The Tesla Legacy (7 page)

“It’s the periodic table of the elements,” he said. “I’ve completed the first four rows, and I have three more to go, and then I’ll be on to the man-made ones. Can you imagine doing that? Smashing together things to create a whole new element? One that never existed in the whole universe before, and one that will only be around for a tiny slice of time? But it would still be there, and you would know you made it.”

She looked between him and his father, and her brows drew down like they did when she was angry. But why? He’d learned the elements. He was being a Tesla.

“Come see.” He lifted the paper to show her, but he was moving too fast, and it ripped. Just a tiny bit on the edge. He could tape that back together. “I thought of drawing in pictures of what the elements actually look like in real life, but I only know it for a few of them, so I didn’t do it because I thought they wouldn’t all match.”

His mother’s cool hand cupped his chin, and she looked down into his eyes. Her eyes were clear brown, like the tea she drank every day with breakfast. Right now trouble shifted behind her eyes, but he didn’t know why.

She let go of his chin and looked at his father. When she spoke, she used the super calm and deep voice she used when she was really angry. “What did you give him?”

“Just milk.” His father looked at his scuffed shoes. Joe could tell he was lying.

“Men in this circus will beat you until you tell me,” she said.

Joe jerked his head up. “I’m fine. I feel great. My mind is sharp and clear and fast and good. There’s nothing wrong. Nothing at all.”

“Coke?” His mother’s calm voice was directed to his father. She ignored Joe.

But his father hadn’t given him Coke. They didn’t even have soda in the trailer. That was for suckers. You could charge them a fortune for sugar water. His father always said so.

“Tatiana—”

“How much?”

The question hung in the air, until finally his father’s face crumpled up, and he spoke. “Maybe a quarter gram. Not much.”

She touched Joe’s shoulder. “We’re going to see Farnsworth, Joe.”

His father stood, too, as if he were coming along.

“When we come back,” she said to his father, “you will be gone from this place.”

“I don’t have a car.”

“If you are still here, I will feed you to Merle. And no one will stop me.”

Merle was the lion Joe had been warned to stay away from. Not that he needed any warning. Merle spent his days pacing his cage, snaking his paw out whenever anyone came close, and peeing through the bars. They’d bought him a few months before and were looking for a sucker to unload him on. Merle would eat his father, no problem.

“Don’t hurt him,” Joe said. “He didn’t do anything.”

“Enough.” She put her hand on top of Joe’s head and pulled him in closer to her. He stopped arguing.

“You will vanish, George,” she said to his father. “Or I will make you vanish.”

Edison nudged Joe’s shoe. He put down the spoon, packed away the memory, and petted the dog.

Chapter 7

Quantum stopped at a park bench to stretch his calf muscles. He’d been keeping an eye on the entrance to the Waldorf Astoria hotel and on a suspicious gray-bearded hippie sitting on a bench in front of it. The guy had a
Wall Street Journal
, which didn’t match his outfit, and he’d been pretending to read it while glancing at the hotel door every minute or so. Not subtle.

Quantum was here to watch for a certain woman to leave the hotel. After she left, he had orders to search her room for documents in Nikola Tesla’s handwriting, and also for the Oscillator. Ash had given him the assignment, and he was thrilled to be trusted with something this important.

He leaned into the stretch, thinking about Ash. He hadn’t managed to uncover much about him, but he was willing to bet that the guy was loaded. His Spooky actions always started with insider knowledge. Ash knew what happened off-line in the corridors of power and then used his online teams to screw things up. He was powerful in ways that Quantum only dreamed about. But maybe Ash would share some of that power and wealth. Whether he wanted to or not.

The old hippie shifted on the bench. He wore faded jeans and a gray NYU hoodie, and he had a beard like a wizard. He looked like Quantum had always pictured Geezer. What if he
was
Geezer? What if Ash had sent them both here? A prickling in Quantum’s neck told him not to discount the possibility.

He’d lived through four foster homes, a violent older brother, and a couple of stints in prison. He knew to trust his instincts for danger. But that didn’t mean he was going to wimp out.

