Star of Stone

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  “Of course.”

  “Homework?”

  “Not much of it, these days.”

  “No second thoughts?”

  “George!” his wife says reproachfully, resting the griddle pan for the steaks on a burner.

  “Not yet,” replies Harvey.

  “Not even just to brush up a little?”

  The second it touches the griddle, the meat lets out a rising cloud of steam.

  “I think we’ve already discussed this topic enough. Harvey wants to do it all on his own.”

  “That’s right.” The boy gets up from the table and puts his bowl in the sink.

  “I’m sorry if I keep going on about this,” Professor Miller protests, “but given that I’m not exactly ignorant when it comes to scientific topics, I’d like to give Harvey a hand.”

  “I don’t need you to baby me, Dad.”

  “I’m not babying you. But if you’re having problems at school, I—”

  “I’m not having problems at school. Just a few little hiccups. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Little hiccups? Is that how you see it? Your brother—”

  “Can’t we leave Dwaine out of this, for once?” Mrs. Miller exclaims, her voice shrill.

  The meat is sizzling on the stove. Mr. Miller drums his spoon against his bowl. The family’s embarrassment hangs awkwardly in the air. Harvey can’t stand being compared to Dwaine. Not even over his grades. And he doesn’t want tutoring or help from his dad. He wants to do whatever he can manage to do on his own. Without help. All on his own.

  Harvey grabs the antiques dealer’s catalog simply because it’s the closest thing around to read. He thumbs through it without any interest at all.

  His father changes the subject. “Today I sent back some findings from the Pacific Ocean, made by some kids from the university….”

  “Why’s that?” his wife asks, although her mind is actually light-years away.

  “They indicated a half-degree rise in the water temperature in only three months. Impossible!”

  “Couldn’t it be the greenhouse effect?”

  “No. It’s some incompetent researcher who got the measurements wrong. Either that, or the ocean’s planning on flooding the whole globe over the course of a single generation.”

  “It’s happened before,” Harvey remarks, still thumbing through the catalog.

  “What?” his father asks curiously.

  “The Great Flood.”

  “Those are just legends,” his father snorts. “The truth is, it’s simply impossible for the temperature of an ocean to go up half a degree in three months.”

  “The steaks are ready.”

  Harvey closes the folder while his father continues. “Besides, it’s far easier to believe that a group of students used the instrumentation improperly!”

  The boy nods. Then he stares down at the platter, stunned. His mother made three steaks. When Dwaine was still around, the “triple-steak platter” had practically become a dinnertime ritual.

  “The other one’s for me …,” Mrs. Miller lies, trying to cover for her mistake. She can’t stand meat.

  Once they’ve finished eating, Mr. and Mrs. Miller drink chamomile tea and Harvey clears the table. “Hey!” the boy suddenly exclaims when he catches sight of a page in the antiques catalog. He puts down the water pitcher, grabs the folder and takes a closer look at it. He shakes his head, not believing his eyes. On the page is a photo highlighted in yellow.

  “Dad,” he says, almost whispering, “who gave you this catalog?”

  “I told you. An antiques dealer who looked like a skeleton. His business card must be in there, at the back….”

  Gaping at the photo in the catalog, Harvey stops breathing. It’s a picture of an old wooden top. On it is engraved a drawing of a bridge, or maybe a rainbow. It’s identical to the four tops they found in Rome, together with the map of the Chaldeans, which he hasn’t used since.

  It’s the fifth top.

  “The top of the rainbow,” Harvey murmurs. Then, out loud, he repeats a thought that popped into his head, as if someone else had just said it. “The others. I’ve got to call the others.”

  “What’s that, Harvey?”

  The boy looks around. Who said that? he wonders.

  The voice in his head repeats clearly, The others. You’ve got to call the others.

  Harvey recognizes the voice. He runs out of the kitchen and into the hallway.

  Rome.

  New Year’s.

  The bridge.

  The others, the voice repeats.

  Harvey runs like crazy to his brother’s room, throws open the door and looks inside. “Dwaine!” he cries.

