36
Little Jackie waited in the pile of trash. The liquid from banana skins, coffee grounds, and rain-soaked rags seeped through his clothes, making him shiver. His teeth chattered. Beneath the soft skin of his bare chest he felt what could have been gravel. A piece of rubber he’d seen thrown away by the hookers on Llollo Street in Barrio Barretto rested like a deflated sausage two inches from his nose. A wasp crawled inside, causing the skin of it to wriggle and jump. He felt rats crossing the backs of his legs. When they sniffed at his skin, he fought the urge to jerk as their whiskers tickled the soft underskin of his knees.
Feral.
Like a pig.
Or a dog.
He was wild and eager to gnaw on something that screamed.
Twice, old men shuffled by, coming home from a day spent at the dump.
Each time he screamed like a dying cat. “Hoy! Hoy! Tanda! Halika. Sayaw tayo.” Hey! Hey! Old man. Come and dance with me.
Whenever the men would look over, he could barely contain himself with glee. Although they looked right at him, he knew they didn’t see him. He was invisible. He was like the air.
But then came the old cripple, pulling himself along with one withered arm, a hand gnarled like the fingers of a twisted branch. His skin was the color of old chocolate. He had a few hairs on his face and even fewer on his head. His eyes were the colors of olive pits and were sunken into craters of wrinkles.
Jackie could barely contain his laughter as he leaped free of the trash and high into the air. Pieces of trash sprayed the cripple. Jackie screamed like a beast. He picked up an old hubcap and swung it as hard as he could. He caught the cripple in the side of the head. The cripple screamed. The slick metal slid off without doing much damage, so he brought it around again, this time coming straight down with the hubcap on the crown of the cripple’s head. Blood exploded outward, the sight of it fuel for another swing of the arm. This time it came around in a flat arch, catching the old man beneath the eye.
“Hoy! Hoy!” he cried. “Dance with me, you fool!”
The cripple fell to his side, his mouth twisted into a curl of fear as he whined miserably.
Jackie growled and peed on the man’s withered arm. Then he turned and ran, giggling all the way to wherever he was going, his bare feet slapping at the ground, all the way down La Union Street.
37
“Try that one. Feel anything?”
Walker didn’t feel a thing. He’d kept from touching the long ratlike tail, but now let his finger graze it. Still nothing. “Are you sure this was from a chupacabra?”
“Positive. I was there. Damn thing almost took Hoover apart. Gave her over two hundred stitches.”
“Then why doesn’t it work?”
Ruiz shook his head and put a fist under his chin. He looked up and down their trophy wall. He’d had the idea during the briefing the other day. What had started as a joke suddenly started to make a certain sense. He’d called it a spooky meter—the way Walker reacted to the supernatural. If they could somehow train it, or figure out a way to use it properly, they could have their own walking, talking supernatural-warning device.
Ruiz spied the pinky finger of a banshee they’d fought on the Isle of Man. He’d had to improvise a mini fuel air explosive bomb to kill her, sucking all the air out of the vicinity to protect them from her wailing. All that had been left was this pinky and a few unrecognizable chunks.
“Here,” he said, hurrying to the piece of wood to which the digit was affixed. The date and place they’d gotten it was on a little brass plate. He pulled the wood from the wall and brought it over to Walker. “Anything now?”
Walker shook his head.
“Really? Not even a buzz?” He held it closer to Walker.
Walker touched it with his hand. “None at all. Maybe it doesn’t work if they’re dead.”
“That can’t be right. We’re always dealing with artifacts that some beegee gets his hand on with bad intentions. Fuck!” He threw the wood on the nearest couch. It bounced up and slammed into the ground. The banshee finger went flying. Hoover, who’d been snoring in a stream of sunlight, leaped to her feet and scrambled after it.
Both Walker and Ruiz ran to the couch to get to the finger before the dog ate it. What ensued was a scramble between three trained killers and a leather sofa. It was anyone’s game for the first few moments; then Hoover snatched the digit from Ruiz’s outstretched hand and trotted toward freedom—
Only to be caught by Holmes, who’d just come out of his room. He reached into the dog’s mouth and removed the finger.
“Anyone want to explain why Hoover is eating something that’s supposed to be up on the wall?”
Ruiz felt his face turn red. He hated it when the boss caught him doing something stupid. Ruiz’s life was a lesson in what two steps forward and one step back could do to one’s career. He pulled himself to his feet, eager to explain himself.
“I was testing a theory, boss.”
Walker managed to stand beside him. He touched a rip in his T-shirt that probably came from one of Hoover’s claws.
“What sort of theory involves feeding Hoover one of our trophies?”
“It has to do with these feelings Walker gets,” Ruiz said.
Yaya joined them, toweling his head and shoulders as he entered the room. Holmes had since cleared out Fratty’s quarters and the FNG had taken it over as his own.
“Okay,” Holmes said, walking over to the couch and straightening it. “Explain.”
“Right on,” Ruiz said, bouncing over to the wall. “I figured if we can have some advance notice next time, we—”
“You mean to turn your fellow SEAL into an early-warning system.”
Ruiz nodded.
“Like NORAD,” Holmes added.
“Exactly. Except it’s not working.” Ruiz shook his head and walked the length of the wall. He spun and gestured toward the trophies—hands and feet and teeth and horns and all matter of body parts. “These are all artifacts and should work with Walker here, but he can’t feel a thing.”
Holmes started to say something, but thought better of it. He glanced at Yaya, then back to the wall.
“What is it?” Ruiz said. He tried to look Holmes in the eye, but the team leader wouldn’t do it. In fact, he was beginning to look upset.
Holmes shook his head. “It’s nothing. It’s just … nothing.”
“Wait a minute. What’s going on?”
“You and your ideas,” Holmes said, shaking his head. He walked over to the wall.
“What? It was a good idea. I was trying to help the team.”
“‘I was trying to help the team,’” Holmes mimicked. He reached up and mussed Ruiz’s hair. “You’re a good SEAL, but Jesus, man.”
“What? What is it, boss?”
Yaya raised his eyebrows. “They’re not real are they?”
Walker’s and Ruiz’s jaws dropped as they looked from Yaya to Holmes to the wall.
“Why is it that the newest member of the house figures out what neither of you two, or the rest of them for that matter, ever did?”
“They’re not real?” Walker asked, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the wall as if for the first time.
“Yaya, please explain to your team members why they can’t be real.”
“Because they’d stink,” he said matter-of-factly. “All of these body parts rotting on the wall? This place would smell like Mogadishu.”
Ruiz couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “They’re all fake?”
“Every last one?” Walker asked
Holmes shook his head. “Not all of them. Yaya is partially right. Some of them do stink, but we have taxidermists who take care of that. What concerns us most is the residual magic.”