The Tesla Legacy

by Rebecca Cantrell

  Dirk looked that way only when he had girl trouble, a condition that cropped up about every six months. Dirk had commitment issues.

  “Long day?” she asked.

  He shrugged and looked around the empty corridor. “Better than yours, by the looks of it.”

  She filled him in on the situation, then took the elevator down. This time she didn’t feel so awed by the lobby. The people here weren’t different from anyone else, except they had more money to burn.

  She turned up her collar and started walking toward Grand Central in the warm night. Even though it was late, people swarmed around her on the sidewalk, some dressed in formal evening wear, others in grungy torn jeans and covered in piercings. Lucy would look like that if their mother weren’t so strict.

  She tapped out a text message to an informant she’d been cultivating at Grand Central. If she didn’t get a response, this was likely a wasted trip. Still, it felt good to be walking and actually getting somewhere instead of just wearing down the carpet.

  A few blocks later, she got an answer.

  Good. He was sober enough to type, and he hadn’t lost or hocked the phone.

  She arranged to meet him in front of Pershing Square restaurant. She was starving, and he likely was, too.

  Then she hailed a cab, remembering to ask for a receipt. This was definitely a business expense, and Tesla would have to pay for it.

  She climbed out in front of the terminal and jogged across the street. The green Pershing Square sign was turned off, the chairs up on the tables inside. They were always closed this late, something she should have remembered.

  A gaunt figure in an Army green jacket emerged from the shadows next to her and grabbed her elbow. She resisted the impulse to smack him because she recognized him from the smell. “Rufus?”

  “The same, baby.”

  She looked at his thin, leathery cheeks, faded brown eyes, and scraggly black beard. “Not your baby, Roof.”

  “You might be, you find out what I have to tell.”

  “What you got for me?”

  He rubbed his thumb against his fingertips in the universal sign for money.

  “Let’s get some food into you first.” She worried about him, even though she knew she shouldn’t.

  Once, he’d told her that at night he slept on a bench in Central Park in the summer and next to a warm subway grate in the winter. He slid around the city on his own paths, always one step ahead. At least tonight he looked mostly sober.

  A few minutes later they were at an all-night diner, drinking coffee and waiting for two orders of bacon and eggs.

  Under the fluorescent lights, Rufus looked even more bedraggled. Grit had settled into the deep lines on his forehead and cheeks, and what was left of his hair didn’t look as if it had been washed or combed since Obama was first elected president.

  He’d seen some hard living, had Rufus. But that was why she needed him. He’d been panhandling around Grand Central so long he was practically invisible, and he knew everything that went on there. For a price, he’d share.

  “What you got?” She fell into his rhythm of speech.

  “Your man was attacked today in the terminal.”

  She knew that. “What you know about it?”

  “He had moves.” Rufus made a karate-chop motion in the air.

  She slid a ten across the table and resisted the urge to ask for a receipt. So far, he hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know, but it was good to keep him on the payroll so he’d keep trying.

  “Word in the station is, he took out two cops and ran off.”

  “Has he been around since?” she asked.

  “Maybe.” Rufus leaned back so the waitress could set a loaded white plate in front of him.

  Vivian gave him another ten.

  Rufus scooped up the bill, then cut his bacon in half with his fork and ate it, his movements surprisingly dainty.

  Vivian usually ate bacon with her fingers, but she decided she’d better up her table manners if Rufus was more refined than she was.

  “Saw a guy go into the tunnels.” Rufus took a long sip of coffee. “Not a homeless guy. He dressed in black, clean-shaven. He went down in the tunnels off Track 42, smooth as you like. Never came back.”

  Vivian stifled a curse. This was definitely about Tesla.

  Too late to call, but she texted Tesla a warning and told him to be on the lookout for a guy dressed in black, maybe the one who attacked him, in the tunnels.

  Tesla didn’t answer, but she didn’t expect him to. He kept his phone in that stupid pouch, and collected his messages whenever he felt like it. Besides, he was probably asleep. Like she should be.

  But she still worried.

