Star of Stone

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  Ermete immediately bites his lip. Too late. He let it slip.

  “Mom! Wait … I … no … they didn’t steal anything. Don’t worry! They didn’t steal a single penny from me! There wasn’t anything valuable here…. Sure, they broke a few things. A couple pieces of furniture, but I’m renting the place furnished! It isn’t my stuff! Americans all have property insurance! They even get insurance insurance! Besides, they came here once, and they certainly won’t come here a second time! I … Mom, listen, I’ve really got to go! I … Mom … I’ve got to … AAAAAAAAHHH!”

  With a slam dunk worthy of a basketball champion, Ermete slams the phone down. Then, just to be sure, he yanks the cord out of the wall jack. He stands there, contemplating the mess he’s just made, on top of the mess caused by the robbers’ search. He takes a deep breath, checks his watch and leaves. He’s supposed to meet Mistral in Rockefeller Center, and he already risks showing up late.

  He grabs his briefcase and walks to the door but then has second thoughts. He goes back, steps over some big clumps of the couch padding and walks into the bathroom.

  “The best way to hide something,” he murmurs to himself, looking at his poorly reflected image in the mirror, “is to hide it right in front of everyone’s eyes.”

  Ermete takes the Ring of Fire down from the bathroom wall and tucks it into his briefcase. “Perfect,” he says under his breath, checking out his reflection in the only other mirror in the apartment. “Just perfect.” He’s dressed as a bank manager, in a pin-striped suit and shiny black shoes; no one could ever recognize him.

  He walks out of the house, whistling.

  Sheng and Harvey climb up onto a stoop to get out of the crowd. There are even people climbing up the lampposts. Sheng keeps on taking snapshots. Then he asks, “What do you think the top was showing us, exactly?”

  “This whirlpool of people?”

  “In Rome, it led us to Mistral’s kidnapper.”

  “I don’t know, Sheng, really….” Harvey stares out at the river of people in the street. “It could mean anything.” Then, suddenly, his hand darts out and he grabs Sheng’s shoulder. “Come on!” he cries, bounding down the steps. “I saw them!”

  “Saw who?” Sheng asks, running after him.

  “The two women! The ones who stole the top!” Harvey shouts, diving into the sea of many shades of green.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people together in one place!” Mistral shouts to Ermete. They’re on Fifth Avenue. The people are crowded together on the sidewalks, waiting for the St. Patrick’s Day parade to pass by.

  “I’ve heard a lot about it, but this is the first time I’m actually seeing it,” Ermete replies, chuckling. “It’s fantastic!”

  Ermete takes Mistral by the hand and leads her into one of the buildings in Rockefeller Center, the square in the heart of the city. It isn’t so crowded here.

  “I can breathe again!” Mistral exclaims, looking out at the square, which in winter is turned into an ice-skating rink. Ermete smooths down the lapels of his elegant jacket.

  “You look good dressed like that! Very professional …”

  They walk down the stairway leading inside the concourse, the flags of many different nations flapping in the wind. Mistral looks around, fascinated. Before them are the picture windows and little tables of a big restaurant and then one of the buildings’ majestic facade, with a grand entranceway in gold. Behind it, two arched staircases are hugging a fountain, in front of which rises up a gold statue.

  “What is it we’re looking for?” Mistral asks Ermete the moment they walk through the doorway.

  “A dog guarding something,” he replies, looking around in search of the elevators. “Should we try going upstairs?”

  * * *

  The moment she steps foot on Ellis Island, Elettra starts to feel hot. The kind of heat she didn’t think she’d ever feel in New York, the kind that builds up because of her ability to absorb the energy around her. A tingling heat. By now, she knows perfectly well what it means: Something’s about to happen.

  Ellis Island is a flat, skeletal expanse still at the mercy of winter. In addition to the cement pier is a glass and metal canopy leading inside a large redbrick building with windows trimmed in white. Four tall towers mark the confines of the building. Elettra grabs on to her aunt’s arm and lets herself be pulled inside.

