At some point Mabel brought him lunch, and by midafternoon Curial was starting to get sleepy, so he turned up the music to power through the sugar crash. He was singing loudly to “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones when, out of his peripheral vision, he noticed a green light blinking. It took him a moment to realize what it meant. An intruder. Crap. The music had been too loud and he hadn’t heard the buzzer.
He spun around and almost jumped out of his skin.
Getty, his father’s assistant, stood five feet away from him, arms folded, shaking his head back and forth; the scowl was chiseled deep as ever into his face.
Curial tried to control his breathing, his heart feeling like it might jump out of his chest. He turned the music down and Getty shook his head.
“So this is what you do all day? Hide away in your secret bat cave, listening to rock and roll while playing with the fanciest computers money can buy?” Getty rolled his eyes as he bent down to look at the computer screen. Curial jumped in front of him.
“What do you want, Getty?”
Getty straightened up and glared. “What do I want? I’d give anything to have what you have. But I promise you, instead of wasting it looking at God-only-knows-what in Peru, I would work hard to earn the job that will one day be handed to you on a silver platter.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
Getty did what he did best: he rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
Curial locked eyes with Getty. He wanted to demonstrate the new left-right combination Hank had taught him in the ring. He wanted to drag him down the spiral staircase by the collar of his perfectly tailored suit.
“Why exactly are you here?” Curial asked.
Getty stood unfazed, unmoving for twenty seconds, then finally grabbed a green folder out of his brown leather satchel.
“To give you this. After you left yesterday, your father remembered one more place I should look. Turns out your mother did leave you something.”
She did?
Curial stared at the folder for a moment, not fully understanding, then finally grabbed it and looked up at his dad’s assistant. “Thanks.”
Getty rolled his eyes once more and took another look around the corners of the secret room. “Some of us have real work to do.” He spun and walked down the length of the balcony, descended the spiral staircase, and left the library.
Curial stared at the front doors of the library for a full minute after Getty left, then realized his body was so tense he was practically crushing the folder in his hands. A green folder with a little bump on the bottom. He turned it over. The flaps of the folder were attached together with a blood red seal made out of wax. It had two initials impressed into it: C.D.
Caroline Diggs.
Curial Diggs.
Curial’s heart raced. He ran back into his computer room, laid the folder on his glass desk, and ripped open the seal.
Inside was a handwritten note, in his mother’s handwriting:
Dear Curial,
The first dream of my life was to have a son, and I couldn’t be more proud of you and the young man you’ve become.
The second dream of my life was to one day find the treasure that bewitched me in my youth. Over my life, I’ve accumulated a special folder with everything I know about the Romanov Dolls and their disappearance.
Curial, I want you to continue where I left off.
I want you to find the treasure—but only when you’re ready. And you will know you’re ready when you can find that special folder. Consider it a small treasure hunt to see if you’ve got what it takes for the grander adventure.
Good luck, my wonderful boy. As the only son of your father, much is expected of you. But you are also my son. And I always hope you can follow your heart.
Love,
Mom
P.S. Turn the sheet over for your clue.
Chapter Four – The Clue
Curial read the clue for the third time.
H A J E F 18 19 4 12 15
Gibberish. Nonsense. Curial drummed his fingers against the glass table. He looked at the clue again. Tilted his head. He thought of what the letters and numbers might represent, but the only thing that made any sense was a license plate. Could that possibly be it? Maybe his mom hid something in one of the many cars in the Diggs family automobile fleet. He took out his cell and dialed his driver.
“Mike, do we have any cars with the following license plate number?” He spoke slowly as he read off the sequence of letters and numbers.
Mike sounded like he was gurgling water. “That’s too long for a license plate.”
“But the first part of it, with the letters, that could be a license plate. Does it ring a bell?”
“Curial, your family has over forty cars that I maintain and drive—across three different residences in the state of New York alone. I don’t have all the plates memorized.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“But I do have them all listed in my records. Give me a second.”
Curial heard the echoes of Mike’s footfalls as he walked across the concrete of the family’s parking garage.
“Okay,” Mike said, “running through the list right now. Hmmmm. Nope. Got nothing for H A J E F.”
“Can you think of any other cars or license plates that would mean something to my mom?”
“Nah. Curial, your mom wasn’t much of a car lady. What’s this about anyway?”
“Never mind, dead end.”
Curial puzzled over the letters that evening, ran them through his computer for some kind of recognition, and found nothing promising. By the looks of it, the letters were random. Which made him think the letters might stand for something else—like an acronym. So he tried to think of words that started with these letters. Words that might mean something to his mom. Like a famous quote, something like that. He brainstormed the rest of the night, trying different combinations, but ultimately he came up with nothing.
The next morning, while Curial ate some of Mabel’s crunchy French toast, he ignored the Wall Street Journal in favor of continuing to play with the letters and numbers from his mom’s clue.
