The Tesla Legacy

by Rebecca Cantrell

  “Were you in the elevator when I texted?” Rosa tucked her waist-length hair behind her shoulder.

  “Based on the timing, you knew that before you texted.”

  “Mariella is asleep,” Rosa said. “Surely you don’t wish to wake her.”

  He very much wished to wake her, so that he could at least say good night, but Mariella was a poor sleeper and might be awake for hours if he did. He couldn’t let her suffer—something else that Rosa knew.

  “She’s been unavailable for the last three visits,” he said.

  “A cold, a meeting with her therapist. I told you the reasons.” Rosa’s brown eyes opened wide and guileless. That look had gotten her full custody from the male judge. He couldn’t blame him. It had gotten her a lot more out of Ash.

  “You did.” He’d logged each missed meeting with his lawyer, in the hopes that he might be able to use them as evidence that Rosa was deliberately keeping him from his daughter, but it would be a hard sell. Colds, therapy, early bedtime—those were all reasonable excuses, even if they did pile up. “But if I go a month without seeing her, she barely seems to recognize me.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about that.” Rosa set her book down on the green velvet and crossed her arms. “Maybe you shouldn’t skip visits.”

  The last visit he’d missed was six months before. Like him, she’d probably logged it. “No matter how busy I am, I almost always keep to my scheduled visits.”

  “Such a busy man you are.” Her eyes narrowed. “Cleaning up the whole wide world.”

  “I’m trying to protect other children, so they don’t end up damaged like Mariella.” He was going to make the world a better place for his daughter. Even if she would never know or understand it.

  “She is not damaged!” Rosa lowered her voice. “She is who she is. She’s not some kind of rifle sight—something you can use to aim yourself at a cause.”

  Ash didn’t bother to respond.

  Rosa unfolded her long, slim legs and stood in front of him. “You use her as an excuse to be ruthless, a way to justify not caring about anyone or anything that might get in the way of your goals.”

  She must have seen the homeless-shelter protest on the news. She claimed to care about the fall of every sparrow, never once stopping to take in the big picture. Hard to believe that he’d once found her so appealing.

  His secret phone buzzed in his pocket, so he cut the familiar argument short and retreated to the elevator, texting his driver on the way down.

  Spooky didn’t disappoint him. Spooky understood about disruption, about risk, about sometimes sacrificing the proverbial sparrow to the greater good.

  Chapter 20

  Joe set his teacup on the coffee table, then plopped next to Edison in the parlor, watching the dog snooze in front of the fire. They’d played for a long time, and the dog was worn out. They’d stayed inside the tunnel in front of the house because Joe hadn’t felt safe enough to go play in their usual spot after the incident on the train.

  He cracked open his laptop and wrote up the details of his encounter with the man by the clock—how he reminded Joe of the man who’d attacked him, how he’d followed him onto the platform and boarded the train. He didn’t mention when he’d gotten off the train, just that he had. Deciding that was enough, he sent the email to Detective Bailey and blind copied Vivian. They could track the man in the outside world, and he would track him underground.

  Time to get started with that. He took a sip of tea and hacked into the surveillance footage for Grand Central. He’d done this often enough in the past that he could get in, back out, and cover his tracks in his sleep. He pulled up footage from Track 42 (green, blue) and followed the man back in time across other surveillance cameras. He had been wandering around in the concourse for hours before Joe spotted him. But he seemed to know exactly where the cameras were placed, and every single shot caught him looking away—head turned so far that his face was unrecognizable, or head tilted so far down that his face couldn’t be seen. The guy was clever.

  Joe pulled up the footage from the evening when the man had tried to take his suitcase. That man wore large sunglasses and a hat, plus he was moving too quickly to register properly. Pellucid’s facial recognition software wouldn’t be able to produce an identification.

