Framed!

by James Ponti

  I looked up at the entrance to the school. It was imposing with tall white columns and three pairs of dark blue doors.

  “Two more days until we start,” I said.

  “You’re not worried about Deal, are you?”

  “I always worry about new schools,” I answered.

  “Don’t. You’re going to do great,” she assured me.

  “Why? Because the school’s loaded with geeky kids who have mad mystery-solving skills?”

  “No,” she answered. “Because I’ll be there.”

  “That should take care of it,” I replied. “Now go back and get your trophy and have fun at the party.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you later.” She jogged back down the hill to where her teammates were waiting. When she reached them, they swarmed her all over again.

  Despite her assurance, I was still a little nervous about starting at a new school. Again. Each time presented new challenges.

  I was in no rush to get home, so I rode around the neighborhood for a while to get a better feel for it. First I went to a castle-looking building right by the campus called Fort Reno. It was used to defend Washington during the Civil War, and now it’s a park. According to one of the information plaques, it’s the highest point in the city. After that I had a couple slices of pepperoni and sausage at a pizzeria with free Ping-Pong and foosball.

  I was just about to play a kid in foosball when I noticed a man watching me as he talked on a cell phone. He was thin and muscular with short red hair and aviator sunglasses. He was also the only person in the building who wasn’t working, eating, or playing.

  “You going to play?” the boy asked me.

  “No,” I said. “I just realized what time it is and have to get home.”

  Since the red-haired man was between the front door and me, I decided to slip out the back. Unfortunately, it opened onto an alley where there was another man waiting for me. He was tall and lean and wore the same sunglasses as the guy inside.

  “Stop right there,” he said.

  I instantly thought back to Kayla’s self-defense training and tried to get into position.

  “Are you Johan Blankvort?” he asked.

  At first I didn’t recognize the fake identity I’d been given, so I barked, “No.”

  Then I thought about it for a second and said, “I mean, yes. I mean, who wants to know?”

  “I’m Agent Chaffee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said in that direct FBI way.

  “And I’m Agent Kendall,” said a voice from behind.

  I turned and saw that the redhead had followed me out.

  “Agent Rivers asked us to come and get you and bring you straight home.”

  Just then I heard a text signal on my phone.

  “That’s him telling you to trust us,” said Kendall. “I was just speaking to him on the phone.”

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and indeed there was a text from Rivers: It’s okay. Go with them.

  “Okay,” I said. “So what’s going on?”

  “He didn’t tell us that,” replied Chaffee. “He just said to get you.”

  They led me to a black SUV, and when I got in I saw that they’d already loaded my bike into the back.

  “Hey, that was locked,” I protested.

  “You might want to get a new one,” Chaffee said, tossing the lock to me. “This one was pretty easy to pick.”

  I started to ask how they found me when I remembered the tracking chip inside the SmarTrip card for the Metro. It took only a few minutes to make it to the house, and when we pulled up I saw the maroon hybrid parked in front. I was excited because I thought there might have been a big break in the case, so I hurried up the front steps and went inside.

  “Florian?” my mother called out. “We’re in the kitchen.”

  I found my parents sitting around the table with Agent Rivers and another agent I didn’t recognize. They all looked worried.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Were you at a soccer game today?” Rivers asked. “On the field behind your school?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was great. Margaret’s team won the championship and—”

  “Did you see this man when you were there?” he said, cutting me off as he placed a photograph on the table.

  I picked it up and studied it. It looked like a surveillance picture taken from a distance with a long lens. The man looked both stylish and menacing at the same time. He had on a nice suit, but his face was tight and muscular.

  “Not that I remember,” I said. “But there were a lot of people.”

  “Well, he was there,” he said. “And we think he may have been there because of you.”

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  Rivers sighed before answering. “He’s an EEL crime boss named Nicolae Nevrescu. But his enemies call him ‘Nic the Knife.’ ”

  “That sounds bad,” I said with a gulp. “What do his friends call him?”

  “He doesn’t have any friends.”

  20.

  The Underground

  MY PARENTS AND I SPENT the next half hour learning all about Nicolae Nevrescu from Rivers and his fellow agent Martin Kellogg.

  “Marty’s really our expert on him,” Rivers explained. “So I want him to tell you the basics.”

  Kellogg was about ten years older, and unlike the always-sharp Rivers, he was somewhat wrinkled and unkempt. He’d spent years sitting in the backs of surveillance vans tracking criminals and was a little worse for the wear.

  “Although he’s the son of a prominent Romanian mobster, the plan seems to have been to keep Nic out of the family business,” he said with his New York accent. “He was smart, had a bright future, and his parents wanted him to go to America and start a new chapter in the family’s history. He came to Washington as a student at Georgetown, majored in international business, made good grades, and was headed to law school.”

  “So how did he end up a gangster?” asked Dad.

