City of Dreams (62 page)

“Sally, I want you to quit thumbin’ through them. People like to buy them for birthday presents. You know, if you were born in 1960, you get one for your fiftieth birthday . . . it’s a nice present. But if there’s greasy bag lady fingerprints all over—”

“Understood.” Sally started for the stairwell in the corner, then turned. “Say, those bonds you sold to Arsenault . . . did you know they’re part of a single purchase of twenty thousand dollars? Sold to someone called Loretta Rogers?”

Delancey, who usually half-ignored her, raised his head slowly.

She had gotten to him. She even worried that she had revealed too much.

He walked over and stood close enough that she could see the thin line of perspiration under his comb-over. “Where did you get that bit of information?”

She heard something in his tone that made her grip the handle of the six-inch carving knife she carried in her pocket. “In the papers, I guess.”

“You couldn’t have,” he said. “I never told any reporters. Do you think I want to start a treasure hunt? What do I look? Stupid?”

“No, Mr. Delancey. If I was drawin’ a picture of a smart man, I’d draw you.”

“So I’m gonna ask you again, Sally Lawrence from Zero-Zero-Zero Nowhere Street, New York. Where did you hear about the rest of those bonds? Tell me, or I might get mad.”

Get mad?
She hoped he didn’t, because he’d end up with a six-inch blade in his belly, and she would lose her bridge to Arsenault and the bonds.

So she decided to create a half lie. “I done some research.” Then she described Erica’s journeys to the various libraries, only she made them her own. Then she said, “Why you so interested? Do you think these bonds are all together?”

He just stared at her.

“You do!” And she gave him one of her Walter Brennan hoots. “You think all these bonds are wrapped up in an elastic somewhere, don’t you? I guess I’ll keep lookin’.” She turned and started up the stairs. She wanted to get out of there as fast as she could, because she was afraid he was going to come at her, or call someone who would. But she could not show fear. She had to keep to her routine.

“Sally,” he said when she was halfway up the stairs. “You promised to show me anything you found. Remember that promise.” He said it like a threat.

She didn’t stay long after that. She flipped through a few musty old magazines, then she said it was getting cold and she didn’t want to leave her little dog to freeze.

As she stepped outside, she froze herself . . . but not from the cold.

Someone was watching her from across Fourth Avenue. It was not the stocky man in the Yankees hat. She had grown used to seeing him. It was someone she had never forgotten. He wore a hooded sweatshirt and a leather jacket. And the hair peeking out from under the hood was red-orange. He had been there that day, the day she died.

She did not look a second time. She did not need to. She adjusted the rearview mirror on her cart and watched all the way home.

T
HAT NIGHT, THE
weather turned rotten with rain and sleet.

Sally sat with a cup of tea in her little flat, and she shivered, and she remembered.

With the first winter storm, she always remembered the winter after she died. She remembered how hard it had been to see a future when the wind splattered rain and wet snowflakes against the single rattling pane of glass. She remembered looking around the little two-room flat and asking herself if this was all that life would ever hold for her.

Even now, she wondered what would have happened had she not decided to stay dead. Would she have gone to jail? Would she have become a target of the avenging Antonov family? Was she now? The one with red hair worked for them.

She warmed her hands on the cup and thanked the Lord for Erica. Erica had not been one to sit still or stay down. She had shown Sally how to live again. But in two or three years, they would be out of money. What would they do then? Sally had learned plenty on the street, but she had always been able to retreat to her anonymous little flat. Rent in cash. No questions asked. Real life on the street would kill her. So would life without Erica. Or the redhead might get to her and—

Georgie heard it first. His head popped up and he looked toward the door.

“What, boy?” she whispered.

Then she heard a creak on the little landing, then—good Christ!—a knock.

The dog growled and scratched across the linoleum to the door.

She kicked off her shoes and tiptoed after the dog, picked him up, shushed him. Then she reached into the kitchen and grabbed the carving knife.

If the redhead was out there, come to finish the job he started on 9/11—

Then there was another knock and a low voice: “I mean you no harm.” Then a minute of silence, then the rustling of paper and a large manila envelope appeared under her door. The voice said, “Take a look.”

