Peter put a hand on Evangeline’s arm. Then he swallowed, took a deep breath, and said, “Where did you get that box, Mr. O’Day?”
“This?” He laughed and held it up. “This is my key box. Always losin’ my keys.”
“Where . . . where did you get it?” asked Peter again, as politely as he could.
Evangeline wanted to grab it and run.
“I still remember,” said Walter O’Day. “We was takin’ down a sprung tank over on Tenth. And underneath, right where the upright boards make a little lip that notches under the bottom and connects to the legs, there was a neat little box of fir, mortised right in, with a tiny little carved X on it, something you wouldn’t have seen unless you was lookin’ for it. This box was inside, wrapped in an oilskin tarp.”
“And you kept it all these years?” said Evangeline, trying to sound chatty rather than absolutely shocked.
“Look around you, honey,” said O’Day. “I’m a pack rat. Always have been. And that whole store upstairs is a pack rat store.”
“Was there anything in it when you found it?” asked Peter.
“Nope. As empty as my grave will be for another twenty years, I hope.” He gave a laugh. “Just a nice box for keepin’ stuff. So, I brought it back here and used it for my keys. Like I say, always losin’ my keys.” He shook the box and made the keys rattle. “If I hadn’t been losin’ them when I was in my twenties, I’d think I had Alzheimer’s now.”
Peter swallowed and said, “May I hold it?”
“Sure.”
As Peter reached for the box, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. “I’m sorry, Mr. O’Day.” He opened the phone to a text from Antoine: “Henry says get out now.”
At the same moment, Evangeline gasped—“Peter”—and gestured toward the windows overlooking the yard.
KGB and two others were coming past the piles of lumber. They moved quickly, with a sleek, predatory grace, as if they knew exactly what they were looking for and had no fear of anyone who might be watching them.
Peter told Evangeline to get down, then he said, “Mr. O’Day, put the box back in that drawer and lock it.”
“Hunh?” The old man gave him another squint
Then Peter looked up the stairs, which ended right outside the office door.
A guy was coming down. He was wearing a tool belt and sunglasses, a Yankees hat and a hooded sweatshirt over the hat. He stopped at the bottom and looked around.
When he turned, Peter saw red hair.
Evangeline had already crouched against the door, and now Peter dropped onto one knee. The windows of the office were at waist height, so there was a bit of hiding space . . .
But not if the old man kept talking, and he said, “What the hell is going on here?”
Peter raised a finger to his lips.
One by one, the machines out on the floor were stopping as the workers noticed the three guys standing in the entry bays, silhouetted by the bright May sunshine.
The O’Day grandson walked over to KGB and said, “Can’t you guys read the fuckin’ signs? This is the shop. You need somethin’ cut, place an order upstairs.”
“You in charge?” said KGB.
“No, my—”
“Then shut the fuck up.” KGB smashed the handle of his pistol into the kid’s face, sending young O’Day onto the floor with blood spurting from his nose.
“Hey!” cried Walter O’Day.
All in an instant, the Redhead pulled a 9 mm and smashed it through the window in the office door, sending glass flying all over the crouched figures of Peter and Evangeline . . . the old man cried out . . . the Redhead told him to shut up . . . and Peter Fallon, knowing he had half a second before the Redhead saw him, reached up, grabbed the forearm, and pulled it down, knocking the gun out of the hand and jamming the forearm down hard onto the jagged glass.
The Redhead let out a scream and pulled back.
Evangeline jumped up.
Peter started to fumble on the floor for the gun.
Walter O’Day shouted, “Son of a bitch!” and pulled a billy club from under the desk.
KGB fired three shots into the little office. One hit the wall. One ricocheted off the ledger and out the window. One hit Walter O’Day and knocked him sideways.
The other two thugs whipped sawed-off shotguns from under their jackets and held them on the men who a moment before had simply been doing a hard day’s work and now had to be wondering, was this going to be some kind of massacre?
