by Paul Aertker
Alister mumbled the names as he pulled out the folders. “Baak, Babbit, Babineaux . . .” he whispered. “Who are these people?”
Lucas said, “Kids who live in other Globe Hotels, I guess.”
“Benes!” Alister said. He pulled out the one Benes file. It read ASTRID. “Let’s try Kapriss.”
The file they were looking for was so fat that it nearly jumped off the shelf. It was light blue with an x marked on the side. It read, KAPRISS, LUCAS (BENES).
It wasn’t a simple birth chart, but rather a group of file folders, each bulging with papers of all kinds wrapped with rubber bands. The first chart number was 330816-1.
The number meant something to Lucas, but at the moment he couldn’t put his finger on it.
Alister set the folders on the floor and spread out the loose papers.
There were notes written in different languages-Chinese, Dutch, Italian. Some of the papers had browned. A few pages felt like they would crumble into bits. Some were handwritten, and some had been typed and had splotches of Wite-Out painted over mistakes. There were drawings of spirals and Greek letters.
Alister snatched up a note card that was embossed with the letters ATLNIII. “These are my dad’s initials.”
The card was addressed to Luz Kapriss, The Good Hotel, Buenos Aires. Alister studied the card. “I can’t read this.”
Lucas took the note and flipped it open. “It’s written in Esperanto.”
He read:
Mia Luz,
Kiam mia filo, Ivy, estas malnova sufiĉa, mi sendos lin en serĉo de ĉi tiu dosiero desentrañar via mistero. Triple Sticks
Lucas worked out the translation.
“My Luz. When my son, Ivy, is old enough, I will send him in search of this file to unravel your mystery. Triple Sticks”
“Not Ivy,” Alister said, his eyes wide open. “I. V. That’s what my dad used to call me.”
“Why?”
“My name is Alister Thanthalon Laramie Nethington the Fourth. ‘The fourth’ written in Roman numerals is IV—Ivy.” He glanced at the front of the card and pointed at the ATLNIII. “That’s my father. Alister Thanthalon Laramie Nethington the Third-Triple Sticks.”
Lucas shook his head. “He should have saved every body a lot of trouble and just called you something easy, like Al.”
Having Alister around gave Lucas new eyes for this old chart.
While Lucas flipped through the cards that were clasped to the file, Alister stacked the pieces of paper.
The first couple of pages Lucas had recently seen when they were looking for this mysterious code. It showed his name and the Good Hospital in Tierra del Fuego. He saw the notes about his birth and messages that said Lucas’s head was “rather large” and that he had “a congenital case of cowlicks.”
Bed-head since birth, Lucas thought.
He spotted the note where the doctors had listed him as an FLK—Funny Looking Kid. But this time he noticed a series of numbers next to the letters FLK.
He looked at Alister. “You said you knew what FLK meant,” he said, and he spun the paper toward Alister.
“FLK means Funny Looking Kid,” Alister said, “but it is also the ISO country code for the Falklands.”
“So how does this fit into my birth chart?”
“Apparently your mother was some sort of math genius.”
“She was a cleaning lady.”
“That’s partly true,” Alister said as he took over the file and began flipping through the papers. “But my father worked in international banking his whole life and knew your mother. He said that she was one of the smartest people he’d ever met.”
Lucas said, “It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if you understand higher-level math,” Alister said.
“Yeah,” said Lucas.
“Did you ever wonder why you’re taking university-level math and you’re only fourteen?” Alister asked. “It’s called genes. And not the ones you wear.”
Lucas had thought about his olive-colored skin and his bed-head hair before, but had never really thought about why he was the way he was, why he was able to memorize city maps, and why calculus was easy for him.
Both boys stared at the pages. Alister flipped one after another while Lucas tried to make sense of them.
“According to my dad,” Alister said, “there are supposedly three types of numbers. There’s one for a shipping container, another number or code for the destination or place, and the third number for time on the calendar.”
