Trapped!

by James Ponti

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “He’s one of the representatives for the Russian government in talks with the US about treaties and agreements regarding where and how much we fish the oceans.”

  I laughed. “No, I mean what does it mean in regard to the FBI and Morozov? Are they going to arrest him?”

  He shook his head. “We don’t have enough for that. Besides, we don’t want him to know that we know who he is. They’re looking for him now, and as soon as they locate him, we’ll have a team follow him around the clock. That means they’ll know if he’s anywhere near you two.”

  “I thought you weren’t worried about that,” Margaret said.

  “Well, now I’m even less worried,” he replied.

  We said good-bye to Marcus, and he headed over to the Hoover Building to find out all he could about Andrei Morozov. Once we’d bagged all the balls, Margaret locked them up in a storage shed by the field house (the coach had given her a spare key so that she could practice whenever she wanted), and we started walking home.

  Despite Marcus’s many assurances about our safety, I looked over my shoulder every thirty seconds or so to make sure no one was following us. At one point I was suspicious of an elderly man walking his dog, and I also gave the evil eye to a young mother pushing a stroller.

  “You don’t have to worry,” Margaret said. “The FBI has a team following him.”

  “Actually,” I pointed out, “they’ve got a team looking for him so that they can follow him. Which means, at the moment, he could be anywhere.”

  “This case is making you paranoid,” Margaret said, reading my reaction.

  “You know what they say,” I responded. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re not being followed.”

  We were almost home when Margaret’s phone buzzed. When she checked her message, she seemed surprised.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  She didn’t respond. I don’t think she was ignoring me so much as she was distracted and hadn’t really heard me.

  “Is it from Marcus?” I asked a bit louder. “Is something wrong?”

  She hesitated before shaking her head. “No. Nothing.”

  We took a few more steps, and she just stared out into space as she walked.

  “I’m a pretty good detective,” I reminded her. “I even got an award from the FBI.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Well, it doesn’t take a detective to know that something’s bothering you,” I replied. “So why don’t you tell me what it is?”

  She stopped for a moment, trying to figure out how to answer.

  She took a deep breath. “I just got an e-mail that surprised me. That’s all.”

  “What does it say?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet.”

  I was even more confused now.

  “I just know it’s about my parents,” she continued. “My birth parents.”

  9.

  Helix 23

  “YOU GOT AN E-MAIL ABOUT your birth parents ?” I asked, confused, assuming that I’d somehow misheard what she said.

  She nodded.

  “How’s that even possible?”

  She looked around to make sure no one could hear us. “I’ll tell you in the Underground.”

  The Underground was the room in my basement that we’d turned into the headquarters for Florian Bates Investigations. It’s where we went to brainstorm ideas, work on cases, and discuss things in private. I’m pretty sure it was the “discuss things in private” feature that was appealing to her at the moment.

  “We’re all alone right now,” I said.

  She looked down the street toward her house and shook her head. “No. Not out here.”

  Margaret desperately wanted to find out whatever she could about the couple who left her—“abandoned” is the word she typically used—at a firehouse when she was only a few days old. She loved her adoptive parents and wouldn’t have traded them for anything. But she still wanted to know her full story.

  And that was a problem, because her full story wasn’t a good one.

  Margaret’s birth father was Nicolae Nevrescu—a notorious criminal known as Nic the Knife. I had discovered this during an earlier case and had been sworn to secrecy. (Technically I’d been threatened to secrecy, but I agreed with him because we both wanted the same thing—to protect Margaret.)

  Nic the Knife was determined to keep her sheltered from the life he inhabited. He felt that any connection between him and her was dangerous. That’s why I was worried about the e-mail. What if someone from that world had found her? What if the e-mail was from someone willing to use Margaret as a way to hurt him?

  Neither of us said a word as we entered my house. A note inside my front door said that my parents were at the grocery store and would be back soon. We went down the stairs and into the Underground. Margaret plopped into an old, comfy chair that Florian Bates Investigations had inherited when we had gotten new living room furniture, and I sat at my computer, trying not to seem too nervous.

  “Okay,” I said, bracing myself for a revelation. “Who’s it from?”

  She handed me her phone, and there was an e-mail from Helix 23.

  “What’s Helix Twenty-Three?” I asked.

  “It’s a genetics laboratory. I read about them on a blog for adopted children and thought I’d give it a try. You put your saliva in a vial and send it in. Seven weeks later you get a full DNA report.”

  “You did this seven weeks ago?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t tell me anything about it?”

  She gave me a funny look but didn’t say anything.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re a really great detective, Florian,” she said. “And an amazing friend.”

  She paused for a moment, and I said, “Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ coming in here?”

  “But . . . I don’t think you really want me to find my birth parents.”

  Her words stung because she was right. I didn’t want her to find them even though I knew it meant more to her than almost anything. And the fact that I had a good reason didn’t take the hurt out of what she said. I felt like a terrible friend.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked her, careful not to deny something that we both knew was true.

