19 Purchase Street

by Gerald A. Browne

  After a short ways she turned in at Number 19 and drove the vertical chrome-slatted grill of the Corniche up to within inches of the outer gate. She gave the headlights several impatient blinks.

  A security man came from the gatehouse. Rather than have him shine a light in on them, Leslie clicked on the interior light. The security man was one of those who had survived the battle of Ellis Island. His expression almost betrayed his surprise. He asked their names as a matter of course. Were they expected? When told they were not, he excused himself and went back inside the gatehouse. He checked the allowed list, saw neither of their names on it.

  Gainer saw the security man inside the gatehouse on the telephone. Day before yesterday, there they were being chased all over Ellis Island and New York Harbor with intent to kill, and now, Gainer thought, here they were driving in like a couple of friends come unexpectedly to call. Well, not exactly.

  The gates swung open.

  The security man hunched down to the car window and smiled. “Mr. Hine said to say he’s glad you dropped by.”

  Leslie proceeded slowly up the drive. When she parked near the front of the house the main entrance door was already open and two security men were waiting. There was nothing subtle about their frisks this time. One of the security men thoroughly patted Gainer from shoes to collar. The other ran his hands over Leslie in an efficient manner. A .25 caliber automatic was found in the zipper pocket of Leslie’s handbag. It was a Baby Browning identical to the one Ponsard had in Monet’s garden.

  “Oh damn,” she said working her eyelashes, “I forgot that was there. This must have been the handbag I carried last time I was out at night with some of my jewels on.”

  A reproachful glance from Gainer.

  Contrite eyebrows from her.

  He had told her absolutely no weapons.

  The tiny automatic was confiscated.

  “I want that back later,” Leslie said.

  One of the security men led the way, the other followed, with Gainer and Leslie between. Down the hall, past the portraits of Bostonian saints, pink-fleshed and stern. When they came to the little library, Leslie was told to wait there. She complied, had no other choice, actually, as one of the security men used his bulk to press her into that room.

  Gainer was taken further down the hall to the study. He was left there with Hine. Just he and Hine and the door closed. Gainer had expected at least one security man would be within grabbing distance of him at all times. Maybe, he thought, the boisserie paneling on the walls had a hole through which a gun was kept on him. One wrong move by him or a certain signal from Hine and phutt.

  Hine was reading Barrons, the financial weekly. He had his jacket, vest and tie off. The cuffs of his white silk shirt were rolled twice up and the front of it was unbuttoned four down. He closed the paper, folded it once and tossed it into the brass wastebasket beside the desk. “Sit if you like,” he said instead of hello.

  Gainer sat.

  “The money …” Hine began.

  Gainer wanted to play his number and leave, not have to listen to a lot of whiteshoe wailing. But he listened.

  “… was a sight for my skeptical eyes.”

  Gainer’s chin and attention went abruptly up.

  “For a while there I thought you might be letting down on your end,” Hine told him.

  Gainer, trying to recover, said “never” with a shake of his head.

  “You came through. That’s all that matters.”

  What the hell was Hine talking about, “came through”? “Where’s the money now?” Gainer asked, offhand.

  “Upstairs, all put away.” Hine seemed to enjoy saying it.

  “Don’t I get a receipt?”

  Hine only smiled.

  “But the money was all there?”

  “Except that you held back for yourself.”

  “Fifty million.”

  “Is that how much you kept?”

  “That was our deal.”

  “You counted the fifty, I presume.”

  “Twice.”

  Hine’s eyes clouded. “The amount that was thrown away in the park was from your end.”

  “No. I considered it an expense.” Gainer was improvising, doing his best to keep it going to learn as much as he could … Evidently the money was back and he was getting credit for it. Translated, that meant Chapin had somehow managed to return it without giving himself away. The scheming little bastard no doubt figured it was how he could turn off the heat and have the fifty.