Quantum wiped sweat off his forehead. More sweat replaced it. He didn’t much mind. He’d spent every summer in New York, and he’d done without air conditioning for most of them. If he played his cards right, he’d end up living in air-conditioned splendor one day. He bet Ash lived in air-conditioned splendor all the time.

A bustle of activity drew Quantum’s glance to the front of the hotel. His target had emerged from the building. She was a small woman, in her sixties, accompanied by a man in his fifties pulling a black suitcase. Both looked well-to-do, and the woman moved with a coordinated grace that made his awareness pop up a notch. She looked like she could handle herself. Probably a dancer, but she could just as easily be a martial arts expert. Not one to underestimate anyway.

Quantum might look like a nerd online, but in the real world he had a black belt in karate. Before she died, his mother had insisted on sending him to karate after kids started picking on him in grade school, like she thought he’d be a modern-day Karate Kid. After a couple of years, it started to pay off. He still ran from fights and didn’t like to get hurt, but he was quick in the way that a little nerd on the streets had to be to survive. And when he had to stand and fight, he could actually kick ass. He’d given a kid twice his size a broken nose, been charged with assault a couple of times, and once beat a guy and left him for dead in the street. He still didn’t know if the man had lived or died, and he didn’t much care.

The lady smiled up at the man in the business suit. He didn’t look like anything to worry about as he kissed both cheeks and installed her in a bright yellow taxi, sticking the suitcase into the trunk himself. Only after the taxi pulled away from the curb did the man start walking briskly in the other direction.

Perfect. Both of them were out of their room.

In a piece of weird timing that couldn’t be coincidental, the Geezer guy jumped to his feet and ran to the street. A taxi practically hit him, and he climbed inside. The hippie seemed to be arguing with the driver before it pulled away. Quantum debated following, but didn’t. Ash had told him to search the room as soon as the couple left. He wasn’t going to screw up such a simple assignment to follow some hippie.

He jogged across the street and looked right through the uniformed doorman. Quantum was a guest of this hotel, his room paid for through Spooky’s petty-cash fund—another reason he thought Ash might be rich. Spooky always had access to plenty of money, either from Ash’s pocket or stolen by him, each as good as the other as far as Quantum was concerned.

Since check-in, he’d ordered all the room service he could and had raided the minibar. Money was just a concept to someone like Ash, he suspected. And Quantum could resell those tiny liquor bottles.

He sauntered across the opulent lobby toward the elevators. Nobody said anything about the sweat he was dripping on the floor, because he had every right to be here. He was a guest. Refrigerated air wafted across his skin, and he took in a deep breath of it.

A quick smile in the concierge’s direction, and he was already to the elevator. His room was beside the one he was supposed to search, and he had a card key to it in his wallet next to his own. If the card key didn’t work, he’d have to improvise, but he bet Ash had come through. That guy didn’t miss a trick.

A few minutes later he was in the hotel room of one Tatiana Tesla and Hugh Hollingberry, a tidy couple. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and began his search. His mother called him The Accountant, because he was so meticulous in his habits—always putting things back as he had found them. He’d been like that as long as he could remember. A useful trait.

He finished the search and returned to his room, where he tapped out a message to Ash in a dark chat room, telling him he hadn’t found anything, but the woman had left with a suitcase. Maybe the plans or the Oscillator were in there.

ash: she’s at oyster bar in grand central. get suitcase

quantum: how do u know?

ash: tracking her. go!

It was spooky how much Ash knew. Quantum smiled at the pun. He only ever contacted Ash through a screen of false identities or with a disposable burner phone, so he wouldn’t be easy to track, even for someone like Ash. Or at least he hoped not. His phone vibrated with an incoming text, reminding him that he was still on duty.

ash: get suitcase

quantum: any means necessary?

ash: do no serious damage. don’t get caught

Quantum parsed those last sentences. What kind of damage did Ash deem to be serious? Tough to say. He’d have to use his own judgment. And no matter what, he didn’t intend to get caught.

