The Greatest Power (10 page)

Without a word, Lily disappeared inside her own apartment (as nothing makes a saucy girl take off faster than being mistaken for the girlfriend of a buttoned-up dork). And just as Lily’s apartment door closed, Dave’s flew fully open. (It had been cracked so that Evie, Dave’s little sister, could keep an eye on the hallway and be the first to sound the alarm about her wayward brother.)

“Davey,” Mrs. Sanchez cried. “Where have you been!”

“I told you he was fine,” Mr. Sanchez said, looking down at Dave. “Rough day?”

Dave was untangling himself from his bike. “Very. Sorry I’m late.”

“Dave-y was with Lil-y, Dave-y was with Lil-y.”

“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 who’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.