Doom at Grant's Tomb

by Marcia Wells

  The more I think about all the different puzzle pieces, the more they become a tangled mess of nonsense in my brain. My arm starts to cramp up from drawing the little looping jewels.

  “What’s wrong?” Jonah demands.

  After resting my pencil down on the table, I stretch my fingers and glance over at Paula. She’s eating one of Mario’s famous fudge brownies. She smiles and gives me a quick wink, then turns the page of her magazine.

  “I feel like there’s a secret plan I don’t know about,” I say. “Why would the police give me protection if Lars is supposedly back in Germany? I feel like they’re using me as bait, like I’m the worm on the hook and they’re trying to catch the big Lars fish.”

  Jonah snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous. They’d never use you as bait. It’s highly illegal. They’re just being careful. You work for the police, and they take care of their own.”

  I sigh and look down at my art pad. I guess the drawing of the crown came out okay.

  Jonah snaps his fingers. “I almost forgot.” He unzips a pouch on his backpack and pulls out a slim black box. “Your birthday present finally came in the mail. Happy birthday.” He hands me the box. He was going to come over three days ago for cake and ice cream, but between school starting the next day and the police calling me down to the station, our plans for a birthday party fizzled.

  I smile. “Thanks.” I pop open the lid. A pen sits nestled in white tissue paper. It’s dark blue and about half the size of a regular pen. He knows I love to draw, so maybe it’s a special kind of draft pen. I pick it up to examine it. Seems pretty regular to me. “A pen?” I ask.

  He grins and his leg starts twitching, bumping the sides of the table and making our plastic cups rattle. “Not just a pen. A pepper pen. It’s filled with pepper spray, an excellent weapon for today’s student.”

  I drop it back in the box as if it just burned me. He’s given me a lot of strange gifts in the past—a rubber nose with candy boogers in it, a fart machine that killed all the plants in our apartment—but this is different. This is a semi-dangerous weapon.

  He grabs it and uncaps one end. “Look, it even writes.” He demonstrates on my notepad by writing Jonah is cool in blue ink. “The other end is filled with pepper spray. One shot to someone’s eyes will blind them for at least ten minutes. Just flip the safety switch off and press this button.” He points to a tiny red knob on the end of the pen. “Keep it in your pocket. In case.”

  Sweat springs up on my forehead. “In case what?” Is it me, or is it suddenly very warm in here?

  “You know.” He clicks the cap back on and shoves the pen into my hand.

  I stare at him blankly, so he leans forward, glancing around to make sure no one’s listening.

  “In case you’re bait,” he whispers.

  Chapter 5

  Little Red

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER

  Fat drops of rain are splattering the sidewalk when we leave the restaurant. Jonah clutches his computer bag to his chest and sprints down the block to his parents’ dental office, waving goodbye over his shoulder. That kid is like a vampire in sunlight when it comes to rain on his tech gear.

  Paula steps off the curb and whistles loudly for a cab. Clearly she doesn’t understand how nuts New York gets in the rain. “No taxi’s going to stop,” I tell her. “They’re all occupied.” Three cabs drive by with their service lights switched off, as if to illustrate my point. “The subway’s a block away. Just four stops to my house.”

  She waves me off. “No subways.” She holds a hand out for another taxi. Occupied.

  No subways? Why? More cars pass. One hits a puddle and sends water spraying over Paula’s black skirt and jean jacket. Cursing softly, she pulls out a Kleenex and dabs at her clothes. After eight more cabs go by, she gives up. “Fine,” she grumbles. “We’ll take the subway.”

  If the streets are wet, the subway steps are even wetter. We hold on to the rail so we don’t slip, and carefully make our way through the press of soggy people trying to get home. I hear Paula mutter about “rude New Yorkers” and “cold northern weather.” It’s rush hour, and the station is extra jammed because of the rain. There’s a swampy smell in the air, a combination of pee, body odor, and bubblegum.

  She grabs my hand as we struggle toward our platform. She seems nervous. Maybe she’s claustrophobic and hates crowds. I lead the way, weaving expertly through the sea of bodies. A group of obnoxious teens knocks into us. Paula shoots them a look that could melt steel. Yep, she definitely hates crowds.