  That left his experimental gait detection software. He loaded up clips of the man walking calmly, before he grabbed the suitcase and compared them to the man walking toward track 42 (green, blue). A match—both men had identical stride lengths and leg lengths, and their arms and feet moved in the same way when they walked or ran. Not enough to hold up in court, but enough to tell him that he hadn’t been paranoid—he’d been in danger. Still, an identification would have made everything a lot easier.

  He carried the automaton into his billiards room, the spot where he had built him, set him on the table’s green felt surface, wound him up, and watched him wave his pointer around. This creation was at the center of everything. His father’s warning had been attached to its blueprints, and the man on the train had come after him twice. But why?

  The automaton wound down, and Joe wound it up again, watching his waving arm. What if he was pointing at something, like a teacher at a blackboard? If Joe could figure out what the tiny man was pointing at, maybe he could figure out why his father had wanted him to build this automaton in the first place.

  First, he needed to make the movements clearer. Nikola Tesla claimed to have extraordinary eyesight, but Joe’s wasn’t that great. He took out his set of small screwdrivers and removed the automaton’s delicate arm. Soon, laid out on the table were a dozen tiny parts.

  Looking at the pieces gave him pause. He was altering Nikola Tesla’s original design on a hunch. That was practically the definition of hubris. He laughed, then remembered the scar on his father’s hand, the one that he had said was caused by hubris. Hubris, another word in the Tesla family lexicon.

  His hands moved as if they had a mind of their own as he plucked tiny pieces from the green felt and fitted them into the tiny arm. At the circus he’d worked with Jackson, a quiet man with long fingers who always smelled like engine oil and Brut aftershave. Jackson was responsible for keeping the carousel and the rides running. He’d taught Joe about machines. Before he’d gotten the scholarship from MIT, Joe had thought of leaving the circus to become a watchmaker, particularly because he knew that it would horrify his father. The Tesla genius thrown away on watches, even if Tesla himself had been a mechanical genius.

  His life would have been different, maybe better, if he had. He loved the contemplative nature of assembling simple, tiny pieces into intricate designs. Manhattan had watchmakers, too. Maybe he could find one who’d take him on as an apprentice. Or maybe he’d buy broken watches online and fix them so that they could be resold and go back to work in the world. He smiled at the headline: Multimillionaire Software Recluse Turns to Watch Repair.

  A quick glance at the grandfather clock told him it was two a.m. (blue). The concourse was officially closed. It would take a while to get everyone herded out, clean up the worst of the mess, and leave the hall empty and quiet. He would wait.

  He left the reassembled Tik-Tok in the center of the green felt, like a professor waiting for his class to arrive, and went to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. Edison, never one to sleep through the creak of the icebox’s door, trotted in. Joe had removed the interior and replaced it with a modern fridge to keep the period look but still have proper refrigeration. Considering the sound of that door was such a siren song for Edison, he wondered if he ought to replace the whole refrigerator.

  “Here to see if you can beg some food?” Joe asked him.

  Edison’s eyes went straight to the open refrigerator, and his tail gave a tiny wag. That was a yes.

  Joe laughed and pulled out a white paper-wrapped packet of shaved ham. Edison licked his lips. He gave the dog a piece before making himself a ham on rye with a pickle. They both went upstairs to the librar
y, Joe to catch up on some mindless TV, Edison to look mournful until he got more ham.

  Chapter 21

  Vivian dragged herself out of bed. She stumbled into her clothes as quietly as she could so as not to wake Lucy. Lucy shared her apartment with her, and she had an early class in the morning. Lucy woke up like a grizzly bear, a good reason to let her sleep.

  Vivian made it to Grand Central Terminal right before two a.m. The place had just closed up for the night, and a few people still milled around on the front steps. If she was lucky, Tesla’s credible threat might have hung out in the terminal until closing time, hoping to get another glimpse of him. If so, she intended to follow him home, maybe get his identity. Then she could turn the information over to Tesla and recommend that he give it to the police to follow up. He might not ask them for help, but she’d at least give him all the information she could.