  “We could visit the dormitory where immigrants had to spend the night while waiting for their visas, and … the Great Hall … then … on this side … no, on that side”—Linda Melodia turns the map of the building around in all possible directions—“there’s the place where the luggage was inspected, plus the vaccine infirmary. Only once the immigrants had gone through all these steps were they given a train ticket.” The two continue on until they reach the large waiting hall.

  “May I help you?” asks a mustachioed man with an Italian accent.

  Linda Melodia lowers her gaze just enough to inspect him: well-groomed mustache, well-combed hair, a presentable overcoat, nice shirt, elegant trousers, well-shined shoes. Her smile instantly broadens. “Yes, would you, please?”

  The man slicks back his mustache, delighted. Elettra pulls off her scarf from around her neck. It’s boiling hot in the Great Hall.

  * * *

  Harvey runs through the crowd on Fifth Avenue and heads west, following the women he saw a minute before. He turns around and spots Sheng panting behind him, banging into the people around him and accidentally hitting them with his camera. Then, looking in front of him again, Harvey pushes his way through with his gym bag. After a few blocks, the two women slow down their pace. They’re in Hell’s Kitchen.

  Sheng swings his backpack around in an attempt to avoid being trampled. He slips through and tries to gain his bearings. Harvey waves him over.

  Just then, the two women stop. Harvey ducks his head and walks back a few steps. When he turns back to look in their direction again, he sees that they’ve gone up to the closed door of a nightclub. A place called Lucifer.

  Harvey forces himself to stand perfectly still so he can keep them in his sights. The two don’t say a word to each other. They ring the doorbell and wait for someone to answer.

  Sheng catches up with his friend, panting, and Harvey points at the club on the other side of the street. “It’s them.”

  “H-hao!” Sheng stammers, struck by how beautiful the women are. He pulls out his camera. Click. Click.

  Harvey manages to cover the camera just in time. As though they’ve heard the noise of the shutter, the two women turn around to scrutinize the crowd.

  The door to the club opens slightly. A man’s hand comes out and caresses one of the women’s faces.

  “They’re going in,” Sheng remarks. The two boys start walking and pass by Lucifer. Fifty steps later, the street ends at yet another chaotic intersection.

  “You sure it was them?” asks Sheng.

  “No doubt about it.”

  “The top wasn’t lying, then.”

  “Looks that way,” Harvey agrees.

  “So, what do you want to do? Should we wait or should we tell the others?”

  “Tell who?” Harvey says in a low voice. “Elettra’s with her aunt, and Ermete doesn’t have his cell phone.”

  “We could call Mistral. He and she are supposed to be together right now.”

  Harvey wrings his hands nervously. “Let’s wait.” A flapping of wings over their heads makes him look up toward the sun. It’s already low in the sky and is beginning to set.

  “The club will be open tonight,” says Sheng.

  “I suppose so.”

  Gray clouds are hanging over the river. Harvey and Sheng lean back against a brick wall. Around them, people are celebrating. Then the door to Lucifer opens up a second time.

  18

  PROMETHEUS

  ROCKEFELLER CENTER iS A LABYRINTH OF MARBLE HALLWAYS. Ermete and Mistral search every square inch of the public part, staring at their reflections in
the shiny black walls. They go up to the top floors and do a complete round of the shops inside. They search every single corridor with a fine-tooth comb. At least they think they do.

  Three hours later, they’re back where they started out, sitting at a little table in the café looking over the square with the gold statue. Not even a trace of any guard dogs.

  Spread out in front of Ermete is a map of Rockefeller Center, which he picked up at an information desk. He moves his finger over the areas they’ve visited and shakes his head. “I don’t know where else we should look,” he says, discouraged. “Especially because we don’t even know what we’re looking for. In Rome, the guard dog was Jacob Mahler….”

  Mistral tries to catch the waiter’s eye.

  “A person in flesh and blood …” Ermete groans, deep in thought. “But there are thousands of people here at Rockefeller Center. How could we know who the guardian is? Not to mention what he’s guarding!”

  “A postcard, maybe?” Mistral guesses. “Or the top they stole right in front of your eyes?”

