“It looks like there’s something written on its side. What does it say?”
“ ‘Pneumatic Transit,’ ” Sheng reads, zooming in as close as he can. “Wait a sec. It isn’t a train. It looks more like a string of toy cars. There’s a drawing, too: a pyramid, an obelisk … No, hold on…. Oh, man! It’s a comet!”
When she hears Sheng cheer, Mistral walks over to them. “Have you found something?”
“Maybe. I might be all wrong about this,” Sheng says in a low voice, adjusting the focus, “but it looks like there’s a key chain in the last car.” Then he lowers his camera and looks at the two girls, who are peering around, scanning the area. At that time of the morning, there isn’t a soul on Avenue B.
“Should I climb up and take a look?” Sheng asks, reading their minds.
Ten minutes later, they’re all standing in a circle around a park bench, staring at a bizarre little tin train. The Pneumatic Transit.
“We’re turning into real delinquents,” Mistral remarks, clearly amused by the idea.
“You think anyone saw me?”
“No, nobody. But the real question is this: What do we do now that we’ve got it?” Harvey groans.
The train is in terrible condition. Eaten away by the humidity and half-covered with rust, it’s formed of four cylindrical cars with big, funny-looking side wheels, like the steam trains back in the Old West. A comet is painted on the side of the central car. Tied around the caboose is the chain of a key ring, complete with a plastic tag and a little metal key.
“We’ve got this,” says Sheng, showing the new key to the others. Written on the tag is a number: 181.
“That’s a prime number,” Ermete remarks. “And on top of that, it’s a palindrome.” Then, noticing the inquisitive stares of the others, he shrugs his shoulders. “Sorry. I spent all night going crazy with numbers.”
22
THE ATTIC
THE DOOR TO THE ANTIQUES SHOP IN QUEENS OPENS WITH A creak.
Hunched over at the doorway, Vladimir takes in deep breaths of the crisp air and checks his watch. Noon. Right on time. He brushes off his black overcoat and waits there until the taxi arrives.
“Grand Central, please,” he tells the cabbie.
Once he’s there, he reads something from a slip of paper he kept folded up in his pocket. Then he walks into the station, checks the signs on the walls and heads down the hallway leading outdoors. He stops just before the Oyster Bar, steps over to one corner of the crowded room and waits, facing the wall.
He’s just about to check his watch when he hears the first whisper. It sounds like it’s coming from the very stone in the gallery, which is transmitting a clear male voice to him.
“Hello, Vladimir!” the wall whispers.
“Hello,” the elderly antiques dealer replies, rather surprised, moving his mouth closer to the vaulted stone wall, just as the instructions on the slip of paper told him to do.
“Hao! It really works!” the voice from the wall cries. Vladimir doesn’t even have time to turn and look behind him when the voice adds, “It’s me, Sheng, sir.”
“Well, it looks like the Whispering Gallery really works,” Vladimir agrees.
“You bet it does! It sounds like you’re standing right here next to me,” exclaims Sheng, who’s all the way in the opposite corner of the room.
“And now? What are my instructions?” Vladimir asks, rather curious.
“Ermete said we needed to be really careful.”
“I imagine he’s the one who told you about this place, then.”
“Yeah. He said he saw it in a movie where—”
“Where are you sitting?” the antiques dealer asks, cutting him off.
“At the Oyster Bar. Table eighteen.”
“Have you noticed anyone suspicious?”
“No. Have you?”
“No, neither have I. Why don’t you go on ahead? I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
Vladimir counts to a hundred and turns around. To be even safer, before slipping into the Oyster Bar, he heads toward the main hall of the station. Overcoats and hats swarm around him like moths around wool. When he reaches the Main Concourse, Vladimir looks up at the ceiling. The moment he sees all the constellations painted up there, he remembers how much he loves Grand Central. The sky with its stars, the twin staircases in light-colored marble and the old clock over the information booth.
“Every hundred years, it’s time to contemplate the stars,” he murmurs to himself, staring at the stars on the ceiling. Every day, thousands of people cross through that hall without even glancing up. By now, no one knows the secret of those stars better than Vladimir does.
