Inside the Shadow City (7 page)

• • •

Kiki Strike sat at a small outside table with the gossip section of the
New York Post
spread out in front of her. An enormous bowl of café au lait held the paper in place as a cold April breeze tried to blow it into the street. A green felt beret sat atop her head at a cocky tilt, and the starched collar of a khaki uniform peeked over the paper.

“You're late,” she snapped as I approached, not bothering to look up. “If you're going to work with me, you'll have to learn to be on time.”

“Who said we were going to be working together?” I shot back.

“How else do you expect to find the Shadow City?” she asked nonchalantly, licking her finger to turn a page.

“You've found another entrance, haven't you?”

Kiki looked up, her eyes glistening dangerously, like icebergs at sunset.

“We've got a lot to do today,” she said, ignoring the question and standing up. She was wearing a Girl Scout uniform, complete with a sash covered entirely—front and back—with badges.

“You're a Girl Scout?” I scoffed. “Shouldn't you have outgrown that sort of thing by now?”

“Maybe, but the Marines wouldn't take me.” She tossed a bag over the table to me. “Guess what,” she said. “Today you're a Girl Scout, too. We're going incognito.”

“No way. I have to wear one of those?” Two years
earlier, I had left the Girl Scouts in disgrace after sharing an illustrated edition of
A Man's Body
with my fellow troops. I had hoped to never see another Girl Scout uniform as long as I lived.

Kiki glared at me. “You'll wear it if you're coming with me,” she said.

Ten minutes later, I emerged from the bathroom of the café wearing a polyester uniform that rubbed uncomfortably in all the wrong places. A waitress smiled down at me.

“Aren't you just the cutest! I was a Girl Scout, too, when I was little.”

“I'm not in the Girl Scouts, I'm undercover,” I snarled back at her.

“Oh, isn't that just perfect!” She beamed. I resisted the urge to give her a good kick and stomped out to the street, where Kiki was waiting. She looked me over and straightened my collar.

“Not bad.” She grinned. “You look good in a uniform, but we're going to have to work on your posture.”

• • •

Our first stop was a Girl Scout meeting in the basement of a ramshackle church in Morningside Heights, its ancient steeple leaning ominously toward a row of little houses across the street. In the basement, which smelled of mold and mothballs, the meeting had already begun. An unremarkable group of girls sat Indian-style in a circle on the cold, concrete floor. A couple of them shifted to make room for us.

“You're just in time, Kiki,” said a plump, pleasant-looking
woman dressed in an ill-fitting Scout leader uniform. “Luz Lopez is just about to share her latest project with us. Let's all give her a hand.”

The Girl Scouts clapped obediently, and a sullen girl with long curly hair pulled back tightly from her face rose from their midst. She walked briskly to the front of the room and stopped in front of a table covered with a tattered sheet. With an unexpected flourish, she snapped the sheet from the table, revealing a small electronic device. Speaking quickly but carefully, the girl addressed the crowd.

“The invention you see has been put to the test and has proven highly successful in the field. My mother keeps a small patch of flowers in front of our building. For the last few months, someone has been wrecking her garden. Personally, I couldn't care less about plants, but my mother was very upset. The evidence speaks for itself, I think.”

Luz retrieved a handful of Polaroids from the pocket of her uniform and passed them out to the group. Each picture showed a different view of the sad remains of a little garden. Mangled tulips were strewn across the sidewalk, their bulbs squashed into pulp. Dozens of dainty, brightly colored pansies lay dying on the windshields of nearby cars, and a clump of sweet peas dangled from the limb of a tree.

“I always suspected Mrs. Gonzalez, one of our neighbors. She's never liked my mother, and she's always saying rude things to my sisters. But I didn't have any proof, and my mother was too polite to accuse Mrs. Gonzalez. I tried staking out the garden, but the damage appeared to occur
in the hours after my curfew, and my mother wouldn't let me stay outside to watch.

