The Shadow Mask Page 4

  “Just try not to run,” I said, “or the cops will stop us.”

  I led Dmitri on a wild and crazy path to the 5 train, going through tunnels under the tracks just to take another tunnel back to the other side, running up stairwells and taking the escalators down, zigzagging throughout the subway station until I was dizzy. We passed three guys playing plastic-bucket drums and a dazed-looking dude playing the bongos, no doubt accompanying some frenzied voice in his head. As we ran, the drumming from the subway musicians played like a theme song over the chase, sometimes distant and far away, sometimes deafening and right on top of us.

  We got to our platform just as the train lights showed in the tunnel. The brakes screeched, drowning out the bucket drummers as we jumped on board and blended into the crowd of straphangers. Outside the train window, I could see Pieter and his friends running up and down the subway platform, looking for us. I put my hood on, pulled my beanie low, and hunched down, staying that way until we were clear of the station and deep underground. We’d made it. We were free, and I felt amazing.

  So did Dmitri. He stood up, stretched, and puffed out his chest, staring at his reflection in the dark window the whole time. Even though he was definitely not what you’d call a good-looking kid, with his greasy hair and crooked teeth, he seemed pleased with what he saw. He smiled and grabbed my arm, squeezing my muscles.

  “Not bad,” he said. “You’re pretty fast for being so chubby. We’ll make a good partnership.”

  “Yeah, Dmitri, but we won’t last long if those guys chase us every day. What’d you do to them anyway?”

  “I sold those Ukraine dogs fake tests. So they all got Fs and got caught for cheating, too.”

  “Dmitri, why are you conning the princes of the Ukrainian Mafia?”

  “Because they killed my grandfather. They shot him in the back like cowards. That’s why my family had to leave Yugoslavia.”

  “I thought you were Polish?”

  For the entire hour-and-twenty-minute ride, Dmitri opened up to me like the Grand Canyon. How his family had defected from Poland before the Berlin Wall came down, how they lived in Yugoslavia, but then had to escape from the civil war, the spies, the Mafia entanglements, his grandfather’s murder. His parents fled to South Africa, to Greece, to Turkey, just trying to find work and a little peace. It was in Turkey where Klevko met Crane, who was on an expedition to the underground city of Derinkuyu. Dmitri wasn’t alive for most of that — Crane brought them over to the States when he was three — but I was starting to get him. He had a lot of anger and mistrust, and he admired Crane more than anyone else. I guess that was natural. After all, Crane had taken them in and given them a place to call home.

  Even though it appeared that I was giving Dmitri my full attention, I was also planning a way to ditch him before we reached Jeremy’s store. I needed a window alone with my friends and Hollis, so we could figure out how this whole news story broke, how to get Hollis and me back together, and maybe how to get us away from Crane for good. I wasn’t crazy about double-crossing Dmitri, but I knew that he was playing the same game as I was, and that he would double-cross me first chance he got.

  It was almost completely dark when we got out. The frozen mist was thick and chaotic in the howling wind with ice crystals several inches thick in some places. Cars streamed by on the streets, nearly invisible except for their muted yellow and red lights. It was strangely quiet out, too, muffled. The nor’easter storm made everything sound far away and indistinct.

  “It’s only a couple blocks from here, Dmitri.”

  “No problem,” he shrugged, putting on his beanie.

  “Let’s play a game,” I said, and then as swift as a kung fu master, I pulled his hat over his eyes and socked him a “friendly” punch to the gut.

  “Oooh,” he grunted, and hunched over, but I was already a ghost.

  I dashed down the sidewalk, cutting across intersections, weaving through the blocks so Dmitri couldn’t sniff out my trail. Miniature ice crystals stung my face. I felt great running, and felt even better when I spotted Jeremy’s shop and the orange light illuminating the crummy hand-painted sign, RPM RECORDS. Someone was home.

  The door jingled when I threw it open. There wasn’t any music playing in Jeremy’s shop today, but the voices of Hollis and Trevor were better than music. They shouted my name, smiling ear to ear, and came rushing over to me. Jeremy followed, his ponytail all twisted into a gnarly knot. He always wound it around his finger when he was nervous. One look at him and I knew that he had been worried about me.