  Wait a second … It occurred to Gainer that he hadn’t told Chapin about the extra ten million Hine had volunteered in the graveyard after Darrow’s funeral. In fact he hadn’t seen Chapin since then. Which meant Chapin had sliced out only forty million and that was what Hine was now hitting on. Hine had gotten back more than expected. Gainer thought: If only he hadn’t said he’d counted it twice. What he should have said was a silly little oversight had caused ten million to be returned with the bulk. Then when this meeting was over, maybe Hine would have gone upstairs and bundled up that ten for him, But now Hine must be upset. He, Gainer, had just said that without question he’d held back the fifty million, he hadn’t made a mistake in his count as Hine must have assumed. Which to Hine meant his calculation of the total Balance was incorrect.

  Gainer was right. Hine had always prided himself with knowing within a hundred thousand or so how much The Balance was. Unlike his predecessor Darrow, who had pretended to know while really having only a vague idea, a hundred million one way or the other. Hine hated the thought that his own sure figures were obviously off. The only remedy for that was to do a total count. What a chore that would be. It would take days, disrupt the routine and, if he was to believe the count, it would require his constant presence. Hell, Hine thought, he just wasn’t in the mood for a total count. Such a damned mundane task. He was in too good a mood, except for the discrepancy in the count. He’d let it slide for the time being, do it soon. The big issue was settled, he’d pulled it off, gotten the appointment he wanted.

  The only item on the well-cared-for surface of the desk was a gold Mont Blanc pen. Hine spun the pen as though it was an indicator. It came to a stop pointing at Gainer. “Is that the only reason you’re here tonight,” Hine asked, “to make sure the money was received?”

  “No.”

  “I must say I wish you’d chosen some way of hauling it other than a gasoline truck. The Balance Room smells like an Exxon station.”

  Give it a try, Gainer told himself. Right across to Hine he said: “There was a mix-up regarding my part of the money. Ten million of mine was inadvertently put in with what you got back.”

  “But you said—”

  “It was included by mistake after I counted it twice.”

  Hine concealed his relief. As usual he was right. “Are you certain?”

  “Yeah. It’s easy to be certain about ten million.”

  “According to our count you got what was due you.”

  Lying prick, Gainer thought. “There’s a ten million fuckup in your favor,” Gainer insisted.

  “I think not.” Hine capitalized each word.

  Gainer had the urge to go over the desk for Hine. He remembered the boiserrie. “The other matter I want to take up with you is what happened last Sunday when we went for the money.”

  “I heard.”

  “Your Mr. Sweet and company almost whacked us out.”

  “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “It was all Sweet’s idea?”

  “He wasn’t very bright … or nice, as you know. Somehow, he got it all mixed up, thought that that was the way to please me, poor fellow—”

  “You’re slime.”

  Hine was unfazed.

  “You’re what people on the street call a scumbag,” Gainer said.

  Hine spun the pen again.

  “You got Darrow’s job, didn’t you?”

  Hine’s silence said yes.

  “So now you figure you can have me whac
ked out any old time.”

  “As a matter of fact, I can.”

  “Kill me, you kill yourself,” Gainer told him.

  “Your opinion.”

  “I brought along something you better hear.”

  Hine stood abruptly. “I don’t have time for any more of this. You came here attempting to cheat me out of ten million. When you didn’t succeed you resorted to insults—”

  “Got a cassette player?”

  “You’re low, Gainer. You’re not merely below the salt, you aren’t even on the table.”

  “Piss on your white shoes,” Gainer told him. “Get me a cassette player.” He took a cassette cartridge from his breast pocket, placed it on the desk.

  Hine considered the cassette for a moment, and then Gainer, who had the look of a bettor with a sure thing. “That, I suppose, is your alleged Southampton tape.” He got a portable cassette player from a nearby cabinet. Loaded the cassette and pressed the play-switch, smiling like a man sure he was calling another man’s bluff. But not so sure. Not anymore.

