Caleb feels along the walls. He turns to me, a worried look on his face. “He’s right, Ted. We’ve got to get out of here, and—”
“And what?” Isabel protests. “We’re supposed to trust him? As soon as you let him up, he’s going to do whatever it takes to leave here alone.”
There is another tremor. The look in Kellerman’s eyes goes from an easy calm to an edge of panic.
“Ted, you’ve got a choice. You let me help you, or we all could very easily die.”
“Shut up!” I close my eyes and try to think.
The words on my great-uncle’s pad call out to me. Keep looking for the answers!
I turn to Kellerman. “You were so determined to find out what my great-uncle’s last words were. Well, he did say something. The one word he said, with one of his last breaths, was ‘Promise.’ He was making me promise to never give up. I made that promise. And I can’t break it.”
I turn my back on the man trussed in the corner. “Isabel, can I have the flashlight?”
Isabel tosses it to me, and I run the beam around the room one more time.
Maybe there’s something I’ve missed. I look up, and I can feel the smile spread across my face.
“So? You’re letting me go, right?” whines Kellerman, trying to catch my eye.
“Just be quiet and let me work this out,” I order. I hand the flashlight to Caleb. “Keep this light on me, okay?”
There is one area of the floor that has stayed perfectly flat, right in the center of the room. I slowly take two of the cartons that fell and carefully place them next to each other. I then clear away the broken bottles with my foot and stack two more cartons on top of the first two.
Caleb and Isabel watch me, fascinated.
“Caleb, what’s the first thing I say to you whenever you’re stuck?”
“You mean like in a game?” Caleb asks.
“No, when your zipper’s stuck. Of course in a game,” I sigh, and move three more cartons next to the pile I’ve started. “Whenever you call me as soon as you run out of ideas…”
“Ohh…right.” Caleb thinks, and his hand moves the light up. He follows the light and says something that sounds like “Huh!”
“You don’t think…” His face is set in disbelief.
“Only one way to find out,” I say. I move two more boxes onto the floor, making a pattern of three-two-one, piles of three, two, and one boxes in a row.
Caleb hands the flashlight to Isabel and joins me in arranging the boxes.
“You’re wasting time!” whimpers Kellerman.
As we continue to move the boxes around, Caleb turns to Isabel.
“When you play an escape game, you have to look everywhere for clues. The one place people always forget to look is the ceiling. Ted always has to remind me to check there.”
Isabel moves the beam of light onto the ceiling, where a pattern of boxes has clearly been drawn in chalk. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was simply a decorative design, or something drawn by a bored workman.
Caleb and I have finished. We exchange looks.
“You’re missing two boxes, aren’t you?” Isabel asks anxiously.
I take the flashlight and look up at the ceiling. If it is a pattern, Isabel is correct. We’re two boxes short.
Kellerman struggles against his bonds. “What did you think you could accomplish with that? You didn’t seriously think that piling up a bunch of boxes was going to do anything, did you?”
Ignoring Kellerman, I rack my brain. I go through every strategy I’ve ever played, every solution that seemed impossible but turned out to be right there if you knew where to look. I make an inventory of the room’s contents once more.
And then my eyes settle on the cardboard signs leaning against the wall.
“Isabel, point the light over there,” I say.
I carefully make my way over to the signs and, to my satisfaction, see that they’re scored.
They aren’t signs at all. They’re flattened boxes. Two of them.
I hand one to Caleb and take one myself. Quickly, we fold the boxes and assemble them. Then we put them in the right place in the pattern.
Nothing happens.
“I told you!” Kellerman laughs. “Now why don’t you be smart about this and cut these things off me.”
I reach down and find some of the bottles that have rolled out of a box and put them into one of the empty cartons. I then put a pipe that has fallen off one of the shelves into the other. There’s a grinding noise.
“We need just a little more weight,” I tell Caleb.
Caleb looks around and disappears out of the circle of light. There’s a cry of delight and he reappears. “How about these?” he asks, indicating the stack in his arms.
“Uncle Peter’s comic books!” I laugh. “So Great-Uncle Ted didn’t throw them out!”
What happens next is even more amazing.
I gently lower the comics into the boxes, half in one and half in the other. There’s an earsplitting grinding sound as the floor begins to shift again, magically leveling itself, while the display case pulls away from the gate.
We watch in fascination as the gate automatically, slowly, rises to reveal…
The world outside. The beautiful, real world. Untouched.
Kellerman still lies hog-tied on the floor of the unit, staring from one face to another, uncomprehending. He looks like he’s in shock.
“I don’t get it,” he keeps repeating over and over.
Isabel looks at me and shakes her head.
“I don’t either,” she admits. “What just went on in there?”
“May I?” asks Caleb with a hint of pride.
“Be my guest,” I say.
“Ted’s great-uncle left one more test before someone could take the falcon. You had to arrange the boxes in the storage unit to match the diagram on the ceiling. Otherwise, if you tried to open the compartment and remove the bird, well…you saw what happened.”
“But how?” demands Isabel.
“There’s some sort of pistons or springs set underneath the unit,” I explain. “If the weight wasn’t distributed properly, opening the panel would trigger them—”
“—tilting the whole room and trapping whoever was in it inside!” Caleb finishes triumphantly.
