What could I say to that? He was doing me a favor. So we made our way down the walkway, passing beneath a new vinyl banner. It didn’t make a lot of sense, though the heavy block letters were nonetheless imposing.

KILLAHEED
THE COMPLETE STRUCTURE

WESTERN HEMISPHERE DEBUT

It snapped in the breeze as if preparing to swoop down on bat wings.

Neither of us was encouraged by what we found inside. Carol was absent from the ticket booth. We peeked around the corner. No one was manning the coat check. We perked up our ears. There were sounds, dim vibrations of voices, but there was no telling from which direction they came. Tub shrugged, hitched up his duffel, and pushed his bulk through the turnstiles. I followed and we proceeded, more carefully than usual, up the stairs and beneath the bison. Tub didn’t touch the chin hairs this time.

The Sal K. Silverman Atrium looked no different from the outside. But when we pushed through the smoked-glass doors we were greeted by a hive of activity. Museum staff, everyone from Carol to docents to board members, were buzzing about with frowns, while men with hardhats and work gloves called back and forth to one another from behind packing crates and the seats of small forklifts. Tub and I were dumbstruck. When we approached not a single person paid us notice.

Spanning the entire length of the room was a stone walking bridge. Had it been stretched across a country stream somewhere, it might have looked harmless enough. But indoors it pushed against the room’s paltry boundaries with a formidable, primordial force. It was ancient, its every notch and outcropping scoured with the nicks and discolorations of centuries. Fiberglass cushioning hid much of the detail work, though a dozen workers were preparing to remove it. Clearly the bridge had been delivered in sections; both ends had been reconstructed, but a center monument connecting the halves was missing.

Tub and I wandered closer. If not for the laborers, we could have passed beneath the bridge without ducking. Cobwebs swayed from spires at either end and moss grew in moist patches around many of the intricate carvings. The bridge was practically a living thing—you expected rats to come pouring out of the innumerable small chasms. The air was unaccountably cold and I shivered as I tried to see over a man in a houndstooth coat.

He whirled around, nose raised as if he’d sniffed me out. It was Professor Lempke. His left hand clutched a clipboard but the right hand shot out, somehow snaring both of our collars in a single fist.

“Aha!” he cried. “My perennial trespassers! My shadow skulkers! Young masters Sturges and Dershowitz, reporting for duty!”

We squirmed but his grip was iron.