To me, the woman offered a lame “Sorry, dear.”
“But I’m the one doing a paper on Señor Cortés,” I said. “It’s why Mrs. de Lucena invited me. It’s so important I get to see the map.”
“The exhibit will be open to the public in another week. You can come back then. In the meantime, you’ll enjoy the Youth Wing, I’m sure. Fun to browse around. Juvenile fiction and that kind of thing.”
Normally, I’d head right for the juvenile fiction section, but I hated being kept out of the exhibition. I steamed a bit as others passed by me and had their names checked off on the list.
Booker started to walk toward us, and I grabbed the sleeve of his shirt. “You’ll actually need your glasses this time. This lady has a thing about kids.”
Booker reached into his pants pocket and put the reading glasses on his nose as he walked toward the woman. He looked like a full-on scholar. “How are you doing today, ma’am? Booker Dibble here.”
“I don’t see the name,” she said, running a finger down the list.
“I just joined the society the night before last—maybe my online credit card payment didn’t catch up yet.”
My kind of detective. He had gotten totally into the swing of things and joined the Latitudians in preparation for this visit.
“Here you are,” she said. “We had you backward. Dibble Booker.”
“It’s not the first time someone has made that mistake.”
“Go right on in, Mr. Dibble.”
I felt queasy for the first time today. I hadn’t expected to be separated from Booker quite yet.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” I said, approaching the woman again. “I think I just saw a friend of mine go in. Booker Dibble’s his name. I can be his guest, can’t I?”
But Booker was already out of our line of sight, with people crowding into the room to get close to the Cortés masterpiece.
“He didn’t list a guest, dear. Wait for your friend’s mother, and we’ll see what we can do for you then.”
I turned away and took out my phone, scooting down the hallway followed by Liza.
I tried to get a signal but was having trouble. Maybe it was the thick walls in the library and the fact that I was nowhere near a window. I ran across the hallway to see if the reception was better, with no luck.
The security guard was keeping an eye on me. I held the phone up in the air, high over my head, to see if I could make it work. All I seemed to be doing was getting in the way of the flow of visitors.
I stepped off to the side and texted Booker as fast as I could move my fingers. U R out of sight. Come back 2 us.
A security guard walking to the elevator came toward me. “You need to put your cell phone away, young lady. This is a library.”
“Yes, sir. I will, but I’m just waiting for a text. I don’t intend to talk to anyone.”
“This is a really old building, miss. Thick walls and steel foundation. Texts don’t usually work inside here anyway. And phone calls certainly don’t,” he said. “So I’d advise you to put your phone away, like I said.”
I took one more glance at the cell screen before putting the phone in the pocket of my jeans.
“Why don’t I go in and bring Booker out?” Liza asked. “That lady will let him go back into the exhibit after he talks to you.”
“Good idea.” I didn’t exactly count on being by myself and unable to get through to Booker and Liza, but this was—after all—a public library on a Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t exactly a high crime neighborhood.
“Be right back,” she said, squeezing my hand. “Why don’t you go down to the information desk and wait for us there? That way this lady won’t think we’re just lurking around.”
“Okay, Liza. Good plan.”
I took the staircase down and headed for the information desk. I suddenly had an idea that might help us put things together.
When I got to the front of the short line, I asked the woman who was also wearing a button that said VOLUNTEER if she could help me with a problem. She was cheerful and willing to do so.
“I know I can’t use my phone here,” I said, “so I’m wondering whether you can call one of your other branches from your extension. There’s a particular librarian who can answer a question for me.”
“Yes, we’re all connected in our phone system,” she said, picking up the receiver to dial. “If you don’t know her number, just tell me what the librarian’s name is and where she works.”
“It’s Ms. Bland,” I said. “She’s at the main branch on Fifth Avenue.”
“Oh,” the volunteer said, putting down the receiver. “In Manhattan?”
“Is that a problem?” I asked.
“Not really. It’s just that this library is not part of the New York Public Library system,” she said.
I was so anxious to talk to Ms. Bland, I couldn’t believe the two boroughs weren’t connected. “But—but you’re part of New York City.”
“Yes, but Brooklyn has its own library system—this central building and fifty-eight neighborhood branches—so I’m afraid I have no way of connecting you to the librarian you want to speak to,” she said. Then she pointed to the front door. “Why not step outside and use your cell phone if this is so urgent?”
I worried that once I stepped outside, Booker and Liza wouldn’t know where to look for me.
I waited another two minutes but there was no sign of my friends. I walked out the front door, down the steps, and off onto the grass to get out of the way of the people on the sidewalk and dialed information to get the number for the New York Public Library.
It took another two minutes to get through the switchboard and transferred to the Map Division.
“Ms. Bland, please?”
“Sorry,” the man who answered said. “She’s on her lunch break. May I give her a message?”
“Please. Yes, please do,” I said, trying to keep calm. “My name is Quick. Devlin Quick.”
“Will she know what you’re calling about?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “But I need her to call me back and tell me what book Preston Savage was looking at on Tuesday. What kind of maps are his specialty, okay?”
