Edison's Gold Read online

  “That’s the difference between you and me, Colb. You live for the A—”

  “And you live for the explosion.”

  “True. Maybe that’s why we work.”

  Drawing on his gloves, Tom eyeballed about twelve ounces of vinegar into the springwater jug, then sifted four ounces of powdered bleach into the solution. The surface of the bleach-green dust bubbled and smoked as it mixed into a smelly purple concoction.

  “I ever tell you my dad and I developed twenty-eight different inventions using bleach?” Tom reached for the cardboard container of Comet. “Bleach hybrid battery, SuperDuperStick adhesive goop, this really cool stain remover for bicycle grease—”

  “And this’ll be your last invention, if we don’t hurry it up,” Colby interrupted. They could now hear the sound of a man’s heavy shoes slowly walking the perimeter of the main room.

  “Add some salt to the baking-soda-and-bleach combo, and voilà!” Tom began to swirl the frothing liquid inside the jug. “Homemade hydrochloric acid.” He unwrapped the chocolate bar and placed it on the wooden floor, directly beneath the brick.

  “Lactose and sucrose for absorption,” said Colby with a nod. “Smart thinking.”

  “Stand back,” said Tom, then carefully splashed a little bit of the acidic mixture directly onto the wall.

  Hiss! Crackle!

  The bricks began to dissolve, and as the excess acid dribbled down to the floor, it made contact with the candy bar, reacting with the milk and sugar to form a gummy substance that resembled a squishy putty.

  “Amazing. One of your experiments could actually be working.” Colby blinked.

  “Gee, thanks,” Tom answered, though he could hardly believe it himself. He poured a little more of the solution onto the brick.

  As a small section of the wall disintegrated into a bubbling red liquid, a snug compartment behind it was exposed.

  “No way.” Colby rushed over, her jaw hanging open in amazement. “Are you gonna grab those already, or should I?”

  “Just waiting for the acid to dry.” Slowly, Tom reached in and pulled two disk-shaped packages from the hidden space, careful not to let any exposed skin make contact with the wall.

  The packages were both wrapped in brown paper. The first disk was about six inches in diameter, while the second, thicker disk was roughly half that size around. Both were covered in almost a full centimeter of gray dust.

  “Unbelievable.” Tom was genuinely speechless. His heart was hammering from a mixture of excitement, adrenaline, and fear.

  Colby leaned forward. “What do you think they are?”

  Clomp, clomp clomp clomp …

  Heavy footfalls interrupted them. Down the hallway, but definitely getting closer to the reptile room.

  In a flash, Tom stuffed the two disks into his backpack.

  “Let’s go!” he mouthed, leading the way as Colby followed him out the room’s window. They slipped around the side of the building with only moments to spare before they heard the footsteps enter the reptile room.

  “Whoever that is’ll know we were there,” said Colby, who was on the verge of hyperventilating. “Part of the freaking wall’s dissolved.”

  “We can’t think about that right now,” said Tom. “We just have to get Noodle out of the building. I got a weird feeling about that guy.”

  “So do I.”

  The two of them went quiet, listening as the footsteps paused, paced, and paused again, probably inspecting the mess they’d left. Sweat prickled along every inch of Tom’s body. There was a long silence. Perhaps the man was waiting them out. Or pulling all their fingerprints off the walls. Or loading his gun.

  Finally, the footsteps headed out of the room and back down the hallway.

  “Let’s go back in,” Tom whispered.

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Believe me, he probably thinks we’re halfway to the Prospect Park subway station by now. Returning to the scene of the crime’s the last thing he’d expect us to do.”

  “You better be right.” Colby sprang to the sill and vaulted it neatly. Tom was not quite so graceful but, with Colby’s help, managed to pull himself up. Crouched behind one of the largest cages, they waited until they heard the pet shop’s front door slam.

  Tom counted to twenty before stepping into the hallway. “Let’s hope he didn’t take Noodle with him.”

  Out in the main room, Noodle was nonchalantly balancing a guinea pig on his head for Mitzi’s amusement. He looked thrilled and relieved to see his friends.

