Vitaly put an arm out to move Mr. Beltron aside, then he gave Peter a small bow of the head and Evangeline a little smile, just enough to show a bit of stainless steel.
Then Evangeline heard Antonov’s voice. “Miss. Miss, you’ve forgotten your purse.”
He thrust his hand through the curtain.
She took the purse. “Thanks.”
“Fendi. Nice. But heavy. What you got in there? Rocks?”
“A gentleman shouldn’t ask,” said Evangeline.
THE BLACK CABBIE drove them back to Times Square. They got off at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Forty-second Street.
And Evangeline told Peter, “That cabbie was the guy watching us on the Bowling Green the other morning.”
“Maybe Joey Berra will know who he is. We’ll wait fifteen minutes.”
“It’s after midnight. We’re too late,” said Evangeline. “Besides, Antonov told us not to trust him.”
“So you trust Antonov? Because he says he went to Harvard?”
“Well . . . no. But he has good taste in music, and he liked my purse.”
“Yeah, and he has lots of poetry in his soul.”
Somewhere above them, the sky was dark. Somewhere around the edges of the square, the shadows reached out. Somewhere below the street lay the memory of the farm that sat there in 1776. But this was the land of the midnight LED, the crossroads of the Big Apple, the place where American commerce, money, and entertainment collided in a giant pinball machine of light and noise.
It didn’t surprise Peter that New York had written ordinances requiring Times Square office buildings to display neon. Neon was as natural here as snow on the Tetons or sugar maples in Vermont.
He looked up at the wall of red lights extolling Coke, at the ribbon of words wrapping the Times Building, at an illuminated sign for—of all things—an accounting firm. He took in the giant billboard images of anorexics modeling underwear and athletes eating hamburgers and the huge television screens, too. It was night transformed into neon noon. He said to Evangeline, “Somewhere, a glacier is melting—”
“Glaciers? Peter, we have a missing bookstore owner, a dead accountant, a bag lady, a Vinnie-Boom-Bah named Berra who plays catcher in the rye whenever we get into trouble, a Russian in a rock-club dungeon, a stock market slut named Kathy, a phony businessman and his phony lawyer—”
“You think they’re phonies?” He led her north through the perpetual Times Square crowd.
“Or thieves, as Antonov said—”
“Not exactly an unimpeachable source—”
“Who may blow up Fallon Antiquaria if he doesn’t get what he wants, so let’s just agree with him, find him the bonds, and forget the goddamn glaciers.”
“If America can’t make good on its bond obligations, starting with the unretired debt of the Revolution, we’ll have all we can do to keep the lights on, never mind trying to save the glaciers while we do it. So there is a connection.”
They hurried toward the bleachers on Duffy Square, the triangular traffic island between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh. Father Duffy had been chaplain of the Fighting Sixty-ninth in World War I. His statue stood in the middle of the triangle, backed by a Celtic cross better suited to some Galway graveyard, and a hundred feet in front of him, at the tip of the triangle, stood the statue of another Irishman, George M. Cohan.
Evangeline said, “You should feel right at home with all these micks.”
“We’re not looking for bronzed Irishmen. We’re looking for an Italian named Berra. So let’s sit down and wait.”
The bleachers: eighteen steps of architectural glass rising to cover the new Broadway TKTS Booth, room for a thousand tourists’ asses. Even after midnight, people were climbing all over the steps, looking, laughing, posing for flash pictures that would illuminate their faces but wash out the brilliant backgrounds and leave them disappointed when they got back to Indiana or Indonesia.
Peter and Evangeline sat about halfway up, next to a pair of old ladies.
One was chattering away about how exciting it was to be up so late.
The other was tapping her cane on the glass that formed the seats, the steps, the risers, and complaining about the waste of electricity. “You wouldn’t see this in Bangor. They even have lights underneath this thing, so people can see up our skirts.”
“Who’d want to see up your skirt?” said her friend.
Evangeline whispered, “This is surreal.”
“What’s surreal?” Peter asked. “Old ladies sitting on bleachers in Times Square? Or us sitting with them, reading about ourselves?”
“Reading?” she said. “About ourselves?”
