City of Dreams (65 page)

“Condensation to evaporation to rain.” Evangeline looked across the roofs of Hell’s Kitchen. “And the rain fills the reservoirs and flows back to the water tanks.”

“But the beauty of the water tank, whether you on the top floor or the bottom, you get the same water pressure. And that’s where our economic metaphor get shaky.” He arched an eybrow. “
Metaphor
. You surprised I use big words like that?”

“I’m surprised you don’t use more.”

He took another puff of the cigar. “In the real world, them at the top get the best water pressure, when it’s them at the bottom who need it most, but”—Henry shrugged—“they ain’t a lot to do about that. We still got the best chance in the world to make somethin’ out of nothin’, right here in the big city.”

She looked out. “I love the roofs of Hell’s Kitchen.”

“This one of the oldest parts of town. Mostly six-story buildings . . . for a reason. Seven or more, the law say you need a water tank. Pump the water up, and every time somebody draw it down, a float in the tank trip the pump in the cellar and pull more up.”

She lay back in the chaise.

Henry said, “One-point-four billion dollars. That sure would rain a lot of water bucks down on a lot of folks.”

She gazed up into a skylit New York night that was starless even though it was cloudless, and she thought again of those strange, final words in Tim Riley’s notebook.
Rainwater O’Day. X marks the . . . spiffle
. Then she said, “Henry, say that again.”

“I said those bonds sure would rain a lot of water bucks down on a lot of folks.”

She sat up. “And where did Antoine park his car this afternoon?”

“Say what?” Henry took out his cigar. “In a lot on Eleventh. Why?”

“Across from what?”

“Midtown Hardware. Everybody shop at Midtown Hardware.”

“
Whose
Midtown Hardware?”

Henry took another puff of the cigar, and the tip flamed, like light dawning. “
O’Day’s
Midtown Hardware, Carpentry, and Cooperage.”

A
T SEVEN O’ CLOCK
the next morning. Henry Baxter, wearing a gray three-piece suit, headed west on Fifty-first Street with a Bluetooth in his ear.

A few moments later No-Pete and the E Ticket came out of the apartment and followed. Peter was also wearing an earpiece, and his phone was on.

A few minutes later came Antoine, in a hoodie, with a gym bag over his shoulder.

As Peter passed Sacred Heart, he tipped the brim of the Brooklyn Dodgers replica hat that Henry had given him as a new disguise.

“Interesting tradition,” said Evangeline.

“My father taught me to tip my hat when I went past a church, or when a lady passed. So”—Peter tipped his hat to her—“I’ll bet that Tim Riley’s father gave him the same advice. One is good manners. The other is a good prayer.”

“I suppose we can use all the prayers we can get,” said Evangeline.

“Yeah. And we should say a few for Kathy Flynn.”

Evangeline hitched her purse on her shoulder and slipped a hand into the crook of his elbow. “I’m sorry about that, Peter. I really am. And honestly, I’m scared shitless myself right now.”

“Me, too. But not for the first time.”

“If I hadn’t been in Delancey’s on Monday, Kathy might still be alive.”

“No. If Joey’s right, the Redhead was going to kill her no matter what.” Peter had been trying not to think of her death, but he couldn’t get it out of his head. “If I had let her come to Henry’s safe house, she might still be alive.”

Evangeline let go of his elbow. “Now you’re making me feel really guilty.”

He stopped and put his arm around her shoulders. “No one’s to blame but the people who shot her. And the best thing to do for her now is to find what we came for.”

“It’s the best thing to do for ourselves, too,” said Evangeline, “and for two souls lost in the World Trade Center who’ve been trying to find themselves ever since.”

They had heard plenty of news that morning over bacon and eggs at Henry’s table.

The police had discovered Kathy Fynn’s body, and questions were already being raised about Austin Arsenault, especially since she was working on a story critical of his investment fund.

The Dow futures had turned positive for the first time in a week, which suggested that the world was not as concerned about the impending Supreme Court bond decision as it was about the announcement of the Chinese that they would stop selling American Treasuries at the next auction and start buying at the one after that.