  “The how we don’t know,” he answered. “We just know that he did. With money from his dad, he opened a construction company that was corrupt from the beginning. In little over a decade, his businesses have grown to include everything from sanitation and recycling centers to demolition and dry-cleaning companies. All of them launder money for his father and other EEL crime lords.”

  “How do you launder money?” I asked.

  “You take money earned through illegal activities and pass it through a legitimate business so it becomes clean,” he explained.

  “If you know all this,” asked my mother, “then why don’t you arrest him?”

  “We want to,” he answered. “But what we know and what we can prove in court are two different things. We’ve had him under surveillance for two years, and we’re building a case against him.”

  “Which brings us to today,” said Rivers. “The surveillance team followed him to the soccer game at Deal.”

  “That’s all?” I asked. “That’s why you grabbed me off the street and terrified my parents? Because both of us were at a soccer game? There were a lot of people there. What makes you think he was there because of me? He could have been there to watch his kid. Or watch his friend’s kid. It was a big game, the city championship.”

  “He doesn’t have any kids, and he doesn’t have any friends,” said Kellogg. “All of his family is in Romania, and in two years he’s never once shown the slightest interest in soccer or youth sports. But he did show an interest in you.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Dad.

  “After the game, he walked around the school and watched Florian get on his bike and leave.” Kellogg handed a photograph to my mom and dad, and I leaned over from my seat to look at it. In the picture, I was watching Margaret as she ran back down the hill to her team, and he was about twenty-five yards behind me. It was weird seeing a picture of myself that I hadn’t known was being taken.

  “I still think you’re taking a big leap,” I replied. “The
parking lot in front of the school was full of cars. He could have been looking at anything. He may not have even noticed me and just happened to be facing that direction.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” said Rivers. “This may well be an overreaction. In fact, it probably is. But we’d rather overreact and err on the side of safety than make a mistake and put you in jeopardy.”

  “We agree,” said Mom.

  “Definitely,” added Dad.

  I turned to Kellogg and asked, “How did you even know I was there? I thought I was a covert asset.”

  “The chip on your SmarTrip card,” answered Rivers. “There’s always the worry that a surveillance op might blow someone’s cover. So there’s a monitor in the van that picks up the signal from anyone with a chip like yours.”

  “I still didn’t know who you were,” added Kellogg. “But when the monitor displayed a number, I called it in to the covert asset desk to let them know our two situations had overlapped. They called Rivers.”

  “And when I heard it involved Nevrescu and EEL, it set off the alarm in the little monitor in my head,” he said. “Since we suspect that EEL is involved in the theft, we decided to act.”

  The pieces may have snapped together for them, but they didn’t for me. It seemed like a total stretch. Although I will admit that may have been because I didn’t want to think that the Romania Mafia might be coming after me. But it still seemed unlikely.

  “Does it make sense that he’d be interested in art?” I asked Kellogg.

  “He’s not your average criminal,” he replied. “He graduated from Georgetown and is intellectual. He supports various cultural activities in the Romanian-American community. He even created a scholarship fund, totally legitimate, that helps inner-city DC kids go to college. So a Monet might appeal to him a great deal.”

  “Besides, his interest wouldn’t necessarily be in the artistic value of the painting,” added Rivers. “In the world of organized crime, stolen art is often used in place of money to pay off one group or another.”

  “So what do we do about it?” asked Mom as she reached over and put a protective hand on my knee.

  “First of all, Florian’s off the case,” he said.

  “What?” I protested.

  “Stay away from any place and anyone associated with the crime or the investigation,” he continued. “If he was there to see you, he most likely just heard a rumor that you were involved and was curious to find out how. We don’t want to give him any reason to believe that rumor’s true. If you stay away from the museum and the investigation, he’ll lose interest quickly.”

  “If Florian’s a covert asset, then how could Nevrescu even hear a rumor about him?” asked Mom.

  “That night at the museum, there were a lot of people there when Florian figured out where the paintings were hidden,” he said. Then he turned to me and asked, “Do you want to tell them which ones might have told Nevrescu?”

  “How would I know?” I replied.

  He gave me a look and leaned in. “Do you want to tell them, Florian? Because I think you know.”

  “You haven’t told anyone, have you?” Dad asked me.

  “No. Of course not,” I replied. “He’s talking about the guys on the garbage truck.”

  “I figured you caught that,” Rivers said with a smile.

  “Okay, for those of us who aren’t detectives?” asked my mom.

  “The garbage truck drivers were there on the scene being questioned as the agents dug through the Dumpsters looking for the paintings,” I reminded her. “They were there when the agents gave me the standing ovation. And Agent Kellogg said that Nevrescu owns sanitation and recycling centers. So there’s a possible connection.”

  “Impressive,” said Agent Kellogg.

  “I told you,” replied Rivers.

  “What about the stuff from the dinner party?” I asked. “You said you wanted me to use TOAST to analyze the travel records from the museum to see who had traveled to Europe on business and to look over the information Oliver Hobbes had about auctions involving Monet and the Impressionists. Neither of those involves Nevrescu. Can I still do that?”

