by James Ponti
“Julius Rucker,” he said, shaking my hand. “But Julie to my friends.”
“Back in the day, Big Julius was one of the top heavyweights on the East Coast,” said Kayla.
“They used to call me the DC Destroyer,” he added with a proud smile.
“What was your record again?” asked Kayla.
“Officially, it was thirty-three and eight, but you know three of those . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she joked. “Julius feels strongly that three of those decisions were incorrect.”
“Very strongly,” he said.
“And the music?” I asked.
“Opera is all about murder, betrayal, and deception,” he said. “It’s the perfect music to fight to.” Then he leaned over and added, “Besides, it classes up the joint, don’t you think?”
Both Kayla and Big Julius laughed hard at that.
“What do you need?” he asked her.
“Just the mat next to the ring,” she said.
“It’s all yours.” He turned to Margaret and me. “You listen to her, all right? This woman knows what she’s talking about.”
It was obvious by the reaction she received that Kayla was not only well known but also well liked around the gym. A boxer working the speed bag nodded and flashed a smile without missing a beat, and two guys stopped jumping rope long enough to say hello.
“Okay, limber up,” she instructed us when we got to the mat.
“Do we have to?” I asked.
“Pre-exercise stretching is essential,” she said. “These guys know it, and you know it too.”
We could not have looked more out of place. Everyone else wore black and gray with the occasional splash of blood red, and the only things more prevalent than muscles were tattoos. Meanwhile, Margaret and I were in PE uniforms that said, ALICE DEAL MIDDLE SCHOOL PHYS. ED., and Kayla was wearing bright blue exercise pants and a Gryffindor T-shirt.
“Okay,” she said once we were suitably limber. “Today I’m going to teach you both the art of WAR.”
“That sounds ominous,” I said.
“It’s not ominous; it’s a memory tool I designed to help you think fast in a crisis,” she said. “The W is for Weakness. Identify your opponent’s weakness and exploit it. A is for Anticipate. Anticipate your opponent’s next move and disrupt it. And R is for Redirect. Redirect your opponent’s energy and use it against them.”
We practiced each phase for about twenty minutes. For Weakness, she taught us how to break out of different holds and demonstrated how a sudden kick or well-placed elbow could impede an attacker.
Anticipate was more about strategy than maneuvers.
“Your attacker has a plan,” she said. “And as long as you’re reacting to that plan, you’re giving him control. But if you can anticipate what he’s going to do, then you might be able to disrupt that plan and take away some of that control.”
To demonstrate this, she walked us through various scenarios and asked us to predict her next move. When we did, she told us to come up with actions that could disrupt the plan.
“Be ingenious,” she said. “He may be stronger, but I bet you’re both smarter and more creative. Use TOAST. Let your brain be your strongest muscle.”
We ended with Redirect.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked her.
“It means using someone’s strength and energy against him,” she said. “If you hit a tennis ball against a wall, it bounces because the wall redirects the energy off the ball in the opposite direction.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I’m guessing in most situations, I’m more tennis ball than wall.”
She laughed. “Well, you don’t have to be a wall to redirect it. Let me demonstrate.”
There was a fighter who’d taken a break and was watching our lesson. He was at least eight inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier than her. “Would you be willing to attack me for my demonstration? I need it to be someone big like you so that I can teach the kids not to be intimidated by size.”
“Aren’t you worried about injuries?” he asked.
“Oh, I promise not to hurt you,” she said. “I’ll go easy.”
He laughed. “I wasn’t worried about me.”
“Great, then you’ll do it?” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Tyson,” he said.
“Nice to meet you, Tyson,” she said. “I’m Kayla. Come over here and let me introduce you to Florian and Margaret.”
I noticed that Big Julius and a couple of the other fighters were moving over to get a look. I think they had an idea that Tyson might not know what he was in store for.
“All right,” she said, setting the scenario. “This is Tyson. He’s much bigger than I am. He’s much stronger than I am. So if I try to fight him head-on, I’m going to lose. That’s why I need to use his own strength and size against him.”
“How do you do that?” asked Margaret.
“Just watch,” she said. “Imagine that I’m walking down the street in the middle of the night and Tyson runs up from behind and tries to grab me.”
He was reluctant at first, but she encouraged him. Finally he charged at her, and just as he reached her, Kayla turned to her side, twisted her body, and grabbed him by the arm. Using all of his momentum, she was able to flip him in the air and body slam him onto the mat.
There was a whooshing sound as the air was forced out of his body.
“See, it’s as simple as that,” she told us. “I redirected his strength and speed up and over so in effect he did this to himself.” She looked down at him. “You okay, Tyson?”
He didn’t answer so much as moan.
“Thanks for your help,” she said cheerily.
I looked over at Big Julius and the others, who were all snickering.