“Let me have your number, please, Ms. Quick. I’ll give her that message.”
I thanked the man and turned my phone off again, pocketing it to go inside the library.
As I walked through the door, I could see Liza circling the information desk with a sort of panicked expression on her face. She must have been looking for me while I was outside making my call.
“Liza!”
“Dev,” she said. “There you are. Didn’t you see him?”
“See who?”
“Mr. Blodgett. Walter Blodgett. He must have been getting off the elevator on the second floor just as you got on to come downstairs.”
“I didn’t take the elevator. That’s why I missed him,” I said. “Does Booker know?”
“Yes, I pointed him out,” Liza said, taking deep breaths between sentences. “Mr. Blodgett just entered the exhibit upstairs.”
“Is Booker talking to him?”
“Not yet. Lots of people are greeting Blodgett. He knows everybody in the society and most of the other guests who’ve already arrived. From the looks of things, it will probably be fifteen minutes to half an hour before Booker gets him alone to make an approach.”
“Fifteen to thirty minutes?” I said. “That’s a lifetime. By then it will be almost Monday and this will drop into Sergeant Tapply’s lap. Cold Case Squad, here we come.”
“Booker’s watching Blodgett like a hawk, Dev. That’s for sure.”
“And no sign of Preston Savage?” I asked.
“Not a trace.”
I closed my eyes, cracked my knuckles, and counted to ten. “I have an idea, Liza.”
“What kind of idea?”
“The way I figure it, Liza, is that Preston Savage never planned to come to this exhibition today.”
“Why not? Forty-eight
hours ago you were sure he would show up here. You don’t think he’s interested in a mapmaker like Cortés?”
“Two different things, Liza. I’ll bet you that he’s here all right. In this library, but that he won’t show his face upstairs, where Booker is.”
“Why not?”
“Think of the show at Harvard, the reception in Poughkeepsie, and the lecture he did on Tuesday at the New York Public Library, and now this exhibition about Cortés, who is so controversial,” I said.
“Yes, Dev. What’s your point?”
I put my hand on my stomach to stop the fluttering butterflies. If Liza knew I was harboring them, she’d run for the nearest exit.
“The well-publicized exhibition,” I said, “the big show or the display of the latest rare and valuable thing? It’s just a distraction to Savage. That’s just the kind of distraction a map thief needs to do his work.”
“You mean—?”
“Yes, I mean that everyone important, all the staff and trustees and donors, are completely engaged in the fireworks of the big exhibition. That gives Mr. Savage a perfect opportunity to be alone with the things he loves most in the world—old atlases with scores of valuable pages, ready for the cutting. And the people who give him the books do so because he’s cultivated their friendship over time. They trust him completely.”
I started walking to the information desk again.
“So you’re convinced that he’ll show up here today?” Liza asked, a few steps behind me but trying to keep up with the strides of my longer legs.
“Better than that,” I said. “I’m quite sure he’s here right now.”
“But, Dev,” she said, “what makes you think we can find him? We’ve never been to this library before.”
“We’ve got half an hour while Booker twiddles his thumbs waiting for Walter Blodgett to talk to him,” I said. “All I want is five minutes alone with Preston Savage.”
27
“What can I do for you now?” the volunteer at the desk asked.
“Carrels,” I said. “Where would we find your carrels?”
She looked puzzled.
“You do know what carrels are, don’t you?” Although the word was new to me, I assumed a library volunteer would have it down.
“Certainly. I just didn’t hear you correctly,” she said. “Most of our carrels are on the lower level, in the basement. You can take the elevator or the stairs to your left.
“Thanks so much.”
“Want me to run up and get Booker, Dev?”
“Every minute that goes by, Liza, could be another rip through the heart of a book. That’s a painful thought, isn’t it?”
Whatever focus I had lost during the morning swim practice had come roaring back to me now when I needed it most. I was striding to the staircase while Liza kept her eyes on the elevator doors, as though willing them to open with Booker inside.
“C’mon, partner,” I said. “I think I’m right about this.”
“What will we do if you are?”
“Easy enough. Either Mr. Savage agrees to talk to me, or if he isn’t cooperative, then when I give you the signal, you just turn around and run right back up the stairs,” I said. “Go outside and call Sam Cody. You have his number. Or dial 911. There are a whole lot of security guards near the entrance, too.”
The stairs were wide and steep, and as we wound down and passed through the second landing, the corridor grew dimmer and darker.
At the bottom of the steps, I came to a stop. Liza was a few feet behind me, but pulled up right by my side. Our sneakers didn’t make a sound—not even a squeak—on the old linoleum floor of the basement.
I mouthed two words to Liza. “Follow me.”
Slowly I inched forward and was relieved that the lights in the hallway were a bit brighter than those in the stairwell.
There was a long row of carrels on either side of the corridor. As we walked in, it appeared that only two were occupied. There was a kid a bit older than us, who was using library books—it seemed to me—to do homework assignments on her laptop. There was also a man taking notes from a worn volume that had only text—no maps or pictures.