He pointed to the news ticker crawling around the Times Building. There wasn’t much left of the architecture that once made it one of the most iconic buildings in the city. But it was one of the most icon-covered: Samsung, Prudential, NBC, Nissin’s Cup of Noodles.
Letter by letter, Evangeline read the words going by on the northern edge of the building. “NYPD Investigates Harvard Club Killing. Suspect Loose. Witnesses Sought.”
“‘Witnesses sought,’” said Peter. “That would be us.” He pointed to two officers doing sidewalk duty near the statue of George M. Cohan. “And there’s cops everywhere.”
“I don’t think they’re looking for us,” said Evangeline. “But he is.” She pointed to the west side of Times Square. It was his stillness that caught her eye. In a fast-moving stream of late-night strollers, gawkers, and drunks, one man stood motionless on the corner of Broadway and Forty-sixth: Oscar Delancey
“The son of a bitch.” Peter stood and peered across fifty yards of people on the new pedestrian-mall section of Broadway.
Delancey was holding his cell phone to his ear.
Peter felt his phone vibrate. He answered.
“Hello, Pete.”
“Hello, Pete? All you can say is ‘Hello, Pete’?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted. And don’t call me Pete. Now how did you find me?”
“I didn’t. My partners did. They been on that fuckin’ Vitaly’s trail since he blew up my store this afternoon. This is a war we’re in, Pete, and you gotta choose sides. Fast.”
“How fast?”
“I’d say you got one minute.”
“A minute? What are you talking about?” Peter looked around for some new threat . . . at the crowd on Broadway . . . into the traffic on Seventh Avenue. But halfway up the bleachers, ten feet off the street, he saw only motion. . . .
Meanwhile, the old women from Maine asked Evangeline to take their picture with Times Square behind them.
“This is so exciting,” said the cheery one. “The girls back in Penobscot County will never believe we were up past midnight.”
“They don’t call it the city that never sleeps for nothing,” said the grouchy one. “Might as well stay up late. Can’t sleep. Noisiest goddamn hotel I’ve ever been in.”
Evangeline took the camera and looked through the digital viewfinder, but instead of hitting the shutter button, she hit the zoom. The screen image grew. She saw a man step around the statue of Father Duffy and start climbing the bleachers right behind the old ladies.
He looked familiar. Receding hairline, but solid . . . a little like Vladimir Putin.
Evangeline pressed the button again, to make his image grow even larger. And she remembered: the shooter on the balcony of the Harvard Club.
Delancey was saying to Peter. “Looks like your minute is up. Sorry. It’s just business. I told them you’d be holding a cell phone.”
Peter shoved the phone into his pocket.
Evangeline cried, “Peter!” just as he saw another man fix his gaze on them and start to climb from the Broadway side.
Peter took it all in: two guys closing from two sides. The quickest way to escape was to make a scene. So he shouted, “Gun! Gun! He’s got a gun!”
At the same moment, one of the old ladies turned to Putin. He had a hand in his p
ocket and maybe a gun in his hand. And he was standing way too close to a grouchy old lady from Maine, because she shouted, “Get back, you perv!” and swung her purse right into his face.
The other old lady smashed her cane off his head, so that his hand flew out of his pocket and the gun flew into the air, and he fell back onto a gang of kids sitting three steps below.
“Gun!” cried the grouchy one. “He’s got a gun.”
One of the kids pushed him down two or three more steps, while dozens of people were turning, stumbling, running, and practically falling to get off the bleachers.
Peter was dragging Evangeline straight for the other guy, who was smaller, more compact, and had flaming red hair. If he’d been planning to use a weapon on Peter, he was thinking better of it with all those witnesses, and if he’d been planning to use the strong-arm, he’d have to do it himself because his partner had just taken another smack off the skull.
Peter pulled out his cell phone and aimed it at him and fired a picture as the redhead disappeared into the crowd. Then Peter pointed the phone toward the other guy, who was on his knees, looking for his gun. Click. Click. The animated iris on the iPhone closed twice, catching the gunman, the fleeing people, and the golden arches of the Times Square McDonald’s in the background.
