The Lost Gate (20 page)

“And this is supposed to be on the way?”

Eric finally joined in. “He wanted to see Embassy Row. So we got off at Foggy Bottom. His parents have this thing about not wanting to raise a limo kid. So they pay me to get him to and from the lessons so he doesn't get beaten up or kidnapped.”

“You're his bodyguard?” asked the cop skeptically.

“I couldn't hold off, like, Al Qaeda, but we don't have any trouble with bullies or pushy beggars.”

The other cop finally spoke. “You know what I want?” he asked. “I want to hear the little one sing.”

“I'm thirteen,” said Danny. “You make me sound like I'm a toddler.”

“Sing,” said the cop again.

“You got to understand my voice hasn't settled down after changing.”

“Doesn't sound changed to me,” said the second cop.

“I was a real boy soprano before. I could sing along with ‘Un Bel Di' in the original key. So now I'm practically a baritone compared, you know?”

“Still don't hear any singing,” said the cop.

So Danny opened his mouth and sang. It was one of the arias that he'd memorized when Baba and Mama used to play a lot of classical music in the house. Not that they ever stopped listening to opera, they just weren't home that much these days. And since Danny was so good with languages, he had no trouble singing along in Italian or German or French, with dead-on pitch. As a little kid he had been killer cute, which was probably one more reason the cousins his own age kind of despised him. But that's why he used the singing-lessons excuse—what
other
lessons could he be taking, without an instrument? Harp or something, maybe. Should have thought of harp.

He gave them “Fin ch'han dal vino” from
Don Giovanni,
and if there were bits he didn't remember, it's not like these cops would be experts, so he sang right through the rough patches. He sang as if he intended to go on forever.

He hadn't sung it in years, and it surprised him how his own, deeper voice sounded. Not very good tone quality, but his pitch was still true.

“You're not very good, kid,” said the second cop.

“Hence, the lessons,” said Danny. “I was a great boy soprano but you sing a pure tone, like a fife. Now I'm trying to get the vibrato. It's not like I have to sing at the Kennedy Center tomorrow morning.”

“Good luck, kid,” said the first cop. “Just don't stand in front of any one embassy for too long, and you'll be okay.”

“They're not going to start shooting at us or anything, are they?”

“The trigger-happy ones have our own soldiers stationed around them,” said the first cop. “Get home safe.”

The second cop said, “Don Giovanni has never sounded worse.” So there were cops who knew their opera.

“I've never heard him sing it,” said Danny.

“Don Giovanni's the name of the…”

Danny was grinning at him. “Vocal student humor,” said Danny. “Like cop humor, not everybody gets it.”

The cops got back in their car and Danny and Eric walked on.

“Was that pure bullshit or did you ever take lessons?” asked Eric.

“Did I
sound
like I've had lessons?” asked Danny.

“You sure as shit sounded like you were singing opera, even if your voice is kind of squawky.”

“You pick things up, living with my family.”

“Strange family.”

“Didn't I mention they weren't normal?” asked Danny. “Okay then, they're not normal.”

“I think we'd better not hit any of the embassies,” said Eric.

“I'm glad we see eye to eye on that,” said Danny. “But what I'm wondering is why we're walking through Embassy Row.”

“I didn't know we were,” said Eric. “I mean, I've heard of Embassy Row, I just never came here before. Come on, it doesn't go on forever, we'll hit some civilian houses pretty soon.”

“At least that explains why they're all so big,” said Danny.

Half an hour later they were on 44th Street between Garfield and Hawthorne, looking at the mother of all houses. The mansions across the street would have looked big anywhere else, but compared to this monstrosity they were like dollhouses.

“I think this is the one,” said Danny.

“Their mortgage is probably so big they don't have any money to buy stuff,” said Eric. “They probably live on shredded wheat and skim milk. And in the winter they heat the house with calisthenics.”

“But I'm dying to see what it looks like inside.”

“So make a gate or whatever it is and go look.”

“Now?” asked Danny. “In broad daylight? On the street?”

“Now's the time when there's probably nobody home,” said Eric. “Except the servants. You might have to push them aside to go through the drawers.”

“I got to admit, daytime would be easier.”

“I'll wait for you over here in these bushes,” said Eric.

“Oh,
that
won't look like you're skulking.”

“Then
don't
go in.”

“Actually,” said Danny, “what if I find stuff right now? Why not just take it?”

“Because what if you're caught with the stuff on you?”

“I'll pass it to you through the gate,” said Danny. “So it won't be on me.”

“But I'm not going to go over and stand by the wall. That
would
get us caught.”

Danny laughed. “Come on, Eric. Just because
you've
been talking about how I go through walls doesn't mean I actually go through the walls. I mean, I don't open a door in them or anything. I make a gate in
space.
I'll make the gate right here, and when you see my hand stick out with stuff in it, then take the stuff and put it in your pocket.”

“What, your hand's just going to appear in midair?”

“I don't know,” said Danny. “I've never seen it. I've just done it. Sort of.”

“I'll stay right here.”

“Good,” said Danny. “Because if you don't stay here and take what I hand you, I'm not splitting any of it with you.”

“You will or I'll make a gate in your ass,” said Eric.

“You try that,” said Danny, “and let's see how that goes.”

“Go on,” said Eric. “I'll be here, you go in and take a look around.”

So Danny made a gate from right there in the bushes and found himself in the middle of the ultra-posh living room.

It was like no one lived there. Even the big artificial Christmas tree that dominated the room looked institutional, like in a dentist's office. The room was posing for a picture. There were art pieces on the walls and a couple of sculptures and vases, but everything was too big to lug back to the Foggy Bottom Metro station. Though now that they'd walked this far, Danny was pretty sure the Metro station at Wisconsin and Nebraska was a lot closer. Didn't matter—he wasn't touching this stuff.