“This is the secret of Century …,” the antiques dealer adds. Then he goes back to the Whispering Gallery. The Oyster Bar overlooks the short side of the hall. Vladimir pulls the door open.
Just then, a black bird flies across the starry sky of Grand Central and perches for a moment on the golden spire atop the old clock. It’s a crow with one blind eye.
“Excellent technique, kids!” Vladimir Askenazy says, sitting down at the table in the Oyster Bar. “Just like real spies. Although, I have to admit that when I found this note slipped under my door, for a moment I feared the worst.”
No one feels like wasting much time with small talk. By the time they’ve ordered lunch, the kids have already told Vladimir everything they discovered in Hell’s Kitchen.
“Lucifer …,” Vladimir grumbles when Sheng mentions the name of the nightclub. “No, I don’t know it. But then, I’m not one to frequent late-night establishments.”
When Sheng hands him the flyer for the rave, the man’s face grows even darker. “This sounds much more worrisome to me,” he remarks. “The old City Hall station has been abandoned for years.” He rests his long, long alabaster index finger on his lip. “Unless I’m mistaken, it was inaugurated in October 1904 and was closed in December 1945. Lines four, five and six stopped there, heading toward Brooklyn. Today, I think you can see a part of the station loop from the window of the six just before it dives down below the river.”
“So it really was a subway station once?”
“Yes, one of the oldest ones on the old IRT line. I stopped there a few times myself. I remember there being big archways, decorated ceilings, plaques on the walls…. I imagine it still looks like it did sixty years ago. From what I know, when the station was closed down, the street level entranceways had to be sealed off. That’s it.”
The kids exchange worried glances.
“In any case,” Elettra cuts in, “that isn’t the real reason we asked you to meet us here. We’d like to show you something we found. A few things, actually.”
“I’m listening.” Vladimir smiles, clasping his long, spiderlike hands together on the table.
“The first … is this,” Mistral starts out, handing him the gold angel they found in the fountain at Rockefeller Center.
Vladimir Askenazy gapes at the little golden angel and turns it over in his hands as if it might shatter at any moment. Then he rests it on the table, stares at it, scratches his eyebrow, looks at it from another angle and remains silent, sitting perfectly still for an endless amount of time.
“Well? Does it mean anything to you?”
“It looks like a replica,” the antiques dealer concludes enigmatically. “Paul Manship,” he adds, “was one of the most important sculptors in New York during the last century. You might be familiar with his Prometheus over at Rockefeller Center….”
“We sure are,” the four kids reply.
“Then at the Western Union building on Broadway is his interpretation of the elements: fire, earth, air and water. Manship spent a great deal of time studying in Europe, particularly in Rome, where he discovered a passion for ancient art. He studied the most important Roman monuments and then delved back further in time, studying the Greeks, the Egyptians and the Assyrians.”
“The Chaldeans, too?” asks Mistral.
“Also,�
�� the antiques dealer nods. “Paul loved the symbolic language of legends. In fact, his Prometheus is full of symbols. This angel would be, too, if it weren’t a copy….” He’s about to go on, but then, as if he’s had second thoughts, he stops himself.
“Why do you say this is a copy?” Elettra asks.
“Because with the exception of its raised arm,” the antiques dealer explains, “it is.”
“But a copy of what?”
“The Angel of the Waters in Central Park,” Vladimir Askenazy answers. “It’s the angel standing in the fountain at Bethesda Terrace. The original has its hands down at its sides, but in every other respect, this is the same angel.”
“Are they both works by Paul Manship?” asks Mistral.
“Oh, no!” the antiques dealer exclaims. “The Angel of the Waters is much older. If I remember correctly, the fountain was inaugurated … in 1873. The angel was commissioned to celebrate the opening of the city’s first freshwater system, the Croton Aqueduct, the first plumbing in New York. The angel in Bethesda Terrace has watched over their underground aqueduct ever since.”
