The Dead Key

by D. M. Pulley

  Detective McDonnell found Box 547. “So, how does this work?”

  “Well,” Iris said, clearing her throat, “Suzanne’s key must go here, and the bank’s key goes in this larger hole.”

  “And these are the bank keys?” He held up the ring of keys she’d found not far from where they stood. “So which one do we use?”

  “Why don’t you just try them all?” There were only twelve keys, each with its own cryptic letter engraved on its face.

  “The lock might break. The pins could be set to snap if the wrong key is forced in.”

  She raised her eyebrows, and he raised his back.

  “What, you think you’re the only one who does detective work? These markings don’t make sense. The keys are lettered, but the boxes are numbered.”

  He handed the keys to Iris, and she looked through them. “U,” “I,” “N,” “D,” “E1,” “O,” “S1,” “P,” “E2,” “R,” “A,” “M” the letters read around the ring. She’d wondered the same thing ever since she found them. There were tiny numbers on a few, but not all of them. Just on the letters that repeated, she realized.

  “Oon Day-O Sper-Am.” Iris sounded out the letters aloud as she turned the keys over.

  “Well, Deo is Latin for ‘God.’ ”

  “Huh?” Iris scowled at the detective.

  “It’s Latin. Twelve years of Catholic school,” he said with a shrug. “But who cares. I’m sure no one was thinking about God when they rigged this key system.”

  “In God We Trust is the key!” she nearly shouted, and then clapped a hand over her mouth. In a lowered voice she explained. “That’s it! It was written in one of the files. ‘In God We Trust’ is written all over the dollar bill, isn’t it?”

  Iris scrambled back to the vault corridor, where she had dropped her bag, and yanked out the file. “See! It says right here ‘In God We Trust is the key.’ Wait, there’s more.”

  She pulled out another sheet from the file she’d found in the suitcase. “It’s a code or something.” Iris sat down on the vault floor with the notes and slowly translated.

  “What the hell is all of that?” the detective asked, pointing his flashlight at the page of tick marks and bird tracks. “Where did you get those?”

  “This stack of notes was in Beatrice’s personnel file. I thought it was weird, so I took them. And I found these”—Iris held up the other stack of paper—“in that suitcase up on the eleventh floor. Did you want to see it?”

  His face was a stone. “First things first. You can read that?”

  “It’s shorthand. I found this book, and I’ve been trying to make sense of it for weeks.” She dug out a pencil and wrote in the margins what she deciphered. “ ‘IN DEO SPERAMUS, one hundred at a time.’ ”

  “In Deo Speramus means ‘In God We Trust,’ ” the detective confirmed softly.

  “What’s the first box number?”

  He walked deeper into the vault, searching both sides until he found the smallest number. “001,” he said, walking back to her. He paused and added, “The last number is 1299.”

  “Okay, there are thirteen hundred boxes. If there was a key for each hundred of them, there should be thirteen keys, but there are only twelve.” Iris lay the keys on the ground and shined her light on them again. She arranged them until they read “I, N, D, E1, O, S1, P, E2, R, A, M, U.” Iris trained her light back to where she’d found the keys hanging from a lock. The key still stuck there was labeled “S2.” That was the thirteenth key. The man in the blue shirt must have forced it into the wrong lock. It was stuck.

  “So, then, which one do we think goes to Box 547?”

  “If I is 000, N is 100, then D, E1, O . . .” She spun the key ring, counting. “S1 must be 500, right?”

  “Your guess is a hell of a lot better than mine.” The detective picked the keys out of her hand. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  He stood up and slid the S1 key into the lock. He winced ever so slightly and gave it a gentle turn. The key rotated freely. Iris slid Suzanne’s key into the other hole, turned it, and the door swung open. Iris couldn’t help jumping up and down a little. They had done it.

  “I guess they don’t let dummies into engineering school, huh?” He grinned.

  Iris smiled back triumphantly. She had finally done something right. It was all going to work out now. Somehow.

