Walls within Walls (8 page)

CJ could not believe what he had just heard. Thanks to Ray, he knew that not only was Eloise still alive, she was living just one floor below them. He wondered if she knew that Pat had gotten behind her wall through the grille opening. He wondered if she knew about
Treasure Island
.

CJ just wanted to be away from people so he could think. He stumbled down the back wooden stairs to the storage area with his mind reeling. No wonder their visitor had known where the kitchen was in their apartment. CJ wondered if Eloise thought there was treasure, her treasure, somewhere in this building, maybe even in their apartment. Was that why she still lived here? Maybe she could make sense of the seven poems in Mr. Post's book.

His mind ran through a checklist of clues and facts. They had traded
Treasure Island
for a book of seven poems and a key. They had uncovered skip writing that said to find seven structures, each related to one of seven poems. Since the poems were all about New York City, he was certain the treasure was hidden somewhere in the city—if not in this building, then in one of the structures. It had something to do with water that flows from above. Would that mean rain?

We have so many dots, thought CJ, and no way to connect them.

They needed to start somewhere, he thought as he unlocked the storage room, breathing in the stale scent of dust and old books. He started dutifully moving boxes away from the wall with no idea what he was looking for, but it felt good to be busy. If he could clear some space, he thought, he could have a real place to be alone and to think. In a few minutes, CJ saw letters on the back wall, written with elaborate strokes of a pen on the fading, yellowed paint. It appeared to be a poem, and a funny poem at that:

The poem went on and was signed “a soldier.” CJ touched the fading ink marks and wondered if that was what someone returning from war would be thinking about, the food of home.

To CJ, the poem read like Dr. Seuss, because it was funny, rhyming, silly, but with a touch of sadness behind it. He felt a little surprised to be thinking so long about the meaning of a poem. Maybe his old teacher at PS 149 was right. He'd said poetry could get under your skin and into your heart, especially if you gave a poem a chance by reading it three times. So, out of deference to the poet-soldier, CJ dutifully read about corned beef two more times.

Then he caught sight of something else on the wall. It was a seam, no wider than a fraction of an inch, running straight up to the ceiling. It was covered with paint and slightly raised. Wanting to see where the seam started, he began moving boxes off the lowest shelf. He stayed at this laborious work for a while, till he glanced at his watch. He had been downstairs for over two hours and had left Brid and Pat upstairs the whole time. He dashed up the hall, leaving the storage room open, while he went to find his brother and sister.

As Ray opened the elevator door into the Smithfork apartment, CJ could hear Brid's frantic voice. “I swear, Maricel, CJ is home. He is just hiding or something. He didn't go out and leave us alone. He would have told me if he was leaving.”

Why was his sister so upset? He hadn't technically gone outside the apartment building. Was going to the basement considered leaving people home alone? He didn't think so. As he ran down the hallway, CJ rehearsed his excuse. He would just tell the truth. He had never left the building. It wasn't like he'd gone to the park or the store, right?

Maricel was seething. She didn't even let him have a chance to state his case. She pointed a finger at him and spoke in a way he had never heard her talk. “Listen, little big-man. You are not the biggest kid I have been the nanny for, and you are not the smallest. But if there is one thing you and I need to be straight on, it is that your parents trust me to take care of you, and you have to let me do that.”

Maricel was standing so close to CJ that her saliva landed on his shirt. He wiped it with his hand and looked beyond her, not right at her face. “Look at me when I address you,” she continued. “You are my responsibility, and you've proved to me that you cannot be trusted. From now on, I will tell you what we will be doing each day. If we are going to the playground, then you are coming to the playground, too. You will not run around free, and I am not going to get fired just because you make your own rules. Are we clear on this?” CJ wanted to scream at her, but he just stood in that grand hallway, staring at the angels stenciled on the ceilings, waiting for the avalanche of words and spit to end.

But Maricel wasn't finished yet. “Do you know that while you were out, your brother found a man in the hallway?” she screamed.

This got CJ's attention. “What?” He looked at Brid quizzically.

“It's true,” Brid said, looking upset. “There was a man in the hall—we think he came out of Patrick's room. I swear, CJ, we both saw him. And then he just left, right out the back fire stairs. Ray didn't see anyone come in or out of the elevators. How is that possible? What if that man is still around here? What if he's the man the librarian said was looking for Mr. Post's poetry book? What if he knows we have it?” she finished, her voice rising to a shriek.

“Listen, guys, let's just be calm and figure out how he got in.”

“We've looked everywhere! That fire door was locked. He opened it from the inside, so how did he get into our apartment in the first place?”

“Definitely a ghost,” said Patrick, whose eyes were huge and round. He was actually holding one of Maricel's hands.

“Geezum, Pat, there isn't such a thing. Give that a rest.”

“We'll give
you
a rest,” shouted Maricel. “Just go to your room. Something terrible could have happened to these children while you were gone!”

CJ walked past all of them back to his bedroom. He slammed the door with enough force to tell everyone what he thought. In the back part of his mind, he bristled, thinking Brid was right, that the man looking for the Post book at the library had followed the children home, and he knew the book's secrets and wanted the book for himself. CJ pulled out the book, and as he began to read, the words became unfocused as wet, hot, salty tears filled his eyes.

Hours later, CJ woke up, still wearing his clothes, his jeans sticking uncomfortably to his body. How long had he slept? Why hadn't anyone woken him for dinner? The house was completely silent, and his digital clock read 3:32
AM
. Had he really just slept for twelve hours? Moonlight fell across his bed. His window was made up of many panes of glass, and the shadows from the window frames reminded CJ of bars in a jail cell. That was how CJ felt—like he lived in a jail.

