CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Jaime  

“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” said the woman.

“You call this easy?” said Theo.

Jaime knew her instantly. It was the woman who had accused Nine of biting her. The woman from Green-Wood Cemetery who had taunted and trapped them. The woman who had fought with Ava and then vanished. Candi, her name was Candi. If there was anyone in the world who didn’t deserve that name, it was this woman. Sweet, she was not. Jaime said, “You finally got a haircut. Or a new wig. Looks good.”

“Thank you, Mr. Cruz,” said Candi. “You’re also looking well. No injuries after your fall into the river?”

“Did you have something to do with that?”

“You know who did it. Your little friend in the long gray coat. The one who believes she’s a superhero. She’s a touchy thing. I was only intending to chat with you. I’d even bought you a hot chocolate.”

“In other words, she beat you. Again,” Jaime said.

Candi smiled. “She got lucky.”

“I thought you worked for Duke Goodson,” Tess said. “She beat him, too.”

Candi leaned in close. She smelled like hair spray and breath mints. “I’ll tell you a secret. I have always worked for myself.” She leaned back again. “Bruno?”

Both big mushroom men pushed into the closet. Jaime and the twins backed up, but there was nowhere to go, and no time to try knocking again. The men hauled them out of the closet and dragged them to the escalators. As they were paraded down the frozen escalator stairs, Jaime looked around for Ono but didn’t see the robot anywhere. He prayed the robot was hiding, or had escaped the building entirely.

The big men shoved them into the elevators and then stood in front of them, grinning like maniacs as Candi punched the button for the penthouse. The elevator went up and then drifted left and right. Jaime felt a sense of déjà vu, not for the movements of the broom closet they’d just been in so much as for the elevator back at 354 W. 73rd Street. Even though Jaime’s heart was pounding, even though he was scared out of his mind, he missed that place, every single thing about it.

“I hate this elevator,” said Candi, ruining the moment. “It has a mind of its own. It never goes the same route twice. And you never know when you’re going to get anywhere. It’s maddening!”

“I think it’s kind of cool,” said Theo, voice chilly.

“We’re replacing them with ones that work properly,” Candi said.

“But will you have this view?” said Jaime. The elevator car emerged from the inside of the building through a glass tunnel that now ran up the building’s facade. Glass on the sides and the back of the elevator car made Jaime feel like he was flying. People in the Underway car that curled around the Tower waved at them, and Candi waved back.

“We’ll lose the machinery that controls the cars but keep the view,” said Candi. “That’s what Mr. Slant wants, and what he wants, he gets.”

“Not always,” said Tess.

Candi said, “You’d be surprised.”

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. A long hallway stretched out before them. Like in the lobby, the floor was creamy marble, and the blue walls were adorned with paintings. Not of the Morningstarrs, but of Darnell Slant. Here was Darnell Slant as a little boy on his father’s lap. Here was Darnell Slant as a smooth-skinned young man in a hunting jacket, a sword—a sword!—resting on one shoulder. Here was a present-day Darnell Slant in some kind of metal chair that looked more like a throne.

“Interesting décor,” said Jaime dryly.

“That’s the newest painting,” Candi said. “We’ve only had time to swap out the art. We’ll tackle bigger renovations later.”

“Where are the old paintings?” Tess asked.

“What old paintings?”

“The ones that the Morningstarrs had.”

“Oh, those. Mr. Slant is going to make a deal with some museums for those.”

“He’s not going to donate them?” Theo said.

“They’re worth a lot of money,” said Candi. “You can’t just give them away.”

“Why not? Doesn’t Slant have enough money?”

Candi laughed. “Nobody ever has enough money.”

“Especially people with enough money,” said Jaime.

They reached a set of double doors tall and wide enough to admit elephants. Candi opened the doors. Behind them was yet another highly coiffed young woman sitting behind an antique desk. This room had a rose-colored Persian rug underfoot, and numerous bookcases lined the walls.

“This is a nice room,” Tess said.

“It’s going to be gutted at the end of the month,” said Candi. “Britni, tell Mr. Slant we’re here.”

On Britni’s desk were four monitors. The one monitor Jaime could see had its screen broken up into sixteen different views. Camera feeds, he guessed.

Britni picked up a phone, waited. “Sir? They’re here.” She listened, then gestured to another set of huge wooden doors. “Go on in.”

Candi opened the doors and led Jaime, Theo, and Tess inside the office, the burly men bringing up the rear of their sad parade. Behind the doors was an office that appeared to have been shipped in from another place and time. Instead of worn marble, the floor was polished black granite so shiny it looked like a sea of ink. The walls were stark white, and decorated with black-and-white photographs of Slant, Slant, and more Slant. There were no bookshelves, but there was a long white leather bar along one side, complete with a set of crystal decanters set on top.

