“You’re seriously not going to tell me your real name?”
“No one knows it but me and my dad,” I say. “Well, and my mom. Wherever she is.” My teasing smile fades when I think about the gun. Tyler’s thoughts must be flowing along the same lines, because his smile dims as well.
“So you’re sure it’s your mom’s gun?”
“I didn’t even know my mom had a gun. My dad obviously redacted a lot. I’ve always assumed my mom left because she was sick of the con thing. Now, after seeing all the crap about her in my student file, I’m not so sure.”
“What do you think his leaving you the gun means?”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” I say. “It could have something to do with the clues he’s leaving me. Or it could be something of my mom’s he wanted me to have. Or it could be him telling me to be careful, that I need to protect myself. Who knows?”
“Why didn’t he just leave you a note and a map?”
“Because any idiot could read a note and follow a map.”
“So what about the clue you found at the racetrack?”
I pull the folded note out of my jeans pocket and hand it to him.
“ ‘Men turn into boys when consumed by the Land of Toys.’ ”
“Any thoughts, guesses, wild speculations?” I ask.
He shakes his head and hands back the scrap of paper. “No, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Did you say there was a key, too?”
I tug the chain I threaded it onto for safekeeping out from under my sweater and pull it over my head.
He snatches it out of my hand, staring at it in shock.
“I know this key,” he says.
THE STRAND
“Why are we doing this, again?”
Sam and I stare up the broad stone steps to the heavy, barred door guarding the entrance to the Strand, the private club that belongs to the key dangling around my neck. The flat gray edifice dominates the block, as if the arrogance of its wealthy members has seeped into its stones. I’m not at all surprised that the senator is on the executive board. The building itself screams privilege.
“Because the lock my dad’s key goes to is in there.” I adjust my wig. Damn thing itches like a mofo.
“I mean, why can’t Tyler walk you in?”
Tyler asked the same thing, actually, after he tracked down his father’s version of the key to show me. The senator’s key has the same art deco–style head as the key Sam found in the lamp at the racetrack. It’s the same size and is made of the same material. It has to be from the same source as the senator’s, and the senator’s is from the locker room of the Strand.
Tyler and I argued about my involving him in this next part of the game. He wanted to infiltrate the club with me, even helped me devise how to do it. But this isn’t the place for him.
“Plausible deniability. I’m not sure what we’ll have to do when we get in there. I don’t want Tyler going down for this.”
“How noble of you,” Sam says. “You don’t mind us going down for it, though?”
“I don’t mind Chester and Dwayne going down for it, no,” I say, flicking his recently forged badge. “Besides, we’re professionals. Tyler’s a rookie. Odds are in our favor.”
Sam smiles at that. Good to see his smile again. It’s seemed rarer the last few days.
We continue around the side of the building to the service entrance. I pull at the sleeve of his tan coveralls, which happen to match mine, which I happen to have had Tyler commandeer from the garage chain his father owns. Lucky connection, that.
“There’s the truck,” I say, rolling my shoulders forward in a slouch and indicating the step van just ahead of us with my freshly goateed chin.
Sam and I stroll up to the back of the van. It’s already half empty, but there are still enough boxes for Sam and me to each grab a couple and haul them in through the service entrance.
“God, what’s in these?” Sam asks, wrinkling his nose.
“Cod, I think,” I say. “Close, though.”
“I’d laugh, but I’d have to breathe, and that’s not something I really want to do right now.”
The hallway from the door to the kitchen is surprisingly narrow and low-ceilinged. But it’s good cover. No one watching the route. The only danger is running into the real delivery guys coming back for another load.
And of course, as soon as I think that, Joe and Blow come around the corner. Sam hesitates for a step, but I nudge him from behind with my box. He can’t help it. It’s an ingrained response to hesitate when you’re afraid you’re going to get caught. But that’s exactly when you get caught. Never hesitate.