For the rest of the lesson, Margaret and I took turns getting tossed, flipped, and thrown around the mat. At one point, Kayla was demonstrating how to escape a two-handed hold on her arm. My grip was tight, and I really thought I had her. But in less than three seconds, she’d reached between my arms, pulled herself out, and somehow left me twisted like a pretzel with my face down against the mat.
Margaret didn’t fare any better. She had Kayla wrapped in a bear hug from behind, and since she’s a lot taller, she thought she had the upper hand. She thought wrong. In a sudden move Kayla snapped forward and flipped her over her head and against the mat.
An hour later Margaret and I were sitting on the stoop in front of her house laughing and moaning as we recounted the lesson. The weather was perfect, and although our muscles ached, at least the breeze was nice. We also talked about school and the case. Margaret even tried to figure out how Kayla’s WAR principles might apply to soccer.
“You know, I read up on natural hair last night after you left,” I said.
“Really?” She seemed touched.
“Of course,” I said. “I want to know everything that’s on your mind.”
“So, what do you think?” she asked.
“I think it would look great,” I said. “But more importantly, I think it would be absolutely Margaret in every way.”
She talked a little bit more about what the big chop would entail, and then Marcus arrived. He parked on the street and seemed lost in thought as he came up the walkway to her house.
“Marcus, you missed it,” Margaret said. “Kayla took us to this gym, and then she flipped this huge guy in the air. . . .” She stopped when she saw his expression. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Did you find out anything new about the case?” I asked. “Did the fingerprints match?”
He didn’t answer the questions. Instead, he asked Margaret, “Are your parents home?”
“Yes, they’re both inside. What’s the matter, Marcus? Am I in trouble of some sort?”
“No, no,” he said absently. “It’s not about you at all. I just need to talk to your parents.”
“Why do you need to talk t
o my parents if it’s not about me?”
He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Then he looked at us and said, “Because I need a lawyer.”
21.
Back to the SCIF
MARGARET’S PARENTS WERE BOTH ATTORNEYS who specialized in cases that involved government agencies. This included everything from representing an employee who’d been unjustly fired by the Department of Agriculture to negotiating the sale of a historic building to the National Park Service. They were partners in a law firm located downtown but also had an office next to their living room so they could sometimes work from home.
This is where they talked with Marcus behind a closed door for five minutes while Margaret and I tried to figure out what was going on. We were nervously pacing back and forth when Mrs. Campbell came out to talk to us.
“Margaret, I just spoke with Florian’s mom, and you’re going to have dinner at their house tonight,” she said. “Take your books so you can do your homework there too. We’re going to be with Marcus for a while.”
“Mom, what’s going on?”
“You know I can’t tell you that, sweetie,” she said. “Just go.”
My mind raced all through dinner trying to figure out what could be happening. I assumed that it somehow involved Dan Napoli following us, but that didn’t really make sense because he was an agent with the organized crime division and we were working on a case that involved stolen books and spies.
“It’s a mistake,” I blurted out at one point. “It just has to be a mistake.”
“Don’t worry,” Margaret said calmly as she looked across the table at me. “You know how you are with mysteries? And how Kayla is with beating up bad guys?”
“Yes,” I said.
She smiled proudly. “That’s how my parents are with the law. They’re the best. They’ll take care of him.”
It was another hour and a half before Margaret’s dad came over to get her. He had a concerned expression that he tried to hide behind a smile, but I could tell the situation was serious.
“Is Marcus okay?” she asked.
“He just went home,” he said, without answering the question. “He wanted me to tell you both not to worry about him.”
“But is he okay?” asked Margaret.
“Come on,” said her father. “You’ve got to get ready for bed.”
I went down into the Underground and stared at the caseboard, trying to figure out what was happening. First, I focused on the four suspects we’d checked on. Next, I thought about the evidence we’d seen in the cold case file.
Finally, I went through everything I knew about Dan Napoli, which admittedly wasn’t much. He’d transferred from New York six months earlier. He worked organized crime. He spied on us at the awards reception and Texas Tony’s. He followed us on the day we went to see Brooke King at Palace Books and Lucia Miller at the Petworth Library. We lost him at the zoo.
“What am I missing?” I said to myself.
The next morning I met up with Margaret before school, and we sat on one of the aluminum benches behind the building.
“What’d you find out?” I asked.
“Not much,” she said. “Mom and Dad won’t tell me anything. That’s what makes me think it’s serious. If he’d just come over to ask for advice, they’d tell me that without any of the specifics. I did, however, have some toast for breakfast.”
“I don’t know why that’s important but okay,” I said. “I had cereal.”
“No, I mean TOAST,” she replied. “A little Theory of All Small Things around the breakfast table.”
“Oh, I get it,” I said as I flashed a grin. “What did you find out?”
“First of all, my father called his secretary and cancelled all his meetings for the day,” she said. “Then he reserved the Federal Room.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a really nice conference room at the firm. It has top-level security features and a private entrance. They use it when they have to talk to a high-ranking government official without letting the whole world know what they’re doing.”