And at the end of the long room, behind a huge black desk the size of a pool table, sat Slant. He was scrolling through his phone.

Jaime said, “I guess we know which room was first on the renovation list.”

“Oh yes,” said Candi over her shoulder. “Mr. Slant had owned this property not twelve hours before the contractors were in here tearing out all the old junk.”

As they got closer to the desk, Jaime could see that Slant’s desk chair was the metal one from the painting in the hallway, the black bars fanning out around him like the rays of a twisted sun.

“That cannot be comfortable,” Theo said.

“It hurts me just to look at it,” said Jaime.

Darnell Slant set aside the phone and folded his hands. On TV, the man looked youngish, younger than Jaime’s dad, with thick dark hair buzzed close at the sides. In person, he looked older, paler, his pink mouth not much more than a slash. He didn’t seem so scary, this man who had taken so much from them already. Jaime marveled at that. He’d thought facing down Darnell Slant in the flesh would be momentous, like David facing down Goliath. But Darnell Slant didn’t look scary at all.

Which, now that he thought about it, was even scarier.

“Children,” said Darnell Slant. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“We’re doing a school project,” said Tess, though earlier she’d thought it was a silly excuse. But she was nervous. Only someone who knew her well could have guessed how nervous she was. Her face was relaxed, her expression open. But if you tried to unclench her fists, you’d need a pry bar to do it.

“A school project,” said Darnell. “School hasn’t started yet.”

“It’s due when school starts,” Theo said.

“Sure, sure,” said Darnell Slant. He swiveled in his throne, something that Jaime didn’t know was possible. Who had a swiveling throne?

Slant said, “Did you search them?”

“Not yet,” said Candi.

“Do it now.”

Candi searched Tess, who had little on her but her phone. Candi took it and tossed it on Slant’s desk. The two beefy men searched Theo.

Theo said, “Which one of you is Bruno?”

“Both,” said the Brunos.

They found Theo’s phone and threw that on Slant’s desk, too.

“Hey!” said Jaime as the Brunos patted him down and started pulling things from his pockets—the sketchbook, pens, pencils, a stick of gum, a business card. “Watch it!”

“This one has little paper toys,” said one of the Brunos. He put an origami bird, fish, snake, crab, and heart on the desk. Jaime held his breath as Darnell Slant pawed through the paper figures, popping them into 3D before flattening them again. But he seemed more interested in the phones. He tried Tess’s, then Theo’s, then Jaime’s.

“You can’t go through our stuff,” said Tess.

“You’re trespassing on private property,” Candi said. “We can do anything we want.”

“That’s not the way laws work,” said Theo.

“It’s the way the world works,” Darnell Slant said. “Listen, I know who you are. I know your mother is a detective. I hear she’s pretty good at it, though she hasn’t come through for me.”

The locket. The one with Jaime’s mother’s picture in it. The one that Lora Yoshida said had been hidden in a book at the New York Public Library. Jaime’s nerves flared with rage. He didn’t know what any of this had to do with this mother, but it had something to do with her. His mother! Jaime wanted to slap the face right off of Darnell Slant’s skull.

Through gritted teeth, Jaime said, “She did come through.”

“What?” said Darnell. “Who? What are you talking about?”

“The thing you’re looking for? The detective knows where it is.”

“Jaime, what are you doing?” Tess said.

Darnell Slant’s thin lips got even thinner. “You don’t know anything.”

“Do you know anything?” Jaime said. His fists were as tight as Tess’s. He didn’t know what he was doing, but he seemed to be doing it, and he didn’t care.

“Someone should have taught you some manners,” said Darnell Slant. “But I guess that’s what happens when boys don’t have a mother to raise them.”

Jaime launched himself at Darnell Slant, thinking, just for a moment, that he would be able to hurt someone, really hurt someone, and that this someone deserved it. But the burly men grabbed him by the shirt collar and yanked him back. They shoved him to the floor. He rolled over, coughing, rubbing his throat.

“Stop it!” yelled Tess. She tried to run to him, but Candi grabbed her arm. Tess tried to kick her, but Candi swept her leg and Tess ended up on the floor, too.

Darnell Slant looked at Theo. “You going to try something?”

“I already did,” said Theo.

“Huh?” said Slant.

The doors burst open, and a crowd of people marched into the office.

The twins’ mother flashed her badge. “Mr. Slant, before I arrest you, do you want to explain why you’ve detained these children against their will?”