  “W-we only h-have a l-l-little time,” I stammered, freezing. “I d-ditched Dmitri, he thinks I’m p-p-playing a game….”

  “Here, Leo, wear my jacket,” Trevor said, and wrapped his puffy jacket around me. Trevor was at least a head taller than me, and his jacket came down to my knees, but I was grateful for the extra coverage. Hollis gave me a huge hug, crushing my hands against my chest so that I couldn’t even hug him back.

  “D-d-dmitri will find us, soon —”

  “Leo, just relax and warm up,” Jeremy said. “Hollis filled me in as much as he could.”

  “But, I have to get it out before Dmitri —”

  “We’re already working on it, Leo,” Jeremy said. “I’ve been calling your old school since noon.”

  “Can you get me back in there?” I asked.

  “Yes … well, maybe … eventually.”

  “Even if he can, we still have Crane to worry about,” Trevor said. “We’ve been looking at your parents’ will for the past hour. Your dad left a copy here with Jeremy.”

  “So far,” Jeremy continued, “we haven’t found anything that would let us change his decisions for your school.”

  “Maybe we need to get out of Crane’s place altogether,” I said. “What do you think, Hollis?”

  “That wasn’t cool what he did this morning,” he said, not entirely convinced that we should pick up and go. As I searched his face, I realized how traumatic the whole day must have felt for him. First, our parents’ disappearance in a horrible plane crash, then a wrenching move to our stepuncle’s strange home, and now an abrupt separation from me, the only real family he had left.

  “I agree with you, Leo,” Jeremy said. “Crane’s is not the place for you guys. But we haven’t found anything your uncle —”

  “Stepuncle,” I corrected.

  “Got it. Crane hasn’t done anything illegal or that violates the will. But if we find something, or if Crane gives up his custody of you guys —”

  “Then they’re going to send us to a foster home,” Hollis said, his voice tight as if there were rubber bands around his vocal chords. “And probably not the same one.”

  “No one’s going to a foster home,” Jeremy said firmly. “You guys hear me? I won’t let that happen. Hollis, forget I ever mentioned it. And you guys can stay with me for as long as it takes.”

  “And you can stay with us, too,” Trevor said. “I know my mom and dad will say it’s okay.”

  “Thanks, Trev,” I said as I slapped him five, and held on for a moment longer than usual. “I still don’t get it. I mean, we don’t have a lot of family, but why in the world did our parents pick Crane?”

  “Money?” Hollis guessed.

  “That can’t be right,” I said.

  “I knew your dad as well as anyone did,” Jeremy said, stroking his beard, “and I can tell you money didn’t mean much to him. He and your mom, they valued experiences more than anything else. But this will is so strange — it seems like they only made it up six months ago.”

  “Well, I don’t care what the stupid will says,” I proclaimed. “Hollis and I aren’t going to Crane’s tonight. Not after what he put me through today.”

  “Cool, I’ll call my dad right now,” Trevor said.

  “Slow down, guys,” Jeremy said. “It’s not going to be that easy. You’re going to have to hang on a little longer. Crane is your legal guardian, and he knows his rights. And since he wo
n’t return my calls, I have to assume he still wants you guys in his care. He’ll definitely make life impossible for all of us if we don’t play this whole thing exactly right. It’s going to take patience, and there’ll be lawyers involved, and —”

  The bells on the door jingled.

  “That’s Dmitri! He found me,” I cried, and bolted past Jeremy’s desk for the back room where Jeremy stored all his special records. “Tell him I’m not here.”

  “Don’t get my records wet,” Jeremy called out to me as I kicked the door closed behind me. It was pitch-black in the back room, and I hadn’t gone more than two feet before I crashed into a wall of invisible records, so I crouched by the door and listened.

  “Am I late for work, boss?” a muffled voice asked. I recognized it as belonging to Jeremy’s one and only employee, a guy we affectionately refer to as Stinky Steve. As Crane would say, his personal grooming leaves something to be desired.

  “Steve!” Jeremy hollered. “It’s five o’clock! I’m about to close. And are you really wearing shorts?”

