Chapter 4 - THE IRON BOX AT SOUTH STATION
The Polish church did not belong to the Archdiocese of Boston anymore.
It had been deconsecrated in ninety-four, its stained-glass windows sold off to an architectural salvage firm in Portsmouth, its copper roof stripped by addicts until the rainwater ran straight through the choir loft into the basement where the Polish fraternal society used to hold its Sunday breakfasts.
The rain was coming down in long, gray sheets that bounced three inches off the cracked asphalt of the parking lot when Mateo brought the secondary car—a battered black Buick with commercial plates—to a stop behind the rusted chain-link fence.
"Two cars at the corner of West First," Mateo said, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror. "Dark sedans. Crown Vics with the municipal antennas on the trunks. Eleanor didn't wait for the state troopers, Grant. She called the transit police. They have jurisdiction over the rail spurs behind the sugar house."
"Transit cops don't carry shotguns into abandoned churches," I said, checking the slide on the .45 I had taken from the lockbox beneath the Buick’s driver's seat. The oil was clean; the magazine clicked into the grip with a sharp, heavy *clack*. "Those aren't transit cops. Those are Victor's boys from the security firm in Braintree."
"They know what’s in there?"
"They know Victor told them anyone coming out of this cellar with an iron box gets three in the chest and a one-way trip to the bottom of the Reserved Channel," I replied, opening the door and stepping into the deluge.
The cold hit me like a wet towel across the face. My shirt was thin—a gray poplin work shirt Mateo had kept in the trunk—and within three paces the fabric was plastered to my ribs, cold and transparent.
The side entrance of St. Stanislaus was an arched oak door studded with iron nails that had oxidized into orange rings against the wood. The lock had been jimmied years ago, replaced with a length of rusted log chain held together by a five-dollar master lock that someone had already severed with a bolt-cutter.
Someone had been here before us.
"Mateo," I hissed, flattening myself against the limestone casing of the portal.
Mateo was already behind me, his snub-nosed revolver low against his thigh, his breath coming in short, white puffs that vanished instantly into the wet dark.
"Fresh grease on the hinges," he murmured, nodding toward the lower iron strap. "Not more than an hour old. Victor’s people have the location, Grant."
"They don't have the key," I said, my fingers closing around the cold brass in my pocket. "The lockbox is double-valved. If you take a torch to it, the magnesium lining inside incinerates the papers before the drill hits the tumbler. My father spent twenty thousand dollars in seventy-six to ensure Eleanor couldn't open his safe with a locksmith."
We moved inside.
The nave smelled of wet pigeons, rotten horsehair from the collapsed kneelers, and the sour chemical stink of spray paint. The third station of the cross—*Jesus Falls the First Time*—was a high relief carved from Caen stone, half-broken now, the figure of Christ lying face down on a plaster road that had turned the color of ditch water.
At the foot of the pillar, the pine floorboards had been ripped up with a crowbar, revealing the rough fieldstone foundation of the original 1880 chapel.
A man was kneeling in the hole.
He was wearing a yellow rain slicker with the hood pulled back, a battery-powered work lamp sitting on a milk crate beside him, casting a harsh, white beam against the rusted face of an iron chest set into the stone. He had a cordless hammer drill in his hands, the carbide bit screaming against the steel with a high, mechanical shriek that filled the empty church with the sound of a dentist's office.
Standing above him, leaning against the broken altar railing with a cigarette between his teeth, was Victor Vance.
"I told you, Leo," Victor said, his voice flat and bored above the racket of the drill. "The second plate is hardened manganese. You aren't going to get through it with a masonry bit. We should have brought the hydraulic wedge from the yard."
"The wedge weighs three hundred pounds, Victor," the man in the slicker grunted, leaning his weight onto the drill until the motor began to smoke. "You want to carry that up three flights of rotten stairs while the rain is coming through the roof?"
"I don't carry things," Victor said. "I supervise."
I didn't give them a warning.
In the old days, my father would have cleared his throat, or he would have sent a boy to tap them on the shoulder with a hickory stick. But my father had died with his lungs full of glass from his own windshield, and my wife was bleeding out in a church cellar three miles away while my sons fought for thirty percent of the oxygen in two plastic boxes.
