Barely Legal

61

Chico called Mookie from the car. “We got her.”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you mean, am I sure? She’s in the fucking car.”

“Are you sure it’s her?”

“It’s her. You showed me her picture.”

Mookie had found the girl on Facebook and printed out her photo. He was more adept at a computer than he looked.

“All right. Come by and pick me up.”

“We’ll be there in five minutes.”

Mookie was waiting at the corner when Gus pulled up.

“How did it go? Did anyone see you?”

“She’s a wildcat,” Chico said. “She bit my finger. But we weren’t seen.”

Gus went through the Midtown Tunnel and took the Long Island Expressway to Forest Hills, Queens, where he pulled up in front of a two-story frame house on a residential block.

“This is your cousin’s place?”

“Yeah,” Chico said.

“Take her in.”

When Chico opened the trunk, Melanie kicked her tied-up legs and began yelling from behind the gag they’d put over her mouth. Hearing the commotion, Mookie came behind the car and looked down at her.

“I don’t need you alive, sweetheart. Don’t make your life more inconvenient than it’s worth.”

Cowed, Melanie fell limp as Chico and Gus lifted her out of the trunk and carried her up the front steps and in the front door. A couple of guys were hanging out in the living room. Mookie knew one of them. The other Chico introduced as his cousin Lou.

“There’s your babysitters. There’s a room upstairs that locks.”

“Does it have a window?”

“It’s nailed shut with railroad spikes.”

“It’s made of glass.”

“She’d have to break a lot of small panes. The boys would hear her.”

“Let’s see it.”

They pushed Melanie ahead of them up the stairs, toward a room at the end of the hall.

“In there,” Lou said.

Mookie took a look around the room. It would do.

“Where’s the bathroom?”

“Down the hall.”

“How’s she going to get there?”

“I’ll take her.”

“Let me see it.”

Lou took them down the hall to the bathroom. The window was small. It would be tough to crawl out of open. Closed, with broken glass in the frame, it would be close to impossible.

The bathroom door had a lock that twisted shut from the inside. From the outside it opened with a key, but there was no key.

Mookie pointed to the door. “Take off the lock.”

“Huh?”

“The lock on the door. Take it off.”

“Why?”

“She smashes the window and calls for help, and you can’t stop her because she locked the door. Just take it off.”

“Okay,” Lou said.

His attitude said he thought it was stupid.