Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 1

Beads of sweat dripped down the bulldozer operator’s face as she reached over to turn off her engine. “Hey, Joe,” Hannah Creager yelled, “throw me that bottle of water, will you?”

Seventeen-year-old Joe Hardy grabbed a bottle and tossed it up to her. She took a sip and surveyed the ground she had just leveled.

“Nice job,” Joe said, glancing at the same flat section of the foundation pit that was forty feet below street level on a construction site in the section of New York City called Hell’s Kitchen.

Joe looked up at the rising steel structure of QuadCom. Eventually, he knew, it would look like a stack of open boxes rising like a flight of stairs suspended in midair. The whole structure would be supported by a steel tower.

Joe guessed that Hannah was in her early twenties, and wondered how she ended up driving a bulldozer. “How’d you learn to work one of these things?” he asked.

“I learned on my daddy’s lap,” she said, pausing to tuck her straw-colored hair back under her bandanna. “He works for an excavating company. On the weekends I used to beg him to take me along. This job is a dream come true.” She paused, then added, “I just wish Ferris would hghten up a little.”

Joe knew what Hannah meant about Nick Ferris, the contractor Hannah worked for. Joe and his older brother, Frank, had just been up to the fifteenth floor of the steel frame under construction to deliver some plan changes to Ferris, whose company was building QuadCom for developer and newspaper mogul Ace Berg-hoff. “He’s not exactly Prince Charming,” Joe said, thinking about Ferris’s gruff manner. “But at least you know where he stands.”

“I guess.” Hannah sighed. “But I’d sure rather be working for your boss.”

Frank and Joe were spending the summer working for QuadCom’s architect, Richard Michaels. “Yeah, Michaels is pretty cool,” Joe said. “Not that we see that much of him.”

As Joe watched Hannah take command of the massive machine, he saw Frank waving him over.

Frank was standing on the other end of the pit with a man named Dave Kaiser. Dave was one of the carpenters who’d built the wooden forms into which concrete was to be poured to secure the foundation and support the whole tower. Joe had often stopped to admire the speed with which Dave could drive a nail.

Now the frame was a confusion of beams, columns, and a multitude of crisscrossing supports— most of which would be dismantled when the ascending stepped frame finally made contact with the support tower. The whole project required a high degree of technical skill, all so that Michaels could achieve his dream of building a “vertical village.” Each level would provide its residential and business occupants with an open-air plaza.

Frank definitely scored big when he set up these summer jobs with Michaels, Joe thought It had started when Frank wrote a letter to Michaels criticizing the Comfortage, a building Michaels had designed for Ace Berghoff. The architect was impressed. He asked Frank to come down to his office in New York City to discuss his objections to the superfunctional skyscraper, with its elevator shafts and all the rest of the service equipment on display outside the frame. Frank had come home that night with two contracts for sunmier work.

As Joe approached Frank, he could see that he and Dave Kaiser, a slight, bearded man with glasses, were looking up at the workers on the top of one of the four concrete footings that had recently been poured. The massive cyhnder, Still encased in the curved plywood forms and two-by-four framing, was ten feet in diameter and rose forty feet from the base of the pit to ground level.

“Hey, Dave,” Joe yelled over the noise of the hammering workers, “what are those guys building up there? I thought the pillar was finished.”

“Joe, you won’t believe what’s going on here,” Dave began, his dark, serious eyes fixed on Joe’s.

“It looks like they’ve decided to build the support tower out of wood?” Joe joked.

“No, I’m serious, Joe, this is really bad news,” Dave said in hushed tones, as if he were afraid someone might overhear. “Yesterday the layout man—the guy who figures out where to place the columns—found he’d made a bad mistake. These pillars are all a foot out of position.”

“So they’ve got to make them wider so the support tower fits, right?” Joe knew the steel frame that would go on top couldn’t be altered, because it was made of carefully engineered steel tubes with precision joints. But pouring some extra concrete didn’t seem like such a big deal.

Dave shook his head. “If a small house’were going on top, sure. But these pillars have to hold the weight of the tower and all the horizontal and vertical forces generated by the building above it.”

“Well, Michaels must think it’s okay,” Joe said.

“That’s just it,” Dave responded, pulling Joe by the arm so he could whisper m his ear. “I don’t think Ferris told him.”

Joe looked at Frank and then up at the top of the column. “There are steel columns embedded in these pillars, aren’t there?”

“Exactly,” Dave responded, nodding grimly. “And I think they have to line up exactly with the columns of the tower.”

“So why is Ferris doing this?” Joe asked.

“Because he doesn’t have the guts to do the right thing,” Dave answered.

“You mean, demolish them all and start over?” Joe was amazed by the idea. “It would mean a delay of weeks, wouldn’t it?”

“Right again. And think of what it would cost. On the other hand,” he added with a smirk, “if you quickly add the six inches and get on with it, who will know?”

Frank spotted the building inspector. Ken Silver, checking out the pillar at the far end of the pit. “Silver will know,” he said, watching the inspector as he walked with Ferris away from the pillar. “You see, Dave, there’s no evil plot to fool anybody. Ferris is explaining the whole thing to Silver right now.”

“Oh, so you think that means it’s all on the up and up, huh? I’ve got news for you. Ken Silver is about the sleaziest official in New York City. He thinks his main job is to collect bribes from the likes of Ferris.”

“Look, Dave,” Frank said calmly, “if it will make you feel better, we’ll ask Michaels about it.”

A worker suddenly walked out from behind the pillar, gave Dave a quick look, and then headed toward the ramp leading out of the pit.

“Oh, man, do you think he heard me?” Kaiser asked. He looked around nervously. “Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone you talked to me,” he said as he hurried off.

Frank and Joe watched Dave walk over to one of the pillars and begin climbing up a ladder that was built into the wooden frame.

“He sure seemed jumpy,” Joe said.

“Yeah,” Frank replied, “but if he’s right about this being a cover-up of a major flaw, and if he’s right about Silver being corrupt, he should worry. This is major.”

“Let’s check it out, then,” Joe said. “We’ll go straight to Ferris about it. I’m not afraid of the guy, are you?”

Frank smiled. “You’re on, little bro’,” he said. “Lead the way.”

“I saw him take the elevator up to the frame. Let’s go,” Joe said as they headed to the temporary elevator leading up to the fifteenth floor of the structure.

Eventually the building would slant up to the fortieth floor, and the support tower would rest under the thirtieth. This would leave the last ten floors jutting out into open space, as though defying gravity. Eventually the elevator would ride in a glass tube attached underneath the giant slanting girder that supported the layered squares of QuadCom.

As they rode up in the rickety cage, open at the top, they could see the Comfortage a block away, glistening in the midmorning sun.

“That building doesn’t look like it was easy to build, but somehow I think this one must be a lot harder,” Joe said.

The elevator clanked to a stop and Joe pulled the lever that opened the half-door to the cage. A metal grid walkway with thin handrails led to a section of the frame that had been temporarily floored over the plywood. It didn’t take long to find Nick Ferris going over the plans that Frank and Joe had delivered an hour and a half earlier.

“So,” Ferris barked as he looked up from the plans, “your boss thinks we can start building an extra floor of the steel frame before the next concrete pour. I sure hope he knows what he’s doing.”

“Well,” Frank said, “I think it was actually the structural engineering firm that came up with the suggestion.”

“All the same to me,” Ferris said. “They sit in their offices fiddling with numbers while I’m up here making sure the thing is really put together right. But when you’ve got a crazy structure like this, I don’t think it pays to experiment.”

“Yes, sir,” Frank said. He basically agreed with Ferris that it seemed hke a better idea to wait until another section of the steel frame had been encased in concrete before proceeding with another floor of the frame.

He was thinking of how to bring up the subject of the pillars when Joe spoke up. “Speaking of composite steel and concrete columns, we were wondering if it’s a good idea to try to extend the width of those footings.”

“Oh, you were, were you.” Ferris stood up from his makeshift desk. His unbent frame now stood a head above Joe and Frank. He pushed close to Joe, who was standing at the edge of the floor, which had no guardrail. “So you’re a concrete expert now,” he added with a toothy grin.

“No, sir,” Joe repHed, standing his ground and trying not to think of the fifteen stories of air behind him. “I just wanted to learn about the technique you’re using.”

Ferris laughed again and gave Joe an easy shove. Then, as quickly, Ferris grabbed Joe’s arms and pulled him back. The unexpected move caused Joe to lose his balance and he fell onto the floor.

“Trust me, boys,” Ferris howled in delight. “You’re better off not coming up here and bothering me with nosy little questions like that. Now run along.” He walked over to a worker and whispered something in his ear. The man, a beer-bellied iron worker whom Joe recognized as Zack

Mieli, smiled and began speaking inaudibly into his walkie-talkie.

Frank grabbed Joe by the arm and pulled him up. Joe started to say something and Frank squeezed hard on his bicep. “Can it, Joe. Let’s just get out of here.”

Joe nodded and the two got back onto the elevator. The car jolted to a start and began its slow descent. When they had reached the sixth floor, the car slammed to a halt with a loud clang. Then it started climbing, first slowly, then faster.

“Why are we going back up?” Joe asked, annoyance in his voice. “Can’t they wait two minutes until we’re down before they call the elevator up again?”

Frank felt his knees give a httle as he watched the beams of the elevator shaft whiz past. “I don’t think anyone called it back up. I think maybe it’s out of control.”

By the time they reached the fifteenth floor, there was no doubt about it. With only four floors left before the cage would hit the top of the shaft, the elevator showed no sign of slowing down.

Frank hit the red Emergency button. Nothing happened.

“We’re not stopping!” he cried. “We’re going to crash!”

Chapter 2

The elevator cage continued to speed upward. Suddenly it banged into the frame of the shaft, knocking the Hardys to the floor. A high-pitched screech filled the air, and the cage violently shook back and forth. Frank looked up to see the support wire flipping the pulley at the top of the frame. It would be only a few seconds before the cage hit the top—that is, if the wire or pulley didn’t break first.

Instinctively Joe got to his feet, grabbed Frank by the shoulders, and pulled, thrusting him over the half-door of the cage and out into the open air.

Without hesitating, Joe jumped after Frank, and the two seemed to hover for a moment in the air as the cage catapulted upward.

Then all they could hear was a deafening crash, and before they knew it they were sprawled on the walkway leading to the fifteenth floor. In shock, they watched as the elevator cage crashed into the frame nearby and then bounced over the edge.

Ferris ran to the edge and peered over. “Look out below!” he yelled as the cage hurtled down. A few seconds later the muted sound of the crash reached the Hardys, followed by shouts from below.

“You okay, Frank?” Joe asked as he slowly picked himself up.

“I think so,” Frank said, carefully testing his twisted right ankle. “Hey, that was a pretty good move, old buddy. I owe you one.”

Now Ferris was approaching, barking orders into his walkie-talkie. “You boys all right?” He directed his worried gaze up to the twisted elevator frame above them. “You’d be dead if you hadn’t jumped then and there,” he said somberly.

“Joe’s got good timing,” Frank said.

Ferris nodded, then abruptly turned to go. “Of course, you shouldn’t have been up here to begin with,” he said brusquely.

Joe and Frank stared at him in disbelief as he walked away. “Nice guy,” Frank said when he was out of earshot.

“Do you think this was his idea of a joke— one that somehow got out of hand?” Joe asked.

“If it was, he’s got a weird sense of humor,” Frank said. He walked over to the elevator shaft and peered down. The stiff support wire lay tangled at the bottom of the shaft. “Let’s go down and check it out,” he said with a determined look in his brown eyes.

Alongside the shaft was a ladder that still seemed to be stable, so they took it down. The farther down they went, the farther they got from the main building, which slanted off to the east. But they were close enough to hear people talking somewhere near the tenth floor.

The deep voice was muffled, but there was no mistaking it. Ferris seemed to be working over one of his men, but it was impossible to make out the words.

“He’s probably yelling at somebody for not roughing us up more,” Joe said, only half-joking.

“It sounds like he’s more upset that his elevator is broken,” Frank said dryly.

By the time they got to the bottom of the shaft, a crowd had gathered around the wreckage of the elevator car.

“You guys okay?” Hannah Creager called. “Somebody said you jumped from that thing.”

“Yeah,” Joe responded. “Frank must have pushed the wrong button. He’s done that before.”

While Joe joked with Hannah, Frank quickly saw what had gone wrong. On top of the huge flat iron plates that made up the counterweight was the banged-up remains of a commercial air compressor. Someone must have dropped it down the shaft, Frank figured, and perhaps did not realize that the large weight would not stop the elevator, but would cause it to reverse direction and lose control.

“It looks simple enough,” he said. “Ferris must have told his men to give us a scare. They must have found this compressor near the shaft and wheeled it over the edge.”

“It’s hard to believe they actually wanted to hurt us,” Joe said.

“If Dave is right about the pillars, they must not want Michaels to hear about it. Who knows how far Ferris would go to stop us.”

“Well, they didn’t scare us off,” Joe said, “so let’s call Michaels.”

“I’ll do it,” Frank said, grabbing the mobile phone they had been given for the job. “You go on down.” Frank could see that Hannah had climbed over the wreckage at the bottom of the shaft and was waiting for them to come down to ground level. When Joe looked to see her staring up at them, he smiled and climbed down the ladder.

Joe looked out to where the elevator cage lay flattened. “Anybody hurt?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” she said. She smiled when she looked up to see Frank climbing down. “Boy, was I worried about you guys.”

“Thanks, Hannah,” Frank said. “We could sure use a friend at a time like this.”

“Why don’t we hang out after work tonight?”

“Great,” Joe said.

“You’re on,” Frank added. “In the meantime, Michaels sounds very upset about these pillars. He’s coming right over to talk to Ferris. He says we’re welcome to stick around for the discussion.”

“Why, what’s wrong with the pillars?” Hannah asked.

“Come with me,” Joe said. “I’ll show you the problem.”

“You two go ahead,” Frank said. “I’m going over to the main gate to wait for Michaels.”

It wasn’t long before Frank could see the guard wave Michaels through the checkpoint at the entrance to the compound. Michaels’s tanned face looked unperturbed as he strolled through the gate toward Frank, his wavy black hair somehow unruffled by the wind blowing off the Hudson River. Frank couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark sunglasses, but his smile had the same reassuring look Frank had grown to expect from his self-confident boss in tough situations.

“Looks as though you’ve been trying to fix those pillars by yourself, Frank,” Michaels said as he looked Frank up and down. Frank realized that his shirt was torn and untucked, and his pants were dirty at the knees.

Frank quickly explained what had happened.

Michaels looked from the top of the elevator shaft down to the wreck on the ground that could easily have entombed the two Hardys. He stood there shaking his head, speechless.

Frank saw Michaels’s expression change again, and he turned to see Ferris stomping toward them from the base of the QuadCom frame. His hard hat cast a shadow over his face, but it was clear from his clenched fists that he was more upset than usual.

Flashing a smile that Frank could see took considerable effort, Michaels faced Ferris squarely. “Better slow down there, Nicko. We don’t want to add a heart attack to this mess.”

Ferris glared at Frank, indicating that he knew Frank had told him everything. If looks could kill, Frank thought, Pd be dead right now.

“Okay, let’s get this over with,” Ferris said, as he led the way down the ramp.

Everyone, including Joe and Hannah, watched silently as the architect chmbed up the ladder on one of the pillars. He studied the top of the pillar and spoke to one of the workers. It didn’t take long. Slowly he climbed down and with a set look on his face spoke to Ferris. “They’ll all have to come down,” he said quietly, with no trace of uncertainty. “I’ll go tell Berghoff.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Ferris shouted as Michaels calmly walked toward the ramp. “The delay would cost millions.”

Michaels turned quickly. “We can’t have the embedded steel columns that far out of line, and you should know that, Nick.” He looked at the Hardys. “Frank, Joe, you come with me.”

Back at the office of Michaels Associates, which was four long crosstown blocks away on Eighth Avenue, on the tower floor of a forty-story building, Frank and Joe stood outside Mi-chaels’s door, waiting to be called in. At the building site Michaels had called Ace Berghoff with the bad news, and they had arranged to meet right away.

Michaels had explained as they walked over to his office what he had not yet told Ferris. The blame for the mistake lay not with Ferris’s layout man, but with Michaels’s blueprint. Michaels had quickly spotted the error after talking to Frank on the phone. Even though the faulty work had been done by an assistant, Michaels knew that as lead architect for the project he would have to take the blame.

Frank found it strange to see the normally confident architect admit that he deserved to be raked over the coals for failing to catch the error.

Berghoff, a large, overweight man in his sixties with thick black hair, had shown up right away. His office and living quarters were on a huge yacht docked on the Hudson not far from Quad-Com and the Comfortage.

The door had slammed shut and the yelling had gone on for several minutes. Now it was quiet.

“You think they’re still alive?” Joe asked the secretary, Bianca Millard. Bianca was an elegantly dressed woman in her forties, with brown hair cut smartly above the collar and a straight posture that made her look all business. Joe had been working to get her to loosen up, and lately he’d had some success.

“I suspect they’re both very much alive—and now plotting to join forces against you two troublemakers,” Bianca said with a smile.

Just then the intercom buzzed, and Frank and Joe were whisked into Michaels’s office.

Michaels stood looking out the large plate-glass window. Berghoff, by contrast, looked hke a grizzly bear sniffing its prey. He had just finished with Michaels, and now some new victims had been thrown in with him—Joe and Frank.

“Well, well, if it isn’t our young heroes!” he boomed as he rushed forward to lay his heavy hands on their shoulders.

“Not really, sir,” Joe replied, undaunted by the big man. “We were just lucky enough to jump out of trouble.”

“But somehow or other my operation has just jumped into trouble,” Berghoff said, dropping his arms and walking away. “Big trouble. Those pillars were built to last forever. And now they’ve got to be blown up.”

He turned to face the Hardys. “Of course, safety is my main concern. But you can understand my position. Now the tower will go up late and we’ll have to stop work on the frame. I’ll have all kinds of trouble with the union when they hear about the temporary layoffs.”

He sat down and bared his teeth in a menacing smile. “All because you boys had a conversation with some nervous Nellie. What was that fella’s name again?”

Frank looked over to see Michaels leaning against the glass, off in his own world. Then he glanced over at Joe. He knew they were both wondering whether an informant had told Berg-hoff about David Kaiser. Better stay cool, Frank thought to himself.

“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” Frank said. “We just asked some of the workers what they were doing. It seemed odd that forms were being built on the side of the pillars.”

Berghoff got up from his chair and walked toward them. “Nice try, boys. But you’re in over your heads. I’ve been running a newspaper for two decades, and this is my tenth high-rise project. I just don’t let things happen behind my back.”

Now he was standing close enough for Frank and Joe to smell the garlic on his breath. “Let’s put it this way. If you want to keep your jobs, and if you want this fellow to keep his job, then you’ll tell me his name right now.”

