Staring at the plastic tray of French toast and still kneeling by his bed, Nico, for the third time, asked, “What’s for dinner?”
“It’s meat loaf, okay?” the delivery woman replied, rolling her eyes. “You happy now?”
“Of course, I’m happy,” Nico said, flattening the Velcro with the heel of his hand and smiling to himself. Meat loaf. Just like his mom was supposed to have on her last night. On the day she died. The Three told him so. Just like they told him about the M Men… the Masons…
Nico’s father had been a Freemason — proud of it too. To this day, Nico could smell the sweet cigar smoke that wafted in the door with his dad when he came back from Lodge meetings.
Nothing more than a social club, Nico had told them. All the Masons did was sell raffle tickets to raise money for the hospital. Like the Shriners.
The Three were patient, even then. They brought him the maps— taught him the history. How the Freemasons had grown worldwide hiding under the cover of charity. How they’d perfected their deceptions, telling people they were born out of the master stonemason guilds in the Middle Ages — a harmless organization where members could gather and share trade secrets, artisan-to-artisan. But The Three knew the truth: The Masons’ craftwork had built some of the most holy and famous places in the world — from King Solomon’s Temple to the Washington Monument — but the secrets the Masons protected were more than just inside tips for how to build archways and monuments. The night before Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, he was in a Mason Temple in Memphis. “I might not get there with you,” King said that night to his followers. Like he knew that bullet was coming the next day. And the fact he was in a Masonic Temple… it was no coincidence. Fate. Always fate. At their highest levels, the Masons’ ancient goal had never changed.
Even the church stood against the Masons at their founding, The Three explained.
It was a fair point, but Nico wasn’t stupid. In the Middle Ages, there was much the church opposed.
The Three still didn’t waver. Instead, they hit him with the hardest truth of alclass="underline" what really happened to his mother the night she died.
16
But you can’t tell anyone I told you,” the woman whispered through the receiver.
Brushing a stray strand of red hair behind her ear, Lisbeth reached for the tiny tape recorder on her desk, double-checked it was plugged into the phone, and hit Record. “You have my word,” Lisbeth promised. “Our secret.”
As a reporter for the Palm Beach Post, Lisbeth was well aware that Florida law made it illegal to record private conversations unless the person recording first asked the other party. But as the gossip columnist for Below the Fold — the Post’s most popular section of the paper — Lisbeth also knew that the moment she asked permission, her source would freeze and fall silent. Plus she had to get the quote right. Plus she had to have proof for when the paper’s lawyers gave her their usual libel thumbwrestle. It’s the same reason why she had a mini-refrigerator stocked with wine and beer in the corner of her tiny beige cubicle, and a fresh bowl of peanuts on the corner of her desk. Whether it was her fellow reporters coming by to chat or a stranger calling on the phone, it was the sacred rule she learned when she took over the column six years ago: Always keep ’em talking.
“So about your story, Mrs… ?”
“I’m just passing this along,” the woman insisted. “Free of charge.”
Making a note to herself, Lisbeth wrote the word Pro? in her spiral notepad. Most people fall for the name trap.
“Again, you didn’t hear it from me…” the woman continued.
“I promise, Mrs… ”
“… and I’m not falling for your little trick the second time either,” the woman said.
Lisbeth crossed out the question mark, leaving only Pro.
Excited by the challenge, Lisbeth started spinning her phone cord like a mini-jump rope. As the cord picked up speed, the sheets of paper thumbtacked to the right-hand wall of her cubicle began to flutter. When Lisbeth was seventeen, her dad’s clothing store had shut down, forcing her family into bankruptcy. But when her local newspaper in Battle Creek, Michigan, reported the story, the smart-ass reporter who wrote it up threw in the words alleged poor sales, implying a certain disingenuousness to her dad’s account. In response, Lisbeth wrote an op-ed about it for her school newspaper. The local paper picked it up and ran it with an apology. Then the Detroit News picked it up from there. By the time it was done, she got seventy-two responses from readers all across Michigan. Those seventy-two letters were the ones that lined every inch of her cubicle walls, a daily reminder of the power of the pen — and a current reminder that the best stories are the ones you never see coming.
“Regardless,” the woman said, “I just thought you’d want to know that although it won’t officially be announced until later this afternoon, Alexander John — eldest son of the Philadelphia Main Line Johns, of course — will be awarded a Gold Key in the National Scholastic Art Awards.”
Lisbeth was writing the words National Schola- when she lifted her pen from the page. “How old is Alexander again?”
“Of course — seventeen — seventeen on September ninth.”
“So… this is a high school award?”
“And national — not just statewide. Gold Key.”
Lisbeth scratched at her freckled neck. She was slightly overweight, which she tried to offset with lime-green statement glasses that a rail-thin salesclerk promised would also shave some time off her thirty-one years. Lisbeth didn’t believe the clerk. But she did buy the glasses. As she continued to scratch, a strand of red hair sagged from its ear perch and dangled in front of her face. “Ma’am, do you happen to be related to young Alexander?”
“What? Of course not,” the woman insisted.
“You’re sure?”
“Are you suggesting—? Young lady, this award is an honor that is—”
“Or are you in the employ of young Alexander’s family?”
The woman paused. “Not full-time, of course, but—”
Lisbeth hit the Stop button on her tape recorder and chucked her pen against her desk. Only in Palm Beach would a mother hire a publicist for her eleventh grader’s elbow macaroni art masterpiece. “It’s a national award,” Lisbeth muttered to herself, ripping the sheet of paper from her notepad. But as she crumpled it up, she still didn’t hang up the phone. Sacred Rule #2: A crappy source today might be a great one tomorrow. Sacred Rule #3: See Sacred Rule #2.
“If I have space, I’ll definitely try to get it in,” Lisbeth added. “We’re pretty full, though.” It was an even bigger lie than the thinning and de-aging effects of her lime-green glasses. But as Lisbeth hung up the phone and tossed the crumpled paper into the trash, she couldn’t help but notice the near-empty three-column grid on her computer screen.
Twenty inches. About eight hundred words. That’s what it took every day to fill Below the Fold. Plus a photo, of course. So far, she had five inches on a local socialite’s daughter marrying a professional pool player (B+, Lisbeth thought to herself), and four inches on a week-old cursing match between some teenager and the head of the DMV (C- at best). Eyeing the balled-up paper in the plastic garbage can, Lisbeth glanced back at her still mostly empty screen. No, she told herself. It was still too early in the day to be desperate. She hadn’t even gotten the—