  Our train arrives and we board, pushing our way into the corner of the subway car. Just four stops until we can exit. The doors ding and snap closed. With a jerking rumble, the train starts to move, swaying as it picks up speed. Suddenly the emergency brakes slam on and we all stumble forward. I catch myself on a metal pole before I fall.

  Crrrrunch! The car jolts hard, sending us flying for real this time. I fall down on my knees and am about to hit my head when Paula jerks me to her side with an iron grip. “Hold on!” she shouts. “We just hit something!”

  What? Through my confusion, a panicked thought strikes: What if Lars followed me down here and is attacking the train? I hold my breath. No fire, no flashes of light from an exploding bomb. I become aware that Paula’s arm is covering my head, squishing my cheek against the dirty floor.

  “Stay down,” she commands. Her usually smiling face has morphed into the serious expression of a warrior as she looks back and forth, back and forth. Her hand is inside her jacket. I catch a flash of black. She’s got a gun in there!

  The train groans and the lights flicker. “Sorry, folks,” the conductor says, his voice tinny over the loudspeaker. “An old I-beam fell onto the tracks and we sideswiped it. I’m going to need everyone to vacate at the next station. Attendants will be there to assist you.”

  Some passengers complain but others are helping people off the floor and murmuring words of comfort. Even the group of pushy kids who bumped into us is helping an old man get back to his seat.

  Paula’s still smothering me. Her arm is heavy and the floor smells like stale nachos and sweat socks and I’m getting nauseous. “Paula, I’m okay.” I squirm to remind her I’m still here.

  “Sorry,” she says. She stands up, yanking me to my feet in the process. Then she kneels down again to grab the papers that have spilled out of her leather purse.

  I stoop to help her collect some pictures that lie scattered beneath a seat. A large black-and-white photo stops me in my tracks. It’s of Lars and O’Malley, sitting together at an outdoor café! My mind starts snapping pictures: Click—baguette sandwich on the table. Click—Lars gesturing to O’Malley. Click, click, click.

  As I hand the picture back to Paula, I raise an eyebrow at her.

  She snatches the photo from me and stuffs it into her bag. “Not here, Edmund.” She pulls me by the arm as the train stops and everyone piles out. We hurry over to the stairs and up into the fresh air.

  It’s still raining. I stand on the sidewalk, arms folded, waiting for an explanation. She ignores me and whips out her cell phone, punching in a number. “It’s me,” she says after a few seconds. “Just had an accident in the subway. One of those I-beams from the old tracks. Little Red’s secure. Yep.” She hangs up.

  Little Red? Are you kidding me? That’s my new code name?

  “Was that Bovano?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Chief Williams.” We stand there staring at each other, the rain wetting our hair and faces. “You weren’t supposed to see that picture,” she finally says.

  I shoot her a No duh look. “Tell me about Lars and O’Malley. I deserve to know.”

  She shifts her purse from one shoulder to the other. “There’s not much to say.”

  I let out a sound of disbelief and point to her jacket. “You just had your hand on a gun. That’s not normal, Paula! Tell me what’s going on!”

  She runs a hand over her wet hair. “O’Malley vanished a year ago. Tha
t picture was taken in England, the week before he disappeared.”

  “So you guys lied to me. Lars and O’Malley are buddies and they’re in town with some evil plan.”

  “No.” She shakes her head hard. “We confirmed Lars is in Germany. That’s the truth. Oh, thank goodness, a cab!” She waves frantically at a taxi with an in-service light. The car pulls over and we climb in.

  We don’t speak during the ride home. Her words about Lars bother me. If the cops confirmed Lars is in Germany, then why do I need all this extra security?

  When we reach the safety of my apartment building, she walks me to the front entrance, her forehead creased with worry. “Look,” she says quietly. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about the picture. I could get fired.”

  “I won’t say anything. For your information, I already suspected that Lars and O’Malley are a team. What else do you know? Tell me. Please.”

  She’s silent a moment. “I can’t,” she finally says. “Look, Edmund, we need your help. You are brilliant and you see things we don’t and you draw perfect pictures. But that’s as far as this arrangement goes. My job is to keep you safe. Your job is to draw.”

