"I'll call you when we have any news," Lapidus adds, his voice suddenly thick. Three hundred million dollars is too big even for him. When I glance over his shoulder, he seems more ragged than me and my brother...and the way he clings to the golden doorknob, it's almost like he needs a foothold. . As he pulls me away, Lapidus closes the door slowly. But at the last second…just as he turns around…just as he brushes his hand over his upper lip…I swear he's suppressing a slight smile.
"So he hasn't told you anything?" Charlie asks as we head down Park Avenue, weaving in tandem through the lunch crowd.
"Can we not talk about it please?" -say.
"What has...?"
"I said I don't want to talk about it!"
Charlie steps back with both palms up.
"Listen, you don't have to tell me twenty times, I've got better things to do anyway."
What do you want to buy first? I'm thinking of something small, but easy to hide... like Delaware.
This time I decide not to answer him.
-Than? Don't you like Delaware? Okay, what about Carolina?
I still don't answer.
"Come on, Ollie, show me some love…a hug, a shout, something.
He knows I'm too stubborn to bite my tongue, but he also knows that when I'm silent it's because my mind is on something else.
"Hooooooooooo, this is planet Earth calling Oliver!" Do you speak Spanish?
I go under the curb and cross 41st Street. It's only a block away.
"Do you think Shep will play tricks on us?" I ask suddenly.
Charlie laughs. That little brother laugh.
"Is that why you're shitting your pants?"
"I'm serious, Charlie. That may be the reason why he has agreed to meet with us. He could record our entire conversation and then he would just have to hand it over to...
"Ha ha ha… it's time to get on the tram and get out of Neverland. It's Shep we're talking about. He's not here to fuck with us. He wants that money as much as we do.
"Speak for yourself," I tell him. I don't want to know anything about that money. He just worries me that when the time comes, we won't be up to our eyebrows in "he said/we said."
"Well, let me tell you what, if it got to that point, Shep would be a complete jerk. I mean, the way it all turned out, we couldn't have done it without anyone's help. Even Shep knows. So, if he starts pointing fingers at us, it's clear we've got plenty of his fingerprints to point at him. Furthermore, we have no alternative; Shep is our only man on the inside.
I remain silent again. Charlie is right on that point. We're still missing a ton of information. Right now, as we cross 42nd Street and briskly approach the glass and brass doors of Grand Central Station, there is only one place we can enter.
-You are ready? Charlie asks, opening the door and leaning his body slightly as if he were a
Butler. He watches me closely to see if I show any signs of hesitation.
I stop at the threshold but only for a second. Before Charlie can raise the challenge, I walk in without looking back.
"Now we understand each other," he says.
"Come on," I say out loud, daring him not to be left behind. Only by the silence can I know what he is thinking. He can't decide if my act of bravery is genuine, or if I'm just anxious to get some answers. In any case, when I turn to examine the expression on his face, there's no mistaking that he's impressed.
At first we run through a claustrophobic, low-ceilinged underground tunnel. Then—like that moment when your car emerges from Brooklyn's Battery Tunnel and all of Manhattan appears before you—we go into the light... the ceiling rises, rises... and the marble-covered main concourse of Grand Station appears. Central. Charlie cranes his neck up to gaze at the twenty-meter arched windows along the left wall, and the blue-and-white zodiac mural that decorates the vaulted ceiling.
According to the clock in the center of the station, we only have three minutes left. I turn to Charlie, still running.
"What's the easiest way to...?"
"Follow me," he cuts me off and quickly takes the lead. He may have heard many times where we are going, but I have never been there. This place belongs to Charlie. With me hot on his heels, he turns sharply to the left, weaves his way through the crowd of passengers and tourists, and accelerates up a dozen steps to the lower level of the station.
"Now take it easy," I say, tugging at his shirt to slow him down the stairs. I don't want to set up a number.
"Yeah, like someone was watching," he says, raising an eyebrow.
Charlie leaps up the last three steps and lands with a thud that makes his shoes rattle against the concrete floor. His feet must have felt the impact inside the dress shoes, but he doesn't say anything. He hates I-told-you-so.
"Where to now?" I ask when I get to his side.
Without answering, Charlie continues to run through the lower level of the station, which now houses another food bar. Charlie's nose follows the scent of potato chips, but his eyes are glued to a left-pointing arrow at the base of an old tile sign: To Tracks 100-117.
"Here we go," Charlie says.
Along the lobby, we have the food bar on our left and the turn-of-the-century access to the tracks on our right. As we go, I count the doors. 108... 109... 110. At the end of the hall I see the sign: Tracks 116 and 117.
We pass through a door and find ourselves at the top of a high staircase overlooking the wide concrete platform. According to the schedule there is a train parked on track 116 to the right of the platform. To the left, however—on 117—there's no chance of any train coming. Not now, not never. To put it briefly, Track 117 does not officially exist. Okay, the space is there, but it's not an active pathway. For the past ten years, that space has been occupied by a long line of trailers prefabs.
"This is where you used to play?" I ask as we look through a lighted window at two construction workers inside one of the trailers.
"No…" Charlie says, heading toward a short passageway that opens up to my left. This is where we used to hide...
