City of Dreams

by Martin, William

  Then another stranger—another Russian—pulled open Delancey’s door. From a distance, this one looked like a series of cubes, almost a drawing exercise: sketch three cubes and make a human being out of them. Large cube for the body and shoulders, smaller cube for the head, tiny cube for the nose.

  Peter did the math: two Russian thugs, a cattle prod, a Taser . . . them. This would not end well. So he decided he wasn’t going into that bookstore.

  He thought about flopping right in the middle of the street and forcing the Russian to cattle prod him in front of all the idling traffic.

  He could take the pain, and it would be better than whatever was waiting. And while he was down, twitching in agony, Evangeline could run. And when the light changed, the cars would come, and . . . suddenly he sensed movement to his right.

  A black Ford Taurus shot out of a parking spot at the corner of Tenth, sped halfway across the street, halfway up the block, and screeched to stop right behind the Russian, who said, “What the fuck?”

  Then, Peter heard the beeping of the pedestrian light counting down the seconds before the light changed and the traffic roared toward them.

  And the beeping became like a metronome for the quick dance that unfolded in the middle of the street.

  Ten. Nine. Beep. Beep.

  The driver’s door opened and Joey Berra popped out.

  Eight. Seven. Beep. Beep.

  “Get the fuck scrammed,” said the Rus sian to Joey.

  Six. Five. Beep. Beep.

  Joey raised a Glock 9 mm and fired a round into the Russian’s head.

  Four. Three. Beep. Beep.

  “Jesus Christ!” cried Evangeline as the blood splattered.

  “Get in!” said Joey.

  Two. One. Beep. Beep.

  “Get in?” Evangeline screamed. “No. You’re crazy.” She turned and ran.

  The light changed. But the lead drivers didn’t move. Who would after what they’d just seen? So horns began to blare farther down the traffic column.

  In New York, if you hesitated at a crosswalk when a light turned green, the city would grind to a halt. That was how it seemed. And it didn’t matter if the cops ticketed every horn-blower in the city. The basic rules of life applied in New York, like “He who hesitates is lost” and “Use it or lose it,” especially when he who hesitates is slowing you down and you have a horn to use on him.

  Peter didn’t hesitate. When Evangeline began to run, he ran after her.

  “Fallon!” shouted Joey Berra.

  Peter turned, “Another one, in the bookstore. And answer your phone.”

  “Shit!” Joey gave the store a glance, then shouted at Peter. “Where’s Delancey?”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “I lost him.”

  “Then who’s using his phone?”

  “Whoever has him.”

  A little Chevy got around the cars at the light, blaring its horn as it sped toward the Taurus in the middle of Fourth Ave. Then a panel truck shot up from Lafayette and swerved around the Taurus and the dead man in the street.

  Joey Berra took a few steps after Peter Fallon.

  But a police car in the traffic turned on its blues and gave three or four whoop-whoops on the siren.

  Joey Berra jumped into the Taurus and sped away.

  Evangeline was running for the subway, the fancy one at Astor Place, the one with the Beaux Arts flair that made it look almost Parisian.

  The police car sped past them in pursuit of the Taurus that had just turned down Twelfth. And the traffic began to move, because an empty avenue and a green light formed a vacuum, and nature decreed that cars should rush in to fill it, even if there was a body lying across the lane lines.

  “Evangeline,” shouted Peter, “we should follow Joey!”

  “We should get the hell out of New York. This is just—”

  All in an instant, they heard a low thumping sound and a tremendous blast that blew out all the windows in Delancey’s Rarities.

  Glass shot in shards and sheets and shining pellets out into Fourth Avenue. Flames blew out right after the glass. People on the sidewalk went down in fear or were cut down by the explosion. Alarms went off in parked cars and screamed in buildings all around. Cars swerving to avoid the body of the Russian in the street swerved again and slammed into each other.

  Peter pushed Evangeline down into the subway.

  THEY CAME UP in Grand Central and moved quickly across the main concourse.