  I sigh. “Fine. But I need a favor.”

  “Oh?” She eyes me warily.

  “Can you change my code name? Make it Big Red, or maybe Hulking Manly Red . . . anything but Little Red?”

  She laughs and holds out her hand to shake mine. “Deal.”

  That night I sketch the picture of Lars and O’Malley at the café. Then I study it for more than an hour. At first glance, they seem like two people at a business lunch with sandwiches. But something’s off in O’Malley’s expression. He looks stressed.

  There’s a napkin on the table to the left of Lars’s hand. It’s folded differently than the other napkin, shaped into a lumpy square instead of a smooth triangle. I squint. Is something black hiding beneath the napkin edge? A gun? Has Lars placed a gun on the table? No wonder O’Malley looks worried. Are they friends, or enemies?

  And what does that mean for me?

  Chapter 6

  Frank’s Tank

  11:02 A.M., FRIDAY

  The next day in chemistry class, Jonah and I are sitting at our lab table, waiting for Mr. Frank to give us instructions. The chemistry teacher, Mrs. Roberts, had to go on emergency maternity leave, so our sixth grade science teacher, Mr. Patterson (a.k.a. Mr. Pee), was supposed to cover the class. But after the first day, it was clear Bovano knew a lot more about chemistry than Mr. Pee did, so Bovano took over. At first Mr. Pee sat in the back and zoned out, but yesterday he stopped coming altogether.

  I slide my art pad over to Jonah and show him the picture of O’Malley and Lars. “I found this,” I whisper. “It was taken a year ago. Are they friends or enemies?”

  He stares at the picture, his body so still and quiet that I wonder if he’s breathing. “Enemies. But maybe with a common goal, so they’re working together?”

  Some kids walk by our table. Quickly I grab the art pad and put it on my lap. “I think Lars is forcing O’Malley to do something.” I lean closer. “The police showed me a mug shot of O’Malley from the nineties. That’s a long time ago. He’s old now and I bet he’s retired. Did you see how miserable O’Malley looked in the café picture? Maybe Lars is forcing him out of retirement, ordering him to make a bomb and send it to the NYPD.”

  Jonah scratches his head. “But why? What does the bomb mean?”

  I flip through my drawings under my desk, landing on the picture of the bomb. “I still don’t know. This afternoon I’m doing surveillance at the Met. Paula won’t talk to me, but I’ll try to get some answers out of Bovano. If I can’t, I need you ready and in position with Operation Hack. Five o’clock sharp.”

  His eyes grow wide and he salutes me. “I’m on it.”

  “Class, listen up,” says Mr. Frank. His voice is deep and commanding, and everyone jumps to attention. He points to a word that he’s written in huge letters on the whiteboard: GOLD. A shudder of treasure-hunter excitement ripples through the room. Everyone sits up a little straighter.

  He chuckles. “I knew that would get your attention. Gold,” he says, strolling the front of the room with his hands tucked behind his back, “is an element. Number seventy-nine on the periodic table, identified by the symbol ‘Au.’ Reacts with very few other elements. Today we’ll be studying the phenomenon known as crazing. Anyone know what that is?” His beady eyes dart around the room. I think he’s really enjoying this teacher stuff.

  Silence answers. In a different class, somebody might crack a joke about “crazing” having to do with going crazy over gold, but not in Mr. Frank’s class. The first day of school he established himself as a no-nonsense kind of teacher when he made three kids jog laps around the gym for speaking without raising their hands.

  He pulls out a white cloth bag that makes a heavy metallic clinking sound when it settles on his desk. “Crazing is when cracks appear on a glazed surface. You may have noticed it on your ceramic cups at home. There’s a gold-covered monument in Central Park that suffers from this problem. The William Tecumseh Sherman Monument, to be exact. It was regilded in a layer of gold just last year, but the gold has already begun to crack. We’re going to figure out why.”

  At the words “gold-covered monument in Central Park,” Jonah starts to splutter and cough. Like I said, sometimes he has difficulty with surprises.

