Blood Lite

Willie reached for a box, dug out a torn copy of Amaz­ing Spider-Man #146, and traced his finger up and down the Scorpion's tail in a way that made Mick the Mick uncomfortable. So he reached out, slapped at Willie's bad tooth. Willie dropped the comic and curled up fetal, and Bruno the beagle abandoned the calf for the loftier pos­sibilities of Willie's head.

Mick managed to pop the top on the can and he began to sprinkle mineral spirits on some cartons labeled "Pre­cious Photos & Memories."

Willie moaned something unintelligible through closed lips—he was probably afraid to open his mouth until he disengaged Bruno the beagle. "Mmphp-muummph-mooeoemmum!"

"We don't have a choice, Willie. The only way out of this is fire. Beautiful, cleansing fire. If there's money left over, we'll bribe the orderlies so Nana doesn't get abused. At least not as much as the others."

"Mick!" Willie cried. It came out "Mibb!" because Bruno the beagle had taken advantage. Willie gagged, shoving the dog away. Bruno the beagle ran around Willie seven times, then flew up the stairs.

"Bruno!" they heard Nana chide. "Naughty dog! Not when we have company over!"

Willie hacked and spit, then sat up. "A heist, Mick. We could do a heist."

"No way," Mick the Mick said. "Remember what hap­pened to Jimmy the Spleen? Tried to knock over a WaMu in Pittsburgh. Cops shot his ass off. His whole ass. You want one of them creepy poop bags hanging on your belt?

Freaks me out."

Willie wiped a sleeve across his tongue. "Not a bank, Mick. The Arkham Museum."

"The museum?"

"They got all kinds of expensive old stuff. And it ain't guarded at night. I bet we could break in there, get away with all sorts of pricey antiques. I think they got like a T. rex skull. That could be worth a million bucks. If I had a million bucks, I'd buy some scuba gear, so I could go deep diving on shipwrecks and try to find some treasure so I could be rich."

"You think Tommy the Fence is going to buy a T. rex skull? How we even go

"They got other stuff, too, Mick. Maybe gold and gems and stamps."

"I got a stamp for you."

"Jesus, Mick! My toe! You know I got that infected ingrown!"

Mick the Mick was ready to offer seconds, but he stopped midstomp.

"You ever been to the museum, Willie?"

" 'Course not. You?"

"Nah."

But maybe it wasn't a totally suck-awful idea.

"What about the alarms?"

"We can get past those, no problem. Hey, you think I need a haircut? If I look up, I can see my bangs."

Willie did just that. Mick the Mick stared at the cardboard boxes, soaked with paint thi

But if they went to the museum and pinched some­thing small and expensive, chances are they could turn it around in a day or two. The faster they could pay off Nate the Nose, the safer Little Mick and the Twins.

"Okay, Willie. We'll give it a try. But if it don't work, we torch Nana's house. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

Mick the Mick extended his hand. Willie reached for it, leaving his hernia bulge unprotected. Now that they had a plan, it served absolutely no purpose to hit Willie again.

He hit him anyway.

"I don't like it in here, Mick," Willie said as they entered the great central hall of the Arkham, Pe

Mick the Mick gave him a look, which was pretty use­less since Willie couldn't see his face and he couldn't see Willie's. The only things they could see were whatever lay at the end of their flashlight beams.

Getting in had been a walk. Literally. The front doors were unlocked. And no alarm. Really weird. Unless the museum had stopped locking up because nobody ever came here. Mick the Mick had lived in Arkham all his life and never met anyone who'd ever come here except on a class trip. Made a kind of sense then not to bother with locks. Nobody came during the day when the lights were on, so why would anyone want to come when the lights were out? Which made Mick the Mick a little nervous about finding anything valuable.

"It's just a bunch of rooms filled with loads of old crap."

Willie's voice shook. "Old stuff scares me. Especially this old stuff."

"Why?"

" 'Cause it's old and—hey, can we stop at Burger Pile on the way home?"

"Focus, Willie. You gotta focus."

"I like picking off the sesame seeds and making them fight wars."

Mick the Mick took a swing at him and missed in the dark.

Suddenly the lights went on. They were caught. Mick the Mick feared prison almost as much as he feared Nate the Nose. He was small for his size, and unfortunately blessed with perfectly shaped buttocks. The cons would trade him around like cigarettes.

Mick the Mick ducked into a crouch, hands above his head. He saw Willie standing by a big arched doorway with his hand on a light switch.

"There," Willie said, gri

Mick wanted to punch his hernia again, but he was too far away.

"Put those out!"

Willie stepped away from the wall toward one of the displays. "Hey, look at this."

Mick the Mick realized the damage had been done. Sooner or later someone would come to investigate. Okay, maybe not, but they couldn't risk it. They'd have to move fast.

He looked up and saw a ba

"What's this?" Willie said, leaning over a display case. Suddenly a deep voice boomed: "WELCOME!" Willie cried, "Whoa!" and Mick the Mick jumped— high enough so that if he'd been holding a basketball he could have made his first dunk.

Soon as he recovered, he did a thorough three-sixty, but saw no one else but Willie.

"What you see before you," the voice continued, "is a rare artifact that once belonged to an ancient lost race that dwelled in the Arkham area during prehistoric times. This, like every other ancient artifact in this room, was excavated from a site near the Arkham landfill."

After recovering from another near dunk, plus a tiny bit of pee-pee, Mick noticed a speaker attached to the underside of the case.

Aha. A recording triggered by a motion detector. But the sound was a little garbled, reminding him of the voice of the aliens in an old black-and-white movie he and Wil­lie had watched on TV last week. The voice always began, "People of Earth ..." but he couldn't remember the name of the film.

"We know little about this ancient lost race but, after care­ful examination by the eminent archeologists and anthropolo­gists here at the Arkham, Pe