  Chapter 16

  Joe’s phone rang. He groaned and rolled over in bed. Too early. It rang again, and Edison nudged his arm. Time to get up.

  Could the bike couriers be delivering his parts already? If so, he had to get up to the clock to meet them quickly, or they’d take the delivery back. Bike messengers waited for no man.

  He yanked the phone off its charger. “Tesla.”

  “Still sleeping?” Celeste’s breathless voice sounded surprised. Joe had taken to waking up early since he’d moved underground.

  “Late night.” Joe rubbed the stubble on his chin and yawned.

  “Carousing?” She laughed.

  He filled her in on the near mugging. With his luck, it was probably already in the newspapers or on a blog somewhere, so lying wouldn’t do any good.

  “Tell me about this Detective Bailey,” she wheedled.

  Celeste was never jealous, always urging him to find a partner, as if it would be easy to find a woman who wanted to live underground with a man who couldn’t go anywhere. As if he wanted anyone but Celeste—the Celeste of his twenties, when they were both young and healthy and easily in love. “Not much to tell.”

  “Don’t be like that. I want details.”

  “She just took my statement.” Joe checked the time. Already ten. He needed to get showered and shaved.

  “Is she cute? She sounds Irish. I bet she has a great accent.”

  “She’s a cop.”

  “Cops can be cute. Like Beckett on Castle.”

  “Beckett’s not a cop—she’s an actress.” He didn’t know where this was going, but he was plenty uncomfortable along the way.

  “Is Detective Bailey cute like Beckett?”

  Edison barked from the front door. He needed to go outside, and pronto by the sound of it. Joe stuffed his feet into a pair of slippers. “I have to take Edison out.”

  “Poor baby!” Celeste said. He wasn’t sure if she was talking about him or the dog.

  He thudded down the stairs to where Edison waited by the front door. He pulled on a sweatshirt, slipped into his running shoes, and took the dog out.

  Edison raced ahead of him to the door that led out to the long tunnel. That’s where they usually went. Joe trotted along after him, stopping to enter the long string of numbers that would open the door.

  With a grateful bark, Edison bounded through the door and out into the dimly lit tunnel. His silhouette paused at the end of the tunnel, before he veered off to mark the side of the tunnel, the beginning of his outside territory.

  Joe yawned and trudged after him. He picked up the bottle of odor remover that he kept right at that spot and sprayed it onto Edison’s pee. He wasn’t sure if he believed that it broke down the odor on a bacterial level like it said on the package, but he had to admit that it kept the smell at bay.

  Edison stopped to sniff the ground. His ears perked up. Probably rats. The dog could track a rat for a mile, but he never attacked them. Joe was grateful for that. He kept Edison’s rabies shots up to date, but you never knew what other diseases tunnel and sewer rats might carry.

  He whistled for the dog. Edison barked once, a sign that he wanted to be taken seriously. He probably wanted more time to run around.

  “Not in the cards today, buddy,” Jo
e called. “Come on.”

  Casting a glance over his shoulder, the dog loped to Joe’s side.

  Joe followed Edison’s look, but he didn’t see anything. But Edison often saw things he didn’t in the tunnels. Dogs had much better low-light vision than people.

  Probably a rat.

  But the back of his neck prickled while he stood at the end of his tunnel, entering in his security code. He and Edison went through, and he swung the door shut. Just before it closed, a faint crinkling sound came from the tunnel.

  Maybe a stray breeze blowing an empty candy wrapper across the tracks, or maybe something more. He was glad the door was closed, and they were safely on the inside.

  He checked his phone messages. Vivian had left him a warning about a man who might have followed him into the tunnels. That would have been handy to know a few minutes earlier and made him feel even more worried about Edison’s reaction. Maybe someone was lurking outside his back door.

  His phone buzzed, and Joe jumped. It was the bike courier. Joe had to be at the clock at 11:30 (cyan, cyan: red, black) to get the various metal bits he’d need to use to assemble Nikola Tesla’s automaton. Joe grabbed a quick breakfast, then got some actual work done before taking the elevator up to meet the man with his parts.