“Good morning, Master Diggs,” Hank said from behind him. “Should I be arranging an ambulance for you after this morning’s workout?”
“Ah, yeah, sure thing,” Curial said, not taking his eyes from the clue for even a moment.
“Master Diggs, are you feeling quite well? I don’t detect even a hint of your usual insufferable self this morning.”
Curial looked up.
“Oh, hi, Hank. Were you talking to me?”
“You appear preoccupied, sir.” Hank bent down over Curial’s shoulder. “What is it that you’re working out?”
Curial shook his head. “Not sure. It’s something Mom left me. She said it was a clue of some sort, but I can’t wrap my brain around it.”
“And she left it for you?”
“Yep.”
“So she must have made it something you can figure out.”
Curial nodded. “But so far, no luck. Look here, do these letters ring a bell to you?” Curial spread the napkin out so Hank could see.
Hank bent low again and squinted, then shook his head. “No, nothing at all, sir. They seem, well, random. There doesn’t appear to be any order at all.”
“Right,” said Curial. “And why would my mom give me a clue with letters and numbers that have no order?”
Hank smiled. “I don’t believe she would, sir. In the army, we had a word for letters and numbers that appeared to have no order.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” Curial said, spinning a pencil between his fingers.
“A code.”
Curial shrugged. “Clue, code, same difference.”
Hank shook his head. “To the riffraff still inhabiting the American colonies maybe, but as for those speaking the King’s English, not really.”
Curial sat up a little straighter. “I’m offended and curious all at the same time.”
&
nbsp; “A clue functions more like a symbol,” Hank explained. “A clue reminds you of something else. The whole point of a code is for it to not remind you of anything. The army transmits messages in codes so enemies won’t figure them out.”
Curial tapped his pencil against his napkin.
“So, how to decipher this code?”
“Codes have keys, Master Diggs. If this is a code, then there’s some key that opens it up.”
Curial wrinkled his forehead. “Like what?”
“I don’t have the faintest idea, Master Diggs. You’re the generation that tumbles, tweets, and faceplants.”
“You mean Facebooks?”
“My point exactly. You’re smart enough to figure it out.”
“Speaking on behalf of the American riffraff, could you please give me a hint?”
Hank rolled his eyes. “It could be anything. The receiver of the code might have a piece of paper with a key that says the letter H stands for, I don’t know, an airplane. Or that each number stands for a different letter in the alphabet. Or each letter stands—”
“Wait, go back. What was the second thing you said?”
“Each number stands for a letter?”
Curial slapped the table. “I’m an idiot.”
“I think that’s been well established, sir.” Hank bowed slightly, then left the kitchen via the swinging door.
When Curial was seven, his mom took him to Coney Island on a hot July day. She told him that if they became separated for any reason, he should just yell “Mom” as loud as he could and she would find him.
He remembered how he was too embarrassed and refused to do it. “No boy my age calls for their mom in public,” he told her.
She thought about it a minute, counted something on her fingers, then wrote down the letters of the alphabet on her hand. Underneath the letter A, she wrote a zero, under the letter B she wrote a one, and so on until she had finished assigning each letter of the alphabet its own number. When she finished, she circled the M and the number below it:12. Then she circled the O and the number below it: 14.
“So, Curial,” she asked, “how would you spell Mom using numbers?”
He puzzled over it for a bit, then smiled as he tapped on the palm of her hand. “Twelve, fourteen, twelve?”
She nodded. “So next time you’re embarrassed about saying ‘Mom,’ just use this special code instead.”
He remembered how strange that sounded. “You want me to call you twelve-fourteen-twelve?”
“Too weird?” she asked.
He nodded and thought about it until he came up with a solution.
“Mom, if I add up all three numbers they equal thirty-eight. Can I just call you thirty-eight instead?”
Occasionally, over the years since, he had still called his mom thirty-eight from time to time, but he had mostly forgotten about how the nickname started.
Until just now.
Curial grabbed a napkin and wrote down the letters A through K, and then put a 0 under the A, a 1 under the B, and so on, just like his mom had done.
Then he matched them up. Now, instead of H A J E F, he had 7 0 9 4 5.
He had assumed that unlocking a code would reveal something that made sense. But these numbers didn’t.
So he did the same thing with the numbers. 18 corresponded with S in the alphabet. 19 corresponded with T, 4 corresponded with E and so forth, until at the end he wrote out everything that he had.
7 0 9 4 5 S T E M
He grouped the numbers and the letters separately.
70945 STEM
He said it to himself once, twice, three times before it suddenly clicked. His mom’s code had revealed another code. Except that, normally, there was a period between the 9 and the 4 in this particular code: 709.45.
709.45 STEM was an example of a popular kind of code used to organize books in libraries all over the world: the Dewey Decimal System. And this particular Dewey Decimal number referenced a book from the Arts section of the library. Specifically, Renaissance Art.
