Brent knew a lot about different things. Even though he was rich like the other kids, he was fun to be around. Instead of a nanny like the other kids, he had a manny—a man.
Brent had asked for the playdate, and when CJ said okay, Brent had the manny set it up. He never even had to ask his parents.
“You guys want to stop in the park and shoot some hoops?” the manny asked when they left the school. So they played basketball for a while, until Brent suggested they go to CJ’s house, which was just two blocks away. The manny was tall and African American. With his perfect teeth, chiseled body, and the way he was always being upbeat, he reminded CJ of a talk show host. Brent told CJ that the manny wanted to be an actor, and he sometimes left Brent in odd places while he auditioned for a movie or a play. Brent didn’t mind at all.
“My dad’s never home,” said Brent. “So this is the next best thing, ’cause we do guy stuff, and he’s really good at my homework.”
CJ didn’t want to ask about the manny doing the homework, because Brent was pretty capable in science lab. He also didn’t want to talk to Brent about his own missing dad, as he was certain this was a temporary thing. Once Bruce Smithfork got that factory opened in China, he would resume being his old self. CJ hoped.
When the three guys got to CJ’s house, the manny told Brent he would be back in an hour. They did some complicated secret handshake, then the manny turned and left.
“Where’s he going?” asked CJ.
“He mostly talks to girls,” Brent said. “At least that’s what he tells me.”
The apartment was mercifully quiet, the other kids all out with Maricel. “Wanna play some cards?” Brent asked.
“Uh, okay,” said CJ, not really into it. They pulled CJ’s desk to the middle of the room, and CJ was glad he had hung a poster over the grille so the eye wouldn’t peek out at them. Brent took the seat facing the door. CJ shuffled, letting the cards fan his face before he dealt.
“What’s with the dot writing?” Brent asked casually.
“What?” replied CJ, startled.
“The dot writing, like they used in the late eighteen hundreds. It’s all around your room.” Brent pointed at the poem that wrapped around the moldings.
“They’re poems,” said CJ. “The guy who lived here was really into poetry and had them written like that in the moldings.”
“No, I mean the dots have a message. You see how certain letters have a tiny dot over them? You just put them in order and then check out what they spell. So what does that one spell?” Brent said, staring at the eastern wall.
CJ was embarrassed that he’d never even noticed the tiny dots. “I never really looked at them.”
“Really? Well, let’s check them out.”
Brent had already pulled a piece of paper out of his backpack and was writing down the letters that had a dot above them. The dots were small, almost like a pinprick. Still, CJ wondered how he had missed them.
While Brent wrote, CJ worried about their secret. He had to keep Brent out of the other rooms, or he’d see the poetry on the moldings there. What if he knew something about the Post family fortune?
Brent was talking. “You see, back in England, people hated paying postage to the government. So they started to mail newspapers to one another for free. They would just put a dot beneath the letters of the words they wanted to write, and that gave them a free way to communicate with others.” He seemed to like the same sort of arcane information CJ liked.
“That makes no sense. If postage was expensive, how could they mail newspapers for free?”
“Because the law was that anything with a government stamp on it could be mailed for free because they paid a government tax.”
CJ thought that if this kid weren’t so nosy, he might actually like him. “I’m sure this isn’t anything like that.”
Brent read the poem. “Let’s see. I think Carl Sandburg wrote this:
Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you
know how many you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven—
or five six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand—
And there the poem stopped. CJ thought the artist had simply run out of wall.
When Brent wrote the letters with a dot under them, it looked like this:
INSILVERROOM
“Dude!” exclaimed Brent, who CJ was beginning to not like at all anymore. “What’s in the silver room?”
“Oh, that!” CJ said, thinking quickly. “There used to be a silver room here, but it was covered over years ago,” he said, wondering what could be in the silver room. Was there access to the wooden mural through there?
“I thought my grandmother was the only one who still had a silver room.”
“Really? What does she use it for?”
“She has a lot of parties, and I guess it’s an easier way to keep things organized. She does an inventory of all her silverware before and after, and she has people shining stuff all the time in there.”
Both boys jumped at the buzzer. CJ ran down the hallway to answer it, closing Brid’s, Carron’s, and Patrick’s doors on the way. He didn’t want Brent snooping and finding any other messages.
He buzzed the intercom. “Hello?”
“Got a guy named Manny here, asking for someone named Brent,” said Ray.
“I’ll send him down.”
Brent had followed CJ down the hall. “Time to go, Brent,” said CJ. “Your manny guy is here.”
“Dude, he can wait.”
“He said it’s important you meet him downstairs right away.”
“So you just stay home all by yourself?” Brent asked with wide eyes. “We can wait with you.”
“No, you need to leave. Now!” CJ was surprised at the sound of his voice, and he felt a little badly that Brent was getting his jacket on, grabbing his backpack, and practically running to the elevator.
“See you at school tomorrow,” CJ said, with some apology in his voice.
“Yeah, whatever,” came Brent’s deflated reply.