Then Peter and Evangeline sprinted for the corner where they had seen Delancey, but Delancey had vanished again.
“Do you think Joey B. set us up?” said Evangeline.
“If he’s in cahoots with Delancey, but”—Peter grabbed the back door of a cab idling at the light and they hopped in—“I’m not trusting any of them. I’m getting my own security.”
THURSDAY MORNING WAS another warm, sunny May day.
They had used Evangeline’s credit card to spend the night in the Grand Hyatt. They had also used it to do what could only be done in Manhattan: purchase a new laptop and cell phones and set up accounts, all at one o’clock in the morning.
At six, Peter called his partner, Orson Lunt, and told him to meet Antoine at Fallon Antiquaria and remove three cases of books, including the Shakespeare Second Folio, and put them into safety deposit bins. If Antonov decided to do to Fallon Antiquaria what he had done to Delancey’s Rarities, at least the most valuable items would be safe.
Then Antoine called with bad news. Cousin Jonas, of Scarborough Security in Harlem, didn’t want to handle their case. He said they were too “hot.” He said a legit businessman couldn’t be annoying the NYPD by helping a guy whose Facebook picture was now in the Daily News, right next to a sketch of a guy in a Yankees hat, a person of interest in a Central Park drug death. The caption: “Resemblance?”
“Cousin Jones is smart,” Peter said, “but I need to stay on the loose at least another twenty-six hours. I need the Russians to think I’ve done all I can to find those bonds.”
“Jonas suggests you call Henry Baxter,” said Antoine. “He was half brother to our dads. Special ops in Vietnam, did long-haul truckin’ for a lot of years. Works for Scarborough sometimes, for himself the rest of the time. Lives on Fifty-first Street.”
“That’s the Rileys’ old neighborhood,” Peter said. “Hell’s Kitchen.”
HENRY BAXTER SAT at his desk and looked at his notes. He was so big that he blocked the sunlight bouncing off the trees outside the window. He wore a blue T-shirt, jeans, and a smile. “Cousin Jonas say you got cops lookin’ for you and Russians after you, and you’re makin’ big scenes in Times Square, and all you tryin’ to do is save America by findin’ a itty-bitty little box.”
Peter laughed. “By tomorrow.”
“By tomorrow. I like a man with a plan.” Henry laughed too, and the residue of a thousand truck stop hamburgers made little waves over his muscle.
While they talked, Evangeline was taking in the office. A big rottweiler named Ripper was snoozing in the corner. The furniture was spare. The only decoration a few certificates and some photographs on the walls: a skinny Henry with his unit in Vietnam, Henry and Willie Mays, Henry and Derek Jeter, Henry and Lady Ella herself standing in front of Sylvia’s in Harlem. Henry got around.
“But tomorrow comin’ fast, and Antoine say you runnin’ out of people to trust.”
“Startin’ with a guy named Joey Berra,” said Peter. “We were supposed to meet him last night in Times Square. But if he didn’t show up, he said we should meet him there at noon today.”
“And he didn’t show up?” Henry stroked his goatee.
“We were late,” said Evangeline.
“But you ain’t trustin’ him?”
“Would you?” asked Peter.
“Well, don’t know ’bout this Berra cat, but you can trust old Henry. My little brother spoke nothin’ but good about your daddy. He said that when Big Jim Fallon went to work, so did he.”
“First hired and last fired on every Fallon job,” said Peter.
“It didn’t roll that way for too many of the brothers back in the day. That’s why I go into business for myself.” Henry grinned. “So I got your back. This your safe house as long as you need. Bedroom down the hall. My wife and me and Ripper, we live upstairs.”
“You rent two places?” said Evangeline.
“Honey, I own the buildin’. If you get scared, just holler. If it’s something we can’t handle, we run across the street and say a prayer.”
“If I hire security,” said Peter, “I don’t want prayer. I want a license to carry.”
“I’m licensed to carry and licensed to snoop. You got a wanderin’ wife you want watched? You got a brother-in-law who owes you big and been outta sight for a while? You wonderin’ if the woman workin’ your cash register dippin’ in the petty? I’m your man. I know my way around this town better ’n anybody, and I know who to meet and how to talk wherever I go. And if I really need to, I can make myself invisible.”
