Evers would then liquidate everything. He would sell the condos on Abingdon Square, in Stowe, Vermont, and on Useppa Island in Florida. He would empty the stock portfolio and pay the debts.
And what remained would do some good. She had left a quarter of her estate to the Episcopal Charities of New York. She had been raised Episcopal, had been a congregant at St. George’s, and had been reborn in the graveyard of an Episcopal church. She had left a quarter to legal aid of New York. She had left 20 percent to her New York friends, four women—a lawyer, a house wife, a parishioner at St. George’s, and a financial reporter named Kathy Flynn, whom she had met one day in a shoe store. She would miss them. They would mourn her. But it was better this way.
She had left 10 percent to her cousins in California. She had not seen them in twenty years, but blood was blood.
And she had left 20 percent to the New York Animal Rescue League.
She had performed an animal rescue of her own that morning. It had been her first foray out of the flat that she had rented on Grand Street in the Lower East Side, a lonely brick tenement surrounded by parking lots a block from the Williamsburg Bridge. Rent in cash. No questions asked.
In a Salvation Army shelter, she had gotten clean clothes, including a single-breasted London Fog raincoat and the Mets hat. She had found a shopping cart parked against a chain-link fence just up the block. So she had put on the raincoat and hat and thrown a few paper bags into the cart, and she had started uptown. And she had realized as she went, that she was becoming a character, and to the people who passed, that character was invisible.
She had reached Madison Square Park at around quarter to eleven . . .
Fifteen minutes later, right on schedule, along came Marie MacCallan with three leashes in each hand, the big dogs on the right, the little dogs on the left.
Jennifer had paid Marie two months in advance, so she was still walking Georgie the terrier. But for some people, dog-sitting was a passion. For others, it was just a day job. Miss MacCallen told anyone who would listen that she was really an actress. So she put the dogs into the pen with a few others, sat on the park bench near the gate, and took out a copy of Happy Days by Samuel Beckett.
A little young to be playing Winnie, thought Sally.
But the girl’s inattention made it much easier for Sally to step inside the gate, pretend to be enjoying all the frisking dogs, crouch slowly, and whisper, “Georgie.”
The little dog looked up from inspecting the urine of a bigger dog.
Sally glanced at Marie—still reading—and said it again. “Georgie.”
She was sure that the little guy smiled, because dogs could smile. She believed that. Then he ran to her and jumped onto her lap.
The other two people inside the pen, a man and a woman, were conducting the oldest ritual of the urban doggy park: they were hitting on each other. So they were paying Sally even less attention than the dog-sitter was.
The raincoat had a huge inside pocket. She grabbed the dog, dropped him into it, and walked right past her twenty-something dog-sitter.
A block south, Georgie the terrier was riding in the shopping cart.
JENNIFER WILSON HAD also created another persona.
Her name was Erica Callow. She had a taste for nice clothes, Chanel no. 5, and expensive shoes. Her hair was a blond wig. Her New Jersey driver’s license was forged (thanks to the friend of a friend, who owed a friend a favor). Over a period of eighteen months, from the bursting of the high-tech bubble to 9/11, Erica had filled a safety deposit box at an East Side Chase Bank with stacks of hundreds, totaling a quarter million dollars.
The day after Sally rescued Georgie, Erica Callow visited the bank and took out 10,000 in a large purse. She figured that would get her through her first winter as another person . . . or people. Then she walked up Fifth Avenue to the Terence Cardinal Cook Health Care Center at 106th Street.
She chose midday visiting hours because it was likely to be quiet. With a bouquet in hand, she found her way to the room of Dr. Gary Smith. He had no other visitors, and the second bed was empty, so she didn’t have to pretend that she had stumbled into the wrong room.
She set the flowers on the window sill. Her movement blocked the sun pouring in the west-facing windows. The old man’s eyes fluttered open and he frowned, as if the warmth of the sun was his only comfort, and she had taken it from him.
