The Tesla Legacy

Chapter 28

Vivian dodged a pack of Swedish tourists taking pictures at the Washington Square Arch — the Arc de Triomphe of New York. She could have gone around, but she liked walking through the giant, marble monument. It always helped put her problems in perspective. Right now, her biggest problem was the Teslas.

Neither Tatiana Tesla nor her son had given her any hints as to why would try to steal Tesla’s suitcase, or why she had to set up a team to protect Mrs. Tesla. It seemed like Tesla himself had been the one attacked, not his mother, and he ought to be the one that she was protecting. But he’d categorically refused to let her guard him. Maybe it was a macho thing.

Speaking of macho, the man she’d been following last night hadn’t wanted to back down. He hadn’t acted like someone who was easily frightened or dissuaded. If his goal was to track Tesla, he’d be back. Hell, he might be back already, and she wasn’t there to protect Tesla. The best thing she could do was investigate, see if this professor had more of an idea of what was going on.

She stopped next to the fountain. The haze of water droplets scattered by the wind made the air cooler here, and she took a deep breath. The air smelled of chlorine and mildew, which was better than the exhaust fumes and hot pavement of a few moments before.

She wasn’t just enjoying the view as she dug a penny out of her pocket and tossed it in. She used the motion to take a good long look behind her. The tourists she’d passed were posing next to the arch, one after the other, their white-blond hair gleaming in the sun. Nobody else had come through the arch yet.

On her journey here, she’d doubled back, cut through alleys, even hopped on and off the subway, to make sure that she wasn’t being followed. A long shot, but she was still careful, especially after last night. So far, she hadn’t seen anyone suspicious.

A couple paused next to her to take a selfie with the arch in the background, chattering away in Spanish. One wore a red T-shirt, the other a white one, and both wore jeans and espadrilles. Sunlight glinted off their sunglasses as they bounced their heads back and forth, trying to find the right angle for their shot. Some people’s problems were easy.

She hurried toward the southeast corner of the park. Her destination was a few blocks outside the park: a tall, brick and glass building known as Warren Weaver Hall. It was part of the Courant Institute, and she had an appointment with Professor Patel. She hadn’t been able to reach the other one yet.

The closer she got to the building, the older she felt. Even though it was summer, kids who seemed like they should still be in high school wandered around. She passed a group of girls who looked younger than Lucy, standing in a circle, all stabbing away at their cell phones with their thumbs and not talking.

She stopped in front of the building and texted Professor Patel. He was supposed to be in the library, working, while he waited to hear from her. She sensed that he was used to students coming late for meetings.

But he appeared immediately, walking quickly toward her across the grass.

“Professor Patel?” she asked. “I’m Vivian Torres, we met at Mr. Tesla’s funeral and spoke on the phone.”

“Of course you are.” He led her into the building, down a hall, and into an empty classroom. Rows of desks faced a chalkboard and table at the front of the room. It reminded Vivian of high school.

He pulled one desk to face another and gestured to it. “We can talk here.”

She sat across from him, although she preferred standing. “Professor Patel, I know this is an unusual circumstance.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “It most certainly is. Two colleagues dead within such a short time. Nothing suspicious, of course, but still unexpected.”

“Two?”

“Professor Egger, of course. You met him at the funeral. Bald man, with a beard.”

And a yellow bow tie. That explained why she hadn’t been able to reach him, and it made things a lot more worrisome. “Professor Egger is dead?”

“Overdose, rumor has it. Last night. Found this morning by his cleaning woman.”

“Why do they think it was an overdose?”

“He had a heavy load to carry since his wife died. He never got over it, you see.” Patel’s voice quivered slightly.

“Do you think he overdosed?”

“That is a matter for the police.” Professor Patel tilted his head to the side. “I thought that might be why you wanted to meet this morning, but it’s not.”

“Was he the type of person who would overdose?”

“The type of person who was taking sleeping pills? Yes. The type of person who also drank more than he should sometimes? Yes. The type of person who was also depressed and at risk? Yes.” He patted the top of his desk with one finger. “That does not mean that he intended to die.”

Vivian made a mental note to ask Dirk to look into it. “Were Professor Egger and Professor Tesla close?”

“Professor Egger had once been the graduate student of Professor Tesla. They often played chess even after Professor Tesla was…confined.”

A polite term for locked up in an institution. “Did Professor Tesla have other friends?”

Patel looked past her shoulder and out the window for a second before replying. “His ex-wife. They spoke on the phone often.”

So, maybe Tesla Senior had given something to Tatiana, and his good friend Egger had known about it. Maybe that something was in the suitcase that was almost stolen from Tesla.

“Were you close with Professor Tesla?”

Patel flinched ever so slightly. “What is close for mathematicians? We taught some of the same students, we played chess, we had lunch.”

“Yet you went to his funeral.” There was more to their relationship than he was suggesting.

“Close for mathematicians is not the same as close for others, but that does not mean we do not mark it when one of our friends dies.”

“Will you go to Professor Egger’s funeral, then?” She shifted in the hard desk.

“I do not believe that he will have one. He donated his body to science, so there is nothing to bury, and he hated ritual. With his wife gone, he will not want his passing to be formally acknowledged.”

She thought she might have liked this Egger. They had the same idea about funerals, anyway. “If you hear of a funeral—”

“You would attend? Yet you do not like funerals. You were jumpy and angry at George Tesla’s. You came to that out of a sense of duty, not sentiment. But why would you have a duty to Professor Egger?”

This guy saw more than he let on. “Did Professor Tesla have any enemies?”

“Enemies? Friends? He was not beset by either.” Patel tapped his finger on the desk again. “Demons of his own, he had those.”

“Do you know if he was in possession of any important papers?”

“He would have said that all his papers were important.”

“He left his son a box that someone tried to steal yesterday.”

“What was in it?”

“What do you think?”

He shrugged. “Professor Tesla was a mathematician, not a spy. I doubt that he had anything worth worrying about. He was a very paranoid man, but I never saw any indication that he needed to be.”

“How was he paranoid?”

Patel smiled wryly. “He once said space aliens were sending him messages through his teeth because he was special. I did not give his paranoia much credence.”

Had Tesla Senior been like that Joe’s entire life? Joe had never told her anything about his father. But just because his father was crazy didn’t change the fact that someone had tried to steal that suitcase. She questioned Patel for a few more minutes without gleaning any new information, extracted a promise that he would notify her if Egger did have a funeral, and then left him alone in the classroom, staring across the empty desks.

She called Dirk from the elevator, telling him to be on high alert. If Egger’s death wasn’t an accident, the threat level had kicked up a notch, and something didn’t feel right about it.

After she hung up, she tried Tesla again. He didn’t answer, so she left a message summarizing the results of the interview, stressing Egger’s mysterious death, and telling Tesla to stay put in his house. She had no idea where he was, but she did know where Tatiana Tesla was, so that was her next stop.

Both Teslas might be in more danger than she’d thought.