Without hesitating, Frank looked Berghoff right in the eye. “Nobody told us what to do. We did what we thought was best, and you ought to be grateful.”

“I am—grateful to be rid of three troublemakers. You and your Mr. Kaiser are fired!”

Chapter 3

“I THINK you’re making a big mistake, Mr. Berg-hoff,” Joe said, his feet planted firmly and his arms crossed. He realized that Berghoff had guessed all along that Dave Kaiser had spoken to them and had just been trying to call their bluff. “You’re firing people who are telling you what you need to hear, and you’re spying on them like a tyrant.”

“If it hadn’t been for Dave Kaiser,” Frank added, “you’d be setting yourself up for a disaster—not just a delay.”

Berghoff bared his teeth again. He seemed amused by the confrontation. “So you boys are engineers as well as heroes, are you?”

“No. But if you don’t believe there’s a problem with the pillars, why don’t you hire an engineer to check them out?” Frank asked.

“As a matter of fact,” Berghoff said, “I’ve already called in the structural engineering firm. They’re over at QuadCom right now.”

He brushed past Frank and Joe, then stopped at the door. “I’m off to play golf. Oh, by the way,” he said, hghting a cigar. “You boys report to me from now on. Not every day. Just when I call you. Otherwise, stay here and keep Michaels in line.” He chuckled to himself as he gave his suspenders a firm snap.

Neither Joe nor Frank knew quite how to handle this curve ball. They had been fired and rehired inside of a minute. And how could they accept this arrangement without insulting Michaels? And yet it sounded too interesting to pass up. They both looked over to see Michaels’s reaction.

“It’s okay, guys,” Michaels said with a smile. “I deserve all the scolding Mr. Berghoff wants to pour on me.” Now he seemed to have his old charm back, though Joe wasn’t sure how genuine it was. “But I’m sure he doesn’t mean to iuterfere in the workings of this office.”

“On the contrary, Richard,” Berghoff responded. “I’ll do anything to shake you architects up and get you to see the reality of the business world. And I’m going to start interfering by telling these gentlemen to take the rest of the day off. Then I want them both on board my yacht for dinner—^with dates if they like—at seven o’clock sharp.”

“No objections to that,” said Michaels, looking at Frank and Joe blankly.

“Of course not,” Berghoff said. “What about it, boys?”

“This sounds like an offer we can’t refuse,” Joe said, not missing a beat.

“Then it’s settled,” Berghoff said as he walked out of the office.

It was good to get out on the hot sidewalk and walk among the bustling crowd of short-sleeved tourists and businesspeople on Eighth Avenue. Frank was wearing a monogrammed dress shirt that Michaels had let him borrow.

“Hey, Frank,” Joe said. “It’s one o’clock and I’m starving. I think we deserve a pretty good lunch, don’t you?”

“What’s not good in midtown Manhattan? The question is, what’s close and fast?” Every day they’d been bringing bag lunches from their home in nearby Bayport, so they were both anxious to try some of the local cuisine.

Joe spotted an Italian restaurant across the street. “Do you see what I see?” he asked, sure that Frank would have the same reaction—an irresistible craving for pasta and pizza.

It was near the end of the peak lunch hour, so they walked into the restaurant, which looked as though it had been around for a long time, and headed for a table near the window. The decor was old but well-maintained. Dark carved mahogany tables with marble tops matched the paneled walls.

“We’re a long way from Mr. Pizza in Bayport,” Joe said.

“I’ll say. Look at all the different kinds of pizza.” Frank was scanning the menu in vain for the classic four-meat pizza he usually ordered.

“Speaking of Mr. Pizza,” Joe said, “I wonder if Tony would know anything about the situation we’re in.” Their friend Tony Prito worked at Mr. Pizza, but Joe wasn’t thinking of Tony’s expertise in the pizza department. His father worked construction in the New York area, and Tony loved to relay stories that he’d heard from him.

Frank knew what Joe meant. There were a lot of odd things about what had happened that morning, and Frank felt the same urge to talk openly to someone who knew the business. “Maybe I’ll go give him a ring. And I’ll see if Hannah minds if we all eat at Berghoff’s tonight.”

He looked to see if there was a pay phone in the back, since they were only supposed to use the cellular phone for business, and then stood up. “Hey, Joe,” he said, “you mind if I call Gallic?” Gallic Shaw was Frank’s steady girlfriend, and he couldn’t imagine going to Berghoff’s without her.

“Of course not. That’ll make Hannah my date. Vanessa will be mad she missed this dinner, but she’s busy tonight.” Vanessa was Joe’s steady girlfriend, but “steady” didn’t mean the same thing to Joe as it did to Frank.

The waitress came to take their orders, and Frank shpped by her to make the calls.

Tony didn’t have much time to talk, so Frank concentrated on one of the more serious issues of the morning. “So if the position of the pillars was going to be such a problem, could the inspector really be paid to look the other way?”

“I don’t know, Frank,” Tony responded. “It sounds hke there’s more to it. Maybe the builder had convinced the inspector that he could fix it. My dad always says there’s nothing that can’t be fixed on a construction site. Maybe the architect is being a perfectionist.”

“But if the builder and the inspector thought the retrofit would work, why was someone so worried about keeping it quiet that they tried to scare us off?” Frank asked.

“Who knows? Anything’s possible in construction. But hey, I’ve got to spht. Call me later and tell me how lousy—and expensive—the pizza is in the city.”

While Frank spoke to Tony, Joe sat wondering mainly about what Ace Berghoff had in mind for them. Their jobs with Michaels had not been exactly glamorous so far. They mostly acted as messengers or helped out the secretarial staff. Did Berghoff really have something interesting in mind for them, or did he just want to throw his weight around in front of Michaels?

While he was staring out the window, imagining having dinner on Berghoff’s yacht, three men had entered the restaurant and were now standing over him, pressing in close.

“Hey, Rita,” one of them shouted from behind in a thick Brooklyn accent. “Why d’ya put this kid at our table?”

Jolted out of his daydream, Joe jerked back to see the bulging stomach of Ken Silver, the building inspector.

“Oh, never mind, Rita,” Silver said. “We know this kid. Fine then, we’ll all sit here.”

Rita came over, looked at Joe, and shrugged. “What can I do?” she said with mock exasperation. “If I throw them out, he’ll condemn the building. We’re stuck with them for now, I guess.”

“That’s fine,” Joe said pohtely. “There’s room for Mr. Silver and his friends.” There wasn’t really, not when Frank was included, but Joe didn’t feel like making trouble, and he was curious to find out something about Silver.

“How is it that you know my name? We haven’t actually met, have we?” Silver asked, sitting down next to Joe and making the chair creak under his weight.

“I guess you’re kind of a celebrity at the building site,” Joe responded. “I’m just a flimky.”

Silver smiled and looked at his friends. He raised his eyebrows and chuckled as though sharing a private joke with them. “From what I understand you and your brother are making awfully big waves for a couple of flunkies.”

Joe wondered whether their role in the morning’s events was now common knowledge at QuadCom or whether Silver had gotten the story straight from Ferris. “There were waves all right,” Joe said, “but I don’t think we were the ones making them.”

“You’ve got to expect to get into a Httle trouble when you make trouble,” Silver continued matter-of-factly as he scanned the menu. “By the way, let me introduce you to my colleagues, Danny Blustein and Olgar Halzynitsyn. They’re with the local steelworkers union.”

“I see,” Joe said, beginning to wonder if it was an accident that Silver and his muscular and not very friendly-looking “colleagues” had shown up. “Glad to meet you.”

The two thick-necked men, dressed in well-tailored light business suits, seemed uninterested in conversation. They both nodded silently.

“I don’t know, Joe,” Silver said. “Maybe Danny and Olgar are feeling a httle unhappy about what happened this morning. Maybe they’re thinking, ‘Gee, before these two fellows showed up, everything was going great.’ Now it looks like some of the good people they represent might be laid off. Do you think that might be affecting their mood a little, Joey?”

“Look,” Joe said, “all we did was tell our boss we thought there was a problem. Vm sorry if a building delay would cause problems for people.”

“Oh, the kid’s sorry,” Silver said. “Doesn’t that make you boys feel better?”

Remaining stone-faced, the two men shook their heads no.

“Ah, that’s too bad, Joey,” Silver said.

Danny Blustein cleared his throat and put his clenched fists slowly down on the table. “You see,” he said in a raspy voice, “we like you to check with us before you monkey around with people’s jobs.” He kept looking at the table. Then he reached for a knife and started bending it, the way other people might bend a straw. “We got a tradition in this business. If a person takes something that belongs to somebody else, he owes that person something.”

He looked up briefly at Joe and then stretched his neck to adjust his shirt collar. His eyes had the cold, remote look of a predator.

The waitress brought the pizzas Joe had ordered for himself and Frank, and the other three reached for shces. Silver began eating as though nothing unusual was happening,

“Now, I don’t know what you got to offer, Joey,” Blustein began again. “But we got to find something.”

“How about the boy’s wallet?” Olgar suggested in a thick Russian accent. “Maybe he has credit cards.”

“That might be good for starters,” Blustein said. “Let’s have your wallet then, kid.”

“Look,” Joe said, starting to stand up and looking over his shoulder to the back hall where Frank had gone, “this has been fun. But I just remembered Fm late for a karate lesson.”

“Very funny,” said Blustein as he and Olgar clamped on to each of Joe’s arms and pulled him back down. “I’m scared of this kid now, aren’t you, Olgy?”

“I’d advise you to cooperate, son.” Silver sighed. “These gentlemen are professionals.”

Professional what? Joe wondered. It didn’t really matter. He wasn’t about to let two thugs take his wallet in the middle of a restaurant. But he wasn’t prepared for what came next.

Before he could react he found himself immobilized by a tight hammerlock around his neck. Danny Blustein had reached over with lightning speed and pushed Joe’s head down onto the table.

“You guys are crazy,” Joe gasped, unable to move. Then he felt Olgar reach into his back pocket and take his wallet.

Chapter 4

Rita came rushing down the hallway and grabbed Frank by the arm. “Your friend’s in trouble!”

Without waiting to say goodbye to CalHe, he dropped the phone and ran down the hallway. When he reached the dining room, all he could see at first was Ken Silver, the back of another man sitting in Frank’s chair, and a third man standing up and bending over the table. Another step forward revealed Joe’s contorted figure beneath the man. Joe was writhing and the man was struggling to maintain control.

Frank froze for a moment in disbelief. What could be happening in the middle of the day in a restaurant in Manhattan, with everyone looking on? And why was Silver sitting there eating his pizza?

“Hey,” he heard hhnself shout, “let go of my brother!”

The man on top of Joe looked up and barked to his friend, “Take care of that one, Olgy.”

Before Olgar could move, Frank hurtled into Joe’s captor. If his instincts hadn’t taken over he might have tried a neat karate kick to the man’s neck. Now a messy flying tackle would have to do.

On impact Frank grabbed Blustein’s head from behind and wrenched it back with all his strength as the three of them—^Joe still entwined in the man’s grasp—crashed to the floor.

Joe was the first to get up. Now Olgar was bearing down, wielding a chair. Joe ducked down, then shot forward headfirst into Olgar’s abdomen, sending him sprawling backward onto the floor.

Meanwhile, Frank’s unlucky victim lay unconscious as Frank pushed him aside. Silver raced out the door and onto the street, Frank close behind. Before Frank got to the door, though, his legs were pulled out from under him. Olgar had tackled him. Frank got up on his knees and gave Olgar a punch in the stomach.

Then Joe was there pulling Olgar off and sending him careening into the counter. When the dazed man got up and saw both Frank and Joe, unscathed, coming at him, he took off running down the hallway to the rear exit.

Frank looked over to see the man he had tackled splayed out on his back, unmoved, and bleeding from a cut on his head. He ran over, grabbed a cloth napkin from the table, and pressed hard against the cut to stop the bleeding.

Frank made sure not to move the man. “Somebody call an ambulance—and the pohce!” he yelled. Joe was now by his side, looking at Danny Blustein. “What just happened, Joe?” Frank asked, out of breath.

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “These guys just showed up and started harassing me. Silver said the two thugs, Danny Blustein and Olgar Something, are with the steelworkers union.” Joe felt in his back pocket and then quickly scanned the floor near the table. “It looks like Olgar made off with my wallet.”

“All right, everybody!” Rita shouted above the din of the onlookers, who were now emerging from behind the counter where they had taken refuge during the fight. “The show’s over. Everything’s okay now. You can go back to your tables.”

As people began returning to their meals, with just a few customers leaving hastily, Rita approached Frank and Joe. “Boy, I’ve seen that sleazy inspector bring muscle in here before, but this takes the cake,” she fumed. “Now you watch. The police will come, ask a few questions, say they’ll do the best they can—and then nothing will happen.”

“But we can identify all of them, no sweat,” Joe said. “The whole restaurant saw what happened.”

“Yeah, and even if they get arrested, with their fancy lawyers those characters will be out of trouble in no time,” Rita said while picking up a broken chair. “They’ll probably be back here in a few weeks, expecting me to serve them.”

Joe was about to answer when he noticed that there was still some pizza left on the table. He stepped over Danny Blustein’s legs and grabbed a slice. “Well, anyway, Rita, you make good pizza here,” he said with his mouth fulL

Frank joined in and soon—after the ambulance had taken Blustein away and the pohce had come to fill out their report—Rita had brought them a fresh pizza and sodas on the house.

“Seems like a lot of people want us to roll over and play dead,” Joe said. Frank was driving the van from Bayport to pick up Hannah Creager for dinner on Berghoff s yacht. She lived in the borough of New York City called Queens, just a short ride from the Midtown Tunnel. They were going to take the tunnel under the East River to get to Manhattan, and then drive straight across town to the pier on the Hudson where Berghoff s yacht was docked.

“I didn’t mean play dead—^more like play Dad,” Joe punned. “You know, like he’s always saying, ‘Lie low and look out.’”

“I’m not sure lying low is your strong point, Joe,” Callie shot from the front passenger seat. She was wearing a short black dress, and her blond hair was braided and pinned up to expose the back of her long neck, which she turned only slightly as she spoke, avoiding Joe’s eyes. Joe knew without seeing it what sort of smirk she would have on her face.

“It seems to me, Joe,” she went on, “that your talent has more to do with acting low, no matter where you are.” Now she turned all the way around to look right at Joe. Her expression was pretty close to the one Joe had expected. “Which will make tonight’s dinner with the high and mighty Ace Berghoff an interesting experience.”

Joe didn’t waste time shooting back a response. “And I’m sure with Ms. Cordiality on board we’ll all feel like we’re on the Lx)ve Boat.”

“Okay, you guys, that’s enough,” Frank said. “Here’s Hannah’s house—and there’s … can that be Hannah?”

Joe wasn’t sure at first. He slid open the side door of the van and stepped out. The hair color seemed to be the same, but otherwise it was pretty hard to be sure. Did Hannah possibly have a sister? Joe felt awkward as he realized that his jaw had dropped.

“What’s wrong, Joe, haven’t you ever seen a construction worker dress up before?” she asked. Her normally pulled back hair was now full of imruly curls that spilled over her tanned, lightly made-up face. She wore a white knit dress, silvery stockings, and high heels.

“Yeah, I just didn’t… um,” Joe said, faltering once again.

“What Joe means to say,” Callie said as she opened her door and got out to meet Hannah, “is that he has no manners and is caught completely off guard by civilized people. Hi, I’m Callie Shaw.” She extended her hand, and the two smiled warmly at each other while Joe looked on.

“It sounds like you know Joe pretty well,” Hannah said as they all climbed into the van.

“When you date Frank, you get Joe in the bargain,” Callie explained with a chuckle. “It’s kind of a two-for-one deal.”

“Anyway, Joe,” Hannah said, “I really appreciate the invitation. We could have had our dinner another night. You probably have a …” Now she was hesitating.

“Girlfriend? Yes, I do,” Joe said. “Her name is Vanessa Bender. And I already talked to her about this. She doesn’t mind—she doesn’t expect to do everything with me. Besides, her mom has a really important deadline tomorrow and needs her help tonight.”

“Cool,” Hannah said. “What does her mom do?”

“She runs an animation studio in Bayport,” Joe replied. “Actually, they recently moved from Manhattan—and I guess they’re kind of bored anyway with dinner parties like the one tonight.”

“Well, now I really do feel better,” Hannah said, “but Vm not used to this kind of thing at all. In fact, I’m kind of nervous about it. I doubt Ace Berghoff has ever had a bulldozer operator to dinner.”

“So what are we?” Joe replied. “Gophers, I think, is the term.”

“Why is this happening, then?” asked Hannah. “I mean, Fm not complaining, but it is kind of weird. My dad couldn’t believe it.”

As Joe explained everything that had happened at the office—and then what had happened at Rita’s—to Hannah and Callie, Frank drove through the Queens Midtown Tunnel and out into the borough of Manhattan. It was six forty-five on a Monday night, so the traffic was beginning to thin. The air was clear and beginning to cool off a little. It would be a perfect night to eat out under the stars overlooking the Hudson River in Hell’s Kitchen.

“Hell’s Kitchen,” Frank said to himself. He remembered a story his father had once told him about how the area, now officially known as Clinton, had gotten the strange name. Back before all of the high-rise buildings, when Manhattan was still largely undeveloped, there was a hermit who lived under a bluff on the shore. Every night he would fight a fire, and from a distance the mysterious play of light and shadow would evoke the larger-than-hfe image that people said was the devil cooking dinner. Well, maybe it was just a legend, Frank thought, but it made a good story.

“Hey!” Frank exclaimed. “Look who’s walking down the gangplank!” They had pulled into the parking area beside Berghoff’s yacht.

“That’s Silver all right,” Joe said. “Let’s go after him!”

“No, not now, Joe,” Frank insisted. “We’ve got to deal with him carefully. I wonder what he’s doing here.”

“Will you look at that?” said Hannah. “He’s getting into a red Ferrari. Pretty fancy for a building inspector.”

“I’ll say!” Frank let out a low whistle.

They waited until Silver had driven off before getting out of the van and announcing themselves to the gatekeeper at the base of the gangway.

“Well, hello,” a lanky young man exuded when he saw Hannah and Callie walking up the plank. Frank guessed he was in his midtwenties. “Good going. Dad,” the young man added—loud enough for everyone to hear. “You score two points for this invitation.”

Great, Joe thought. Berghoff’s got a jerk for a son—I should have expected it.

“You’ll have to excuse my son,” Berghoff said, elbowing him aside so that he could greet his guests. “Scott’s never recovered from his years at boarding school. Oh, well, welcome aboard!”

“Come on, Dad,” Scott said, “you’ve got to admit you were thinking the same thing. Who are these lovely ladies, anyway?”

