City of Dreams (61 page)

Sally Lawrence always wore the old Mets hat and a dirty raincoat, pushed the little dog around town in a shopping cart, rifled trash bins, ate in food kitchens, read newspapers left on park benches, outfitted herself at the Salvation Army, and went home every night to that lonely tenement.

But once a month, Erica Callow emerged with her groomed and ribboned little dog, walked up to Delancey Street, and hailed a cab. She usually wore a pantsuit and flats, because she still had good legs and didn’t want to attract attention to them.

She would stop at a midtown Starbucks for a grande something-or-other and lounge on a sofa with the dog on her lap and read the
Wall Street Journal
. Then she would walk on to the Chase Bank branch on Seventy-ninth, where she had her safety deposit box, and take out the cash that she needed. Then she would parade down Madison Avenue with her dog on a leash, just like any East Side lady who lunched. And when she sat at the banquette in some little restaurant to enjoy a beef bourguignon and a glass of wine, she might catch a glimpse of herself in a mirror. And she would think,
not bad
.

Sally had gotten free dentures at a dental school, so that Erica could have front teeth. Sally had also stolen a couple of wigs, one with dirty dreads for herself, and for Erica, a blond wig that made her look like Eva Marie Saint in
North by Northwest
, which made Erica think of train trips, so every few months, she took one.

While Sally never left the city, Erica loved to travel, usually by Amtrak, sometimes by bus, always in cash. She had been as far south as Key West, as far north as Bar Harbor. She never stayed in hotels. At bed-and-breakfasts, they didn’t question you if you paid in cash. A lot of them preferred it.

And Sally approved of Erica’s wanderings, even though they took a bite out of the budget. Travel was good for the soul and for the perspective, too. It always helped Erica to see New York through Sally’s eyes because Sally knew that living in New York as a bag lady was better than paying cash and wandering anywhere else.

And that was not the only thing that Sally and Erica agreed on. They both believed that they had been allowed to live for a purpose. Sally believed what she had read on the top of that crypt: The Lord seeth all and loveth all. Erica tried to fulfill the charge of an old man on his deathbed the week after 9/11: celebrate your survival by doing something good for America.

So Erica had gone to the New-York Historical Society and tracked down the ancient bond ledger. And sure enough, there was a cache of bonds unaccounted for, numbers 2510 to 2709, sold to a woman named Loretta Rogers in 1780.

And what did it matter? Jennifer Wilson had led the last fight to cash the bonds, and she had failed. Why waste any more energy on that?

So Sally and Erica found other ways to make America and New York better places to live. Sally picked up litter in the street and collected bread bags that she gave to dog walkers who looked as if they might leave their droppings on the sidewalk. Erica volunteered once a month in the soup kitchen where Sally got her meals.

Then, in September of 2008, the shit hit the fan. That’s how Sally put it.

Erica thought about a decade of profligacy, from the high-tech bubble to the repeal of Glass-Steagall to the Bush tax cut to low interest rates after 9/11, which inflated the real estate bubble and re-inflated American wallets, to the fourteen-billion-dollar-a-month war that we put on a credit card, to the mess at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to the relentless, reflexive, reactionary greed of big banks and small borrowers and every operator of every size in between, and now we were paying for all of it.

But Erica thought Sally said it better: “The shit hit the fan, and a lot of people got splattered.”

Lehman Brothers failed. Credit froze. The stock market plunged. The country went into panic mode. Then came the seven-hundred-billion-dollar stimulus package.

Sally read all about it in papers she picked from trash bins. She read it aloud to Georgie at the wobbly table in her little kitchen overlooking a parking lot with orange lighting. She read about it all winter.

By March, the stock market had lost half of its 2007 value. It had not been like 1987, a precipitous crash and quick recovery. It had been a slow, steady, disastrous withdrawal from everything. Even stockbrokers were calling clients and asking for permission to sell out.

“We’re damn near capitulation,” Sally told Georgie one cold spring night.

The dog cocked his head.

“That’s when the no-balls nervous nellies give up . . . when they decide things’ll never be good again. No rebound, no reward, no light at the end of the tunnel. But GE at five dollars a share? I tell you, boy, Jennifer Wilson would back up the truck.”

