City of Dreams (3 page)

He could almost hear the
pop
of her phone as she flipped it shut.

There was nothing for him to do, so he turned back to the ball game.

I
N MOST OF
New York, the parade went on day and night. But Lower Manhattan was different after dark, especially since 9/11. It was more like Houston, a business district that emptied when the workday was done. And it had always reminded Evangeline of Boston, with streets that were narrow, twisty, unpredictable, the streets of the ancient city, streets with a pattern that would not have been unfamiliar to Alexander Hamilton or even Peter Stuyvesant.

The night was cool. She was glad that she had worn a camel’s hair sportcoat over her silk blouse, along with Antik denims and comfortable cowboy boots. Her heels echoed behind her as she followed Broad Street to Stone Street to Whitehall.

She stopped in front of the entrance to the Bowling Green subway station, a modern arch of glass and steel. For a moment, it enticed her down.

Maybe Peter was right. Maybe this was crazy. Just jump on the 4 or the 5, change at Fourteenth Street, and be back on the Upper West Side in no time.

But she was committed now. She had always been the one dragged kicking and screaming into Peter’s hunts for lost tea sets or Shakespeare manuscripts or drafts of the United States Constitution. What better way to begin their marriage than to drag Peter into something? What better way to remind him that she was still going to be as independent as ever? And if it paid off, what better wedding present?

The area was quiet but not especially dark. Floodlights sculpted shadows onto the neoclassical façade of the old Alexander Hamilton Customs House. Quaint street lamps lit the tree-lined oval of grass where the Dutch had run a market, where the British had bowled the jack, where the Americans had torn down a statue of the king.

So Evangeline glanced at her watch—almost eleven—then she went through a gate in the wrought-iron fence surrounding the Bowling Green.

And suddenly, it
was
especially dark. The tall sycamores seemed to suck up the light. The sound of the fountain in the center of the oval—the alien sound of running water in the heart of the city—drowned out the hum of the few cars passing by.

Broadway ran down the west side, Whitehall down the east. Two cabs were idling at the corner of Whitehall and Beaver. The cabbies were standing outside having a chat. An NYPD cruiser glided slowly down Broadway. That made Evangeline feel better, because the sidewalk in front of One Broadway was covered by construction canopy: pipe staging and plywood to protect pedestrians from overhead work, also good for hiding muggers, thieves, and other phantasms of the New York night.

She stood a few moments more, thinking that something might happen quickly if it happened at all. She was glad that it was a small park. She knew that she could make it to the safety of the street in a few strides. So she went toward a bench on the north side of the fountain and sat . . .

. . . and listened to the running water . . .

. . . and looked at her watch . . .

. . . and scoped out the entrances, one at the south end, one at the north . . .

. . . and took out her cell phone and checked her messages . . .

. . . and jumped when she heard footsteps behind her.

But it was only a jogger. He did not even glance at her. He pounded past the fountain and went out by the south gate.

So she checked her messages again . . .

. . . and left the phone open on the bench, like a little night-light, or an alarm . . .

. . . and listened to the running water . . .

. . . and watched a middle-aged man and a girl in her twenties stroll into the park. They stopped in a shadow, kissed, kissed again, pawed each other, then noticed Evangeline and turned quickly for the subway.

She knew their story: the husband had told the trusting wife that he was working late. He had not told her what he was working
on
: a pretty secretary, perhaps, or a client with 36DDs.

Evangeline had been the trusting wife once, married to a dermatologist whose motto was “the softer the skin, the better.” She called it her sandwich marriage, after her time with Peter Fallon the young man, before her time with Peter Fallon the grown-up.

Grown-up? Perhaps there was a better term . . .

She looked at her watch: 11:09. Six minutes and she was out of there, due diligence done, curiosity not satisfied but reputation for stubborn sense of purpose upheld.

She glanced again at her phone. No new messages in the last three minutes . . .

. . . and set the phone down . . .

. . . and gazed up at the façade of the Customs House . . .

She had read that once there was an old fort there. She imagined torchlight instead of floodlights. She imagined Alexander Hamilton and his artillery company out at the Battery. She imagined two-and three-story buildings instead of skyscrapers, and . . .

She heard something behind her.