  Rivers looked at my parents as if to gauge their response.

  “I can look at them here at the house,” I added. “The sooner this case is solved, the better all of this will be.”

  “I guess that would be all right with me,” said Rivers. “If it’s okay with your parents.”

  Dad nodded. “That would be okay. He’s safe here.”

  One of the advantages of having a father who designs security systems is that our house is super well protected. We had video surveillance, door and window sensors, motion detectors, exterior lighting, alarms, and anything else you could think of. We even had special high-security cables for Internet access, which was necessary because my dad runs his business from home.

  They stayed for a little while more and reminded me about fifteen times to make sure I always carried my panic button with me. The next morning I went down into the unfinished room in our basement and started turning it into the world headquarters of Florian Bates Investigations. If I was going to have to work out of the house, then I wanted to at least have a good place to do it.

  I was staring at one of the walls when I heard a voice behind me.

  “What are you doing?”

  I turned to see that it was Margaret. “Interior decorating.”

  She laughed. “Well, now I know.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Now I know the thing you’re really bad at is interior decorating.”

  I nodded. “I am, aren’t I?”

  “Terrible,” she said.

  I had just been trying to squeeze as much into each corner as I could, but then Margaret took over and started “using the negative space,” as she said. Over the next four hours it went from a room with boxes to a cool environment where we could brainstorm and work cases together. She made one wall into a giant case board and turned the gaps under the stairs into funky staggered shelving.

  While we worked I told her all about Nic the Knife, stressing my belief that he wasn’t involved and accusing my parents and Agent Rivers of overreacting.

  “They’re not overreacting,” she retorted. “They’re being careful and that’s smart.”

  She got onto the computer, which sat on a desk we made out of an old door and some wooden boxes, and started looking up everything she could about Nevrescu. I’d done the same thing the night before so I’d already seen most of what she came across.

  “Here’s an article about his scholarship fund,” she said. “He looks intense.”

  “Is that the picture of him by the bridge with his arms crossed?” I asked as I tried to figure out the best place to put a floor lamp.

  “That’s the one,” she said.

  “He definitely has a don’t-mess-with-me vibe,” I said.

  “And that’s in an article about him helping kids go to college,” she joked. “Imagine how he looks when he’s trying to be intimidating.”

  “How’s this?” I moved out of the way so she could see where I’d put the lamp.

  “Uh-uh,” she replied, shaking her head. “Over there.”

  She pointed at the other corner.

  I moved the lamp and she kept looking online.

  “Mi-ar placea sa vizitez Romania,” she said. Well, that’s what she tried to say. What she actually said was a much-butchered version of that.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s Romanian for ‘I’d like to visit Romania one day,’ ” she answered. “Here’s a website of Romanian phrases. It might help if you learned some in case you two come face-to-face someday. I wonder how you say ‘No, I didn’t have anything to do with uncovering your plot to steal tens of millions of dollars of paintings. Please don’t hurt me.’ ” She pretended to look at the list and said, “No, I guess that’s not a common enough phrase.”

  “Let me look at that,” I said.


  I looked over her shoulder at the phrases. It’s funny because Romanian has a lot in common with Italian, so I could actually make sense of most of the phrases.

  “Check this one out,” she said, pointing to one at the bottom. “My hovercraft is full of monkeys.” She laughed when she read that. “You definitely have to learn that one. You never know when that’ll come in handy.”

  We both got up to leave, and when we reached the door, we turned around to look at the room. It was much cooler than I would have imagined.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I love it,” I replied. “How about you?”

  “Almost,” she said. “But it’s missing something.”

  She knelt down and started looking through a box filled with odds and ends from our many moves.

  “Should we give it a name?” I asked.

  “What? The room?”

  “Yeah, should we give it a name? In London, the police work out of Scotland Yard.”

  “And in Gotham City, Bruce Wayne’s got the Batcave,” she offered.

  “Exactly,” I answered, going with it. “We need a name like that.”

  I tried to brainstorm, and she kept digging through the box.

  “Wait a minute, I think I’ve got it,” she said.

  She pulled out a metal sign that had the symbol of the London subway system. It was classic and simple. A red circle with a blue bar across the middle. The word “Underground” was written in the bar.

  “I like it,” I said.

  She hung it from an old nail in the wall and stepped back to look at everything.

  “It’s perfect,” she said. “Welcome to the Underground.”

  21.

  Back to School

  IT WAS THE FIRST DAY of school and mom wanted to drive. This had nothing to do with her being worried about Nicolae Nevrescu, and everything to do with the fact that she’s a mom and thinks I’m still in kindergarten.

  “It’s less than a mile away,” I said. “I can just walk with Margaret.”

  “Why don’t I drive Margaret, too?” she offered.

  “Because then her mother will feel left out and she’ll want to drive,” I answered. “We’d end up with two cars when we don’t need any.”