Ralph’s eyes narrowed a tiny bit. “Yes, sir?”
“There was something in that package that I need to look at. The company is offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who can produce it. Does that interest you?”
“Well, sure, Mr. Barrington,” Ralph said cautiously. “Since you’re a lawyer, can you tell me if there’s any legal liability attached to having some knowledge of that package?”
“No liability whatsoever, Ralph, I just want to see the package, and I’ll produce the ten thousand in cash within the hour.”
“Tell you what, let me have a look in Mr. Tillman’s storage unit,” Ralph said. “I’ll get the key.” He walked to an open door behind him, disappeared inside for a minute or so, and came back with the key. “I’ll be back in ten minutes,” he said to somebody in that room. He walked back to where Stone stood. “I’ll go have a look.”
“I’ll have a look with you,” Stone said.
Ralph hesitated. “Nobody’s allowed down there but the tenants and the doormen,” he said. “I don’t want to get in any trouble.”
“Ralph, the only way you can get into trouble is by not telling me the truth,” Stone said.
“This way, sir.” He led the way to a door that opened onto a stairway and walked down the stairs. The storage units were neatly divided into rows, and he walked down one, then stopped. “Here we are,” he said. “Fifteen A.” He opened the padlock securing the door, swung it open, and switched on an overhead light. Fluorescent lamps blinked on.
Stone followed him inside. The room was about twelve by fifteen feet and contained several pieces of furniture stacked on top of each other. There were some lamps, no shades, a rolled-up carpet, and a few pictures in bubble wrap. “Just a minute,” he said to Ralph. He went through the pictures: two portraits, what appeared to be a Hudson River School landscape, and an abstract painting. No van Gogh.
“Let’s continue,” he said to Ralph. There was a clothing rack filled with zipped-up covers, then, at the end of the aisle, two steel filing cabinets and a large steel cabinet. He tried to open them. Locked. “Do you have the keys, Ralph?”
“No, sir, we just keep keys to access the unit. We don’t have keys for anything inside.”
Stone reached for his own keys, which included one for his office files. He tried it in the locks and had no luck.
“No package,” Ralph said. “Are you satisfied, Mr. Barrington?”
“No, Ralph, I’m not. I’m going to have to come back with a locksmith.”
“Why don’t you just ask Mrs. Tillman for the keys?” Ralph asked.
“I don’t want to trouble her, Ralph, and I don’t want you to, either. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir, I’ll be discreet.”
Stone took two hundreds from his pocket and handed them to the man. “For your trouble today,” he said. “I’ll come back with a locksmith, and we’ll see if we can get you the ten thousand.”
“Yes, sir,” Ralph replied. “I’m on all day, then off for two days.”
They went back upstairs. “If I don’t get back today,” Stone said, “I’ll speak to Gino Poluci when he comes in tomorrow and see what I can find out. You can make your own financial arrangements with him.” They parted company. Back on the street, Stone called Bob Cantor, his go-to guy for any sort of technical work, mechanical or electronic.
“How you doing, Stone?”
“Pretty good. I need to get into a couple of locked pieces of office furniture. Can you meet me at Park and Seventy-eighth?”
“Sorry, Stone, I’m in the middle of a major alarm installation, and I’ve got to be finished by tonight. As it is, I’ll probably be here until midnight. How about tomorrow?”
“Okay,” Stone said.
“What kind of office furniture?”
“Standard steel stuff, like you’d see in a hundred offices.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Bob said. “I just don’t have the time today.”
“I understand, Bob.”
“Stone,” Bob said, “just about any locksmith can open those cabinets.”
“I’d rather wait for you, Bob.”
“Okay, you know best.”
“Okay.” Stone hung up; he was just going to have to be patient until then.
28
Stone met Bob Cantor at 740 Park at ten the following morning. A doorman wearing a name tag with the name “Gino Poluci” greeted him at the reception desk. “Good morning, Mr. Barrington,” Gino said. “Ralph called me last night and said you’d like to get into the storage area for 15A?”
“That’s correct, Gino,” Stone replied. “This is my associate, Bob Cantor.”
“Oh, yes, we’ve met before, haven’t we? You’ve done some security system work here.” The two men shook hands.
Gino got the key and led them down to the storage unit. Stone found it apparently undisturbed from the day before. “Back here, Bob,” he said, leading him to the three pieces of office furniture.
Cantor knelt and produced a key ring containing a couple of dozen similar keys, and he began working his way through them, inserting them into a filing cabinet lock. “If we get one that works, chances are it’ll be keyed to all three pieces,” he said. “If not, then I’ll have to do some picking.” Nothing he had worked.
Stone watched as Bob took a small zippered case from his shirt pocket and chose two of a number of lock picks.
“I made these myself,” Cantor said, “cut and ground from hacksaw blades.” He started on a filing cabinet, and after a minute or two, he opened the drawer.
“Go ahead and finish all three,” Stone said, standing back and giving him more room.
Cantor had all three done very quickly.
Stone knelt and began going through the file drawers, first looking for the painting itself, then glancing at the names of files. This drawer was mostly old tax returns. He went through the second drawer in the cabinet, then did the same with the second filing cabinet. All that remained was the larger storage cabinet. He swung the door back to reveal a stack of reams of printer paper. On top rested a FedEx box. Stone picked it up gingerly, by the corners: it was addressed to Mark Tillman. It was empty. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go back upstairs.”
“Find what you’re looking for, Mr. Barrington?”
“I found the FedEx box, but not the contents.”
They went back up the stairs. As they arrived at the desk a man in a FedEx uniform placed an envelope on the desk and gave Gino an electronic box on which to sign. Stone watched as the doorman scrawled his name: only the G and the P were legible; the rest was a scrawl.
Stone thanked Poluci and he and Bob Cantor left. Outside, Stone stopped and handed the FedEx box to Cantor, his hand inside it. “Bob, I know this is a long shot, because a lot of people may have handled it, but I’d like for you to go over this box very, very carefully, see if you can find any legible prints, and if you do, run them against every database you’ve got.”
“Okay, I’ll go back to the office and start on it now,” Cantor said. “I’ll try to have something for you late this afternoon.”
The two men shook hands, and Stone sent Cantor on his way. He decided to walk back to Turtle Bay; it was thirty blocks or so, but the exercise wouldn’t kill him. He began thinking his way through the steps of assembling and sending a FedEx package. You had to put stuff inside, then you had to fill out a waybill or print one from your computer. You’d seal it, then it would begin its journey through the system. Finally, it would be received at the front desk of the building and delivered to the recipient. Except this one wasn’t delivered, because the recipient was dead. It apparently didn’t get to Morgan or her housekeeper, either. It was emptied and the box placed in a locked storage cabinet in a locked apartment storage unit.