Sam shifts his box slightly higher on his shoulder to hide his face. I follow his example. And sure enough, neither of them looks at us, probably assuming we’re Strand employees helping bring in the goods. In any case, we walk right past them and into the kitchen. We drop off the boxes under the watchful eye of the sous-chef, who probably thinks we’re with the guys who just left.
We exit through a side door into the main dining room. Ducking into the men’s room, we stow our coveralls under the sink behind an overflowing trash can.
It drives me crazy when people on TV throw away perfectly good disguises after swapping into their next character. What if the job goes south and you need to get invisible fast? You could’ve had that fabulous masquerade-mask outfit you came in wearing, but instead you stuffed it in the fireplace when you shed it for your cat-burglar outfit. Amateurs.
I straighten my black bow tie with a white-gloved hand. The wig still itches like crazy, but it’s one of my most convincing disguises. Messy, a touch too long for a manly cut, and an unflattering shade of orange.
There’s a method to my madness, as always. It’s stupid hair. People look away from stupid hair faster than they do from nice hair. Hair that’s too nice is an attraction. It’s important not to get carried away, though. Nasty hair attracts even more attention than nice hair.
Sam has switched out his newsboy cap for a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. His dusky skin tone is pretty distinctive, but he’s practiced enough now in deception that a shift of his shoulders and a change in his bearing are enough to convince even me he’s a different person. I look away to hide a smirk.
“What’s so funny?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say, the smirk widening into a grin.
“I don’t have to put up with this abuse,” he says as he follows me into the restaurant. “I have better things to do.”
“Like hanging out with that girl you’ve been pining over?”
I’m making it up, of course. I have no idea if he’s pining over a girl or not. But sometimes the best way to get information is to pretend you already have it.
Sam tries and fails to cover his shocked expression, and I realize that I’m right. He is pining over a girl. Interesting. I make a mental note to torture her name out of him later.
“Where are we going, smart-ass?”
“This way,” I say, pointing to another door at the far end of the dining room.
The place is like a maze. It’s a giant, square building in Old Town, which means it’s been renovated umpteen times over the years. Most notably during the Prohibition era, when every property owned, operated, or occupied by the male half of the population was supplemented with a network of hidey-holes to shield the demon liquor and its associated vices.
But it’s an opulent maze. The dark wood paneling isn’t reserved for service hallways—it flows throughout the place, making the doorway lintels, the window frames, and the wainscoting seem heavy and overbearing. The vermilion wallpaper, the ornate crown molding, and the bulky baseboards add to the anchored feeling. The rooms, like the service hallway, are smaller than you’d expect, which lends credibility to my suspicion that there are rooms we’re not seeing.
Tyler sketched a map of the place to the best of his knowledge. He knows the location and layout of the locker room with some certainty. He’s less sure about the rest of the bui
lding, especially the upper floors, since they’re reserved for clandestine conference rooms and special overnight guests. But Sam and I can fake it if we need to. In any case, the locker room is our starting point.
The waiter disguises were the best I could come up with on short notice with no way to conduct my usual analysis of the place. Towel boys would probably have been a better choice for the locker-room search, but I have no idea how long the search will take or if we will need to move on to a different room. Waiters seemed like the inmates with the most mobility, considering the high probability of the facility offering room service to its elite overnighters.
Sam pushes open the door into the main lobby. A thick Oriental rug worth more than my entire tuition at St. Aggie’s muffles our footsteps as we cross the room. We detour around the claw-footed table with the boulder-sized lily-and-orchid flower arrangement on it and stride purposefully toward the glass doors leading to the gym area.
As I tug the chrome handle to open the door, a rush of humid air immediately heightens the itchiness of my wig. Must be the right place. The wood floor continues into the foyer of the gym area, but it’s the only interior element shared by the rest of the building. The gym sports a more contemporary design, with modern furniture, unadorned walls, and the occasional bamboo-infested water feature.
