Mystery on Museum Mile Read online

  That leaves one seat left for me, next to Bovano at our cozy table for four.

  Hooray.

  After some small talk and pleasantries, my parents lean their heads together and start to whisper about what they want to order. They do this annoying thing about ordering to share, as if neither of them can actually just have their own food.

  I sit and fiddle with my watch. Should I say something about the kick? Did he hear my apology at the gym, or was he in a pain-induced blackout? Should I apologize again?

  Bovano beats me to it. “Do you remember what you learned from our self-defense class?”

  I nod.

  “Good. Always run, Eddie. Always run. If you understand that, then there will be no more need for those classes.”

  I nod again, although I’m not happy about it. I still want to learn some good old-fashioned butt-kicking techniques. And I do regret hurting him. “Detective, I—”

  He holds his hand up as if to say Fuggeddaboutit. We never speak of it again.

  Fine by me. I’ll go take classes at the Y.

  There is little pleasure in eating my ravioli. Bovano is left handed, so we keep bumping elbows, which results in a frown cast in my direction followed by a bout of cramps in my stomach.

  Bump—glare— “Sorry”—cramp—cramp.

  Partway through dessert, I start to sweat. From the rich food? I’ve barely eaten. And the restaurant isn’t hot, either, even with the cheesy fake fire blowing in the middle of the dining room, or the pizza door opening and closing. Did Bovano poison me as I feared? I haven’t taken my eyes off my food, and he hasn’t taken his eyes off my mother, so I don’t think he could have managed it.

  It’s like I’m in a dream. I observe the grownups’ faces at the table, detaching myself from the scene, becoming a fly on the wall. Or a fly in hot olive oil—choose your metaphor. Dad is spewing out random factoids about Sicily to Bovano, whose parents were born there. Huh, he actually has parents. And here I thought he’d just sprung up from the earth in an angry ball of flame.

  Bovano is nodding his head, casting flirtatious looks at my mom and interjecting an opinion when he can, while my mom smiles back, her dimples lighting up Bovano’s world.

  Things have ground to a strange slow motion, my brain desperate to make sense of the alarm in my gut: the clink of the silverware, my father’s chuckle, the flicker of candlelight, a drop of sweat running down my temple. Something is coming. Something is not right.

  “I’m afraid I come bearing bad news, folks.” Bovano’s voice snaps me back to reality. “This case we’ve been working on . . . No harm in telling you a bit about it. We’ve been tracking a group of art thieves, all led by a German pro named Lars. An international thief, famous for playing with the cops, setting them up with clues to make the crime coincide with a geometric pattern on a map. Drove the French crazy a while back.”

  My dad glances at me and quirks his mustache at the word “geometric,” but says nothing.

  Bovano continues. “Eddie has helped, he really has . . .”

  Warning bells sound in my head. There’s a big “but” coming my way.

  “I wanted to let you know what we’re up against,” he says, “and how grateful we are for your help. But the case is going to be dropped soon. And so will Eddie’s contract. No results means no money. The department can’t afford more time. We officially close up shop mid-May. If we don’t solve this thing in the next seven weeks, then it’s all over.”

  Senate Academy . . . classes and lunches and bus rides with Jonah . . . gone. My throat tightens. Do not get upset, Edmund! I command myself.

  My parents murmur words of understanding, as if everything is going to be fine. No harm done. But they’re not the ones whose world has just been shattered. I should get a T-shirt: I WORKED FOR THE NYPD AND ALL I GOT WAS A LOUSY ITALIAN DINNER AND SOME VERBAL ABUSE.

  I study Bovano, wondering whether he has invented this challenge as some kind of test to push me. His face is blank. He asks for the check and makes up an excuse about having to get back to the office.

  He leaves without looking at me.

  We stand to go, my mom wrapping her arm around my waist. “We’re so proud of you, honey,” she says. “You’re such a hard worker. Don’t worry, there’s still time.”

  Still time? Yeah, right. I’ve been at this for months with zero progress.

  “Maybe you and I can go out for ice cream next week. It’s been a while,” my dad says, patting my back. “I wonder if they received a new shipment of pistachio.”