“But why would Manship make a copy of the Angel of the Waters?” Sheng wonders aloud.
“I can’t tell you that,” the antiques dealer replies. “Maybe you should tell me where you found this statue.”
“In an old wardrobe,” Harvey answers quickly. “Together with this …” He hands him the gold key they found together with the angel. A perfectly ordinary house key with the number thirty-two on it. “And this,” Harvey adds, pulling out the toy train they found in the tower in the East Village.
When he sees it, Vladimir smiles. “That’s a Beach Railroad model train,” he explains, brushing his fingers over it. “In the late 1800s, a fellow by the name of Beach secretly dug a series of tunnels below the city to build a pneumatic transportation system. Imagine it as an ancestor of today’s subway system, but with compressed air.”
“Cool!” gasps Sheng.
“His plans were coming along well, but it didn’t work out in the end, and pneumatic transit was soon forgotten. And this chain? Oh, it’s a key ring.”
“Do you recognize it?”
“Certainly. It’s a key to one of the lockers here in the station.”
A strange little group comes out of the Oyster Bar and walks across the Main Concourse of Grand Central Terminal. A tall, skinny man gestures upward, showing four kids the ceiling of the hall, pointing out that it was painted backward. “Those aren’t the stars as we see them from Earth, but the artist’s interpretation of how you’d see them from the outside, traveling toward our planet.”
“Professor Van Der Berger was obsessed with stars,” Elettra recalls. “He’d even covered the ceiling of his bedroom with constellations.”
“How could anyone not be obsessed with them?” the antiques dealer says approvingly. Then, before saying goodbye, he points them in the direction of the lockers. “If you need any more advice, you know where to find me.”
“You can count on it,” the kids remark, saying goodbye.
Once they’re alone, Sheng looks for locker 181 and tries to open it. The lock puts up a bit of a fight, but after a moment it finally gives in.
“Rats!” the blue-eyed Chinese boy groans, thinking the locker is empty.
Instead, there’s an old postcard at the bottom of it. On it is a cross section of the construction plan for the Brooklyn Bridge. Paul Manship’s name is written on it, although there’s no mailing address.
The message on the postcard reads:
7, 212, 51, 113, 65, 186, 168, 101, 102, 107, 73, 155, 87, 164, 77, 26, 71, 25, 212, 141, 174, 178, 212, 61, 26, 121, 174, 186, 107, 212, 168, 25, 30, 45, 91, 107, 77, 224, 14, 53, 45, 13, 13, 148, 14, 79, 168, 1, 90, 162, 198, 27, 26. Star of Stone, 3 of 4.
23
THE CENTURY
BETHESDA TERRACE IS IN THE SOUTHERN SECTION OF CENTRAL Park, in a wide, open space that leads to a placid lake. To the left and right begin an array of picturesque paths leading off through the trees.
The fountain is located right by the terrace. Its basin is low, round and dark. Standing in the center of it, on a pedestal resting on little pillars, is the Angel of the Waters, gazing forward confidently, her wings spread open as if in an embrace.
“Vladimir was right,” Elettra remarks the moment she sees it. “It’s the same angel.”
“So what now?” asks Harvey.
The angel’s arms are lowered. The water in the fountain is clear and ice-cold. The lake is rippled by a light breeze. Not far away, a homeless man goes over to a stand selling coffee, orders a cup and slowly walks toward the kids. Suddenly, he howls with pain. “I don’t know how you can drink this! It’s boiling hot!” wails Ermete, who’s still wearing that morning’s disguise. “Everything okay with the antiques guy?” he asks then, sitting down on a park bench not too far away. “Did he get the note?”
The four nod. A man with two dogs on leashes jogs by the fountain to then disappear along the path to the left. From a branch in one of the age-old trees, a crow lets out a low caw.
They tell Ermete everything. Then Elettra walks halfway around the fountain and comes back to where she started. Ermete sips his coffee. Sheng leans over the edge of the basin to take a better look at the fountain sculpture. Mistral joins him. She rests the copy of the angel on the edge of the fountain and starts to turn it to the left and right. “Maybe this angel is trying to tell us something….”