  She hadn’t been waiting long when a man matching Tesla’s description and photo—tall, Asian, coordinated, wearing black—strolled out the front doors. She was across the street, half-hidden by the doorway of Pershing Square. Lots of men might fit that description, but she had a hunch that this was the guy.

  He looked both ways, then turned left. She intended to let him get a good lead on her, but he went right into the Chrysler Building. Interesting.

  She jogged over. She didn’t need to get close, because the lobby was lit up. Her guy chatted with the security guard as if he knew him, then swiped a card and headed for the elevators. So, he worked here. Even if she lost him, she could come back and stake out the building. Good. While she waited for him to return, she typed what she’d found into an email and sent it to herself. Nothing looked more natural than someone standing around texting these days.

  The man returned a few minutes later. He loped down the street like someone with no place to be. As the streets emptied, she had to leave more and more space between them. She was reaching the point where she’d have to close up the distance and risk being caught, or let him go.

  She decided on the latter. A few expensive cars were on the streets, but this wasn’t a friendly neighborhood. She cut over a block and headed back. She had a couple of miles to put behind her before she was home.

  The deserted streets kept her from dropping her guard, and she saw his shadow from half a block away. He’d doubled back, too. She slipped into an empty doorway, but she knew the game was up. Not a good place for a fight either. Nothing stirred on the street except for her and the man she’d been following.

  Near as she could tell, he hadn’t been carrying a gun, except maybe something small in a shoulder holster. It was too warm outside to wear a jacket without looking conspicuous, and he was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt that was too tight to hide anything underneath.

  She had a gun. She wore a loose blouse with a ruffle along the bottom that was the perfect size to hide a flat gun tucked into the back of her waistband. Cop-fashion, her sister called it. Vivian hated to use the gun, but she wasn’t going to take any crap either.

  With one sweaty hand, she reached back and pulled it out. She released the safety. He hesitated at the sound. He knew what it meant. Hopefully that would be enough.

  It wasn’t.

  He kept coming, but he raised his hands in the air. “I don’t know why you’re following me, lady.”

  He had a slight accent she couldn’t place. East coast, at least. “From where I’m standing, it looks like you’re following me.”

  He moved closer. “I’m trying to get home.”

  She stepped out into the light so he could see the gun, assess her stance, and know she meant business. She was in the middle of the sidewalk now, the streetlight full on her. “I think you’d better find a different way home.”

  He glided forward another step. If he came in any closer, she’d have to shoot. Life wasn’t like the movies where you could let someone get an arm’s length away from you before shooting. A gun was most useful as a distance weapon.

  If she pulled the trigger, she wouldn’t have time for a warning shot. She’d have to hit him. And, if he kept coming after that, she’d have to kill him. He didn’t look like someone who’d let a gunshot stop him from killing somebody. He looked like somebody who might just get pissed off.

  She kicked out, and her quarry slowed in surprise. He wasn’t close enough for her to kick him.

  But she wasn’t aiming for him. Her foot crashed against the side of a blue BMW M5. Its alarm wailed. People mostly ignored car alarms these days, but this was a damn expensive car on a street where its owner was probably nervous.

  Her assailant looked up when lights went on in the building next door. She could see him weighing his options. He might take her before she shot him, but he might not, and the appearance of someone else on the scene changed the odds.

  He shrugged and backed away. She didn’t lower the gun until he was around the corner. Then she stepped away from the BMW and tucked the gun under her shirt.

  A man in silk pajamas appeared in the doorway she’d just vacated. He brandished a baseball bat.

  “I saw the guy who kicked your car,” she said. “Do you want me to stay so you can file a police report?”

  His eyes flicked to the dent she’d made in his fender. She felt a pang of guilt, but better his insurance company covered the damage than that she had to shoot the guy she’d been following.

  “Did you get a good look at him?” he asked.

  “Better than you did.” She called a cab while he thought that over. At least he’d lowered the bat.

