The Tesla Legacy (20 page)

“Easy now,” he said softly. “I’ll come with you.”

First, he called it in, reporting his location and a dog covered in blood that wasn’t his own. Anderson, the prick, treated it as a joke, but said he’d be right down. With Anderson, that meant any time in the next hour or so.

He wanted to wait right here for Anderson, even if it took an hour, but he looked again at the blood on the dog’s fur. It was still wet. Someone or something was hurt down here, and they might be dying. Maybe it was the IT guy. Maybe he cut himself. Even a snot like Mathison deserved to have someone look for him.

He took a deep breath and followed the dog. Nobody was dying on his watch. He strained his ears, but couldn’t hear a single sound. Not good.

The dog led him down a hall to another one, then stopped in front of a closed door with a broken window. He looked into the dark room. Various sheet-draped shapes stood in straight lines. He didn’t see anyone inside, but someone had to have broken out the window. The IT guy wouldn’t have done that. The dog probably couldn’t have, not without cutting itself. Sweat trickled down his back. He thought about calling Anderson again, but didn’t want to be mocked if it turned out to be nothing.

As if it knew that he wasn’t going to open the door on his own, the dog took the doorknob in his mouth and turned it, which was a pretty neat trick. It must have special training. The dog pushed the door open and held it. It whined deep in its throat. It clearly wanted him to go into the room.

He wasn’t sure whether he should do what the dog wanted, but he’d come this far. He stepped through the door, searching for movement and holding on to his nightstick. Broken glass crunched under his feet, although someone had put down a sheet to cover it up.

As soon as he was in the room, the dog let go of the doorknob. It made a beeline straight for the center of the room, barking.

Francis flicked on the lights. He kept his weapon up and cautiously followed, ready to dive behind the long rows of furniture if he saw any sign of danger. Not that there could be any danger in this basement. The only one who’d come past him to go down here was the IT guy, and he was a skinny little runt. The dog, he reminded himself. How did the dog get down here?

The dog had reached the center of the room and was putting up quite a racket, barking and whining. Anyone in here had to know something was up. But nothing else moved.

When he reached the dog, he saw why. A man lay on the floor, pinned under a heavy wooden wardrobe. His eyes were closed, and his head rested in a pool of blood. The wardrobe had fallen on him, and he must have cracked his head on the bloody edge of the desk when he went down. None of which explained what he was doing here in the first place.

Francis took a panicked look around the room. Empty. If someone else had been here, like that IT guy, they were gone now.

He knelt next to the man, careful not to touch the blood. The dog had stepped in it and left bloody paw prints all around, and he stayed away from those, too.

A wardrobe next to the one that had fallen gaped open. One of the doors had been knocked off its hinges. Long scratches in the wood told him that the dog had done it. Had someone stuffed the dog in the wardrobe, then dropped a second wardrobe on its master?

The dog whined and looked at the man on the floor. It clearly expected Francis to do something.

He touched the man’s neck, searching for a pulse. A thready and irregular beat pushed against his fingertips. It felt as if it could stop at any time. But at least the guy was alive.

“Can you hear me?” Francis said. He didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t get one.

He put both hands under the wardrobe and lifted with his legs. He got it up off the guy and back onto its four legs. That should at least make it easier for the man to breathe.

He pulled out his phone and called 911. He gave specific directions to the hotel, the basement, and the victim. He even had the operator repeat it all back.

Then he called Anderson and told him to get down here right away, and see if he could bring a doctor with him.

He looked at the man on the floor in front of him. Francis was no doctor, but he could tell this guy was badly hurt, maybe dying. The dog knew it, too. It had lain down next to its master’s body as if to keep him warm, and it kept licking his cheek and whining.

He tried to remember what the teacher had said in first-aid class. For a head injury, keep the victim still. Not a problem. This guy wasn’t moving. Don’t move them because they might have a broken neck. OK, he wasn’t going to move him either. Apply pressure to stop bleeding unless you think they might have a skull fracture. He couldn’t tell, but the guy might. Best not to touch him. So he settled for taking off his shirt and spreading it over the guy to keep him warm. He thought about using one of the sheets, but they looked filthy. He felt stupid standing around in his T-shirt, and he wished he could remember more treatment options for a head injury, but that was all he could come up with.