When Callie rolled her eyes at Frank, Hannah stepped forward. “Hi. I’m Hannah Creager,” she said, shaking Berghoff’s hand. “I drive a bulldozer for Nick Ferris, and Fm not at all put off by your son’s remarks. In fact, I think a certain amount of male chauvinism is sexy. Anyway, Fve gotten used to it on the building sites.”

“Brava!” cried a young woman from behind Ace. “Looks like somebody’s got your number, Scott.”

“Ah, Megan,” Berghoff said, obviously delighted to see her. “Meet our guests, Frank and Joe Hardy, and Hannah Creager, and …”

“Callie Shaw,” Callie supphed, smiling.

“My brother really is a bore, though he does have his good points,” Megan said. She was an attractive brunette in her late teens with a wide, open smile. “For instance, I think he’s pretty good at pool—and a few other things that don’t require much exertion.”

“Very funny, Megan,” Scott said. “I don’t suppose any of you play pool?”

“Frank’s a real whiz at it,” Joe said, grinning at Frank.

“Okay, then you’re on,” Scott said, turning to go. “Follow me.”

“Good,” Berghoff said. “You kids all make yourselves at home.”

Frank followed Scott below deck while Joe stayed topside with Callie, Hannah, and Megan.

“So you’ve got a little summer job with Richard Michaels, eh?” Scott said as they wound down the circular stairway with polished brass handrails.

“Yes,” Frank said. “We’re not doing anything too important, but it’s interesting to be in the middle of such a big building project.”

They arrived in the pool room, a richly decorated salon with mahogany paneling and nautical lamps. The pool table had beautifully carved wooden legs in the shape of lion claws.

“Stripes and solids—you break,” Scott said.

Frank had a lucky shot, sinking three stripes. He sank another before missing.

“I’d say you’re luckier at pool than you are at picking employers,” Scott said. “Michaels is a real loser.” He aimed and missed, sending mi-other one of Frank’s balls in.

“What do you mean, he’s a loser?” Frank asked as he sighted to see if he could make a bank shot. “He’s done some important buildings—and I think QuadCom is amazing.”

“Amazingly messed up, by the sound of it,” Scott said in the middle of Frank’s shot. “Sounds like even more of a fiasco than the Comfortage was,” he added as the ball bounced off the bank and careened into the nine ball, sending it straight into the comer pocket.

“There were problems with the Comfortage?” Frank asked as he lined up another shot.

“You sure are green, aren’t you? Why does my father always latch on to people like you?”

Frank wasn’t about to get into a shouting match with Berghoff’s son, so he decided to stay calm and concentrate on the game, which he was about to win.

“I guess you don’t read the papers,” Scott continued. “The coverage would have been a lot worse if I hadn’t been running Dad’s newspaper, the Examiner. We managed to control the spin on the story pretty well.”

Frank was about to shoot when Megan came down the stairs and into the pool room. “Scott telling you the family secrets?” she asked. Frank stopped and turned. Joe, Callie, and Hannah were there, too.

“No, we’re just talking about architecture,” Frank said diplomatically.

“Did he tell you how he fired his star reporter for giving the Comfortage bad PR?”

“Not exactly,” Frank said, bending over again to shoot. He had an easy shot open, but he thought he’d try to knock in his last two balls at the same time.

“Did I invite you in here, Megan?” Scott said crossly.

The cue ball cracked into the three ball, sending it into the side pocket, and then went on toward the seven, but it was slightly off target and missed.

It didn’t matter. Frank was now set up for an easy shot to win. Scott lost it. He threw his stick against the wall and stomped out.

“I’m sorry,” Megan said. “He’s like that. Just watch—when we see him on deck, he’ll act like nothing happened.”

“Sore loser, huh?” Joe said. He kept the rest of his thoughts to himself as they went out the door and began climbing back upstairs.

“I didn’t realize the Comfortage was such a problem to build,” Frank said, sidestepping the whole subject of Scott’s personality.

“Oh, boy, was it!” Megan replied. “I work in the real estate division of Dad’s company. It was such a nightmare trying to lease the space in that building after the stories broke.”

“So your brother fired the reporter?” Frank asked as they stepped on deck. “Why didn’t the reporter go to another paper with the story?”

“Well, I think there was some kind of deal made,” Megan said as they rounded the corner on the way to the front deck. “I’m not sure—” She broke off when she saw her brother leaning on the rail, looking moodily out toward the skyline of Manhattan.

“Great, Megan, why don’t you tell him everything,” he said as the group approached.

“Look, buddy,” Joe said, fed up with the guy. “She can tell us whatever she wants—you don’t run the planet, you know.” He moved over toward the rail and put his hand on Scott’s shoulder.

“Oh, yeah?” Scott said, shrugging off Joe’s hand and turning sharply to face Joe. “We’ll see about that.” He grabbed Joe’s arm with one hand, and shoved him hard with the other.

Caught off guard, Joe stumbled backward. He reached for the rail, but he’d been pushed too hard. In an instant he was tumbling over the rail and falling fast toward the concrete pier below.

Chapter 5

“Man overboard!”

Frank watched with every nerve straining as Joe free-fell toward the pier.

Joe knew his only chance was to use the pier to redirect his fall so that he could land in the water between the pier and the yacht. Then all he could feel was the sudden impact on his legs followed by more falling and then a forceful plunge into cold, dark water.

Frank saw Scott running down the gangplank. “Get some help!” he shouted to Callie as he lowered himself down over the rail until he could swing himself toward the hull and drop, making sure to aim himself away from Joe’s point of impact.

He hit the water and plunged below the surface. He could see nothing under the water and then little more when he came up into the dark shadows between the ship and the pier. “Joe!” he yelled, feehng a helpless panic grip him as he heard no response. He swam over to the spot where he thought Joe had landed and did a surface dive, reaching out through the thick, cool water.

He came up to breathe and yelled again. Nothing. Then, barely audible above the lapping of the water against the hull, he could make out a splashing sound and what might have been a gasp for breath. He swam over to the hull and bumped into something else. A body! He grabbed an arm and pulled Joe’s head above water.

Frank gasped for air and looked around. There were Hghts now, and voices yelling from above. He turned his head toward a splash in the water nearby and saw a white life preserver on the end of a rope reaching up to the pier. It didn’t take long to put Joe’s head and arms through the hole and secure him with the rope.

While the crew of the Golden Bow pulled Joe up, Frank swam to a ladder and climbed up the pier.

Callie was waiting for him at the top of the gangplank. “He’s getting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” she explained as they approached the circle of people gathered around Joe, who was stretched out on the tarmac. “He wasn’t under that long, thanks to you, so he should be okay.”

Frank didn’t say anything. He cut through the circle and knelt beside Joe. His stomach tightened when he looked over to see that the man working on Joe was Scott Berghoff.

“He’s breathing!” Scott shouted before Frank could do anything. Frank came closer to see for himself. While he was watching, Joe opened his eyes, looked at Frank, and then sat up.

“Hey, take it slow,” Frank said. “You just almost drowned.”

“No kidding!” Joe said groggily as he tried to stand up. “Hey, where is that jerk—ouch! My ankle!”

Hannah rushed over from the circle of onlookers and put her arm aroxmd Joe, bracing him and blocking his view of Scott, whom Joe had not yet recognized. “Don’t worry about Scott now, Joe,” she said. “Do you think you broke anything?”

“No. My ankle’s sore, but it’ll be fine. Look, here comes the jerk’s poor sister.”

“And Mr. Berghoff,” Frank said.

“I’ll bet they must be embarrassed,” said Callie.

“Look, Joe,” Scott said, elbowing his way past Hannah, “I know I’ve been a real jerk, but I didn’t mean to knock you overboard. I … um, I had a rough day at the paper.”

Now Scott’s father was barreling into the group. He grabbed Scott by the upper arm and shoved him away. “What kind of a son have I raised?” he yelled, his face red. “Megan told me everything! You’re a disgrace to this family!” he boomed.

“But, Dad … I … I saved him,” Scott whimpered.

“You have some nerve to say such a thing. Get off my boat right now. We’ll see about your job later.”

Scott backed off, scowling. Then he turned and ran down the gangplank to the parking lot.

“Dad!” Megan wailed, burying her face in Berghoff’s chest as he engulfed her in his arms. “This is horrible.”

“Now, now. Princess,” Berghoff soothed, “everything will be all right.”

“I guess we’d better get going,” Joe said, trying to get to his feet.

“Nonsense,” Berghoff said. “You haven’t had dinner yet. We’ll get you into dry clothes and give you some dinner. Then we’ve got business to talk about.”

“Come on now, Dad,” Megan said. “If they have any sense, they’ll want to get as far as they can from this boat—and us!”

“No, it’s not that, Megan,” Frank said. “It’s just that tonight’s been quite an ordeal and we’ve got a long ride back to Bayport.”

“We’ll send you home in a limo—after you’ve dried off and had a little something to eat,” Berghoff boomed. “We can’t let this episode with Scott get in our way. He’s always been a high-strung fellow. I think he’ll turn out okay if I handle him right.”

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Berghoff said an hour later as he ht up a cigar. Frank and Joe were up on deck with him, while Hannah and Callie were getting a tour of the ship from Megan. They had finished off their four-course meal with Itahan ice cream. Now they were walking in the night air with one of the richest men in New York, admiring the view of the glittering city. No one had forgotten what Scott had done a short while earlier, but the chemistry had been good and the conversation had flowed easily, and now the whole affair seemed remote.

“I’ve had you boys checked out,” Berghoff was saying, “and I like what I’ve heard.” He stopped and looked out over the raihng. “You’ve worked closely with your father in cracking some pretty important crime cases.”

“Well,” Joe said, “we’ve been lucky a few times—and Dad is a good teacher.”

“So here’s what I need you to do.” Berghoff turned to face the boys squarely. “This problem with QuadCom reminds me too much of what went on during the building of the Comfortage. I can’t afford another disaster hke that—all the other papers having a field day over it.”

So Scott had been lying about controliing the PR, Frank thought.

“Now the engineers have already told me that the pillars have to be rebuilt. That means you boys did the right thing.” He looked them over and took a deep drag on his cigar.

“What I want you to do is more of the same. Only call me first, not Michaels, when you find a problem like that. Then we’ll take it from there. And you’ll find yourselves getting another paycheck.”

Joe thought about whether to tell Berghoff about Silver and the union thugs, but remembered that Silver had been to the Golden Bow earlier that evening. He glanced over at Frank and saw him shake his head quickly, as if he read his thoughts.

“Yes, sir,” Frank said, “if you think we can be of help.”

“I don’t know if I trust that guy,” Joe said as he got back into the van later that night. He had just walked Hannah to her door, and he, Frank, and Callie were driving in the van back to Bay-port, having turned down Berghoff’s offer of a limousine.

“The arrangement Berghoff suggested seems a little fishy,” Frank agreed. “You could say that he just tried to buy us off.”

“We wouldn’t look at it that way if we trusted him,” Frank said. “I think we’d better be careful for a while, until we know more.”

“Like what Silver was doing on the Golden Bow,” Joe said.

“And what exactly went on at the Comfortage— and what the papers said,” Frank added.

“And then there’s the whole business with Silver and the Mob,” Joe said. “If Berghoff is mixed up in all of that, we could end up being food for the sharks.”

“So I guess we should just play along for a while until we learn something more definite,” Frank said.

“You mean until the sharks start biting?” Joe asked with a chuckle.

Soon the Bayport exit appeared, and Frank turned off onto the familiar ramp and headed to Callie’s house. The town, with its small cluster of office buildings surrounded by a sea of low-lying houses, all with yards and driveways and neatly trunmed shrubbery, seemed as quiet as a graveyard after the day Frank and Joe had had. And as they headed home neither of them was in any mood to change that.

“Frank, that you?” boomed the voice of Ace Berghoff over the phone. “Fve called Michaels and told him that you’ll be going straight to QuadCom this morning. Let me know what you find.”

As Frank hung up, he looked at the clock. It was five-thirty and the sun was just beginning to come through the slats of the bedroom mini-bhnds. “I guess Berghoff hasn’t gotten this far by sleeping in.”

Joe was across the room in his bed, his eyes closed but his mind racing. The ringing of the phone had awakened him completely, but he was trying to deny it. “But Berghoff didn’t get himself thrown into the Hudson last night, either,” he finally croaked.

“He wants us to go straight to QuadCom,” explained Frank, quickly putting on some clothes.

“Great,” Joe said. “At least he didn’t invite us to dinner with Scott.”

They took the 6:08 train and walked from the station to the QuadCom site. The fumes from the early-morning rush hour made it hard to breathe, and the massive buildings trapping the heat seemed like oppressive weights hanging overhead.

They were soon within sight of the plywood fence surrounding the QuadCom site. A group of workers milled around outside the gate. Joe recognized Zack Mieli by the bright tattoos running down both arms.

“Hey, pretty boys,” he taunted as they approached. “Whose jobs you going to screw up today?”

“Look, Zack …” Joe said.

“Forget about it, Joe,” Frank said as he caught Joe by the arm. “Let’s get going.”

“That’s right, little fella,” said Zack. “You schoolboys run along now—you’ve got work to do.” He waved his arm as though to dismiss them, and turned back to his friends.

When Frank and Joe finally made it inside the gate, they could see immediately that work had scaled back dramatically. There were only a few workers visible on the stepped structure. A group of white-collar people—engineers probably, Frank thought—^was down near the foundation pillars, and Frank could see Dave Kaiser near the deep shafts that were being prepared for the rear pillars.

“Let’s go see how Dave is doing,” Frank suggested. “I’m glad to see Berghoff didn’t actually fire him.”

“Me, too,” Joe replied. “Do you think we ought to warn him about Silver and his henchmen?”

“Why don’t we find out what he knows,” Frank said.

When Dave saw them approaching, he waved them over, apparently now more comfortable about being seen with them.

“Hey, guys, looks hke this is all going to work out okay,” he said, looking more relaxed than they’d ever seen him. “By the way, did you tell anyone that I told you about the pillars?”

“Why?” Joe asked.

“Berghoff made me the point man with the engineers,” Kaiser explained, beaming. “Somebody must have said something.”

“There isn’t much Berghoff doesn’t know about what goes on around here,” Frank said. “We didn’t have to tell him. He already knew.”

“Anyway,” Dave said, pointing toward one of the shafts, “now we’ve got another problem. Come and have a look.”

He led them over to the shaft, which had been dug so that the pillars could rest on the bedrock some fifteen feet below the surface of the large pit.

“We thought we had hit bedrock,” he said looking down into the pit, which was illuminated by a portable spotlight. A large boulder rose from the bottom to about five feet below the surface. “But that piece of granite turned out to be loose, and now we’re going to have to blast it out of there.”

He climbed down the ladder built into one side of the wooden framework that lined the shaft. Joe and Frank grabbed hard hats and followed.

Near the bottom of the shaft they had to squeeze through a tight spot, where the rock nearly filled the shaft. Once past the bottleneck, a large space opened up below, where the earth had been excavated. They got off the ladder and in the dimness Frank and Joe could just make out the contours of the cavern.

“Not much of a foundation here, is there?” Frank said. “Does it take long to get a blasting permit?”

“Wait a minute,” Dave said, slightly flustered. “Is that a truck’s backup beeper I hear up there?” He climbed up a few rungs of the ladder.

“Sounds like one to me,” Joe said.

“Strange, we’re not expecting … Hey—” Kaiser fell off the ladder with a thud. Then there was the slushing sound of a heavy, wet substance coming down on top of him. “It’s concrete!” he shouted.

Chapter 6

A STEADY STREAM of concrete poured down the small opening between the rock and the ladder, and the cavern was filling up quickly. Dave Kaiser scrambled to his feet, and the three of them huddled together in the darkness as the heavy hquid rock came down. They yelled, but it was obvious that the onrushing concrete was muffling any sounds that might have made it through the opening.

Frank tried to figure out how much it would take to fill the cavern and how much a cement mixer would hold. He was pretty sure that the giant mobile vats that he’d seen on the site could easily fill the cavern and maybe half of the entire shaft. He knew that there would be another truck waiting in the wings, ready to finish the pour.

Unless one of them could somehow fight the weight of the deluge while climbing the ladder, they would be buried alive.

Frank could see that Joe was too weak from his accident the night before to try any heroics. Dave had already been knocked down once. Frank knew it was up to him to stop the concrete. He waded over to the spot where the concrete was falhng and felt for the ladder. He managed to grab one of the rungs and lift himself a few feet against the current. He hugged close to the wall as the rough mixture of sand, gravel, and cement crashed onto his head and down his back.

It was no use. The closer he got to the opening, the more concentrated the stream of concrete became. He was holding on with all of his strength against the heavy pummeling when the rung he was holding broke. He fell back and crashed into the ooze.

Joe could only guess what had happened. He heard something snap and then he heard Frank cry out. Dave heard it, too.

“He must have fallen!” Joe shouted. “We’ve got to help him.”

By now the concrete had risen to waist level, and it was with great difficulty that Joe and Dave could wade over to the base of the ladder.

“What’s the use?” Dave said in despair as they felt for Frank. “We’re all going to die anyway.”

Then Frank emerged on his own, coughing and struggling to get some air. “I … I’m sorry,” he spit out. “Couldn’t make it. We’re … we’re done for.”

Joe reached for Frank. They stood in silence, their arms on each other’s shoulders. Dave trudged over and now they formed a circle, their heads bowed toward the center. No one spoke or wanted to. No one panicked. Somehow each of them had found a way to wait.

Then suddenly the stream of concrete stopped flowing. A shaft of light pierced the cavern. Frank ran back to the ladder, yelling.

“Frank, is that you?” came the strong, clear voice of Hannah Creager from above. “Are you okay? Is Joe down there, too?”

Frank was through the opening now and could see Hannah climbing down the ladder to meet them. “We’re okay, Hannah. I mean, we’re alive.”

“Who’s responsible for this?” Dave shouted as he emerged into the upper portion of the shaft. “That concrete was supposed to be for shaft nimiber five. The operator should have known that.”

“I don’t know what happened,” Hannah replied. “But I did see Zack Mieli hurrying away from here.”

“Zack Mieli?” Joe shouted as he climbed into the light. “He just tried to kill us!”

“I don’t think so. He must have told the operator to stop pouring. I didn’t,” Hannah said as she climbed back up onto the surface of the pit.

“Mieli did,” the operator said as he grabbed Frank’s arm to help him up. “He told me to pour into the opening down there—and then he told me when to stop. Fd seen him around here before and thou^t he was legitimate—^until he started running. I—^I sure didn’t know anybody was down there.” He looked as if he’d just seen a ghost.

“It’s not your fault,” Dave said as he tried to wipe off some of the drying concrete. “It’s just the way things work around here—one disaster after another.”

“Let’s get that stuff off before it dries completely,” the driver said as he walked over to the hose that was attached to the truck.