  She gave him a quick description of the guy. Maybe she’d get lucky and the cops would pull him in for damaging the car. Yeah, and maybe Santa Claus would give her a ride home in his sleigh.

  She took the cab.

  Chapter 22

  At three a.m. (red), Joe gathered up the automaton and took the elegant elevator up to the concourse. He hoped the guy who had been following him hadn’t somehow managed to evade Grand Central security and was still inside. Joe had kept an eye on the surveillance cameras while watching TV, and he’d seen only the regular nightly cleaning crew moving about the terminal.

  A few minutes later he and Edison were alone in the vast room. Illuminated stars on the ceiling glowed softly. He had read that the LEDs installed in 2010 were equipped with special light-blocking filters so that each star glowed with the same relative brightness as its counterpart out in space. He liked that.

  He carried Tik-Tok over to the corner under the constellation for Cancer the crab. Nikola Tesla was born on July 10 (cyan, black), which meant his astrological sign was Cancer. If Alan was right, and Nikola had spent nights here, walking the concourse alone, maybe Cancer would have special meaning for him, and maybe Joe’s father would have known that. Edison’s claws clicked against the marble as he walked, a sound Joe never heard during the noise and bustle of the day.

  With a clink, he set the metal man on the polished floor and lined him up with Beta Cancri, the brightest star in the constellation. He wound him up, each click loud in the empty room. Tik-Tok raised his arm. Joe had changed the simple red bulb on the end to a laser pointer. He hoped the little man’s arm might point to the Oscillator.

  But it didn’t.

  He moved the man to various locations around the terminal, trying all the stars of Cancer, then Hercules, and then each constellation in turn. He even climbed the information booth and positioned the man atop the clock, trying not to think about the fact that each face of the clock was made of high-grade polished opal and that Sotheby’s had put a replacement value on each face of between two and a half and five million dollars. He’d also heard that the clock faces were made of opalescent glass, which would make them significantly cheaper. He hoped the second explanation was true.

  Roger, the older gentleman who washed the floors, raised an eyebrow when he saw Joe crawling around with a doll, but he didn’t say anything. Joe officially had the run of the place, so he was allowed to be there, and he was considered
eccentric enough that nobody questioned him. Perks of being a crazy rich guy.

  By the time 5:30 a.m. (brown: red, black) rolled around, his knees hurt from kneeling on the cold Tennessee marble, his fingers were sore from winding up the little man, and Edison was sleeping on the bottom stair of the East Staircase.

  The station would open to travelers soon, and he’d accomplished nothing. He felt as if he’d betrayed his father’s memory by not being smart enough to solve the puzzle left for him. More was expected of him, even if he wasn’t a Tesla after all.

  Chapter 23

  Joe woke up late and grouchy. He fed Edison and put on a cup of coffee. His coffee maker was a work of modern-day wonder, even if it didn’t match the décor. Some compromises he was willing to make.

  He switched on the flames in the parlor and stared into them until he had enough caffeine in his system to think about his email. Regular work stuff, more surveillance matches from what had to be the most massive government surveillance program ever, and a few private emails.

  One from Alan Wright inviting him to play tennis later in the week. Did Alan even play tennis? Maybe he was reaching out because Joe’s father had died, but that didn’t mean Joe had to play tennis with him, did it? Plus, Alan didn’t strike him as a reacher-outer. He must want something. But what?

  One from Vivian saying she’d followed a man matching the description that Joe had given her to the Chrysler Building, where he seemed to work, but had lost him afterward. She must not have gone to bed. She didn’t ask any questions about why he wanted to have the man followed, which was good given that his best answer was a bunch of paranoid worries about a box of papers from Nikola Tesla that only had instructions for how to build a windup toy.

  The toy stood on the mantel next to a human skull and a black statue of the Egyptian cat-headed goddess Bastet. It looked right at home among the other Victorian-era collectibles.