  “Mostly, it’s a feeling,” she said. “Whenever it comes up, you seem reluctant to work on it.” She motioned to the caseboard we’d made on one wall trying to piece together the mystery of how she wound up at the firehouse. “We solve most of our cases pretty quickly, but this one has been stalled for a long time.”

  “True,” I admitted. “But it’s not because I’m reluctant. It’s an incredibly difficult case, and we don’t have much to go on. Besides, wasn’t I the one who figured out that you were born at the hospital at Howard University?”

  “Yes, you were,” she said. “And I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I’m not upset with you. I just don’t think you’re in love with the idea of me finding out the truth.”

  After a brief silence, I nodded. “I will admit that I’m worried you might find out something bad. I don’t want you to be hurt.”

  “I understand,” she replied, letting me off the hook a little. “You’re a detective and you’re a friend, and sometimes those things are at odds with each other. But I’m going to find them, either with or without you. That’s why I didn’t tell you what I’d done.”

  “I didn’t know you went on a blog for adopted children either,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, it’s all kind of complicated,” she replied.

  I was tempted to tell her everything right then and there before she opened the e-mail. But I didn’t. I knew Margaret well enough to know that she would want to talk to Nic the Knife, and that wouldn’t be good. Her safety still outweighed my sense of guilt.

  On the plus side, I was pretty certain DNA couldn’t connect her directly to an organized crim
e family. In fact, part of me wondered (hoped unrealistically) if learning more about her ancestry might be enough to satisfy whatever it was she needed to learn.

  “Well, I think it’s a terrific idea,” I said.

  “Really?” she said.

  “Of course,” I answered. “Open it up and tell me what it says.”

  She looked at her phone and took a deep breath. Her finger almost touched the screen, but it wavered for a moment and she pulled it back.

  “You do it,” she said, thrusting her phone toward me. “I’m too nervous.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “We’re talking TOAST here,” she said. “My genes are the ultimate example of the Theory of All Small Things. This report has my smallest characteristics—the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up my DNA.”

  “But there’s no mystery,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “With TOAST you add up all the small things to get the answer,” I said. “But the chromosomes add up to you, so they’re great no matter what they are.”

  She smiled at that. “But they also point to where I come from, and that is a mystery.”

  The e-mail had a link that connected back to the Helix 23 website. I clicked it and opened a full rundown of Margaret’s genetic history. On the first page was a map of the world with little blooms of color where her ancestors had come from. Next to it was a list with percentages of different ethnicities.

  “Forty-two percent West African,” I said, reading off one line. “Twenty-eight percent of that is from Ghana and fourteen from Cameroon.”

  “Ghana and Cameroon,” she repeated as if committing it to her permanent memory.

  “Eleven percent North African,” I added. “Twenty-five percent Eastern European and twenty-two percent Southern European, probably from Italy.”

  She looked up at me, stunned. “Wait, what?” She snatched the phone from me to see for herself. “That means one of my parents is white.”

  This hadn’t even occurred to me as being important. I was so concerned about who her father was—a ruthless criminal—that I’d forgotten to factor in what he wasn’t: African-American. Margaret had grown up in a family with two black parents. This was a significant discovery.

  “Did you ever consider that was a possibility?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I mean, I guess I knew it was possible, but I look a lot like my parents. People are always surprised to find out I’m adopted. So I just figured my birth parents looked like my parents too.”

  She sat there staring at her phone. Obviously, I’d known that Margaret was African-American since I met her. But despite everything we’d been through together, we’d never really talked much about race.

  “Does that bother you?” I asked.

  She thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think ‘bother’ is the right word,” she said. “But it does surprise me.” There was a mirror in one corner of the room, and she got up to look at it. She studied her face for a moment, trying to reconcile the girl that she saw reflected with the information in her file.

  “Does it change the way you think about yourself?”

  She looked at her image for a moment more and then turned to face me.

  “No,” she replied. “When people see me, they see my skin color. I’m black. My parents are black. That’s my identity. But it does change the story of the firehouse.” She pointed to the caseboard where we’d laid out the information we knew about her. “When Captain Abraham told us about the night I was abandoned, he said that I was dropped off by a young man who was African-American.”

  “Right,” I said.

  She looked through the report. “But according to this, my African DNA comes through my mother’s side, which means my father’s white. So he wasn’t the one who dropped me off.”

  “True,” I said.

  “There’s another person in the mystery for us to find,” she replied. “Maybe he was a friend.”

  “We should put it up on the board,” I suggested.

  “It also gives me a possible motive.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “Not everybody’s comfortable with white people and black people having babies together. That may have played a role in why they gave me up.”

  In this she was absolutely right. Nic the Knife had told me that this was exactly what happened. He wanted to marry Margaret’s birth mother, but his family—the crime family—wouldn’t have accepted the marriage or their daughter.