  Pistachio!

  Suddenly it all clicks together. That’s where I know the green-eyed woman from. From the alley crime I witnessed, the ice cream date with my dad. She was there! She walked right by the bench just before the men fought in the alley. Is she connected to the Picasso Gang? If she is, she might have been casing the Winston Café at my mom’s art show, although I don’t think any of those photographs were worth stealing.

  My spirits lift as we walk to the subway. This isn’t over. I still have seven weeks. I figured out the green-eyed lady connection that’s been hounding me, which is a huge relief. Now I have to uncover if she fits into the gang. And more important, tonight Bovano made a mistake. He used the name Lars. I know the last name Heinrich from the pictures on Bovano’s desk. New clues, new information. I can do this!

  There’s an extra bounce in my step as we head home. My parents smile at each other, happy to think that they raised such a well-adjusted kid who doesn’t get upset when things don’t go his way.

  Little do they know what I’m plotting.

  Chapter 22

  Office Work

  After I change into pajamas and say good night to my parents, I settle into my desk chair and fire up the computer. The search for “Heinrich” that resulted in a dead end last week is now exploding with possibilities when I type in “Lars Heinrich.”

  Turns out Lars has been a very busy man, or at least he was thirty years ago. I examine his face, research his crimes. He’s the blond guy in the mug shot, all right, but he hasn’t been seen since the eighties.

  Maybe he’s had drastic plastic surgery. I should do some drawings of what he might look like if he had a chin lift, a nose job, cheek and forehead implants . . . What other crazy things do people have done to their faces?

  He’s a suspect for robberies in Rome, Paris, and Amsterdam, but the cops could never get enough evidence to charge him, let alone convict him of the heists. Diamonds, artwork . . . an ancient Roman statue. Who is this guy? How can you steal a six-foot stone statue and not get caught?

  Thinking of Bovano’s book on ancient Egypt, I scroll to find a link connecting Lars with Cairo or a pharaoh’s tomb or the Nile River. Nothing.

  I study intricate European maps, the city streets where he planned his crimes. I am a Googling ninja until well after midnight. Just when I think I can’t possibly read another page from a French newspaper (of which I understand non), a list of Parisian museums and restaurants that were robbed in the eighties slaps me across the face. The word “Picasso” is repeated over and over again, listing the artwork that was stolen from each location. I guess that’s why they’re called the Picasso Gang. The robbery sites are laid out on a city map of Paris, forming a star surrounded by a circle, a perfect geometric figure.

  I recognize the shape from a tattooed kid who rides the bus uptown. He’s got piercings and tons of body ink, radiating an aura of I-will-kill-you-if-you-look-at-me. The star and circle pattern is tattooed on his forearm. Maybe Lars was a troubled youth back in the day?

  I look it up online. A pentagram, or five-sided star, used for religious and cult purposes. If the two points of the star are facing upward, it’s connected with devil worship. I toggle back to the map of Paris. The two points are facing up.

  I am out of my league.

  March 28

  I wake up wired. The pressure is on, and it’s making me more daring and bolder. Reckless, even. Nobody is going to keep me from Se
nate and Jonah and whatever awesome things we’ll do next year. I may not be able to outwit Lars Heinrich, or Satan for that matter, but I will get Frank Bovano to hear what I have to say.

  Operation Green Eyes kicks off after school at the police station.

  “I need to see the detective!” I yell in Marilyn’s direction as I fly by her desk and into Bovano’s office.

  “Eddie, he’s on the phone! You don’t have an appoint—”

  I close the door swiftly behind me.

  Bovano is at his desk, phone by his ear, mouth open in shocked irritation. I just stand there in the middle of the office, ignoring my brain as it yells, What are you doing? Run, you idiot! He will eat you alive!

  “Jim, I’ll have to call you back.” He hangs up, shooting fireballs out his eyes at me. “Getting a little comfortable in my office, are we, Eddie?”