When we reached the end of that row, there was a single line of carrels that was perpendicular to the main one. This part of the hallway was completely dark to the left, but to our right, one carrel seemed to be lighted from a lamp hanging above it.
I made the choice and turned right. I took two steps in that direction and was startled when an overhead light suddenly turned on. Liza clasped her hand on my shoulder, from behind. Being nervous was a contagious condition. I’d been fine till she grabbed me.
I didn’t want to speak to her. I didn’t want to announce our presence, in case anyone was around who was expecting some level of privacy. It was pretty obvious that the light was activated by a motion sensor, probably an effort to save the library money so it wasn’t wasting electricity when the carrels were unoccupied.
I bent over and looked under the row of desks ahead of me. The well-lit carrel was the very last one to my left. A pair of men’s legs was planted on the floor beneath the writing table. The shoes looked, from the back, like the kind the tall man had been wearing the day of the theft.
I straightened up and signaled to Liza—at least I thought I did—to stay here, nearest the long aisle that led back to the stairwell.
I walked in the direction of the seated man, and the next overhead light popped on. I looked back and saw that Liza was following me, which was not exactly what I had planned. Liza and I both stood still.
I took her hand and pulled her into the next carrel with me. There was no way we could get any closer to the man without each light going on and alerting him to our approach.
I had to think.
“What do we do?” she asked, in her softest whisper. “Is it Savage?”
I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head. Then I pointed my index finger to my temple. “Thinking,” I mouthed to her.
I knew my phone wouldn’t work, but I texted a message to Booker that Liza and I were in the basement, and that I thought we had found Preston Savage. I hit send, figuring even if he didn’t get it till after we were all together, he’d know I’d tried to do the right thing.
And then it happened. I heard the sound.
My eyes narrowed, and if I’d been a hunting dog, my ears would have stood straight up. I’d have been a pointer.
Liza heard nothing. That was clear to me.
Again I heard the same sound. Atwell ears at their sharpest, and I thanked my lucky DNA stars to have inherited them from Lulu. I waited before I sprang into action.
The noise stopped for several seconds, and then it started again. It was the sound of paper being torn. The very old fibers of the page of a book were being severed from each other.
I bolted from our carrel and ran fifteen yards toward the man at the end of the row. The lights blasted on overhead, one after another, barely able to keep up with me as I ran.
The man stood up at the sound of my steps and the flood of light. He turned to look in my direction.
It was the tall man, the man we had chased from the steps of the public library.
“Preston Savage,” I said, coming to a stop just two feet away from him.
“It’s you again,” he said. “It’s both of you.”
He stepped into the aisle, his back against the wall at the very end of the hallway, after he pushed the large atlas he’d been tearing across the desk, farther away from us.
“Mr. Savage,” I said, despite the feeling that my heart was trying to push its way into my throat. “We just want to talk to you.”
“How do you know my name?” he asked, inching farther to his right.
“We just have a couple of questions to ask you,” I said, trying to channel Sam Cody’s advice about how to conduct a composed interrogation. “We just—”
Preston Savage had no intention of waiting for me to ask him anything. He spun around, put his hands
on the bar that opened the heavy door behind him—under an unlighted red sign that said EXIT—and before I could finish my sentence, he leaned against it and burst through.
28
I pushed against the closing door with my right shoulder. “Run upstairs, Liza,” I said. “Just run. Grab the kid who’s in one of those first carrels working on her laptop and get help.”
Liza seemed to be frozen in place. She was fumbling with her cell phone.
“It won’t work down here, Liza. Now, just go for backup, will you? Get Booker, too!”
The door was trying to shut against my weight. I pushed again and shimmied through it, at the top of more steps that led down into the total darkness of the sub-basement of the library.
The last sliver of light was behind me.
Suddenly, as I tried to get my iPhone out of my pocket to use the flashlight on it, the door opened again. This time it was Liza.
“You’ve got to get someone to help us, Liza,” I said as the door slammed shut and darkness enveloped us.
“I couldn’t leave you alone, Dev. I just couldn’t do it.”
She was looking to me for courage, I knew, but I was fresh out.
“Friends for life, Liza,” I said, although I wasn’t sure how long that would be. “Thanks for that.”
I reached for her hand and squeezed it with my free one. With the other, I turned on the small beam on the end of the phone.
The steps were painted black and were very steep.
“No point going down there,” I said. “Let’s get out while we can.”
“Yeah,” she said.
She pivoted and reached for the handle of the thick old door. She pulled on it but there was no give.
“Let me try,” I said. I twisted it and yanked at it several times, but there was no doubt that it had locked behind us.
Again the two of us stood still and again we listened. This time I heard nothing.
“What do you think is at the bottom of the stairs?” she asked me with a serious tremor in her voice.
“The great thing about libraries,” I said to her, “is that the basement levels often go on down forever, and they’re filled with stacks, with shelves of books. There are eight levels of stacks of books below the street at the public library in Manhattan.”
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