“That's when I had my stroke of genius. I found an old baby monitor in the trash outside my building, and with a few adjustments, I was able to convert it into the apparatus you see before you—a short-range bugging device.”

Luz picked up the baby monitor and held it up for everyone to see.

“Mrs. Gonzalez likes to talk—
a lot
. From what I had observed, when she wasn't destroying other people's gardens, she was usually sitting on her big butt in her kitchen, gossiping with her friends. I knew that if I could hide my bug inside her kitchen, I'd hear her bragging about what she'd done to my mother's flowers.

“So I started hanging around with Mrs. Gonzalez's daughter, Rosie. Nobody else will talk to her since she always got her fingers in her nose. After a few days, I invited myself over to Rosie's house for some
arroz con leche
. While I was there, I planted my device under her kitchen sink. Then all I had to do was tune my scanner to the right frequency and wait for Mrs. Gonzalez to confess her crimes.”

“Luz!” the horrified Scout leader broke in. “You can't bug people's homes! Are you aware that you've committed a felony? The Girl Scouts do not condone illegal activities!”

“The Girl Scouts,” replied Luz, filled with righteous indignation, “believe in truth, justice, and the American way. Which part of that did I violate? In my opinion, nothing could be less American than destroying other people's gardens.”

Kiki leaned over to me.

“We have our first recruit,” she whispered, reaching into her backpack and pulling out a golden envelope with Luz's name inscribed on the front.

“Recruit?” I asked.

So you think that the very personal conversation you just had with your friend Petunia will always stay between the two of you? How can you be sure that there wasn't a third person quietly listening in as you spilled your deepest, darkest secrets?

There are countless ways to eavesdrop on other people's conversations, and many don't cost much more than the average taco platter. Fortunately, spying on other people tends to be illegal in most countries. But if your foe is desperate to listen, breaking the law may not be her biggest concern. That doesn't mean you have to make it easy for her. Learn to be wary of the following tools:

Stethoscopes

A devious criminal can use an ordinary stethoscope to listen to conversations through walls and doors. However, unless your enemies happen to be members of the medical community, they may find it difficult to get their hands on one. Unfortunately, a reasonable alternative can be crafted from a funnel (or the top of a plastic soda bottle) and some rubber tubing.

Voice-Activated Tape Recorders

The shelves of your local office supply store are stacked high with cheap versions of this low-tech spying device. Some can be as small as a box of matches and are easy to hide in a pocket, a handbag, or a bra.

Cordless Phones

Always think twice before spilling your secrets over a cordless phone. If it's not digital, anyone with a police scanner can listen in. (In fact, many sick individuals stay up-to-date on the latest gossip by eavesdropping on their neighbors' conversations.)

Baby Monitors

Some of the best “bugging” devices available, these cheerful-looking contraptions can be used for evil purposes. If you're sitting within range, a baby monitor will broadcast whatever you say over the airwaves, where your conversations can be picked up by police scanners or other baby monitors.

Conference Calling

Say someone wants to listen in on a conversation between you and a friend. If they have conference (or three-way) calling, they can place a call to your phone and wait for you to answer. Once you say hello, they can simply speed dial your friend's number. You may both assume that the other person placed the call, and the sneaky third person can sit back and quietly listen to the conversation.

Some people, I've found, are almost bursting at the seams with the desire to let you get to know them better. Ask one innocent question, and within ten minutes, you'll learn that their beloved pet Chihuahua suffers from halitosis, that their grandfather once wrestled an alligator, and that they secretly dream of being a Las Vegas showgirl. As entertaining as these people may be, experience has taught me that those who say the most are often those who know the least. Quiet people keep their secrets to themselves. That's what makes them interesting—and generally worth the wait.

I suppose it goes without saying that Kiki Strike was not a talker. In fact, on that first day we spent together, she didn't say much at all, and I have to admit I was a little surprised. We shared at least one secret that demanded discussion, and I was anxious to hear what she knew about the Shadow City. But although it was clear
that Kiki had a plan, she didn't choose to reveal it. I found myself following silently alongside her as she marched down Amsterdam Avenue, her eyes darting into alleys and doorways as if she were patrolling the street.

