Look Into My Eyes

  “Valerie Capaldi, also known as Nine Lives,” said LB.

  “Wow, she’s pretty,” said the same mouthy young man.

  “Not as pretty now,” replied LB. “A couple of years back she got into a nasty tangle escaping one of our agents — I would imagine she has a fairly ugly scar across her left eye. Be kind of hard to miss. They call her Nine Lives because she has cheated death as many times as any cat.”

  The woman on the screen didn’t look the type, Ruby thought — in fact she looked like someone her parents might know.

  “She’s a decadent sort and pretty stylish,” continued LB. “Though I would be surprised if she were involved in a gold heist — jewels and precious stones are more her style. She was trained by this gentleman.” Click. “Fenton Oswald — he loves planning a good robbery, enjoys the challenge, but he is, strictly speaking, more of a jewel thief — spends most of his time in Europe.”

  He looked ordinary enough — the picture showed him exiting a jewelers in Berlin. He was wearing tinted glasses, a tweed suit, and carried a rolled umbrella.

  Then came a very different sort of face, the kind of face you might expect to appear in an old movie, very melodramatic looking with slicked gray hair and pointed sideburns. The nose was long and elegant, which gave the face a dignified look, but the chiseled cheekbones were those of a gothic villain. His clothes were different too, long black coat and pointed black shoes polished to a high shine. The slide was aged, and the picture black-and-white. LB clicked past him without explanation.

  “Who was that guy?” asked Ruby.

  “Oh, him?” said Blacker. “That was the Count.”

  “The Count of what?”

  “The Count von Viscount. If you think he looks like something from some old B-movie then that’s because he is.”

  “He used to be an actor?” asked Ruby.

  “Not an actor but a director — there’s a theory that he turned to crime when all his movies were trashed by the critics. Some say he was a little ahead of his time — the moviegoing world wasn’t ready for him back then. Still isn’t — too dark, too strange, too dangerous. Unfortunately, he became a much more successful criminal than he ever was a filmmaker — only one of our agents ever met him and lived to tell the tale.”

  “Who was that?” asked Ruby.

  “Oh no one,” said Agent Blacker quickly. “No one you would know.”

  Bradley Baker? wondered Ruby.

  “It’s been a long time since we heard from the Count,” said Blacker.

  “But he’s a contender?” asked Ruby.

  “Oh, he’s been off our radar so long we are wondering if he isn’t pushing up daisies — that, or he retired.”

  “How would you know if you had heard from him?” asked Ruby.

  “You can recognize a Count von Viscount crime because it is always bizarrely melodramatic. You can be sure if someone is dangling you over a bubbling volcano rather than just dropping you in it then it is almost bound to be the Count.”

  “That’s a comfort,” said Ruby.

  “Of course, I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him myself but they say he was always very charming — right up until the moment he decided your time was up.”

  Ruby shivered.

  Suddenly the lights came on — the briefing was over. Ruby managed to slip out, hidden amongst the crowd; in the corridor she adopted the pose of someone who was fed up of waiting.

  A short while later Hitch stuck his head out of the door. “You’re up, kid.”

  When Ruby walked in, LB didn’t waste time with hellos.

  “So, Redfort, anything to report?”

  Ruby tried to look confident, even if she didn’t sound confident. Here goes everything. She cleared her throat. “Um, not quite but almost.”

  “What does that mean?” said LB.

  “I think I have almost figured something out but I kinda need, well, I sort of wondered if I could, you know . . .”

  “Spit it out, Redfort.”

  “Take a look at Lopez’s stuff.” The words hung stupidly in the air; LB didn’t say anything but Ruby could gauge what she was thinking by the scowl on her face.

  “What ‘stuff’?”

  “The stuff she had with her when she died in that avalanche.”

  “And why would you need to look through Lopez’s backpack? What does it have to do with anything?”

  “I just thought maybe she could have had the missing code with her,” said Ruby.

  LB looked at her as if she hadn’t heard quite right.