After a good hosing down, Frank, Joe, and Dave went to get some dry clothes from the trailer where the workers kept their gear.

“You guys doing anything for lunch?” Dave asked. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“Good idea,” Joe said, grabbing his lunch box. “Why don’t we sit by the river?”

A breeze was beginning to pick up over the Hudson River as the threesome walked out onto the pier. “Wow, that feels good,” Frank said as he sat down on the platform overlooking the water, letting his feet dangle over the edge. “Maybe we’ll get a break in the weather now.”

“Yeah,” Dave said, “I could sure use a rain day—or week, for that matter. I hear that Hurricane Miranda is on its way.”

The three sat in silence for a few minutes, contemplating the New Jersey shore that seemed to Joe only a stone’s throw across the Hudson.

“So was it this bad working on the Com-fortage?” Joe asked, pulling out the ham and cheese sandwich he had quickly made at five forty-five that morning before racing for the train.

“Worse. One guy was killed,” Dave said grimly.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Joe said. “How’d that happen?”

“It was apparently an accident,” Dave said. “A structural engineer fell off the top floor.”

“Did anyone think he was pushed?” Frank asked.

“It occurred to me, but who am I? Anyway, I was working on a different project by then, since the foimdation had long been finished when the guy fell.”

“You said everything was screwed up at the Comfortage—^in what way?” Joe asked.

“Oh, you know, the same sort of thing as on this project. Last-minute changes, mistakes in the blueprints, siureyor’s errors. I think eventually Ferris decided things would go better if he left Michaels out of it as much as possible. Which would be fine if we were building conventional structures.”

“Do you think Berghoff knew that Ferris was keeping Michaels out of the loop?” Frank asked.

“I don’t know. But I guess Berghoff had contracted with them both to do three buildings together. He’s kind of stuck trying to make the best of it.”

“And if he tried to get out of the contracts, there’d be bad press, right?” Joe ventured.

Frank finished eating and began throwing bits of bread to the seagulls that had begun circling above them. He glanced over past the freighter docked near the Golden Bow, whose topside rigging was just visible.

“I’m beginning to think,” he said as one of the birds swooped down against the breeze and caught a morsel midair, “that all Berghoff’s money comes at a pretty high cost.”

While Dave Kaiser went back to work at QuadCom, Frank and Joe headed across town to the main branch of the library. They needed a clearer idea of the history that had led up to the present disaster.

It didn’t take long to find that Megan’s yersion of events at the Examiner, the paper Ace Berghoff owned and Scott Berghoff ran, had been the right one. A reporter named Byron Pinkie had been covering the series of mishaps at the Com-fortage. There were stories on various incidents that had involved the public, like the time a crane had dropped a steel beam on a row of parked cars. Then there was a story detailing how a mistake had delayed the project and caused workers lO be laid off. Finally a piece appeared about the ieath of the structural engineer, Peter Flannery.

“That’s the last one I can find by Pinkie,” Frank said to Joe, as they scrolled through a roll Df microfilm in the large high-ceilinged reading room of the famous library.

“Look at this,” Joe said, peering over Frank’s jhoulder and reading the article. “It says a con-idential source speculated that it was murder.”

“But then he goes on to say that the coroner ruled it an accident.”

“That’s enough for me,” Frank said. “We’d setter head over to the police department to :heck out the report.”

They’d done it before. Normally, to get a police report with pictures took several days. You tiad to fill out forms and wait for the lieutenant m charge to review the request. Now there wasn’t time for that.

“I don’t think Dad would mind if we used his :ontact in Homicide to hurry things up,” Frank said.

“You mean Raymond Grew?” Joe asked.

“Right. He can give them a call in Police Records.”

They packed up their notes and went downstairs to the lobby to make the call. Detective Grew was in his office and happy to help. He told Frank who to see in the Records department and after asking how Fenton Hardy was, hung up.

“I don’t know, Frank,” Joe said. They were on the train back to Bayport, going over the file on Flannery. “This guy was pretty messed up after the fall. I doubt they could tell much of anything about what happened.”

“Let’s see what the autopsy report has to say,” Frank said.

The report described in detail all of the breaks and contusions, the body temperature upon discovery, the nature of the bleeding. Frank flipped to the conclusion. Since Flannery had landed more or less on his back, the impact had obliterated any evidence there might have been of a previous blow to the head. There were no knife wounds or bullet holes, and no lacerations at all on the front of the body. Ultraviolet examination of the wounds revealed no significant time lapse between any of them. The cause of death could not be definitively stated, but all the evidence was consistent with death upon impact.

“I have an idea,” Frank said. “Are there any pictures of the back of the body after it was turned over?”

“Plenty,” Joe said, handing Frank a stack.

“Good,” Frank said, pushing them back. “Let’s look at them later—at Vanessa’s.”

“Are you kidding?” Joe asked. “She’ll be totally grossed out. Remember when she fainted after I cut my finger to the bone?”

“I know. But I don’t want her to look at the pictures. I want her mom’s computer to look at them.”

“It may be a smart computer, Frank, but I don’t think it knows anything about forensics.”

“Yeah, but remember the scanner her mom uses to introduce images into her animation?”

“Yes,” Joe said. “What about it?”

“What if we have it scan the shot of Flan-aery’s back?”

“But what could the computer see that the pathologists couldn’t see, either on the pictures or on the body itself?”

“I don’t know,” Frank replied. “It’s just a [lunch, but if there was a blow to Flannery’s head before he was pushed, there might have been some blood.”

“Yeah—there was obviously plenty of that.”

“Well, that blood would have been on his head as he fell thirty stories. That’s a lot of wind.”

“So you mean it would have dried a little?”

“Exactly,” Frank said. “And then the new blood from the impact wounds would have dried on top.

“And the scanner might pick up the difference?” Joe guessed.

“I don’t know. Could you call Vanessa to find out if she minds?”

“Come on, Joe,” Vanessa Bender called from across the studio. “I’ll tell you how to do it, but Fm not going to look at it.”

“Okay,” Joe said, sitting at the computer terminal. “But you must have gotten it wrong. The dialogue box is asking me if I really want to overwrite the original image.”

“All right,” said Vanessa. “Fm not used to doing this by remote control—my fingers usually do the thinking. Say ‘no’ and then see what it says.”

They were in the barn behind Vanessa’s house, in the high-tech animation studio. Vanessa and her mom had just finished their job on deadhne, and Vanessa had asked them to stay for dinner. She said she was curious to hear about their evening on the Golden Bow. She’d heard from Callie about Joe being pushed overboard. She was happy that Joe was okay, but the accident wasn’t what interested her. Joe was always getting into some kind of fix hke that. What she really wanted to know was what Joe thought of Hannah.

It wasn’t that she was jealous. She was too confident to feel insecure. Maybe she was testing Joe, making sure he had behaved himself. Joe wasn’t sure. All he knew was that by the end of dinner, she’d apparently found out what she wanted to know.

Except that she wasn’t so happy about deahng with the pictures of Peter Flannery. Joe hadn’t said why they needed to use the scanner. She had assumed it was for some investigation or other, but she hadn’t thought it would involve scanning a picture of a bloody corpse.

Now they were trying to enhance the image that the color scanner had introduced into the computer—alter it in some way that would tell them something about how Flannery died.

“All right,” Joe said, “here’s the red-green-blue color breakdown program.”

“Okay, take the mouse to an area where the injury was definitely caused by the fall,” Frank said.

“Now,” said Vanessa, “hit the tool button and click the filter icon. Then set the filter to the levels that you found in your breakdown.”

The screen went blank as soon as Joe finished doing what Vanessa had asked. Then after a few seconds, another image appeared.

“Wow!” Joe exclaimed. “Look at that.”

It was hard for Frank to look at the image, but it was obvious that the process had delivered what he had hoped for. Instead of a corpse completely covered with red blood, there was now a body with one odd, brownish blotch emanating from a spot on the head.

“That’s it,” he declared. “Hiis proves Flannery was hit on the head before he fell. I think that means only one thing—Flannery was murdered.”

Chapter 7

“VANESSA, CAN YOU E-MAIL this file to the NYPD?”

“Sure, Frank,” Vanessa said, “but not before you close the file and get that picture off the screen.”

Frank did so and then moved aside. “Who do I send it to?”

Frank flipped through some cards in his wallet and came up with one. “Send it to Detective Raymond Grew at RGrew@det.nyc.pol. I’ll call him and tell him it’s coming.”

It tool only a few minute for Grew to call back. He said he was going to have his own people do the same analysis. “What made you think the guy was killed?”

We’ve been working with the same contractor who built the high-rise Flannery was pushed from. It’s a crazy outfit. We’ve almost been killed twice ourselves.”

“Dangerous work, construction,” Grew said. “You ought to try something less physical. Take my daughter—she’s got a good summer job as an inputter.” He was chuckling.

Frank ignored the dig and got to the point. “What I mean is, there’s something funny going on with that outfit. As soon as we started poking around, to try to make sense of it all, we came up with a corpse.”

“Yeah, they’re all over the place, those corpses,” Grew rephed. “My advice is, if nobody’s paying you to find out who did it, forget about it. It’s hard work—especially when you’ve got one who’s been sprouting daisies for a while.”

“You’re right. This happened a year ago.”

“You’ve been watching too many TV cop shows if you think we’ve got time for this one, Frank. We just don’t, I’m afraid. But let us know what you come up with.”

Frank said goodbye, then hung up and turned around on the big leather swivel chair to see Vanessa and Joe having an intergalactic shootout on the computer. Frank knew better than to interrupt. He turned back to the phone and called information to get Byron Pinkie’s number. He wasn’t sure what he was going to tell him, but he was going to try to find out who Pinkie’s source had been at the Comfortage.

It turned out that Pinkie was now working for a tabloid, the Sun. He was better than Frank at keeping his cards close while pumping the other guy for information. When Frank told him about the wound on Flannery’s head, he acted as though Frank had made a discovery worthy of a Nobel prize. Then he wanted to know all about the situation at QuadCom—^not, he said, because he was going to write a story about it, but because he was curious about what the Berghoff clan was up to.

Pinkie had been sure, he said, that the Mob had been involved in making things difficult at the Comfortage, but he’d never come up with anything sohd. So Frank told him about what happened at Rita’s Pizzeria, how Silver and the two thugs had jumped on Joe.

“That’s it!” exclaimed Pinkie. “I knew it. What the union wants is for the work to keep coming, steadily, with no interruptions. The Mob’s job is to put pressure on the right people to make sure that happens.”

“And Silver gets paid off for letting things go?”

“Exactly,” Pinkie responded. “Now the question is, is either Ferris or Berghoff in on all of this?”

Frank was thinking about whether to tell Pinkie that he saw Silver coming off the Golden Bow and getting into his Ferrari when Pinkie took up the slack. “Now, if Flannery was trying to put the breaks on some shoddy building practice, and one of these guys knew about it, well , . . you get the picture?” Pinkie said.

“Then he might have pushed Flannery,” Frank said.

“Or had the Mob do it,” Pinkie said.

“So who was your source back when you wrote the article that got you fired?” Frank asked.

“You know about that, huh? Very good,” Pinkie said. “I can’t tell you who that was. But I can tell you he was plenty scared. By the way, Fd advise you to be careful. As you can see, these people play hardball.”

The conversation ended with Frank giving Pinkie his number and promising to keep in touch.

Frank sat back and looked up at the rafters that spanned the large open room that once housed cows and horses and whatever else hved in a barn in the days when Bayport was an isolated farming community. Now it was furnished with sleek white laminate office furniture, lit with Euro-design track lighting, and filled with computers and other high-tech gadgets used for animation.

“Frank—I’m beat. Let’s get out of here.” Joe was standing behind him, holding Vanessa’s hand. “What did Detective Grew say?” he asked, reminded of Flannery’s murder by Frank’s expression.

“I’ll tell you on the way home,” Frank said. They went over to the main house to thank Mrs.

Bender again for dinner and climbed in the van for the short ride home.

“Another day, another wake-up call,” Frank said groggily as he reached over to grab the phone from his nightstand. It was five-thirty on Wednesday morning, and Frank was sure it was going to be Ace Berghoff once again.

It was. “You’ve really done it now, Frank,” the voice boomed through the receiver. “Decided to talk to Pinkie, eh? Scott called me an hour ago about the story in this morning’s Sun. Before I fire you, I want to hear an explanation. Be at my boat within an hour.”

When they picked up a copy of the Sun at the train station, Frank felt silly to think they could have expected a tabloid reporter to be a discreet ally in a murder investigation. There it was, for all the world to see. “Murder of Whistle-Blower Uncovered by Teenage Detectives,” screamed the headline.

Frank’s stomach turned as he realized that Pinkie had left out nothing—and he had added quite a bit of his own. Pinkie speculated freely about a conspiracy about Berghoff, Ferris, Silver, and the Mob—all orchestrated by the Hardys’ soon-to-be former employer, Berghoff. For good measure Pinkie threw in an accusation against the coroner for covering up the murder to begin with.

“Why is he so good about protecting this other source, when he hoists up the mast for everyone to see?” Joe asked, amazed that Frank, who was normally so careful, would let such a thing happen. He was reading over Frank’s shoulder, holding one comer of the paper to keep it from flapping in the strong breeze.

“I thought he had a httle more class than this,” Frank rephed. “But I was wrong.”

“He does work for a tabloid now, after all,” Joe said.

“And he does hate the Berghoffs,” Frank added.

“So what are we going to tell Ace Berghoff?” Joe asked as he and Frank hopped onto the commuter train.

“At this point,” Frank said as soon as they found seats, “Fm more concerned about the murder than our summer jobs. And what if there’s some really bad flaw in the Comfortage that Ran-nery was trying to get fixed? The building might be a disaster waiting to happen.” Frank paused and looked out the window at the trees blowing in the wind, and then back at all of the people crowded onto the train.

“No,” he went on, “I don’t feel like humoring Berghoff any more for the sake of our jobs. If he’s involved in something like what Pinkie describes, I want to find out.”

“So maybe it’s a good thing Pinkie did what he did,” Joe observed as he finished reading the article.

“Maybe so,” Frank said. “We’ll find out, I guess.”

When the train arrived in New York, the Har-dys decided to save time by taking the subway as far west as they could, then walking the rest of the way to the pier. It was still warm, but the breeze from the south was picking up, and it looked to Joe as if it was bringing in some bad weather.

Joe looked over his shoulder as they came up the stairs from the subway. “Have you noticed the guy with the green suit and slicked-back hair?” he asked his brother casually. “He’s been with us since Bayport.”

“You mean the guy coming out of the subway right now?” Frank noticed that the man was making a call on his portable phone and that he didn’t make any attempt to hide the fact that he was staring right at them as they crossed the street.

“That’s him. Not exactly a cheerful type, is he?”

The man crossed the street, too, then kept about half a block behind them.

Neither of them said it, but they both’ wondered whether it might be somebody Berghoff hired—or Ferris, or Silver—or whoever murdered Flannery. But the article quoted Frank as saying that the Mob was in the middle of the whole corrupt business. They could have decided to take care of Frank and Joe.

“I don’t see him anymore,” Joe said, looking back. They had walked a few blocks since spotting him, and were only a hundred yards from the open tarmac on the pier.

“Maybe we were just being paranoid,” Frank said.

They waited a while in front of an office building with a busy lobby, trying to decide whether or not to proceed onto the pier.

“Might as well go ahead,” Joe said, striking out. “It’s almost six-thirty and Berghoff will be expecting us.”

“I’m with you, bro’,” Frank said as they broke off from the crowd and headed off toward the nearly deserted wharf.

They had passed under the West Side Highway and were about twenty yards onto the cracked surface of the parking lot when a dark blue Mercedes came rolling through the gate about a hundred yards to their left and then proceeded slowly toward them.

As soon as they started running the car burned rubber, but neither Frank nor Joe looked back to watch it come. There was an abandoned, roofless warehouse about twenty yards ahead with an open doorway. They were about to make it to the door when the tires squealed and a shot rang out. Joe felt the bullet whiz past his left ear as he leaped to the ground and rolled through the tall weeds blocking the door.

Frank’s feet had left the ground when he felt the car whoosh past his legs and spin him around in midair. He landed flat on his face an inch from the left front tire of the car. As he began to get to his feet, somebody’s foot crashed into his back and pinned him to the ground. “Run for it, Joe!” he shouted.

Chapter 8

From the safety of the dark warehouse, Joe saw the man with the green suit standing with his foot on Frank and pointing a gun down at him. The driver was getting out now and heading toward the door. Quickly Joe picked up a stone from the rubble that lay scattered on the ground and took aim at Frank’s assailant.

The rock hit the man square on his forehead. He reeled back and the gun discharged into the ground. As soon as Frank felt the pressure let up on his back, he reached over and grabbed the man’s foot. For a split second Frank thought about running for it. But he knew that would only give the man time to recover. The idea of hiding from two armed killers in a weuehouse he’d never been in before wasn’t too appealing.

While the man still lay on his back writhing in pain, Frank lurched forward and grabbed the wrist of the hand that held the gun. It went limp, and Frank reached down and grabbed the gun. Quickly Frank spun around and saw the other man crossing the threshold into the warehouse. He took aim and cried out for the man to halt.

“Well done!” The famihar deep voice of Ace Berghoff could be heard from behind the car. “I’d drop your gun if I were you,” he said to the man whom Frank was pointing the gun at. “You don’t want to monkey around with Frank Hardy.”

The man dropped his gun, and Joe came out of the darkness to grab it. He looked over to see Berghoff and two guards armed with machine guns. It was hard to tell if the guns were being pointed at Frank, Joe, or the men near them.

“Better frisk them, boys,” Berghoff said. “Make sure they don’t have any other weapons.”

Frank and Joe did as they were asked, each finding a variety of knives and revolvers concealed all over the men’s bodies.

“Looks hke you boys got yourselves some hit men,” Berghoff said matter-of-factly. “Not bad, not bad at all.” He told his guards to collect the guns and cuff the men. It was only when the guards didn’t cuff Joe and Frank that they were sure they were safe—and that Berghoff wasn’t going to finish off a job that his hit men had bungled.

“I saw what was happening from the deck of the Golden Bow,” Berghoff explained. “I have to admit I didn’t think I’d be standing here seeing you alive.”

He went over, first to Frank and then to Joe, and gathered them up in his exuberance, as though he were a great hen pulling in her chicks after a dangerous brush with a fox. Except that it still wasn’t clear to Frank and Joe whether he was in fact another predator. They hadn’t forgotten that they had been on their way to get fired, and they hadn’t forgotten why. While they wouldn’t have chosen to publish Pinkie’s theory about Berghoff being the mastermind behind all the corruption and Flannery’s murder, they couldn’t argue that it was implausible, either.

