“Utilities were already off,” Graham called out.
“Good,” I replied. “Find something sharp and get back here.”
While he sorted through tools, I grabbed a long pipe off the floor. Long ago, drywall had replaced lath and plaster as the most popular form of interior walling. Although solid to the touch, it was really nothing more than gypsum plaster sandwiched between thick sheets of paper.
In other words, easy prey.
I felt around the wall, locating lots of little screws. Steering away from them, I slammed the pipe into the drywall. It punched through the material with ease, leaving a hole in its wake.
Graham joined me, hammer in hand, and together we attacked the drywall. Then I dropped the pipe and reached my fingers into one of the many jagged holes. A couple of tugs and the drywall began to break off into my hands.
After clearing away a four-foot square hole, I aimed my beam into the space. “You know what’s more annoying than a layer of drywall?”
“What?” Graham asked.
“Two layers.”
He groaned.
Peering into the space, I studied the second layer. It sat about three feet beyond the first one. It was heavily stained and stank of mold, thanks to a significant amount of untreated water damage.
“That looks like black mold,” Graham said.
“The one and only,” I replied.
“I’d rather walk back into that riot with a Kick Me sign on my back than go through there.”
“Look on the bright side,” I said. “At least you’re not part of The Falcon’s investor flock.”
For the next three minutes, we attacked the outer layer of drywall, eventually clearing away two whole panels. Then we gathered our tools and hiked to the second wall. I studied the moldy material for a moment. Then I prodded it with my pipe. The drywall cracked and crumbled in numerous places.
We checked for studs and screws. Then we attacked the second wall. It fell easier than the first one and in a matter of minutes, we found ourselves facing a dark void.
“If there’s more drywall back there, I’ll…” Graham grumbled something unintelligible as he aimed his beam into the void. “Want the good news or the bad news?”
“Good news,” I replied.
“There’s no more drywall.”
“Nice. Then let’s—”
“Instead, there’s an old masonry wall.”
A masonry wall? That was about a billion times more challenging than drywall. “You realize this isn’t good news and bad news, right? It’s just bad news.”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “I just always liked that whole good news, bad news shtick.”
I checked my satphone. 9:42 p.m. Twelve minutes down, forty-eight to go.
Stepping past Graham, I moved to the masonry wall. The individual bricks looked old and many showed signs of significant crumbling. Mortar joints were cracked in multiple places and some of the bricks had shifted a bit.
“How do you want to do this?” Graham asked. “From the top down?”
I touched the bricks. They felt gritty and a bit moist. I scratched one and its edges crumbled beneath my fingernails.
Taking a step backward, I aimed my beam at the top of the wall. The bricks and mortar didn’t quite reach the ceiling, which meant it wasn’t a load-bearing wall.
“I’ve got another idea,” I said. “Get back.”
Arching an eyebrow, Graham backed up a few feet.
I shoved my satphone into my pocket. Took a deep breath. Steeled myself.
And charged the wall.
My left shoulder slammed into ancient brick with jarring force. It stopped me cold, but I felt a little give.
Beverly.
My adrenaline raced. Sweat poured down my neck, soaking my left shoulder. Mashing my teeth together, I kept pushing, pushing, pushing. Pushing with all my strength. Pushing with strength I didn’t even know I possessed.
The wall creaked. Bricks began to vibrate, to quake. Mortar dissolved into dust and debris. It shot up my nostrils and I tasted it on my tongue.
Abruptly, the wall exploded into dust and smithereens. I pitched forward and rolled. Bricks slammed into bricks. Dust wafted into the air and shot down my lungs. Coughing and choking, I struggled to my feet.
The falling debris slowed, then stopped altogether. I coughed a few more times, hacking up about a pound of ancient brick dust while accidentally swallowing another pound at the same time. It tasted terrible, an unholy mixture of mold and stale grit.
As my coughs subsided, I glanced back. The brick structure now had a gaping hole in it, three-feet wide and stretching all the way to the ceiling. The rest of the wall, as far as I could tell, was still intact.
“The good news?” Waving dust away, Graham clambered over the pile of bricks. “Or the bad news?”
“The bad,” I said.
“You look like a building just fell on you.”
“And the good?”
“You were right.” He smiled and his good eye looked past me. “There’s definitely a vault here.”
Chapter 19
I spun around and my eyes grew wide as tumblers. A giant door stood before me, bathed in the beam of Graham’s satphone flashlight. It was rectangular in shape and rounded on the edges. Beneath the grime and dust, I saw hints of silvery metal, all well-tarnished.
“What’s the time?” I asked.
“9:49 p.m. Looks like we beat the clock.”
I took out my satphone. Switching on the flashlight function, I approached the door. It was partially ajar and connected to a metal wall with enormous hinges. Elegant marble surrounded the metal wall and door. Clearly, the basement had once been an area of great pride, built to showcase the bank’s wealth along with its impressive and secure vault. And despite everything — the grime, the tarnished metal, the mold, the general abandonment — the area still retained a regal air about it.
This was old-school New York. A New York of jazz pianos, straw boater hats, and Art Deco skyscrapers. Not much of that New York remained, having been swallowed up and spat out by the avant-garde movement. To stand before a small piece of it felt oddly enriching.
I stopped just outside the vault. The door was about three to four feet thick and made of solid metal. Probably steel with some kind of embedded copper alloy.
The history of bank security was a sort of tit for tat between brilliant inventors and relentless criminals. By the 1920s, giant vaults with thick steel doors and steel-reinforced concrete walls had largely replaced the traditional bank safe. Steel was a strong material and well-equipped to deter angry mobs as well as withstand explosives. But it was particularly susceptible to cutting torches. That led to the addition of copper alloys. Copper’s high thermal conductivity helped to dissipate heat and ended a short, but significant run of cutting torch thefts.
I slid past the door and entered the vault. It was gigantic. There were multiple internal walls, all filled with neat rows and columns of safe deposit boxes along with rectangular holes where boxes had once rested. More rectangular holes filled the reachable portion of the vault walls. Steel plating covered the higher portion along with the ceiling.
As for the safe deposit boxes, they were everywhere. The vast majority were heaped upon the floor, their metallic surfaces marred by scratches and dents. The rest were positioned in the various walls, partially pulled out of their individual holes. Keys stuck out of some of the boxes. Other keys lay scattered about the floor.
“Wow.” Graham whistled through his teeth as he slid through the doorway and entered the vault. “There must be hundreds of boxes here.”
“Try thousands.” I rotated my head, my gaze passing over the vault’s interior. “We might as well be picking a needle out of a haystack.”