  Now that the initial shock had worn off, Margaret started studying her report. We spent about twenty minutes going through it, and it was fascinating. Then she clicked a button sending a reply to the company.

  “What’s that?” I asked her.

  “You click that if you want to be notified of any matches,” she said.

  “Matches?”

  “If any relatives have submitted their DNA, they can tell,” she explained. “And they’ll send me an e-mail asking if I want to reach out to them.”

  Suddenly I was worried again.

  “For all we know, my parents may be looking for me too,” she said. “And if they use Helix Twenty-Three, I’ll know.”

  I tried my best to be a good friend and smile, but I doubt it was very convincing.

  10.

  Operation Barbara Gordon

  I HAD TROUBLE SLEEPING THAT night.

  There were a lot of things on my mind, but mostly I was bothered by the fact that Margaret had kept her DNA test a secret. It hurt. Not because her reasoning was wrong but because she was absolutely right. It also made me think about how much it would upset her if she ever learned the secret I was keeping.

  She might never forgive me.

  The next day at school I was determined to prove that I was a good friend. No matter what she wanted to discuss, I’d be supportive and understanding. I was ready to do anything except tell her that her birth father was a notorious criminal. Our first chance to really talk came in the cafeteria at lunch.

  “I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to be one hundred percent honest,” she said as we sat at our usual table. “You’ve got to promise.”

  “Okay,” I answered. “I promise.”

  She took a breath and looked me square in the eye. “Did you tell me everything I was doing wrong with my penalty kicks?”

  “What?”

  “You said I was pointing at the spot with the logo on the ball, taking a couple extra glances at my target, and adjusting my shoulders right before I took the kick. I just want to make sure that there wasn’t anything else.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Very,” she said.

  “After all that we went through this weekend, that’s the thing that’s been troubling you? Not Russian spies? Not your DNA?”

  “The FBI’s keeping an eye on the spy, and there’s nothing I can do about my DNA. But if I’m telegraphing penalty kicks, that’s a problem I can fix. So did you tell me everything?”

  “Yes,” I assured her. “Everything.”

  “Good.” She took a few bites of her sandwich before she spoke again. “Can I ask you another question?”

  Once again I prepared for something important. “Anything.”

  “What’s your favorite Serie A team?” she asked, referring to the top Italian soccer league.

  I accepted that there would be no meaningful discussion. Soccer was apparently as deep as we were going to go.

  “Juventus,” I answered.

  She considered this for a moment. “Their fans call them Juve, right?”

  “Yes. Or the bianconeri, which means ‘the white and blacks,’ because of the stripes on their uniforms.”

  “Thanks,” she replied as though this was important information.

  Neither of us said anything for a moment until I asked, “Out of curiosity, why do you want to know?”

  “I figure that if I’m a quarter Italian, then I should have a favorite Serie A t
eam. And since you’re my best friend, it should be the same team as yours.”

  And there it was. She turned soccer into something deep and meaningful. That’s Margaret for you. I always seemed to get caught off guard with her. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that we now had an additional connection with regard to our heritage.

  “If you’d like, I can teach you a couple of the cheers in Italian.”

  She kept her focus on her sandwich but nodded. “I’d like that. Who knows? Maybe you and I are related.”

  “That would be eccezionale,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Awesome.”

  She smiled, and we both ate quietly as the table filled with our classmates and conversation turned to normal seventh-grade topics.

  After school we walked out the front entrance, and I scanned the rows of cars and parents to make sure Andrei Morozov wasn’t hiding among them. He wasn’t. There was, however, a black SUV parked across the street with an FBI agent keeping an eye on things. This was expected. What wasn’t expected was the other FBI agent leaning against his maroon hybrid, wearing jeans and a Kansas City Monarchs baseball jersey.

  “Marcus, what are you doing here?” asked Margaret, a bit annoyed, as we approached him. “You can’t follow me everywhere to make sure I’m safe.”

  “That’s not the reason I came.”

  “Oh, really,” she said, disbelieving. “Then why? Did you suddenly want to catch up on the latest fashion trends among thirteen-year-olds? Are you thinking of enrolling in middle school?”

  “Actually, I’m on my way to investigate some possible suspects in our case, and I thought you two might want to join me. But if you’d rather go and do your homework, I totally get that.”

  She momentarily slumped in embarrassment, and I took advantage of it by claiming the passenger seat.

  “I vote for chasing suspects,” I said as I quickly hopped in and buckled my seat belt.

  “Margaret?” he asked.

  “Sorry for snapping at you,” she said. “I want to check out suspects too.”

  “Good,” he replied. “And I’m sorry you feel like everybody’s worried about you, but the truth is, we are. No matter what else is going on, we’re going to do everything we can to keep you safe. We’d be crazy not to.”