  Evangeline had stopped shaking.

  And it was good that she was wearing a black suit, because the bloodstains dried quickly and dried black.

  She had simply followed Peter’s lead since he pushed her down into the subway, pulled the MetroCard out of her purse, and swiped it twice as two transit cops ran upstairs toward the sound of the explosion.

  Plenty of police were patrolling in Grand Central, as always, along with National Guards carrying automatic weapons. It had been like that since 9/11. It only made sense in the most famous train terminal in America.

  And Peter always felt a bit of awe when he crossed the concourse. With all that marble and the soaring height and the constellations dancing across the blue sky-ceiling, Grand Central proclaimed the majesty of the city itself. Even as it reminded you of your own insignificant anonymity, it said that if this was how they welcomed you to New York, you must be pretty important, too, and if you weren’t, you could be.

  At the moment, Peter preferred insignificant anonymity.

  None of the police seemed to pay attention to a well-dressed man and woman heading toward the west stairway. There was no Roger Thornhill moment, no Russians, and no sketchy Americans who might be working for them. A few bums and bag ladies, but none that caught Evangeline’s eye.

  Peter had already called Joey Berra twice with no luck. He wasn’t sure of what his next move should be, but he suddenly realized that he was running out of energy. He stopped and took Evangeline’s arm and turned her in the other direction.

  “Where are we going now?”

  “The Oyster Bar.”

  “The Oyster Bar? Why?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “At a time like this? No.” She pulled away from him and started walking again. “Besides, it’s too expensive.”

  “Too expensive? You can take the girl out of New England, but you can’t take New England out of the girl.”

  “Peter”—she turned—“I just want to get in a cab and go home. I’ll pack a bag and we’ll be on the New England Thruway in an hour.”

  “Honey, you dragged me down to New York. So humor me.” He slipped his arm into hers. “Whole sand dabs sautéed in a ginger-scallion sauce. One of my favorites. And we’ll both think better on a full stomach. Besides, my leg is killing me.”

  “You mean from where you were shot?”

  “Yeah, the last time I tried to save America.”

  He put a little weight on her arm for support. She knew he was acting, but she went along. She always went along. And he was right. She had started this one.

  EVANGELINE WASHED HER hands in the ladies’ room, then she washed them again. She washed her face and combed her hair and washed her hands a third time. But no matter how many times she washed, she couldn’t wash away the images of that afternoon, or the splatter of blood that now stained the sleeve and the front of her suit, so she took off the jacket and carried it over her arm.

  When she came back, he was studying his iPhone at a table as far from the entrance as possible.

  “I hope you didn’t order some expensive bottle of wine,” she said. “This is not a celebration.”

  “It’s a chance to sit and make sense of things, so I ordered wine.” He put down the phone. “But you don’t get much on a New York wine list for under forty dollars—”

  The place was big and crowded, and even if it wasn’t a celebration for Peter and Evangeline, the lights trimming the arches in the tiled ceiling made it feel festive. But the ceiling vaults that
gave it the look of some deep Roman grotto also concentrated the conversation all around them. It was noisy.

  The waiter arrived with the wine. “Brancott New Zealand sauvignon blanc.”

  Peter told him to pour. It was screw-capped like most New Zealand wines, and since it didn’t have a cork, it couldn’t be corked, so no need for a big tasting show.

  “And we know what we want,” he said. “I’ll have the sand dabs. And—”

  “Broiled red snapper,” said Evangeline.

  Peter also asked if they had any Island Creek Duxbury oysters.

  The waiter apologized that they didn’t.

  “You should get them. They taste of the waters that welcomed the Pilgrims, the fresh clean estuaries on the fresh green breast of the New World.” He ordered a half-dozen Wellfleets instead.

  The waiter gave him an annoyed look and went off.

  Evangeline took a sip of the wine and said. “If I was the sort who outlined the reasons why I loved someone—”

  “And you’re not.” He raised his glass in a small toast.

