“Yeah, I’m a real threat for a hotshot like you with all your superpowers. Did I ever tell you about the time I bent three spoons at once? It was at a party, and I just concentrated, and all of a sudden all the ladies’ spoons up and bent. You could hear them gasp. I didn’t say anything, because that’s our code. We don’t mention nothing about what we do. I was hot that night. I could have bent anything. Boy, those were the days. I could still bend stuff, but I gotta be careful on account of I got high blood pressure. I don’t want to bust a blood vessel over some spoon. It was better back in the day when they were real silver. Softer, more bendable, if you know what I mean. Everything’s stainless now. I could get a hernia trying to bend some of them stainless pieces.”
“What’s the deal with him?” Glo asked Diesel.
“He puts people to sleep, and then he steals stuff,” Diesel said.
“So they should stay awake and guard their stuff if it’s so valuable,” Mortimer said. “How am I supposed to know they want it? You can’t even have a conversation with people today without them falling asleep. Sometimes they sleep with their eyes open. I don’t know why they don’t fall over. If it was me, I’d fall over, but I don’t have that problem. I stay awake. I pay attention. I’ve always been able to pay attention. You gotta concentrate to bend a spoon.” He looked over at Clara. “What about you? I bet you can’t bend a spoon.”
Clara didn’t say anything. Her eyes were glassy and her mouth was slack.
“Hey, girly,” Mortimer said to Clara. “I’m talking to you. Wake up.”
Clara made an effort to focus. “Sorry, I think I dozed off there for a minute.”
“How does he do it?” I asked Diesel. “Magic?”
“Boredom,” Diesel said. “He just keeps talking, and eventually, your mind turns to the consistency of grits. He lives with his son in Newton, but he ran away from home three weeks ago.”
“Why don’t you talk about me like I’m not even here,” Mortimer said. “What, do I look like I’m deaf? Do you know what it’s like to live with my son? It’s a mortuary. Why don’t I just shoot myself, or jump off a bridge, or drink rat poison. He never does anything. He watches television. What kind of life is that? I need action. I need some hot mamas.”
“I found you living in the park,” Diesel said.
“I like the park. Lots of fresh air. And people come around in a van and hand out baloney sandwiches twice a day. I like baloney sandwiches. When I was a kid, I always ate baloney sandwiches. I’d take one to school with me every day. My son never eats baloney. He says the stuff in baloney will kill you. I say
“I thought you were going to save mankind this afternoon,” I said to Diesel.
“That’s still the plan,” Diesel said. “We’ll have to take Morty with us.”
I had a new batch of rejected meat pies in a bag on my workstation. “Have you had lunch? Do you want a pie?” I asked him.
“I’m good,” Diesel said. “I had a baloney sandwich in the park.”
“I’ll be done in a few minutes,” I told him.
“What about me?” Glo asked. “You need me, right? You can’t save the world without me. Can you wait until three o’clock? That’s when I’m done.”
“I don’t know what we’re doing, but I think we should wait for her,” Morty said. “She’s a cutie. She makes me want to bend a spoon. Did I ever tell you about the time I bent three spoons at once? I was at this dinner party and…”
Clara groaned. “Don’t wait until three o’clock. Leave now.
An hour later, we were standing in front of Old North Church.
“I’ll go in first,” Diesel said. “Give me five minutes to look around, and then all three of you can come in. When you see me go downstairs, make sure no one follows me.”
“Oh boy,” Morty said. “We’re pulling off a caper, aren’t we? Now, this is more like it. Don’t you worry. No one’s gonna get past me and go down those stairs. You can count on me.”
“Keep your eye on him,” Diesel said to me. “He’s sneaky.”
“You bet I am,” Morty said. “I’m a slippery old bugger. You turn your back on me, and-
“The golden years,” Diesel said. “I’d like to hear more, but I have to rob a grave. Give me a head start and then come in and cover me.”
I watched him walk to the church and go through the red door. I timed five minutes and turned to Glo. “Morty and I will stand close to the stairs that lead down to the crypt. You position yourself more toward the middle of the church. If we see someone who looks official, we talk to them, ask questions, so they don’t go near the stairs.”
“Gotcha,” Glo said. “Let’s do it.”
A family of tourists stood in the center aisle, staring up at the pipe organ in the balcony. Someone who appeared to be a docent was talking to them and gesturing toward the organ. The docent was a pleasant-looking woman in her fifties. She was wearing sensible shoes, a brown skirt, and a tan sweater set. She had a name tag pinned to her cardigan sweater, but I couldn’t see it from this distance.
Morty and I moved toward the stairs, so we screened Diesel while he stepped over the rope that prohibited entry. In seconds, Diesel was out of sight and Morty and I were standing guard.
“What’s he after down there?” Morty asked. “It’s gotta be something real valuable. Like jewels or a bag of money or a treasure map.”
“He’s looking for a bell.”
“Does it have jewels on it?”
“No, but we’re hoping it has a secret message.”
“I like the sound of that. This is like Indiana Jones, where he goes into a tomb and he’s looking for a clue to something. I don’t remember all the details, but there’s spiders and a big boulder that could have crushed him, but it didn’t. It might not have happened in that order, but it was pretty darn exciting. I’ve seen all the Indiana Jones movies. And I’ve seen all the James Bond movies, too. That Bond was a cool cucumber. He knew what to do with the ladies.”
A man and a woman came into the church and joined the family listening to the docent. Morty and I pretended to be reading a plaque on the wall. Glo was still hanging in the middle. A couple minutes passed, and two women walked in and went to the docent.
Glo meandered over to me and studied the plaque Morty and I had been pretending to read. “We might have a problem,” Glo said. “I’ve been eavesdropping. There’s a crypt tour scheduled. They’re waiting for one more person to arrive.”
I glanced at the entrance to the stairs. No Diesel. Even with Diesel’s skills, it probably wasn’t easy to get into Charles Duane’s hidey-hole. I saw an older man enter the church and my heart skipped a beat. The tour group was complete. The nine people gathered around the guide, she gave a short speech, and she motioned for them to follow her.
Still no Diesel.
Glo shot me a panicked grimace and pantomimed hanging herself.
“They’re going to walk in on Diesel,” I said to Morty. “We need to do something to distract them.”
“What?”
“You need to have a heart attack.”
“I had one of them last year, but I had a stent put in, and now I’m good as new.”
“Fake it!”
“Arghh,” Morty yelled, staggering forward, lunging at the tour group. “Can’t breathe. Got pain.” He clawed at the air with one hand, and he had the other clamped to his chest. “I’m having a heart attack,” he said, eyes rolling in their sockets, tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. “It’s a big one.”
Everyone’s first reaction was stunned silence, and then it was utter mayhem.
“Call 911!”
“Who knows CPR?”