And from Boston came word that two members of the Rhode Island mob had been caught on a surveillance camera breaking into the Newbury Street Bistro. They had set off burglar alarms and fled just a few minutes before the police arrived. This news reached Peter from his aunt Bernice, whose son was a BPD detective. It looked as if the New England mob was doing a favor for their Russian friends in New York because the Newbury Street Bistro occupied the first floor of the building that housed Fallon Antiquaria.

So, unless he wanted his store to end up like Delancey’s, Peter had to keep up the illusion of chasing this story as far as he could.

With Henry walking point, they went from under the tree-shaded block between Ninth and Tenth to the blank brick block between Tenth and Eleventh, always in telephone connection.

They feared the Redhead and KGB. How many more thugs could they raise with a few phone calls? What if the shooter had gone through Kathy’s purse and found the address and simply left it? Maybe the Russians were watching right now, just to see what they were doing.

From the beginning, Hell’s Kitchen had been the working side of Midtown, and it still was. The rents were lower than a few blocks away. There was more space. Eleventh Avenue was a two-way street, unlike the avenues to the east. So this was where you went to find a gas station or a tire shop, a car dealer or a car wash, an equipment rental or a FedEx depot, a lumberyard or a hardware store.

And there, in the block between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh, on the west side of the street, they saw the sign:

O’Day’s
Midtown Hardware,
Carpentry, and Cooperage
Plumbing, Lumber, Paint, Supplies
Since 1884

It was a big old three-story building made of sandstone blocks that somebody had painted a forest green, with two loading bays in the front, along with a half flight of stairs leading up from the sidewalk into the main store. A big Midtown Hardware delivery truck was parked at one of the bays. Another one was pulling down the block and turning into a driveway in the back, beneath another sign:
LUMBER YARD, TRADE ONLY, RETAIL PURCHASES FRONT DESK
. And just beyond, another driveway and another sign:
VALIDATED PARKING FOR MIDTOWN HARDWARE AND USS
INTREPID
.

The old World War II aircraft carrier sat serenely a block west, waiting for its daily invasion of tourists.

Henry walked past the half a block of storefront and down to the corner, turned, and leaned against a lamppost. Then he whispered into the phone, “All clear. Go ahead in. Put the phone on vibrate and lose the earpiece. Them fellers in there’ll think you some kind of businessman asshole with the Bluetooth.”

“They wouldn’t be the first.” Peter pulled out the earpiece. Then he and Evangeline went up the stairs and into the store.

Because Midtown Hardware served the contracting trade as well as the carriage trade, they opened at six in the morning, so the place was bustling with men in overalls and steel-toed shoes, men buying bags of nails and lengths of PVC pipe and faucets and lag bolts and a thousand other items that lined the two-story shelves.

Peter said, “How in the hell has everyone else missed this place?”

“Maybe they haven’t missed it. Maybe there’s nothing,” answered Evangeline. “But it’s an easy clue to miss. More like a hunch.”

After a few questions at the front of the store, Peter and Evangeline headed back to the bank of offices overlooking the sales floor, to talk to Mr. O’Day.

“You’ll know him,” said the salesman. “Red face, squinty eye.”

O’Day was just coming down a rickety set of stairs from an upper office.

“What can I do for you folks?” He gave them a squint and a smile. He had huge hands and looked as if he preferred a carpenter’s apron to the sportcoat he was wearing.

Evangeline introduced herself. “I’m a writer for
Travel & Leisure
magazine. I’m doing a piece on the New York water tanks. I’d say they’re one of the most distinctive sights on the New York skyline.”

O’Day nodded. “They sure are.”

“Peter’s my photographer. We’re hoping you’ll answer a few questions.”

O’Day looked at his watch and said, “Okay. Fifteen minutes. Then I gotta get out on the road. You want the tour?”

“Sure,” said Peter.

The man offered his hand. “I’m Buddy O’Day. Fifth generation. One of three families in New York that’s been buildin’ water tanks since the late 1800s. You got the Rosenwachs and the Isseks and us. We been here since the beginning, when this side of Eleventh was mostly riverfront.” He led them down a flight of stairs, beneath a sign:
CARPENTRY SHOP. AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY
. “We stay in town because we own the real estate and have the retail operation.”

“Are you the biggest?”

“We’re the smallest. But there’s plenty of work for all of us. You got between ten and fifteen thousand water tanks in Manhattan, plus new construction all the time. And while we all say we’re the best tank builders, we all work basically the same way.”

