City of Dreams

by Martin, William

  Peter told Evangeline, “Stay here. Don’t let anyone in. If this guy slipped past Jackie, he might—”

  “Nobody slipped past me,” shouted Jackie into the phone. “The guy went outside. He’s headed toward Columbus. You want I should follow him?”

  “No. Don’t leave the desk. I’ll be right down.”

  Jackie was waiting when Peter stepped off the elevator.

  “What was his name?” asked Peter.

  “He said it was Delancey.”

  “Delancey? About fifty-eight, Vitalis comb-over?”

  “Yeah. That’s him. Is he trouble?”

  “I think he might be in trouble. Where did he go?”

  “He come in and asked for you, then somethin’ spooked him. I don’t quite know what it was. I was on the phone.”

  Peter ran out onto Seventy-ninth Street.

  Jackie followed him to the door. “He crossed Columbus and turned south. Maybe you can catch up to him.”

  Peter peered down Columbus, looking for Vitalis shining in the sun. Delancey lived downtown, so it made sense that he’d be heading south, unless he’d already hopped a cab. But Peter had been doing business with him for a long time, and never once had Delancey picked up the check or paid for a cab, so Peter decided he had to be on foot and heading south, unless he had doubled back around the block to the Eighty-first Street subway station.

  Peter took out his cell phone and called Delancey’s. Four rings, no answer. So he crossed Columbus at Seventy-seventh. And his phone rang. He answered without checking the caller ID.

  “This is James Fitzpatrick speaking.”

  “James. Thanks for getting back to me.” Peter decided to head toward Central Park West while he talked. “What do you know about the crown finial?”

  “Disappeared about eight months ago from the New-York Historical Society.”

  “I’m walking along Seventy-seventh right now, right next to the society.”

  “Handsome building. Fine library.”

  “What else was in the stolen box?”

  “Some letters, some news clippings, a few personal possessions that belonged to a guy named Gil Walker.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Just one of those tiny grains of sand in the great machinery of history.”

  Peter imagined Fitzpatrick leaning back in his oak-paneled Boston office and plucking that image out of the air. He said, “Not only are you a fine librarian and a brilliant scholar, James. You’re a philosopher, too.”

  “Go see my friend, Karen Richards, in the historical society library. Use my name. In the meantime, I’ll e-mail you a few things.”

  “Good, but I have to run.”

  Peter clicked off and began to quickstep ahead, because he had just seen a tall, skinny guy cross Central Park West and go into the park by the Seventy-seventh Street entrance: Mr. Daily News, aka Boris.

  But where was Delancey? And why had he come uptown to talk to them? What was wrong with telephones and e-mails?

  And why was Boris heading into the park?

  Following Delancey? Then Peter remembered that in addition to being a cheapskate, Delancey was a bird-watcher. So he must have headed for the Ramble, thirty-eight acres between the Seventy-ninth Street transverse and Sixty-fifth, one of the most important birding areas in urban America. Peter knew this because Delancey had told him about it when he was trying to sell an Audubon Elephant Portfolio. In the Ramble, a man could get as easily lost as he could in a dense fog on Long Island Sound. Peter knew this because he had gotten lost in there himself.

  From the sidewalk, Peter watched Boris head toward the Ramble. Should he follow, or let Delancey fend for himself? Why should he help Delancey out of trouble? Delancey had put Evangeline hip-deep in it the night before. But tracking Boris might lead back to his handler. Or maybe even to the bag lady.

  So Peter started into the park, but he was wearing the same khaki slacks and blue button-down he’d been wearing that morning. Even without the blue blazer, that would make it easier for Boris to notice him. And if Boris noticed Peter . . .

  Then, just above the traffic noise, Peter heard a rattling, a thumping, a grunting.

  He turned and saw a big pushcart rolling toward him. It was loaded down with souvenirs—balloons, Empire State Building paperweights, miniature Lady Liberty statues, stacked T-shirts, piles of bumper stickers, and—yes—baseball caps. Yankees, Mets, the old Brooklyn Dodgers.