  “Took you guys long enough,” he whispered to Tom. “I tried to warn you about that fat dude coming in but didn’t want to blow our cover.”

  “It’s cool. We hid from him.” Tom peered through the window. The Cadillac was gone. “Did he say anything?”

  “Just that he wanted to buy a kitten for his niece, but I wasn’t really buying it.”

  “Is there a back entrance to this place?” Tom called to Mitzi, who had moved to one of the side rooms.

  She seemed far more interested in the fat, yapping pug squirming and slobbering in her arms. “Helloooo, Parsley! There’s a boy!”

  “Another way out?” Tom asked, louder.

  “There’s a fire door in the back.” Mitzi pointed toward the rear curtain behind her. “But I don’t see why …” As the kids headed straight toward it, she called, “Wait! We never found your friend a dog!”

  “I just remembered my mom’s allergic,” Noodle called back. “Sorry, Mitzi—it’s been a blast!”

  Out the back door of the pet shop, Tom, Colby, and Noodle found themselves facing a pockmarked and graffitied cement wall that was way too high to climb over. Dented aluminum trash cans lined both sides of the narrow alleyway that seemed to stretch for several blocks in both directions.

  “We got exactly one hour and forty minutes until curfew,” noted Tom. “And this is really not a place where we want to be lost at night. Especially with some lowlife on our trail.” He glanced right and left, unsure which was their best route out of there.

  “Noodle, guess what? In the reptile room? We found something.” Colby was still pumped up from the discovery. “Something good!”

  “It better be good, considering I just spent the last twenty minutes hearing about pet psychics, while getting scratched by a buncha rodents.” He showed her his arms, both red and crisscrossed with fresh claw marks.

  “A small price to pay for—”

  The roar of an engine interrupted her.

  “Run!” Tom shouted as the black Cadillac came barreling down the alley, its side mirrors inches from the walls on both sides.

  The car’s tires screeched after them, giving chase in a streak of black tracks and sour exhaust, narrowly taking the corner that led the kids onto a small, unmarked street, then charging in their direction. Noodle was so lean and Colby so light that they could run like deer, but Tom thought his lungs would explode as his sneakers burned rubber. He was starting to regret all those times he’d skipped recess to tweak one of his robots in Dr. Kinney’s wood-shop classroom.

  “There’s another alley!” Colby pointed to the small break in the road, twenty yards ahead of them.

  “You crazy?” shouted Noodle. “Always stay on main roads when you’re being chased. That way they can’t corner you.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Haven’t you guys ever seen the show Cops? Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?” he sang, then broke left and hurled a trash can directly into the car’s path. The Caddy slowed to skid around it, but the can bumped and scraped against its passenger door.

  Two more blocks of running, and the street finally dead-ended at a row of police barricades sectioning off what appeared to be a large street fair.

  “Left, right, or lose him in the fair?” asked Noodle. There wasn’t much time for hesitation, as the car was hurtling toward them at forty miles an hour and counting.

  “Fair!” Tom yelled, sprinting as hard as he
could to catch up.

  As the three slipped underneath the barricades into the crowded street, Tom built up the nerve to glance behind him. The car had come to a halt, and leaping from it was a fat bald-headed man in a tight-fitting suit.

  Tom froze in his tracks. It was the same guy he’d seen at the police station yesterday talking with Lieutenant Faber. Despite his heavy frame, the man was nimble on his feet and camouflaged himself in the crowd with surprising ease. Within seconds, there was no trace of him whatsoever.

  “Noodle. Colb. We gotta hold hands,” said Tom, his eyes darting at every angle. He was expecting the fat man to appear at any moment and grab them. “I know it sounds dumb, but we can’t afford to get detached from one another. I have a feeling this guy’s been after us for a while.”

  “Awesome. If I’d known I’d be chased through a street fair by a madman,” said Noodle, “I might’ve taken a rain check on the evening portion of today’s activities.”