“Well, boys,” Berghoff said with a sigh as they walked up the gangplank of the Golden Bow, “I’m in a real pickle.” The wind was blowing hard now, pushing against them as they climbed up, and they had to go into Berghoff’s mahogany-lined office before they could hear one another talk.

Once inside, Berghoff settled in behind his huge gold inlaid desk and lit a cigar while Frank and Joe sat down on two imposing wing chairs facing the desk. Even though the ship was docked on the leeward side of the island, it rocked slightly from side to side.

“As I was saying,” Berghoff began, “I don’t mind telling you boys that I’m more confused than I’ve been in a long time. Tm not going to play high and mighty with you—not after what just happened. In fact, Vm going to ask you boys to help me—help me get out of this mess.

“It’s not just the Mob,” he went on, “though that’s bad enough,” he confessed. “Last night Peter Benvenuti, the head of the family involved here, called me and told me to expect the worst if I don’t call back the laid-off workers immediately. Then this story comes out in the Sun. ” He got up out of his chair and started pacing.

“I was already on the outs with the creditors over the Comfortage. Now this could ruin me. Even if I could afford to buy a whole crew of idle steelworkers, I’ll have trouble getting the space rented after this bad press. I could be ruined even if we don’t have any more mistakes like those blasted footing columns—which is wishful thinking in any case.”

Joe watched in amazement as the Rock of Gibraltar crumbled into little pieces. Either, he thought, Berghoff is really in trouble, or he deserves an Academy Award for acting,

Berghoff sat down again, rested his elbows on his desk, and buried his head in his hands for a few seconds. Then he raised up slowly and looked at Frank and Joe earnestly. “Now, do you boys actually know anything about why Flannery was murdered?”

“Not really,” Frank said. “I called Pinkie to find out what he knew. He took the little I told him and ran with it.”

“Pinkie’s no slouch,” Berghoff said. “He must have been waiting for the right moment to get his revenge. But what’s all this about the building inspector and the Mob? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

Joe decided to face the situation squarely. “To tell the truth, we thought you might be right in the middle of all the corruption. We still don’t really know what’s going on.”

Berghoff seemed to be studying Joe’s response carefully. He smiled and rubbed his hands together, as though he was relishing the moment. “All right, then, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll bring Pinkie back out of the minor leagues. Let him go to work on this thing. If there’s anything to his accusations, we’ll let him print them in the Examiner. I know I’ve got nothing to hide.”

Berghoff stood up and began ushering Frank and Joe out. “Now, you boys get back to work—I mean with Michaels—and tell me what you find.”

When Frank and Joe walked into Michaels’s office after being away since Monday afternoon, they didn’t know what to expect. Would he be upset about Berghoff hijacking his sunmier help? Had he seen Pinkie’s article in the Sun?

“Oh, good morning, gentlemen!” Michaels said, barely looking up from his desk. “Good to see you. Say, I’ve got a job for you—^that is, if you’re not too busy playing detective.”

“Yes, sir,” Frank said, looking over at Joe and noting the hint of sarcasm in Michaels’s voice.

“Take these papers over to the building inspection unit on Ninth Avenue, would you?” Michaels continued. “I need them to clarify a few points in their report on the design for the Bullock Center.”

The Bullock Center was a neighborhood performing arts building that was to double as a drop-in center for local teens. Dropping off the papers would be a good way for Frank and Joe to get away from the gritty, dangerous reality of QuadCom for a while and get back to the abstract world of design.

The inspection unit was in the basement of a run-down city building on Ninth Avenue, between Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth streets. Frank and Joe had made the walk several times already that summer. Often they would take a short detour to check out the scene at nearby Madison Square Garden. Today, however, those carefree days of rambling around the city, thinking about where a new skyscraper or a museum might fit in, seemed distant.

It was Joe who first said anything about what was on both their minds. “I guess by now those hit men have called whoever they report to.”

“Which means that someone else will come out looking for us,” Frank said as they walked

through the drab, badly maintained lobby of the city building.

“We should at least be safe in here,” Joe said.

They went down to the basement and found the receptionist at the inspection unit. She looked up the Bullock Center in her records in order to direct them to the inspector in charge. “That’ll be Ken Silver, in room one-oh-four.” She buzzed him and then told Frank and Joe to go ahead in.

When he looked up and saw who it was. Silver looked shaken. Without his cronies there to protect him, he was just another overweight city bureaucrat. The last time he’d seen Frank and Joe, they had turned Danny Blustein and Olgar Hal-zynitsyn into mincemeat.

“What brings you here?” he asked, trying to disguise his nervousness with a scowl.

“We were just going to drop off these questions about the Bullock Center,” Frank began. “But now that we’ve found you here, a few other questions come to mind.” Frank moved forward and put his hands on Silver’s desk.

Silver slid back into his chair, as if to get as far away from Frank as he could. “It’s a busy day,” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t have time for any questions.”

“Just tell us how well you knew Peter Flan-nery,” Joe said.

“Flannery? Of course I knew Flannery,” Silver said in a kind of squeal. “That doesn’t mean I know anything about his … uh, death. Why

don’t you ask somebody whose reputation was at stake?”

“What do you mean?” Frank asked.

“I mean,” Silver said, suddenly sounding tough as he looked beyond Frank and Joe. “I mean, you ought to keep your nose out of other people’s business.”

Was it bad luck or the result of a well-orchestrated hunt? Frank wondered. Either way, he and Joe were the ones cornered now. They turned to see Danny Blustein and his sidekick, Olgar, strolling through the door. Danny had on a neck brace, and a bandage on his bald spot.

“Actually,” Silver said, “what I mean is, you should let us take your smart Dick Tracy noses and put them where they belong. I mean, relax and let us show you around.” The three of them were laughing now.

“Danny and Olgy here want to take you to lunch, isn’t that right, boys?”

“Sure, Mr. Silver,” Danny answered. “Whatever you say.”

“We pick up friends on way,” Olgar added in his broken EngHsh. “Share good times.” He pulled Joe by the arm and motioned to the door with his hand in his coat pocket—as if he had a gun, Joe realized with a sinking feeling.

“Splendid idea, Olgar,” Silver said. “Well, then, I’ll see you boys later. Or, come to think of it, maybe I won’t,” he added with a chuckle.

Outside, Olgar shoved Frank and Joe into the backseat of a shiny black Lexus, which was double-parked in front of the building, while Danny took the wheel.

“You’re gonna like these folks,” Danny said as they drove down Ninth Avenue.

Joe tried to say something, and Olgar slapped him across the mouth. “We not ask you talk,” he said. After that, no one said a word as the car fought its way through traffic, winding its way east, past Greenwich Village to Mulberry Street, the center of Little Italy. When Danny crossed Canal Street onto Mott, it was clear they were headed to the thick crowds of Chinatown.

They screeched to a halt in front of an old building with a dim sum restaurant on the ground floor. Sitting on a chair out front was their old friend, Zack Mieli.

“Okay—everybody out,” Danny ordered.

Frank swung open the left passenger door and got out, then slammed the door. He was thinking about what his chances might be if he crouched down behind the driver’s door, slammed it into Blustein, and then ran for it.

Then he heard tires squealing from behind and the roar of a powerful engine. He looked up and saw an off-road vehicle bearing down on him.

Chapter 9

Frank quickly slammed his door. While Danny stood frozen behind the front door, staring at the driver of the truck, Frank tackled him under his arms and pushed him into the front seat, saving both of them.

Danny screeched in pain as his head hit the steering wheel. Frank gave one more shove to get Danny’s legs out of the way just before the truck hit the front door and snapped it off like a dead twig.

Frank backed off Danny and crawled out onto the street. A crowd was gathering around the car, and one of them, a young Chinese man, grabbed Frank by the arm. “I got the hcense plate number,” he said. “Do you have some paper?”

Frank looked at the man, and then over at Olgar, who was opening the right front door to tend to Danny. Danny had stopped screaming but looked as though he had passed out. Joe was standing behind Olgar, looking perplexed, and Zack Mieli was running out into the street toward Frank.

“Paper?” Frank asked, still a httle dazed.

“Yes. I don’t want to forget the number,” said the man. “I have a pen.”

“Here,” Zack said, taking a piece of folded paper out of his shirt pocket. He was apparently not about to grab Frank in pubhc, so Frank didn’t try to run. Neither did Joe. In fact, Olgar was asking Joe to help him pull Danny out of the car.

“That was a pretty good move,” Zack said. “You saved Danny’s life. He was just going to stand there staring at the driver, like an idiot.”

As soon as Joe and Olgar got Danny to his feet and out in the fresh air, he revived. “What’d that kid do? I could have had that guy. Nobody does that to me—or my car—and gets away with it.”

“It’s okay, Danny,” Zack said. He was walking toward the sidewalk and pulling Frank with him. He had grabbed Frank, but in a gesture of affection. “We’ve got the Hcense plate number. We can get that slime.”

“Look,” Frank said to Danny, still unsure why he wasn’t running for it, “I hate to dampen your enthusiasm, but I think that guy was trying to get me.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Danny said, adjusting his neck brace with a pained look. “He wrecked my beautiful new car.”

“Don’t worry about the car, Danny,” Zack said, squeezing Frank tighter with his thick, hairy arm. “We can get that fixed. Think about it. Frank here saved your stupid life.”

Danny walked over to look at the driver’s side of his car. He stopped and stared at the car, pointing his finger first to the back door, then the front, then back again, as though he was trying to figure something out. Finally he looked up. “Hey, this kid Frank saved my life. He actually saved my fife. I mean, he wasn’t just shoving me out of the way to save his life. He could have jumped up on the hood or something.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Zack said. “I saw the whole thing. It was amazing. The kid deserves a medal.”

“So who was that guy, anyway?” Danny asked, looking at Frank. “He wasn’t fooling around. You got enemies or something, kid?”

Frank shook his head in disbelief and looked over at Joe, who had a very confused look on his face. Zack saw Joe, too, and started laughing. “Hey, that’s a good one, Danny—does he have enemies,” Zack said, slapping Frank on the back.

Danny didn’t seem to like being laughed at. “Give me a break, cheesehead. There are enemies, and there are enemies. What I’m saying is, this guy was serious.”

“And you guys aren’t serious?” Joe asked.

” ‘Course we’re serious. But we wasn’t going to kill you. Hey, you guys are just kids. Pretty tough kids, but still kids. I got honor. I don’t km kids.”

“Yeah,” Zack said, “we were just going to shake you up a httle. And straighten you out on all this baloney you’ve been spreading around— in my favorite newspaper, too. It’s the one all the guys read.”

“That’s all Alfie and Lorenzo were up to when you creamed them this morning and got them put in the slammer,” Danny said, sounding as though it hurt his feelings to be misunderstood.

“I don’t think the bullet that almost grazed me was exactly a joke,” Joe said, still unable to be-heve he was having this conversation.

“You said ‘almost,’ right?” Danny repHed, stretching his hands and shrugging. “Those guys are professionals. They don’t miss if they don’t want to. In fact, that’s what screwed them up to begin with—having to take it easy on you.”

He paused, looked over at his car, and shook his head. “Now, this idiot who wrecked my Lexus, he ain’t no professional. He missed because he had no idea what he was doing.”

“Okay,” Frank said. “You said you wanted to straighten us out. What’d we get wrong? You may not have killed us, but you guys aren’t exactly Boy Scouts.”

“No, we ain’t Boy Scouts,” Danny said proudly.

“And this city we live in ain’t no Boy Scout camp, either.”

“So you’re saying that the article was right about the connection between the union and the Mob?” Frank asked.

“No, it’s not that,” Zack said, hitching up his pants. “Times are tough for unions. We do what we have to do. See, the problem is, you make it sound Hke that arrangement is what’s messing things up. You got it backward. We’re the ones trying to make sure the fat cats don’t make any more mistakes. All we’re saying is, you make a mistake, you pay for it.”

“So what about Peter Flannery?” Frank asked, trying to sound as if he was discussing the weather instead of a murder. He wanted to keep things calm and friendly, and to keep alive the temporary illusion that they were all on the same side.

“I don’t know nothin’ about that guy,” Danny said. “Except maybe he got what he deserved.”

“What do you mean?” Joe asked.

“Let’s say he didn’t go with the flow,” Zack said. “But don’t get Danny wrong. You’ve got to be more than a pain in the butt to get yourself pushed off a building.”

I wonder what it takes, Joe thought, and who decides when somebody has gone over the line. Neither Zack nor Danny seemed to be arguing that they wouldn’t push anybody off a building if they felt like it.

“So you tell your reporter friend to keep his mouth shut about the way we do things,” Danny said, beginning to sound more hke his old tough-guy self. “K he don’t get it, he shouldn’t say nothing about it. And I’m telling you, he don’t get it.”

Frank wasn’t sure he got it, either, but he could see that the whole situation was more comph-cated than he or Joe—or Pinkie—had thought. In any case, it seemed like a good idea to get going before Danny’s friendly mood wore off.

“Well,” Frank began, “I guess we’d better head back before they start missing us at work. Thanks for the, um, advice.”

“Okay, kid,” Danny said, looking at Frank with respect. “I hope you take it. And don’t worry about that guy in the truck. If he’s after you, he’s a goner.”

Before catching the subway uptown, with Joe making sure there was no one tailing them, Frank called Michaels to see what was next on the agenda. Sounding even more distant than usual, Michaels explained that there was nothing pressing and that in any case Nick Ferris had called, asking if Frank and Joe were available to help out a little at QuadCom, as temporary helpers for the few remaining steelworkers. Ace Berghoff had told him that they might be free.

“You gentlemen are popular these days, and I can’t claim you as my own anymore,” Michaels said. “Check in when you’re done.”

“He hung up kind of abruptly,” Frank said after he explained their assignment to Joe. They were rumbling along underground, carefully watching the passengers who remained on board after each stop.

“He’s probably just busy,” Joe responded. “Eggheads like him, you never know what they’re thinking.” He paused and looked at his brother. “Kind of like you, Frank,” he added with a twinkle in his eye.

“I’m glad you don’t know what I’m thinking now,” Frank joked back as he stood up and started squeezing past people to get to the door of the subway car. “Maybe we compensate for all those people who speak before thinking, or who never think at all.”

“Come on, Frank,” Joe said, following Frank through the door. “I thought you’d be proud of me for keeping my mouth shut back there in Chinatown.”

“I was, I was,” Frank said, patting Joe on the back. “In fact, I had a pretty hard time myself swallowing that stuff about how unions have joined hands with all those gangsters to make the world a better place.”

“Well, I guess things are kind of rough for them right now,” Joe said as they came out into the light of day.

“Sure, but there are plenty of powerful unions that protect their workers without signing on Danny and Olgar. Those guys just make a bad situation worse.”

They were walking west, coming up on Quad-Com now. The stepped steel structure, with its jungle of temporary supports, looked majestic in the sun, especially silhouetted against the dramatic-looking storm clouds that were gathering over the Hudson River.

“Anyway,” Joe said, “I guess it’s pretty clear now that they’re not the only ones playing dirty pool around here.”

“Come to think of it,” Frank said uneasily, “since we didn’t try to stop Olgar and Danny from going after the guy in the truck, I suppose we’re getting kind of dirty ourselves.” It wasn’t as though they had had any choice, but Frank felt uncomfortable knowing that those tough guys were, in a way, protecting them.

“Hey, I’m not going to worry about that one,” Joe said. “If some maniac wants to try to run us down while we’re in a gangster’s car, that’s his bad luck.”

Before there was any time to speculate about the guy in the truck, Nick Ferris was marching over with his hand extended.

“Dave Kaiser told me what happened to you fellows in the pit yesterday.” Frank thought that Ferris seemed to be genuinely concerned, and for some reason was acting Hke a long-lost pal. “What a nightmare that must have been,” Ferris went on. “Boy, you guys have really had a rough time on this site.”

“You could say that,” Joe said, looking at Ferris cautiously. “Nothing we couldn’t handle, of course.”

“I can see that,” Ferris responded, obviously impressed. “But now I won’t blame you if you decide not to help me out up there on the structure. That’s dangerous work, even without those union bozos pulling their pranks everywhere you turn.”

“We can handle that,” Joe said firmly. Frank nodded his agreement.

“You guys are made of iron,” Ferris said. “Let’s go, then.”

The job required both Frank and Joe to ride up on a steel girder while a crane hoisted it into place. “Not a big deal when you’ve bungee jumped off the Rockland Bridge,” Joe said, remembering the time the previous fall when they’d joined a group upstate that did the jump annually.

“Not real hard work, either,” Frank said.

They made it to the top floor, which was now the twentieth, where a welder stood waiting to guide the girder into place. Frank and Joe had to sit on the girder and hold it in place against the vertical column while the welder attached temporary clamps.

“You boys look pretty relaxed,” said the welder, who had introduced himself as Mike. “Most rookies turn green the first time up.”

Mike finished assembling the clamp on Frank’s side and then started walking around on the foot-wide girders, as though he were in his own living room, to reach Joe’s side.

Joe felt a jolt before he saw the crane wire go limp. Reacting quickly, he lunged forward to get a good grip on the column. As he reached the girder, it creaked and jumped down two feet, causing him to bang his head against the column and lose his balance. A spht second later the clamp on Frank’s side gave way completely, and the girder snapped free, with Joe still on it.

Chapter 10

When the beam clamp broke, the girder jolted back into the horizontal position and bounced, swinging violently as it fell. Joe hung on with his legs and arms entwined around the girder and tried hard to focus on the structure as he flew past it, hoping to find a dangling rope or a platform to leap toward. There was nothing but thin air—and the ground some fifteen stories below.

Joe had a feeling of deja vu as he felt the rush of blood to his head and the same physical thrill he had felt when accelerating toward the deep blue water underneath the Rockland Bridge. It was as if he were a comet hurtling through space on its way to some mysterious destination. Only then there had been the bungee cord. Now the mystery was real, and there was nothing he could do about it.

At first the backward trend, the shght push upward, was imperceptible. Joe thought it mi^t have been wishful thinking or maybe the feeling that came with reaching maximum velocity. Then he knew he was slowing down.

When he was about fifty yards from ground zero, the deceleration was pulling his upper body down onto the girder. A sudden jolt almost knocked him off. Then it was over.

He was dangling thirty yards up off the ground, swinging gently back and forth. Down below he saw nothing unusual. No sign of life from the crane operator’s cabin. No gathering crowds. Except for Frank and Mike, the welder, no one seemed to have noticed what had happened.

Frank had pulled himself up to safety and had started scrambling desperately down the ladder to the elevator on the eighteenth floor when Joe stopped falling. Now he and Mike were taking the elevator down. “The safety brake must have chcked in,” Mike explained. “But I can’t figure what happened to Fred, the crane operator, unless he had a heart attack.”

“Fred wouldn’t be friends with Zack Mieli, would he?” Frank asked as he watched Joe’s prone figure through the grate on the elevator cage.