“So the only way out…,” Isabel reasons, “was to put the boxes in the right pattern and hope it reset the mechanism?”
“I figured there had to be a reset,” I say. “In case of some sort of accidental triggering, or if we’d placed the boxes wrong the first time and had to try again.”
Isabel stiffens. She looks wildly at me. “Did you hear that?”
In the distance, the sounds of shouts and running feet.
“No one knows we’re here,” Caleb says anxiously. “But someone sounds like they’re in an awful hurry.”
I kneel down next to Kellerman. Now I’m the one who’s not playing. “Do you have friends? Are there people who were going to meet you here?”
Kellerman just looks at me and smiles. “Why don’t we find out?”
I spin around. The voices are getting closer. There’s shouting, but it’s indistinct.
Isabel grabs my hand. “We have to get the falcon and hide.”
I look down and raise my eyebrows. Isabel drops my hand.
“I don’t think so,” I say as the voices grow clearer.
The words are becoming easier to make out in the echoes of the big warehouse.
They’re calling, “Ted! Isabel! Caleb!”
“It’s a trap!” Caleb shouts.
“No, it’s not, you idiot. That’s your mom’s voice.”
“I know.” Caleb grins. “But I’ve always wanted to say that.”
We yell back, and the excited cries of the rescue party let us know that they’re only a few rows away.
“Row P, row P!” I call, and Caleb and Isabel join me in a sort of improvised school cheer. “Row P! Row P!”
And
now here they are.
My mom, running in her scrubs, followed closely by Graham Archer, with Caleb’s parents, followed by the now-familiar form of a squat, burly man with a fringe of black hair around his ears, chunky black glasses, and a unibrow.
Behind them, taking his time, ambles good old Dad.
“Man, your mom can book it,” Caleb says.
“She used to run track in school,” I remind him proudly.
And then we’re crushed in an avalanche of hugs and kisses as each of us is tackled in turn.
Graham Archer holds Isabel in his arms, tears streaming down his face as he strokes her hair.
Isabel looks uncomfortable at first, patting her loving father awkwardly on his shoulder. Then she grabs him as hard as she can.
“I’m okay, Daddy, really….I’m okay now….” But looking over, I can see that her eyes are glistening too.
And she called him Daddy.
Looking over isn’t easy; Mom seems permanently attached to me, like a giant squid, sucking the life out of me with her hugs. She’s also openly sobbing.
I note with satisfaction that Dad is doing his best to hold it together by talking to the burly man as the two of them peer into the structure.
Doris and Gene Grant are trying to concentrate on their son.
“By the way, Doris, I didn’t mention it before, but you’re looking good. Have you been working out?” says his dad.
“As a matter of fact, I have. Thank you for noticing,” Doris says proudly, flexing her biceps.
Caleb pulls himself away and joins Isabel and me, once we’ve both pried our respective parents off our bodies.
Dad comes over with a big smile on his face.
“I know…I never listen…but I knew something was wrong when you said Isabel didn’t return to Osmond,” Dad tells Isabel. “I just didn’t know what.”
“I knew you’d get my clue,” Isabel replies, nodding vigorously. “Ted, of course, thought it was a stupid thing to say.”
“Well, Ted should trust his Dear Father. So I told your mom, who kind of freaked out—”
“Why did Mom freak out?” I ask.
Before Dad can answer, my mom turns to the burly man, who is having a one-sided conversation with Kellerman, who is glaring at him.
“Kellerman!” Mom shouts.
“Yes?” both men answer.
My mom marches over, sheer fury in her eyes. The fake Kellerman looks terrified.
She reaches back and wallops…
…the real Kellerman, who falls over, coughing.
“Amanda!” Dad rushes over but freezes as she glares at him.
The real Kellerman has gotten to his feet, looking baleful.
Then Mom says, through gritted teeth, “You promised us! You #$%# liar!”
Whoa.
I did not see that coming.
Wait, this is my mom? The “for heaven’s sake” mom?
He must have messed up big-time to get her this mad.
“Everything we were told suggested he was not violent or capable of doing what he did.” The real Kellerman speaks with a thick New York accent, kind of like he could be Mrs. Krausz’s son.
Mom smacks him again, hard. “Our children could have died. We trusted you when you said he was just a harmless antiques dealer. You said to say nothing to them, that he’d show himself and you’d take care of it.”
The real Kellerman raises his hands. “Whaddaya want me to do? I’m not the FBI, for God’s sake. We’re just an organization looking for artwork.”
“That is unacceptable.” My mom is fuming. “I am writing a letter to whoever runs your organization.”
“Fine! Write a letter!” the real Kellerman shoots back. “Get a lawyer! Sue them! See if I care! I didn’t even want to do this! I wanted to be an orthodontist, but no, I had to run around the world looking for artwork, because that’s what Kellermans do. Seriously, go ahead.”
This stops Mom for a moment.
“HE KIDNAPPED OUR KIDS!” she screams at him.
I walk over to Dad. “Wait, so you knew that Kellerman was a phony and you let him take us?”