Rattle-ka-thump-rattle-ka-thump-rattle-ka-thump-thump-thump
.

She looked over her shoulder.

“No need to turn around.”

Rattle-ka-thump-rattle-ka-thump-rattle-ka-thump-thump-thump
.

The bag lady’s shopping cart had a bad wheel. She pushed it right up to Evangeline’s feet and scowled. “Where’s Delancey?”

Evangeline smelled rum, but not much in the way of b.o. or bad breath or any of the other smells she expected from someone wearing a raincoat so greasy it reflected the light of those quaint street lamps.

She said, “Delancey thought it would be better if I came in his place.”

The bag lady’s dirty little fuzzball of a dog popped out of a pile of rags and stood with his paws on the edge of the cart and growled at Evangeline.

The bag lady began digging through the trash barrel next to the bench. “If I hadn’t seen you in the store, I wouldn’t be talkin’ to you now. I came here to talk to Delancey. Why didn’t he come?”

Evangeline decided to offer a bit of truth. “Something made him nervous.”

The bag lady stopped rooting and looked up, “I make a lot of people nervous. Do I make you nervous?”

Evangeline looked around. “This whole thing makes me nervous.”

“Well, I do business on my turf, or I don’t do business at all.”

Evangeline swallowed. Her mouth was dry. “I . . . I can understand that.”

“You can understand? Well, isn’t that fuckin’ sweet of you.” The bag lady pulled a Pepsi bottle out of the barrel, checked for a bar code, then threw it into the cart.

Evangeline said nothing. She saw no point in antagonizing this woman, who was not nearly as old as she appeared from a distance. The hands were dirty, the hair matted into dreadlocks, but the face didn’t have the leathered appearance that a lot of homeless developed. Evangeline put her somewhere in her forties.

The bag lady pulled out a bottle of rum and took a swallow. “We’re all nervous these days.” She offered Evangeline the bottle.

Evangeline wondered if it would be better to accept the offer and make this a meeting of the drinking sisterhood, or decline the bottle, the germs, and the honor, but leave the bag lady with a little more rum. She declined.

The bag lady laughed, revealing two neat spaces where her front teeth should have been. Somebody must have knocked them out, thought Evangeline, because the rest of her teeth looked pretty good.

The bag lady dropped the bottle into her pocket and said, “Who wouldn’t be nervous these days? You got your government spending, your limp-dick recovery, your crash of 2008 caused by the subprime mess, which you can blame on slick lenders and stupid borrowers who don’t know that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is—I call it thieves selling garbage to morons—oh, and don’t forget the politicians on both sides of the aisle, that fat Massachusetts fuck Barney Frank, sayin’, ‘when it comes to affordable housing, I’m willin’ to roll the dice’—yeah, his dice, our money—or that slithery Texas snake Phil Gramm—don’t you think he looks like a snake?—comin’ up with the bright idea to repeal Glass-Steagall, so that bankers become brokers and brokers become bankers and you can’t tell who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy and—shit, they’re all bad guys—say, I’m not borin’ you, am I?”

Evangeline shook her head.

“Good. I hate to be a bore at all those fancy uptown cocktail parties, so I practice my chitchat on the Bowling Green.” She went back to the trash barrel and pulled out a newspaper.
“New York Post
. Did you know Alexander Hamilton founded this rag?”

“As a matter of fact, I was thinking about Hamilton while I was sitting here.”

“Bullshit. You were thinkin’ you have to tinkle you’re so scared to be sittin’ here in a park with a crazy hag like me at this time of night.”

Evangeline said, “I’m not scared. Not with a watchdog to protect us.”

She reached out to pat the dog, and he bared his teeth.

“Down, Georgie.” The bag lady laughed. “You know why I like this place? It’s where the Dutch had their first hog-and-cattle market, so this is where the money changers first met in New York. That makes it the birthplace of American trade, which makes it the birthplace of American money. And all our troubles are about money.”

“My name is Evangeline.” She offered her hand. “What’s yours?”

The bag lady said, “Call me Frivolous Sal, a peculiar sort of a gal.”

“Okay, Sal.”

“So, are you Delancey’s assistant or something?”

“More like a new partner.”