She was shocked at the sight of him. He had lost twenty pounds since she’d last seen him.
“Who . . . who are you?” he asked.
“I’m a friend. I had to come and tell you that your grandson . . . he was a wonderful man. And he died bravely.” As she said it, she realized it was the truth.
“My grandson?”
“I worked with him.” She spoke carefully and smiled with her mouth closed, so as not to reveal the missing teeth.
“Oh . . .” The old man rolled his head on the pillow and his eyes rolled, too. He was drugged, perhaps. Or just dying. Broken hip or maybe, like a lot of New Yorkers, broken heart. His eyes drifted into the distance, out over the trees in Central Park.
She reached down and took his hand.
He rolled his head toward her again. His eyebrows rose, then furrowed down. Was it morphine dancing in his brain, or did he feel something in her touch, or did he see something that she could not?
She held his hand in both of hers. The need to hold that hand a final time had gotten her moving on that terrible day. Dr. Gary, in a way, had saved her life.
She said, “Smitty wanted me to tell you that he loved you. And Jennifer Wilson wanted me to tell you that you were like a father to her.”
“Jennifer.” He said the word with no sense of recognition. Then he said it again. “Jennifer.”
Then his eyes fluttered and closed. She stood there for a few minutes more, holding the hand, glancing occasionally at the hallway so that she was not discovered. Then she slipped her hand from his, leaned forward, kissed his forehead.
And from the bed she heard her name: “Jennifer.”
Did he know? Or was it simply another reflex in a sequence firing for the last time?
He rolled his head again and said with sudden clarity, “Read the ledger.”
“What?”
“The bond ledger. Two hundred bonds in one batch. J. P Morgan owned three of them. Where are the rest?”
She swallowed. She ran her tongue between the space in her teeth. She said, “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Dr. Smith.” It pained her to stay in character, but she felt it was the best way.
He nodded as if to say, “Yes, you do.” And his eyes fluttered. Then they popped open, and he looked straight at her. “Do something good for America.” Then his eyes fluttered again as if he had used up the last energy in him.
She kissed him again, walked out, and walked south on Fifth Avenue.
SEVENTEEN
Thursday Afternoon
“I LOVE THIS GOOGLE EARTH,” said Henry Baxter.
He and Evangeline hunched over the computer in the Marshall Room of the New York Society Library.
Evangeline ran her finger across the image, tracing a route: “We can go out the back and then into the little alley that leads to Madison Avenue, then over to Fifth.”
The phone rang, and Miss Nolan looked at the caller ID. “It’s the front desk.”
Henry went to the phone and inclined his head to listen with her.
Miss Nolan said, “No, Miss Carrington left some time ago.”
Henry gave Miss Nolan thumbs-up.
The person on the other end said something, and Henry shook his head again.
“No. There never was a black man up here,” said Miss Nolan.
Henry gave her a big nod and another thumbs-up.
“He says that he wants to come up?” Miss Nolan looked at Henry.
Henry nodded again.
Evangeline looked at him and shrugged—what the . . .?
Henry made a little calming gesture, like this wa
s something good. Then he looked at Miss Nolan and gave a rotating motion with his hand—keep talking.
Miss Nolan said, “Does he have a subject that he’s researching? The history of New York? Well, yes, we have a lot of pertinent information.”
Henry walked his fingers along the palm of his hand, then pointed to himself and Evangeline.
Miss Nolan nodded. She was getting good at this. “Do me a favor and tell him to take the elevator on the second floor.” Then Miss Nolan hung up.
“That’s my girl,” said Henry. “We need to give you a nickname after all that.”
“Casey is good enough,” said Evangeline. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m really sorry.” Miss Nolan led them across the floor to the back stairs.
By the time they reached the lobby, the Russian had gone up. Henry told Evangeline to wait by the circulation desk, then he crossed the catalogue room—once the paneled receiving room of the old mansion—and looked out onto the street.