  But no one’s there.

  It’s the top of the rainbow, nobody’s voice says again inside his head.

  Harvey staggers, claps his hands over his ears and stares into the darkness, stunned. Then he turns around and goes back to the kitchen. His parents are silent, their cups of chamomile clenched in their hands.

  “Why did he come see you?” Harvey asks his father.

  The professor seems confused. “The antiques dealer, you mean?”

  “Yeah. Why did he come here?”

  “I don’t know,” his father continues. “He was just a run-of-the-mill antiques dealer. With a Russian accent. I’ve already told you….”

  Harvey grabs the catalog again and flips through it nervously, looking for the business card. “But … has this ever happened to you before? I mean, has anybody else ever showed up here, trying to sell you stuff?”

  “Oh, that happens practically every week. Paintings, electronic equipment, encyclopedias …”

  It’s a coincidence, Harvey thinks. It’s just a coincidence. But as he’s turning the pages, it’s as if his brain shuts down. Was it Dwaine’s voice he heard? What did he say, exactly?

  It’s the top of the rainbow. You’ve got to call the others.

  “Where the heck is the business card?” Harvey shouts, exasperated.

  The professor steps over to him. He turns to the last page of the catalog and pulls out a handwritten card:

  Vladimir Askenazy

  Antique Art

  48th Street

  Queens, NY

  “Vladimir Askenazy …,” Harvey whispers. “Can I keep this?” Without waiting for an answer, he walks out of the kitchen and, two at a time, climbs the stairs leading up to the loft. Once he’s there, he locks the door, his heart beating wildly.

  “The top …,” he says, starting to tear the room apart, looking for something. Then he stops in his tracks. Idiot, he thinks. He didn’t hide the top in his room. He sits down on the bed and forces himself to breathe. He can’t tell if he’s more scared because of the picture of the top or because of the voice he heard in his head.

  “Vladimir Askenazy,” he repeats to himself, trying to concentrate. The name doesn’t ring a bell. Beatrice, Joe Vinile, Jacob Mahler … Harvey goes over the list of names from his Italian New Year.

  He can hear zapping on the TV downstairs.

  For the millionth time, the boy reads the antiques dealer’s name on the business card. He makes sure the door to his room is closed, stands on a chair and opens the ladder door leading up to the attic. He pulls down the ladder and climbs up into the darkness above. Then he walks through the dark, hunched over, using his memory to guide himself through the maze of old junk until he reaches a metal cage beside the skylight. Inside of it is a carrier pigeon, which is cooing softly.

  “I never would’ve believed I’d actually use you,” he whispers. Next to the cage are boxes of birdseed that Ermete gave him, an old lamp and some little square slips of paper. Harvey switches on the lamp and grabs a piece of paper and a pen. I found another top, we need to meet up, he writes. He slips the note into a tiny metal cylinder, which he ties to the pigeon’s leg.

  “Here we go, my friend. It’s up to you. I just hope you really know the way there….”

  Harvey nudges open the skyl
ight with his elbow and frees the messenger into the dark city sky. He watches it fly off until it’s disappeared. Then he shuts the skylight. And he waits.

  Later on that same night, Harvey hears a noise coming from the roof. It’s a faint but insistent noise followed by a fluttering of wings and something tapping against the glass.

  The boy wakes up with a start, emerging from a dream that’s both confused and frightening. His throat is dry. He can barely move. Lactic acid has stiffened his muscles. It’s raining.

  The house is silent. Harvey sits up in bed and when he hears the tapping noise again, he opens up the ladder door and climbs up to the attic.

  Outside of the skylight is the pigeon. It’s wet and trembling from the cold. Harvey opens the window, scoops it up gently in his hands, rewards it with a little ball of birdseed and tries to detach the tiny cylinder from its leg. Once he’s managed to take it off, he puts it down on the table and lets the pigeon back into its cage.

  He turns on the lamp, opens the cylinder and reads Ermete’s reply:

  Tomorrow afternoon at 4. The Montauk Club, 25 Eighth Avenue, Brooklyn.

