued, “he has a hat on now, but I recognize him. He’s the bald gentleman who chased me around last night. If anyone’s wondering about the fire at 316 Larch Street, he set it. I was there.”

  This speech was pretty long for Luis, as well as being the first one he had ever made on TV. His heart was pounding, and his voice had gone raspy. He hoped he didn’t have to say anything else. Even if he got some of that cyber stuff wrong, it ought to have been enough to convince Uncle Nate and Julia Girardo that he knew what he was talking about, that he knew what they had done.

  Then the news guys helped him out. “What’s he talking about, Ms. Girardo?” a reporter with a notebook yelled.

  “My family’s store was trashed in the blackout!” said a black woman in the crowd. “You should be ashamed!”

  “Pay us back!” somebody cried.

  “Pay us back!” said someone else.

  Looking shell-shocked, Julia held up her hands for quiet. “My good people,” she said. “I don’t know this young man, and I can assure you I had nothing to do with—”

  “I thought it was fishy,” Luis heard someone say. “She was out in that truck the moment my lights went out. She was stirring up more trouble.”

  And then the crowd took up the chant: “Pay us back!”

  In the distance, Luis heard a siren.

  “You won’t rat out my grandpa, will you?” Maura said.

  “I got this,” Luis said. Then he looked at the angry faces around him, the fear in the eyes of Nate Bridgewater and Julia Girardo, the steely determination of Tony and his guys, the news cameras with eyes unblinking . . . and added, “I think.”

  Without a backward glance, Uncle Nate swung himself over the tailgate and began walking briskly across the parking lot toward the mall. After a dozen steps, his pace became a jog and then an all-out sprint. Three of Tony’s guys gave chase, but Nate Bridgewater was in excellent condition. Seeing his winded, beaten guys turn back, sheepish expressions on their faces, Tony shook his head, disgusted. “That’s it. No more cigarettes. And we’re cutting down on the fast food too.”

  Abandoned in the truck bed, Julia backed toward the cab. The hooting crowd was moving forward when three black-and-white Hampton cop cars pulled up. Ordinarily cops were not Luis’s favorite people. Today, though, Luis was glad to see them. He didn’t want anyone to get hurt because of what he’d said—not even the hunter, not even Julia Girardo.

  The officers were out of their cars in a heartbeat, but they didn’t know where to turn. The obvious targets were Tony and his gang, but the crowd steered them in another direction, the right direction. The crowd was full of people who had suffered during the blackout, people who wanted someone punished. Julia Girardo was available.

  “Stay right where you are, Ms. Girardo,” an officer called through his bullhorn. “And you folks, hold your horses now. We are going to get to the bottom of this.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The police detained both Julia Girardo and her driver—the man Luis had been calling the hunter—without incident. In fact, both of them looked relieved to climb into patrol cars. It probably seemed a whole lot safer than facing an angry crowd.

  When the news guys identified Luis as the kid who had asked about the blackout, the police brought him in for questioning. Luis was surprised by how polite the two officers were. One of them he recognized, a Latino guy with silver hair. He was somebody’s tío. Luis could not remember whose. The other one was black—taller, thinner, and less sure of himself. Both of them called him “young man” and told him they were impressed with his knowledge of computers and the electric grid.

  Luis was kind of impressed with his knowledge too.

  He was careful with his answers, though—careful to leave out Maura’s grandpa. Instead, he pinned all the glory on Computer Genius, who—according to Luis—had thought of the smart meters on his own.

  Where would they find this kid, Computer Genius, the officers wanted to know.

  “My house,” Luis told them. But when they sent someone to talk to him, Luis’s mom said he was gone, vanished back into legend.

  “He was here when we returned from Tío Pepe’s in Wilmington,” Mrs. Cardenal told the officer. “He was very courteous. He asked for a six-pack of Red Bull and three cans of Cheddar Cheese Pringles. I had to go to Cherry Hill to find them. When I came back, he said, ‘Gracias, Señora, and adiós.’ Then he walked right out the door. I didn’t try to stop him. I had plenty else on my mind.”

  Later the same day, Nordstrom security picked up Nate Bridg
ewater after a customer reported a suspicious man holed up in a dressing room in women’s sportswear. He spent a night in jail before being arraigned along with Julia Girardo on charges including computer fraud, conspiracy to commit computer fraud, use of intercepted communications, and misappropriation of campaign funds.

  The evening of the following day—Thursday—Mrs. Girardo, out on bail, called a press conference, apologized to her supporters, and citing changed circumstances, withdrew her candidacy for mayor.

  Luis didn’t hear this news till Friday morning when he was microwaving oatmeal for breakfast. He was home by himself. His parents, both called back to work, had gone in early to pick up overtime. They had bills to pay—rent, electricity, cable, credit cards, groceries. Plus Christmas was coming, and Luis’s family always made a big deal out of Christmas.

  If Luis had learned one thing from his parents, it was this: Vivir la vida americana cost money. To afford it, you had to work hard.

  Luis ate his oatmeal at the kitchen counter, put his bowl in the sink, picked up his phone, and started to text Maura. The news on the radio reminded him there was some stuff he still did not understand.

  Then he had a thought and tapped the green phone button. Once in a while, it was easier just to talk.

  “How’s your grandpa?” Luis said when Maura picked up.

  “Not good but better,” she said. “Did you hear about Julia Girardo?”

  “Yeah, just now, and that’s why I’m calling. Can you tell me one thing, Maura? Why did your grandpa wanna help those losers?”

  Maura didn’t answer right away. In fact, it was so quiet, Luis could hear her breathing. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked. But didn’t he deserve to know? He had gone to a lot of trouble to protect Mr. O’Hara. He had gone to a lot of trouble period.

  Finally, Maura spoke. “I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to tell me. I don’t know if he even knows himself anymore. The stroke messed up his brain. I said something about the blackout yesterday, and he kind of shut down. I have my own idea, though, if you want to hear it.”

  “Sure, I do,” Luis said. “I mean, I guess.”