  Clutching one another’s sweaty hands in a daisy chain, the threesome bobbed and weaved their way through the mass of fairgoers, past the wooden stands that were brimming with pretzels, cotton candy, and homemade arts and crafts. The fair seemed to stretch for blocks on end.

  “Moon bounce!” yelled Colby, suddenly spying it at the far end of the block. “That’s where we want to be—somewhere public with kids, where he can’t nab us without drawing attention to himself.”

  “We’d have to cut across the stage to get there,” said Tom. “Unless we went up the block.” Standing directly between them and the moon bounce was the raised platform of an outdoor theater, where actors in fluffy pink-and-white bunny suits and yellow chick costumes were in the middle of a song-and-dance routine.

  “Shortest distance between two points is a straight line!” Colby was already yanking them in the direction of the stage. Tom and Noodle had no choice but to follow as she leaped up the wooden steps, then broke hands—and Tom’s rule—to race across the stage.

  “Colb, wait up!” But the girl was possessed. She seemed to have shed all traces of her old overcautious, always-worried personality in favor of a gleeful daredevil Tom and Noodle could barely recognize.

  “Ooph! Watch it, dude!” yelled an angry Easter Bunny as Tom accidentally knocked him into a screaming audience of delighted children.

  “My fault!”

  “They’re ruining the show!” Parents were on their feet, and Noodle was lucky to slip out of an angry father’s grip.

  Across the stage, they jumped back into the crowd, but not before Tom got a second glimpse of their chubby pursuer stepping out from behind an ice-cream truck. He was a good fifty yards from them and still in dogged pursuit. But his coat was drenched in sweat now, and he was lagging. Without being spotted, Tom slipped between two old ladies and bumped through the crowd toward the moon bounce.

  The threesome zigzagged past wooden stalls, heading for the inflatable room. Tom didn’t even break stride as he reached into his pocket and grabbed his last dollar.

  “Three tickets, keep the change, and sorry to skip the line!” he called out, then threw the bill at the ticket seller.

  “Hey! You’re two dollars short,” the ticket seller shouted, just before the three of them disappeared into the mouth of the moon bounce.

  Inside the massive plastic bubble, Colby, Tom, and Noodle blended into the cavalcade of kids bouncing around like popcorn. A chunky redhead immediately threw herself into Noodle’s path. “Bounce-off!” she yelled like a sheriff out of a Western movie.

  “Get away from me!” he yelled back.

  “Dummy, I’m challenging you to bounce-off!” Her face was sweating red to match her hair. “Nora! Caitlyn! Come over here and help me bounce this dummy!” Two more squealing girls came springing over with a bounce intensity that sent Noodle flying up, up, and then ricocheting against the wall.

  As the girls whooped and giggled, he shot Tom a despairing look. “When’s it safe to go back out there? I’m getting my skinny butt kicked like a piñata.”

  “I think we lost our man,” Tom called back, then bounced his way to the front of the room and looked out onto the street fair. There was no sign of the fat man, which made it feel even scarier. Like he was just waiting to leap out from behind any food cart or cluster of people.

  “Maybe we really did lose him.” Colby had bounced her way to his side. “Told ya this was the place to hide.” She executed a perfect somersault that caused the younger girls to oooh.

  “Look! There’s a side chute here,” said Noodle. “We can slip out the back and lose him for sure in the food court.” It seemed as good a plan as any other, and they only had another fifty-three minutes till curfew.

  One by one, they vaulted back onto solid cement.

  “You’re right, Tom. He’s nowhere,” said Colby.

  But as the three of them sprinted along Bedford Avenue toward the Prospect Park subway station, Tom still couldn’t shake the very real, very worrisome feeling that he had now crossed way out of his safety zone.

  They were messing with people way more dangerous than their parents. People with shady connections to police officers, people who spied on others from their messy cars.

  But finding those two mysterious wrapped packages at Mitzi’s made the treasure hunt real. Edison and the Sub Rosa were hiding something. Tom was sure of it now, and whatever that something was, he was going to find it before anyone else.