KGB smashed the other window in the little office and pointed the gun in at Peter and Evangeline. “Stop moving.”
Peter looked up into the lifeless eyes of the assassin from the Harvard Club.
The Redhead was ripping open the office door. He had pulled another 9mm from somewhere in his tool belt, and he pointed it at Evangeline, “Out.”
Then his eyes brightened at something on the floor.
Walter O’Day had knocked the box off his desk.
The Redhead said, “Son of bitch. You found it!”
Walter O’Day had slumped in the corner and was gasping. The bullet had passed through his arm and into his side. “Get the fuck out of here, you—”
The Redhead told Evangeline to pick up the box. Then he grabbed Evangeline by the hair. Then he looked down at Peter, who was still on his knees, “Good-bye, Mr. Fallon.”
He gave KGB a nod. Then he dragged Evangeline out of the office and pushed her up the stairs.
She cried Peter’s name. She wanted her voice to be the last one he heard.
Then she heard the pop of the 9 mm.
She turned to see KGB’s head fly back.
“Peter!” she cried again.
“Go!” growled the Redhead. And he forced her up the stairs.
KGB staggered.
Peter stood. He had found the pistol on the floor. He had used it.
Evangeline saw him and called his name again.
The two thugs with the shotguns were turning now, one of them toward the office, one toward a new sound, coming from the yard: the roar of an engine.
A forklift loaded with a pallet of cypress boards was speeding straight for them.
A shotgun blast tore into the wood and sent chunks of cypress flying.
But the forklift didn’t stop. It smashed into the shooter, then into his partner, then into the staggering body of KGB, and drove the three of them right into the wall of the little office.
The wall collapsed toward Peter. The forks punctured the wall. And KGB came right through the glass. He died hanging in the window, staring at Peter Fallon, while the other two were squirming like worms on a hook.
“Serves those son of a bitches right.” Walter O’Day was back on his feet, the billy club in his hand. He reached around Peter and whipped the club twice on the two heads, and the worms stopped squirming.
Peter lurched out of the office with the gun in his hand.
Henry hopped off the forklift. “The motherfuckers all come in the back, ’cept for the Redhead. But he wore that tool belt. Threw me off. I ain’t much for doin’ chores with tools, so a feller with a tool belt, he’s like a priest to me.”
UPSTAIRS, THE REDHEAD was dragging Evangeline toward the big double doors at the front. He had her by the hair with his left hand, while he held the box under his right arm and his gun in his right hand.
She screamed, and two men at the register turned.
The security guard, an old guy with a pot belly, appeared at the head of the aisle.
Even with the box under his arm, the Redhead was better with a gun, and he shot the poor guard in the pot.
The guard fell back and his gun flew from his hand.
Evangeline grabbed a screwdriver from a display shelf and drove it into the Redhead’s back. But he did not let go. He barely flinched.
Peter was coming up the stairs now, running after them, and Henry was right behind him.
A painter buying two gallons of Dutch Boy dropped the cans and crouched to pick u
p the security guard’s gun.
“Don’t move!” cried the Redhead, and the painter froze.
The Redhead kicked open the front door and dragged Evangeline down the steps to a blue Nissan Maxima waiting on Eleventh.
Oscar Delancey was sitting in the front passenger seat.
The Redhead yanked open the back door and threw Evangeline across the seat. The he jumped in and said, “Go. Go. Go.”
Instead, the driver slowly turned and smiled.
“Why the fuck—you!”
It was Joey Berra. “Say good-bye, Mr. Ivankov.”
“Go and fuck your mother.” The Redhead tried to raise his pistol, and Joey Berra shot him in the heart.
Evangeline screamed.
“Get out,” said Joey calmly. “Right now.”
“But—”
“Go!” said Joey. “We got things to do.”
“You and Delancey?” cried Evangeline. “You and goddamn Delancey?”
“Delancey? Shit no. He’s dead, which is too good for him. Now get out, will ya?”
She opened the street-side door and stepped onto the body of another Russian.