  “Maybe we should cast the tops on the map of the complex,” Ermete suggests. “That way we could narrow down our search.”

  Mistral nods and stares at the fountain on the other side of the glass walls. “What a shame,” she murmurs.

  “Don’t give up hope. It’s just our first reconnaissance mission,” Ermete says encouragingly. “We’ll find it.”

  Mistral sighs. “Actually, I was thinking of the ice-skating rink. It’s a shame they’ve already taken it down. I’d gladly have gone on it.”

  “You can skate?”

  “A little. I saw this movie where a guy and a girl met on that rink. They danced there on the ice with the snow coming down and all the lights sparkling around them. They stopped and kissed right there … in front of that statue.”

  Ermete smiled. “A giant golden eyesore.”

  The waiter comes up from behind them. Mistral orders a hot tea, Ermete a fruit juice cocktail with a slice of orange. “A businessman’s kind of drink,” he explains. They sit there for a while in silence, thinking.

  “Ermete?” Mistral asks when the waiter brings their order. “What’s that statue of, anyway?”

  The engineer twists his lips. “Beats me.” He turns to the waiter. “Do you know who that guy is, by any chance?”

  “That’s Prometheus,” the man replies with a smile.

  Ermete sits up straight in his chair. “Prometheus … Prometheus? The one who stole fire from the gods?”

  “That’s him,” the waiter continues. “It’s from 1934 and—”

  “Keep the change!” Ermete says, almost shouting, as he rushes out of the café together with Mistral.

  “Why didn’t it dawn on us before?” the engineer asks the girl, who’s standing beside him in front of the colossal gold statue. “He’s right here, at the entrance … guarding the door! Look at him! He’s just a kid! And there’s the Ring of Fire, too!” The gold carving of Prometheus really does look like a boy. He’s holding a ball of fire as he escapes down a mountainside.

  “It sure is something …,” Mistral agrees.

  Written in golden letters on the copper-colored panels behind the statue are the words PROMETHEUS, TEACHER IN EVERY ART, BROUGHT THE FIRE THAT HATH PROVED TO MORTALS A MEANS TO MIGHTY ENDS.

  Ermete’s head is awhirl with ideas. Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from the gods to give it to mankind, whom he himself had created by mixing together clay and water … a boy.

  Mistral looks doubtful. “Could he be the guardian we’re looking for?”

  “I’ll bet he is.” The engineer nods.

  “So how do we … get past him?” the girl asks.

  “I think I have an idea … a crazy idea,” Ermete answers. He reaches down into his briefcase and strokes the Ring of Fire, the mirror they found in Rome beneath the mitreo in San Clemente Church.

  Prometheus’s mirror.

  “Mistral, I …,” Ermete grumbles. “I don’t know if this makes any sense, but …” He pulls the ancient mirror out of his briefcase. “If Prometheus is the guard … and this is his mirror, maybe we need to …”

  “To what?”

  “I don’t know,” Ermete admits, getting as close to the statue as possible.

  Prometheus has one hand free. It’s open. The fountain is gurgling up in front of him. Ermete looks around to see if there’s a policeman, a guard or an alarm system.

  “It’s too tall and too far away,” Mistral whispers to him, walking around the fountain until she’s reached the bronze panels.

  “You may be right, but …” The engineer looks carefully at the golden ring surrounding Prometheus’s body. Engraved on it are the signs of the zodiac. The constellations devised by the ancient Chaldeans. They’ve always been right there, in front of everyone’s eyes. The Ring of Fire. And the constellations. The young Titan who tricked all the gods.

  “I’m going to try it!” Ermete exclaims. With this, he steps into the fountain. He wades a few steps through the ice-cold water, until he can almost reach up and touch Prometheus. Then someone behind him starts yelling.

  “Don’t worry!” he shouts, raising his hands. “I’m not doing anything bad to it.” He can see parchments engraved on the inside of the ring. The parchments on the side where he’s standing form a sort of indentation. A gap. A niche.

  “Ermete!” Mistral calls to him, begging him to come out.

