Free The Secret Cellar by Michael D. Beil Page A

He asked me if I knew anyplace in the neighborhood to get a coffee—what was I supposed to do? We went inside, and while I was ordering our drinks, I saw something really strange. The manager was working at the cash register, and as I’m talking to him, I see these little whiskers popping up out of his coat pocket, followed by a nose and two beadylittle eyes. The guy just gently pushes the critter back down into his pocket—he doesn’t know I saw it.”
    “He has a pet rat?” I ask. “That’s very interesting, because—”
    “Because a rat is what got Perkatory shut down,” Raf says, finishing my thought exactly. “I overheard some kids talking about it.”
    “I think I smell a rat,” I say. “I knew it! There’s a conspiracy to shut down Perkatory to make way for a whole … um, cluster of cookie-cutter Coffeeterias. Pretty soon, there’ll be one on every corner. Raf, we have to do something.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like clear Perkatory’s good name. Who knows how high this goes—the landlord, the health inspector, even the mayor!”
    “Do you really think the mayor cares enough about a coffee shop to get involved in this conspiracy? Even one with a cool name like the Cookie-Cutter Coffeeteria Conspiracy.”
    “Don’t be so naive, Raf! This isn’t just about Perkatory; it’s about the very soul of the city. So, you’re going to help me, right?”
    As if he has a choice.
    When I tell Raf the story about the spies landing in Maine and the FBI manhunt for the Third Wise Man, he says something that gets my attention.
    “That sounds a lot like an old movie I saw with my grandfather,” he says. “It’s called
The House on 92nd Street
.”
    His grandfather worked as a projectionist at a movie theater in Times Square in the forties and fifties, and is a real movie nut. I swear, he and Raf have watched every black-and-white movie ever made. Okay, maybe not every one, but Raf
has
seen a lot of them, and the kid has a remarkable memory for details about each one.
    “Directed by Henry Hathaway. Lloyd Nolan and … Gene Lockhart, I think. Not great, but not bad. It was actually filmed at a house on Ninety-Third Street. It was about these German spies who were in New York to steal secrets from the guys who were working on the atomic bomb. It was a true story—they really were in a house on Ninety-Second Street.”
    See what I mean about the details? He’s a freak.
    “Wait a second. That’s strange. There’s a movie about spies in a house on Ninety-Second Street. And Lindsay’s reading that article about the Third Wise Man and getting all weird when we told her about what I found in the pen. I wonder if she thinks—”
    Raf finishes my thought: “—that the pen guy was some kind of spy?”
    “Exactly.”

Minds are boggled, and Margaret gets a new Web address
    Friday after school the temperature is all the way back up to the midthirties, and we’re standing on the sidewalk in front of the house on Eighty-Second Street—the former home of Curtis Dedmann. I elbow Becca. “Remember what Madame Zurandot said? She saw an old man with a cane, standing in front of a blue door with the number nine. Well, Dedmann was old, he used a cane, his door is blue, and it has a nine on it. Freeeaaaakkkyyyy.”
    “I see two nines,” says Becca, suddenly Miss Literal.
    “Maybe Madame Z. couldn’t see the other nine because the guy was standing in front of it. And I forgot to tell you the best part. Shelley—the woman who we’re going to see—found him dead at his desk … with his pen in his hand.”
    “Shut up!” says Becca. “Now you’re messin’ with me.”
    “No, I swear!” I say. “Just like Madame Zurandot said.”
    Becca grabs me by the shoulders and looks straight into my eyes. “If you’re lying, I’m going to pound you, St. Pierre.”
    “Okay, everybody just calm down,” says Commander Wrobel. “And let these red blazers work their magic.”
    We follow Margaret up the steps (nine