  FIRST STASIMON

  “Hello? Vladimir? Any news?”

  “I tried to contact Harvey.”

  “Did you manage?”

  “I’ll let you know over the next few days. How’s it going there?”

  “Everything seems fine. I haven’t heard from anyone.”

  “Your niece?”

  “She’s not talking. I think they’re in touch, but I’m not sure.”

  “Spring’s almost here.”

  “Now comes the hardest part.”

  “Tell me what’s scaring you.”

  “I don’t know how to approach this. I don’t know if someone’s around … trying to track down Alfred.”

  “You don’t know their names?”

  “No. Except for Jacob Mahler.”

  “Forget that name.”

  “Well, I’ve got good news and bad news.”

  “Tell me the good news first.”

  “Two days ago there was a short article in the regional paper. They found the bodies of two men in a town just outside the city. One of them was a petty criminal from Rome. Joe Vinile, the man who tried to steal the Ring of Fire from my niece.”

  “And the other man?”

  “The article just said it was a middle-aged man with no ID on him. His face couldn’t be identified. I thought of Jacob Mahler, but I suggested that Fernando investigate. You know, using his novel as an excuse …”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “If Mahler’s dead, too … who killed them?”

  5

  THE PANTHER

  A LONG, BLACK, ASCENDING HALLWAY. A PAIR OF STILETTO HEELS click rhythmically on the polished floor. Then they stop. A black hand, the nails painted black, knocks on the gold door three times. It waits. Then it knocks three more times. With an electric groan, the door slides back into the wall.

  Beyond it is a room with red upholstery. Massive gold picture frames. A man, his back turned to the doorway, watches the images sliding along inside one of them. It’s a television monitor.

  The man is wearing a dark blue velvet jacket and an eighteenth-century shirt with long, ruffled cuffs that cover his hands. He’s leaning against a cane with a pommel shaped like a bunch of grapes.

  “Go ahead and tell me, Panther,” he orders, still peering at the images. The woman walks into the room, her heels sinking down into the leopard-skin carpeting. She’s very tall, with a dancer’s body. She’s wearing a tight black catsuit with a white fur-trimmed collar and a wig glimmering silver. She doesn’t say a word.

  The man continues to observe the monitor. The images are showing the inside of a nightclub. It’s called Lucifer. It’s his club. The owner is old, even though no one could say how old, exactly. Some claim he opened his first nightclub back when New York was founded. Others say he’s even older than that.

  His name is Egon Nose, also called Dr. Nose because of his incredible nose for business. And because of his enormous, pockmarked nose. But he hates it when people talk about his nose.

  The man heaves a sigh and switches off the monitor. Then he turns around.

  In her hand, Panther is holding the body of a sleeping pigeon.

  “Ah, good. You got it,” he remarks wearily. Clutching his cane, he moves toward her a few steps. His eyes are glittering with excitement, but his neck is hunched forward, as if the weight of his nose has become unbearable. “Hmm … of course … Very good. Put it right here.”

  Panther lays the pigeon on the majestic baroque desk in the middle of the room. Four massive legs shaped like lion’s paws. Cherubs and floral inlays. On its front panel, a cornucopia brimming with animals and baskets of flowers.

  “Go ahead and move the tray, my dear,” Egon Nose suggests, rapping the tip of his cane on a large silver platter piled high with bananas and red apples. “I’m not hungry tonight.”

  Panther still hasn’t spoken.

  “Did it have anything on it?” the old man asks, stroking the pigeon’s chest with his right index finger. He has long, sharp nails the color of alabaster.

  The girl reaches into the top of her catsuit, pulls out a note and hands it to her boss.

  Egon reads it avidly. “Excellent, excellent,” he remarks, nodding. “This is the news we’ve been waiting for. Heh, heh, of course …” He makes the note disappear into his jacket pocket and leans against his cane with all his weight. “Now one of you needs to get to work….”

  Panther steps over to him. She slides her hand down his arm, then strokes his neck with her fingers, their nails polished black. The old man lets out an unusually childish laugh, which makes his fleshy, undulated nose quiver. “All right, all right, Panther … Choose another one of the girls. You’ll both be going to that dreadful Montauk Club tomorrow.”