  When Hine heard his own voice he raised the volume, leaned forward in his chair. As he listened he matched the words with visual recall—Gainer and himself bareass that day in that dip of sand. Not a sandal or a stitch on, yet somehow Gainer had recorded everything they’d said. Every syllable was clear with only the sound of the ocean faint in the background.

  “How did you manage that?” Hine asked, trying to sound more curious than disconcerted.

  “It’s all on there,” Gainer told him. “The entire proposition just as you made it.”

  “I can’t say I like my voice—”

  “I do.”

  “The quality is sort of reedy. Do I really sound like that?”

  Gainer told him: “If anything happens to myself or Leslie, a copy of this tape will be heard. Believe me.”

  Hine sat back, arms crossed. “Heard by whom?”

  “I know some connected people, including a certain made guy who’s close to the top. The way I’ve arranged things, he’ll see that the tape reaches the right ears.”

  “Mafia? Organized crime people? Unpronounceable names and garlic breath? Or perhaps shiny-suited Jews with ugly complexions or liver-lipped niggers. Are they the sort you’re threatening me with?”

  Bluffing, Gainer thought.

  Hine laughed around his words as he said, “God, you’re naive.”

  Gainer decided Hine wasn’t bluffing. But Hine had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure he wasn’t wired when they’d met in Southampton. Why all that unless there was someone Hine wouldn’t want to hear what was on the tape?

  “You’re pathetic,” Hine said. He stopped the tape, popped out the cartridge and tossed it to Gainer. “Here, go play it for the boss of the bosses.”

  Gainer didn’t catch the tape, let it fall to the floor. If not the Mob, who, he was wondering. Who?

  AT that moment upstairs in The Balance Room.

  Halfway up a stack of three million dollars on a shelf containing many other such stacks. Among all those millions upon millions.

  A microchip.

  It was one-tenth the size of Hine’s little fingernail and not nearly as thick. A sliver of a square stuck to one of the bills, covering Benjamin Franklin’s right eye like a patch. A simple device, as microchips go. Not nearly as complex as, for example, the 256K RAM Random Access Memory chip used in some computers capable of handling 262,144 pieces of information. This chip sandwiched by money in The Balance Room was designed with only one circuit, intended to accomplish only a single purpose in response to a remotely transmitted impulse.

  There it was now, the impulse.

  The microscopically arranged wires of the circuit reacted, sent an electronic charge to the point where all the wires converged. The body of the chip itself was impregnated with sulfur, making it very flammable. The charge ignited the chip, exploded it into a blue flame.

  Seven identical incendiary devices elsewhere among the money were also set off. At once the small but intense flames found the gasoline fumes that still permeated the money. Fire ran from shelf to shelf, around the room.

  The outside air flowing in through the ventilating system acted like a bellows. The heat sensor alarm could not alert anyone because it was turned off.

  Hundred dollar bills, layer after layer of sheaf after sheaf of them caught and curled into pieces of black paper ashes.

  The steel alloy panels inside the walls and floor of The Balance Room prevented the fire from spreading. They also kept it from being discovered ten or fifteen minutes earlier. The Balance Room was like a covered incinerator receptacle until the flames ate around the roof of the north wing.

  A security man on his regular rounds looked up to the roof and saw the smoke, the unmistakable licks and colors of the flames. He ran into the main house shouting fire.

  When Hine heard it he rushed from the study, left Gainer there.

  Gainer’s instinctive reaction was to hurry out, but by the time he’d reached the door he realized there was no close danger. He didn’t care if the place burned down to its wine cellars. He went at a leisurely pace down the hall to the little library. To Leslie.

  Apparently she also couldn’t have been less concerned. She was sort of straddling the end of a fat arm of a black leather Chesterfield sofa. She had been fussing with her hair, with the couple of wisps that lay like gathers of fine letter Cs above her right eye.

  “You started it,” she said.