Lucas stopped cold. He could sense movement on the other side of the door. He killed the flashlight and parted a clump of files to peer through to the door. Outside in the hallway someone was jiggling keys.
“Shut up you idiot,” one voice said.
Alister’s eyes bugged out, and he mouthed, “Who is it?”
Lucas shrugged. Alister dumped Lucas’s main file into the briefcase.
Before Alister had time to spin the locks on the briefcase, two figures entered the dark office.
Lucas crept behind the filing cabinets, and Alister clutched the unlocked briefcase under his arm.
Flashlight beams flickered through the file folders.
“Let’s get what we need,” said one of the voices, “and get out of here.”
“Don’t worry,” said the other. “That Texan coach won’t wake up until we’re long gone.”
Lucas noted the Eastern European accents. He knew these guys. Muscle Shirt and Tall Boy had obviously done something to Coach Creed and broken out of the infirmary.
Tall Boy chuckled. “That was a good idea to fake being hurt in the parking lot this morning to get us in here.”
“It was easier than I planned,” Muscle Shirt said. “I thought that Lucas kid was supposed to be some superstar.”
“What was that he was trying to do? Tae kwon do?”
“More like tae kwon don’t.”
A knot formed in Lucas’s gut.
The birth files in that room were sacred to everyone at the New Resistance. They were the keys to the kids’ identities, and losing them would erase their histories.
Lucas had gone easy on those guys, and now he was paying for it. Once burned, twice shy.
He would have to up his game.
Lucas and Alister eased around the end of the giant cabinet marked J–L. Muscle Shirt passed just on the other side of F–H.
A light hit Alister’s briefcase.
“What’s that?” Muscle Shirt said.
“What’s what?”
“There’s somebody in here.”
“I got this,” Lucas said, whispering. He snatched the briefcase from Alister. “Take off your bow tie.”
Tall Boy moved closer.
“My tie?” Alister asked.
“Just unknot it!”
Alister undid his tie, and Lucas moved into the aisle.
Muscle Shirt aimed the flashlight at him.
Lucas started to swing the briefcase toward Tall Boy’s head, but he remembered that the case was still unlocked. Tall Boy threw a flurry of solid fists. Lucas sidestepped them, and the files behind him took the force of the blows. Papers flew everywhere.
Lucas ducked and locked the briefcase.
Tall Boy stumbled and nearly fell from the missed hits.
Lucas rose and crashed the briefcase up into Tall Boy’s chin. Then he smashed the side of the case across the boy’s face. Tall Boy buckled over, groaning.
“I hope you approve of my skills now,” Lucas said.
Then Lucas smacked the briefcase on the back of the boy’s head. Tall Boy dropped to the floor. Holding his face, he curled into a ball.
Out of the corner of his eye, Lucas spotted Muscle Shirt accelerating down the aisle toward him. Lucas swung the briefcase, jabbing its corner into the boy’s gut.
When the case skittered to the floor, Muscle Shirt leaned down to pick it up.
Lucas said, “I’m not going to let you take the one thing that my mother left me.”
>
Lucas spun and slipped the bow tie from Alister’s collar. He looped it over Muscle Shirt’s head and around his neck. The boy dropped the briefcase, clawing the tie away from his neck.
“What are you doing?” Muscle Shirt complained.
“You didn’t like my tae kwon do this morning?” Lucas asked. “Well maybe you’ll like my bow tie kwon do.”
“Stop!” the boy screamed.
Still holding Muscle Shirt from behind, Lucas said, “Don’t worry. I’m not really going to hurt you.” He caught his breath. “But Alister is.”
When Alister stepped forward, guarding his face with his fists, Lucas quickly realized the mistake. Alister wasn’t trained to fight at all.
Muscle Shirt arched his back and used Lucas’s chest as a fulcrum.
As Alister moved closer, he cocked his right arm.