“No way, son,” Mike said, who appeared to be in his late fifties. “We’re not all lunatics on this job site. Fred and I have been working together for twenty-five years, and I’ve never seen him let anything like this happen. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone attract trouble the way you and your brother have over the last few days. Seems like somebody’s got it in for you.” He looked over toward the base of the crane. “I sure hope Fred’s all right.”

The elevator touched ground and Mike swung the door open anxiously. Frank ran with him around the perimeter of the foundation pit to the far side where the crane was anchored. He stopped for a moment to yell up to Joe, to let him know that they’d soon get him down. Joe waved in response, letting Frank know that he had heard and was okay.

Ferris must have noticed now, too, and was running across the construction site toward the crane.

The door of the glass-enclosed cabin at the base of the crane tower was open, and Frank could see from twenty feet away that Fred was in his chair, slumped over the controls. Frank scanned the site while Mike and Nick Ferris went in, and then followed them in.

“He’s been hit on the back of the head!’,’ Mike shouted. “He’s bleeding pretty badly.” Mike pressed a handkerchief against the wound to try to stop the bleeding, while Ferris worked the controls to lower the girder. The contusion, which while only slightly larger than a silver dollar, appeared to be quite deep. Somebody had hit Fred with a blunt object—and had hit him hard.

Seeing the wound close up gave Frank a chill. He couldn’t help thinking of the wound on the back of Peter Flannery’s head. Had the same killer struck again? Walking back outside to get some air, Frank saw something unusual in the dirt around the crane. There had been a light rain during the night, and the soil, while dry now, was still soft. A set of footprints from a pair of smooth-soled shoes with pointed toes—dress shoes—led from the crane toward the main gate.

“Frank, call an ambulance and the pohce,” Ferris ordered as he continued to guide Joe toward the base of the foundation pit. Frank looked over and saw that Ferris’s normally blustery demeanor had been shaken. His face was red and his hands trembled shghtly as he worked the controls. Clearly, if Ferris had somehow been able to write off the earher episodes involving Frank and Joe as out-of-control pranks, he couldn’t do that now. Fred was still unconscious, despite Mike’s efforts to revive him.

Frank did what Ferris asked, and this time when he called Detective Grew he found a ready ear. “I’ll be right over,” Grew said, interrupting Frank midsentence.

While waiting, Frank followed the footprints and looked for others. So far every time he and Joe had run into the Mob, there had been two of them. This time there seemed to be only one.

The trail took Frank past the tool and supply trailer. That gave him the idea of taking a cast of one of the footprints using some quick-drying plaster. He thought he’d better do it right away before the ambulance and police arrived and obhterated the trail. By the time Detective Grew showed up, Frank had the cast safely packed in a plastic bag.

“Find any trace of the weapon?” Grew asked.

“Not yet,” replied Frank, looking down into the pit at Joe, who was apparently entertaining a crowd of workers with an animated story of his adventure. “Judging from the small wound, I’d say we should be looking for something like the butt of a handgun.”

“Which we aren’t likely to find lying around here,” Grew said as he looked up to the top of the QuadCom frame. He was a stout man in his sixties with a shock of white hair and a cheerful, somewhat distant demeanor, more like a professor than a hardboiled cop. “So I guess you didn’t take my advice to get out of this line of work. You were way up there, were you?” Grew asked.

“At the very top,” Frank said, looking past the structure to the horizontal arm of the crane that loomed above it.

“About as high as Flannery was when he was hit,” Grew said matter-of-factly.

“So you had your people do the analysis on Flannery?” Frank asked.

“Yes. The computer enhancement people got very excited about it. We’re going to exhume the body now. Seems youVe hit on a textbook murder case.”

“And we were ahnost the victims of another one,” Frank said. “Do you think it might be the same killer?”

“Hard to say. Like I said before, this is a tough business. But it’s a good thing that crane operator looks like he’ll be coming around.” Grew looked at his watch. “Look, Frank, I’m working on a dozen current murder cases at the moment. This one’s too old for me to dive back into. Let me know what you find.”

“I got a cast of the guy’s footprint,” Frank offered. “Do you want it?”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we had time to check on that. Sad to say, but I’m afraid I’m not going to get any more people to work on this case— unless there’s a fresh murder.” With that. Grew ambled off, shaking his head and whistling.

Before Frank could go down into the pit to see Joe, he was surprised to see Michaels walking toward him. “What’s this I hear about another accident?” he asked, looking concerned but calm.

“I don’t think it was an accident, sir,” Frank said. “The crane operator was hit pretty hard on the head.”

“My goodness, this is becoming a bit of a mess, isn’t it?” He seemed to be looking at the smudges on Frank’s shirt, then he brushed a small piece of dirt from his cream-colored linen suit. “You’d better stay off the site until the poHce sort this out.”

“Yes, sir,” Frank said. He thought about telling Michaels about what Grew had said, but he was already walking away.

“See you tomorrow at the office, then, Frank. Fve got what I needed,” he said, holding up a roll of blueprints.

Frank looked over to see Joe coming up the ramp with Dave Kaiser. Dave had a black eye, and his upper lip was bruised and swollen.

“What happened to you?” Frank asked.

“I had a little visit from some criminal types last night,” he explained.

“What’d they say?” Frank asked.

“Oh, you know, the usual. Keep your mouth shut, stop making trouble.”

“What’d they look like?” Frank asked.

“I already asked,” Joe said. “It sounds like our friends from this morning.”

“Anyway, we can’t let this stuff get to us too much. Fve just asked Joe if you guys can make it to a volleyball game tonight. Some of the guys on our team who got laid off refuse to play.”

“Sure, that’d be great,” Frank said, seeing that Joe had already agreed.

Frank and Joe left the site shortly after three and took the train home. The volleyball game was going to be on a section of the beach not too far from Bayport. Aside from wanting to pick up their van for the trip out there, they wanted to spend a few hours working things out and using their dad’s computer to gather some information.

“Fve been thinking, Frank,” Joe said as they walked through the door of their house. “You know, just because Silver sent us off with those thugs doesn’t mean that he was finished with us.”

Frank walked to the kitchen, grabbed a pizza out of the freezer, and stuck it in the oven. “He might have been upset when he found out that nothing happened to us—and then maybe he came after us himself.”

“Yeah, I mean, if he’s being paid off by the unions, and working with organized crime, he’s got to be worried about getting into trouble.” Joe grabbed some chips from the food pantry and opened a can of soda. “What I don’t get is why he’d be picking on us. Now that Pinkie’s article is out, the whole world knows about him.”

“Don’t forget what kind of paper Pinkie writes for, Joe. Nobody believes that stuff. He probably thinks he can still keep a hd on it. And besides, we don’t have any hard evidence yet.”

“I was thinking we might be able to use Dad’s computer to log on to the Interpol Web site,” Frank said, referring to the international crime database in Paris. “If Silver’s been getting large cash payments, the Federal Reserve Bank should have filed its credit transaction reports on him with Interpol. It’s worth a shot, anyway.”

Frank left Joe in the kitchen and went into his dad’s study. Once he got through the clearance system using his dad’s password, it didn’t take long to file his request. The answer would be available in the morning.

The volleyball game turned out to be fun, while it lasted. Hannah was there, and of course Dave. Even Mike, the welder, showed up. Batting the ball back and forth, diving into the sand, spiking perfect setups, flubbing the easy ones—all of the usual aspects of the game worked together with the sound of the waves hitting the beach to ease Frank and Joe out of the world of crime and violence that was beginning to get to them.

Then the rain came. Storm clouds had threatened the skies all day. It was a heavy downpour, and when it hit, the wind picked up immediately. Everyone scattered and ran to their cars. Frank and Joe got in the van and started to drive out of the parking lot with all the others.

Frank had his left blinker on and was waiting to head west on the road running along the Atlantic shore when an imperceptible sound from behind caught his attention. He slowly turned his head to the right to see Joe, sitting still, his neck firmly locked by an arm that was reaching from behind.

Chapter 11

“Turn right, Frankie,” a voice from behind the driver’s seat said. “We know a nice quiet place to go.”

“We got to teach you boys some manners,” the other voice said. “You were a httle rude to us this morning. We had to spend time in a place we don’t like very much because of you.”

“And we wanna show you it don’t pay to be calling the cops on us. It makes us kind of mad.”

Frank was driving slowly through the rain. Up ahead was a huge puddle on the road, so he slowed even further. He caught a hght in the corner of his eye and looked through the rearview mirror. A line of cars was approaching and gaining on them.

Within seconds the cars were right behind, and then several started to pass. Frank looked to the left and saw Abby Mundt, a steelworker’s apprentice who had been at the volleyball game, passing in her blue pickup. Soon the cars and trucks of their friends from QuadCom had boxed them in. Then the cars in front slowed to a crawl. Finally everyone stopped.

“Man, you guys are trouble,” said the voice behind Joe as he tightened his grip around Joe’s neck. Joe heard the click of a switchblade opening and struggled to break the hold. It was no use. The man’s arm was like a steel vise.

“I’ll bet two out of three of these cars have phones or CB radios,” Frank said. “Your friends the police will be here soon.”

“Okay, look, you little rugrats,” the one behind Frank said. “This isn’t turning out the way we planned. We was just going to give you guys a little scare. For fun. We heard how you saved Danny Blustein’s life today. So we was coming out to tell you that the truck that went after you was stolen and we ain’t found the guy yet.”

“That’s good of you,” Frank said, swallowing what he really thought.

“Only problem now is, we can’t be seen acting too friendly in front of all these union guys.”

“So here’s what we want you to do,” the man behind Frank said. “Frank, you get out and talk to them. Tell them when they let us get out of here in the van, we’ll let Joe out.”

Frank did as they said, and soon the cars parted. The van crept through the opening, Joe was thrown out, and the van sped back toward the beach where they’d played volleyball.

Hannah Creager jumped out of her car and ran over to Joe, who was sitting beside the road, looking dazed and rubbing his shoulder.

“Joe, are you okay?” she cried, kneeling down as the rain drenched them both. Joe took a few deep breaths to make sure he had no broken ribs. Somehow in spite of the pain of this parting blow, he felt a smile stealing across his face. He looked into Hannah’s eyes. “I’m okay, Hannah.”

Hannah looked up at Frank, who had come over with Dave Kaiser and a few others. Frank leaned over and examined Joe in the hght of the surrounding headhghts. “You’ve got nine hves, httle brother. Looks like nothing’s broken.”

Frank and Hannah helped Joe to his feet. “My car’s over there,” Hannah said, pointing to a red four-door sedan.

When they had Joe safely in the backseat, Hannah gave Frank the keys. She stayed in the backseat with Joe. He was getting his wind back and was sitting up, seeming to enjoy being fussed over by Hannah.

“I was standing in the rain, watching you guys leave the parking lot,” Hannah explained, after Frank got into the driver’s seat. “I’ve always loved walking in the rain, and I wasn’t eager to leave the beach.” She was holding Joe’s hand and looking into his eyes.

“So I was just standing there, thinking about how much fun we’d had, when you suddenly turned the wrong way. I looked carefully and thought I saw somebody in there with you.”

Frank started the car and began driving back to the beach. He was hoping that the hoods had gone back to get their car and left the van in the lot. “So you got everybody to chase after us,” Frank said. “BrilHant work, Hannah.” He decided not to tell her that she had actually gotten Joe pushed out of the van, if what the thugs said was true.

“Thanks,” she responded. “Actually, it wasn’t until I talked to Dave Kaiser that I really had any idea of what to do. He was the first guy I waved over. When I told him what Fd seen, it was like something chcked inside him. He said he had thought he had recognized one of the cars in the lot as belonging to some criminal types but had shrugged it off. It didn’t take us long after that to organize everybody who was still in the lot. We even got a few guys from the beach who we didn’t know.”

Joe didn’t know what to say. The whole thing was so crazy. There she was, soaking wet; thinking she had saved their hves. He didn’t want to tell her otherwise. As he looked into her eyes, he was afraid something else was happening to confuse things.

“Hannah, I—”

“Don’t say anything, Joe,” she said softly. “We don’t have to think about it now.”

Joe smiled and squeezed her hand, grateful and tired. He leaned back and wondered how many lives he had left.

The van was in the lot, parked sideways across three spaces, with skid marks trailing behind it. Frank got out and looked through one of the windows. He couldn’t see anything, and even though he assumed the gangsters wouldn’t have had time to set a trap, he felt nervous when he opened the door. The keys were still in the ignition. There was no sign that they had done anything but park and run. Still, before turning the key, Frank took a flashhght from the glove compartment and checked underneath for signs of a bomb.

There was nothing, so Frank went over to get Joe and say goodbye to Hannah. When Frank opened the door, Joe reached over and kissed Hannah. Suddenly he felt as if it would be hard to leave. Frank grabbed him by the arm. “Come on, guys, I’m freezing.”

Joe pulled himself away and said goodbye.

The next morning Frank was surprised when he looked at the clock. It was eight-thirty. They had overslept by three hours. They had grown dependent on Ace Berghoff’s wake-up calls. Oh, well, he thought, Joe needs the sleep. He looked over at Joe’s bed and was surprised to see that it was empty.

He smelled bacon cooking and jumped out of bed. Joe’s all right, he told himself. He probably just couldn’t sleep with all his new aches and pains. Still, he found himself hurrying to find Joe. He threw on a bathrobe and stumbled into the kitchen.

“Well, good morning,” Laura Hardy said cheerfully as she turned off the flame under a pan of scrambled eggs. “Joe told me you had another run-in with some tough guys after the volleyball game.” Frank nodded, happy that his mother didn’t know what had really been happening. Normally, they would have told her everything, but with their dad out of town, they didn’t want her to worry too much.

“I wish you could just stay around here after work, Frank,” Mrs. Hardy said as she placed a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him.

“We will. Mom. I think maybe we’ve had enough for now, anyway.” He could see that she didn’t really believe him, so he changed the topic. “Where’s Joe, anyway?”

“Oh, he’s been up for hours. He’s working on your father’s computer. When I saw the way he looked, I thought I’d better look after you boys. I turned off your alarm so you could sleep.”

“Mom,” Frank protested.

“Don’t worry,” she replied, pouring a cup of coffee for him. “Joe called in and said you’d be late. Nobody seemed to care, he said.”

Joe bounded into the kitchen. “Wow, that smells good. Mom. Got some for me?”

“Of course, dear. Have a seat,” Mrs. Hardy said, smiling affectionately at her younger son.

“So, Frank, I got an answer from Interpol. And boy, have they got a file on Silver.”

“Well, ril get going now,” Mrs. Hardy said. “You boys look like you can take care of yourselves.”

They said goodbye and got back to their conversation. “He deposits large amounts of cash in his bank fairly often,” Joe said. “Has been for years.”

“I guess we knew that. He isn’t driving a Ferrari on an inspector’s salary. Those must be payments from the union—^probably funneled through the Mob.”

“Exactly, but here’s the odd thing. Last year, a few days before Peter Flannery was killed, he got a huge check—a hundred thousand dollars. It was from a Swiss bank with a numbered account that can’t be traced.”

“Hmm,” Frank said. “Interesting. I wonder if it could have been a payment in advance for Flannery’s murder. But Silver’s no hit man, and in any case, the Mob could obviously arrange that on its own. There must be some other explanation.”

“Well, there’s always extortion,” Joe said.

“You mean, say, if Silver was about to shut down a building project for code violations …”

“And Berghoff paid him not to?” Joe finished Frank’s thought, supplying Berghoff’s name with a combination of excitement and regret. He had begim to like the blustery guy. At the same time, it would explain a lot if Berghoff had been in on the corruption from the beginning.

“But that doesn’t explain why Flannery was killed,” Frank said, perplexed.

“Maybe he knew about the code violations and wouldn’t keep quiet,” Joe said.

“In which case either the Mob or Berghoff would have had the motive to kill him. The Mob, to keep the union working, and Berghoff, to save his project from financial ruin.” Frank finished his breakfast and poured himself and Joe another glass of orange juice.

“Suppose this was true—then Silver must have been going out on a limb to pressure Berghoff into making the payment. The Mob and the union wouldn’t be happy to know he was working his own turf like that. What if Berghoff had exposed the whole racket?”

“Maybe Silver had some reason to think he wasn’t honest,” Joe said.

“Or maybe we’re on the wrong track altogether,” Frank said. “Did you check out Dad’s footprint program?”

“Yup,” Joe said proudly. “The guy was wearing an expensive, handmade Italian shoe, size forty-four—American size eleven.”

“Well, I guess we’ve got to start taking an interest in people’s feet,” Frank said. “In the meantime, we’d better get to work.”

“Well, well, look what the cat dragged in.” Bi-anca Millard looked up from behind her desk when she saw Frank and Joe walk into Michaels’s suite. They had been caught in another downpour on the way to work and had the bedraggled look of some unlucky prey, especially compared to Bi-anca’s picture-perfect appearance.

“Now we won’t need showers till next week,” Joe said, picking up Bianca’s light tone.

She returned the smile, then resumed her usual businesslike tone. “Mr. Michaels is at a meeting and wants you gentlemen to assist me today.”

“Oh, no,” Joe groaned, pretending to shrink back against the desk. “More filing to do.”

“Not quite. Here’s your first job,” Bianca said. She held out a floppy disk while squinting to read the instructions in her notebook. “Mr. Michaels wanted me to get a CAD drawing of the elasto-meric joints from the Comfortage printed. I was going to get Charles next door to do it, but you’ve worked with CAD systems before, haven’t you?”

“Piece of cake,” Joe said. “Which system is it on?” He knew that the office used several different CAD—Computer Assisted Design—^programs, depending on the application.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “The joints have to do with the amount of sway a structure can have in the wind. I hope that gives you some clues.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Frank said. “The code will be in the file name extension on the floppy file.”

Relieved that the assignment sounded more interesting than filing, Joe started to follow Frank to the terminal they used in the main studio, a huge room filled with computers and drafting tables.

“Joe,” Bianca said before he had taken two steps, “here’s a stack of papers for you to file.”

He looked down in agony at the pile of papers. “This will take me all day.” The groan was real now.

“I hope not,” she said. “I’ve got some typing for you to do, too.”

Frank, who had heard this interchange, smiled at his good luck, and slipped into the studio. He knew Joe could handle it, and in any case he figured he would be enlisted to help before long. He looked at the floppy and was surprised to see that the label had “Flannery and Rynn Associates” printed on it. Interesting, he thought to himself. These must have been special files generated by the structural engineer for the Comfortage.

Frank knew that in a building like the Com-fortage, the structural engineer was almost more important than the architect. It was up to him or her to make sure that the building that the architect had designed really worked. Often, the structural engineer would specify exactly how the frame was to be configured.

Frank eagerly got to work. Before long he had clicked on the picture Michaels wanted and was having it printed on the big laser printer.