  Panther steps back and sits down on the wooden desk.

  Egon Nose taps his cane against a cart beside him, making the crystal wineglass on it clink. “Go ahead and help yourself,” the old man adds. Next to the glass is a decanter half-full with a ruby-colored liquid. “I need to make a phone call.”

  The girl’s gaze follows her boss as he goes to sit down in a damask armchair. Behind him, the giant gold frames. Above him, a Venetian glass chandelier. Its light is too faint to illuminate the walls. Egon Nose lets out a long sigh. “You can go, my dear,” he says. His eyes are two desolate, rocky reefs.

  The woman obediently withdraws. She slides off the desk and points at the pigeon’s body.

  “No, leave it there. I’ll set it free myself later on. Or I might get my appetite back.”

  She strides out of the office, her hips swaying, the heels of her boots clicking on the hallway’s polished floor. The gold door slides shut behind her.

  Now alone, Dr. Nose pulls open the heavy desk drawers, one after the other. In the third one he finds a cell phone. He rests it on the table. He rifles through the right pocket in his tartan trousers, pulls out a gold lighter, flicks open its hinged top and stares at his office in the light of the flame.

  “Heh, heh, heh,” he repeats, waiting for the phone to switch on. Then he tosses the lighter on the desk. He dials a number very carefully, because any other combination would make the cell phone explode: 666.

  He hears a crackling noise.

  Egon Nose puts the telephone up to his head, almost making it disappear into his ear.

  It’s still crackling.

  “Heh, heh, heh,” the man repeats, raising his cane to prod the pigeon’s limp body. “Traditional methods are best!”

  The crackling suddenly stops.

  It’s ringing now.

  Nose rests his cane on the floor. He fiddles with the note in his hand. And then …

  “Heremit,” a voice replies from the other side of the world. It’s piercing, surreal.

  “Cheer up, old friend!” Egon chimes, his nose quivering. “Or perhaps I called you at a bad moment?
What time is it over there? Oh, may Zeus strike me down with his thunderbolts if I called you in the middle of the night again! The problem is that I can’t even remember what daytime is like anymore. Is it still so ridiculously … sunny?”

  From the other end of the line comes an eerie noise. And then: “No.”

  “What a pleasure to hear you speak again. It’s been quite a while since we last had a nice little chat. How long has it been? Months? Years? Oh, I’ll get straight to the point…. I know you’re obsessed with time. But there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re aging, too, even if you’ve found a way to alter the process. In any case, I have news for you. And since I can’t call it fresh news … heh, heh, heh …” Egon Nose’s cane prods the pigeon another time. “I’ll call it ‘new news.’ Our man has made a move. Tomorrow at four. At the Montauk Club. Does that mean anything to you?” Not waiting for an answer, the lord of New York nightlife lets out yet another prolonged sigh. “Oh, how could you know about it, since you never leave that skyscraper of yours? The Montauk is a historic club in Brooklyn. An old, decadent Italian American club.”

  “Send someone,” the voice on the other side of the world replies.

  “Oh, it’s a pleasure to know you’re still alive. In any case, that’s exactly what I intended to do. Send someone. Of course, it might be rather … costly.”

  “No limits.”

  “Good. I like it that way. While we’re talking, I wanted to give you a second piece of news. It has to do with the first task you entrusted to me. Remember? I had to take care of a two-bit criminal in Rome and your musician friend…. Would you like to know how it went?”

  “I already do.”

  “Heh, heh, heh,” chuckles Egon Nose. “So it’s true that news travels fast! I’m sorry about your friend! I wanted to plan a nice little evening for him at the club, violin included. In any case, it’s done. Tomorrow, I’ll authorize my girls to—”

  “No.”

  “I understand. I’ll tell them to look but not eat….”

  On the other end of the line is perceptible hesitation, second thoughts. It only lasts a fraction of a second, and then the voice says, “Only if they see the tops.”