As Joey sped away, Peter and Henry came barreling out of the store.
“Are you all right?” said Peter.
“Just barely.” Evangeline looked at Henry. “Way to keep watch.”
“Now you know the truth, baby. I ain’t perfect.”
“How in the hell did they figure this out?” said Peter.
“Delancey figured it out,” said Evangeline. “He must have figured it out yesterday.”
“I thought he’d be too scared,” said Henry.
“However scared he was,” she said, “he’s dead now. The Redhead, too. Joey Berra did it.”
“Joey Berra?” said Peter.
She pointed down the street. “He took the box.”
Police and ambulance sirens were blaring from every direction now.
But Antoine’s Camry was spinning out of the parking lot across the street, shooting across Eleventh, screeching to a stop. “Come on.”
Peter jumped into the front, the other two in the back.
Antoine floored it and said, “They’re in a blue Maxima. Just turned on Forty-second, probably headed down the West Side Highway.”
“Did you see what happened?”
“I never saw anything like it,” said Antoine. “That Joey Berra came right up to the car, popped the driver, popped the one in the passenger seat, and Jesus—”
Henry was looking at his cell messages. “Little Sonia writes that the nice Mr. Berra came by the house to find us this morning, and she sent him down to Midtown Hardware.”
“You need to have a talk with her, Uncle Henry,” said Antoine.
The car made every light to Forty-second where Antoine hung a right and headed for the river.
But before he reached the next light, Peter told him to pull over.
“Why?”
“Just do it,” said Peter.
So the car screeched to the curb.
“We’re in enough trouble as it is.” Peter opened the door and got out.
“You got that right.” Henry jumped out, too, and held the door for Evangeline.
“So, instead of taking a left,” said Peter, “I want you to go right. Right now, up the Henry Hudson, to the Merritt, to Ninety-one, to Eighty-four, to the Mass Pike. You’ll be home in three and a half hours. But don’t speed. You don’t want any tickets.”
“That’s right, kid. You don’t want any record of bein’ in New York, because you was never here. Y’understand?” Henry smacked the roof of the car and said, “Now go.”
And Evangeline hailed a cab.
TWENTY
Friday Morning
“NOW WHAT?” Evangeline hitched her purse on her shoulder.
They were standing in a ratty little front room in a lonely flat in a lonely building near the corner of Grand and Clinton.
Henry had forced the door.
The flat was empty. Not only was it empty, the dresser in the corner had been pulled apart. Drawers lay on the floor. Old clothes were scattered all about. Somebody had cleared out . . . and fast.
Evangeline noticed a little dog’s bed in the corner. She crouched and picked up a chew toy.
“Look at this.” Peter found two wigs in the top drawer, one all dreadlocks, the other a silken blond.
Henry picked up a blue hat from under the bed. “Mets fan anyway.”
Evangeline looked at Peter, “Do you really think she was orchestrating everything from here?”
He shook his head. “Looks like she was just surviving.”
Henry gave a little shiver. “This the kind of place where you kill a rat, the roaches carry him off for you. Let’s get on out of here.”
“Wait a minute.” Evangeline sniffed at the air. “Do you . . . do you notice that?”
“Notice what?” said Peter.
“Chanel.”
“Chanel what?” said Henry. “Chanel Number Ass?”
Evangeline ignored him and followed her nose toward the little windowless bathroom off the kitchen. “A lady splashed perfume here.”
Henry looked over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t take a leak here. Let’s go.”
Back on the street, Henry looked around at the sea of empty lots. “Like the E Ticket says, now what?”
Peter hailed a cab and told the others to get in.
“This better be good,” said Henry, “’cause I’m thinkin’ we do ourselves a favor by sittin’ down with my friends on the NYPD and givin’ out with a few explanations just about now.”
“This show isn’t over yet.” Peter told the driver, “Forty-eight Wall Street.”
“From the fryin’ pan into the green money fire,” said Henry.