  “Sir, I’m sorry. But I have new information about the case. A green-eyed woman walked by me in January when I was eating ice cream with my dad, right before those guys in the alley started to yell. And then I saw her at the Winston Café last week. At a photography exhibit. Look!”

  I place the picture I drew of her onto his desk, then retreat to the center of the room again, making sure to keep a safe distance between us. “She’s mixed up in this, I know it. She’s part of the—” I almost say Picasso Gang and blow the whole thing.

  He frowns at the picture, then shoves it back at me with a scowl. “She’s not a suspect.”

  “But she could be! I’ve seen her twice now. At an art show and a crime scene. She’s involved!”

  “She’s not involved. Look, I don’t know what angle you’re working here, but I have a job to do. Go home.”

  Angle . . . angle . . . The word tickles at a memory. I shake my head. Stay focused!

  “No,” I say boldly. I fold my arms and stand my ground. The door is only three feet behind me in case I need to run.

  “What?”

  “No, sir. I am onto something.”

  “Eddie, in case you didn’t hear me last night, we are down to the wire here. If we don’t get a break in the case, they are closing us down. I do not have time to chase down your little theories. YOU ARE NOT A DETECTIVE.”

  “Maybe I should ask Chief Williams about it. See if he thinks it’s worth pursuing.” Okay, I will admit it. I’m acting like a first-grader. But he is being Impossible.

  He glares a moment longer, then beeps Marilyn on the intercom. “Marilyn, do you know where Alisha Maynor is?”

  “No. Want me to page her?” she chirps back over the speaker.

  “Yeah, that’d be great. Tell her to come to my office.”

  What is Bovano up to?

  He leans back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the armrest, gazing lazily out the window and humming. He doesn’t invite me to sit, so I just stand there, hands shoved into my pockets, watching him. He needs a haircut.

  “Eddie, I’d like you to meet Alisha Maynor,” he finally says, gesturing to the door.

  “Hello, Eddie.” A woman’s voice drifts into the room from behind my back.

  I turn. Her bright emerald eyes nearly knock me off my feet.

  Chapter 23

  Vector Ninja

  Angle, angle, angle, angle.

  My mind is a skipping CD as I trudge up the steps of the uptown bus like a zombie. I can’t get the word out of my head. It’s important somehow. Something I learned last year in that architecture and design class I took at Senate . . .

  I plop down onto the hard plastic seat. The bus is only half full, thank goodness. I need quiet time to collect myself before entering my apartment and squaring off with fussy cats and inquisitive parental units.

  I’m really floored about the whole Alisha thing. Turns out she’s an undercover cop they placed in the operation a year ago. Bovano didn’t tell me much, only that she’s been posing as an art curator who is interested in making a few bucks on the side, and has been “helping” the thieves cook up a plan. According to her, she was at the Winston Café with a friend. Pure coincidence.

  I’m not sure if I buy her story, but I do know this: if I put it together that Alisha is part of the case, then I am onto things, and am actually getting pretty good at this detective stuff.

  I hop off the bus at my stop and walk two blocks to my apartment building. Leaves are popping on the trees, the flowery smell of spring in the air. I peel off my jacket as I go. It’s warm and I should be grabbing a Frisbee and meeting Jonah in Central Park, but all I can think is angle, angle, angle.

  Dad is in his office and Mom is on the Internet. After a quick hello to both of them, I set up shop in the privacy of my room, spreading out the marked-up city map on my desk. I root through my drawers for architecture supplies from last year’s class and find a protractor, tracing paper, and triangular scales.

  I line up the tools again and again. Nothing fits. Trace and retrace. Measure and angle and remeasure. Nothing. And then . . .

  “No way,” I say out loud. The protractor is lined up with the Neue and the Jewish Museum, the other sites falling into a pattern of angles. A perfect pattern fit for the geometric obsession of Lars Heinrich.

  “NO WAY!” My cackling laughter is a little too close to a mad scientist’s, but I don’t care. I’ve done it, I’ve done it—I’ve cracked Lars’s puzzle!

  Grinning like a fool, I snatch the phone from my desk and dial Jonah’s number.

