An elbow applied carefully to glass is the second best way to enter anywhere.
The best way is a door, unless you’re scared of who might be behind it.
There were two doors into Rispoli amp; Sons Fancy Pastries and I wasn’t about to use either one.
I cruised past for the third time, seeing the neon sign hanging unlit and gray, the interior of the place dim in midmorning sunlight. Even though I hadn’t spotted anyone-no cops, no Uncle Buddy-it didn’t mean they weren’t nearby, watching the front door with its jingly bell or the delivery door on the alley. Even worse, they could be lurking inside, waiting for those doors to open.
I pulled to the curb and stared at the place.
It hadn’t even been forty-eight hours since I’d discovered my home in shambles and family missing, yet it appeared as if the bakery had been out of business for a decade. I knew it would be closed and locked, but it was worse than that. The only way to say it is that the bakery looked dead.
It made me want to drive away and to keep on driving.
Except, like Willy said, I hadn’t seen any bodies.
I had to assume my family was alive, and I had to go in there.
Harry had begun to whine in a way that suggested a desperate need to pee, so I took a deep breath and climbed out. Just as I opened the back door, a haunting, jingling tune cut through the air, like a slow-moving ice cream truck calling kids with its siren song. Harry lifted his head at it, sniffing the sky, and then, forgetting his injuries, bolted from the car. He was so fast that I had time only to yell, “Harry!” as he hit the bricks, running hard, yowling at the top of his lungs. I ran after him, stopping at the crossroads of the alley, but he was gone. Dark clouds bumped into each other overhead, blotting out the sun, and I felt so alone that I couldn’t hold back tears. I wiped them away, looking up at the coming rain, and something caught my subconscious eye-a telephone pole with metal footholds. It climbed higher than the roof of Cofanetto’s Funeral Home, which sat hard against Lavasecco’s Dry Cleaning, which was next door to Rispoli amp; Sons Fancy Pastries. I climbed a Dumpster, grabbed a foothold, and when I was halfway up the telephone pole, stopped and scanned the alleyways, but no Harry. The idea that I had lost another member of my family was too much to accept, so I pushed it away, resolving to track him down later.
Truthfully, I was unsure there would be a later for him or me.
I pushed away that thought too, and stepped onto the roof of the funeral home.
From somewhere deep in the building I heard a pipe organ, low and sonorous.
I walked lightly over the pebbled roof, crouching as I moved to avoid being seen. I was four stories in the air, equal to or lower than the surrounding apartment buildings in a neighborhood where someone’s Italian grandmother was always looking out a window. Anyone on a roof would raise suspicion, but a teenager in a huge EMT shirt with a bloody bandage peeking out from beneath a cap was a 911 jackpot for a local snoop. I hurried across the roof of the dry cleaner, feeling a blast of heat filled with sour starch, and paused, looking over at the bakery’s glass skylight. It sat directly on top of the kitchen, which meant directly over the oven.
It was time.
I stepped onto the roof of the bakery.
Peering through glass, I saw only the square white tile floor below.
Just like in a caper movie, I quickly popped my right elbow off of the window. It splintered, shards tinkling to the floor below. I reached inside, unlocked the skylight window, and stuck my head inside, listening to the silence. There was no sound, no movement, only the hum of the big industrial refrigerator. Carefully, I held on to the window ledge, lowered myself down, and kicked my legs to get my body moving. The top of the refrigerator, my target, was about four feet away. When I was swinging like a trapeze artist, I gritted my teeth and let go, and was in midair when I realized that I wouldn’t make it. It was slow-motion desperation, like a baby bird pushed from a nest with no idea how to fly, my legs and arms flailing at empty space until I hit the hard tile floor.
I tried to scream but nothing came out.
The only sound was a wet-cement-bag noise when my body hit the ground.
I groaned and rolled onto my back, feeling like I’d just been hit by a school bus.
There was a limit to the physical punishment that one sixteen-year-old body could take, and I lay there with every muscle, fiber, and tendon in my body aflame, sure that I’d reached it. When I opened my eyes, I stared up at six letters stamped in heavy metal.
Vulcan.