  But he doesn’t listen to her. What’s done is done. He can hear other people shouting with surprise, while a few others are laughing, but he couldn’t care less. They can’t kill him just because he stuck his feet in a fountain….

  Click. Someone decided to photograph him.

  “Here goes nothing!” he exclaims, rising up on his tiptoes. He lifts up the mirror and places it inside the gold ring. The mirror slides in, slips over and then, just when Ermete is about to give up, it clicks perfectly into place between the two parchments in relief.

  Clack! goes one of the fountain’s lowest panels, revealing a tiny secret compartment. Two streams of water begin to lower, allowing him to reach out to it. Ermete turns around, triumphant. But his smile vanishes instantly. A swarm of security guards is running toward him. Big, angry-looking security guards.

  “Uh-oh …,” he groans, looking over at Mistral. She, too, noticed the secret compartment behind the fountain. She’s really close to it. She needs a diversion. The guards need to focus all their attention on him, and only on him. Ermete can’t think of anything better to do than plop down into the water, shouting, “Help! I’m drowning!”

  A moment later, the guards are on top of him. They grab him by the shirt and pick him up like a bird with sopping-wet feathers. “What’s the big idea, huh?”

  “Thank you! You saved my life!” Ermete exclaims. Meanwhile, he peeks around, looking for Mistral. Not seeing her anywhere, he smiles.

  “This is no laughing matter, you know!” A security guard yanks him away before the eyes of the curious onlookers. “What’d you do to the statue?”

  “Nothing. I just added its missing piece,” Ermete replies, grinning from ear to ear.

  * * *

  Elettra’s fingers hurt. It’s a sharp pain, as if her skin weren’t thick enough to protect them. Just like when she crossed the Quattro Capi bridge back in Rome the night they met the professor.

  In the giant lobby of the immigration building on Ellis Island, she feels suffocated, as if she were inside a tiny prison cell. The laughter of her aunt and the man with the mustache aren’t doing anything to help her understand why she feels this sudden surge of energy.

  There’s someone here …, she thinks, trying to follow her instincts. Or maybe something’s happening to the others. Maybe they’ve found something. Maybe Harvey … with the whirlpool …

  She doesn’t even want to think about it. She tries dialing Harvey’s number. Straight to voice mail. She tosses her phone back into the pocket of her white ski jacket. Then she looks down a
t her hands angrily. “Why do you hurt so much?” she asks them.

  There’s nothing electrical around, except for the lights. And there aren’t any mirrors. Who’s there? Who is she about to meet? Is someone watching her? If so, why? Could it be the man with the mustache? The woman dressed in blue? The three kids with the heart-shaped balloons?

  A drop of perspiration rolls off her eyebrow and splashes down onto the tip of her shoe. Elettra takes off her jacket. She ignores her aunt Linda’s protests, as if they were coming from a different planet, and peers around. Rows of wooden benches. The white toweringly high vaulting holding up the American flag on the back wall. The windows that the pale sunshine is streaming in through. The computers with records of the immigrants. Irish, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Russian.

  Elettra can feel someone’s stare piercing the back of her neck. When she turns around, she sees a man leaning against a brass railing. He’s a Native American dressed in old-fashioned clothing. He’s standing so still that he looks like a statue. But he isn’t. Why is he staring at her? There are lots of people there in the lobby. All around them is the shuffling of feet and a low murmur of voices.

  The Native American casts one last glance in her direction before he steps back from the railing and starts to walk away.

  That’s him, thinks Elettra. She doesn’t know who he is and she doesn’t know why, but she knows she needs to follow him.

  She starts running.

  19

  THE APPOINTMENT

  “WELL, MISTRAL,” SHENG SAYS ON THE CELL PHONE. “FIND ANYTHING?” A moment later, he’s gaping. “What do you mean, a secret compartment? You lost the Ring of Fire? In a statue? Hold on, hold on! I’m not following you…. What angel are you talking about?”

  Harvey isn’t even listening to him. He starts walking. The two women have just come out of Lucifer. “Let’s go!”