“So what’s around us?” Sheng asks Harvey.
He points toward the trees. “This here behind me is the park’s thickest patch of woods. In front of the fountain is all open area. Fifth Avenue is right around there, and if you take this path to the left, you’ll end up in Strawberry Fields, which was given its name in memory of John Lennon.”
Ermete sighs. “Mistral’s right.” He gets up from the bench and hands his boiling hot coffee to Sheng. “Hold this.” He walks over to Mistral and takes the statue from her. Looking down at the icy water in the fountain, he sighs again. “Any cops around?”
Elettra shakes her head.
“You can’t be thinking of—” Mistral says, but it’s too late. Ermete’s already stepped into the fountain.
Standing there at the edge, the kids watch him wade over quickly, groaning because of the cold, cold water that goes up to his knees. He’s almost reached the sculpture’s base when the man from the coffee stand spots him and lets out a gruff shout.
Ermete doesn’t slow down. He reaches the center of the basin, grabs hold of a pillar with one hand and pulls himself up. In his other hand he’s holding the golden angel. He starts circling around the sculpture’s base, searching it.
“What do you think he’s trying to do, guys?” Sheng asks from the edge of the fountain, discouraged.
“I think he’s looking for a place where it might fit in,” Mistral replies.
“Like with Prometheus?”
“Something like that.”
“Think he’ll manage?” asks Elettra.
“Unless they shoot him first, yeah.”
“Maybe we should help him.”
“But how?”
“By creating a diversion.”
“Anything come to mind?”
“Should we try to tackle the guy from the coffee stand?” Sheng suggests sarcastically. Meanwhile, the man in question starts yelling at Ermete, grabbing the attention of a few curious onlookers. Ignoring them completely, Ermete reaches the front part of the angel’s base, where he seems to find something.
He leans over, rests the angel between the pillars and leaves it there for a few seconds. Then he looks around, picks up the angel again, jumps back down into the water and starts running toward the edge of the fountain.
“Looks like he doesn’t need a diversion after all,” Harvey points out.
“More than that, I think he could use some dry pants and shoes.”
Worried, the kids look around at the people who are gathering by the fountain. Erme
te runs toward them, grinning from ear to ear. “I found it! There’s a slot in this statue, too!”
It’s the man from the coffee stand who hauls him out of the fountain. He showers Ermete with insults, but they’re water off his back. The engineer from Rome makes his way through the curious onlookers and, nodding to the kids, says, “Let’s get out of here!”
Once they’re far away, Ermete explains what happened. “The angel fit perfectly into the base. It was pointing toward the left, in that direction … toward the skyscrapers. That brought to mind the key….”
“The house key?”
“Exactly.”
“What are those buildings anyway?” Mistral asks Harvey.
“The one right there with the two towers is the San Remo,” Harvey replies.
Ermete shakes his head. “Not that one. The building farther south. Down there …”
Harvey freezes. “The Century Building.”
The engineer nods. “Yeah, the Century. I think that’s what we’re looking for.”
The doorman at the Century Building doesn’t say a word the whole ride up, but the suspicious look on his face speaks worlds about what’s going through his mind. He agreed to let the kids in and take them up to apartment 32 only because they were so insistent. After all, they seemed to have the key. Besides, they insisted so much that after a while they made him think of his grandchildren. The kids look honest. Although their request sounded crazy and he was a little suspicious, he decided to go up and check with them.
The elevator ascends swiftly. Standing next to the doorman and still dressed as a homeless man, Ermete tries to drip as little as possible, but a puddle has already formed around his feet. Harvey, Sheng, Elettra and Mistral are staring at the floor indicator, which is climbing dizzyingly fast up to number 32.
Then, with a ding and a sigh, the elevator reaches its destination. The doorman ceremoniously leads the way down the corridor. They can practically see their reflections in the marble floor. “This way, please,” he grumbles, disgusted. Behind him, Ermete’s shoes splosh with water.
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