WALL STREET WAS one way heading east. You couldn’t access it in a car from Broadway, and since 9/11, there were barriers, posts, pillars, hard solutions, soft solutions, security guards, and security cams just about everywhere. So the driver dropped them at the corner of Pine and William streets.
They walked a block down William and turned west. On the left was the famous Morgan Bank. And at the head of the street, staring down on American commerce like the benevolent eye of God, was Trinity Church. On the right, at the head of Broad Street, were the steps of the Federal Hall Museum, leading to the statue of George Washington.
Peter stopped for a moment and took it all in.
“Like I asked the E Ticket,” said Henry, “y’all think this is the street of dreams, or the street of schemes?”
“I’d have to say that it’s both,” answered Peter. “Come on.”
At the polished brass doors of 48 Wall, a green banner proclaimed, THE MONEY, THE POWER, THE HISTORY.
Henry read the banner and said, “That’s what it’s all about, baby.”
“They could be talking about us this week,” said Evangeline.
Peter pulled open the door. “Welcome to the Museum of American Finance. Former home of the Bank of New York.”
A small sign in the vestibule announced, PRIVATE EVENT. MUSEUM REOPENS AT NOON.
The ticket booth was to the right, the coatroom to the left, and directly ahead, a half-story entrance rotunda, with marble and bronze staircases curling right and left around a marble and bronze floor medallion. Somewhere above the rotunda, the amplified voice of Austin Arsenault was echoing. The meeting had already begun.
As they entered, a guy in a chauffeur’s uniform stepped out of the coat-room: Vitaly, scowling.
Henry flipped open the coat, and whispered, “No matter what you carryin’, mine’s bigger, baby. So be cool.”
The woman at the ticket booth did not notice this little exchange. She was speaking to Peter. “Yes, sir, the Paul Revere Foundation Meeting is up the stairs. Are you members, sir. Sir?”
But Peter and Evangeline were already heading into the little rotunda and taking the staircase to the right. Henry was going up on the other side.
Pet
er read the medallion as they went. “‘On this spot, Alexander Hamilton founded the Bank of New York.’”
“The Plymouth Rock of American financial history,” said Evangeline. “And there’s nothing we can do here except look at it.”
“Look and be seen. Antonov will know we did our due diligence. Then maybe he’ll leave us alone. He might even thank us for wiping out his opposition.”
“He gonna have some opposition from the FBI, I think,” said Henry from the other side.
“And we owe it to ourselves to be with Arsenault when the decision comes down in”—Peter glanced at his watch—“about fifteen minutes.”
“He headed for trouble, too,” added Henry.
In a short climb, the stairs ended in one of the most magnificent spaces in New York, the grand mezzanine banking hall.
Evangeline said, “I feel like I’ve died and gone to marble heaven.”
After the Bank of New York moved, this columned, coffered space had been protected as a national landmark. Now it was filled with exhibits that Peter thought were among the best that he had ever seen. He had been here before, and as a trustee at a few New England museums, he knew good work when he saw it.
Hard to go wrong when you started with the all that marble, and architecture designed to impress well-heeled customers, and the 1928 Hewlett murals depicting commerce and trade in New York. An exhibit under an archway showed the history of money. Others explored the effect of the Civil War on finance, the reasons for the crashes of ’29 and ’87, the workings of the bond market. And on the right was a time line of the 2008 credit crisis, a marvel of clarity for all its complexity, explaining how we had come close to a financial meltdown long after we thought we had safeguarded such things out of the system.
One of the three video kiosks—dedicated to explaining stocks, bonds, and futures—had been removed so that the main exhibit floor could accommodate two hundred chairs for the annual meeting of the Paul Revere Foundation.
And this was Austin Arsenault’s show. Not only was he standing at the podium. He was on every video screen in the place—screens that usually ran interviews with modern entrepreneurs, or old archive film, or clips from It’s a Wonderful Life that explained in simple terms how money flowed from individuals into the credit and capital system and back again to individuals.
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