  “I would include your love of how things look, taste, smell—”

  “And feel. Don’t forget feel.”

  “Your well-documented enthusiasm for life. So let’s get back to living it. Let’s just call the police and tell them everything and that will be the end of it.”

  “That could mean the end of Delancey, too. If these Russians have him—”

  “Why should we care about Delancey? He stiffed me in Fraunces Tavern. He got us into this because he wouldn’t be straight with me.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t be straight with you.” Peter broke a breadstick, ate half, and gave the other half to her. “Maybe there were things he had to keep hidden.”

  “He certainly wasn’t trying to protect me when he stiffed me,” she said.

  The oysters came.

  Peter squirted lemon and a bit of hot sauce onto one and offered it to her.

  She said no. Too much on an empty stomach.

  So he tipped his head back and let it slither down. “Delancey told you to leave.”

  She took another swallow of wine. “I wish I’d listened.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. Otherwise, we’d have no shot at making—how many millions was it?”

  “I don’t care about the money.” As she said it, she wondered if she believed it. She would have meant it half an hour earlier, but she had to admit it, a bit of food and drink was giving her a better perspective . . . or maybe worse.

  “Evangeline”—Peter leaned across the table—“I do this work for a lot of reasons, and money is one of them.”

  “I know.” She decided to have an oyster after all.

  “I live well. I invest in good things. I give to charities. I help my son pay his law school tuition. I have season tickets to the Red Sox.”

  She swallowed down the oyster and dabbed at the corner of her mouth.

  “I put money into companies like that Duxbury oyster business because they’re making life better in some small way. I make money to spread it around.”

  She had another oyster and a bit more wine. “What happened to the business about saving America?”

  “We save America by doing what we do, and doing it as well as we can.” He drained the last of the oysters as the main course arrived.

  She sat back and stared at him. “So what do you want me to say?”

  “That we’re still in. We play it smart. We keep trying to connect with Joey Berra. We find the bag lady. And—”

  “What about the police? The NYPD could be helpful.”

  “They could be helpful. And”—he picked up his iPhone—“an e-mail from the Harvard Club tells me the police would like to talk with me about the shooting we witnessed today. So we can go to them at any time.”

  “Probably better to go to them rather than have them come to us.”

  “Probably. But we haven’t done anything.”

  She poured more wine into each glass. “Do you think they had surveillance cameras at Tenth and Fourth Ave?”

  “No, but they must have had them in the Astor Place subway. They’ll find us, once they get through the layers of police bureaucracy, the transit cops, the NYPD detectives . . . By tomorrow, we’ll be persons of interest. But all we need is thirty-six hours.”

  They continued talking as they ate. They tried to lay out the next day and a half and how they would proceed. They read an e-mail that Antoine sent:

  Still tracking Riley Wrecking through Times archive, adding names as I find interesting links. This one is good:

  Peter angled the iPhone for Evangeline, then clicked the link that took him to the actual story, headline and all, just as it had looked on October 30, 1907:

  HELL’S KITCHEN BIDS FAREWELL TO BELOVED CITIZEN

  MOTHER OF THE RILEY BOYS PASSES

  MAYOR MCCLELLAN, THE MCMANUS, AND

  G. W. PLUNKITT ATTEND RITES

  Mary Riley, fifty-three, was laid to rest yesterday at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, after a funeral mass at Sacred Heart on Fifty-first Street.

  She arrived from Kilkenney at the age of twelve and lived in Hell’s Kitchen all of her life, the last twenty spent on a fourth-floor flat on Forty-eighth Street. More than once, said neighbors, her sons had tried to move her, but she preferred to stay in the old parish, in the old neighborhood.

  After her husband, Richard, was murdered in 1893, she took in extra sewing to support her sons. Neighbors said that her Singer could always be heard, rumbling through the night. However, her sons soon took jobs and found success, one in business and the other in politics, and they eased their mother’s burdens.

