Tuesday Mooney Wore Black. Kate Racculia

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СКАЧАТЬ never told you my last name,” said Tuesday.

      “I never told you mine either.”

      Fair point.

      “Are you so surprised by my resourcefulness?” he asked.

      “Your resourcefulness,” she said, “is borderline creepy.”

      “Isn’t your whole job borderline creepy?”

      “I don’t cross the border. I have a code of ethics. I don’t, for example, show up at the apartment of someone I have researched.”

      “You just write up dossiers about us that we don’t even know exist.”

      “Dossiers that help the people I work with strategically persuade you to become just slightly less rich, so the hospital can build a nice new oncology suite. Besides,” she said, “you knew. You know. You gave those interviews.” He pulled his own helmet over his head as she continued. “You tweeted those memes. You put an idea of yourself out there for me, for anyone, to find.”

      “Did you ever consider,” he said, “that I was using my resourcefulness to impress you?” His voice was muffled by the helmet, but his eyes were visible, the same eyes she’d recognized in the ballroom of the Four Seasons. “And that with our powers combined—”

      He threw his leg over the motorcycle, parked illegally in front of her building’s driveway. Tuesday didn’t know much about bikes, but she knew his was a Ducati, and that it was very cool.

      “Your game needs work,” she said.

      The first glow of sunset was disappearing over the top of her apartment building when she climbed on the bike and locked her arms around him.

      “Seems like it’s working okay,” he muttered, and ripped the bike to life. She was charmed, begrudgingly; it was the cheater’s way of getting the last word.

      They rode through the blue night air, up and over the Somerville streets, on the crumbling elevated highway, past the Museum of Science, crossing the Charles River into the white lights of the city. They swung low through the winding snake of Storrow Drive, pulled off at Beacon, looped around the Public Garden, and slalomed down into the parking garage beneath Boston Common. There was so much beneath the ground in Boston: cars and tunnels and tracks and subway trains. Literal garbage, under the Back Bay – an entire neighborhood built on landfill. No wonder Pryce started his hunt here, at the center of the city, on the corner of the Common, in one of the oldest subway stations on earth. Everything began beneath the ground.

      Archie cut the engine. “That tickles,” he said, and Tuesday realized her phone, tucked in her inside jacket pocket, was vibrating. Dorry, probably. She’d been pissed to be left behind, but she’d backed off once Tuesday pointed out that (a) her father would have a fit if he found out his daughter’s tutor had taken her on a wild treasure hunt, (b) they needed someone at mission control, someone who could call the police if they stopped making contact, and (c) only two people would fit on the bike. “I’ll give you the first two,” Dorry’d said. “But the third reason is crap. It’s a T station. I don’t need to ride with you guys to get there.”

      But it wasn’t Dorry. It was Dex.

      Did you solve it yet you’re killing me

      She felt a little guilty. For forgetting about him. And for not, with a fleeting adolescent protectiveness, wanting to share.

      Yes! Park Street. Heading there rn, stay tuned

      It was officially blue-dark in the Common when they came up out of the garage, only a little past seven, though, so the paved paths were still full of people. The closer they got to the station itself, the brighter and noisier it was. Under a streetlamp, two guys in bandanas banged syncopated beats on upturned plastic tubs while a third did the worm on the sidewalk, the last of the day’s buskers, playing, now, for the locals. Drumming in the city made her walk differently. It loosened her hips. Brought her back into her body, ready to bend and to move.

      Her phone buzzed again.

      WHAT you mental minx

      I knew you’d figure it out

      She texted back, Next Dorry did, not me, and felt a pop of pride for her neighbor. Dorry was a good kid. The best kid she knew. The kind of kid who made having kids seem particularly great, if you wanted to have kids, which Tuesday didn’t.

      “So what are we looking for?” asked Archie.

      “I have no idea.”

      “Then let’s go see what we can find,” he said. “Maybe it’ll scream at us.”

      Park Street had two entrances, gray iron-and-stone structures like twin mausoleums dropped at the edge of the Common, heralded by the symbol of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority: a capital T in a black circle, branded on white like the M on an M&M. Tuesday and Archie took the right entrance, flowing with the human tide down yellow-edged steps to the first of two levels of trains. The upper Green Line platform held the remnants of rush hour, exhausted-looking commuters, eyes glazed, ears sprouting white buds and wires, lazily poking at their phones or burying their noses in books. A girl with pink and purple hair – Berklee student, for sure – was slow-jamming the theme from The Simpsons on tenor saxophone, smooth and sweet, and a youngish man with dark hair silvering at his temples smiled at her. He dropped a crisp bill into the instrument case open for change at her feet. It floated down like a leaf.

      Tuesday stalked along the right side of the platform, dodging T riders, following the yellow rubber edge all the way to the end. Nothing. “I don’t know what I expected,” she muttered. “Kilroy saying ‘Vincent was here’? ‘Follow to clue’?”

      “Um,” said Archie, pointing over her shoulder. “That seems pretty close.”

      On the other side of the tracks, spray-painted and dripping on the dirty white and gray plaster of the wall, was a black bird. Head up and stiff. Wings folded back. The very silhouette of a raven, if it were sitting, say, on a bust of Pallas above one’s chamber door. A shaky scrawl in white chalk floated above the raven’s head. She had to step closer to read it: The prince of darkness is a gentleman!

      “I mean,” said Tuesday. Her pulse picked up speed. She imagined the platonic ideal of a lawyer, three-piece suit, leather attaché, leaping over the tracks with a stick of chalk and a raven stencil, shaking a can of spray paint like a maraca: Pryce’s helper. Leaving clues around the city. “We shouldn’t be worried that it seems too easy, right? Pryce wants us to follow him. He wants people to solve it. He’s not trying to hide.”

      The painted raven’s beak and one spindly foot, raised, were pointing toward the dark of the tunnel, beyond the platform, where the tracks disappeared on their way to Tremont Street station.

      She took a picture on her phone and sent it to Dorry.

      Dorry responded in four separate texts:

      O

      M

      F

      G

      “I have no idea,” said Archie, drawing Tuesday by the elbow to conspire, “what sort of security cameras СКАЧАТЬ