The Old Testament word for “Righteousness,” one of the thousand names of God.
The man from Rome eased back the slide of the Beretta with his free hand, took a breath and held it. He pushed open the door and went into the room beyond, the end of his journey. He reached up to shade his eyes with one hand, almost blinded by the light.
47
Behind them in James J. Walker Park Finn and Valentine could faintly hear the sound of children jumping rope, singing a counting song that became faster as they skipped.
“I am the Baby Jesus,
Marching to the cross.
I am the Baby Jesus.
My daddy is the Boss.”
“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” said Finn, sitting on the bench beside Valentine. Between his feet was a bag of equipment. They were both dressed casually in running gear. It was past seven and dusk was falling, the rush hour traffic on Hudson Street thinning.
“You’re the one who went in there today and took the keys.” Valentine smiled. “Besides, if we want to bring this thing to some kind of conclusion that will satisfy the authorities we have to have evidence. Right now everything’s circumstantial, Internet paranoia and conspiracy theory.”
“I just wanted to find out who killed Peter.”
“We will,” Valentine offered. “I promise you.” He kept his eyes on the house on the far side of St. Luke’s Place. The last lights went out and a moment later Hugo Boss appeared, locking the door behind him. The tiny Panasonic D-snap camera Finn had carried in her shoulder bag earlier in the day had given Valentine all the information he needed about the inside of the interior of the building including the name on the security panel just inside the front door. It appeared to be a relatively simple ADT system with a telephone line connection to a central security center. The system was almost ten years old and a single call to Barrie Kornitzer had given him the bypass code for the system within five minutes. Finn’s theft of the key ring had simplified things even more; after copying them at a locksmith’s shop on Carmine Street, she used the beeper on the ring of originals to find the car the keys belonged to, eventually finding a Toyota Camry on Varick Street that answered the call. She simply tossed the keys on the floor underneath the front seat and then manually re-locked the car behind her. When the owner eventually discovered them he or she would assume the keys had been left behind when exiting the car earlier in the day.
“I am the Baby Jesus.
I see every single sin.
I am the Baby Jesus
And I always win.”
Valentine checked his watch and then the darkened brownstone across the way. Nothing moved except the leaves in the trees. The traffic hummed a block away. Finn could faintly recall a few lines from an Edgar Allan Poe sonnet about some spooky dead love. She tried not to think about what lay beneath her, buried deep under the soil of the park. Old secrets. Older bones.
“Time to go.”
“All right.”
“I told Barrie most of what we know. If I haven’t called him by midnight he’ll let a friend of his in the Bureau know what we found.”
“That’s a comfort,” said Finn with a hollow laugh. They both stood up and headed across the street. Behind them, lost in the gloom, the children skipped.
48
They stepped into the dark house. Ahead of them and to the right was the ADT panel. A small, angry red light pulsed. Valentine punched in a set of numbers. The red light reverted to green.
“That was easy enough,” Finn whispered.
“This isn’t some high-tech heist movie,” Valentine answered. “After a while people get careless and they don’t bother with the basics.” He shrugged. “Besides, why would anyone break into a place like this? As far as anyone knows they’re just a bunch of paper pushers.”
“Maybe that’s all they are,” said Finn. “Maybe we’re wrong.”
“You said you thought your receptionist in the expensive suit was wearing a gun.”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Then we’re not wrong. You don’t need a gun to guard papers.”
Valentine paused for a moment to examine the painting behind the desk. “You do need a gun to guard something like that, however.”
They moved quickly through the reception room and down the hallway into the open area at the center of the house. Finn dropped the equipment bag on one of the desks and slid open the zipper. Valentine took out a heavy flashlight and switched it on, panning the beam around the room. He saw nothing any different from what the camera had shown him: a large rectangular windowless room with a flight of stairs against the right-hand wall. There were three desks and a row of filing cabinets. A doorway at the end of the room led into a comfortable conference area with a long table and a half dozen chairs. There was a painting over the mantel of an old-fashioned fireplace to the left. It was too dark to see clearly; a muted landscape of some sort. Another door led to the rear of the house. It was locked. Finn stepped forward with her set of keys and tried them until she found one that fit. She turned it and the door popped open. They stepped through.
“Now this is interesting,” Valentine murmured.
The room was completely empty. A window on the far wall had been bricked up and the original rear door had been replaced by something that looked vaguely like the sliding mechanism usually seen on garages. Instead of the cherry in the other rooms here it was wide oak planks, dark with age. It was the original floor.
“A loading bay,” said Valentine. “The insurance plat books show an old court-style alley in the back with an entrance on the Varick Street end. That’s where this must go.”
“That doesn’t make sense unless they’ve got something to load,” said Finn.
“Look.” Valentine pointed. In the center of the floor there was a square seam in the planks. He swung the light around the walls. Beside the operating mechanism for the heavy rear door there was a single large button, much like the elevator call at Ex Libris. “Hit it.”
Finn crossed the room and slapped her palm down on it. There was a humming sound and a section of the floor six feet on a side pushed upward slowly. A large open cage appeared, finally thumping to a stop.
“What the hell is that?” said Finn.
Valentine played the beam of his light over the open cage. A stamped metal plate across the top beam read: OTIS BROTHERS YONKERS NY 1867.
“I couldn’t find anything out about the original owners of the building but it could easily have been some kind of tavern or small hotel. This would be the freight elevator they used to bring up beer barrels and food from storage down below.” Valentine stepped into the cage and swung the flashlight around. He spotted a switch on one of the cage uprights. “Looks safe enough.”
Finn stared, horrified. “We’re going down in that thing?”
“I don’t see any other way.” He waved her forward. Tentatively she stepped onto the old steel floor of the cage and Valentine tapped the button. The cage descended ponderously. By the time they reached the bottom they were smothered in darkness. They stepped off the elevator and Valentine swept the beam around. They appeared to be in a modern, concrete-walled basement filled with boxes and crates. Valentine found a light switch and flipped it on. Overhead fluorescents crackled into life.
The basement was as large as the entire house, a long narrow room with a well-outfitted packing facility complete with storage bins for lumber, saws, worktables and a large overhead setup for blowing in foam popcorn, and an area devoted to metal strapping. All very efficient. A dehumidifier hummed against one wall and the room was cool and dry. A half dozen medium-sized crates had been arranged close to the freight elevator, neatly labeled and bar-coded. They were all designated for various outlets of the Hoffman Gallery around the world and they each had a plastic pouch stapled to one side already packed with customs clearance papers. Off in one corner of the room was a metal desk with a computer and heavy-duty label printer. Valentine took a box cutter out of his bag and slashed one of the pouches open.