  Peter went up to the guy pushing the cart, but the guy kept going, as though he finally had some momentum and wasn’t going to stop.

  “How much for a hat?” Peter began to walk along beside him.

  “Twenty bucks, but I’m closed,” said the guy, a bulky young Hispanic with a healthy stream of sweat pouring down his cheeks. He had pushed the cart a long way, probably from somewhere well north of the park. “My permit’s no good above Fifty-ninth Street. They catch me sellin’ here and—”

  Peter usually carried his cash in his wallet, but when he was in New York, it went into his pocket. Easier to get at, because New York was a cash town: cabs, tips, sidewalk vendors. Cash was quicker, and fumbling with a wallet was never a good idea in a crowd. He pulled out the wad and peeled off a twenty.

  The guy said, “I told you, man, I’m closed.” And he kept pushing.

  So Peter slipped a C-note from the middle of the roll and curled it over a finger.

  The guy stopped, looked around, and said, “Which team?”

  “Yankees.”

  The guy handed over a hat. “I’m a Mets fan myself.”

  Peter put on the navy blue hat with the white NY on the front and pulled it down over his eyes. “I’m from Boston.”

  “Boston? So what’s this, some kind of initiation?”

  “No. It’s a disguise.” And he put on his sunglasses.

  “Yeah, well, nobody from Boston gonna reco’nize you.”

  Peter gave the guy a wave and went into the park.

  He had to dodge the bicycles and Rollerbladers speeding along the West Drive. Then he went up a rise, with the model boat lake on his right, took a few turns onto the paths that he thought Boris or Delancey might have taken, and suddenly found himself in the midst of dense plantings and tall trees, as isolated as if he were in the Adirondacks.

  That, of course, had been the idea in 1857, when Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux looked at a shantytown on some rock outcroppings and imagined this maze of interlocking pathways, like trails in a forest. They had not designed it for a foot chase, or a least not for the one doing the chasing.

  So, after a few minutes, Peter stopped, stood, and listened. He thought he might hear footfalls. All he heard was the dull hum of the city traffic and the nearby birdsong

  Then he got an idea. Delancey might have turned his telephone on. So Peter called him again and started walking and listening. If he heard a cell phone ringing somewhere in the maze of paths, it might lead him to Delancey.

  The phone rang a dozen times, then Delancey’s voice came on: “Not available. Out looking for books or birds (pronounced boids). Leave a message.”

  “Delancey, it’s Fallon, I need to talk to you. Please—”

  He came around a bend and walked into two people: an Asian man in a white sun hat who was pointing a pair of binoculars into the trees, and a New York woman in a kerchief and Birkenstocks who held a camera. Peter knew the woman was a New Yorker because she looked at him like he was bird dung and started scolding him. “For chrissakes will you turn off the goddamn cell phone?”

  “Sorry,” said Peter.

  “Can’t you see we’re birding? We got a Wilson’s warbler up there and you’re scarin’ the shit out of him.”

  “He gone,” said the Asian man. “Bird gone.”

  “See?” the woman snapped at Peter. “A man comes all the way from Japan to see a Wilson’s warbler on its spring migration, and you scare the damn thing off.”

  “Sorry,” said Peter, “but did either of you happen to see a man
go by?”

  “No,” said the woman, “we were looking at one of the rarest birds on the continent.”

  Peter tugged on the Yankees hat, just to let her know he was one of them, and kept talking. “There was a small man with a comb-over and a tall guy in a leather jacket.”

  “I see,” said the Japanese man. “With tattoo. Heart and arrow.” He pointed to his neck, then to the path that the man had taken.

  “Thank you,” said Peter.

  “Go Mets,” said the woman.

  Peter pushed on into that urban wilderness and tried not to remember the stories about the muggings and gay-bashings that used to happen in the Ramble. New York had changed a lot since he first started visiting in the seventies. Back then, it had all been kind of scary. Now there were only a few pockets of scary. And this surprisingly dense bit of forest was one of them, at least for the moment.