“So, how much of the story do you know?”

Evangeline did not want to say “absolutely nothing,” so she said, “As much of it as Delancey knows.”

“I’ll bet you don’t know about this.” Frivolous Sal pulled a small brass crown from her pocket. “Do you?”

“No.”

Frivolous Sal looked around the Bowling Green. “You see all the posts holdin’ up this fence? There were little crowns like this on all of them. Little crown finials. But the rebels tore ’em all off the night they tore down the king’s statue in 1776.”

Evangeline extended her hand. “May I hold it?”

Frivolous Sal gave her a squint, then asked the dog, “What do you think, Georgie? Do we let this lady hold a piece of history?”

The dog looked at Evangeline and sniffed.

Frivolous Sal said, “Georgie likes you. He thinks you’re honest.”

She dropped the crown into Evangeline’s hand. It was heavy brass, polished and shimmering in the lamplight. A hole had been drilled though it and a leather lanyard passed through the hole, as if it were a talisman of a more noble past.

“Is this what Delancey was supposed to see?” asked Evangeline.

“This is just the preview.” And something cracked through Frivolous Sal’s voice, something hard, trained, professional. “But the real story is coming right . . . about . . . now. Coming in at the south entrance, coming this way, coming fast.”

A man appeared from the shadows beyond the fountain. He wore a gray suit and rimmed glasses. He was tall and skinny. His stride was long but more frightened than confident. He carried a briefcase.

Evangeline tried to catch his features, but they were bland, square, conventional. She didn’t think, in the moments she watched him flicking in and out of the pools of light cast by those quaint street lamps, that she could ever give a police sketch of him.

“Slow down there, cowboy,” said Frivolous Sal. “You’re supposed to be bringin’ a message to Delancey.”

“I don’t see Delancey.” The man never broke stride. “And I’ve been made.”

“Made?”

“I told you this would happen. Even on the Bowling Green late at night.” He was heading for the north entrance. “Two of them, under the canopy over by One Broadway.”

Frivolous Sal looked over her shoulder. “Fuck.” Then she looked to her right, as if she was expecting backup from somewhere on the other side of the Bowling Green.

The man with the briefcase began to run. And the dog did what dogs do. He jumped out of the carriage and ran after the running man.

Frivolous Sal cursed again and ran after the dog.

Evangeline looked back toward One Broadway: two men were appearing from under that plywood and pipe canopy, moving toward the south entrance of the park.

But she had seen enough. Whatever was happening, she didn’t want any more of it. So she jumped up and ran.

The dog was barking near the north entrance. Now the bag lady forgot the dog and started after Evangeline. “Come back, you silly bitch. Stop, thief!”

Evangeline was running straight for a cab still parked at the corner of Beaver Street. The fence rose between her and the cab, but Evangeline did two circuits around the Central Park Reservoir every other day. So she was in shape enough to grab a spoke and vault over, right into the middle of Whitehall Street.

At least there were no cars coming.

So she sprinted across the street and grabbed the handle of the cab door.

Frivolous Sal let out a scream and began to wave her hands to attract attention, but two or three cars went past. Just another crazy bag lady making a scene.

Evangeline jumped into the cab and said to the driver, “Seventy-ninth and Columbus. Fast.” Then she looked out at the shadows on the Bowling Green. The man with the briefcase had disappeared . . . into a cab or a car or onto a bicycle, she couldn’t tell. Another man was crossing Whitehall Street and vaulting the fence. And those two from under the canopy were still advancing.

Evangeline reached into her pocket for her cell phone. Instead, she felt something harder and heavier and far older. In all the excitement, she had forgotten to grab the phone but had kept the crown finial.

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER
, Peter Fallon’s cell phone rang.
Evangeline
. He pressed the button. “What now?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.” It wasn’t Evangeline. It was some guy.

“Who’s this?”

“My name’s Joey. I picked up this cell phone from the sidewalk on the Bowling Green. Your number’s on it.” He spoke with a Brooklyn accent.

“The sidewalk?” Peter’s stomach turned. His focus split and split again.
Who is this? What’s happened to her? Who do I know in New York who can help
? He decided the best thing was to play it cool. So he asked, “Did she drop it?”