I got to my feet painfully, holding my back like a retiree, while the oven loomed before me, its massive iron door and old-fashioned dials and gauges like something from a World War II submarine. It was really old-my grandpa’s father, Great-Grandpa Nunzio, installed it when he started the business in 1922, and it had been hard at work ever since baking cakes, pies, and cookies. Staring at it, I realized that I’d never noticed how massive it actually was-six feet tall, four feet wide, encased in white glazed brick, with the iron letters painted a fiery red. Unconsciously, like before a bout, I cracked all of my knuckles and reached for the door handle. As I pulled it down, the hinges complained loudly in the silent building, making me jump. It was dark inside, with all of its racks removed. I looked into it just as I’d been instructed and saw nothing but empty space, a deep metal cave.
My heart was beating against my chest.
I had no choice-I’d have to climb inside.
I took a breath, pulled myself up and in, and I fit.
It required crouching but I realized that if my lanky frame fit inside the oven, so could my dad’s. Tiny Grandpa Enzo would have had no problem, and even Uncle Buddy, if he figured out how to position his gut-but for what purpose? There was nothing to see, nothing hidden or out of the ordinary as far as ovens go. The burners were down there, ventilation up there, sides made of solid iron. There was a small lightbulb inside but it wasn’t lit. Quickly, quietly, I pulled it shut, the light popped on, and something clicked solidly into place. I pushed against the door, felt that it was locked, and my skin went cold with panic, flashing me back to being a small kid when I’d turned a delivery crate into a hideout. Once inside, claustrophobia had attacked my little mind and I was screaming by the time my mom pulled me out. Ever since, I’ve avoided tight, enclosed spaces. I shoved against the door again with no result, and that’s when I noticed a tiny red button above it. It had to be the release, so I pushed it.
The door did not open.
Instead, something began to rumble.
A moment later the world fell out from under me.
I screamed as the box of the oven plummeted, quickly and smoothly. The lightbulb dimmed and lit, dimmed and lit, and I was so freaked out by what was happening that I gaped at it like a hypnotized moth as it tracked my rapid descent. Finally I felt the box begin to slow, and when it stopped, the lightbulb popped on brightly. A vacuum of wind rose behind me, and the back of the oven separated top to bottom, like a small set of inverted elevator doors. I slid out into semidarkness, where, a few feet away, a heavy metal door sat in a brick wall. I approached slowly, squinting at words printed in gold paint that were chipped and worn.
CLUB MOLASSES
PASSWORD REQUIRED
Looking closer, I saw that the O in “Molasses” was a glass peephole.
I pushed open the door, which swung heavily on old hinges, and stepped inside a high-ceilinged, brick-walled room filled with stale air. A circle of natural light fell from somewhere high above. Squinting up, I saw that I was deep at the bottom of what, to the outside world, appeared to be the bakery’s smokestack. I peered through murkiness like a goldfish in dirty water, spotted a switch on the wall and flipped it, and time reversed itself by ninety years. Green sconces lit the walls while brass lamps with green glass shades burned at opposite ends of a long curved bar trimmed in leather. There were no barstools, no bottles or glasses behind the bar, only a long mirror stained with age that bore the words Club Molasses in curved golden script and my reflection staring back. Across from the bar was a raised, empty platform that I recognized as a bandstand; in front of it spread a parquet dance floor with a large CM set in an intricate pattern. One wall was stacked with dozens of old, empty barrels, one on top of another reaching high into the air like a rounded, wooden pyramid, each stamped with the image of a maple leaf and the words 100 % PURE CANADIAN MOLASSES. I crossed the floor to a line of old-fashioned steel and wooden slot machines. I’d seen ones like them only in movies, and a place like this in one movie in particular.
Doug’s favorite, Some Like It Hot.
In the opening scene, two musicians play bass and clarinet in a speakeasy.
Secret nightclubs flourished during Prohibition, providing jazz, gambling, illegal booze, and stealthy good times to Chicagoans.
Later in the movie, the musicians witness the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, a bloody, real-life incident that happened in Chicago in 1929. Gangsters disguised as Chicago cops machine-gunned seven rival gangsters execution-style in a North Side warehouse. Speakeasies like this one, operated by those same violent criminals, were hidden in the most unlikely places.