  Especially when he rounded a bend and saw a body.

  He stopped. No shiny comb-over. But—

  He took a few more steps and saw the tattoo. Boris loves Mary.

  He could not see blood, but from the look of things, Boris would not be having supper or sex with Mary or anyone else that night.

  Peter bent closer, to touch Boris’s jugular, and his cell phone rang. It was as startling as if Boris jumped up and grabbed him.

  Number blocked.

  “Fallon here.”

  “Just keep moving,” said the voice.

  “Delancey?”

  “Just keep moving.”

  Peter stood. “Joey Berra?”

  “Don’t look for me because you won’t see me. Just move out now. Walk straight ahead and turn left on the next path. It’ll take you to the Seventy-ninth Street transverse. Go home from there. And . . . nice hat.”

  Peter looked around once more. Then he did as he was told.

  When he reached Central Park West again, he tried calling the number that Joey Berra had given him on the business card.

  A generic female voice: The party is not available. Please call later.

  “WAS HE DEAD?” asked Evangeline.

  “I couldn’t tell,” said Peter.

  “Well, one thing’s for certain.”

  “What?”

  “My instincts were right about this being . . . something.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Something.”

  “Should we call someone? The police?”

  “Let’s not wave red flags,” he said. “Let’s see what happens.”

  Peter heard police sirens down in the street. He went to the window and peered across the tops of the trees surrounding the Museum of Natural History.

  “Were there witnesses?” asked Evangeline.

  “Two bird-watchers. If the police are interviewing them—”

  “Could they finger you if you weren’t wearing the Yankees hat and sunglasses? Pick you out of a lineup, maybe?”

  “A lineup?” Peter took off the hat and threw it on the sofa. “Let’s not find out.”

  He went into the bedroom and changed into blue jeans, a green golf shirt, and running shoes that he kept in her closet. When he came out, he felt better.

  Evangeline had clicked on the television. “It’ll be on the all news station.” She went into the kitchen and made an afternoon pot of tea. “I can see it now. A police sketch of Peter Fallon in the paper . . . in a Yankee hat. If they ran it in Boston—”

  “They’d make me give up my season tickets.” He went over to the dining-room table and opened his laptop.

  “And breaking news—”

  That got his attention.

  “A body has been found in the Ramble in Central Park,” said the announcer. “Police are on the scene. More as information becomes available. And speaking of Central Park, Manhattan dog walkers have a new space for off-leash canine hijinks—”

  Peter grabbed the remote and turned off the TV.

  Evangeline put two cups of tea on the table and sat. “Now what?”

  “We see where things take us. Starting with this—” Peter opened his e-mail and clicked on the name James Fitzpatrick.

  Afternoon Peter: I had NYHS librarian Karen Richards e-mail me the text of some of the material that was in the mahogany box. She said to come see her in the A.M. She knows your work and says any friend of mine is a friend of hers.

  Peter clicked on the icon that read: Newspaper Article.

  A scanned image appeared: an article from Rivington’s Royal Gazette, dated March 21, 1780.

  “This paper was published throughout the Revolution,” Peter explained. “Read by all the loyalists in New York, which was the British capital for most of the war.”

  “So they spread British propaganda?”

  “True, even though the publisher turned out to be an American spy.”

  HOPELESS ATTEMPTS TO FINANCE REBELLION

  The rebel government of New York, seated at Poughkeepsie, has joined with rebel governments in the other twelve colonies to recapitalize their obligations and replace the all-but-worthless rebel currency now in circulation.

  This plan, hatched by Robert Morris and others, encouraged by the likes of financier Haym Salomon, a Jew, asks holders of Continental dollars to turn them in at specified sites of redemption. For every forty dollars, they will receive one dollar’s worth of so-called New Emission Money, state currency that will be backed—so they say—by the full faith and credit of the Continental Congress which is, if you’ll pardon our opinion, a joke.