“Sorry, doggie,” he said. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

The dog looked over at him. Its brown eyes were wide with panic. He petted its head a couple of times. “Help is coming, doggie. Your buddy will be fine.”

Francis didn’t believe it.

Chapter 32

Vivian waited outside the entrance to the emergency room at Lenox Hospital. Dirk had recognized Joe Tesla’s name on the radio and had called her. She’d made it to the hospital before the ambulance, a tribute to the vagaries of Manhattan traffic.

She had brought Tatiana Tesla with her, of course. The woman stood right beside her, looking pale but composed. Hollingberry was next to her, holding her hand. Dirk was there, too, since he’d been on bodyguard duty when she’d called. He and Vivian were both scanning the area, looking for threats.

It would have been a lot easier if they could have persuaded Mrs. Tesla to go inside, but she wanted to see Tesla when the ambulance brought him in. Vivian couldn’t blame her for that. It might be the last time she saw her son alive.

“My doing,” Mrs. Tesla said. Red lipstick stood out against her pale face, making the usually sophisticated woman look like a clown.

“You couldn’t have known.” Hollingberry moved as if to take her into his arms, but she sidestepped the gesture, her eyes fixed on the busy street, searching for the ambulance.

“I might as well have given him a bomb.” She pressed her lips together. Vivian made a mental note to follow up on that comment later.

Hollingberry murmured something that sounded reassuring, but Vivian couldn’t quite make it out. Whatever it was, it didn’t have any effect on Mrs. Tesla. Simple words weren’t going to reassure her. Her son had been cracked on the head hard enough to have been knocked unconscious, and that was all they knew.

Vivian felt she should have kept better track of him. Her warning hadn’t been enough. He’d gone wandering off alone in the tunnels. Apparently, his worry about his mother’s well-being didn’t extend to himself.

An ambulance braked in front of them and switched off the siren. It was the second one they’d seen since they arrived. The first had had no siren and carried an old man who’d looked dead.

Mrs. Tesla moved forward a step.

The ambulance doors slammed open. Someone lay flat on a stretcher, but she couldn’t tell if it was Tesla. At the head of the stretcher was Edison. So, the man inside must be Tesla.

It was a good sign that they’d come in with the siren on. Didn’t they turn the siren off if the patient died?

A man and a woman in EMT uniforms slid the stretcher out, unfolded its wheels, and pushed it toward the door.

Tesla’s eyes were closed, and he was completely unconscious, which was probably a good thing. Otherwise, he’d have panicked about being outside. A blood-soaked bandage covered his head, he was strapped to a backboard, and an IV ran into his arm. He looked dead.

Mrs. Tesla was already moving toward the gurney. “My son.”

“You’ll have to move to the waiting area, ma’am.” The EMTs didn’t even look at her as they rushed forward.

“Is he alive?” Mrs. Tesla’s words boomed out toward them. She had the practiced rich voice of someone used to working onstage.

“He came to in the ambulance, answered some questions.” The man by Tesla’s feet gave her a quick smile. “They’ll do the best they can with him inside.”

The dog jumped out of the back of the ambulance and started after them. He held something metal in his mouth that jangled when he walked.

“Edison!” Vivian called, and he stopped.

The two EMTs whooshed through the doors and disappeared inside. She gestured to Dirk, and he followed them. His police badge would let him stay closer to Tesla in the hospital than she could. He couldn’t go into the operating room, but he could stand outside in the hall.

The dog looked between her and the disappearing gurney, a question in his eyes.

“You can’t go in there,” she told him. “Heel.”

The dog trotted over and put his head against her leg. Dried blood was caked on his muzzle, his paws, and his chest. His master’s blood. She positioned herself between the animal and Mrs. Tesla. Tesla’s mother didn’t need to see that.

She leaned down and took the object from his mouth. It was a giant key ring full of dozens of keys. She’d seen it before and knew that Tesla considered it irreplaceable. He used it to get through various locked doors underground. He’d probably used one of the keys to get into the basement of the hotel where he’d been attacked. She clipped it to her belt. “Good boy.”