While he waited, he clicked back to the directory on the floppy. Of the twenty files, one, besides the one labeled “Elas.dzl” for the elastomeric joint he printing out, caught his eye. It was called “wind.stl.” He knew the extension was the one used by the program that calculated stresses on structures. He wondered if this file was the one used to test for wind stress on the Comfortage’s frame. He opened up the stress program and then called up the “wind.stl” file.

Strange, Frank thought. It’s been deleted. He went back to the directory to check the date on which the file had last been altered.

It was midnight of the day Flannery had been killed.

Stunned, Frank tried for a moment to avoid thinking the obvious. Anyone could have gotten into the office and deleted that file. But who else would think of it?

Now, for the first time, he had to come to grips with the possibility that Richard Michaels himself might have been involved in the whole treacherous affair. He was trying to imagine Michaels hitting someone on the back of the head with a gun when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Frank turned around.

It was Michaels, staring beyond Frank to the computer screen.

Chapter 12

Frank stiffened and tried to think of some way to divert Michaels’s attention from the directory showing Flannery’s floppy.

“Oh, I see you’ve got the Comfortage files out,” Michaels said calmly. “Any trouble finding the elastomeric joint?” He seemed perfectly at ease and unconcerned about what Frank might have discovered.

Frank thought he’d better take a chance and probe a Httle. “I didn’t have any trouble with that, but I was a httle surprised to see that someone had erased the Wind Stress file.”

“Hmm,” Michaels said, raising his eyebrows. “That’s odd. Are you sure?”

Frank double-chcked the file name and brought it up. “I mean, it wasn’t erased the normal way, through the directory. Someone must have been looking at the file, and then erased the contents from within it.”

“Oh, well, it’s a good thing we don’t need it anymore. Of course, that building is built like the Rock of Gibraltar, so there wasn’t much to that file.”

“I see,” Frank said, wondering if Michaels was covering something up. He didn’t seem to be, but then it had always been hard to tell what Michaels was thinking.

Frank realized that the only way to know for sure would be to find the original file. As soon as Michaels left, he went over to ask Bianca if there were any other copies of the file and where this one had been kept.

“As far as I know, that’s the only copy of the whole disk we have, and it’s kept right here at my desk. The original would be with the structural engineering firm. Of course, several of the architects might have their own copies. Why? Didn’t you find the right file?”

“Yes, it’s just that an interesting file was erased. I wanted to look at it.”

“Now, Frank,” Bianca said disapprovingly. “Let’s not forget we have work to do. 1 had hoped that when you were done with your job, you could help your brother.”

“Actually, Bianca,” Frank said, quickly thinking up a lame excuse to get away, “I’m not feeling too well. I’d better get Joe to take me home.”

He sank into the chair next to Bianca’s desk, hoping she would think he was suddenly dizzy.

“My goodness, you’re not going to throw up, are you?” Clearly, the idea of that happening in Bianca’s perfectly controlled environment struck horror into her. She called Joe over in desperation and urged the two of them out without a trace of hesitation—or concern for Frank’s well-being.

Once safely in the elevator, Frank straightened up and told Joe what he had discovered.

“So you’re okay?”

“Of course,” Frank said.

“Thanks for rescuing me from the file room. Where to now, then?” Joe asked, chuckling.

Frank remembered from the label on the disk that Rannery’s firm was out in Denville, New Jersey, a town about an hour west of New York. He called on the mobile phone to find out if the firm had moved since Flannery’s death.

“It’s still there,” he told Joe. “Why don’t we go home and get the van and then head out there?”

“You think they’ll let us in?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Frank replied.

What Frank hadn’t counted on was the degree to which Flannery and Flynn Associates saw itself as a modem fortress. Located in a beautifully landscaped industrial park in what had been farmland twenty years earlier, the mirrored office building was surrounded by what appeared to Frank to be a moat. Frank and Joe had to park the van and then proceed by foot over a bridge that crossed a duck pond. There was a security checkpoint midway across the bridge.

Frank had called ahead, posing as one of Mi-chaels’s junior partners. He explained to a secretary that they urgently needed the file for a project under deadline. She said it would take time to talk to the proper authorities in the firm. Frank insisted that he and another partner would be out right away, and politely signed off before she could object.

They felt like Cold War spies trying to cross Checkpoint Charley at the wall that had separated the former East and West Berlin, when a guard stopped them and called in for clearance. “Go ahead, fellows,” he said, waving them through. “My gosh, you architects look younger every year.”

Once inside, however, they were met by a distinguished-looking man who introduced himself as the director of corporate relations. He led them to a lounge area in an atrium that soared five stories.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” he explained. “We had a brief phone conference on this, and our attorney informs us that we need a written request from your firm in order to release any of Mr. Flannery’s files.”

“But this is urgent,” Frank said. “And we did pay a high price for Peter Flannery’s analysis.”

“Indeed you did,” the man answered. “And because of that, we would be glad to arrange something for a fresh analysis of whatever situation you’re now facing.”

He paused and let the exotic bird in a cage nearby finish making its call. “Of course, if you are simply checking the calculations on a completed building, one of our engineers would be glad to help you.”

In other words, Joe thought, if you want something we’ve got, it’s going to cost you.

Knowing that nothing could happen along these lines without Michaels being involved, they talked their way back outside as fast as they could.

As they were driving back to the interstate, they passed large, attractive homes on huge lots. “You know,” Joe said, “I’ll bet Flannery’s family hves around here somewhere.”

“Or used to,” Frank observed. “I’m not sure his widow would want to stay in the area.”

“I think I remember reading he had a daughter in jimior high school at the time of his death. Maybe they stayed for her sake.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Frank said. “Maybe they know something that would help. Call information.”

The operator found a Mrs. Peter Rannery, but the number was urdisted. Joe didn’t want to intrude on the family’s privacy, but he didn’t feel he had any choice. He called the special number his father used to get unlisted numbers and gave the operator his father’s identification number. It worked.

Joe had trouble mustering the courage to make the call. If the Flannerys had read or heard about the article in the Sun that heralded Frank and Joe as heroes, they would probably be upset about it. If, on the other hand, they did not know about the article, they wouldn’t want some stranger calling them up to rip open a wound that was healing.

By the time he made the call, he felt as if he had imagined himself being a part of the Flan-nery family. While he had never lost a member of his immediate family, the hurt from his girlfriend lola’s death still stung deep. He also felt a certain solidarity with Peter Flannery. Hadn’t Flannery most likely been killed by the man who had tried to kill him and Frank?

When Lucy Flannery, now sixteen years old, answered the phone, there must have been something in Joe’s voice that made her realize that he only wanted to help.

At first she was reluctant to say anythihg, but she did not hang up. Joe didn’t beat around the bush. He quickly laid out the facts of the case, explained how they had become involved. He apologized for the shock Pinkie’s article must have caused, but said that in the end it might have been a good thing, because it seemed to have aroused the killer again. He ended with a plea for her help.

“If you have any way of getting to your father’s files, please let us know. I know you don’t have any reason to trust us, but I hope that you will hear the sincerity in my voice.”

There was a long pause. “I’ll have to meet you in town. My mother’s really angry about the article, and I’m sure she wouldn’t want to meet you.

“I’ve always known my father was murdered,” she went on with certainty in her voice. “Meet me at the coffee shop on the main street in Den-ville. “I’ve got red hair, and I’ll be wearing a blue T-shirt.”

By the time Frank and Joe found the Denville Diner, Lucy was there, sitting in a booth.

“Look,” she said, not wasting any time, “I know how to get into my father’s office. In a half hour nobody will be around. I doubt I could find the floppy disk you were talking about, but I know the computer system pretty well. I had a job there last summer. Many of his files should still be on the hard drive there.”

She was clearly as motivated as Frank and Joe to pursue her father’s killer. Her eyes had a distant, slightly cold look, and her freckled face looked a lot older than sixteen.

She must have realized that Frank and Joe looked a little taken aback, since she suddenly loosened up and smiled. “Are you guys hungry?

This place has great burgers. We shouldn’t go yet anyway.”

It was six o’clock, and Joe and Frank realized they hadn’t eaten since their mother had made them breakfast. The three ordered deluxe burgers and milkshakes. While they waited Frank and Joe filled Lucy in on the whole case.

“So you’re thinking that the Wind Stress file will show some weakness in the structure of the Comfortage?” Lucy took a deep breath and looked outside. Frank and Joe followed suit. It wasn’t raining, but the winds had steadily picked up during the course of the day, and the trees outside were bending.

They all must have had the same thought simultaneously. It was Lucy who said it first. “The Comfortage could be in trouble.”

When the food came, they ate quickly and headed off with a renewed sense of urgency. The radio said winds from Hurricane Miranda were only expected to get worse in the next twenty-four hours.

Lucy urged Frank to park in the company lot despite his desire to find some out-of-the-way place. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, shouting above the wind. “This place has such ‘an advanced security system that there are no guards on duty. Besides, there’s nothing to guard except computers, and they’re all protected by so many hard and soft locks that no one could possibly steal either the machines or what’s in them,”

“So what are we doing here?” Joe asked.

“As I said, I know the system. And I have the key. My mother and I still own half this place, you know.”

“In that case, why are we sneaking in?” Frank asked.

“Well, we own the stock, but we signed a contract agreeing to give up actual control of the company to Mr. Flynn. He’s nice enough about it, but he’s made it clear that he intends to run things without interference. Besides, my mother would have had to know if we’d decided to go in during the day.”

“But you still have the keys?” Frank asked.

“I have some keys. I just hope the security codes still work.”

They were all relieved to find that the computer at the front door recognized her palm print. From there on, it was easy sailing. Lucy found the last disks that her father had worked on stored in the hard drive where they had been, in Flynn’s—once her father’s—office on the third floor. She got into the system using her dad’s old password without any hitches.

“Wind.sts” was on in the directory for the Comfort age. When Lucy double-checked to open it, everyone was relieved to see a full file, clearly full of CAD illustrations. Lucy skimmed through the document quickly, clicking from page to page.

“There!” Frank cried. “What’s that?” A picture of the frame of the Comfortage was on the

screen. The steel members were in gray, and at a number of joints bright red cracks were visible.

“This is the virtual wind tunnel. It allows you to check the stress points under various wind conditions, and shows where the structure is too weak.”

Lucy showed them how a dial labeled “wind velocity” worked. She used the mouse to manipulate the cursor on the controls of the virtual dial, and then she did the same for the virtual wind direction dial.

Then she clicked “OK” in the dialogue box, and the sound of howling wind came through the speakers. Soon hot pink spots appeared in various places on the structure.

“Those are the stress points,” she explained. “At this wind velocity and direction, the structure holds up all right.”

“So let’s check it at the levels we’re about to get from Hurricane Miranda,” Joe suggested. “I think I heard they were going to be about sixty miles per hour from the southwest.”

Lucy set the dials and clicked on the wind. Immediately, bright red cracks appeared all over the structure, and the elastomeric joints in the middle heights of the building appeared to be exploding.

“Can you copy that image?” Frank asked grimly. “I’d like to confront Michaels with that myself.”

“Sure,” Lucy said. She went over to the bank of machines at the far end of the room and turned on the printer. Then she came back and set up the print job. After a few seconds the screen went blank. Then, bright red blinking letters appeared on the screen that read “Security Breach.”

“Uh-oh,” she said. “They’ve put in a new function since I worked here. I think they can tell someone’s accessed to the system. I hope they don’t know who, though.”

After another few seconds, the lights started blinking in the room, and a deafening siren went off.

“Too late!” Frank cried. “We’ve been caught!”

Chapter 13

“Maybe we can beat the cops getting here,” Joe said as he, Frank, and Lucy flew down the stairs toward the exit.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, trying to be heard over the siren’s wail. “Police headquarters is only a few blocks away.”

They raced toward the front door. When Lucy reached up to place her palm on the detector, there was still no sign of the police. Maybe they would make it after all, Frank hoped.

Then the computer started asking questions. Apparently, a special password was needed when a breach of security happened after hours.

Lucy’s efforts to get the computer to open the door were still under way when the first flashing light appeared in the parking lot. “Forget it,” she told the brothers. “We’re in for it now.”

Soon another five or six cars had arrived, and a little army of police officers was marching up the walkway, armed with revolvers, rifles, and walkie-talkies.

“Oh, well,” Lucy said with a sigh. “I guess as an owner of the company, it’s good to know that the security system works well.”

“I don’t suppose they’ll just let us go, though, even knowing who you are,” Frank said. “They probably have to call Flynn, right?”

“And that means Mom will have to get involved.” Lucy’s eyes began to tear up. “I’m not worried about getting in trouble,” she went on. “I just can’t stand the thought of Mom having to deal with all of this right now.”

The officers were just reaching the front door. One of them seemed to recognize Lucy, and when she signaled that she was all right, he ordered the others to put away their guns. Then one of them got out a piece of paper and started trying to figure out how to open the door.

“Uh-oh,” said Lucy, pointing to a man in a tennis outfit running up the path. “Here comes Mr. Flynn.”

Within seconds the trim, middle-aged Roger Flynn had disabled the alarm and opened the door. “Lucy,” he said, shaking his head. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“I’m really sorry, Mr. Flynn,” she began. “I know this looks terrible. But I think we’ve found something really important,”

“This wouldn’t be the Hardy brothers you’ve got with you, would it?” he asked, looking sternly at Frank and Joe.

“Well, yes,” she answered. “How did you know?”

“After that strange episode this afternoon, we called Richard Michaels. He seemed to have a pretty good idea of what you boys were after.”

“Well, we found it—and it’s not good news at all!” Lucy exclaimed.

Roger Flynn dismissed the police and took Lucy gently by the arm. He guided her back to a couch in the atrium. The Hardys followed.

“Lucy, I think things may be a little more complicated than you think,” he said gently.

“That’s because you’ve been talking to my father’s killer,” Lucy said excitedly. Then she began sobbing. “And if the Comfortage isn’t evacuated before it reaches critical stress in this storm, he’ll be responsible for hundreds of deaths.”

“Calm down, Lucy,” Flynn said. “The Comfortage isn’t about to fall down. Don’t you remember how proud of it your father was?”

“Yes, but he must have found that he’d made a mistake. The Wind Stress file we just looked at shows that it’s incredibly weak.”

“Yes, I know. Michaels explained it all, and he explained how your friends here are really not to blame for taking you on a wild-goose chase.” He turned to Frank and Joe. “Sounds like you’ve had a rough time of it lately.”

Joe could see that Michaels might very easily smoothtalk his way out of murder charges, but no amount of trickery could change the laws of nature. If the Comfortage was indeed as weak as the virtual wind tunnel showed, it would soon be toppled. “How do you explain the findings of the wind tunnel, then?” he asked.

“Look, I know you think Michaels erased the file to cover up a motive for killing Roger. He realized that was what you thought as soon as we called him this afternoon. What you don’t know is that Peter had set the strength values of the elastomeric joints at a very low level—merely as an experiment. I can show you sometime.

“Richard erased the file late on the night Peter died because of the state he was in. He wanted to see Peter’s latest work one more time, but it pained him too much to feel Peter’s inquisitive mind at work now that he was dead. So you see, you’ve got it all wrong.”

Lucy looked closely at Flynn. Clearly, she found what he said plausible. So did Frank and Joe. But now she was thinking along different lines. “So you won’t tell Mom about this?”

“Of course not,” Flynn answered kindly. “I understand what you all were after. Let’s just go home now and forget the whole thing.”

He got up from the couch and led them toward the door. “I’ll give you a ride home, Lucy.”

Whatever she may have been thinking privately, Lucy didn’t seem to be in a position to argue. She obviously trusted Fljnin, and even more important, wanted to protect her mother. “I’ll see you guys,” she said to Frank and Joe. “Let me know what you find.”

“You’d better call us,” Joe said. “We’re in the Bayport phone book.”

“I don’t know about you, Frank,” Joe said once they were back in the van. “But I don’t beheve a word of that story about why Michaels erased the file. I think we’ve caught the guy red-handed.”

Frank still didn’t want to believe Michaels was capable of covering up an architectural flaw, much less of murdering someone to do it. But he knew that if he gave up Michaels as a suspect, they were back to square one on Flannery’s murder. He thought hard to try to come up with another explanation.

“What if Rannery found out something about the way the joints were either manufactured or installed, and that’s what caused him to try the low strength figures?” Frank paused to work out the theory. “Let’s say Silver also knew and bribed the killer to keep quiet.”

“Okay, but then we’d actually have more suspects than before. On top of Ferris, Berghoff, and the steelworkers union, we’d have the manufacturer of the joints. Who would that be—the owner of some foundry? And there’d have to be some reason why he hadn’t told Michaels about it. I mean, it would be kind of weird to send him the Wind Stress file with those low figures and not explain it.”

Frank felt at a loss. “Maybe the killer was putting pressure on Flannery to keep quiet. Or maybe Flannery wasn’t yet sure that the joints were so weak. Maybe it was his way of getting Michaels to check into the situation without actually pointing the finger.”

“Which I guess Michaels didn’t do, since he just erased the file.” Joe looked over at Frank, who was concentrating hard on driving in the high winds. “You know, there’s another possibility,” Joe said. “If there was a flaw in Flannery’s engineering, it could be Flynn who is covering up now. His firm would be responsible, in spite of Flannery’s death.”

Frank raised his eyebrows. “Not bad, Joe,” he said. “Then it’s also possible that Flynn murdered Flannery to keep him quiet.”

“And he gets himself total control of the company in the process,” Joe added. He looked over at Frank again, and knew that they were thinking the same thing: if that were true, Lucy was now with the man who had killed her father.

Frank rubbed his neck to ease the tension of hunching over the steering wheel. “I don’t think we can solve this right now. But there is one thing we can do. We can find out if the Com-fortage really is cracking under the strain. If it is, we’ve got to get it evacuated.”

Joe agreed. They could take the van into New York, grab some flashlights and a toolbox, and quickly check out the joints between the nineteenth and twentieth floors, where the test had shown the exploding joints. Frank knew from studying the drawings that morning that there was a service area between the steel framework for the floor and the beam grid that contained the joints in question. As long as they could find the service entrance, finding the joints should be easy.

When they arrived at the Comfortage, they parked at the front door and jogged past the doorman. He ran after them, trying to stop them. “We work for Berghoff,” Joe called. “It’s important, believe me.”

On the twentieth floor they quickly spotted a square panel on the hallway floor that had a keyed lock. Joe got out his lock-picking tool and went to work. The tumblers went easily into position, and the spring-loaded door flew open. They took the ladder down into the dark cavity.

Once their eyes had adjusted to the light of their flashlights, they could see that a catwalk led through a complex network of pipes and bus bars, which conducted electricity through the building. The passageway was about two feet high. They had to crawl about twenty feet before they were within sight of the corner joints they wanted to inspect.

