CHAPTER 16

      AFTER SHUTTING DOWN THE RAILROADS, Fric left the dirty Nazis to their evil schemes, departed the unreality of the train room for the unreality of the multimillion-dollar car collection in the garage, and ran for the stairs.

      He should have taken the elevator. That cableless mechanism, which raised and lowered the cab on a powerful hydraulic ram, would be too slow, however, for his current mood.

      Fric’s engine raced, raced. The telephone conversation with the weird stranger—whom he had dubbed Mysterious Caller—was high-octane fuel for a boy with a boring life, a feverish imagination, and empty hours to fill.

      He didn’t climb the stairs; he assaulted them. Legs pumping, grabbing at the handrail, Fric flung himself up from the basement, conquering two, four, six, eight long flights, to the top of Palazzo Rospo, where he had rooms on the third floor.

      Only Fric seemed to know the meaning of the name given to the great house by its first owner: Palazzo Rospo. Nearly everyone knew that palazzo was Italian for “palace,” but no one except perhaps a few sneeringly superior European film directors seemed to have any idea what rospo meant.

      To be fair, most people who visited the estate didn’t give a rip what it was called or what its grand name actually meant. They had more important issues on their minds—such as the weekend box-office numbers, the overnight TV ratings, the latest executive shuffles at the studios and networks, who to screw in the new deal that they were putting together, how much to screw them out of, how to bedazzle them so they wouldn’t realize they were being screwed, how to find a new source for cocaine, and whether their careers might have been even bigger if they had begun having face-lifts when they were eighteen.

      Among the few who had ever given a thought to the name of the estate, there were competing theories.

      Some believed the house had been named after a famous Italian statesman or philosopher, or architect. The number of people in the film industry who knew anything about statesmen, philosophers, and architects was almost as small as the number who’d be able to give a lecture regarding the structure of matter on a subatomic level; consequently, this theory was easily embraced and never challenged.

      Others were certain that Rospo had been either the maiden name of the original owner’s beloved mother or the name of a snow sled that he had ridden with great delight in childhood, when he had been truly happy for the last time in his life.

      Still others assumed that it had been named after the original owner’s secret love, a young actress named Vera Jean Rospo.

      Vera Jean Rospo had actually existed back in the 1930s, though her real name had been Hilda May Glorkal.

      The producer, agent, or whoever had renamed her Rospo must have secretly despised poor Hilda. Rospo was Italian for “toad.”

      Only Fric seemed to know that Palazzo Rospo was as close as you could get, in Italian, to naming a house Toad Hall.

      Fric had done some research. He liked knowing things.

      Evidently, the film mogul who built the estate more than sixty years ago had possessed a sense of humor and had read The Wind in the Willows. In that book, a character named Toad lived in a grand house named Toad Hall.

      These days, no one in the film business read books.

      In Fric’s experience, no one in the business had a sense of humor anymore, either.

      He climbed the stairs so fast that he was breathing hard by the time that he reached the north hallway on the third floor. This wasn’t good. He should have stopped. He should have rested.

      Instead, he hurried along the north hall to the east hall, where his private rooms were located. The antiques that he passed on the top floor were spectacular, although not of the museum quality to be found on the two lower levels.

      Fric’s rooms had been refurnished a year ago. Ghost Dad’s interior designer had taken Fric shopping. To redo the furniture in these quarters, his father had provided him with a budget of thirty-five thousand dollars.

      Fric had not asked for fancy new furniture. He never asked for anything—except at Christmas, when he was required to fill out the childish Dear Santa form that his father insisted be provided by Mrs. McBee. The idea of refurnishing was entirely Ghost Dad’s.

      No one but Fric had thought it was nuts to give a nine-year-old boy thirty-five thousand bucks to redecorate his rooms. The designer and the salespeople acted as if this were the usual drill, that every nine-year-old had an equal amount to spend on a room makeover.

      Lunatics.

      Fric often suspected that the soft-spoken, seemingly reasonable people surrounding him were in fact all BIG-TIME CRAZY.

      Every item in his remade rooms was modern, sleek, and bright.

      He had nothing against the furniture and artworks of distant times. He liked all that stuff. But sixty thousand square feet of fine antiques was enough already.

      In his own private space, he wanted to feel like a kid, not like an old French dwarf, which sometimes he seemed to be among all these French antiques. He wanted to believe that such a thing as the future actually existed.

      An entire suite had been set aside for his use. Living room, bedroom, bathroom, walk-in closet.

      Still breathing hard, Fric hurried through his living room. Breathing harder still, he crossed his bedroom to the walk-in closet.

      Walk-in was a seriously inadequate description. If Fric had owned a Porsche, he could have driven into the closet.

      Were he to add a Porsche to his Dear Santa list, one would most likely be parked in the driveway come Christmas morn, with a giant gift bow on the roof.

      Lunatics.

      Although Fric had more clothes than he needed, more than he wanted, his wardrobe required only a quarter of the closet. The rest of the space had been fitted out with shelves on which were stored collections of toy soldiers, which he cherished, boxed games to which he was indifferent—as well as videos and DVDs of every stupid boring movie for kids made in the past five years, which were sent to him free by studio executives and by others who wanted to score points with his father.

      At the back of the closet, the nineteen-foot width was divided into three sections of floor-to-ceiling shelves. Reaching under the third shelf in the right-hand section, he pressed a concealed button.

      The middle section proved to be a secret door that swung open on a centrally mounted pivot hinge. The shelving unit measured ten inches deep, which left a passageway of about two and a half feet to either side.

      Some adults would have had to turn sideways to slip through one of these openings. Fric, however, could walk straight into the secret realm beyond the closet.

      Behind the shelves lay a six-by-six space and a stainless-steel door. Although not solid steel, it was four inches thick and looked formidable.

      The door had been unlocked when Fric discovered it three years ago. It was unlocked now. He had never found the key.

      In addition to the regular lever handle at the right side, the door featured a second handle in the center. This one