  “The day I wear pants is the day I die. Want me to wear a suit and tie, too? Never! You’re just a secret yuppie, Jeremy. Admit it.”

  Jeremy knocked on the door and told me that it was safe to come out. I poked my head out and immediately the Stinky-Steve Scent wafted across the room and up my nostrils.

  “Leo!” he shouted. “How goes it, big guy? You’re famous, man, all over the news. Can you believe it, the famous Leon Loman in our store?”

  “You saw the story?” I asked.

  “You bet. Saw it at 7 a.m. and then the repeat at noon. Mike Hazel told me it’d be on today. Yeah, that’s right. I spent all yesterday afternoon with him. Not to brag, of course.”

  “What?!” I bellowed.

  “Yeah, I had him over at my house. I’ve known him for years. He’s always at the WFMU record fair — he’s the weirdo always wearing the jacket that says ‘Rafferty’ on the back.”

  “You’re kidding. Mike Hazel is the mysterious Rafferty Man!” Jeremy cut in, shocked. “Man, you’d never know it to look at him on the news.”

  “He acts like such a tough guy, beating down people’s doors and stuff. But the guy’s obsessed with Gerri Rafferty, the wimpy king of the soft-rock ballad. Man, you just never know — there’s no accounting for taste.”

  “What did you tell him, Steve?” I demanded, although I already knew. Stinky Steve and his runaway mouth.

  “Oh, just about how you found that helmet in Crane’s warehouse. He knew the rest. I was so proud of you for helping save those dolphins that I thought, ‘Hey, my man Leo deserves a little credit.’ But I made sure to give Mike a fake name to protect your privacy.”

  “And ‘Leon Loman’ was the best you could come up with?” Jeremy said, slapping his forehead.

  “This is awful,” I groaned. I held my head and tried to breathe deeply, but Steve’s stench had spread itself thickly around the shop.

  “What’s the prob?” Steve asked. “I thought you’d like the attention. Besides, Mike promised to mention RPM Records on the air for the info I gave him. You know, quip pro qualm.”

  “That’s quid pro quo,” Trevor said. “It means ‘this for that’ in Latin, in case you were wondering. And by the way, he didn’t mention the shop.”

  “I guess Mike’s not such a stand-up guy after all,” Steve said.

  I shivered violently, from the cold or the deep mess Steve had gotten me into, I couldn’t say. Jeremy tossed me his wool scarf from the chair.

  “Steve, make yourself useful,” he said, and handed him five bucks from the register, “and get Leo some soup from the diner. And don’t say anything else to anyone.”

  “Sure thing, boss. I don’t know the soup special today, but they usually have lentil and creamed corn chowder and on Tuesdays they have that Mexican meatball soup, albondigas. I love that word. Albondigas.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Steve,” I snapped at him. I had about twenty meaner things I wanted to say, but I held them in.

  “Just go,” Jeremy told him. “And hustle for a change.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so tense,” Steve said to him. “I just came by to tell you I found this note in a record you traded me last week. It was a Hungarian record, kind of garage pop with some prog leanings, the one where all the guys in the band are in a cave or some such….”

  “I know the record,” Jeremy said flatly.

  “Yeah, so I found this note in the jacket. It was made out to you. Here,” he said, handing it to Jeremy, his stench rising every time he moved. “Okay, I’m off.” The door jingled.

  Jeremy tossed the note on his desk, while I glared at the door, seething with anger at the thought of Stinky Steve. He had caused all of this. Made Crane turn on me and ruin my life. I hated Crane so much. And I hated my parents for leaving us with him. I hated my parents for leaving us at all.

  “Hey, look at this,” I heard Hollis saying as he picked up the note from Jeremy’s desk. “That’s Dad’s handwriting.”

  As he handed it to Jeremy, I caught a glimpse of my dad’s distinctive handwriting and the green ink he always used. My thoughts froze and my eyes bore down on the note in Jeremy’s hand.

  “You’re right, Hollis. It’s a note from Kirk … I mean, your father.”

  “Let me see that.” I snatched the card from Jeremy.

