THE BANDIT QUEEN - Chapter 12 continued

Eden leaned back in her chair and thought for a few minutes about what she’d found out and what she hadn’t found. A bottle of orange juice appeared next to her keyboard and she absentmindedly twisted the top off. She finished drinking it before she even realized she’d begun. Then she nodded her head vigorously and made her decision. As long as she was in the police files, she’d do some more snooping. Instead of typing in her own name, she typed in the block number of her apartment building. Several recent reports flashed on the screen. It seemed her apartment had been broken into sometime in the last week. The apartment manager had noticed the broken lock on her door and reported it. Persons unknown had torn the hell out of her place. According to the report, her furniture was slashed open, everything had been pulled out of the closet, and the drawers had all been emptied onto the floor. Even her refrigerator had been emptied along with the cabinets.
Next she clicked into the missing person’s files and searched through the long list of reports that had been filed in the last week. Her name was not on the list and neither was Deakin’s. That didn’t mean the police weren’t looking for them, though. Someone could have turned them in as suspects for any number of crimes. She then found a list of all APB’s that had been broadcast in the last week. There she found the license number of her car. She backtracked and found that she was suspected in a hit and run accident that had sent a pedestrian to the hospital. Suddenly, she felt very good about leaving her car in the Phoenix airport parking lot. She also felt very good when she noticed the date of the hit and run. She and Deakin had been meeting with Wayne Kimbrough that day. Now, if he would just stay alive, she would have a witness who could say she wasn’t in Los Angeles at the time of the accident. Hell, she wasn’t even in California.
Eden turned away from her screen and looked around the room for Deakin. He stood at the back of Alden’s chair and stared at the huge screen of Alden’s monitor. Deakin turned toward Eden with a face filled with O’s. His eyes were huge round circles and so was his mouth. Alden feverishly clicked the keys on his keyboard. He yelled at Eden to close down her computer ASAP. She turned back to her screen and began closing all the files she’d browsed through. When she had turned off her machine, she moved around the circle shutting down the other computers, one by one. She ran into Deakin halfway around the circle and glanced at the grimness showing in his face as he closed out and turned off computers.
All the other boys in the room had already shut down their machines and gathered up any papers into piles. They stuffed the piles into backpacks and handed them out the door to Jade. When they’d finished, they followed the backpacks out the door. Alden’s machine was the last one to close down. He gathered a stack of disks and stuffed them into a bag. Then he shut down his monitor and tossed the bag to Deakin. Eden stood at the open door and watched the two move from machine to machine. They reached under each desk and flipped a switch. Small red blinking lights scattered around the room. Deakin and Alden met Eden at the door. Just as Alden pulled the door shut, he flipped one more switch on the wall and slammed the door shut.
Eden flinched when she heard a loud “whump” on the other side of the door. Deakin whispered in her ear, “Acid to ruin the machines. Then a fire to burn them totally up.”
She pulled the bag containing the disks out of Deakin’s hand and slipped the handles across her body. She grabbed Deakin’s belt and stumbled after him down the darkened hallway. A hand grabbed the back of her shirt and feet bumped her heels with every step. Eden put out her right hand and touched the wall but the rising heat made her jerk her hand away.
Deakin whispered over his shoulder. “Be careful. That whole room is burning by now. Stairs coming up. Railing on your right.”
Eden followed him blindly down a winding metal stairway into a damp smelly tunnel. Deakin walked faster and faster through the tunnel. Nasty odors wafted up into Eden’s face as they splashed through stagnant pools of water. She kept one hand on the wall and ran her fingers along the old bricks that lined the tunnel. Several times her fingers ran out of wall and touched black emptiness. Other tunnels ran off at right angles. Once she stumbled over a set of tracks that crossed their tunnel and disappeared into another tunnel to the left. After two or three turns, Eden hoped Deakin knew where he was going. After the latest turn, a small light appeared in the distance. It grew larger and larger as they now ran through the tunnel.