Then she came across an item that caused her to shout, “Holy Christ!”

The dog looked at her again.
What’s wrong, Mom?

She held the paper closer to the bare bulb that lit the kitchen: “‘Oscar Delancey, one of the last rare bookmen on Book Row, has sold two 1780 New Emission Bonds to’—you won’t believe this—‘Austin Arsenault of Avid Investment Strategies, founder of the Paul Revere Foundation.

“‘The bonds, which Mr. Delancey bought from a New Jersey fireman named Tom Riley, had been found in an envelope among some old family photographs. Little else is known of their provenance, according to Mr. Delancey, except that the bonds, numbers 2513 and 2514, follow in sequence from three that Timothy Riley, a collateral ancestor, sold to J. P. Morgan. Those three are now at the Morgan Library.

“‘Mr. Arsenault, a scripophilist and antideficit crusader, has determined to redeem the bonds. He says, “When our country is confronting the meaning of its economic philosophy, it is well to remember Alexander Hamilton. He said that these bonds, like all our debts, are debts of honor. With compound interest, a hundred dollars in these bonds is now worth over seven million. So redeeming them will demonstrate for one and all the consequences of kicking our financial responsibilities down the road.”

“‘Attorney Magee added, “We will take this all the way to the Supreme Court, because no matter what happens along the way, this court will hear the case.” ’”

The dog got bored and curled up into a ball.

Sally skimmed the rest of the piece, which talked about Article Six of the Constitution. Then she leaned down to the dog. “You know what I say, Georgie?”

The dog cocked his head to the change in her voice.

“There’s no honor among thieves. This is desperation, tryin’ to cash these two bonds. I know, because we tried to cash them over twenty years ago.”

The dog stood and wagged his tail.

Sally raised a finger. “Arsenault is in some kind of trouble. These bonds are a smokescreen. Knockin’ him over would be good for America and good for gettin’ rid of what still sticks in my craw whenever I think of that bastard.”

S
HE DID NOT
sleep well that night, but not because of the groans of the heroin addict upstairs or the scuttlings of the roaches and mice in the kitchen. Jennifer Wilson, the real brains behind Sally and Erica, the one who always asserted herself in the dark, was hatching a plan. She was even thinking that she might have a new chapter for that autobiography she knew now she would never write.

The next morning, Sally made coffee. She always allowed herself that luxury. Then she microwaved her oatmeal. The microwave she had found in a trash barrel. The oatmeal was cheap. Then she and Georgie headed uptown with their shopping cart.

It was one of those March mornings when the sun was high and bright but the north wind cut like a scythe. Sally was glad she had decided to wear the dreadlock wig. And she hung a blanket over the front of the cart to protect the dog.

“Smitty was right, Georgie. Arsenault dimed us out. He was mad that we cut him out on the Intermetro start-up in ’92, even though we told him to load up on the stock on IPO day. He made his clients fifteen mil before lunch and got himself a nice brokerage arrangement with the Antonov import-export firm. So he did just fine.”

The dog jumped up on the edge of the carriage and barked.

“Why would he blow the whistle on Intermetro if he owned so much stock? Because the stock was tankin’. People won’t forgive a stupid broker, but they’ll forgive one who buys a stock, then discovers that the company was cooking the books. And let’s face it, Georgie, we were cookin’ with gas.”

They had rattled up to Houston and were turning onto the Bowery, right into that cold wind. A pair of passing teenagers gave her a sidelong glance. One of them giggled.

“Ah, what are you lookin’ at? Ain’t you ever seen anyone talk to their dog before?” Then Sally said to the dog, “You gotta stick up for yourself out here, Georgie.”

The dog twitched around in the cart, hopped up and looked where they were going, then turned around to look at her again.

“Now, where was I? Oh, the shootings . . . some people drop dimes, and others are do-it-yourselfers. They didn’t call Andrei Antonov ‘the Avenger’ for nothing.”

At the bookstore, she parked the shopping cart where she could see it through the window, then she peered in at Delancey, then she pushed open the door. She smelled coffee. She heard Brahms. A little bell rang.