  As soon as I touched it, everything changed. My head spun and the ground felt as if it were opening up. I had the sensation of slipping underground … into an underground record store where and all I could make out were hazy stacks of records piled as high as the ceiling and all arranged like a complex maze. The whole shop seemed to fill with the howling frozen mist from the storm outside, gray and frigid. From some of the mazelike rows of records, a black inky substance began to pour into the mist, carrying with it the voices of my parents, distorted and fragmented, little snatches of conversation playing on top of one another, with no rhyme or reason.

  “I just have this feeling….” my mom said.

  “They’re insisting…. Bertie says we have no choice….” my dad answered. “We’ll hide underground … in the interior…. Little pockets of life exist there, with vegetation and moss and lichen…. You read what Bertie sent….”

  “… It could be years….” my mom said, her voice crying now. “They’ll have enough to last years if we’re stuck….”

  “… That’s the plan.” My dad’s voice was firm. “… catch a plane … over the icebergs …”

  “… What’ll we do in Antarctica all that time?”

  The last voice I heard was my dad’s. “It could be years … or never…. The plane is rigged to …”

  The room started to spin, and their two voices merged into one until I could no longer make out what they were saying. It was too much. My hands shook, and as if driven by some deep self-protective reflex, I dropped the note, my knees going wobbly.

  When I came out of the trance, I was staring right into Hollis’s green eyes. His nose was less than five inches from mine. I knew I had only been gone for a few seconds, but from the expression on Hollis’s face, it seemed like he didn’t recognize me.

  “Leo,” he whispered. “What’s going on?”

  I blinked my eyes hard and rolled my neck. “Nothing, bro. I just didn’t feel well for a second. Lousy school-cafeteria food, probably.”

  Hollis didn’t buy it. He stared right at me, and I felt him searching my face for clues.

  “You didn’t look sick. You looked … I don’t know … like you had gone away. Like you weren’t here.”

  I had my reasons why I hadn’t told Hollis yet about my sound-bending power. I told myself I had to wait until I fully understood the power myself. I thought Trevor with his great science brain and I would work on figuring it out, test its limits — then I would tell Hollis in a clear and scientific manner. But the truth was — is — that the real reason I didn’t tell him was that I didn’t want to scare him. I couldn’t ha
ve him believing that I was something different than he thought I was, not when I was all he had to cling to these days. That just wasn’t fair.

  “What’s the note say?” Trevor asked, and I shot him a thankful look.

  He took the card from my hand and read it aloud, Hollis looking over his shoulder at the words.

  “‘Jeremy,’” he read. “‘Thought of you when I found this, because I know you’re collecting Hungarian records right now. I think you’ll enjoy it. Kirk. And P.S., you still owe me that Spiricom record.’”

  “That’s it?” Hollis asked.

  “That’s it,” Trevor answered, and handed him the card. Hollis held on to it, his eyes welling up with tears as he looked at our dad’s handwriting. I knew the feeling; I had to fight back tears myself. It’s like you’re hoping for a message, a word, a sign, a clue, any communication from the person who is gone.

  Hollis turned the card over and examined it carefully.

  “Look,” he said. “This is a business card. It says, ‘Bertrand Veirhelst: Belgian diplomat. Dad didn’t know any Belgian diplomats, did he, Jeremy?”

  “Beats me,” Jeremy answered. “Your dad knew a lot of people, some of them were bound to be Belgian diplomats.”

  I had been listening to the conversation, but half of my mind was also replaying what I could remember of those fragments of my parents’ voices. I was trying to arrange them into a real conversation that made sense, and when I heard the word diplomat, suddenly it started to click. Was the “Bertie” my dad mentioned really “Bertrand”? Maybe he wasn’t really a diplomat? I’d seen a ton of spy movies where the diplomats were actually spies. What if my parents were involved in some sort of international plot? Nah, that was crazy. But then so was the way their plane disappeared, an innocent flight to Antarctica for a musical performance and then nothing, no trace of them or the plane. No radio signals. No SOS or calls of Mayday from the plane. Just radio silence, complete radio silence, and my parents were gone forever. The official story of their disappearance never made sense to me. How could a whole plane just vanish like that? Maybe there was more to it. Maybe they were still alive….