  “I thought you might have.”

  “Maybe lightning struck the place.”

  “No. It’s nice out tonight, not a cloud.”

  “A bolt still could have struck.”

  They went out the french doors to the terrace and around, in the dark, to the front of the house. They found Horridge’s wicker furniture beneath the big copper beech. The crystal decanter of port and some used glasses were on the table, as was an ivory and appliqued silk fan Horridge had been using to shoo insects. A good spot for Gainer and Leslie. From there they would have a splendid view and yet be removed from the scurry of emergency activity.

  It was evident to them now, of course, what part of the house had caught fire. The flames were reaching high above the roof, appeared to be slapping against the night sky.

  Gainer poured two ports, didn’t mind that he swallowed a couple of dead-drunk gnats with his first gulp.

  As for Leslie, someone would have thought her a pyromaniac the energetic way she was using Horridge’s fan to encourage the blaze.

  The roof fell in, causing a fusillade of sparks to fly up, rather festively. The air all around was filled with the charred fragments of money that would disintegrate at the slightest touch.

  All the fire trucks of the Town of Harrison growled up the drive. Their huge tires sank in and slashed across the lawns, crushed the tended hedges and bordering flowerbeds to get at the north wing. The firemen braced with their hoses, arched in tons of water. They extinguished the glow. They made The Balance Room hiss.

  But they were three billion, one hundred five million dollars too late.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  HINE was frightened to his marrow about how Boston would view it.

  All he could do was bide time there at Number 19, await word or some indication. He’d gotten nothing one way or the other from Horridge, although Horridge had not seemed upset by the fire or the loss. “How distressing,” was the extent of Horridge’s reaction. Horridge had flown out at dawn, while The Balance Room was still smoldering. Bound for Boston to present the facts and exonerate him, Hine hoped. After all, he had been recommended by Horridge. And he had been Custodian only a few hours when the catastrophe occurred, could hardly be held accountable.

  Boston would see that side of it, he thought but didn’t really believe.

  For nearly a week there had been no flow.

  No money brought, none to be carried.

  And it was not a good sign that Hunsicker had not shown up to hear his order to elimin
ate Gainer. Hunsicker hadn’t even bothered to phone with an excuse. If anyone knew the temperature of the undercurrents on the inside, it was Hunsicker and his people.

  Hine called his uncle-in-law, Phillip Whitcroft. Asked with a please for a meeting, stressed how important it was.

  Phillip Whitcroft sounded most receptive. Certainly he would make time to see Hine, and Hine was not to worry meanwhile. Whatever the problem he would direct his efforts to solving it. Just come ahead.

  The call loosened Hine.

  Next morning he dressed in his best Boston conservative suit and had a large breakfast to hold him. Made off in his Porsche. Took the Merritt Parkway North.

  As he passed exit 53N at Shelton he felt a slight discomfort.

  As he came down the long grade and onto the Housatonic Bridge it hit him in the chest. Like a stomp of some giant beast, crushing all the breath from him and replacing it with pain. His arms from shoulder to tips of fingers, coursed with electrical sensations. Lost all their strength. His hands dropped from the steering wheel.

  The Porsche, on its own, picked up speed. It drifted toward the metal divider of the bridge, scraped along that for quite a ways, then swerved abruptly. Crashed into the guard rail with such impact most of its front end was shoved back into the driver’s seat.

  The accident did not kill Hine.

  He died of natural causes …

  … from breakfast.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  GAINER was in Zurich.

  Tending to loose ends.

  Alma, for one. Gainer had lunch with her at the Dolder Grand Hotel, where he was staying. She was still employed there, still keeping books.

  Alma was not drawn with grief as she had been the last time she and Gainer had met. Nor did she have to smoke to keep her angry hands occupied. Evident to Gainer now were some of the qualities in Alma that must have attracted Norma. The emotional honesty of her, her neat, pretty, comforting way.