  Evaline gave him a quick wave when he came into the information booth. She was with a customer. Joe let himself out into the busy concourse. Lots of folks hurrying around, out for their lunch breaks. His heart beat a little faster when he glanced at the spot where he had been knocked down, and Edison crowded closer as if he sensed it, too.

  He leaned against the booth to wait. Edison sat next to him. Joe looked around the giant room. His gaze lingered on the blue ceiling. He loved the constellations. He’d read they were painted in mirror image, either an artist’s error or a representation of divine perspective—God looking down from the other side. Today he couldn’t enjoy the graceful constellations. He felt as if he were being watched. Hundreds of people walked and stood in the giant room, and any of them might be watching him or not watching him. Maybe his feelings were just his body reacting to being back where he had been attacked yesterday. Or maybe they were serious. Nothing much he could do about them either way.

  A sweaty guy in spandex clomped in. He wore specialized biking shoes that rang against the marble. Under his arm was a cardboard package. Joe’s parts. Joe waved him over, signed for the package, and retreated down the elevator.

  He had work to catch up on and the GCT video surveillance archive to hack to see if he could get a good look at the guy who tried to take his suitcase. But he knew he wasn’t going to do anything until he’d taken on his father’s challenge and assembled Nikola’s automaton.

  He had to know what his father had left for him.

  Chapter 17

  Ash liked The Campbell Apartment with its tall, open-beamed ceilings, bank of windows looking out onto the station, thick patterned carpet, and the air of old New York that hung like an invisible fog. He ordered a Prohibition Punch—a brandy snifter full of rum, Grand Marnier, fruit juice, and champagne. Prohibition couldn’t have tasted this smooth. It would have been harsher, forbidden, dangerous.

  Joe Tesla walked in with a leather satchel slung over his shoulder. He looked harmless, like a bike messenger or a college student. His yellow Lab walked next to him. The animal wore a blue vest, like a seeing-eye dog, reminding him of Joe’s disability.

  Even in the soft golden light of the bar, Joe’s skin looked white as milk, underlining again the reality that he never got out into the sun. It was hard to remember the tan young man who had climbed to forbidden heights on the Golden Gate Bridge.

  Joe exchanged glances with the bartender and took a red velvet chair opposite Ash. The dog sat next to him, its yellow muzzle raised as it studied Ash alertly, clearly sizing him up as friend or foe. It didn’t growl, but it didn’t wag its tail either, so he didn’t know where he stood in the dog’s estimation.

  He voiced his condolences, and Joe thanked him politely, clearly as eager as he was to get through the formalities.

  “Nice dog.” He petted the dog’s head and neck, sliding his fingers under the animal’s collar and back out again. The dog didn’t move or object. Good.

  “His name’s Edison,” Joe said. “Probably named in honor of all the dogs the great man electrocuted.”

  Ash was familiar with the rivalry between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison over the safety of direct current, Edison’s baby, and alternating current, Tesla’s idea, the one that ended up being adopted around the world. Edison had tried to show how unsafe alternating current was by electrocuting animals with it, including dogs and cats captured off the streets.

  “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” Ash said.

  “Dog omelet?” Joe grimaced. “I thought you were always on the side of the natural world.”

  “Domestic dogs aren’t any more a part of the natural world than PCBs. Or overpopulation,” Ash said. Joe was hopelessly naïve.

  The waiter arrived with a drink and a plate of sliders. The waiter grinned at Joe like an old friend, then hand fed a meat patty to the dog after setting the plate on their table. Apparently, Joe was so well known here that he didn’t even need to order. They knew what he, and his dog, wanted. He probably didn’t need money here either, probably had an open line on his credit card at the bar. Ash felt a stab of envy.

  Joe gestured to the tiny hamburgers, but Ash, a vegetarian, shook his head.

  “I read about your ribbon cutting online,” Joe said. “The plant sounds like a worthy cause.”