Muscle Shirt’s feet rose, his knees bent. Then he kicked Alister square in the chest. The force sent Alister careening against the back wall.
Muscle Shirt squirmed out of the bow tie and spun around to face Lucas, ready to fight. The boy reached in his pocket, pulled out a scalpel, and tossed the safety cap to the floor.
“You stole that from the school’s infirmary!”
“So what?” Muscle Shirt said, glancing at the knife in his hand.
A tiny but perfect distraction.
Lucas took advantage of the moment and lunged at the boy, shoving him against the metal cabinet. The scalpel clattered on the floor.
“My back,” the boy said as he slid to the ground.
“Take an ibuprofen,” Lucas said, “and call me in the morning.”
Somewhere outside the file room, Lucas could hear more commotion. He knew security would be on its way. And they would find these boys and the mess they’d made and Coach Creed, too.
Lucas slowed his breathing to reduce the adrenaline rush. Alister snatched up his bow tie and briefcase while Lucas helped him up. The two boys slipped into the hallway and headed upstairs to their hotel room to figure out what the codes in the birth chart really meant.
THE HOTEL BILL
Holding the beat-up briefcase, Alister opened the door to their hotel room.
On the carpet there was an envelope.
A bill? Lucas thought. We’re students. We don’t get hotel bills.
Alister removed the key card and held the door half open with his foot. Lucas picked up the envelope and lifted the flap. The folds in the paper were not even. Someone had hurried. He slid his finger along the creases to make the paper flatter.
Eleven words were centered on the otherwise blank sheet of paper.
If you want to see your mother, look out the window.
MESSAGE IN A CAR
Doing the same thing as everyone else, following the herd, never really felt right to Lucas.
He raced to the window and craned his head down toward the side parking lot where the trash dumpsters were. Parked cockeyed across the white lines was the Tesla Model S. To block the glare, Lucas put his hand to his brow. There were two people in the car. In the passenger seat there was a woman with long black hair.
My mother? Lucas thought.
It wasn’t logical, and he knew it. But that tiny bit of hope that had been asleep in his heart for twelve years awakened. Lucas stared. His insides were being pulled by a tug-of-war between reason and hope.
Long black hair.
She looked like the woman in the picture he had seen at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop. But that picture had been taken before he was born.
There were too many weird coincidences.
The phone rang, echoing in the quiet hotel room.
The sound snapped him out of his trance.
Lucas looked back as if he’d never heard such a sound.
Alister tossed his briefcase onto the bedspread and ran to the nightstand.
“Answer it,” Lucas said.
“Hello?”
Then he held the phone out for Lucas. “It’s for you.”
Lucas grabbed it and put the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”
A man’s voice said three words. “Bring the file.”
The line went dead and Lucas hung up.
“They want the file,” Lucas said.
“What are you going to do?”
Long black hair. It could be her.
Lucas knew if he did nothing then he would always wonder.
Out the window, Alister kept watch on the back parking lot.
Lucas sat on the bedspread and opened Alister’s briefcase. He looked at his file and at the number written on the tab. He finally recognized it as the number phi, backward: 330816-1.
He borrowed a pen from the briefcase and put Gini’s folder in his lap. On the tab he wrote the number pi, also backward: 295141-3.
Then Lucas put the folder under his shirt and left the room and went downstairs. He cracked the door open and looked out. In his mind he set the plan. He would run out to the car and look at the woman. He knew he would know instantly.
The Tesla turned one hundred eighty degrees to face the driver toward the hotel. Lucas knew this would be trouble because behind the wheel was Charles Magnus.
Lucas clutched the folder in his arms and pushed the door open with his butt. He jogged diagonally across the parking lot through the heat and toward the Tesla.
The trunk located on the front of the Tesla clicked open. Then the driver’s-side door opened.
Lucas glanced through the interior and zeroed in on the woman’s profile. She had long black hair like his mother. She had beautiful olive-colored skin.
Argentinean?