  Detective McDonnell reached in and pulled out a long, silver box. It looked like a miniature coffin to Iris. He carried it carefully to the counter outside the vault. The detective lifted the lid, and they both peered inside.

  CHAPTER 70

  Thursday, December 14, 1978

  A scream tore out of her throat. Beatrice recoiled from the thin fingers she’d felt in the blackness of the tunnel. She lurched backward, right into the body connected to the hand. It was moving.

  Beatrice leapt up to run and cracked her skull soundly on a steam pipe. Camera flashbulbs exploded in her head with pain, and she fell to her knees. She let out a sharp cry and doubled over. A flashlight clicked on, flooding the tunnel like a firebomb. Beatrice sucked in a scream and blindly scrambled through the muck away from whoever held the light.

  “Beatrice?” a familiar voice croaked behind her. “Is that you? How? How did you . . . ?”

  “Max?” Beatrice squinted at the light.

  The body lying in a heap on the floor was Max. She looked like she’d been beaten with a lead pipe. Her eye was swollen shut, and half her face seemed crushed in blood.

  “Oh my God! Max! What happened?” she gasped, and rushed back to her side.

  Beatrice lifted her friend’s head off of the filthy concrete floor and held it in her hands. She searched the dirty water pooled around them for anything to stop the bleeding.

  “They found me.” She coughed. Her lungs rattled with blood.

  “Who found you? What happened?”

  She just shook her head and smiled. One of her teeth had been knocked out. Beatrice’s stomach revolted at the sight. “They were too late. I think . . . I think I got ’em.”

  As Beatrice’s eyes adjusted to the light, she registered the full damage. “We have to get you to a hospital.”

  Max shook her head. “They’d find me.”

  “How did you even get down here?” Beatrice asked helplessly. She wouldn’t be able to carry her friend out of the tunnel on her back. She wasn’t strong enough.

  “I got away through the air shaft . . . They were arguing.”

  “What air shaft? What are you talking about?”

  “In the building. I’d been using the air shaft to move around. The grates are loose.” She coughed again.

  “I’ve got to go for help. I’ll find Ramone or your brother.”

  “No! . . . No, don’t drag them into this. They’d go and get themselves killed. I’ll be fine. I don’t think much is broken.” She struggled to sit and propped herself against the tunnel wall.

  “Max, you don’t look fine. I need to go get help. You look like you might die or something!”

  “Stay out of it, Beatrice. You should just leave. Leave town and forget all of this, okay?”

  “Stay out of it? And how am I supposed to do that exactly? I have no clothes, no money . . . You sent me to the Lancer, and I nearly got attacked. If you wanted me to stay out of it, why did you give me this . . . this stupid key?” She wrestled the key out of her purse and brandished it at her.

  “Oh thank God you still have it!” Max gasped. “I couldn’t risk having it on me. Whatever you do, you can’t let them get it. It would ruin everything.”

  Beatrice slammed it into Max’s raw hand. “I don’t want it. All I wanted was a job. A normal life. I don’t want any part of this—stolen jewelry, missing money, or whatever the hell this is. I’m done! It’s none of my business anyway!”

  “
Isn’t it, though?”

  “Excuse me?” Beatrice shouted.

  “There’s a box in your name too.” Max flashed a broken grin.

  “What?” Beatrice shrieked. “Bill doesn’t even know my name!”

  “It was opened sixteen years ago. Box 256. You didn’t know?”

  Beatrice collapsed against the wall next to Max and shook her head. Box 256. What had Doris done?

  “Don’t worry. I got the keys. I think these are the last ones.” Max winced as she pulled handfuls of keys out of her pockets.

  There was blood drying on Max’s bare legs. Beatrice shuddered. “More keys? How did you . . . ?”

  Max coughed. “I have friends.”

  “Ramone.”

  “Yeah, Ramone, Ricky, Jamal. Half those guards are from the old neighborhood; the other half are ex-cops. Some even worked with my dad.”