An East Side lady, deep in her seventies and deeper in concentration over a card tray, looked up and said, “Young man, I don’t care if one of your people is the president of the United States, this is a library. Please tread lightly.”
Henry said, “Mama, I don’t know what more surprisin’ . . . that somebody callin’ me young, or that one of my homeboys is the prez. But you just keep studyin’. Them equivalency tests is hard.”
The woman huffed, and Henry stalked back to circulation. “They still at the corner. We need the back door.”
The woman behind the desk didn’t hesitate. Whatever was happening, she wanted it outside, and fast. So she led the way.
Out the back, a left turn, down an alley, and they were on Madison Avenue.
Evangeline stuck out a hand to hail a cab.
But Henry gave her a jerk of the head and started walking toward Seventy-ninth. “Let’s have a look at the do-bads.”
“Oh, Jesus, Henry—”
He raised his finger for quiet. “I told you, I can make myself invisible.”
“Henry, you’re six foot four, you must weigh two fifty.”
“Two fifty-five. And when I’m carryin’ this”—he opened his coat to reveal a .44 Magnum—“make it two sixty.”
“Henry!” said Evangeline. “This is the Upper East Side. People don’t flash guns on the Upper East Side.”
But Henry was already moving.
The sun was high. The day was warm for May. So the black car was idling, probably running the air conditioner, in front of the Chase Bank on the corner.
“Well, I be damned,” said Henry.
“What?”
“The Redhead’s in the library. KGB is up the block watchin’ the front door. Let’s scare the shit out of the dude in the car.”
“But Henry!”
In three long strides, he crossed the street and pulled open the door. Then he called to Evangeline to jump in the back.
“What the hell?” The passenger was Oscar Delancey. “Do you know who you’re fuckin’ with?”
“Do they know who they fucking’ with?” said Henry
Evangeline watched KGB step out from under a tree and look toward them in total shock. His own car was hanging a U-turn in the middle of Seventy-ninth and shooting west toward the park.
Delancey looked back at Evangeline. “And you! Are you crazy? I told you to get out of this the first night at Fraunces Tavern. What are you doin’ with this . . . this . . .”
“You watch what you callin’ me,” said Henry. “None of them racialized epithets.”
Delancey looked out the rear window. “They’re jumping in a cab, they’ll be on you in a minute.”
“No, they ain’t. The Redhead still upstairs, and KGB, I don’t think he have the balls to come chasin’ on his own,” said Henry. “Now, what you got goin’ on with the little gal in the library?”
“I’ve donated some nice New York material over the years. Good tax write-off, good business. So I asked her to call me if my nosey friend in the backseat came in.”
Evangeline leaned over the front seat and got in Delancey’s face. “You just figured you and your Russian pals could follow my research trail?”
“They’re not my pals. But we’re in business,” said Delancey.
“I thought you worked for Owen T. Magee,” she said.
“So did he. But I made a better deal.”
“Magee will sue you,” she said.
“Not from jail, he won’t, and that may be where he ends up,” answered Delancey. “That may be where we all end up, for chrissakes.” He was usually cocky and cynical, one of the standard New York combos, like bacon and eggs or oysters and Rocke feller, but Evangeline thought that just then, Oscar Delancey seemed about as frightened as a man could without wetting his trousers. Was it just the effect of Henry Baxter? Or had the Russians already done the frightening?
As the car sped across Central Park, she said, “Why did you set me up on the Bowling Green?”
“I didn’t. I was as curious as you were. But I didn’t want to let on. Then I saw Joey Berra come into Fraunces Tavern and take a seat. He was watching me. He was following us. I didn’t really know who he was, but I knew what he was, so I disappeared. I didn’t even know that KGB was trailin’ me, too. Dumb luck that I lost them both. So Joey followed you to the Bowling Green. Lucky thing for you he showed up when he did.”
“Even luckier if I never went to your store that day.”
“What you mean?” said Henry. “Then you never woulda met me.”