  “Lopez was a professional. Do you even know what that means? She wouldn’t dream of removing classified evidence from Spectrum and take it with her on vacation — up a mountain!”

  It did sound kind of preposterous when put like that, but Ruby persevered. “But the thing is, I’ve been thinking, what if everything isn’t quite as it seems? What if Lopez found something but she didn’t tell anyone that she had found that something but instead decided to check it out herself?”

  “You’re talking crazy, kid — why would she not tell anyone?”

  “Because she was bored?” suggested Ruby.

  “Because she was bored?” LB clearly couldn’t believe her ears. “This isn’t an installment of Nancy Drew, this is the real world, and in the real world Spectrum code breakers don’t just run around playing hero because they get bored.”

  “But you see I think that’s what coulda happened and I think she found something and someone saw her find that something — someone who didn’t want her to find it — so they bumped her off.”

  “Redfort! She died in an avalanche — let’s not let our imagination run away with us. It was an accident! Lopez was a desk agent, not some action hero.”

  “But you see,” said Ruby, “the code isn’t anywhere in the files so Lopez must have had it with her.”

  “What you mean is that because you can’t find it, then it can’t be there.”

  “No, I know it isn’t there because . . .”

  Ruby tailed off, she could hardly tell LB how she knew it wasn’t there. Instead she simply had to stand there looking like some dumb kid until LB, exasperated, waved for her to go. When Ruby got to the door LB said, “By the way, you’re out of here — you failed and that’s all there is to it.”

  BEING DROPPED BY SPECTRUM was humiliating but Ruby wasn’t going to take it lying down. If she could only get some proof — get her hands on that piece of paper.

  By the time Hitch dropped her back home it was already early evening. Her parents were out and she wasn’t in the mood to sit eating her supper alone so she headed off in the direction of the Double Donut. When she arrived she settled on one of the high stools at the counter and was about to order when a thought occurred to her. She slipped off the stool and went straight to the phone booth next to the restroom.

  “Hey, Clance, meet me at the Double, as soon as.”

  “I’m not really hungry, Rube,” replied Clancy.

  “Good, ’cause I wasn’t planning on eating.” She put the phone down.

  Fifteen minutes later a very out of breath Clancy stumbled through the door.

  “What kept you?” said Ruby.

  “Give me a break! I ran the whole way. So what am I doing here exactly?”

  “I’ll tell you in the cab,” said Ruby.

  “Oh brother, not again!”

  Soon enough they were in a car heading east.

  “So,” said Clancy, “what’s going on?”

  “So LB wouldn’t listen. I told her my hunch. I told her that Lopez was most probably bumped off by the Fool’s Gold Gang. It makes sense — she wasn’t trained as a spy and as a consequence she got spotted.”

  “Do you think the Fool’s Gold Gang know who she was working for?”

  “Nah, I figure they don’t — I think they think she’s just some nosey parker who happened to be looking in their direction, and they don’t like people looking in their direction.”

  “They sure do
n’t,” said Clancy with a shiver.

  “My guess is they tailed her to see what she was up to and when she ended up mountain climbing, they came to the conclusion that she was just some woman who had accidentally seen something suspicious but to be on the safe side they decided to rub her out. Only they’re smart — they make it look like an accident by starting an avalanche.”

  “Do you think they mighta spotted you? This Fool’s Gold Gang?” Clancy was beginning to feel queasy again. Danger did that to him — he had a weak stomach when it came to life-and-death situations.

  “I certainly hope not, not now I have seen some of the likely suspects — one of them looked like Dracula.”

  “What, you saw the actual gang?”

  “No, not the gang, just some possible suspects — in a slide show.” Ruby hadn’t meant to tell him about that. She was telling him far too much — knowing too much about a bunch of ruthless killers wasn’t going to do his health any favors at all.

  “So who were they?”

  “Look, we’re here now, Clance — I’ll tell you some other time, OK? It was no big deal — just a few faces.”

  “Tomorrow?” said Clancy.