“You mean someone like Admiral Douglas?”
“That’s just the name that I thought of.”
“What time did he book it for?”
“One o’clock.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“I got onto the computer in his office and checked his search history,” she said. “He was looking up names for private investigators in two cities.”
“Which ones?”
“Birmingham, Alabama, and Harrisonburg, Virginia.”
“Jarrett Underhill?” I said.
“Jarrett Underhill.”
The warning bell rang, telling us we had five minutes to get to class.
We planned to talk about it more during lunch, but we never got that far. Our second-period English class was discussing A Wrinkle in Time when the teacher, Ms. White, got a call and told us to report to the front office. The two of us shared a confused look as we stood up.
“And bring all your books,” she added.
Ms. White’s classroom was on the second floor, and as we walked down the stairs toward the office, I asked Margaret, “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“No,” she said simply. “But I have a feeling it isn’t good.”
For the second time in a week we walked into a room and were surprised to see our parents. (Although in the SCIF it had been all four, and here it was only our mothers.)
“Is everything okay?” Margaret asked, suddenly panicked. “Did something happen to Dad?”
“No, no, everything’s fine,” she said. “We just had to come down here to check you out of school.”
“Why are you checking us out of school?” I asked.
“It’s complicated,” said Mom. “We’ll talk about it in the car.”
As we walked to the car, I noticed both were dressed professionally. That wasn’t unusual for Margaret’s mother because she was a lawyer. But my mom worked in an art restoration studio and usually wore clothes that were nice but less formal.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The Hoover Building,” answered Mom.
They didn’t tell us anything more until we were in the car and headed downtown.
“We’re going to FBI Headquarters because the two of you need to answer some questions,” said Mrs. Campbell.
“Are we in trouble?” asked Margaret.
“Not at all,” said her mother.
“Then why did we have to leave school? And why did you have to come with us?”
“Because you’re both minors, and you can’t be questioned about a crime without a parent present,” she explained.
“But we talk about crimes there all the time,” said Margaret.
“Yes, sweetie,” she said. “But those are crimes you’re trying to solve. This time you’re being called in as witnesses.”
“Who’s going to be asking the questions?” I asked.
“There’s a joint task force on counterintelligence,” she explained. “And the director of that task force is going to ask the questions.”
“Is Dad going to be there?” asked Margaret.
“No,” said Mrs. Campbell.
Margaret thought for a moment and then said, “That’s because he’s representing Marcus, and they don’t want him to be there when they ask us questions.”
Her mother didn’t answer, but it was obvious by her expression that Margaret was right.
Every other time we’d been to the Hoover Building, we’d been with some combination of Marcus, Kayla, and Admiral Douglas. They always prearranged our visits so that we could go straight to Marcus’s office. But this time we had to check in like regular guests. Our pictures were taken and put on little badges, and we waited in the lobby until a female agent came to get us. When we got on the elevator, she pushed the button for subbasement four.
Margaret leaned over and whispered, “We’re going back to the SCIF
.”
As we walked down the hallway, I couldn’t help but think how much things had changed in a week. The previous Friday we’d walked down the same hall on the way to receive medals from the director of the FBI. Now we were headed into the unknown, and even though our mothers stressed that we weren’t in any trouble, I felt like we needed to defend ourselves.
“Remember what Kayla taught us,” I whispered to Margaret. “Remember WAR.”
She nodded.
When we reached the SCIF’s waiting room, there was already a group there, three men and a woman. We had to wait as they signed in on a visitor’s log and handed over their cell phones to the guard behind the desk. We didn’t really speak to them other than to say hello. They seemed polite enough with one exception. There was a tall man with dark brown hair who studied us without expression. He had a thin scar partially hidden by his right eyebrow, and it looked as though it had been years since he last smiled. He was the last one to sign in, and rather than hand one of us the pen, he dropped it on the desk and went inside the SCIF.
That’s when the guard turned his attention to us and said, “I need everyone to sign in and give me any cell phones.”
A week earlier the admiral had skipped the signing-in part. No doubt because he wanted no record that he’d brought us into the SCIF. This time we each had to fill in our name, address, and phone number on the visitor’s log.
I looked up at the last name on the list above us, Michael J. Moretti. He was the one who’d given us the evil eye. When we entered the room, he was also the only one who wasn’t sitting at the table. He was behind the others in a chair with his back against the wall, more like an observer than a participant.
The woman was sitting in the middle of the trio at the table, and she took charge of the meeting. “Thank you all for coming down on such short notice. Please sit down.”
She wore a dark blue suit and had black hair with flecks of gray. She looked to be in her mid-fifties.
“Hello, Florian, Margaret. I’m sorry we had to interrupt you at school, but we’re dealing with a time-sensitive issue of great importance, and it’s urgent that we talk to you.”
I started to ask a question. “Can you tell—”