Deakin stopped thirty yards from the opening and slowly edged his way to the barred window. He peered around the edge of the frame and dropped below the edge of the window as a man walked along the alley. When the man had disappeared, Deakin unhooked the bars and opened the window. He stepped out first and then helped Eden climb over the window sill. Jade followed on her heels as did Alden and two other boys. They all huddled in a group behind a trash dumpster as one of the boys closed and locked the window. Then they split up in pairs and took different paths out of the alley.
Alden grabbed Eden’s hand and pulled her with him down the alley to the left. They melted into the moving crowd of people on the sidewalk. He threw his arm across her shoulders and pulled her close to his side. She leaned into him and slowed her breathing down as they walked. Off to the left, a column of black smoke reached into the sky. The blare of fire engines and emergency vehicles joined the usual street sounds. They drifted with the crowd in the direction of the fire and stopped at the edge of the large watching crowd. Eden’s eyes widened as she realized the building they’d just left had imploded in on itself. Bricks had crashed down on the computer room and covered everything with rubble. Huge metal girders pointed toward the sky and watched over the smouldering mess below. More brick walls crashed down as the firemen sprayed heavy arcs of water on the building.
Alden pulled Eden back as the policemen tried to move the crowd away from the fire. They wandered away with the others who’d grown bored with the spectacle. They walked for blocks and blocks until Alden stopped in front of a tattoo and piercing salon. Eden stepped through the doorway and into the front room of the shop. A girl with green and orange striped hair greeted them. She was a walking advertisement for all the delights offered in the back rooms. Rings and studs decorated her ears and her face. Even the center of her tongue hadn’t been spared. Tattoos twined down both her arms and across her shoulders. Eden smiled at her and left the talking to Alden.
Alden leaned across the glass showcase and pointed to a pair of earrings. “We’d like to see those, please.”
The girl reached down into the case and brought out a pair of silver earrings with tiny lizards dangling off the studs. Alden held them out to Eden and gestured for her to put them on. She slid the posts into the holes in her ears and leaned down to look in the small mirror the girl held. She slowly stood up and gestured for Alden to look in the mirror. Reflected in the small surface was the front window of the shop with two policemen peering through the grime that covered it. Alden fingered the tiny lizards in Eden’s ears and pulled out his wallet to pay for them. Eden looked again in the mirror and watched the cops laugh and walk away. The girl handed Alden his change and spoke some garbled words to him. Eden shook her head and leaned in to listen but she still didn’t understand what the girl said. Then she realized the tongue stud made it difficult for the girl to speak clearly.
Alden took her hand and pulled her into one of the back rooms. A young man sat in a chair with his arm resting on a steady table. The outline of an elaborate work of art covered part of his forearm. The tattoo artist glanced at Alden and then at Eden. His gaze fastened on the lizard earrings and he nodded them through the doorway in the far corner of the room.
They slipped out the back door of the shop, crossed the alley, and entered the back of another shop. The young man in the stockroom noticed Eden’s earrings and sent them into the front of the shop. They stepped into an amazing room. The tall walls were covered with dark wooden shelves. Ancient sculptured tin covered the ceiling. The center of the large room was covered with tables. Piles of comic books were stacked on every table and every shelf along the walls. Large posters waved in the breeze from the ceiling fans. Twenty or thirty people moved around the room and flipped through pile after pile of old comic books.
A teenaged boy stood at the register and watched the crowd around him. He glanced at Alden and Eden and then out the front window of the shop. He turned back and shook his head slightly at Alden, who moved Eden into the shelter of the cash register and began looking through a nearby stack of comics. Eden followed his lead and leafed through a stack also. When the coast was clear, the boy touched Eden on the shoulder and sent them on their way.