In barely a whisper, I heard myself say, “Dad. . what you didn’t tell me was a lot.”
Then again, I thought, he said I could handle whatever came my way and more.
That was good, because there was more, covered by a tarp.
It was a large, oblong mass, squatting in the shadows. I knocked my fist against it, hearing the report of metal beneath my knuckles. I lifted the edge of the material and saw thick tires, and then rolled the whole thing back, revealing a silver two-door convertible with its top down that looked more like a rocket ship than a car. It was wedge shaped-high in back descending to a pointed hood that bore the silver image of a horse kicking up on its hind legs. Carefully, I opened the driver’s side door to an interior of black leather that was thick and tight, punctuated by a five-speed gearshift edged in chrome. When my mom taught me to drive, she insisted that I learn how to operate a manual transmission like this one, her theory being that if I was going to learn to do something, I should learn it completely. I looked from an odometer showing a grand total of four miles to a speedometer showing a maximum speed of two hundred and twenty miles per hour to a box with a silver bow on the passenger seat.
I slid in and slid the top off of the box.
I lifted out an operator’s manual that read 2000 FERRARI 360 SPIDER.
I put it aside and removed a small plain card bearing a message in black ink.
It was in Italian and I inspected it closely, doing my best to decipher both the poor handwriting and the verbs. My lips moved as I read-
Caro Antonio-
Un piccolo simbolo per la nascita di suo figlio, Luigi. Un bambino maschile e il massimo regalo che un uomo puo avere!
Fedelmente-
I Ragazzi
I read it again, not completely sure of my translation but sure enough that on the one hand, my head swam, and on the other, my blood boiled. Basically, I read-
Dear Anthony-
A small token for the birth of your son, Lou. A masculine child is the greatest gift a man can have!
Loyally-
The Boys
In the head-swimming column: Who were “The Boys”? Why were they loyal to my dad? And why had they given him a car for Lou? In the blood-boiling column: What did they mean that a masculine child is the greatest gift? Did my dad agree with them? And where the hell was my car? I looked at the manual again-2000 Ferrari 360 Spider, the year my brother was born-and remembered my mother saying how the Lincoln had been a gift from some “friends” to Grandpa Enzo for the birth of my dad. I understood now that if my dad had been born a girl, Uncle Buddy would be the one driving the sleek Lincoln convertible instead of the crappy red one. I didn’t know much about Ferraris other than that they were fast and expensive, which meant that “The Boys” weren’t just loyal, they were really loyal. I looked around, trying to figure out how in the world someone had gotten a car down here, and absorbed the forgotten quality of the room. It was like a museum that had been closed for a long time. Everything, including the twelve-year-old sports car that had never been driven, was dusty, unused, or antiquated.
Except, I now noticed, a door.
It was near the bar, in a small, dark alcove.
It looked twenty-first century, and it looked locked.
The shock of the existence of this place-a speakeasy with a Ferrari in middle earth, far below the bakery-had numbed my powers of observation. But I saw the door now, and was drawn to it like a magnet. Whether it was some sort of weak joke or it had been made that way, the door bore a small sign that read EMPLOYEES ONLY. I put my ear against its cool metal and heard nothing, and then turned its handle that didn’t move. A keypad of numbers glowed next to the door, mocking me with its endless possibility of combinations. I tried my birthday-4-29-1996-and then Lou’s-6-26-2000-my mom’s, my dad’s, my grandparents’, my social security number, phone numbers, and nothing. The keypad remained mute, the door locked. My blood began to boil again over a cold blue flame. I’d come this far, this deep, with every inch of myself bruised and a couple of cracked ribs just to encounter “Employees Only”? Without thinking, my body running on its own electrical circuits, I heard myself murmur, “Son of a bitch!” as I threw a hard right full of frustration at the keypad.
My knuckles popped off plastic and metal.
The keypad cracked and buzzed and squeaked and smoked and sizzled.
The door yawned.