Sally put down the dog and opened the envelope. And there was Jennifer Wilson in a series of surveillance photos: walking out of her apartment, talking with John Smith, swiping her security card at a World Trade Center turnstile. And there was Sally Lawrence: going in and out of Delancey’s. Finally, a side-by-side of Sally and Jennifer, with computer lines drawn, showing the similarities between the eyes, the noses, the chins.

The voice whispered, “I know who you were.”

But who was
he
? He didn’t sound Russian, at least.

“I was with you that day. You read my story in the papers. I just want to talk.”

“With me? Are you the FBI?”

“Not anymore. Besides, the statute of limitations on insider trading is five years.”

Sally looked at the dog.
What do you think?
The dog looked at the door.

So she opened it but kept the chain in place. The dog growled and bared his teeth.

The man in the Yankees hat was standing there. “I’m former federal agent Joseph Berranova.” He took off his hat, then he pulled out a dog biscuit and offered it through the space in the door.

The dog looked at her, and she said, “Okay.” The dog snapped up the biscuit.

“What do you want?” she said over the chain.

“I think you know, but like I say, I mean you no harm.”

“That’s good, because I’ve had plenty of that harm shit. I don’t need any more.” And she decided to let him in.

That night, for the first time, another person sat with Sally and drank tea at her wobbly table.

He said that after 9/11, he left the agency with a pension as his life unraveled.

Then he had read the story of Arsenault and the bonds, and he remembered the woman named Jennifer Wilson, from the Intermetro case. She had tried to cash a similar set of bonds in 1987. And he started making connections. “So many of the same players as in 2001, back together, Arsenault, Magee, the ghost of Jennifer Wilson, the Antonov family.”

“You knew about the Russians?”

“We knew there was dirty money behind Intermetro in ’01. We were hoping to flip you and Smith, take down the Antonov syndicate.”

“That explains a lot,” she said, and she described the murders on that awful morning.

All Joey could say was, “As dangerous as we thought they were.”

“But it wasn’t me you wanted to flip. It was Jennifer Wilson. I was born on September 11, 2001. Jennifer died that day.”

Joey sipped his tea. “I know what you mean.”

After a moment, she touched his arm. “No one has said that to me in a long time. No one could.”

The wind splattered sleet against the windows.

“You and I saw things. Terrible things.” Joey shook his head. “Anyway, I started spiralin’ back into how I ended up in that tower, and it led me to Arsenault—”

“He told the SEC about Intermetro, didn’t he?”

Joey nodded. “And his name led to the bonds, so I decided to stake out Delancey’s, just to see if any of the old principals from the ’01 case showed up.”

“And along came Frivolous Sal.” She smiled her toothless smile and gave a hoot. “You’re not here to arrest me, are you?”

“I’m here to see if we can work together.”

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know.” Joey shrugged. “I just feel a pull. Don’t you feel a pull?”

“Every day.”

“I remember all the brave people, even the ones who were scared . . . even in the Sky Lobby. Nobody panicked, everybody tried to be orderly, movin’ to the elevators, takin’ directions. . . . People helped people that day, even after the plane hit and we were all in hell. . . . I was blown twenty feet. When I woke up, I thought you’d been vaporized. But I saw Johnson . . . cut in half.”

“I remember a guy named Gomez.” And she just shook her head. “He worked up there, a janitor or something. He saved me, then he went back.”

Joey gave the dog another biscuit, watched him for a moment, then said, “Somebody helped me find stairwell A. And there were people in the lobby and on the concourse, showin’ us how to get out. Some of them didn’t make it, either.”

Another splatter of sleet hit the windows.

“And do you remember the spirit in the city for a while after that?”

“Yeah. People were generous . . . friendly . . . the way people ought to be.”

Joey poured more tea. “Then we just got right back to bein’ who we are . . . a bunch of what’s-in-it-for-me backstabbers. Like all the bankers and brokers and greedy bastards in ’08, makin’ their thirty and forty million, while the whole economy was goin’ up the chimney and the government was scramblin’ to stop a depression. Do you think any of
them
would have helped you in that tower? No way. And guys like Arsenault are the worst, hidin’ their greed—and maybe their failure—under an umbrella of patriotism. Make you sicker than a dog eatin’ rats, seein’ him cashin’ those two bonds. He’ll cash ’em, take the fourteen million, and say he’s doin’ it all for America.”