Five banks of lockers with mahogany benches between them fill the main space of the locker room. Larger lockers line the walls, leaving space for the room’s corners and about three feet of wall from the tops of the lockers to the ceiling. The door on the opposite side of the locker room must lead to the showers and toilets. The side door, judging by the occasional sounds of grunts and ball-wall impacts, must lead to the various sport courts and equipment rooms. Maybe to a sauna and pool as well. Sam darts to each door to check for incoming patrons.
“We’re clear for now,” he says, taking off the glasses and stuffing them in his vest pocket.
I take out the key and pull the chain I’ve fastened it to over my head. There’s no number on the key, so we’re going to have to try each locker. I start at the nearest bank of lockers and work my way around in a serpentine pattern while Sam plays lookout.
“Good thing we came on a Sunday. A lot of them are probably golfing,” Sam says, mostly to break the silence, I think. Talking makes the time pass faster for him when he’s nervous.
“Not great weather for golfing,” I say, thinking about the brisk autumn wind pushing against us as we walked to the Strand.
“There are indoor driving ranges. Business is better over golf. Squash leaves you too breathless to bullshit.”
I laugh, even as the key fails to open the fifteenth locker.
It’s not the next locker or the next, and both Sam and I are starting to get antsy. We can only count on an empty locker room for so long.
“This isn’t working,” I say as I round the edge of the third bank of lockers. “We don’t have time to try every one.”
“Is there a sixty-three?” Sam asks.
“No,” I say. “They’re labeled with letters.”
“How many letters?” Sam says, perking up.
“Three.”
“Is there a pattern?” Sam abandons his post to come look over my shoulder. His presence is solid and warm behind me.
“No.” I slam my hand into the offending locker. “Makes no sense at all.”
“They’re initials.” He reaches past my shoulder to run a finger over the metal plate with the engraved letters.
I let my head fall against the locker, closing my eyes. Of course.
“You’re brilliant, Sam.”
“That’s why you keep me around,” he says, bumping my shoulder. “But which initials are we looking for?”
“My dad’s, maybe?”
But a quick search of the room reveals no JAD in the lot.
“What about your initials?” Sam suggests.
There is a locker with my initials, but the key I have doesn’t open it.
“Maybe it’s like the gun. Your mom’s initials?”
Another quick search, for both her married and maiden names, but no dice.
“What now?” Sam asks.
I shake my head, thinking. “Land of Toys”… Not ringing any bells. And I’m pretty sure that “Land of Toys” refers to the club itself, anyway.
On a whim, I search the lockers again, this time for my real initials, though with a good bit of doubt. My dad hasn’t called me by my birth name since he gave me my grifter name. My mom named me, and I think the name reminds him of her.
And bingo. A wall locker near the corner of the room bears the initials of my given name.
As soon as I insert the key, I know it’s the right locker. I know even before I turn the key and hear the fateful click. The door swings open. My heartbeat ratchets up about twenty notches and Sam leaps a bench to back me up. No dead rats this time, though.
It’s so much worse than that. The locker is empty.
THE STASH
“You have got to be kidding me,” I say.
Sam doesn’t say anything, which confirms that we’re screwed. Dead end, possibly literally for my dad.
“He must not have meant the physical locker,” I say, scrambling. “Maybe the key means something else.” My eyes feel dry and irritated, like I’ve somehow gotten dust in them. “We have to get out of here. If we get caught—”
“Julep, look!” Sam points at the wall behind the bank of lockers. A slight vertical crack has appeared in the otherwise seamless paint. He moves past me to the wall, running his fingers along the opening between the back of the lockers and the wall, widening it.
“It’s a door,” I say in the Captain Obvious way that only true astonishment can evoke.
“I thought the dimensions of this room looked off,” Sam says with not a small amount of glee. “I noticed as we were coming in from the lobby.”
Sam pulls harder at the bank of lockers to expose the remaining hole. Flecks of green paint fall on us, dusting our uniforms. But the door mechanism is well oiled and silent, and the newer floor tile leaves the bottom of the panel of lockers free to swing open where a rug would impede it.