  There was no turning back. He just hoped Noodle and Colby would stay with him. He couldn’t finish this without them.

  Gold? Are you pulling my chain, Tom?” The young police commissioner sat back in his seat and exhaled long and deep.

  “I’m as serious as an undertaker, Teddy,” Edison answered.

  He knew how crazy it must’ve sounded. Roosevelt was not even a year in office, and here he was, getting hit with a scientific conspiracy of global proportions.

  “Tesla and I began experimenting with the dissolution of tinctures several years ago when he worked for me. It started off as a bit of fun, but …” Edison carefully lowered his coffee cup to its porcelain saucer and set it on the table next to him.

  Aside from his wife and Tesla, of course, no one else in the world even knew about his secret basement lab, and as nervous as Edison was about bringing in another party, desperate times called for desperate measures.

  He paused for another moment, gathering his thoughts before proceeding.

  “Our research was going along quite well,” Edison finally said, “until Nikola began on these wild diatribes about particle bombs and death rays. As we got closer to finding the alchemy formula, he became even more obsessed, until finally I had no choice. I had to stop funding the project. If we ever were to find the recipe, he simply couldn’t be trusted with it.”

  “And how did Tesla take the news?” asked Roosevelt.

  “How do you think? He went into a blinding rage, vowing to destroy my career, which I easily dismissed, of course. That is, until this detestable business with alternating currents began.” Roosevelt nodded knowingly. Edison and Tesla’s public feud about the future of electrical distribution was common knowledge, even to the most uninformed citizen.

  “When he was just an engineer, I wasn’t worried. But now with George Westinghouse in the picture, paying huge royalties for these patents, I can only fear the worst.”

  “So, assuming I do believe you about this alchemy business, where do I come in?” said Roosevelt, his brow furrowed in concentration.

  Edison couldn’t help laughing. As a young army officer, Teddy had gained a reputation for his “cut to the chase” attitude, and meeting him now, Edison could see why.

  “Tesla’s research must be stopped. At all costs. Heaven forbid this formula gets into the wrong hands. It would be a recipe for global disaster.”

  “So you’re saying it exists?”

  Edison shifted his eyes toward the Vesper Inn’s window. It was one of his favorite places in New York to grab a coffee and cha
t with one of the many artists who spent time there.

  “I’m close,” he answered. “I may be one year away, I may be ten. But Tesla is a brilliant man, who’s on a mission to find the formula … and destroy me.”

  “Well, Mr. Edison, I’m not one for sorcery, but you have as impeccable a reputation as any man in this great country. If you say Tesla’s work must be stopped, then that’s all there needs to be said.”

  “So … what will you do?” Edison couldn’t help a nervous quiver from entering his voice.

  “The less you know, the better, sir. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a city to protect.” And with that, Roosevelt shot up from his chair, spun on his polished boot, and headed toward the door.

  Edison could only sit there shaking his head in disbelief. Despite the positive outcome of this meeting, he wasn’t used to being spoken to so curtly. Perhaps what they said about this new commissioner was right. A career in politics might just suit him.

  So that was it? Edison thought once Roosevelt had left. A snap of my fingers, and Tesla is finished?

  The hard part now would be living with the guilt.

  7:04 p.m. The first day with a new curfew, and they’d already blown it.

  The kitchen door flew open, and a sweating Tom raced through, heading toward the basement door with Noodle and Colby close on his heels. It felt like they hadn’t stopped sprinting since Brooklyn. Even though the trip home had taken them less than two hours, it felt to Tom like a couple of lifetimes ago. The anticipation of discovering what was inside those two packages had fueled him the entire way.

  Passing his dad at the kitchen table, who bounced Rose on his lap while talking on the phone and perusing a heap of bills, Tom skidded on his heels. Amid all the excitement, he’d almost forgotten that he was still in hot—if not boiling—water with his parents. Fortunately, though, his dad didn’t seem to notice he’d missed curfew.

  “How come you’re late?” Mr. Edison glanced up from his checkbook with the phone still cradled to his ear. “I thought we had an agreement.”