  “Look,” I say to Jonah, leaning over his shoulder to draw lines through the different points on the map with a protractor. We’re in his bedroom, the map and my drawing supplies laid out on his desk. He’s hunched over the materials like a vulture.

  I nudge him to the side so I can continue my illustrations. “If you draw lines at a thirty-, sixty-, or ninety-degree angle from each site on the map, they all intersect with the Guggenheim. The Neue Galerie and the Jewish Museum are at 180 degrees, flanking the Guggenheim on either side. Straight vectors through them. All is divisible into one eighty. Thirty, sixty, ninety.” I twist the protractor around on the map, making light marks with a pencil.

  “It’s a special kind of right triangle,” I continue. “Thirty-sixty-ninety. All lines lead to the Guggenheim.”

  I pause for dramatic effect, letting him absorb the information. He stares at the map, rocking in his seat. When he doesn’t comment, I add, “The cafés across the street must be meeting places. Drop-off zones for money, recon, who knows what else. They’ve been sending me to the wrong museums. The Guggenheim is where it’s going down.”

  My sketch is actually quite beautiful, an intricate shower of fireworks raining down from the Guggenheim onto the city blocks.

  Jonah frowns at the map. “Wow. Yeah . . . awesome,” he says in a flat tone.

  My eyes narrow. “You don’t seem very excited.” Does he understand what I’m talking about? Or is he just jealous I figured it out before he did?

  He scratches his head. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it seems kind of easy.”

  “Easy?” I splutter. “This took me all afternoon!”

  He twists in his chair to look at me while chewing on a pencil. I’m growing more and more irritated, and the three-year-old inside me hopes he bites off a piece and swallows it by accident.

  “Edmund, think about Lars in Paris. How complicated that design was.” He holds up his hands when I growl. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. I agree with you. I think you figured it out. But what if Lars did this on purpose? What if he designed this angle thing to throw the cops off the real crime?”

  He turns back to the map, making marks of his own. “Also, if we take Alisha into consideration with the two sites of the Winston Café and the ice cream incident, then the whole vector thing is thrown right out the window. Those two blocks are over too far, not at significant angles to the Guggenheim . . .”

  I leave him mumbling in his room so I don’t say something I regret. It’s almost dinnertime and I’m hungry and grumpy, so I root around in his kitc
hen for some snacks. He has way better food at his house. Corn chips sprayed with a variety of flavored salts, a crunchy goodness deemed Illegal by my mother. Jonah’s parents still aren’t home from work. I’m hoping they’ll walk in the door with Chinese food and invite me to stay.

  I decide to take the high road and humor Jonah’s theory. What if Lars is misleading the cops on purpose? What else could be going on here?

  I stare at the bright yellow and blue tiles of the countertop while I munch on Doritos. The question we haven’t been asking ourselves is, if they only steal Picassos, then why would we be at a stakeout at the Neue and Jewish Museum? There are no Picassos there. What is Bovano thinking? I try to put myself in his shoes, get into his brain. It’s an icky proposition.

  The Neue Galerie contains only German and Austrian art. Picasso is from Spain. Is Lars sentimental for his homeland?

  The Jewish Museum is a mystery as well. The only significant link I’ve come up with between Picasso and Jewish people is his famous painting Guernica. It depicts bombs being dropped by Nazis on a village in Spain, when the Spanish fascist government allowed Hitler to use their people as target practice. How nice of them.

  Guernica is huge, though. Eleven by twenty-six feet. I’m having a hard time picturing a heist with a forklift. Plus, it’s in Madrid.

  I’ve been doing a lot of research. I may be turning into my father.

  Only ten more days of school until April vacation. We have a week off, which will be spent in major lockdown trying to figure this out. It has to be the Guggenheim. I’ll spend my entire vacation there, sleep on the floor if I have to. I wonder if I can ask to see the museum’s security tapes without raising Bovano’s suspicions.

  Slowly I walk back to Jonah’s bedroom. He’s still muttering to himself and playing with my protractor, knees bouncing up and down and rattling the desk. I resist the temptation to throw my bowl of chips at his head.