The ride back to the Tombs was quiet as a funeral. Detective Biedermann sat stiffly in the passenger seat. Detective Clarkson kept glancing from her to Jaime, Tess, and Theo, who were crowded in the back.

Jaime didn’t know whether he was happy or furious that Theo had managed to contact his mom before their phones had been taken. Maybe both. Happy that they had been saved from whatever Slant had planned for them, furious that now their parents knew and they had to face whatever they had planned for them.

It was going to be ugly.

Seriously ugly.

When they got to the police station and Jaime saw Mima and his father, along with the twins’ father and Aunt Esther, waiting for them, he wondered if dealing with Slant would have been easier.

“Jaime!” said Mima, his name rough in her throat. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Mima.”

“What were you doing there with that man?” said Mima.

“Did you really break into Morningstarr Tower?” his father said. “What were you thinking?”

“Mr. Cruz, Ms. Cruz, we’ll get to that in a minute,” said Detective Biedermann. “If the three of you will follow me.” She brought Jaime and his grandmother and father to an interview room. Tess and Theo looked as confused and terrified as Jaime felt as Detective Clarkson and another detective led them to different rooms.

Inside the interview room, Jaime sat down at the table. This time, Detective Biedermann sat across from him with a folder and a notepad. She had a bag full of the things that the Brunos had taken from his pockets: the sketchbook, the origami figures, his phone, the heart. A wave of shame washed over him, followed by another wave of anger. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Or at least, he hadn’t done anything more wrong than Slant had done.

“Where’s Slant?” he asked.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s being questioned, too. So are his people.”

“Good,” said Jaime. “Ask him . . . ask him . . .”

“What should I ask him, Jaime?”

If he told her about the locket, then he’d have to tell her how he knew about it. He could get Lora Yoshida in trouble. Or he could get in more trouble.

“Ask him where Ono is,” Jaime said. “My robot. He’s gone.”

“I’ll ask him,” Detective Biedermann said, her voice low and gentle. “I need to ask you something as well. Would you tell me why you and Tess and Theo went to the Tower today?”

“We just wanted to look around. Before Slant changed everything.”

“Are you sure that’s the only reason you were there?”

Jaime didn’t answer.

“Jaime, you’re on video sneaking up the escalators and entering a closet on the second floor. Would you tell me what you were doing?”

“Like I said, we just wanted to look around a little bit.”

“You wanted to look in a closet?”

“We just wanted to see if there was anything behind the doors, that’s all.”

“Did you find anything?”

“We found some toilet paper,” Jaime said, which was not a lie.

“Anything else?”

“Did you know that the woman working for Slant is the same woman who accused Nine of biting her?”

“Yes, I did know that. And she’ll answer for it.” Detective Biedermann pushed the folder and the bag of his things aside. “Jaime, I’m trying to help you. I know that it might not feel like that, but I am. I’m worried for you. I’m worried for my own children. I’m afraid . . .” She paused, and in that pause, Jaime saw that she was afraid. “I’m afraid that you’re mixed up in something that’s nothing more than a lie.”

Jaime frowned. “What do you mean? What lie?”

“The Morningstarr Cipher.”

Detective Biedermann was looking at him so intently, and with so much concern, it was painful. Jaime rubbed the surface of the scarred table. “I don’t think it’s a lie.”

“It is. A beautiful lie a whole city told itself because it was grieving a loss, a lie it still tells itself whenever things get bad or sad,” she said. “I know about the Cipher. More than I want to know. It was my father’s life’s work. He believed in it with all his heart. But he was chasing ghosts. And now I’m worried that you three have been chasing the same ghosts. The problem is that over the years very dangerous people have also believed the lie and chased the ghosts. Very dangerous people who might want to hurt you if they think you’ve found something, or that you’re getting in their way.”

“We’ve already been hurt,” Jaime said.

Detective Biedermann closed her eyes, opened them. “I know. Me too. And I’m sorry. I really am. Would you at least tell me what you were looking for today?”

What was he looking for? So many things. His mother. His home. His city. His past. He wanted to know if Tess and Theo Biedermann grew up to be Theresa and Theodore Morningstarr. He wanted to know whether the Morningstarrs could predict the future, or if they had lived it themselves. He wanted to follow the plans, build the machine and understand what it was and what it did.

I was looking for truth, he wanted to say.

I was looking for justice, he wanted to say.

Instead, he poked at the plastic bag that held all his things. A lone business card sat on top of the pile of pens and paper and origami.

SAMUEL DEERFOOT, ESQUIRE

Jaime said, “I think I’d like to talk to my lawyer.”