As soon as he heard the door shut, CJ ran into Patrick’s room. The poem on his moldings also had little marks over certain letters, but instead of dots, some words had numbers. Guessing he had to order the letters by these numbers, he quickly wrote down the poem, one he had never heard of.
For me, me, me.
It has a little shelf, my dear,
For me, me, me.
But when CJ wrote them out in the order of the numbers he got:
NIPAMEHTHSUP
What is that supposed to mean? thought CJ. He wished he hadn’t kicked Brent out quite so quickly. His thoughts were interrupted by a ruckus at the front door as Maricel came home with the other three children.
Patrick came bounding into his room. “Oh, hey,” he said. Patrick never seemed to mind when others used his stuff. “Wanna play with me?” he asked as he pulled out his wrestling figures.
“No, I was just writing some things down,” CJ said as Patrick leaned over his shoulder.
Patrick studied the jumble of letters. “So what map do you want to push in?” he asked.
CJ looked at him, stunned.
“What are you talking about?”
“What map do you need to push in?”
“What are you saying?”
“What you just wrote about pushing the map in. What map?”
“Patrick, I have no idea what you are saying.”
“I’m not saying it. You’re the one who wrote it and now you won’t even tell me why and you’re in my room writing stuff, so you should tell me!”
CJ looked again at his paper. “Show me where you see that?”
“So easy.” Patrick swept his finger right to left across the lettering. “Just read it backward. It says, ‘Push the map in,’ and by the way, C
J, you write with no finger spaces, which is really, really bad.”
Watching Patrick, CJ thought his little brother might be smarter than any of them.
“Hey, Patrick?”
“Yup.”
“That big thing you saw behind the wall, that wooden thing with lines that looked like a Christmas stocking on its side?”
“Yup.”
CJ pulled his brother down the hall and pointed to the map of Manhattan he had pinned to his bedroom door. “Would you say it looks like this shape?” he asked.
“Totally.”
CHAPTER 29
CJ was staring at the map on his door, lost in thought. He felt like he did when he ate large amounts of brownies, all jittery.
“Do you have the map here that you want to push?” Patrick asked again.
When CJ did not answer, Pat got distracted by his toy wrestling figures. He had no idea how important his revelation was.
CJ paced and thought about what the writing on Brid’s moldings might say. He wanted to burst through her door and tell her, but she had brought a friend home from school. He would have to wait.
He went into the closet in Pat’s bedroom, where Eloise had told them Torrio had gotten in. Was that the silver room the moldings had referred to? CJ pushed the back panel, and nothing happened. He pushed the sides the way Eloise told him, and silently the panel slid aside, revealing a narrow hall, dark and uninviting. CJ didn’t enter. He thought about going down to Eloise’s apartment to ask her about it, but he didn’t want to do so unannounced. He’d learned from the Williamsons to call ahead, especially if he was entering by way of a secret panel.
He looked on the kitchen blackboard for Eloise’s phone number, but the collage of messages, phone numbers, and Carron’s art made finding it a daunting task. He had no idea how his mother found anything at all.
CJ decided to go to Eloise’s back door by way of the fire stairs. He could do that without a doorman and an audience. He knocked, but there was no sound from within. He had brought a pen, paper, and some tape, and he began to write: “Dear Eloise, Access to map with symbols may be from silver room. Please advise.” He folded the note and taped it to the door, thinking she or Annika would find it by evening. He couldn’t wait to speak with her.
CJ was about to turn and bolt up the stairs again, when he heard a noise from below. It was a door, opening and closing rapidly.
Torrio? But he lived on the other side, below the Williamsons’ apartment. It couldn’t be him. Unless…did he travel between all four apartments using the fire stairwells and the silver room? Did everyone leave their door to the fire stairwells unlocked?
CJ stood perfectly still. The other person in the stairwell had paused, too, because no noise came from either landing. There was a rushing sound in CJ’s ears, his own blood coursing through his body, so loud that he prayed nobody else could hear it.
For a moment, it was as if these two people were almost daring each other to make the first move. CJ heard a soft ticking sound and wondered if the other person had a wristwatch on. Then CJ heard a click, and the entire stairwell was thrown into complete and utter darkness.
One full minute went by. CJ tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness but was only able to make out the banister to lead him upstairs. It stood about three feet away from him. He fixated on it, working on a plan to dash for it the moment the other person made a move upstairs.
The next thing he heard paralyzed him. The other person was simply walking up the stairs. Effortlessly, this person was coming closer, and CJ once again had jelly-filled legs that felt heavy and lifeless. He forced himself to reach forward for the banister, to feel his way up the stairs. He felt as if he was swimming to the top of a black and sightless pool, desperate for air at the surface. He knew there were eighteen steps between floors. He could see the faintest crack of light peeking out from his back door: the finish line, the place he needed to get to.
He let go of the banister to step onto the landing but instead, he felt his foot kick something hard, something that made him trip and fall forward, directly onto his face. His shin slammed against the firm thing again, the thing that was really the top step. He had miscounted! He hadn’t run the full eighteen steps; it must have been only seventeen, and he had tripped himself.