“It’s not fourteen million,” she said. “There’s a box of bonds. Worth twenty grand in 1780. Compound the interest, it comes to one-point-four billion.”

“Jesus.” Joey Berra sat back. “He’d bankrupt the country if he could.”

“One-point-four wouldn’t bankrupt a county.”

“No, but it would
save
a bankrupt company, and still look like good PR.” Joey cracked his big knuckles. “Arsenault talks about these bonds bein’ a symbol. But he’s a symbol of everything that’s wrong with us.”

And that night, two people whose lives had been shattered on 9/11 joined forces.

Sally slept very well, because at last, she had a friend who could talk back.

iii.

Joey told her to stay away from Delancey’s, because he had seen Ivankov the Redhead watching the store.

Instead they agreed to meet a week later in Katz’s deli at three o’clock.

Sally got there early. She ordered coffee. She didn’t have money for more.

Ten minutes to three: no Joey. Three o’clock: no Joey. Ten past three: no Joey.

She hated herself for getting nervous when it stretched to fourteen past. She hated herself for trusting someone. When the clock on the wall reached three fifteen, she took a last deep breath of all the aromas of the deli, gathered her things, prepared to leave.

That was when Joey hurried in. “Sorry I’m late. I been tracking Avid’s accountant.”

“Carl Evers?” She didn’t say how well she knew him.

“He’s scared shitless. Did you order yet?”

She pointed to her cup.

“Coffee? You don’t come to Katz’s and just have coffee.” Then he got it. He put a hand on her arm and gave her a little pat. “It’s on me, Sal.”

She grinned, revealing the missing teeth, then brought her hand to her mouth in embarrassment. She realized this was the first time she had covered her mouth like that since it happened. “In that case, I’ll have the biggest hot pastrami I can get.”

He ordered, then leaned across the table. “So . . . this Carl Evers, like I say, he’s scared shitless. I came up behind him on the street.”

“That would scare the shit out anyone.”

He grinned. “I just come up behind him and said, ‘How come your bosses waited till the economic shit hit the fan before they started moving on this bond business?’ He didn’t have an answer. Didn’t want to talk to me. Kept walking.”

Joey’s eyes lit up when the sandwich plates landed on the table. “Look at that, will ya? As big as your head.”

Sally slathered hers with mustard and bit with her canines. She ate as fast as Joey. Faster. And after she wiped the mustard from her mouth, he pointed to the corner of his, to let her know she’d missed a spot.

Only a friend would do something like that, she thought.

And after they ate, she told him about a trip to the
Times
archive. She didn’t tell him that Erica did the work. She hadn’t told anyone about Erica yet. She’d need to trust him more. But she told him about Tim’s father, murdered at Woodward Manor.

Then she pulled out a tattered picture book she had bought for two dollars at Delancey’s:
Lost New York
, a series of images of the city that had grown, flourished, and given way over three centuries, including a photo of the ancient house, as it had looked just before its demolition. An old oak tree extended its branches over the roof.

She said, “Tim Riley’s father was a demolition man. He tore out walls and floors. He kept what he found. So I’m trackin’ the name Woodward to see where it leads.”

“Good. And I’ll keep hauntin’ that accountant.”

B
UT BEFORE ALL
that, Erica insisted that they take a bus trip at Christmas. Sally didn’t tell Joey, but Erica never stayed in New York at Christmas. It depressed her. So she traveled to Washington, then on to Key West for New Year’s. But for the first time in almost a decade, she was thinking of someone in New York when the clock struck midnight at the southernmost point in America.

And for the first time in that long, a Christmas present was waiting when she got home, a box of chocolates from Joey.

Sally went down to the pay phone and called him to wish him happy New Year.

“It will be if we take down Arsenault,” he said. “Or the Russians.”

They agreed to have dinner on Saturday night in Little Italy.