  It is a testament to how deep the rebel fortunes have sunk. Their money is all but worthless, their leadership is bereft of ideas, and their hope of victory dims with every new “emission.”

  Those of our readers unlucky enough to hold Continentals may decide to make the trip north to Poughkeepsie. If so, remember two things: As the roads above Kingsbridge are not protected by the Crown, beware of highwaymen. And undertaking such a journey means that instead of holding forty pieces of worthless paper, you will hold only one, because currency not backed by gold is “as worthless as a Continental.”

  And the rebels have no gold. So they will not defeat the Crown.

  “New Emission Money,” said Evangeline.

  “In debt now,” said Peter, “in debt then.”

  “Could these be the bonds that Delancey sold to Arsenault?”

  They looked at each other and a tumbler clicked.

  This kind of work could be like safecracking. Spin the dials, test the theories, read the articles, and then something would fall into place. And they would take a small step toward figuring out . . . something. Debt was part of this story. And old money. New Emission Money.

  “Let’s read the letter.” Peter clicked on the second attachment.

  Woodward Manor, March 25, 1780

  Dear Gil, The Lord still seeth all and loveth all. I have waited four years to do what we talked of. And now ’tis done . . . because men like Mr. Salomon have spoke of the country’s need. Our good deeds will come back to us many times over in the blessings of freedom, stored safe and sound in a mahogany box. I await your return to show you our investment in the future. Love, L. R.

  Evangeline read over her shoulder. “A love letter . . . about money?”

  “Looks like. And a promise kept, too.”

  And another tumbler clicked. With almost every item Peter had ever tracked, from the lost tea set to the first draft of the United States Constitution, there was an overarching tale of politics, business, and occasionally war, but there was a human story, too. It might be about a love affair or dream, a dream deferred or a dream fulfilled. It might have a happy ending or it might be a tragedy.

  “I wonder who L. R. was,” said Evangeline.

  “A patriot, it would seem.”

  “A patriot who lived in the house on the site of Zabar’s.”

  “As I said, there’s a lot of history in this neighborhood.”

  “I wonder who Gil Walker was.”

  “Fitzpatrick called him one of those tiny grains in the gre
at machine of history.”

  SIX

  April 1783

  GIL WALKER STOOD AT THE SIDE of the Jersey and stared down at the cutter that would carry him to freedom.

  He was thirty years old, but any who looked on him would have said he was forty . . . or fifty . . . or more. And he carried in his mind more horrible images than a man could conceive if he lived to a hundred.

  He did not even glance at the faces around him, not at the guards whose contempt had evolved into sullen anger because their war was lost and a few prisoners still survived; not at the oarsmen in the cutter, who may have heard stories of prison ship horror but now saw evidence in the flesh; and not at the faces of the other survivors.

  Gil seldom looked at faces because someone might look back, and if that happened, Gil might smile, and if he smiled, he might make a friend, and making a friend would bring only more pain when the friend died . . . as all of them did, as all of them had.

  One of the guards said Gil’s name.

  They all looked alike to Gil, all took their orders from brutes and were all brutes themselves. They had determined what little food the prisoners would be fed, what little warmth they would have in the freezing hulks, what little ventilation they would have in the summer heat, what few rags they would wear when their clothes wore out, what little succor they would enjoy when the dysentery came and they shit their guts out and died, or the pneumonia came and they coughed their lungs out and died, or the smallpox came and they fevered and shivered and erupted and died.

  Gil hated the guards, every last one of them.

  “So,” said this one, “you’ve lasted six and a half years in a place that killed most men in six months. Must make you proud.”

  “I was cursed.”

  “We’re all cursed, mate.”

  “No”—Gil put his foot on the ladder to freedom—“I was cursed for robbing a house. My curse ends when I die. You and your friends, you’re damned for all time.”

  It would not have surprised Gil Walker if the guard had thrown him overboard for that. A few years earlier, he would have hoped for such a fate. But no longer. Now that he had survived the ship, he expected that he would live a long life. He hoped only that there would be less pain ahead of him than there was behind.