  “Each set of lab partners will have one gold coin for this experiment.” Mr. Frank opens the bag and begins to distribute the shiny coins. “You will also be assigned a chemical. Go find it in the case. I expect these coins to be returned to me by the end of class. And no monkey business. Isn’t that right, Mr. Christopher?”

  All eyes are now on Robin Christopher, our class thug, who grew five inches over the summer and is now even more menacing. Robin’s face goes red and blotchy. “Right, sir,” he mutters.

  The first day that Mr. Frank made the class loudmouths run laps was the first day he caught Robin picking on a fifth-grader in the hallway. Robin had knocked the baseball cap off the kid’s head—I know what that feels like. Anyway, Mr. Frank made Robin do laps and pushups and sit-ups, and we haven’t had any trouble with Robin since.

  The class springs into action, putting on white lab coats and safety goggles that make us all look like alien bugs. The goggles are a tricky fit over my glasses, but I manage. Mr. Frank swings by the table I share with Jonah and plunks down a gold coin. With a small smirk, he hands me a piece of paper with the word water printed on it.

  “Place your assigned chemical in the plastic tank in front of you, add the gold coin, and then observe what happens. Twenty minutes of observation should do it. You may speak to each other quietly, but I expect you to be memorizing the periodic table. Our first test is next week. Anyone scoring below a B will jog laps.”

  The class nods enthusiastically. They love Mr. Frank. He became an instant hero after the Robin Christopher workout session. I guess if he can take bullets in the shoulder while chasing down bad guys, he can handle a pack of seventh-graders.

  Across the table, Jonah fills the tank with water, plops the coin in, and leans in right up close. He starts murmuring in what I think is Hebrew, his fingers doing a little tappity-tap-tap on the tank. Some water sloshes over the edge. This is Jonah “observing quietly.”

  Most adults think Jonah is really spazzy (he is) and therefore kind of dumb (he isn’t—he’s the smartest person I know). He has ADHD, which stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. At times it seems as if he’s not paying attention, as if he’s too hyper to focus. He explained to me that he has a million things running through his mind all at once, and has a hard time slowing them down. For example, right now he’s probably thinking about gold, water, the monument in Central Park, Hebrew school, peanut butter, Greek battle tactics, and Walter the Flying Cow.

  I sit back and observe. The coin is just sitting in the water, where I suspect it will continue to s
it for centuries without any change.

  Milton slides his stool over so he’s sitting beside me. “We need to talk,” he says.

  “Not here,” Jonah hisses, no longer in his Hebrew-chanting trance.

  Milton frowns. “No, I mean, we have to talk about the carnival. I’m in charge of the game booths. You guys haven’t signed up yet.” He pulls out a clipboard and pen. “Which one do you want to cover?”

  The carnival—I forgot! “What is there?” I ask.

  “There are two shifts,” Milton says. “The one o’clock or the three o’clock. You have to stay at your station for two hours, no excuses.” He clears his throat, reading from the clipboard. “First is the maze. Second is the bottle cap toss. Third is the potato sack race . . .” He doesn’t pause for a breath. I zone out after number seven. Jonah’s not listening either. He’s stirring the water in the tank with a pencil, trying to create a whirlpool strong enough to make the coin move upward.

  “And we need parents to chaperone the dance,” Milton finishes. He wiggles his eyebrows at me from beneath his goggles.

  The Carnival Dance is the first dance of the year, and my first dance ever. Just thinking about it makes my palms sweat. Some kids go with groups of friends, and some go with dates. According to the Senate rumor mill, Jenny Miller’s best friend, Andrea Birman, told Kevin Heckles, who told Alan Stoddard, who told Jonah that Jenny’s hoping I ask her to the dance. But what if it’s just a stupid rumor? What if I ask her and she turns me down?

  “I’ll do the ring toss,” I say, ignoring his comment about the dance. Jonah lifts his head up. “I’ll do the bottle cap thing.” He stops stirring the water. “Can we do the one o’clock shift? That way we can hang out after.”

  Milton nods and jots something down. He sifts through the papers on his clipboard. “We still need a teacher for the dunk tank. Hey, Mr. Frank,” he suddenly shouts across the classroom. Is he nuts? Does he not understand the wrath of Detective Frank Bovano?