Chapter 8

A flurry of movement by the door told Joe his mother had arrived at the Oyster Bar. Even in New York City, home to a fashion industry and full of beautiful women a third her age, something about Tatiana drew all eyes to her. She was always a star.

She still wore the black dress from the funeral, but she had taken off the hat, veil, and gloves. Her black hair, hair that would never go gray, was cut in a severe bob that angled forward, longer at the chin than at the nape of her neck. A new cut for her, and it looked good. She crossed the floor with easy grace.

He hadn’t inherited any of her coordination.

A wheeled suitcase trailed along behind her. He jumped to his feet to take it from her.

She kissed him on each cheek and held his face in her hands for a second. “You look pale.”

He kissed her on the cheek. “You look great!”

She waved her hand. “Always you say this.”

“Always it’s true.” He brought her suitcase to their table and parked it before pulling out her chair. His mother was a stickler for manners. “What do you have in here, rocks?”

“You are closer than you think.” She held her fingers down for Edison to sniff.

Edison refused, because he was wearing his vest. When he wore his vest, he considered himself on duty and didn’t respond to anyone’s overtures but Joe’s.

“Such a serious dog.”

“It’s his training.” Joe didn’t bother to explain. She wouldn’t have listened if he had. “What’s in the suitcase?”

“We must speak of your father.”

The waiter saved him from answering. His mother ordered a Brooklyn Summer Ale without opening the menu, and he ordered the same.

“So.” She tapped the top of the suitcase. “You didn’t come today.”

“I can’t. I explained before.”

“Can’t? Won’t try? Who can say which this is?”

“I can say. I don’t like it, but I have a real condition.”

“But he was your father. You owed him such.” She pushed back her hair on one side, and Joe saw the long scar it usually concealed.

His father gave her that scar. One night, she’d come back to the trailer late. His father, standing by the door with a whiskey bottle, had clipped her across the side of the head. If the bottle had been full, it might have killed her. As it was, it took Farnsworth nine (scarlet) stitches to close the wound. Joe was five years old, and when he sat holding her hand while Farnsworth sewed up her head, he had thought she would die.

He leaned over and touched the scar. “I didn’t owe him a damn thing.”

She took her hand in his. As always, her hands were warmer than his. “Your time together was more than those moments. Good moments, too. You owe him your life, the man you have become.”

“I don’t.” Joe’s voice rose. He brought it down. “Anyway, I couldn’t go to the funeral. You know that.”

She dismissed his agoraphobia with a squeeze of his hand. “Anything is possible. Always.”

The waiter arrived with the beer. Joe ordered bluepoint oysters with steak fries, and his mother followed the waiter to pick out a lobster. Joe couldn’t eat a lobster after he’d been formally introduced. His mother never worried about things like that.

He sat in his chair and wished that she was right, that anything was possible, and he’d be able to go outside again the minute he wanted to.

His mother returned and sat. “They fly the lobsters straight in from Maine. Imagine! I can see them sitting in little seats with their seat belts fastened, wishing they were allowed to smoke.”

He laughed. “Maybe they let them smoke on those flights. The lobsters won’t live long enough to get gill cancer.”

Dinner was better after that. She caught him up on the happenings of the people in the circus. She kept in touch with them, although she hadn’t performed in years.

When he got rich, he had bought her any house she wanted, and she chose a Victorian in San Francisco with a view of the sea. It looked much like the one where he lived, except that hers was full of old circus people and relatives from overseas.

“I suppose you are curious about my suitcase,” she said after they had eaten.

“What’s it for? You going on a trip?”

“It’s for you, from your father.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Not from him directly,” she said. “From the Teslas, passed down.”

“But Dad wasn’t a Tesla, was he?”

“You knew?” She raised her sculpted eyebrows. “All this time?”

“I found out today at the funeral. Someone told Miss Torres, and I looked it up from there. Dad’s real name was George Smith.”

“Your Miss Torres is a pretty woman. Smart, too, and not one to be led about. Good for you, I think.”