“I’ll bet you can,” said Evangeline.
“Learned a lot, survivin’ two tours in Nam and twenty-five years on the long-haul highway. But it wasn’t till I met my Sonia that I learned prayin’. Never went Catholic like her, but”—he jerked his thumb to the church diagonally across the street—“every day I look out at ol’ Sacred Heart and say thank you Jesus for a happy life.”
Peter looked out the window. “That’s where the Rileys worshiped.”
“Who are they?” asked Henry.
“You wouldn’t know them,” said Evangeline.
“I know just about everyone in the neighborhood. Gettin’ as gentrified as the Upper West Side. We got yuppies and their puppies everywhere. I liked it better when we had Sharks and Jets—”
“Like West Side Story?” said Peter.
“This was the neighborhood,” said Henry. “And before that, we had all them crazy Irishmen. Gangsters, priests, politicians . . . ol’ Mr. Tammany hisself, George Washington Plunkitt . . . buried out of that church back in the twenties.”
“They buried a lot of people.” Peter was thinking of all the Riley funerals.
“That’s why I like it here,” said Henry. “The roots go deep. But not just black roots, or Rican roots, or Irish roots. New York roots. Now, make yourself at home.”
“Do you have wireless Internet?” asked Evangeline.
“Yes’m, and water pressure good enough to beat the oil off a grease monkey. For a old soldier or a long-haul trucker, a hot hard shower’s as good as the company of a lady.”
And Evangeline just began to laugh. She had not admitted it yet to Peter, but she didn’t know how much more she could take. She was wishing she hadn’t been in that bookstore when the bag lady wandered in, because she’d been running ever since. Being in the presence of this big man, who had seen so much and seemed so comfortable, comforted her, too. And she kept laughing, just put her head in her hands and laughed.
Until Peter decided to calm her a bit. “It’s not that funny.”
“I know,” she said, “but if I don’t keep laughing I’m going to start crying, because this is starting to wear me out.” She
said it, and saying it made her feel better, too.
“Crazy shit like this, it wear anybody out,” said Henry. Then he stood. “Y’all just relax while I go upstairs and vacuum. Little Sonia work as a nurse and she like for me to do the housework. Nothin’ make me happier than makin’ the missus happy.”
Evangeline wiped her eyes and looked at Peter. “A license to carry, and he does the vacuuming.”
“Out on the road,” said Henry, “my handle was Big Mama’s Baby. Now they should call me Little Sonia’s Daddy. You two got any nicknames?”
Evangeline said, “Someone has been calling himself Buck, like the knife.”
Peter just shook his head.
Henry looked at him. “You ain’t no Buck. Let me think on somethin’ better. I be back at quarter to twelve. Then we see about this Joey Berra cat. But we do it my way.”
“Good said Peter.”
“Oh, Antoine say you took pictures in Times Square last night. You got ’em?”
EVANGELINE MADE SOME coffee, then went into the bedroom to change.
Peter went online, to MarketSpin.com. First he checked the stocks: Dow Jones down another 175 points. How long would the Chinese let it keep spiraling?
Then, in the little video box on the lower left corner, Kathy Flynn began to talk to the camera: “Good morning. Asian markets responded predictably overnight to the Chinese action. The Nikkei was down two percent, the Hang Seng was down two and a half. European markets are on the same path.”
In the bedroom, Evangeline was picking the labels off a pair of blue jeans she had bought on their way across town. Enough with Chanel suits and heels. She had bought running shoes, too.
But when she heard that voice, she came out. “Can’t keep your eyes off her?”
“It’s happening.” Peter pointed to the stocks running across the top of the screen.
“And we can’t stop it.” Evangeline stood there, in a blouse and underpants, with the jeans still in her hand.
“All the more reason to get those bonds,” he said. “If the stock market crashes, nobody’ll be buying rare books.”
“And at home,” Kathy went on. “The assassination of Carl Evers, chief accountant for Avid Investment Strategies, has set off a round of speculations regarding the health of the company headed by anti-deficit crusader Austin Arsenault. We caught up with Arsenault this morning outside of his co-op.”
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