He had fallen asleep still holding the book of poems. He wished they could speak. He turned on the bedside light and reread the note to the Post children from their father. Now that he knew Eloise lived below him, he felt he should just hand the whole thing over to her. The
older woman had seemed perfectly nice. Technically the poetry book belonged to her—or did it?

He read, “Dear Treasure Hunters (hopefully Eloise and Julian).” That meant the Smithforks, since they had found it, right? Maybe Eloise was too old to go looking all over the city. Maybe she had lost interest after all these years. Maybe she was so angry with her father for leaving things the way he did that she wanted nothing to do with this project. Maybe.

But what if that wasn't true? The treasure would belong to her, but maybe CJ, Brid, and Pat could help her find it. Maybe the Smithforks could help solve a few of the puzzles, just to get Eloise on her way toward finding it herself. He read the salutation yet again: “…hopefully Eloise.” Deep down, CJ knew the right thing to do. But then he had another thought: What if Eloise had no idea that any of these clues existed?

He reached down for his backpack and the list of clues. But where was his backpack? It took him a few seconds to remember that in his haste to leave the servants' quarters, he had grabbed the poetry book but left everything else downstairs. At least nobody besides the Williamson kids ever went down there, and they were in England now. His backpack was safe.

He flipped through the book. To understand where Mr. Post was coming from, CJ decided to examine the poems the way he had learned last year in English class.
He would read each poem three times. The first time he would try and have no opinion; he would just read to get a sense of the author's frame of mind. The second and third times, he would read with a little more concentration.

Because he had slept so long, he wasn't tired at all. It was quiet now, the quiet of the middle of the night. He turned to the first poem, “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes.

By the third time CJ read the poem, he could almost feel the beat in his head. He knew Lenox Avenue was a main street in Harlem, only about twenty blocks north of their apartment. Had Mr. Post taken his family there? That would be his first question for Eloise.

Maybe he should retrieve his backpack before anyone else came around. If only he didn't have to go past elevator men every time he wanted to go somewhere. Gin
gerly, he put his feet on the floor. He creaked down the hallway to the front door and buzzed for the elevator. It took a full five minutes for the night operator to come upstairs.

The night man was a short, older, white-haired guy. His hair was rumpled, and he seemed embarrassed as he fumbled with the circular fulcrum while putting on his white gloves. When the gears were in place and the elevator cab was in full downward motion, he began to pat his hair with his gloved hand. CJ was certain he had just woken this man up.

“Hi,” said CJ, “we haven't met yet.”

“Hello,” came the gruff answer. This man wasn't as friendly as Ray. He seemed to have no interest in further conversation.

“What hours do you work?” asked CJ.

“Eleven
PM
to seven
AM
.”

“Every night?”

“Six nights.”

“When do you sleep?”

“I sleep.”

“Oh, okay.”

By the time they were in the lobby, the night man seemed a little more awake. He looked surprised when CJ turned and headed down into the servants' hallway.

“Where are you going?” he yelled after CJ.

“I left some stuff down here.”

“Oh.”

That was weird, thought CJ as he entered the storage room, realizing he didn't know the man's name. Relieved to see his backpack still there, he returned to his work of shifting boxes, moving things closer to the front of the room. So many of the artifacts seemed useless. There were dilapidated linens, so old and fragile they almost came apart in his hands, and glass vases, covered in dust. Perhaps he could introduce himself to Eloise with an offer to either return this stuff or help her sort through it.

As CJ cleared more space around the seam in the wall he'd discovered earlier, he could see that it stopped about eighteen inches from the floor. At the place where it ended, he saw the outline of a square with paint over it.

Too impatient to move anything else, CJ lay down on the wide, dusty shelf near the little square. He got a pen from his knapsack and scrambled back into position. He chipped away at the paint with the pen, until his arm ached with the effort. The next shelf, only eighteen inches above his head, greatly constricted his movement. Finally, he freed the square from the layers of paint and saw that it was made of brass. He tried pushing it.

The square didn't free right up. Instead it moved in a complaining way, stiff and uncertain. It was almost as if a spring were in there somewhere, probably rusty and creaky. CJ was eventually able to lift what seemed like
a cover by wedging his fingers behind it. He could feel something roundish with pointy edges. But what was it?

He stood for a moment to let the blood circulate through his arms again. From his backpack, he drew out his cell phone. He couldn't call anyone from the basement, but when opened, it sure could provide some light.

Bending as low as he could, CJ climbed back onto the shelf and shone the bluish light from the cell phone onto the place where the square was. He found himself staring into a large brass keyhole.

“Hello?” came a voice. In his surprise, CJ dropped the cell phone. He sprang upward so fast that he slammed his head on the shelf above him.

He shimmied backward off the low shelf to see the night elevator man standing in the doorway. “Yes, what?” snapped CJ in an uncharacteristically sharp voice.

“Just thought you might need help with something.”

“No, I'm, ah, I just dropped my phone behind here,” CJ said.

“Need help finding it?” the guy asked.

“No, I'm, uh, moving some of this stuff.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You know, there's six of us in our family, so we'll be needing space down here. My mom asked me to make room for all of our things.”

“Right,” the guy said. His eyes kept darting around but
not settling on any one thing. “Well, your mom picks weird times of the day to send you out on chores.”

“Ha!” CJ laughed stupidly and way too loudly. “Well, maybe you should go and, um, man the elevator in case someone needs to go up and down,” he said.

“Yeah. I get the hint.”

“What?” CJ asked, but the no-name elevator man was gone.

CJ shimmied back onto the shelf, reaching deep down for his phone and listening to his own heavy breathing in the darkest part of the night. It was a long time before he found the courage to return to the lobby and summon the elevator.