I stepped out from behind the pillar and fired once.
The heavy .45 round hit the drill casing dead center. The battery exploded in a shower of blue sparks and black plastic fragments, the torque ripping the machine out of the man’s hands and breaking two of his fingers with a sharp, dry *snap* that sounded like celery.
The man screamed, rolling backward into the floor joists, clutching his hand to his yellow slicker.
Victor didn't scream.
He didn't even drop his cigarette. He moved with the terrifying speed of an old boxer who had spent thirty years learning how to duck before the punch was thrown. He dropped behind the marble railing, his hand coming out of his coat with a nickel-plated automatic, three rounds chewing through the plaster of the pillar eighteen inches above my head before I could re-acquire the sight picture.
"Grant!" Victor called out, his voice echoing off the high, broken ceiling vaults. "You're late. Eleanor expected you forty minutes ago. She said if you showed up with Mateo, we were supposed to tell you that Dr. Chen has already been replaced at St. Catherine’s."
The cold behind my ribs went dead.
"He’s lying," Mateo hissed from the shadows by the baptismal font, his revolver barking twice, the lead chipping long splinters off the marble balustrade where Victor was hunkered down.
"Ask him about the ambulance, Grant!" Victor shouted back, firing two more rounds through the nave, the muzzle flashes lighting up the faces of the broken plaster saints like strobe lights at a dance hall. "The transport from Mass General left Cambridge fifteen minutes ago. Your mother signed the transfer order herself. If you shoot me, you'll never find the garage where they're taking them."
"He’s lying," I repeated to myself, but the doubt was a hook in my throat, tearing at the meat.
I didn't fire again.
I circled to the left, through the ruins of the side chapel where the statues of St. Anthony and St. Jude had been smashed into piles of gray dust. The floor groaned beneath my boots—water-logged spruce that felt like sponge—but I kept my balance, my shoulder brushing the wet brick of the outer wall until I was twenty feet behind the altar.
Victor was still watching the center aisle. He was down on one knee, his gray hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, his hand steady on the nickel-plated gun, waiting for Mateo to make a break for the stairs.
I came up behind him through the priest’s sacristy.
The door had rotted off its hinges; I didn't need to turn the handle. I simply stepped through the gap, leveled the .45 at the back of his neck, and said, "Drop it, Victor."
He didn't drop it.
He turned, the gun coming up with that same smooth, professional economy, but he was seventy-one years old and I had spent fifteen years surviving the men my father couldn't buy.
I stepped inside his guard, my left forearm hitting his wrist with enough force to drive the nickel-plated gun into the plaster wall, where it discharged once into the floorboards. My right hand, still holding the .45, came across his jaw in a short, heavy arc that broke his cheekbone and sent him sideways across the steps of the high altar.
He landed hard, his ebony cane skattering down the marble steps, his pearls—no, they were Eleanor’s pearls, a single strand he had taken from her dressing room to pay off the transit sergeants—breaking across the stone like a handful of hail.
"The key," I said, putting my boot on his throat, right over the carotid artery, pressing down until his tongue began to turn gray behind his teeth. "Did you open the box?"
Victor choked, his hands clawing at the leather of my boot, his eyes rolling back until the whites were visible beneath the lids.
"No..." he gasped, the word whistling through his crushed teeth. "The... the lock... it has... the dead-man switch..."
I pulled my foot back six inches, just enough for him to draw air.
"Where is the ambulance going, Victor?"
He laughed—a wet, rattling sound that brought a bubble of pink foam to his lips.
"To the... to the terminal, Grant," he whispered. "Pier Forty-two. The one you wouldn't... you wouldn't lease to the Dutch. She’s... she’s meeting the federal prosecutor there at two. They have the... the maritime warrants. She’s trading... the ledger for the boys."
"What ledger?"
May you like
"The real one," Victor whispered, his eyes fixing on the iron box in the floor. "The one... your father kept on her. The one that shows... she killed your brother Julian."
***