  Minutes later the cab pulled up on Maverick Street. The two of them stepped out on to the sidewalk; there was no one around, it wasn’t a residential neighborhood and being Friday evening the shops and offices were deserted.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” said Clancy.

  “Well, I’m not planning on staying the night — we’ll take a look in the box and then go home.”

  “Box? What box?”

  “Just a box of Lopez’s stuff.”

  “What stuff?” said Clancy.

  “The stuff she had on her when she died.”

  Clancy shivered — he wasn’t feeling so good. “I’m not sure about this, Rube — can’t you just ask LB about it again tomorrow?”

  “Look, you don’t get it, Clancy — there is no tomorrow. LB fired me, OK?” She hadn’t wanted to tell him that.

  He was suitably stunned.

  “So do you see why I have to do this?”

  Clancy nodded; he knew she had no choice.

  “Look, Clance, we’ll just break in to the office, take a look around, and then I promise I’ll take you home.”

  “Break in to the office?” said Clancy, alarmed.

  “Well, it’s not technically a break-in. I have the key code. Blacker gave it to me. It’s just we will probably be murdered by Spectrum if we get caught using it.”

  Clancy was speechless as he watched Ruby punch in the door code and turn the handle. “Well, come on, bozo. Don’t hang around waiting to get caught.”

  Clancy was unimpressed by the Spectrum secret agency office.

  “What a dump!” he marveled. “I think someone has been pulling your leg. I don’t think these people are secret agents at all.”

  But Ruby wasn’t listening, she was busy climbing up the high file shelves that spanned the back of the office.

  “What are you doing?” said Clancy.

  Ruby pointed at the box on the very top shelf; it was wrapped and ready for mailing. “I can’t reach. I am going to have to stand on your shoulders.”

  “Oh, man, you owe me. You really owe me.”

  It was a little perilous but somehow Ruby was able to balance without either falling or injuring her friend; carefully she reached for the little brown box.

  “You really owe me,” repeated Clancy.

  Once down, Ruby placed the package on the desk and carefully unwrapped it. She lifted the lid and one by one took each item out. There was a silver metal water bottle, some sunscreen, some gloves, a penknife, and a powder compact.

  “How very strange,” said Ruby lifting out the compact.

  “What is it?” said Clancy peering over her shoulder.

  “Why would Lopez take a powder compact up a mountain?”

  “She was very into her appearance,” suggested Clancy.

  Ruby gave him a look. “She’s dangling off a mountain, Clance, when exactly do ya figure she’s gonna touch up her makeup?”

  “I was just coming up with a possible explanation is all — perhaps it was her lucky powder compact.”

  Ruby rolled her eyes.

  “OK, if you’re so smart, you tell me.”

  “I think,” said Ruby, holding up the compact. “I think she took this with her for a reason.” Ruby clicked open the case. “I think this just might be where she hid the code!” But when Ruby looked inside she was dismayed to see nothing but a powder puff and some slightly tired-looking beige powder.

  “Oh,” she said.

  Clancy chewed his lip. “Never mind, Rube — you could have been right, it’s perfectly possible. I mean perhaps it was where she kept the code but someone already found it.”

  “Yeah, and perhaps I was just actually wrong, perhaps it’s got nothing to do with anything.”

  Ruby sat down, deflated. “I guess we better put everything back just how we found it and get out of here.”

  “Look, I’ll do it, Ruby. I’m good at leaving no tracks.”

  Clancy had just repacked the box and Ruby was just struggling to push it onto the topmost shelf when they thought they heard a car pull up — its lights illuminating the shabby office. They held their breath and waited — but the car drove on by.

  “Can we maybe get outta here?” pleaded Clancy.

  The whole way back Ruby said not one word. And she spent the weekend alone.

  “WELL, LOOK WHO IT IS — it’s that Redfort kid.”

  “Ha-ha, very funny, Del,” said Ruby.

  “So how’s your grandmother?” asked Mouse.

  Ruby caught Clancy’s eye. “She’s as well as I’ve ever known her.”