Oscar Delancey turned from his computer screen and gave her a look.

Sally knew all the looks . . . the right-through-you look she usually got on the sidewalk . . . the sidelong glance-and-giggle those teenagers had given her . . . and the look that came from someone
forced
to look, the kind Delancey gave her: eyes traveling head to foot, a study of the orange Converse All-Stars, an annoyed, “Can I help you?”

Sally smiled toothlessly. She knew the smile fixed in people’s minds. Afterward, it was all they remembered of her. “Brrr . . . cold out there. . . . Say, I been readin’ about your store, so I thought I’d come by.”

“What have you been reading?”

“About the New Emission Bonds. I sure would like to get my hands on a little piece of paper that’s gonna be worth a fortune. You got any more?”

“They’re pretty rare,” said Delancey.

She gave a loony hoot of a laugh, like Walter Brennan in some old Western movie. She had worked on it until it came naturally. “I ought to start lookin’, then. If I ever find any, can I bring them to you?”

Delancey showed his stubby little teeth, a fake smile. “Sure. You got any ideas where to look?”

She gave another hoot. “Well, sir, I might. I just might.”

She knew that Delancey was rolling that around in his head. The sign above his desk said,
FREE APPRAISALS, IN-STORE OR ON-SITE
. How many first editions of
For Whom the Bell Tolls
or
The Great Gatsby
had he found in the overstuffed apartments of batty old ladies whose children had moved them to nursing homes? He probably respected batty old ladies more than most.

So he didn’t throw her out or talk down to her. He said, “I’d love to see anything you find. Old money, engravings, books. Bring them in, and I’ll be square with you.”

She was trying to be cynical, but she liked him for that, so she pulled off her fingerless gloves and offered her hand. “Can’t find too many these days who’s square.”

He shook her hand and invited her to have a look around.

As she walked down the American history aisle, she noticed him take a squirt from a bottle of Purell. At least he shook her hand.

A
FTER THAT, SHE
went to Delancey’s Rarities on the second Monday of every month and always brought something . . . a book she pulled from a trash bin, an 1894 newspaper she found under the linoleum in her bathroom, a worn set of the Harvard classics that she wheeled from the Salvation Army. Delancey actually gave her twenty bucks for that one.

Usually, she’d go upstairs to the used book area, sip some of Delancey’s free coffee, listen to his classical music, and flip through the old
Life
magazines that he sold for twenty dollars apiece.

And sometimes, when she sat in the chair by the front window, she’d notice a guy standing across the street. He always wore a blue windbreaker and a Yankees cap. Sometimes he’d be there when she left. Sometimes not. But she fixed a little rearview mirror to her cart, so that she could watch behind her to make sure he wasn’t following.

ii.

She kept up this routine all summer and fall. And she always had a comment or two when a headline appeared about the bonds:

T
REASURY
R
EJECTS
A
RSENAULT
B
ONDS
,
C
ITING
S
OVEREIGN
I
MMUNITY
.
A
RSENAULT
A
TTORNEYS
P
RESS
S
TATE
S
UPREME
C
OURT
ON
S
OVEREIGN
I
MMUNITY
A
RGUMENT
.
S
TATE
S
UPREME
R
EJECT
A
RGUMENTS IN
B
OND
C
ASE
.

Meanwhile, Erica was doing the uptown research. If you looked like Eva Marie Saint, people trusted you. If you looked like a bag lady, they didn’t let you near the rare books, and they counted the pencils when you left the reading room.

So Erica went to the Morgan Library to inspect their three bonds and glean what she could about Timothy Riley. Then, she went to the New York Public Library, sat down with the
Times
index, and tracked every reference to Timothy Riley. What she learned, Sally collected to use like bait with Delancey.

On her December visit to Rarities, she was carrying the
Times
story that had run a few weeks earlier:
UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT HEARS ARGUMENTS IN NEW EMISSON CASE; TO DECIDE IN MAY
.

“This bond business sure is gettin’ excitin’, Mr. Delancey.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Say, you got any new
Life
magazines?”