That's not to say that I didn't insist on being let in on her plan the minute we left Luz. But Kiki simply arched an eyebrow and broke into a Cheshire Cat–like grin. Have a little patience, she told me, and refused to say another word. In the long silence that followed, I studied my pale companion and realized that I knew nothing about her—apart from the fact that she knew things she had no business knowing. I suspected she was well on her way to becoming truly dangerous, and the only thought that offered any comfort was the thought that I might not be in it alone for long.

After our encounter with Luz Lopez, we made a brief visit to another Girl Scout meeting, this one held in a dark, wood-paneled classroom on the campus of Columbia University. The blinds were pulled, and the flames of a dozen Bunsen burners lit the room. Surrounding each flame were three or four girls wearing black leather aprons and protective goggles, which lent them the appearance of giant, wingless insects.

At the front of the classroom, on a massive table, was a sinister-looking system of glass beakers and tubes. A strange liquid in a toxic shade of purple coursed through the coiled tubes, bubbled ominously in the beakers, and finally dripped into a bowl manned by one of the Girl Scouts. The entire room stank of marshmallows and grape.

A Scout leader advanced toward us with a pair of metal tongs. Pinched between them was a sandwich bulging with melted marshmallows and dripping chocolate.

“Nice to see you back, Kiki. S'more?” she asked, thrusting the tongs under Kiki's nose.

“No thanks,” said Kiki, recoiling from the s'more as if it were poisoned.

“Suit yourself,” said the woman, turning to supervise a group of girls whose s'mores kept bursting into flame.

“What's the purple stuff in the beakers?” I asked Kiki.

“Punch,” she said. “It's snack time.”

Summoning my powers of observation, I let my eyes roam the classroom. Aside from the rather unusual methods of food preparation being used, I immediately noticed at least two things that weren't quite right. For starters, the Scout leaders who milled about the room, making sure that safety precautions were followed, were all extremely young. Judging solely by their faces, a couple of them weren't old enough to be in charge. But even the most youthful of the Scout leaders had a helmet of silver hair and walked with the slow, painstaking gait of the elderly. It was as if new faces had been magically attached to ancient bodies.

I also noticed, as I filled a paper cup with punch, that the girl standing by the punch bowl had been involved in an accident. She wore her hair in dreadlocks, and on one side of her head they brushed against her shoulder. On the other side, however, her hair was at least four inches shorter and singed at the bottom, as if it had been set on fire. I returned with my punch to Kiki's side, but kept my eye on the girl with the lopsided hairdo.

“Her name's DeeDee Morlock,” said Kiki, hopping onto a stool situated a safe distance from the s'mores. “This is her father's classroom. As I'm sure you've guessed, he's a chemistry professor.”

“What happened to her hair?” I asked.

“It caught on fire during an experiment she was conducting. She's lucky, though. The substances she was working with could have destroyed her whole block.”

“So she's a chemist, too?”

“She puts her father to shame,” said Kiki. “Notice anything unusual about the Scout leaders?”

“Yeah. What's wrong with them? Why do they all have gray hair?”

“Nothing's
wrong
with them. You'll have gray hair, too, when you're their age. Mrs. Lupinski's the youngest, and she turned eighty-five last week. Surprised?” she asked, noting what must have been a look of pure astonishment on my face.

“How's it possible?”

“A couple of weeks ago, our new friend DeeDee succeeded in refining a particularly dangerous strain of botulism. Do you know what that is?”

“It's the deadliest poison on earth,” I answered. There was an entire book devoted to the subject tucked between some cans of tuna in my kitchen. I had once skimmed it while waiting for the kettle to boil. “But some women have it injected into their faces. It paralyzes the muscles and makes wrinkles disappear.”

“Exactly. Unfortunately, it's too expensive for most Scout leaders, so DeeDee whipped them up a batch. Now they're all wrinkle-free and fabulous.”