Mick the Mick put his face in his hands, very close to tears. The last time he cried was ten years ago, when Nate the Nose ordered him to break his mother's thumbs because she was late with a loan payment. When he tried, Mom had stabbed Mick the Mick with a meat thermometer. That hurt, but not as much as a wiener-ectomy would.

"Maybe we can leave town," Willie said, putting a hand on Mick the Mick's shoulder.

That left Willie's kidney exposed. Mick the Mick took advantage, even though it didn't help their situation.

Willie fell to his knees. Bruno the beagle tore down the stairs, straddled Willie's calf, and began to hump so fast his little doggie hips were a blur.

Mick the Mick began searching the bas.e.m.e.nt for something flammable. As it often happened in life, arson was really the only way out. He found a can of paint thinner on a dusty metal shelf and worked the top with his thumbnail.

"Mick, no!"

Mick couldn't get it open. He tried his teeth.

"You can't burn my house down, Mick! All my stuff is here! Like my comics! We used to collect comics when we were kids, Mick! Don't you remember?"

Willie reached for a box, dug out a torn copy of Amazing Spiderman ***146, and traced his finger up and down Scorpion's tail in a way that made Mick the Mick uncomfortable. So he reached out and slapped 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 bags 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 a.s.s off. His whole a.s.s. You want one of them creepy p.o.o.p bags hanging on your belt?"

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."

Mick the Mick rolled his eyes.

"You think Tommy the Fence is going to buy a T-rex skull? How we even gonna get it out of there, Willie? You gonna put it in your pocket?"

"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 mid-stomp.

"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, Mick. 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 thinner. He wanted to light them up, watch them burn. But insurance took forever. There were investigations, forms to fill out, waiting periods.

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 were.

"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 Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards.

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 n.o.body 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 cla.s.s trip. Made a kind of sense then to not bother with locks. n.o.body 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 c.r.a.p."

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 b.u.t.tocks. The cons would trade him around like cigarettes.

Mick the Mick ducked into a crouch, ready to run for the nearest exit. He saw Willie standing by a big arched doorway with his hand on a light switch.

"There," Willie said, grinning. "That's better."

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 banner proclaiming the name of the exhibit: Elder G.o.ds and Lost Races of South Central Pennsylvania.

"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 as 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.

Ah-ha. 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 Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards, they arrived at an irrefutable conclusion."

"Hey, Willie said, grinning. "Sounds like the alien voice from Earth versus the Flying Saucers."

"The ancient artifact before you once belonged to an ancient shaman."

"What's a shaman, Mick?"

Mick the Mick remembered seeing something about that on TV once. "I think he's a kind of a witch doctor. But forget about -"

"A shaman, for those of you who don't know, is something of a tribal wise man, what the less sophisticated among you might call a 'witch doctor.' "

"Witch doctor? Cooool."

Mick the Mick stepped over to see what the voice was talking about. Under the gla.s.s he saw a three-foot metal staff with a small globe at each end.

"The eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards have further determined that the object is none other an ancient shaman's scepter of power."

Willie looked a Mick the Mick with wide eyes. "Did you hear that? A scepter of power! Is that like He-Man's Power Sword? He-Man was really strong, but he had hair like a girl. Is the scepter of power like a power sword, Mick?"

"No, it's more like a magic wand, but forget -"

"The less sophisticated among you might refer to a scepter of power as a 'magic wand,' and in a sense it functioned as such."

"A magic wand! Like in the Harry Potter movies? I love those movies, and I've always wanted a magic wand! Plus I get crazy hot thoughts about Hermoine. She's a real fox. Kinda like Drew Barrymore. In E.T. Hey, why does the wand have a deep groove in it?"

Mick the Mick looked again and noticed the deep groove running its length.

"Note, please, the deep groove running the length of the scepter of power. The eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards believe that to be what is knows as a fuller...

A fuller? Mick thought. Looks like a blood channel.

"...which the less sophisticated among you might call a 'blood channel.' The eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards believe this ancient scepter of power might have been used by its shaman owner to perform sacred religious ceremonies - specifically, the crushing of skulls and ritual disemboweling."

Mick the Mick got a chill. He hoped Nate the Nose never got his hands on something like this.

"What's disemboweling, Mick?"

"When someone cuts out your intestines."

"How do you dooky, then? Like squeezing a toothpaste tube?"

"You don't dooky, Willie. You die."

"Cool! Can I have the magic wand, Mick? Can I?"

Mick the Mick didn't answer. He'd noticed something engraved near the end of the far tip. He leaned closer, squinting until it came into focus.

Sears.

What the-?

He stepped back for a another look at the scepter of power and - "A curtain rod ... it's a freakin' curtain rod!"

Willie looked at him like he was crazy. "Curtain rod? Didn't you hear the man? It's, like, a magic wand, and - hey, what's that over there?"

Mick the Mick slapped at Willie's kidney as he pa.s.sed but missed because he couldn't take his eyes off the Sears scepter of power. Maybe they could steal it, return it to Sears, and get a brand new one. That wouldn't help much with Nate the Nose, but Mick the Mick did need a new curtain rod. His old one had broken, and his drapes were attached to the wall with forks. That made Thursdays - spaghetti night - particularly messy.

"WELCOME!" boomed the same voice as Willie stopped before another display. "What you see before you 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."

"Hey, Mick y'gotta see this."

After some biblical thinking, Mick the Mick spared the rod and moved along.

"We know little about this ancient lost race but, after careful examination by the eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards, they arrived at an irrefutable conclusion: The artifact before you was used by an ancient shaman of this lost race to perform surrogate sacrifices. (For those of you unfamiliar with the term 'shaman,' please return to the previous display.)"

"I know what a shaman is, 'cause you just told me," Willie said. "But what's a surrogate-?"

"A surrogate sacrifice was an image that was sacrificed instead of a real person. Before you is a statuette of a woman carved by the ancient lost race from a yet-to-be-identified flesh-colored substance. Note the head is missing. This is because the statuette was beheaded instead of the human it represented."