  Timothy, twenty-eight, began as an office boy for J. P. Morgan and Co. At the age of twenty, he became a loan officer at West Side Workingman’s Bank on Eighth Avenue and Forty-second Street. At the age of twenty-five, he became the youngest bank president in New York.

  Edward, twenty-seven, began as an errand boy in Washington Hall, Tammany’s Fifteenth District headquarters, and rose in service to his political patron, George Washington Plunkitt. But in the 1904 election, Plunkitt lost his State Senate seat to Republican Martin Sax, which led to his defeat for Tammany district leadership at the hands of Assemblyman Thomas “The” McManus in 1905. Like his mentor, Edward is now out of politics but planning his return.

  After the funeral, Plunkitt said, “Mary Riley was a fine example of New York womanhood. No matter what life threw at her, she faced it with bravery and gave the city two strong sons.”

  There was no public unpleasantness between Plunkitt and The McManus, as there has been on other occasions when their paths cross in public.

  The McManus said, “Mary Riley and her sons are the real backbone of the Fifteenth District.”

  Plunkitt was heard to say to another mourner, “Half the folks here come to give a good send-off to a good woman. The other half come hopin’ that they’d see a corpse in the box and another one standin’ upright. Well, I might have lost my seat, but I’m far from dead, and they’ll be hearin’ from me again.”

  “What does Antoine see in this?” asked Evangeline.

  “I’m thinking he must have cross-referenced Timothy Riley and J. P. Morgan. This shows that they were still connected, even after Riley sold him the bond.”

  “Which means he might have sold him more?”

  “If he had more.” Peter read the rest of Antoine’s e-mail: “Checking obits now, cross-referencing Times archive stories on West Side Workingman’s, et cetera. Will deliver as I discover. Have also informed Cousin Scarborough that you might call for security.”

  “Cousin Scarborough?” asked Evangeline.

  “A little backup. If things get hotter.”

  IT WAS AFTER ten o’clock when they left the Oyster Bar.

  As they crossed the marble floor in the grand concourse, Peter called the front desk at Evangeline’s apartment.

  Jackie Knuckles answered. He was working a double shift.

 
“Any calls or any visits from anyone that made you suspicious?” asked Peter.

  “Nope. Nothin’ . . . Buck.”

  That told Peter that people had been watching, or asking for them . . . the police? The Russians? Joey Berra? It would be best to stay away from the apartment, he thought, so where would they spend the night?

  They went up the stairs at the west side of the station and headed for the cabs on Vanderbilt Avenue. At the top, Peter turned to admire the grand space and the half-acre American flag that had been floating above the crowd since 9/11.

  Just then, two big guys—both drunk—lurched out of Michael Jordan Streak House on the upper level and bumped into Peter. Then one of them slipped and went stumbling down the steps.

  This drew the attention of two police officers down on the concourse. They started up the stairs, which Peter took as a signal to stop admiring Grand Central and hit the street. He grabbed Evangeline by the elbow and led her outside.

  A cab had just pulled away. There was another in line. The driver started to pull up. But suddenly a different cab shot into the space ahead of it.

  A black guy was driving. He reached into the backseat and pushed open the door. “At your service, folks.”

  That sounded a bit strange, and the cabbie he’d cut off leaned on his horn.

  “But the other guy was in line,” said Peter.

  “You snooze, you lose,” said the driver. “C’mon, man. Jump in.”

  And suddenly, Peter heard another voice behind him and felt something jamming into his back. “Get in. This is not cattle prod. It is pistol.” Another Russian accent. “And I will use it. I don’t give any fucks.”

  “And he ain’t shittin’,” said the driver.

  Peter looked over his shoulder and had a thought for the second time that night: Draw three cubes. One for the body, one for the face, one for the nose.

  “But you were in the bookstore,” said Evangeline.

  “Bookstore have back door. And leaky gas pipe. Big pity. Get in.”

  A moment later, they were speeding across Forty-second Street in an old yellow cab. The meter was running, but in this cab, the driver could lock the back doors.