He stood there and listened for voices or movement. Or alarms. Eric had warned him about motion detectors. He almost wished he could hear someone talking or singing, because then he'd know where they were and he could either avoid them or get out of the house entirely. Silence, though—it could be somebody studying or working or napping, and then they get up and walk in on him and he screams and they scream and …

He made his way up the stairs. No creaking. No alarms. Or at least not loud ones. For all he knew bells were clanging in six different police stations, but if the cops showed up, Danny could always leave.

Danny did a quick check of all the rooms. Nobody there to walk in on him. He became more methodical, opening drawers. Lots of jewelry in two of the bedrooms, but it looked cheap to him. Bright colors or funky designs. Plastic. There were a few strands of gold that looked real enough, but they were so light in weight that Danny figured they wouldn't be worth the trip to the fence's store.

As for laptops and computers, Danny wasn't finding any, not on this floor.

He went to the stairs that led another story up. This was mostly storage, and mostly junk. Old clothes, old furniture, things in boxes that hadn't been opened in years. Nothing that would sell.

There was an old safe, a big one that stood on the floor, but there was nothing in it. Not that Danny could have gotten the lock open if he tried. He just made a little gate and reached inside and felt around.

But the presence of this old floor safe made him think: Maybe there's a more modern safe somewhere else in the house.

Where?

Danny went back down to the living room and out through the gate.

Eric almost screamed.

“Come on, you were expecting me to come back, weren't you?”

“It's just a surprise,” said Eric, recovering himself. “Find anything?”

“Cheap jewelry. No laptops. Maybe there's a nice set of knives in the kitchen.”

“Big house, no stuff,” said Eric. “I knew it.”

“I haven't checked the cellar yet. I only came out here because they have an old floor safe in the attic. Heavy thing—I can't believe they'd carry it up the stairs. But I'm thinking, the old safe is in the attic because they have a
new
safe somewhere in the house. I mean, these are the kind of people who own a safe, which means they think their good stuff needs to be in a safe place.”

“Good thinking. Only I don't know how to open safes,” said Eric. “Remember how we're supposed to find stuff lying around?”

“But where would they
hide
a safe?” asked Danny.

“In the cellar?” asked Eric.

“Maybe, I'll look.”

“Behind a painting?”

Danny nodded. “That makes sense. Where else?”

“In case you forgot, this is my first time as a burglar, too.”

Danny didn't believe him. He just thought it was Eric's first time going after really valuable stuff. “Back in a minute,” said Danny, and he went through the gate again.

There was nothing behind the paintings in the living room. He went down the stairs into the cellar. It was as big as the house in every direction, and here was where the computers were. Two complete offices, with windows opening out onto the back yard. File cabinets in both, but nothing stashed there except papers and knick-knacks. Danny picked up a laptop from the man's desk—unless the woman was so vain she kept a picture of herself on her desk—and then stuffed it into the bag that was obviously designed to hold it.

Instead of going back up to the living room, Danny made a new gate—a small one, just big enough for the laptop in its bag. He pushed it through, knowing it would be hanging in the air right next to the original fullsize gate. Nothing. Eric didn't take it.

I'm an idiot, Danny thought. He had made this new gate connect to the wrong end of the other gate. He had been holding the laptop case in the living room of the house he was burgling. He made the new gate more carefully, and this time Eric had the thing out of his hand almost at once.

At least he assumed it was Eric who took the bag.

So they had one laptop. And, after he went through the woman's office, an iPad, which he passed to Eric through yet another little gate. But no safe.

Where would they put it?

Danny walked around the cellar one more time, and this time he noticed that in the storage room under the kitchen, the walls had a lot of bracing in one corner. As if there were something really heavy above them. That's it, thought Danny.

He bounded up the cellar stairs and headed into the kitchen. He saw at once that instead of a safe, the bracing was to hold up a really huge oven. Pair of ovens, actually.

There was a half-eaten sandwich on the table. Was someone here after all?

Danny touched the sandwich. The bread was dried out. So it was from earlier in the day. Or yesterday, maybe.

He walked around the main floor and now he realized that the little half-bathroom for guests wasn't big enough to account for all the distance between the living room and the big room with the TV and the fireplace.

Danny couldn't see any kind of entrance. On the main floor, anyway. But what if it was accessed from upstairs?

Back up the stairs again. He scouted around, looking for what was directly over that inaccessible space on the main floor. It was under the man's closet in the master bedroom. Danny knelt down and pulled up the carpeting. It folded right back and, yes, there was a trap door.

Danny opened it.

A horrible smell rose from the hole. He knew the smell. A dead animal. He also knew how to deal with smells. He breathed through his mouth, with his nasal passages closed at the back of his throat.

A light had come on down inside the space when he opened the trap door—it flickered at first but now it was steady. The entry was halfway between a ladder and a stairway. Danny went down it carefully, and found what he was halfway expecting—four bodies lying tied up on the floor. The man was the one who stank—bullet hole through his forehead, and his body was rotting.

But the other three—one white woman, one black woman, and a white pre-teen girl—were not rotting. They weren't conscious either, however, and Danny guessed that they had been here a pretty long time without water—long enough for the husband to start stinking.

If I bring them water and waken them, they'll see me and wonder how I got in. And my fingerprints are all over the house. I touched all the frames of all the paintings on the main floor. I touched doorknobs.

Then again, my prints aren't in the police records anywhere. And on the good side, whoever did this to them probably disabled any security cameras or burglar alarms.

There was a sturdy-looking floor safe in the corner. The door stood wide open. Nothing inside.

We
would
pick the one house in the neighborhood that had already been hit.

Danny made a new gate that he could fit through, straight from the safe room to where Eric was waiting in the bushes.