From behind him he could hear a grunt, and before he could rise, the grunting thing tripped over him, falling hard and slamming CJ back onto the stairwell floor. Even though he couldn’t see anything, CJ felt certain it was Torrio. The man groaned in CJ’s ear.
“You should get Eloise to talk to me,” the man said, in a low, gravelly voice. “I think you’re a smart kid. You have no idea how complicated this thing is. You don’t know the whole story.”
CJ could hardly breathe. “Let me up,” he said weakly.
“Yeah, we both need to get up.” The old man’s breath was pungent and smelled like coffee. He leaned on his hands, lifting himself off the floor.
“C-c-c-c-c-c-can’t breathe,” CJ said. He felt dizzy, and his mind was fuzzy. He slipped into a dark and foggy place, and that was the last thing he remembered.
CHAPTER 30
“My boy, please get up!” Something smelled bad and his throat hurt. CJ thought dreamily that it sounded like Eloise’s voice, and she must have come to meet with him. He just couldn’t get the energy to answer her. “Take a big sniff of this, dear, please?” she implored. He realized she was holding a jar of smelling salts.
The back door to the Smithfork apartment opened, and Brid dropped to the floor next to CJ. “What happened to you?” she asked. CJ felt her touch his forehead, and he grimaced.
Patrick’s voice came next. “CJ, are you faking it?” CJ wished they would go away and let him be. His head was pounding.
Gingerly, Eloise, Brid, and Patrick got on either side of him and helped him to sit up. Something wet ran down his forehead, and he shut his eyes.
“His forehead is bleeding!” Brid said, a touch of panic in her voice. “I need to get Mom.”
“Mom isn’t home,” said Patrick. “It’s just Maricel and Carron.”
Eloise held some gauze to his forehead, and CJ met her hand with his own and pressed on the tender spot. His forehead was sticky with blood.
“Should we get Maricel?” Brid sounded a little anxious.
“No, I just fell forward in the darkness. I think I caught the edge of the top step with my head,” CJ said.
Eloise looked at him skeptically. “I heard a loud noise, and when I came out here, all the lights were off, and you were lying on the ground.”
“Yes, I was walking up the stairs and tripped.”
“Well, let’s get you inside, at the very least,” Eloise said. “Does anything feel broken to you?”
“Nope,” said CJ, wondering how much he should tell her. “I just feel groggy.”
“I know exactly what to do for that,” she said, bringing her container of smelling salts closer to his face.
A few minutes later, CJ was lying on his bed. Patrick had wandered back to his own bedroom.
“I do think you’ll be fine,” said Eloise, “but we would appreciate the truth. Did anyone hurt you?”
“But I told you…” CJ’s voice trailed off. “I’m not sure if he hurt me on purpose, or if it was an accident where we tripped over each other,” he said. He took a deep breath and began to tell them what Brent had discovered and what had really happened on the staircase.
When he finished, the three of them sat in silence. Brid was looking up at his moldings. “Eloise, did you ever notice the dot writing?”
Eloise twisted her face into a half grin. “I stared at those poems on the moldings enough to see the dots, but I never paid them any mind. I always thought they were little nail heads, places where the nails were driven into the wall. I just saw a lighthearted poem about math, something to make me do my sums. Silly, right?
“Brid,” she continued, “please go into your room and see if the poem on your molding has dots. If s
o, please copy those letters down for us.”
“Right away!” Brid shouted, and took off down the hall.
Eloise stayed seated beside CJ’s bed, looking thoughtful. “I thought you would be happy,” CJ said.
“Happy that Torrio attacked you? It’s high time we called the police on him. He’s coming into your apartment, beating up children!”
“No!” said CJ. “He didn’t beat me up. He was just sort of talking to me about working together. I really did trip myself up on the stairs. He even may have been trying to help me; I can’t remember it so well. But this is important: we found a message about the silver room, and we need to look in there.”
“But we’ve been through that in the past,” said Eloise. “The silver room is a pathway from Pat’s room to a back stair, but it’s empty. I have a feeling access to the map was sealed when the walls were put up. He was either eavesdropping on you or looking for something. He refuses to believe nothing is here.”
Just then Brid burst into the room, papers in her hands. “There is nothing in the other bedrooms, but I have a plan. It’s time to launch Operation Mortar.”
“What?” CJ said. “What is Operation Mortar?”
“It’s my plan to get behind the wall to the wooden map. It’s finally ready. It will take us to the next level of this mystery, if you think you’re ready to go there,” Brid said solemnly. “Because once Operation Mortar is launched, there is no going back.”
CHAPTER 31
It seemed Brid had already gotten started. She had asked Ray to call Mr. Smithfork’s office. Using his most courteous, professional voice, he had requested a DigiSpy unit be sent to their home. Once the Smithforks’ home connected to the office, Ray turned into a fantastic actor who claimed his boss needed to work on DigiSpy the moment he returned from China. Ray didn’t mash any words together, and the people from LeCube thought nothing of this request. The prototype arrived a couple of days later. CJ couldn’t believe his sister had done all this without asking for help.
Walls within Walls Page 14