How to Lead a Life of Crime by Kirsten Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

eighteenth of April—a few days before Easter—I found out how much I still needed to learn.
    • • •
    I’m smarter now than I was back then. My education cost everything that I had. So I find it amusing that Lucian Mandel thinks he’s the one who’ll be calling the shots. I guess he’s been spying on me for a while, because he’s convinced that he’s got me all figured out. But I know something about him too. Lucian Mandel hates my father. Which isn’t surprising. My dad’s the CEO of one of the world’s biggest banks. And he’d be the first to point out that nice guys don’t get to the top. At this stage you’d need the US Census Bureau to count my dad’s enemies. But only one of them has ever come looking for
me
. So I’ve agreed to hear what Mandel has to say.
    • • •
    Mandel pulls his Maserati into an alley a block away from City Hall Park. The lane is too narrow to stand back and get a good view of the building we’re visiting. It must be one of the oldest structures in this part of town. Redbrick with terra-cotta trim. Ten—no nine—stories tall. A couple of towers that would look right at home on a haunted house. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this sure isn’t it.
    The academy can’t have changed much since my dad was a student. I wish I could have seen his reaction the day he stood on this spot for the very first time. The school must have seemed much more impressive to a poor boy from the mean streets of the Lower East Side. To me, it’s like something right out of Dickens. A scene from an old movie flashes through my mind: A line of young boys with empty bowls are waiting for their morning gruel. “Please, sir, may I have some more?” asks one who’s already scarfed down his portion. I almost laugh out loud at the thought.
    “Shall we?” Mandel uses a card key to open a door marked service entrance. When I look inside, all I see is a bright shaft of sunlight.
    Turns out the interior is much more impressive. And I see the source of the light. A glass pyramid serves as the building’s roof, and all nine stories are wrapped around a central atrium. The open space in the middle of each floor is ringed by a balcony with a wrought-iron railing. Every balcony is supported by four metal dragons with outstretched wings and golden balls clamped in their mouths. I imagine them all taking flight and soaring in circles as they snatch up Mandel students one by one.
    I walk to the center of the courtyard—across a tile mosaic. Tiny squares form giant letters, but I can’t figure out which words they form. I’m too close to read them. So I tilt my head back and look all the way up. The steel and glass towers of Manhattan’s financial district peer down at me through the roof. The sky overhead is cloudless, and the school is beautiful beneath the bright afternoon sun. But I bet on dark days, it looks a lot like the toy maker’s building in Blade Runner.
    “Where is everyone?” I ask Mandel. I don’t see a soul. “Winter break?”
    “We don’t have vacations here,” Mandel informs me. “Most of the young people at the academy must work nonstop to make up for lost time, so we can’t afford any distractions. We don’t allow visitors and we don’t observe weekends or holidays. There are three semesters a year, and every day is a school day. The students are all in class.”
    Mandel saunters over to what looks like a tall iron cage on the north side of the atrium. Two metal boxes are suspended inside. One is stationed on the ninth floor. The other has stopped at the fourth. I’ve never seen an elevator like it before. Mandel presses a button, and I hear the sound of metal gates sliding shut. A car begins to descend. I can see straight through it. There’s no one inside.
    “The ground floor houses administrative offices and the alumni lounge,” Mandel announces. “Floors two through four are classrooms. Floor five is the gymnasium. The cafeteria is on floor six. Floors