Wearing a white security-guard shirt with a walkie-talkie clipped to the shoulder, Magnus stepped out and pushed Lucas to the front of the Tesla.
“Get in,” he said, pointing to the small luggage area.
“In the front trunk?”
“Yeah,” Magnus said. “In the frunk.”
Magnus glanced over his shoulder. With his forearm he knocked Lucas into the compartment.
Lucas folded himself into the tiny space between the front bumper and the driving compartment. He was still trying to position his legs and the rest of his body when Magnus closed the lid and plunged him into darkness.
ARE YOU MY MOTHER?
For Lucas, the claustrophobia settled in.
Crammed in the tiny space, he understood what a coffin must surely feel like. He patted the walls around him. They seemed to be squeezing him and sucking the air from his lungs. His heart raced as he pounded on the car’s hood, which was just above his head. There was no exit.
The engine whispered as the Tesla eased around the back parking lot. The car hit a speed bump in the parking lot. Lucas knew he couldn’t worry about the boneheaded moves he’d already made. You can never fix the past. And he would surely make more mistakes in the future. All he could do was focus on now.
This is worse than kidnapping, he thought. I did this to myself. No one knows where I am. And I have no idea where I am being taken or how I’m getting out of this.
Lucas gulped in a giant breath of stale air, and his whole body calmed down. Without sight he navigated by sound. He could hear other cars.
As the tires rolled over the curb and into the street, Magnus spun the car to the right. Lucas tried to visualize where he was. He could sense the map in his head. He guessed they were passing a box store and the 7-Eleven he and Jackknife liked to walk to.
In the dark trunk his mind drifted back to why he had done what he had done. Lucas knew that he had to know for sure about his mother. He had to know if it was possible for her to be alive after this many years.
Magnus took the next turn without slowing down. He cut a sharp left, and the centripetal force tossed Lucas to the right, rocking him against the walls. Lucas heard the monorail buzzing overheard, and then the Tesla stopped.
Magnus hit the INSANE button, and in a matter of seconds the Model S P85D rocketed to sixty miles—nearly one hundred kilometers—per hour.
>
The force pinned Lucas to the back of the frunk. As they weaved in and out of traffic, Lucas tried to trace every twist and turn.
A few minutes later the Tesla slowed. They bumped up a curb, and Lucas heard a garage door rumble open. Magnus spun the car and put it in reverse. The sound of the scrolling door grew fainter.
A second later the acoustics changed to the interior of a building of some kind. Then silence. The two car doors opened.
Magnus opened the frunk and motioned for Lucas to move. He crawled out clutching the birth chart. Magnus hit a button, and the huge roller door began to descend like a big set of teeth locking them inside a giant mouth.
Before the light went out, Lucas took a photograph of everything with his mind.
He presumed they were in the back of a hotel, which he figured was the Good Hotel Las Vegas. The space was some sort of private entrance and could hold only two cars.
The other spot was taken by a black Suburban with tinted windows. The license plate read SALL GOOD.
The giant roller door came to a close, and the garage fell into darkness, lit only by a bulb above a metal door that led doubtlessly inside.
Magnus held out his hand for the woman with long black hair. He then pointed Lucas and the woman up a flight of concrete steps to the metal door. Lucas glanced at the woman in the low light.
The head of Good Company Security led them down a long corridor that smelled of onions.
The walkie-talkie speaker on his shoulder screeched. “Magnus?”
He pushed a button and spoke. “Yes.”
“We’ve got a problem with our audio and video security,” Ms. Günerro said. “Get in here, now.”
“What about the boy and his mother?” Magnus asked.
“Put them in the holding room for a minute. It’ll give them some mother-son time that I’m sure they need.”
At the end of the corridor Magnus opened a door to a walk-in refrigerator. A single bulb hanging from the center of the room cast a cone of light on the concrete floor. On the left, soda cans filled the shelves. At the back, there were step stools. On the right was a corrugated tin wall.