Of all the books on art his mom had ever shown him, Curial wondered which book his mom wanted him to find. There was one way to find out.
He took out his phone and sent Mike Douglas a text.
“Be ready in ten. We’ve got a trip to make.”
Chapter Five – Maurice
Mike dropped Curial off at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in front of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. It served as the main branch of the New York City Library and, to Curial’s mother, was one of the most beautiful buildings in all of New York. Built at the turn of the twentieth century, the Schwarzman Building had once been the world’s largest marble building and included an enormous and majestic reading room that was among Curial’s most favorite spots.
He went to the Arts section of the library, found the spot for the 709’s, and located 709.45 STEM on the fourth shelf up. When he pulled the book out, he remembered it at once. Richard Stemp’s The Secret Language of the Renaissance.
A couple of years earlier, his mother had let him take a break from his Pre-Algebra lessons and had taken him to the library instead. She’d grabbed this book off the shelf and taken it to the reading room, where she showed Curial pictures of famous paintings, sculptures, and churches. Then she came to a particular page and, like she so often did, asked Curial what he saw.
He couldn’t now remember the page, but he would never forget the piece of art. So he found it in the index, then turned to the page: page 168. And there it was, just as he remembered it from that day.
“Well if it isn’t the rich kid who likes to give me his money?”
Curial spun around. Unbelievable. It was that punk skateboarding kid.
“You?” Curial said. “You just about killed me yesterday.”
The kid smirked. “I think if you check the New York City statutes, skateboarders have the right of way on sidewalks.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Curial.
Now, the kid shrugged. “Whatever, so you’re clumsy, how is that my problem?”
“And a few weeks ago, you stole a hundred bucks from me.”
“I believe I won it from you and, forgive me your majesty, but have you looked at your house lately. I think you can afford a hundred bucks.” He leaned in. “So what do you got there?”
“Nothing you would understand,” said Curial.
“Ahh, because I’m just a dumb street kid, eh?”
“I didn’t say you were dumb. Just, um…”
The kid leaned in closer.
“Looks like a vestibule to me.”
Curial was surprised. “How on earth could you possibly know that?”
The kid pointed. “Because of the word vestibule right below the picture.”
Curial felt like a moron. “Yeah, well, a vestibule is like an entrance.”
“I gathered that, Einstein.” The kid pointed again. “Because right here it says ‘a vestibule is like an entrance.’”
“Why are you here?” asked Curial.
The kid looked around. “Me? Well, first of all, I’ve got a name other than you. It’s Maurice. Second, I’m here because,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “don’t tell anybody, but it’s a library, and I like to read.”
“You,” said Curial. “You like to read?”
“Do you have to practice to be that condescending or does it come natural when you have a chauffeur drive you everywhere? I said the name was Maurice, practice saying it with me, MAURICE.”
Curial tensed up. “You are such a—”
“Curious kid named Maurice who wants to know more about this vestibule.” The kid grinned. “Why are you looking at it?”
“Does Maurice really want to know?”
“Yeah sure.”
Curial hesitated. He really should just tell this Maurice to get lost. That’s what his father would do. But it wasn’t what his mother would do. Curial took a breath. “Fine, this is the vestibule of the Laurentian Library, in Flore
nce, Italy. It was designed by the greatest of all Renaissance artists—and one of the greatest artistic geniuses in all of human history. Bet you can’t guess who.”
Maurice held up a finger. “My money’s on one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
“It was Michelangelo,” said Curial.
“That’s the really immature one who uses nunchuks and likes pizza, right?”
Curial shook his head. “You’re an idiot. We’re talking about the greatest artist in history, not a turtle. From the Pieta, his sculpture depicting Mary holding her son Jesus after his death, to the magnificent dome adorning St. Peter’s Basilica; from the beautiful frescoes painted onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, to the absolute perfection of the David. Michelangelo did all of it.” Curial could see Maurice’s eyes start to glaze over.
“Why am I trying to explain this to you? I’m sure you have someone to run over, rob, or generally annoy as much as humanly possible.”
The kid shook his head. “Nah, I’m pretty content to just annoy you right now. So why’s a rich kid all alone in the library staring at pictures of a vestibule? Seems kinda weird.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” said Curial.
“Bet I would.”
“Promise to leave me alone if I tell you?”
“Even better,” Maurice pulled a watch out of his pocket. “I promise to give you this back.”
“That’s my watch!”
“And that’s why I’m offering it back to you,” said Maurice. “Wouldn’t make much sense to offer you someone else’s watch, now would it?”
“You stole my watch! You little—” Curial snatched it out of Maurice’s hand. “Go away!”
Maurice smirked. “Dude, kinda grumpy considering I just found your watch.”
“Yeah,” said Curial, “you found it on my wrist.”
Maurice held up his finger. “A minor technicality. Now I believe we had an arrangement, so what’s the deal with the vestibule?”
Teenage Treasure Hunter Page 3