Mrs. Tesla hadn’t moved from her station by the door, although she had sagged against Hollingberry. She looked as if she’d aged years in the minute since she’d seen her son go by.

The two EMTs came out the door and jumped into their ambulance before Vivian could corner them with her questions.

She called Andres Peterson, Tesla’s dog walker, and arranged for him to come get the dog and keep him until further notice, then walked over to Mrs. Tesla. Edison stayed close.

“Would you like to go inside, ma’am?”

Mrs. Tesla’s dark eyes met hers, and for an instant Vivian saw the fear there, but the woman blinked, and the expression was gone.

“Can we bring the dog in?” Hollingberry asked.

“He’s wearing a service vest. They can’t keep him out,” Vivian answered.

“Why didn’t he save my son?” she asked. “There’s not a mark on the dog.”

Vivian swallowed and told her all that Dirk had been able to find out. “My understanding is that the dog was shut inside of a wardrobe, knocked the door off the hinges, and went for help. He probably saved Mr. Tesla’s life.”

Mrs. Tesla crumpled to her knees and wrapped her hands around Edison. The dog was usually standoffish when he was in his vest, but right now he seemed to need Mrs. Tesla as much as she did him. He leaned into her embrace, then licked the tears off her cheeks.

Vivian looked away, not wanting to intrude on a private moment.

Chapter 33

Ash ground his teeth in frustration. After sending his last enigmatic text, Quantum had gone offline. He’d ditched his phone, and he wasn’t in any of his favorite online hangouts. Ash had sent men to his house and work, but Quantum wouldn’t be as easy to find as Geezer had been. Meanwhile, Joe Tesla had been badly wounded, and Ash still didn’t know where or what the device was. Quantum had said it was the Oscillator and that he had it in hand, but who knew how trustworthy he was?

So, here he was in the back of his limo on his way to the hospital to pretend he cared about Joe Tesla. If the wounded man was still alive, he might be able to give clues about what he’d found. Ash fiddled with his secure phone, hoping to find traces of Quantum, but the clever man stayed hidden. Instead, he verified that news of Joe’s accident had been posted on the Internet, so he could say that’s where he’d found it out. He found an article on the
New York Post’s
website:
Multimillionaire Brained in Hotel Where Ancestor Died
. If Joe ever read it, he’d be angry at being mentioned next to Nikola Tesla, and he wouldn’t like the use of the word
brained
either. Delightful.

“Shall I circle the block, sir?” His limo driver had parked and opened the door before Ash even noticed.

“I’ll text you when I need you.” He was out of the car and halfway across the sidewalk before he heard the door close.

It didn’t take long to find Joe’s room in a long corridor. Two people stood guard outside—a man and a woman, both around six feet tall. No chairs for them. They stood practically at attention. Retired military.

He approached them casually, like a man who didn’t expect trouble.

“I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t go beyond this point.” The Amazon had a gun visible under her jacket, and she stood like someone who knew how to use it.

“It’s OK,” Ash said. “I’m a close friend of Mr. Tesla.”

“You have my sympathy, sir, but you’re not going through that door.” She took his arm, and he tried to shake her off, but she wouldn’t let go.

The man who’d been stationed on the other side of the door looked over at them as if ready to intervene to help her out, maybe tear Ash’s head off if necessary. He wouldn’t be bullying his way into the room. New tactics were called for.

“Let’s start over.” Ash held out his hand. “Mr. Alan Wright. You may have heard of me.”

The woman did not shake his hand. “Vivian Torres. If you’re lucky, you haven’t heard of me either.”

Ash was irritated. He was well known in New York and one of the richest men in the world. “I’ve known Mr. Tesla for many years, and I’d like to see how he’s doing.”

“I understand that, sir.” She planted herself between him and the door and forced him back a step. “But only family is allowed in at this time.”

He thought of making a scene, but his efforts might be better spent looking into this Vivian Torres, seeing what leverage over her he could find online. Fighting a long game instead of a skirmish here. “Is he going to be OK? Is he conscious?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer those questions, Mr. Wright.”