Shaking the punch out of my right hand, pushing open the door with my left, I entered a small room that was nearly empty except for a battered desk with a lightbulb hanging over it. I pulled the cord and it dropped a circle of light, and I heard a gentle scratching at my feet. Looking down, I saw a rat looking up, sniffing the air, sniffing at me. There was nothing threatening about it-it just seemed to be inspecting me-and then it turned and skittered away, and I watched it disappear behind an enormous map of Chicago that covered almost an entire wall, as yellow as parchment, with streets and avenues drafted in perfect lines. It showed dozens of old structures in amazing detail-the Monadnock Building, North Avenue Beach House, the Biograph Theater, even Wrigley Field. I stared at the ballpark, my eye drawn to the accuracy of the main gate sign, and noticed that something circular gleamed around the C in “Chicago”-as in “Home of the Chicago Cubs.” Looking closer, I saw it was a tarnished but still bright ring hewn from brass. It was odd. But then, everything was odd, including the stickpins with colored heads-red, blue, black, purple, green-stuck into neighborhoods. The head of each pin was also lettered-the blue one carried a B, the black one an S, and so on, while the red pin, which was stuck directly on the map where the bakery existed, bore a small, sharp R.
“R for. . Rispoli?” I murmured.
I leaned back on the desk and touched something cold. Looking down, I saw a steel briefcase covered in a thick layer of dust. A note written in my dad’s hand sat on top. I picked it up, blew away the dust, and read, “In case of emergency.” It was a link to him, and I turned it over looking for more words, but there were none.
I tried the latch, which was locked.
I lifted the briefcase, feeling its contents shift.
Every instinct in my body tingled with certainty that the notebook was locked inside that briefcase.
I looked at my dad’s note again and questions flooded my mind-how long had the briefcase been there, and what sort of emergency? Of course, my entire life was now one big emergency, but if it had sat long enough to collect dust, what had my dad been anticipating? I recalled my parents’ mysterious conversations about “the right thing to do.” Had they done it, whatever it was, and it led to this-they and Lou disappeared from the face of the earth, and me far below it? My last question-how did he know I’d survive to find the briefcase at all?
I think the answer is that he didn’t, but that he had to pin his hope on something.
What I knew for sure, and instantly, was that the briefcase I now held was the object of Uncle Buddy’s relentless search of the bakery.
I remembered my dad saying he would never find it, which meant Uncle Buddy had no idea that Club Molasses existed. It meant my grandpa and dad knew, but that they’d never told my uncle. If that was true, then Uncle Buddy was correct-my dad had held information from him. But why? And then in the next instant my newest best friend, paranoia, told me to quit asking questions, take the briefcase, and beat it, and figure out the “whys” when I was safe. I turned for the door and noticed a black-and-white framed photo on the wall. I peered closely at the image of a thick, balding guy in a light summer suit sitting in the front row of a grandstand while a baseball player in an old Cubs uniform autographed a ball. The balding guy was familiar, but it was a small fellow a couple seats to his right whom I recognized.
Actually, it was the Rispoli nose I recognized.
It was Great-Grandpa Nunzio, trying not to look at the camera.
An inscription read, To N.R.-Thanks for the cookies! Your pal-A.C.
I considered taking the photo but the whole thing suddenly felt like grave robbery and I was desperate to get topside, back to the sun and sky. I left the office and crossed the dance floor, took one long look back, and then climbed into the oven and pushed the red button. It rumbled and began to levitate quickly, the lightbulb flashing and dimming as it rose. The box shuddered and stopped, the door whooshed open, and I was back in the kitchen.
I was looking at Uncle Buddy.
Greta was facing him.
She glanced over his shoulder and her eyebrows jumped when she saw me.
Uncle Buddy waved a Sick-a-Rette in one hand, saying, “I swear, when I get my hands on her. .”
“Oh my God,” Greta cried, pointing at me. “Your niece! She’s. . she’s in the oven, Benito! Behind you!”
“What the hell are you. .?” Buddy turned slowly, his jaw falling when he saw me. And then he saw the briefcase. And then he was a bull seeing red, barreling across the kitchen. My hand shot out and hit the button, the door shut, and the box rumbled and fell. Uncle Buddy’s voice trailed after me, saying, “That’s mine, Sara Jane! I’m coming to get it. .!”