“How’s that?” asked Peter.

“We do most of the work right here, so there’s less to do when we send our crews up on the roof of some ten-or twenty-story building.”

At the bottom of the stairs, Peter glanced into a little glassed-in office where an old man was working at a draftsman’s desk. O’Day gave the old man a wave and led Peter and Evangeline onto the shop floor. Two or three guys were already working. And the three big delivery bays were open to the yard, where a forklift was buzzing around the lumber piles.

A table saw was screaming into a length of wood. A machine planer groaned a bass line for the saw. Then someone turned on a band saw, adding a new pitch.

But the sweet smell of fresh-cut wood almost made up for the noise.

The forklift swung around from the yard and brought in a pallet of long boards and dropped them on the floor. Then it swung back out again.

“The forklift is bringin’ in our raw material!” shouted O’Day over the sound of the saws. “We use a nominal six to eight-inch cypress board, three inches thick. We plane it down to two-and-three-eighths, then notch it and cut it to whatever length we’re using.”

“Did you always use cypress?” shouted Peter.

“Sometimes we use redwood. And back in the old days, they used fir, too. Some people like stainless steel, but wood lasts longer.”

“How long?” asked Evangeline.

O’Day squinted harder at her, then made a motion with his hands to the guys on the floor. “Hey! Hey!” And the saws stopped. “What did you say, miss?”

“How long?” asked Evangeline again, and she hoped for the right answer. “How long does a tank last?”

“We like to say twenty-five to thirty-five years with proper maintenance, which we also handle.”

She looked at Peter and shook her head.

“Any ever last longer?” asked Peter.

“Redwood will give you forty,” said O’Day. “And my father tells me that he came across a few that lasted fifty back in the old days.”

Evangeline gave Peter a jerk of the head—let’s get out of here. If the tanks only lasted thirty or forty years, her theory was dead. They would have to keep looking.

But Peter made a little gesture—hold on. Let’s see this through. Then he asked O’Day, “Did the early tanks use three-inch boards?”

“Well, I can’t give you the codes from the old days, but—”

“What about the tank bottoms? Ever use double-thickness tank bottoms?”

“Hunh?” said O’Day, as in what is this amateur talking about?

“You know,” said Peter, “two thicknesses of wood on the bottom of the tank?”

O’Day just squinted at them, like that was a pretty stupid question, then he led them toward the back and pointed to the floor. “There’s how we do a bottom.”

Two men were drawing a twelve-foot diameter circle on a square of cypress boards already fitted together.

“Once they chalk in the circle, they make a cut on each board to the exact curve of the chalk. It’s like a set of Lincoln Logs, everything fits, everything is precut, everything is numbered. And like I say, all our wood starts with a thickness of three inches. But in the old days, before the codes were so strict”—he shrugged—“they might have used double thicknesses of one-inch fir. But the problem is that the lower layer wouldn’t get wet, so it wouldn’t swell, so it would rot . . . or leak.”

One of the guys working on the floor said, “Hey, Dad, if they want to know about old days, have them talk to Grandpa.” The son had a big belly and a squinty eye, too. A family trait, a family business.

“Good idea. My pa’s eighty-four now, but he’s still the floor supervisor.” Buddy pointed to the glassed-in office at the base of the stairs. “Can’t get him to retire.”

“Yeah,” said one of the other guys, “and he don’t miss a trick.”

“So stop yappin’ and get to work,” said Buddy O’Day, then he jerked his head to Peter and Evangeline. “I’ll pass you off to Pops.”

Evangeline rolled her eyes.

Peter gave her a stay cool gesture. Then the phone buzzed in Peter’s pocket. A text from Henry: “How going? All clear here.”

Peter texted back: “OK.”

Walter O’Day was smaller than his son. But he had the same squint eye and the same barrel belly, the same good nature, too. His office was about six-by-six, a pile of papers here, another there, a pile of architectural drawings, a large stool, a draftsman’s slanted desk. The back windows looked out onto the yard. The half-glass partition on the left looked out onto the shop floor, and the half-glass door opened into the base of the stairs. About a two hundred and seventy degree view.
Didn’t miss a trick
.