  “That’s great,” said Red.

  “Yeah, it would be if she wasn’t dead,” muttered Clancy under his breath — Ruby kicked him quite hard in the back of the leg. His squeal was drowned out by the sound of the school bell. The five of them made their way to class.

  “Hey, Ruby,” said Clancy when the others were out of earshot. “You said you were going to tell me what you saw in that slide show — did you see anyone really dreadful?”

  “Oh, that, they were just having a beauty pageant of all the likely suspects.”

  “What do they look like?”

  Ruby wanted to tell Clancy everything but the more he knew the more at risk he was, and for that matter the more at risk she was.

  This is why you should only have dumb friends, thought Ruby.

  “Catch you later, OK?” said Clancy.

  At recess, Ruby tried to take charge. “Look, Clance, the thing you gotta remember is, you aren’t meant to know anything. I would get practically torn limb from limb for telling you a zillionth of what you know.”

  But Clancy just replied by assuring her that he could be trusted. “You know me, Rube, they could feed my toes one by one to a hungry pack of vultures but I would never blab.”

  “Pack isn’t right, Clancy.”

  “What?” said Clancy.

  “Pack, it isn’t a pack of vultures. It’s something but it isn’t a pack,” replied Ruby.

  “Pack, gang, gaggle, that isn’t the point — what I am saying to you is that you can trust me. I don’t blab, never have, never will.”

  “I know that, Clancy. Of course I know that but you gotta see . . .”

  All the while Ruby was talking she was fiddling with something in her pocket, snapping it open and shut. She wasn’t aware she was doing it until Clancy said, “What’s that clicking noise? Are you fiddling with that key ring thing again? Because it’s driving me crazy.”

  Ruby jerked her hand out of her pocket and Lopez’s powder compact clattered onto the concrete of the schoolyard.

  Ruby and Clancy stared down at it.

  “You took it?” said Clancy.

  “I didn’t mean to,” said Ruby. “I didn’t even know I had — boy, am I ever in trouble now!” The mirror was broken
and the powder had all spilled out in a dusty explosion, but as the powder settled it revealed a secret. The force of the fall had popped open a section of the compact that Ruby hadn’t even realized was there, a tray designed to hold the powder puff. But instead of the puff, the tray contained a piece of folded paper.

  “What is it?” whispered Clancy.

  What it was, was a small piece of Fountain Hotel notepaper rubbed lightly with a pencil to reveal a series of negative lines through the graphite. Lines and in one corner, a word.

  “The missing code,” Ruby said in a hushed whisper. “It has to be — so, I was right all along, it never was in the files.”

  “Just looks like lines to me,” said Clancy. “Lines and some kinda gobbledygook.” He pointed to the strange code-like word within the mass of lines.

  Ruby sat on the bench thinking hard. What was it Lopez had said? “I saw it in the mirror and it all made sense.” What if she hadn’t meant the Twinford Mirror — what if she had meant an actual mirror? Slowly, Ruby picked up the compact from the ground and reflected the paper in the glass. The lines were the other way around and the letters in the left-hand corner now read:

  “Well, still doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Clancy.

  “No, me either,” said Ruby.

  The bell sounded to signify the end of recess, and Ruby reluctantly headed to class. All she could think about was Lopez, how one day she had been sitting bored to death in a little brown office on Maverick Street and three days later she was dead. It was like LB had said, curiosity can get you killed.

  Ruby opened the door to classroom 14B and sat down.

  “Remind me,” Mr. Singh was saying, “what’s the formula for sulfuric acid?”

  “H2SO4,” said Ruby without looking up.

  “Correct answer, Ms. Redfort, but incorrect classroom. If memory serves, I see you for chemistry on Tuesdays.”

  Ruby glanced around her. “Oh, I see what you mean, wrong room, wrong class.” She picked up her bag and stumbled through the door and back downstairs to classroom 14A directly below.

  Muttering apologies for her late appearance, Ruby made her way to her desk and sat down.