Outcasts

Chapter 4 - The Kid

The next morning was slow going, most of it spent in bed. He slept mainly on his stomach, to keep pressure off where that kidney punch had landed, breathing through his mouth, having stuck some rolled-up tissue in his nose to keep any blood off the pillow and sheets. When he got up to use the bathroom, one look in the mirror told him he'd best ask the janitor or someone to go out and get him some dark glasses to cover those eyes that were twice as black and swollen as when he'd gone to bed. Couldn't put his face in public like that. He hadn't left the room after Helen dropped him off, had ordered in pizza for dinner and watched part of a game on the tube.

Since this was day one of his thirty-day countdown with Zekov, he needed to get himself in gear and come up with some kind of plan. The one thing that kept coming back to him was that kid with the offbeat artwork on his skateboard. He sensed there was something there he could construct a nice little promotion around. Leverage into something that could generate some art world buzz, some cash flow.

So find him.

Go to where he was most likely to be. And if he wasn't there, ask around.

~~~~~~

A small crowd – sightseers with their maps, neighborhood joggers, people out walking their dogs – had gathered on Central Park's Bethesda Terrace, next to the tall fountain, to watch a skateboarder whose street name was The Wiz performing an array of eye-catching stunts – flipsides, grinds, heelflips... Between The Wiz and the crowd, a kid in a wheelchair was going back and forth with a satchel opened on his lap, people tossing coins and bills into it, compensation for The Wiz's performance, the skateboarder and the wheelchair kid a team.

A group of their colleagues in grunge gear, their posse, wove among the onlookers, urging them to give.

At the edge of the crowd, Victor Sykes, dark glasses perched on his bandaged nose, was watching the goings-on.

His distorted eyes were working well enough for him to notice one of the grunge posse, a dark-haired girl who he'd later learn was named Janna, slipping in behind a man in a business suit. She waited until The Wiz had everyone's attention, then gently raised the vent of the man's jacket. With all eyes on the action, Janna deftly lifted the man's wallet.

She stuck the wallet inside her black leather jacket and casually backed away. Suddenly she whipped around.

Speeding toward her with its siren yelping and bubble-light flashing was an NYPD interceptor cart.

The grunge posse took off in every direction. The kid with the satchel jumped out of the wheelchair and rain full speed past Janna, both of them bolting up the Terrace's grand staircase where the intercept cart couldn't follow.

The Wiz hightailed it in the opposite direction, pushing his board down a narrow path through a section of trees and out of sight.

But The Wiz and the others weren't who Sykes had come to see.

The kid who had his interest was the one off by himself there, who was playing it cool like he wasn't part of the posse – the kid who made that mod-primitive artwork that, with heads-up management, Sykes knew could be cashed in on.

Sykes watched him hop on his board and push off alone, heading for the Bow Bridge, an old cast-iron pedestrian crossing that spanned a narrow part of Central Park Lake. A breeze had come up, rippling the water, and it looked like it might rain again, dark clouds moving in from the west.

The kid rolled across the bridge, the mid-Manhattan skyline stretched above the trees on the shoreline behind him. When he got to the other side, Sykes quickly followed.