City of Dreams (59 page)

“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 was 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.”

P
ETER AND
K
ATHY
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.

So Peter had come along. He also liked Kathy’s company.

“Jennifer Wilson was about to become my first big story,” said Kathy after a time. “She was house council for a high-tech firm. But she and all the corporate leadership were going down for insider trading. They built the thing on hot air and promises, like all the high-tech gang, and when the air got thin, they cooked the books with the oxygen that was left and got out before the shareholders. Osama bin Laden got them before the FBI could.”

“Did you write the story?”

“Of course. It made some news because of the 9/11 angle, but nobody was saying, ‘Oh, yeah, they got what was coming to them.’ The real story was about the FBI guys who went to see them that day. They were in the Sky Lobby when the plane hit. Only one of them made it out. And he was finished. Survivor’s guilt because his partner died.”

As if on cue, a guy in a Yankees hat sat down next to Peter and said, “Does your girlfriend know you’re spendin’ time with gorgeous redheads?”

Peter looked at Joey Berra and said, “Why am I not surprised to see you?”

“How’s it shakin’, Boston?”

Kathy Flynn looked around Peter and said, “Hey, pal, beat it. We’re waiting for someone. We don’t want to scare her off.”

“You already have,” said Joey.

Kathy looked at him a bit longer and said, “Do I know you?”

He offered his hand. “Joey Berra. How ya doin’.”

She took the hand, looked into the eyes, and said, “I
know
you.”

Joey said, “I have a message from Jennifer Wilson. She decided not to blow her cover just yet. But she wants you to know that you were right.”

“About what?”

“About the bag lady and Erica Callow. She did not appreciate it that you spewed those pictures all over the Internet—and Times Square—this morning.”

Kathy said, “Why would she care about—wait a minute. You mean, Jennifer Wilson is . . .”

Joey Berra stood. “Can’t stay, gotta run. Jennifer and I have a lot of angles to work before tomorrow.”

“Jennifer and
you
?” said Peter. “The
bag lady
and you?”

“She ain’t really a bag lady, Fallon, so don’t call her that.”

Peter sensed that Joey was getting a bit agitated. Maybe the New York cool-breeze bit was just an act, or a role he had once played very well and was now relearning. So he said, “Joey, I never laid eyes on her. I’m just goin’ on what people say.”

“Well,
people
don’t know. But we got some work to do before tomorrow. I just wish all you jamokes from Boston and Brighton Beach would stay out of our way. We might have found that damn box by now.”

Kathy said, “Jennifer Wilson is after Arsenault’s bonds, too? The box of bonds?”

Joey gave her a long look, then he sat and said to Peter, “Remember what I told you the other day? When you asked me who I’m working for?”

Peter nodded.

“Tell Miss Dollar Diva, here.”

Peter looked at Kathy. “He said he was working for the American people.”

“Right,” said Joey. “Those bonds don’t belong to Arsenault. They belong to the American people.”

Kathy shook her head and looked out at the water. “All of you people scrambling to find something you think is worth a fortune, and the Supreme Court may reject the suit altogether. Won’t all of you feel pretty damn stupid if that happens?”

Joey jerked a thumb at Peter. “Boston might. He’s only in it for the money. I’m bettin’ he signed a deal with Arsenault and Magee. And for all his Harvard brains, he don’t know that they’ll cut him off at the knees, as soon as he finds what they’re after.”

Peter just listened. Sometimes, the best course was to let a talker talk. And Joey was a talker.

“As for the Russians, you got your dangerous Russians and your
more
dangerous Russians, all descendants of Andrei the Avenger, in one way or the other. So somebody is doin’ America—and the FBI—a favor by takin’ a few of them off the streets.”

“Meaning you?” said Peter.