“Who has the keys?”
“Me. And about twenty other assholes. Don’t tell me you want their names.”
“Naw. Just yours. You look familiar. Ever carry a badge?” It was a line. Something to puff the guy up a little. Win him over.
“No sir. Did a year in ‘Nam, though. That was enough time in a uniform for me.”
“Same here. Nice memories.” Franciscus rolled his eyes.
“Alvin J. Gustafson at your service.” He reached into his pocket and found a business card. “Call me Gus. I guess I better ask what this is about. What exactly are you looking for?”
“Anyone asks, Gus, I’m just checking the view.”
Franciscus found the foreman’s shack as Bolden had described it. He strolled to the door and opened it. The view faced north toward the Bronx, just like Bolden had said. No question this was the place.
Franciscus stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall. He didn’t have much on his mind, no suspicions, no ideas, really. He’d come up to run Bolden’s story through and imagine what had happened here.
It was the man he had under watch at the hospital who bothered him. He had no doubt he was a veteran, but so far his prints had come back negative. He hadn’t been carrying any identification and refused to give his name. In fact, he didn’t even want to use his phone call. He just sat there quiet as a lamb. He was, Franciscus concluded, a serious player, and Franciscus had every intention of learning who had sent him uptown to do bodily harm to Thomas Bolden.
Franciscus looked at the doorway and the chairs, trying to figure out where Bolden had been standing, where he hit the floor. As his eyes skimmed the carpet, he spotted a sterling-silver collar stay lying near the base of the desk. He picked it up. From Tiffany, no less. Isn’t Bolden the big muckety-muck? he mused, dropping the metal sliver into his pocket. A little physical evidence never hurt.
After a few minutes, he headed back to the elevator. On the trip to the ground floor, he reviewed the facts as he knew them. Unbeknownst to him, Mr. Thomas Bolden is followed from his office to lunch at Balthazar yesterday at one o’clock. The suspect steals a cell phone that he can use anonymously later in the day. That night, Bolden’s girlfriend is mugged by two men in their mid to late twenties. Her watch (an anniversary gift valued at six thousand dollars) is stolen, along with a large sterling-silver plate. Bolden gives pursuit and is forced at gunpoint into the rear of a limousine. The watch is returned. During the ride uptown, one of the assailants hints at having served as a Ranger in the army. The limousine deposits Bolden and the two assailants at a deserted building site in Harlem sometime around 12:30 A.M. The gate’s open. The foreman’s shack has been prepared, right down to ripping the construction plans off the wall. Everything has been arranged beforehand with care and precision. He is interrogated by a man named Guilfoyle about something called Crown, and whether or not he was acquainted with an individual named Bobby Stillman. Bolden says no, whereupon Guilfoyle forces him outside, onto a platform seventy stories up and about the size of a postage stamp. When Bolden still refuses to play ball, he fires a gun next to his cheek to make sure he’s not lying.
At this point, Franciscus paused in his reconstruction of the events to reflect. In short order, he decided that if someone put a gun to his head, he would admit to knowing Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé Indians. Mr. Bolden has himself some brass ones. That’s for sure.
Franciscus continued. Guilfoyle gives his associate, Wolf, instructions to kill Bolden, then leaves the building. Bolden manages to wrestle Wolf off the girder. The two fall sixty feet into a safety net. Bolden descends to the ground, surprises the driver, whacks the hell out of him, and takes off with the car, crashing through the gates. Two hours later, when the site is checked, no sign is found of Wolf or of any crazy business whatsoever.
It was one wild-ass story, thought Franciscus as he crossed the construction area. It had to take a lot to bring someone like Bolden into the police station. He made a note to run a check on him, if the budget could stand it. Tossing the collar stay in his hand, he decided everything Bolden had said was true. What he wasn’t sure of was whether Bolden was hiding a prior association with Guilfoyle. It seemed like an awful lot of work to get the wrong guy.
“Still here, Gus?” he said, knocking on the door of the supervisor’s shack.
“Busy as ever.”
Franciscus stepped inside. “ ‘Fraid I’m going to need the names of the people who have a key.”
“Knew it.” Gustafson tore a sheet of paper from a notebook and handed it to him. A list of names numbered one through six filled the left-hand side of the page. “Be prepared, my father taught me. Turns out I couldn’t think of twenty. Only six. Otherwise, you can call the head office.”
“Where’s that?”
“In Jersey. Atlas Ventures.”
“Never heard of them. Why don’t they have a sign up?” Franciscus didn’t know of a construction site that didn’t boast ten signs advertising every tradesman working on the project.
“They did. They took it down a few days back.”
“Kids spray it with graffiti?”
“No. People don’t mess with us too much. The building’s considered good for the neighborhood and all that. Maybe they thought it was looking beat-up or something.”
“Could be,” said Franciscus, giving a shrug to show he didn’t really care one way or the other. “Heckuva view, by the way.”
“Ain’t it, though?”
Franciscus had driven fifty yards down Convent Avenue when he slammed on his brakes. He looked out the window to his right at an old Federal-style house painted pale chiffon yellow. The house was immaculately cared for. An American flag flew from the porch. A National Park Service sign declared it a national monument. The Grange had been the last home of Alexander Hamilton, built in the years prior to his death. At the time, it was considered a country house, and the ride to lower Manhattan took over an hour. It had been moved once already to its present location and another move was scheduled. It was flanked on one side by an aging brownstone, and on the other by an uncared-for church.
Why here?
That was the question that continued to nag at him. Why kidnap a man near Wall Street and drag him all the way uptown? Professionals who were patient enough to case a victim for days before grabbing him could have taken him anywhere. If someone wanted Bolden killed, then that someone had wanted him killed here. In Harlem.
He stared at the flag flapping in the brisk wind. For some reason, he thought of the musket tattooed on the man’s chest.
13
The firm of Harrington Weiss occupied the eighth through forty-third floors of an unexceptional gray granite building two blocks down the street from the New York Stock Exchange. Founded in 1968, Harrington Weiss, or HW, as it was referred to familiarly, was a newcomer on the Street. Compared to its competitors, many of whom had first opened their doors one hundred years before, it had no history. Nor could it compete in terms of size. With assets of three billion dollars, the firm counted just over two thousand employees spread across offices in New York, London, Shanghai, and Tokyo.
But Solomon Henry Weiss had never wanted his firm to be the biggest. He preferred to be the best. A native of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, Sol Weiss had left school at the age of fourteen to take a job as a runner at the New York Stock Exchange. He was hardworking, smart, and congenitally skeptical. He moved up the ranks quickly, earning his stripes as a trader, specialist, and finally, market maker. Dissatisfied with brokering other people’s trades, he founded his own firm to run whatever money he had saved, and the little he could raise from family and friends.