“I wasn’t there when that guy talked to your mom. I kind of wasn’t paying attention when she told me,” Dad answers.
“But you put two and two together when Isabel said something wrong about a book?” I ask incredulously.
“Well, that’s different,” Dad says, impossible as ever. “I mean, if it weren’t for Isabel—”
“I know, I know,” I say.
As Mom continues to beat the living daylights out of the real Kellerman, Caleb joins us.
“Okay,” he says. “Your mom. Isabel. Steel cage match. Your thoughts?”
“Well,” I say appraisingly, “Isabel definitely has the height and the reach….”
“Yeah, but your mom has age and experience,” counters Dad.
“That’s true.” Caleb nods.
“Definitely,” I agree. “You know what they say: Asian blood is strong in that one!”
The real Kellerman then turns to the other parents, who by now have gathered around him, and is once again telling anyone who will listen that they should go ahead and do whatever they want, it’s fine with him.
Dad turns back to Isabel as if nothing has happened.
“So, as I was saying,” Dad goes on, as if this is a funny story from his class. “Ted’s mom went a little nuts. I guess your father went a little crazy too when this Kellerman fellow showed up and mentioned that other guy pretending to be him.”
One thing doesn’t make sense. “But how did you find us?”
“I know you don’t think so, but I’m not completely stupid.” Dad smiles. “I went to your room to see if I could discover anything, and you’d left your laptop on. I hit the History button, and it pulled up Google with the address on it.”
I nod. “You are definitely not completely stupid. You teach college and everything.”
“Wait. If you had the address, what took you guys so long?” Having gotten bored with watching the real Kellerman being berated, Caleb is now part of the conversation.
“We’ve been here for a half an hour looking for you guys,” Dad explains. “Do you know how big this place is? How many floors? It wasn’t until Graham heard the noise of the gate opening down here that we had an idea of the general direction to follow.”
I turn and see something out of the corner of my eye that makes my stomach drop into my shoes.
During all the yelling and catching up, no one has kept an eye on the fake Kellerman.
There on the floor are four zip ties, neatly cut. He has somehow managed to find his douk-douk in the rubble and release himself.
“Kellerman’s gone!” I shout.
“Whaddaya mean? I’m right here!” yells the real Kellerman. He looks around and, as the realization sinks in, says simply, “Oh…”
He turns to my mom. “See? This is what happens when you get angry at the wrong person. He’s the one who threatened your children. I didn’t see you beating him up.”
Before Mom can answer, a deep voice calls out, “Anyone looking for this?” We’re met with the welcome sight of half a dozen LAPD uniformed police turning the corner, one of them pulling a disheveled fake Kellerman with him.
“Well, you certainly took your time,” Graham Archer says.
“It would have helped if you’d given us some idea where in the building you were,” the officer answers coolly.
The police need a statement, so Caleb, Isabel, and I go with one of the officers to file a report. As we turn to leave, I see the real Kellerman emerge from the dust and debris of the storage unit, clutching the velvet drawstring bag.
I stop.
“Can we see it, please?”
All eyes are on the real Kellerman as he carefully undoes the string and lowers the bag.
There in his hand is a statue of a falcon covered in black paint, looking just like the one on the cover of the book Isabel Archer read and told me and Caleb abo
ut, what feels like a lifetime ago.
There’s silence in the room.
“It don’t look like much, right?” the real Kellerman says softly. “But it’ll clean up real good….”
He takes a small penknife out of his pocket. Unlike the douk-douk, this knife looks friendly and cute, like one you might use to sharpen a pencil. He opens it and scraps the blade against the black paint.
In the bright lights of the Valleyview Long-Term Storage Facilities (open by appointment only), there is the unmistakable glitter of gold beneath the black.
It’s a couple of days later and things have finally quieted down to something remotely resembling normal.
It turns out the man who was the fake Kellerman is a rogue antiques dealer (my dad particularly loved the idea of a rogue antiques dealer—“That’s like being a homicidal Scrabble player!” he keeps saying, to no one’s amusement) named Francis Chamberlain.
“Francis?” Caleb exclaims. “We were afraid of a guy named Francis?”
“Oh, like Stan is such a terrifying name,” Isabel shoots back.
The real Stan Kellerman has gathered the families together to explain that the process of locating the rightful owners of the jewels found in what the media are calling the Nazi Falcon might take years. The gold, however, will belong to me if I want to sell it or melt it down.
“Where did the gold come from?” I ask. Then I quickly add, “I don’t really want to know the answer, do I?”
“No, I don’t think you really want to know the answer,” Kellerman says. But then, of course, he can’t resist telling. “When the Jews were killed in the concentration camps, their bodies were burned, and then gold was taken from the fillings in their teeth. So—”
I hold up my hand. “I don’t want it. It’s so gross and horrible.”
Kellerman shrugs. “You’re half Jewish, right? We are the people of the Book, no? So maybe it would be kind of nice if the money went, let’s say, to your education?”
I promise to think about it.
After talking to Caleb and Isabel (and my folks), and doing a little research, I reach a decision.
Most of the money will be split between the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles and the 442nd Veterans Club in Honolulu, which is still keeping the memory and history of the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team alive.
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