Jennifer snapped the lighter and the flame popped.
Two men in the back stood. Someone cried, “Stop her!”
Henry growled, “Y’all remember what I said. Let the lady make her point.”
And she touched the lighter to the bonds.
In an instant, a small funeral pyre sprang to life on the podium of the Museum of American Finance. A flame jumped and a curl of smoke twirled up toward the ceiling. Then she held out her hand and Joey Berra gave her a metal pen, with which she dug into the box, turning over the bonds to keep the flame going.
Arsenault let out a cry of pain, of true anguish, and buried his head in his hands.
Antonov stood to leave.
Henry raised a finger and said, “Don’t you be thinkin’ about goin’ nowhere. They’s folks comin’ to talk to you.”
Jennifer turned the box over and shook it to empty the smoldering bonds. Then she handed the box to Arsenault. “You should have this. It’s an antique.”
And, as cool and practiced now as if she had spent the last decade in the courtroom, she said to the audience, “That is what I have done for my country. What will all of you, the richest and most blessed among us, do now?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She turned and took Joey Berra’s arm and gave a jerk of the head. And together, they started to walk down the aisle, Joey in his gray suit, Jennifer in her high heels, heads up, eyes front. Tick-tick-tick.
People started to stand. Someone stepped in front of Joey. Will Wedge began to climb over people in order to—what?
“Y’all stay seated,” said Henry to the crowd, and he removed the huge .44 Magnum from under his arm. “No need to follow ’em and throw rice. This ain’t no motherfuckin’ weddin’.”
But it was, thought Evangeline. Oh, but it was.
As Joey and Jennifer reached the back of the crowd, they turned to Peter and Evangeline.
Jennifer took an envelope out of her pocket and gave it to Evangeline. “That’s for the O’Days. Four bonds. It’ll be a good payday, if things work out.”
“And this is for you.” Evangeline took the crown finial from her purse and put it into Jennifer’s hand.
Peter laughed. “So that’s what you’ve been carrying around in that thing.”
“Thanks, but”—Jennifer gave it back—“this belongs to New York.”
And Joey said, “Thanks, Boston.”
Peter said, “Go Yankees . . . but just for today.”
Then Joey and Jennifer went down the left stairwell to the street level while Henry dropped down on the right.
After a moment, Evangeline put the finial back into her purse and said, “We can’t let them go yet.”
Peter said, “I want to know where they’re going.”
“I’d just like to say good-bye.”
So they jumped up and headed for the stairs, and their movement snapped everyone into motion. Suddenly, half the people in the place were making for the stairwell.
Peter and Evangeline got to the exit first. Henry had positioned himself in front of the door.
Peter said, “Which way did they go?
Henry jerked his thumb west toward Broadway.
Evangeline gave Henry a kiss on the cheek, then she and Peter stepped onto Wall Street as Henry raised his .44 and fired it once into the air.
The sound of it, in that space, was like a cannon shot that stopped half the business leaders of New York right . . . were . . . they . . . were.
“Now, folks,” said Henry, “seein’ as this is the most powerful handgun in the world, you don’t want me to go all Clint Eastwood on your ass, so why don’t y’all just go back up there and watch the Supreme Court do its thing while we wait for the FBI? There’s a lot of folks here who got some explainin’ to do, includin’ me.”
PETER AND EVANGELINE were standing now in the bright sun, looking west on Wall Street.
“I can’t see them,” said Evangeline.
“But they just left,” said Peter. “They shouldn’t be more than a block ahead.”
“I can’t see them.”
So she took his hand and they simply ran.
They ran along a street that Gil Walker and Loretta Rogers would have known by its shape and light if not by the height of its buildings. They ran past the Morgan Bank where Tim Riley had thought his last thoughts and prayed his last prayer. They kept running toward Trinity Church that, like St. Paul’s, had survived the steel and concrete storm of 9/11.
And when they got to the corner of Broadway and Wall, they looked north and south, uptown and down, toward the old common and the older Bowling Green.
“I don’t see them,” said Peter.
“It’s like they disappeared,” said Evangeline.
And they stood there, at one of the oldest intersections in America.
Then Evangeline said, “Let’s go south. I bet they’re heading to the Bowling Green.”
“I think they’d go to St. Paul’s.”
“Bowling Green,” she insisted.
“All right,” said Peter. “You found the bonds. You’re on a roll.”
So they turned down Broadway and hurried along sidewalks that in the sad September of 2001 had been covered in five inches of concrete dust . . . past buildings with windows blown out in September of 1920 . . . along block after block that had been an impenetrable wall of fire on a terrifying September night in 1776. . . .
And life went on.
In New York, life always went on. . . .
As they passed the Chase Bank, they noticed a video screen, tuned to CNBC. Stocks were up, and a reporter was standing on the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington. “The ruling, in a suit brought by financier Austin Arsenault, says the 1780 bonds are valid. However, the court rejected all compound interest arguments. So, a hundred dollars at five percent, simple interest, over two hundred and thirty years is worth one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars, instead of seven-point-four million.”
Peter Fallon laughed out loud.
“A split decision,” said Evangeline.
“Everybody wins and nobody wins.”
The reporter was saying, “The full text will be found on our Web site . . .”
But Peter and Evangeline were already hurrying south.
They ran past the Wall Street bull and onto the Bowling Green. But there was no sign of Jennifer or Joey, not on the benches, not by the fountain.
Peter and Evangeline were not surprised. They stood for a few moments, watching the fountain send a sparkling jet of water into the air. Then they walked a bit farther south, into the bright sunshine at the entrance to Battery Park.
The Sphere greeted them. It endured. And the harbor flashed blue and silver beyond.
Evangeline said, “They’re gone.”
And Peter said, “No, they’re not. They’re”—he waved his hand around—“here. They’ll always be here. They’ve always been here. They were here from—”
“From the very beginning.”
“It feels that way.”
And Peter and Evangeline looked up into the blue spring sky, as if they might see Joey and Jennifer somewhere up there, rising into the air and mixing their elemental selves with the essence of the city they loved.
Then Evangeline slipped an arm into Peter’s. “So, Mr. No-Pete, did we save America from itself?”
“Not even No-Pete and the E Ticket can do that alone.”
“Then what about living in New York?”
“Let’s talk about that tomorrow.”
“Okay. Then what time is it?”
He looked at his watch. “Quarter to one.”
“As Henry says, we have a lot of explaining to do, but I’d like to get cleaned up. We could be in my apartment by one thirty.”
“One thirty?”
“As in one thirty . . . er.”
Peter looked into her eyes. She kissed his cheek.
And they turned away from the waterfront where it had all begun, where the Indians had bartered their island f
or beads, where the Dutch had built their settlement at the edge of a wilderness, where the British had built their wharves, where Americans had built their businesses, where so many immigrants had come to build their dreams.
And Peter Fallon shouted, “Taxi!”
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