  “Bill was right? You were sneaking around, stealing things?”

  “You’re one to talk.” Max spat blood onto the ground. “I wasn’t the one living there.”

  “I . . . I had nowhere else to go. Someone broke in . . .”

  “I know. I saw what they did. But they didn’t find a thing, and they’re never going to find these,” Max mumbled, and jingled the keys in her hand. Her eyes fell shut.

  “Max? Max!” Beatrice jostled her shoulder.

  “Hmm?” She didn’t open her eyes.

  “What’s wrong with you? Is this some sort of game? You need a doctor! You’re bleeding! How can you just sit there and smile?” Beatrice snatched the keys from Max and threw them down the tunnel.

  The sound of the keys hitting wet concrete roused Max back to life. She blinked her swollen eyes back open. “You have no idea what any of this is about, do you? Don’t be so naïve, Beatrice! It’s about money. Little slips of paper that decide who starves and who doesn’t. Who has a roof over their head and who doesn’t. Who gets to sleep in a cushy bed and who has to sleep with some filthy old man to survive. It’s who owns what and who owns who and who holds the keys to all of it. Well, I got the fucking keys, and they’re not getting them back!” Tears were making tracks through the blood on Max’s face.

  “The keys to all of what?” Beatrice shouted. “Diamond necklaces? Other people’s jewelry? Is that what you want?”

  “I think you have me confused with your aunt.” Max shot her an accusing look.

  Beatrice shut her mouth and looked away.

  “I want Bill and Teddy and Jim and those bastards to pay for what they did to all those people,” Max hissed. “Taking their homes, ruining neighborhoods, tearing down this city to line their pockets. I want to expose them for the crooks that they are.”

  “How are you going to do that exactly? Stealing keys won’t do that. Locks can be changed.”

  “Ha! They can’t change safe deposit locks without informing the customers. There are over seven hundred active accounts that will have to be notified. Seven hundred of the city’s wealthiest people will have to be told that the bank somehow lost the keys to their most precious possessions.”

  Max closed her eyes and smiled. “They’re ruined. The bank is finished.”

  Beatrice frowned. “What about Bill? He has everyone convinced you’re to blame for the robberies. For all of it.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “Of course not! I just . . . I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “Me neither. I thought you were my friend. Then I’m looking through the files two nights ago, and I find out you have this box. Tell me you knew nothing about it. Tell me you’re not going to go running to Bill right now.” Saying the words seemed to make her believe it might happen, and Max began crawling after the keys.

  “I hate Bill,” Beatrice shrieked after her. “I hate Doris too for what she did. But she’s . . . she’s the only one I had, and she helped me. But it’s not right. None of this is right.”

  “What do you know about right, huh? What, are you some sort of angel, Beatrice? You fly up from the shit hills to save us all?” Max shouted down the tunnel. “You and I aren’t so different, are we, Bea? Why did you leave home, huh? Why is your address a diner and your social security number stolen? Who the hell are you to tell me what’s right?”

  Beatrice sat stricken in the dim glow of the flashlight. She smeared tears with her hand and finally managed, “You gave me the key, and I kept it safe. I could have given it to Bill days ago. What more do you want from me?”

  “I want the truth. If you’re not helping dear old Doris rob the vault, what the hell are you doing here? Why did you steal my keys? Huh?”

  “Your keys?” Beatrice pressed her back to the tunnel wall. She had taken over thirty keys right out of Max’s hiding place. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to find the one you took from my aunt.”

  “Why’s it so important to you? Huh? What are you doing down here in a tunnel in the middle of the night?” Max pointed the flashlight into Beatrice’s eyes.

  “I . . . It was cold. I had to get someplace warm.”

  “Bullshit. You’re honestly telling me you don’t have anywhere else to go?” Max motioned to the puddle they were both sitting in.

  “No, I don’t.” There was no point in holding back the tears now. Beatrice let them pour down her face. “I’m . . . I’m only sixteen. I ran away from home, and then Doris got sick and now . . . I can’t go back.”