Joe was the first to spot the problem. Scanning along the huge inverted U-beam to the yoke that connected it to the main load-bearing column, he and Frank found that the complex bearing assembly was strong and sound. The U-beam was plugged into its socket the way it was supposed to be, and Joe could see no cracks in the joint that supported the great vertical load from the floor. Then just as they were about to move on to examine another joint, Joe saw what was happening.

“Look at that, Frank,” he said excitedly, training his flashlight on the section of the joint where the beam plugged in. As the building swayed forward, the beam gradually started separating from the yoke assembly. At the end of the sway cycle, the beam had come at least six inches out of its socket. “Another two inches,” Joe said, “and the beam will fall out.”

“The steel dowels holding the beam to the yoke must have sheared off,” Frank reasoned. He shone his flashhght into the pocket of the beam grid directly below the joint. The large heads of four black metal bolts lay on the concrete surface. “If that’s happening all over the building, there isn’t much time left before the whole thing collapses.”

“Let’s get out of here!” Joe shouted. They turned and began heading for the beam of light where the trapdoor was.

When it snapped shut with a loud bang, Frank and Joe both jumped. “Hit your light, Joe,” Frank yelled. Before Joe could react, a gunshot broke the silence.

Chapter 14

Frank and Joe rolled off the catwalk and lay sandwiched between it and a run of insulated steam pipes. Frank’s mobile phone fell out of his pocket and fried when it hit the high voltage bus bar directly underneath the catwalk. In that tight space between floors sound carried well, and they could hear the gunman tiptoeing fifty feet away. Suddenly he began discharging his gun. The bullets bounced wildly in all directions but came nowhere near them.

At least we can rule out our hit men, Joe thought. Whoever this was, he was no professional gunman. Five more shots rang out, in rapid succession. Then the trapdoor opened, and Frank and Joe could both clearly see a man with a black ski mask climb up the ladder and shut the door behind him. Then they heard the unmistakable clicking noise of the lock turning.

“He’s locking us in here!” Joe cried. “We’ll go down with the building.”

“Not if we’re lucky,” Frank replied, pulling himself back onto the catwalk. He tested to see if his flashhght still worked and then used it to scan toward the middle of the building. “We should be able to get out through one of the elevator shafts.”

Joe was on the catwalk now, too. “I think you’re right,” he said, focusing on one of the vertical structures that broke the wide, flat expanse of the service area. “It looks like they’re nothing but open frameworks. And that means we can get inside one of them.”

“Let’s go for it.”

There was no catwalk leading to any of the shafts, but they found that as long as they were careful they could balance on the beam grid and work their way through the obstacles, like spe-lunkers in a cave, picking their way over a field of stalactites. The building was now clearly swaying back and forth in the wind.

“I wonder how long this building can stand up,” Joe said, as he and Frank looked down the shaft they had finally reached. Joe imagined the whole complex structure collapsing in on itself like a house of cards, leaving a huge pile of rubble. No one would possibly survive. No one knows we’re in here, he thought with a shudder. They wouldn’t even know to look for us.

Frank didn’t say anything. He was watching for the elevator. “As soon as it passes going down, we can chmb up to the next floor and open the outside elevator door to the hallway.” He didn’t know if it would be possible to open the door without some kind of key—or if the elevators always kept going down once they started. He knew there was no other option.

As soon as the elevator whooshed by, Frank climbed through the steel framework and hoisted himself up to the ledge above. The door was rigged with a simple hinged device and a mechanical latch that opened when prompted by the inside elevator door. Frank pulled up on the latch and pushed the hinge down. The door swung open.

When they were both safely in the hallway, they opted to take the stairs down instead of the elevator. Apparently they were not the only ones who had decided the elevator was not a good idea in these conditions. An older couple was slowly making their way down in front of them. “Isn’t this terrible,” the woman said. “My husband insists the building is designed to sway like this in the wind, but I finally convinced him to leave.”

“You’re doing the right thing,” Joe said. “Could you let us by?” Neither he nor Frank wanted to alarm them further by telhng them just how bad things were. They just hoped they could make it down in time to get an official evacuation started.

Once on the ground level Frank called 911 while Joe explained things to a skeptical attendant at the front desk. When the people at 911 asked to speak to the management, Frank hung up and dialed Detective Grew’s private extension at the police department.

Joe kept looking out for the gunman as he spoke to the clerk. Was he still in the building? he wondered. The clerk informed Joe that no evacuation was possible without the advice of the people at 911.

Frank got Grew on the line immediately. This time, with the prospect of catching the killer armed, Grew was willing to commit a large number of officers. He even said he’d send over a SWAT team. And he’d get the rescue people moving immediately.

Frank hung up and worked his way through the by now crowded lobby. People had begun evacuating on their own. One soaking wet man was describing to the clerk how water had begun pouring from the ceiling in his eighteenth-floor apartment. Frank grabbed Joe and told him what Grew had said.

“We’d better go to the top floor and start telling people to get out of here,” Joe said.

They fought their way up the crowded stairway. People had begun to panic. One woman stopped them and described how one of her windows had shattered, and another told of a power outage on her floor. A man who assumed Frank and Joe were rescuers told them that the elevators had stopped working, and that some people were trapped in one of them between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth floors.

“We’d better go there first,” Frank said. Joe agreed, and they continued up against the stream of evacuees.

The entire building must have blacked out when they hit the twentieth floor, and the emergency hghts went on in the stairway. Now there would be httle need to warn people of the danger. On the twenty-fourth floor, Frank and Joe stepped into the corridor. The carpet was submerged in an inch of water, and most of the doors had been left open. A strong smell of gas permeated the air.

Joe found the box holding the elevator key, and shattered the glass door with a mallet hanging down by a chain on the outside of the box.

When they got the door open, Frank and Joe could hear muffled sobbing. Quickly they got the ceiling hatch off. Joe looked down through the opening and saw a woman clutching her abdomen. Beside her was a boy of about six, and kneeling beside her was an elderly woman. The boy was holding his mother’s hand, looking as though he was trying to be brave.

“See, Mom, everything’s going to be okay now!” he cried as Joe dropped down into the car.

“I … I’m having contractions,” the woman explained, and then groaned. “Help me,” she begged. Then she seemed to pass out.

“I don’t think she’s going to deliver,” the elderly woman said. “Her contractions are still quite far apart, and I think we managed to keep her relatively calm, thanks to my grandson Alex here. Can you lift her out of here now?”

Joe guessed the pregnant woman must have weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds. He knew he could press close to two hundred pounds on a good day, so the weight wouldn’t be the problem. But how could he possibly pass her through the small hatch, and then how could Frank lift her through without hurting her?

Frank had been busy figuring out a solution. He had seen that the inner elevator door had a release mechanism on the outside. He flipped it and the door opened. Now there was enough space between the hall floor and the top of the elevator cabin to pass the woman out.

When everyone was out of the elevator, Joe lifted the woman in his arms and began the’ long trip down the stairs. Frank took Alex’s hand and followed from behind, watching out for the elderly woman who was half a flight behind them.

On the tenth floor they ran into a firefighter making his way up the stairs. He offered to take the woman, but Joe said they were doing okay and to go up to help others.

“Make sure you use the side exit,” the firefighter said. ‘There’s a sniper on the roof, firing randomly into the crowd. He’s got himself tucked behind a shaft so that the SWAT team can’t get him. Nice time to decide to crack up, huh?”

Who could it be? Frank thought as they continued slowly down the stairs. He marveled at how calmly the other occupants of the building descended. Despite their expressions of fear, and their occasional wails of despair, their feet kept a steady rhythm on the concrete stairs. No one seemed to be panicking. Frank hoped that the sniper on the roof could be handled as calmly.

Frank realized that whoever it was, whether it was Michaels or Berghoff or Flynn or Silver, it was someone who must have thought he would be ruined by the disaster that was now occurring.

If Silver was the one up there shooting, at least that made for consistency. Frank knew the man was thoroughly corrupt. But in his case all the evidence fit together except for one piece. Why would he have killed Flannery? He could have been the masked man who ran them down in the stolen truck. He could have been the man who knocked out the crane operator. He could even have killed Flannery if Flannery had refused to be bribed and threatened to go to the police. But then why hadn’t Flannery gone to the pohce? Had he been trying to cover up the flaw, and was he partly to blame for everything that had happened since?

Frank realized his speculation had gone nowhere when he and Joe finally spilled out of the side entrance along with their charges. An ambulance was waiting nearby, and when the crew spotted Joe they rushed over and reheved him of his burden. Frank delivered Alex and his grandmother to their care and assured Alex that his mother would be fine.

Joe, unlike Frank, had already decided he knew who was up there shooting. He had decided some time ago. It wasn’t that he had any hard evidence. But to his mind there was no one who fit all the evidence better than Michaels. Who would be more likely than an architect to go crazy about a building falling apart? Hadn’t Michaels shown up on the building site right after the crane operator was hit on the back of the head? Joe couldn’t blame Frank for refusing to see the truth. It’s hard to see that someone you admire has feet of clay, Joe concluded.

Firefighters were waving everyone away from the building, and toward a hotel up the street. Now the self-destructing building was more of a threat than the gunman, since it was dropping windows and pieces of metal onto the street like so many pieces of shrapnel. The wind would pick them up and fling them blocks away, Frank knew. He spotted Grew squatting behind his squad car at the comer. He and Joe broke from the crowd and ran over.

“I think he’s out of ammunition,” Grew said. “Now we’ve just got to hope he stays there. If he heads back in and blends with the crowd, I guess we’ll never know. The winds are too strong for the helicopters to go up there, and I’m not sending any of my men into that death trap.”

“I guess that leaves us,” Joe said. He looked up and saw the building visibly swaying and shaking off pieces of its skin. As he was searching for some sign of the man among all the pipes and gadgets sticking out of the frame of the building, an explosive sound shook the ground and sent a volley of steel flying through the air. A piece of plate glass the size of a boardroom table landed nearby and shattered into a thousand pieces.

“Run for it!” Detective Grew shouted. “It’s going to collapse.”

Chapter 15

Frank, Joe, and Detective Grew got up to run while the sound transformed into a strange dissonant symphony of screeching and banging. After they had run half a block, the noise suddenly stopped. They looked back in amazement as the debris continued crashing at random intervals onto the street. The building had not collapsed after all. It was bent like a finger and leaning over the avenue. Strangely, Frank noticed, it was leaning into the wind. They stood and stared, waiting for the final collapse. ‘

“It’s not swaying anymore,” Joe said. “I think maybe it’s going to stay that way.” He started walking closer to it. The rain had stopped, and it seemed as though the wind had let up a bit.

“Joe, get back here!” Detective Grew yelled.

“I think I see someone who’s been hit,” he called back. Oblivious to the potential danger, Joe ran toward a figure lying on the street.

Frank ran after him. “Joe!” he shouted. “Watch out.”

Another piece of glass had popped out of its frame and was sailing down toward Joe. Joe dived behind a car. After it shattered, Joe looked up to see that the middle floors had collapsed in on one another just as the computer model had predicted. This had pulled the rest of the structure taught. Amazingly, the load-bearing frame had withstood the strain, and was now holding itself taut under the new set of tensions.

Joe emerged cautiously from behind the car and again walked toward the body. He slowed down when he realized the man must have fallen from very high up. He could tell by the way the body was crumpled that there would be no life to save. He looked up to make sure the building was still stable, and then ventured close enough to see the face. It was Michaels. A semiautomatic gun lay at his side.

Joe turned around and saw Frank heading for the van, which was still outside the front door. Though unharmed, it was covered with shards of glass. Frank reached into the back and grabbed the plaster cast of the shoe print. He brought it grimly over to the body.

“Sorry, Frank, it’s Michaels,” Joe said. “It looks hke he fell—or even jumped.”

“I know it’s him,” Frank said grimly. “I recognized the suit.” He held the cast against Mi-chaels’s left shoe and stood up. “It fits,” he said.

Detective Grew ran over, grabbed Frank and Joe by their arms, then pulled them back toward the squad car.

“There, that’s better,” he said as they walked behind the car. “Who is it?”

“Richard Michaels,” Frank said soberly. “He designed this building.” He looked up to see Nick Ferris and Ace Berghoff heading toward them. He and Joe hurried over to fill them in on what had happened.

Berghoff looked at the ruined building in shock. Ferris bent his head somberly. “I know what happened,” he said.

“You mean, you knew there was something wrong with the Comfortage?” Frank asked.

“Well, yes and no,” Ferris replied.

“For heaven’s sake, Nick, spit it out,” Berghoff said with disgust.

Ferris gritted his teeth and stared blankly ahead. “I wasn’t to blame,” he said.

“To blame for what?” asked Berghoff, impatient.

“Michaels said he’d done a full analysis and that it would work, that it would be stronger than what the plan called for.”

“Come on, Nick, start from the beginning,” Berghoff said.

“Our people were having trouble getting the steel dowels that the foundry had sent over to fit in the yokes. You know, where the U-beams were tied in. They were tight as all get out, and we had to knock them so hard that we damaged the ends.”

“So you substituted bolts for the dowels,” Frank said, remembering the shorn bolt heads he had seen.

“Michaels said he checked it with Flannery, and they did a wind stress test on it,” Ferris went on. “Anyway, we were behind schedule, and to wait for new dowels would have taken weeks.”

“How long before Flannery’s death had the analysis been made?” Joe asked.

“Oh, I don’t know—weeks, I guess,” Ferris said.

“How often did Flannery come to the building site?” Joe asked Ferris.

“Not often, really,” Ferris said. “He was pretty much a desk man.”

“So if Michaels hadn’t told him about the bolts, he wouldn’t have known about them?” Joe asked.

“Come to think of it, he did pay us a visit shortly before he was killed,” Ferris said. “That’s why I didn’t think it was that strange that he was up there that day. He seemed to have taken a sudden interest in seeing the building go up. Didn’t say anything about the bolts, though. Of course, by then it would have been a httle late. We were already on the nineteenth floor.”

As far as Joe was concerned, that was the end of it. “So Michaels must have decided on his own that the bolts would work fine,” he began. “He lied about telling Flannery. Somehow or other Flannery found out, did the wind stress test that we saw, and was about to blow the whistle. Michaels stopped him by killing him.”

Frank couldn’t object. Something didn’t jibe, though, and he was trying to put his finger on it.

“You’re wondering who told Flannery.” A short man had approached them during their conversation and was standing next to Berghoff. Frank looked over quizzically. “Byron Pinkie,” the man said, extending his hand. “Reporter for the Examiner at the time. Now I work for the Sun,”

“Th-that’s right,” Frank said, a httle stunned. “And do you know who told Flannery?”

“Remember that source I mentioned I had?” he asked. “I’ve been talking to him since Mr. Berghoff put me back on his payroll. He still wants to keep his name confidential—you know this business—but I can say that he called Flannery to tell him to check out the building. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he thought the frame was swaying too much even then. To tell the truth, Mr. Ferris, my source thought you might have killed Flannery. He never talked to Flannery after the phone call, so he didn’t know the story on the bolts.”

Ferris shook his head and looked down at the ground.

“Why didn’t you write anything about this for the Sun?” Joe asked. “If you knew there was something wrong with the structure, you could have done something about it.”

“Okay, so Scott Berghoff paid me to keep quiet,” Pinkie said defensively. “Look, Berghoff, if I had known anything for sure, I would have written it up. The whole thing was real muddy. Anyway, I wrote an article as soon as I talked to Frank, right? And I had already done my duty reporting about all the problems the Comfortage had—as everyone here knows.”

Ferris obviously didn’t like being reminded of all the negative press Pinkie had generated. “If I didn’t know there was a problem with the Comfortage swaying, how did one of my crew figure it out? I swear, those bolts seemed like an awfully good solution.”

“All I can say is, you’ve got some pretty smart people working for you, Mr. Ferris,” Pinkie said. “It might pay to listen to them now and then.”

I’ll say, Joe thought. “Speaking of which,” he said, realizing now that he had nothing to lose, “may I ask if you dehberately had someone drop the air compressor down the elevator shaft?”

All eyes were on Ferris, who was turning red and blowing up his cheeks so that he resembled an inflatable fish. “Okay, so one of my men got carried away. It was just supposed to be a joke.”

Berghoff wasn’t pleased. “Nick, you and I are going to have a talk,” he said ominously. “And Pinkie, you can come along and listen.”

“Wait a minute,” Frank said, looking at Ace Berghoff. “There’s one more thing I don’t get. Who paid Ken Silver the hundred thousand? And what was Silver doing on your boat the night we went to dinner there?” He stared at Berghoff, trying to read whether he was taken off guard.

Berghoff must have decided Frank was due whatever information he wanted. “You mean that building inspector? I don’t know anything about payments. I simply had him over to get his department’s opinion on the support pillars. I grilled him a little bit when he agreed with the engineer. I wanted to know why he hadn’t said anything earlier if there was such an obvious problem. He waffled a little. I didn’t think much of it at the time. You say he was being paid off?”

“We should be able to find out pretty fast whether it was Michaels,” Grew said, who had been following the whole conversation carefully. “Maybe Flannery was idealistic enough to inform the inspector of his suspicions regarding the bolts. Perhaps then Mr. Silver saw an opportunity for extortion.”

“Of course,” Frank said. “We already know Silver would never stop a building anyway—the Mob would kill him.”

“So Flannery must have been planning his next step when he was killed. Michaels must have lured him up there,” Frank said, looking up to the misshapen tower, “maybe hoping to convince him that the bolts would work.”

The building was still, and now that the winds were dying, the sky was filling up with hehcopters getting aerial shots for the evening news. People had poured out onto the streets to have a look at the site of the disaster. Despite the enormity of the crisis, the general mood seemed to be upbeat. So far it looked as though everyone had made it out ahve—except, of course, for Michaels.

“Now the question is,” Berghoff boomed, apparently ready to confront his crisis-ridden world with his usual dynamism, “what do we do with the building? Can it be fixed? Boy, the insurance company is going to love this.” He began laughing heartily. “I guess you boys will be wondering about your jobs, now that your boss is, um, not with us any longer.”

Frank looked at Joe. Neither one of them had given it a thought.

“Well, don’t you worry,” Berghoff went on. “You boys can have jobs with me the rest of your lives.” He turned to Ferris. “You, Nicko, may not be so lucky. Unless we decide to turn this thing into a tourist attraction. In which case, you could be the gatekeeper.” He laughed again and slapped his stomach. “Maybe you’ll make some money for me after all.”

“The Leaning Tower of Clinton does have a certain ring to it,” Joe said, remembering the new, official name of Hell’s Kitchen that he never used.

Frank laughed with all the others and looked up once more at the tower, now glaring under the spotlights and blinking red emergency lights that had begun to converge on it. For some reason, it made him think again of the hermit’s fire that had once ht the bluff and given rise to the original designation. We’ve come a long way since then, he mused to himself sadly. But the old name still works.