Eden and Alden walked out the front door of the shop and wandered along the sidewalk with other shoppers. Small shops and stores filled the old buildings on this block. At one corner, Alden bought them both cups of coffee and doughnuts. Several times Eden had tried to ask him where they were going but he refused to answer her. At several points in their rambling walk, Alden had entered shops and spoken to young men in the back rooms. Eden’s earrings had given them entrance into those back rooms and she stood to the side to watch the transactions. In one back storeroom, a tall, thin man with wild hair and multiple tattoos took several computer disks from Eden’s bag and stowed them in a small safe behind a pile of junk. In another shop, this time a pizza place, Alden dropped off more computer disks. These disks found their way into the bottom drawer of an old desk and joined a motley pile of other disks.
As they left through the back door of the pizza restaurant, Alden whispered in Eden’s ear. “Remember these people and places. These people are all former bandits. You and Deakin may need to get these disks back sometime later. Always wear those earrings. Never take them off. They’re your passport through this maze. Two more stops and then we go to the new place.”
Eden listened and watched as Alden did business with two more young men. As they walked away from the last, a dirty unshaven man bumped into Eden’s shoulder and grabbed her arm. He shoved something pointed into her ribs and demanded her money. Eden turned to look at him in alarm and the tiny lizards swung out of the shadow of her baseball cap. The man immediately let go of her arm, mumbled an apology, and disappeared into the crowd. Eden turned back to Alden with her mouth still open.
He smiled at her and said softly, “Never take them off. Remember that.”
“I believe you for sure. You really believe in the old saying, ‘When you give, give the very best,’ don’t you?”
A small chuckle escaped from Alden’s mouth. They ambled along through the neighborhood until they passed another pizza parlor. This one sold single slices out a small window. Eden pulled Alden over to the window and ordered two slices and two cups of lemonade. They leaned against the building to eat their pizza and then walked off with their cups of lemonade.
A dirty brown car pulled into the curb next to them and an arrogant voice called out, “Hey, girlie, you sure get around, don’t you? Just how many ‘boyfriends’ do you have?”
Eden whirled around and stared into the eyes of the policeman who’d stopped them the night before. Out of nervousness, she stuck the straw from her drink in her mouth and drank her lemonade. The officer waved her over to the car and leaned out the window. He put his hand on her arm and pulled her down to his level.
“You want to go for a ride with us, honey? We’ll treat you real good.”
The driver of the car snorted in disgust and said, “Cut it out, Jim. I don’t do that sort of thing. Leave her alone. She isn’t doing anything.”
“Don’t you tell me what to do, boy. I’ve been on the street longer than you’ve been alive and I know something suspicious when I see it. This girl is way too clean for this neighborhood. She don’t belong here and I want to find out why.”
“Then, just ask her, Jim. She might just tell you.”
“Goddamnit, I will. What the fuck are you doing in this sinkhole, little girl?”
“Sociology research for the Social Services Department at USC. This is my lab partner and we’re interviewing street people and homeless people. We’re trying to find out how many of them come here from other places just to take advantage of the social services. The State of California wants to know how many people from other states it’s being forced to take care of. There are hundreds of us wandering around here day and night asking questions. Did you know that in the last hour we’ve found sixteen people from Illinois, twelve from Oklahoma, five from Texas, and some from Florida and New York? I can’t remember how many.”
She looked interrogatively at Alden, who pulled a small notebook out of his pocket and flipped through it. “Uh, ten from Florida and three from New York.”
The policeman stared at her in disbelief and said, “Well, I will be goddamned. Now, they’re sending nice kids out on the streets and we’re going to have to take care of them too. Let’s get out of here right now. I don’t want any part of this shit. Drive, boy, drive.”
They watched the car turn the next corner and disappear from sight. Alden looked at Eden in approval and said, “That was very good. How did you learn to do that?”
Eden smiled and said, “I’ve been making up stories like that my whole life. Most people will believe anything you say if it involves a bureaucracy of some kind. You don’t want to say you work for the government but that you ‘do’ work for the government. Then you don’t have to have a badge or identification card of some kind. As long as you look the part and talk the part, 98% will believe you. The other 2% don’t believe anything at all. ‘Walk the walk and talk the talk,’ that’s my prescription for lying.”
Alden laughed as he piloted her toward his new home. He’d been away from a computer for far too long.