  Max lowered the flashlight and crawled back to her side. “Why did you leave home, Beatrice?”

  “There was this man. He was living with my mother . . . and he used to . . .” Beatrice couldn’t utter the words, and she buried her face in her hands. “I got pregnant, and he made me go and . . . lose it.”

  Max wrapped an arm around her. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay, sweetie. I had no idea. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s not okay . . . I’m not okay . . . I’ll never be able to get married or have a . . .” She was crying too hard to say “family.”

  Beatrice hadn’t spoken of it to anyone, not even her aunt. For all of her faults, Doris had taken her in without asking questions, despite the fact that they had never met. The only way Beatrice even knew how to find the woman was from the return address on the birthday card she’d received that year. Doris had always sent her a card on her birthday.

  Beatrice shook with sobs.

  “We’re more alike than I thought.” Max kissed the top of her head.

  Beatrice struggled to regain her composure. She couldn’t bring herself to look Max in the eye.

  “I lost a baby too.” Max wiped blood from her chin.

  “Tony told me. I’m so sorry, Max.”

  “Tony.” Max shook her head, then cleared her throat. “I had nowhere to go. I slept under bridges and in bus stops. And then I met this guy. At first I thought I was getting a real leg up. He got me off the street. He gave me a job. I could go home and face my parents. He even talked about helping me get my daughter back. Just a few nights at the hotel, a few nights in the office, a few nights with his buddy. It was never enough. After a while, he stopped talking to me about Mary. Eventually he stopped talking to me at all. After a couple years, he even stopped sleeping with me.”

  “Bill?”

  “No, Teddy Halloran.” Max grimaced with pain and stifled a cough. “I met him back when I was hustling. He was always at the Theatrical Grille. I thought he was a gangster at first. All those Covelli boys would come out to hear the music and meet the girls. He seemed to know everybody. Then he told me he worked at this big, fancy bank. He took me to his big, fancy house. God, he was a sick bastard. But he got me the job.”

  Beatrice stared at the far wall. Max had been a prostitute. That’s what she had done when she ran away from home. That’s why that strange woman in gold lamé knew her.

  “After Teddy was through with me a few years ago, I took
Bill out for a drink. I thought with his money and connections he could help me with Mary, that sleazy son of bitch. It was just more of the same. I hired lawyers. I spent all my money.” Max wiped a bloody tear angrily.

  “I thought Mary was adopted,” Beatrice whispered.

  “That’s what they said. But I didn’t believe it. After six years I found her down at St. Vincent’s. The birth records were sealed, and the legal fees were a mile high. With my record and now all of this mess, it’s going to take a fortune to get her back.”

  They sat in silence with their backs against the brick wall. The only sound was the dripping of water somewhere down the tunnel. It was like the ticking of a clock. They were running out of time. They were both in a world of trouble. Max had taken the keys. The boxes would stay shut unless there was a warrant to drill them open—that’s what Tony had told her. Without Doris’s journal, no one would be able to sort out what had happened or which boxes contained what anyway. It would be all right, Beatrice tried to tell herself. But she didn’t believe it. Bill still had his files incriminating Max, Doris, and a number of other women. There were still safe deposit boxes rented in their names.

  “What’s the blank key for?” Beatrice finally asked, already knowing the answer.

  “It’s the master. It opens every box in the vault.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Where do you think?” Max turned a black eye toward Beatrice.

  “It was in Doris’s box, wasn’t it?” Beatrice didn’t have to have Max confirm it. Doris was the inside man. The blank key was how she had opened the boxes of strangers. “Did you go to the FBI?”

  “Yeah, I tried. I even brought them a solid-gold brick to prove Teddy was up to something big. They wouldn’t listen. They held me for twenty-four hours instead, as if I were the thief, then they kept the gold. Just figures, doesn’t it? You can’t even trust the goddamned FBI.”