“Listen,” said Delancey to Evangeline, “I felt so bad about it, I came up to your apartment to warn you off, but that doorman, that ex-pug, he looked at a security cam behind his desk and said, ‘Is that guy outside one of yours?’”
“And it was Boris-loves-Mary?” asked Evangeline.
“Yeah. So then the deskman calls Pete and gives him some kind of coded message, and, well, I just ran. Maybe I wasn’t thinkin’ straight. Maybe I ain’t been thinkin’ straight for a while—”
“The smell of big money make lots of fellers stop thinkin’ straight,” said Henry. “Like the smell of pussy. A man just lose all sense of reality when he get around the pussy or the Benjamins.”
Traffic was light on the Seventy-ninth Street transverse road. So the limo sped through Central Park.
Delancey looked out toward the trees. “I thought I could lose the Russian. So I headed for the Ramble, and thanks to Pete—”
“You mean No-Pete?” said Henry.
“Whatever. Did he kill the Russian with the tattoo?”
Evangeline said, “Of course not.”
“Well, he was chasin’ me one minute, and the next he was dead. But his pals got to me that night, told me that I had to play their game or I was a dead man.”
“Is that why you set us up last night in Times Square?” asked Evangeline.
“I . . . I . . .” Delancey looked out the window and just started to cry. “I’m sorry.”
Evangeline put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right, Oscar, it’s—”
“Oscar, you no fuckin’ help at all.” Henry turned onto Central Park West and pulled into the first parking spot. Then he pulled the keys out of the ignition. Then he pulled the .44 Magnum out of his holster and pressed it against Delancey’s temple.
Delancey squawked like a parrot and shrank from the gun.
Henry said, “I could blow your motherfuckin’ brains out right now for settin’ my friends up last night in Times Square. And if them Russians get in our way, the Redhead and KGB, I will. You got it? You got it, bookseller?”
Delancey nodded.
“Now, give me your cell phone.”
Delancey did as he was told.
Henry opened the door. “Thanks for the ride. Let’s go, Miss E Ticket.”
As Evangeline got out, she said, “I’m sorry about your store.”
“That was Antonov, punishing me and warning you. That’s an awful nice store Pete has
in Boston.”
PETER AND KATHY Flynn got out of the cab at the Battery.
Girls with red hair usually had light complexions. But Kathy had gone pure white when she got the telephone call in front of the restaurant. And she had said little on the ride downtown, except that the caller claimed she was Jennifer Wilson, who had died on 9/11.
“I don’t know why she wanted to meet us down here,” said Kathy.
“If she is who you say she is, she might take some comfort in looking at that.” Peter pointed to The Sphere, the bronze globe that now guarded the entrance to Battery Park.
It had once sat on the Grand Plaza of the World Trade Center. Somehow, it had survived the collapse of the towers. It had been dented and gashed through, but now it stood as a symbol of a city’s resilience.
People were strolling, lounging, kissing, singing, making speeches, talking to themselves . . . doing all the usual things people did in a New York park. And everywhere, the human Statues of Liberty stood silently, their torches held aloft and the sweat beading on their foreheads. They spray-painted their skin the color of oxidized copper, put on long robes and gloves the same color, perched on home-made pedestals, and waited for the tourists to gawk. Then the statues would talk, “Take your picture with Lady Liberty?”
The New York hustle went on, even in the shadow of that sacred Sphere. And that was as it should be, thought Peter.
He and Kathy sat on one of the benches lining the walkways that led toward the ferries and Castle Clinton and the blue harbor beyond.
Peter sat close to her, but he did not feel any of the usual redheaded confidence radiating off of her. She was quiet, nervous.
Meeting a dead friend? Who wouldn’t be nervous.
Peter knew that he should have been uptown by now. He had gotten almost nothing from Kathy that he could use to find the bonds, just a bit more dirt on the guys he’d gone into business with. But this Jennifer Wilson might offer answers to some big questions.
City of Dreams Page 45