  “All my causes are worthy.” He palmed a GPS tracker from his pocket. Smaller than his thumbnail, it should provide him with data on the dog’s location for up to two months. It was even waterproof. From what he’d heard, the dog went everywhere Joe did, so tracking one meant he’d have tabs on the other as well. “If I don’t work to clean things up, people like the Bakers are going to wipe out this world. A few inconvenienced homeless people here or there are insignificant compared to that.”

  Joe took a long sip of his drink as if he were swallowing his response to Ash’s words, which he probably was, because he did not have a long-term perspective. He was a small-minded thinker.

  Ash kept his hand under the table and worked the chip down to his fingertips, peeling off the strip that covered the adhesive side. Under the guise of petting the dog, he stuck the chip to the inside of its collar. Even if Joe found the little device, he’d have a hard time tracing it to Ash. Lots of people probably petted the dog in the course of a day.

  “What’s in the bag?” Ash picked up his drink again.

  Joe’s blue eyes shone as they had before he dragged Ash up the Golden Gate Bridge. “Surprises.”

  Ash’s heart beat faster, but he kept calm and waited him out, which took all of a minute. Joe was clearly bursting to tell someone his news. He was like a child, although not, sadly, like Ash’s child. Mariella was never excited to tell him anything.

  “I acquired plans from my father for a mysterious device.” Joe sipped his drink and wolfed down a slider.

  Ash held his breath. Was Joe going to pull the Oscillator out of his bag? He could offer to buy it, or take it and run. Once he got outside, Joe couldn’t follow. “What kind of device?”

  “One that hasn’t seen the light of day in quite some time, I’ll warrant.” Joe unbuckled his satchel and took out an object the size of a small flashlight.

  Ash stared at it for a moment, trying to make out details in the dim light. It didn’t look like the pictures he had seen of Tesla’s patented Oscillator. He leaned in for a closer look.

  The object looked like a tiny man made of metal. The man had a round stomach, a round head with a painted handlebar mustache, and short metal legs that ended in feet clad in metal spats. It wasn’t the damn Oscillator. It was a doll. “It looks like Tik-Tok of Oz.”

  Joe grinned. “I thought I was the only one who read that book.”

&nb
sp; “Mariella likes the Oz books.” Or at least she sat still during them. Ash wasn’t sure what she liked and disliked. It was hard to tell. And, like Mariella herself, this tiny man wasn’t what Ash had hoped for. Trust Joe to disappoint.

  “It winds up.” Joe turned a crank on the contraption’s back, and it produced clicking sounds.

  Then he let go of the lever and watched the automaton. Ash was struck by the enthusiasm and energy in his gaze. Joe might be down, but he definitely wasn’t out. Ash found that this simple optimism made him hate Joe even more.

  Maybe this doll wasn’t the Oscillator, but it was a curious object, one Ash hadn’t expected. A surprise now and then was a good thing, he told himself even as he clenched and unclenched his hand under the table. But where in the hell was the Oscillator?

  The figure lifted its metal hand. Its tiny fingers were curled around a stick. At first he thought the man was brandishing a gun, but it didn’t have a stock or a barrel. “What’s he holding?”

  “I think it’s a pointer, like teachers use.” Joe’s eyes danced.

  The end of the pointer lit up red, and the stick made a series of precise movements. Then the automaton’s stored energy ran out, and it stood still.

  Ash marshaled up his politeness and asked the obvious question. “What’s he pointing at?”

  Joe laughed. “I have no idea. That’s the best part.”

  Ash didn’t think so. The best part would be if he actually had the Oscillator hidden in his fat little belly, but there simply wasn’t room. “Did you build him yourself?”

  Joe took another sip of his drink before answering. “I did. My father left me detailed plans for it, but they weren’t his. They were drawn by the great man himself.”

  “Nikola Tesla?” Ash asked before he could stop himself.

  Joe’s lips pursed as if he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. He’d always hated being a Tesla.

  “So, you have plans drawn by Nikola Tesla?” Leave it to Joe to have built the most useless device first.

  “Just plans for this.” Joe wound the automaton up again.