I had no doubt he was telling the truth.
He meant right now, this instant.
My heart was hammering in time to his violent determination.
As soon as I stepped out of the box, the doors closed and it rose away. Uncle Buddy had figured out how to recall it, and would be stuffing himself inside any second. I ran into Club Molasses and slammed the door, but the old lock didn’t work. Hiding inside the Ferrari was silly, crouching behind the bar even sillier, so I sprinted into the office and slammed the door, hoping it would seal itself, but I’d destroyed the keypad. My mind went into lockdown as I paced-waiting, waiting-until I heard the elevator arrive. Uncle Buddy’s footsteps on the dance floor moved slowly with surprise at what he was seeing for the first time. I knew that there was no way out, and that my only option now was to fight. I might not save myself, but I would at least do damage to my uncle-he would lose an eye or the use of a limb before he did me in.
His footsteps stopped, it was silent, and then they started again.
He’d spotted the door and was moving toward it.
In a mockingly sweet voice, he called out, “Sara Jane! It’s your favorite uncle!”
His tone was so sickly disappointing that it drained me of resolve. Instead of going forward with a fist cocked, I cowered against the wall, hugging the briefcase.
“Sara Jane! I know you’re in there!”
I couldn’t stand to see his smug grin, so I turned to the wall, closed my eyes, and leaned my head against the map, with the tiny metal C of the Wrigley Field sign raised against my forehead.
“I owe you one, kid. I never would’ve found this place on my own!”
I heard a faint buzz and my body tilted forward a few inches.
A puff of earthy-smelling wind swirled around my head.
“Oh, Sara Ja-ane!”
I can now state with complete authority that the first step through a secret door that opens suddenly in an underground wall is helped mightily by the fact that someone may be about to kill you. I didn’t hesitate any longer than it took to hear Uncle Buddy’s hand turn the office doorknob, and I leaped through it. As soon as my feet touched a platform, the door hissed shut and I was standing in musty semidarkness. I saw a thin wire running from the back of the Wrigley Field C to a spring-the C was a hidden button that opened the door. I also discovered that the little drawing of Buckingham Fountain disguised another peephole, and I peered through it just as Uncle Buddy pushed into the office.
“He-e-e-re’s. .,” he announced, looking around the empty room as his fat face fell. “Buddy?”
I would have loved to watch him pull open desk drawers as if I’d shrunk and were hiding inside, or listen to his soliloquy of obscenities when he finally realized that I had vanished. But I couldn’t take the chance of being found out, and turned to a staircase that descended deep into shadows. The staircase fell forever, lower and lower, and I stared at it, thinking that every new discovery plunged me deeper into darkness. I touched a cool, crumbling brick wall and squinted at the painted image of a hand pointing downward. On the other side of the map, furniture was kicked and Uncle Buddy’s first F-bomb dropped. I took a hesitant step, then another, using only the screen of my phone for illumination. Light fixtures lined the wall, some holding ancient burned-out bulbs, some none at all, with the pointing hands appearing each time the staircase took a twist or turn. Finally, when it seemed like I was about to arrive on hell’s doorstep, a rectangle of light appeared at the bottom of the stairs, glowing above a metal door. I laid a hand against it as a rumble sounded in the distance, quickly growing louder, and wind played at my feet.
The door fought me on rusty hinges, then scraped open.
I pushed through just in time to watch a subway train barrel past.
It shuddered to a stop at the far end of the platform, and I ran for it.
I jumped onto the last car and fell into a seat right before the doors slid shut. It was empty except for a woman seated across from me. She was perfectly coiffed and crisply dressed in a black suit with an elbow resting on a black leather briefcase as she inspected a folded newspaper. I slumped across from her in the extra-large, now-filthy EMT shirt, freaky sweat pants, and crooked bloody head bandage while squeezing the steel briefcase to my chest as if my life depended on it, which it did. I felt her eyes flick up and inspect me, and when I met her gaze, she executed an old-time Chicago move-the polite but defensive small smile and a nod.
I returned the gesture.
She returned to her newspaper.
Just two hardworking ladies making the daily commute.