Once Sam pries the door open far enough, I peek inside. It’s as black and silent as a crypt. A triangle of light from the locker room spills onto a stained cement floor.
“He must have rigged the locking mechanism to release the catch on the other side of the door,” Sam says, examining the hidden hinges.
“How did he even know it was here?” I say, nearly lost in the sea of questions this new discovery has dumped on me. How long has he had this locker? How did he reserve it without a membership? Why go to all this trouble? A stunt like this would have taken extensive planning.
I’m pulling my head out to tell Sam what I’m thinking when I feel his hand on my back, shoving me through the doorway and pushing the bank of lockers closed behind me. I open my mouth to protest, but instead I hear a voice chastising him for shirking his duties and ordering him to deliver a tray of shrimp and sesame sticks with apricot dipping sauce to the third-floor conference room. I hear Sam’s muttered “Yes, sir” and then his footsteps as he leaves the room.
I lean back against the now firmly shut panel of lockers. There’s enough give in the hinges that I think I can get myself out. The oppressive darkness and stale air constrict my lungs for a few seconds until I manage to get hold of my imagination. Yes, it’s pitch-black. No, there are no monsters.
I pull off my gloves and wave my hand in the air, trying to determine the dimensions of the room. My knuckles smack against what feels like a slim wooden post. I grab the post and pull myself closer to it. I wave my other hand out from the wooden construct to find what else is in here, and my fingers brush a thread dangling from the ceiling.
A ray of hope sparks in my brain as I give the thread an experimental tug. There’s a promising click, but no light filters through the room. I hear the tiny buzz of antiquated electricity, though, so I wait a few seconds.
My patience is rewarded as a dim orange glow begins to emanate from overhead, lighting a small circle of the room around me. It’s weak and nearly useless, but any light is better than the oppressive unknown of a moment ago.
The wooden structure I’m holding on to is a spindly, empty shelf for wine bottles. Other than the shelf, the dust, and the long-dead secrets, the roughly eight-by-ten space is filled with a whole lot of nothing. Again I’m at a loss as to what my dad could possibly have meant for me to find, until I realize the string I’m holding is tied to something.
I pull the string up, catching the torpedo-shaped object in my hand. It’s a toy airplane. I can’t be sure my dad was the one who left it, but since it’s the only thing in the room not coated with decades of dust, it stands to reason it hasn’t been here long.
I tuck it in my waiter’s vest pocket and turn back to the door, more than ready to be out of the room, out of the con, and out of the building. And to find Sam. I press my shoulder to the door and it swings open with only a moderate amount of effort. I can only hope no patron has wandered into the locker room while I’ve been mucking about in the dark.
“Who the devil are you?” asks someone from the other side.
I quickly don my gloves and pop out of the room to face a pudgy businessman wearing a towel.
“I apologize for startling you, sir.” I search for a plausible explanation for my out-of-wall appearance, but there’s really no need to lie about it. “I stumbled upon this secret Prohibitionera storeroom, and I need to report it to my supervisor.”
“Really?” The businessman’s demeanor shifts from annoyed to intrigued in nothing flat. A discovered secret trumps an errant employee any day. I think he’s almost forgotten he’s in nothing but a towel as he crowds closer to me to get a look.
“It’s right through here,” I say, gesturing him behind the bank of lockers with a sweep of my hand as I back up and head out of the room. He’s too fascinated by the secret room to notice my departure. Now, where did that flunky send Sam? Third-floor conference room?
I dart to the left staircase as soon as I hit the entryway, but my luck has apparently run out. Instead of Sam coming down the stairs, I run nearly headlong into Mrs. Stratton, of all people—Heather’s mom, who incidentally knows me as Jena Scott, attorney-at-law. There’s a good chance she won’t recognize me, but I don’t like to take those kinds of chances. I duck my head and melt against the wall, an overdone show of deference, but one that will likely keep her from looking too closely at my face.
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