Seeing the confused look on my face, he explains:
"When I was in high school, Randy Boxer and I used to walk the platforms on Friday nights playing music for commuters. His harmonica, my bass, and the biggest potential audience this side of Madison Square Garden. Naturally, the cops would chase us when they saw us, but in the maze of stairs, the lower level offered the best places to disappear. And here, behind the 117, we met again to return to the fight.
"Are you sure there's no danger?" I ask as Charlie hurries through the filthy passageway that runs perpendicular to Track 117. It's not the passageway that stops me, but the metal door that stands at the end of it and the faded, brown words painted on it. : Employees only
Stop! Look! I listened! Hazard
Hazard. That's where I hit the brakes. And, as always, that's where Charlie picks up the pace.
"Charlie, maybe we shouldn't...
"Don't be scared," he exclaims as he grabs the doorknob. He looks at the rusty frame, pulls hard, and as the door opens, a sandstorm descends on us. Charlie gets into the middle of the whirlpool. And I find that I am all alone.
As I follow his steps into the adjacent space, we find ourselves in a huge underground station, standing at the edge of a group of abandoned tracks.
For Charlie it's a kind of homecoming.
"'Where the trains come to die,' Randy used to say.
Looking around I see why: the tunnel is wide enough to accommodate three sets of tracks, high enough for the old diesel trains to enter, and its roofs are blackened enough to show why they dispensed with diesels. Alongside the rusted rails and between the even more rusted braces, the floor is littered with condom wrappers, cigarette butts, and at least two used syringes. There is no doubt, it is an excellent place to hide.
"Close the door," Shep says from a little further up the platform.
"Nice to see you, too," Charlie says. Pointing over his shoulder, he adds, "Don't worry about the door, you can't hear anything from there.
Shep looks at him like he's not even there.
"Oliver, close the door," she orders.
I do not doubt it. The door closes with a muffled noise; the place is silent. We have fifteen minutes before someone finds out that all three of us left at the same time. I don't want to waste a second.
"Is the situation very bad?" I ask, wiping my soot-covered hands on my pants.
"Have you heard of the Titanic?" Shep asks. You should see what's going on up there; they are all about to explode. Lapidus is ripping off his ears and threatening to unleash the plagues of Egypt on anyone who leaks information to the public. Across the table, Quincy is yelling his head off over the phone to the insurance company and pounding on the calculator to determine the exact amount that affects them personally.
"Have they told the other partners yet?"
"There's an emergency meeting called for tonight." In the meantime, they're waiting for the Service to analyze the computer system and maybe find a clue where the money has gone from London.
"So they don't know where he is yet..." Charlie starts to say.
"…and they don't know it was us." Shep completes the sentence.
Not yet, at least.
That's all I need to hear. "Okay," I say, hands
supported on the hips.
Charlie glares at me.
He hates this position.
I'm not in the mood to listen to his comments, so I turn to Shep.
"How about we turn ourselves in?" -I ask.
-Than? Shep exclaims.
"The boy is scared," Charlie says.
"Oliver, we mustn't rush it," Shep adds. Even if a tornado is blowing now, things will finally calm down.
"Oh, so now you think we can bypass the Secret Service?"
"All I'm saying is that he can still work out," Shep says. I know the procedures of the Service. When it comes to money, it takes them at least a week to decide if they can find it. If they do, we are delivered with a full explanation of what happened. But if not... why walk away from the loot? Forget about the small change... three hundred and thirteen million dollars means more than one hundred and four million for each one.
A smile spreads across Charlie's cheeks. Seeing the angry expression on my face, he steps forward and begins to dance. Nothing exaggerated, just a few movements of the shoulders and a few steps with the feet. Deliberately meant to annoy me.
"Mmmmmm- mmmmm," he croons, shaking his head in the best Stevie Wonder style. It smells delicious!
"I assure you there is no reason for us to turn ourselves in to the police," Shep insists, hoping to convince me. If we play our cards right, we can get it.
"Are you listening to what you're saying?" -say-. We can't win. Think about what you said when all this started: "It's a perfect crime when no one knows it happened; it's only three million dollars," that was your big speech. And where are we now? Three hundred and thirteen million dollars has disappeared... the secret service has parked in front of our houses... and when the press finds out about all this... that's not counting whoever wanted the money in the first place... when I'm done this whole world will be glued to our ass.
"I'm not denying it," Shep says. But that doesn't mean we should do hara-kiri on the first day either. Besides, Lapidus won't let this happen. If he does, the other patrons will start scrambling for the exit. It's like when that hacker stole ten million bucks from Citibank a few years ago; They did everything in their power to prevent the news from reaching the newspapers...
"But it eventually made all the headlines," I interrupt. Things always end up being known. Secrets no longer exist, we are not in our fifties. Even if Lapidus manages to withhold the information for a month... between reports, insurance company claims and litigation... he will eventually find his way out. And then we'll meet again where we are now, three cousins who...
A noise is heard and the three of us are silent. It's not like the random sounds that echo from the other pathways.
Whatever the source of that noise, it came from where we were.
Turning his head to the left, Shep examines the peeling concrete walls, but can't see anything. Just some long abandoned electrical boxes and some faded graffiti.
"I think he came from there," Charlie whispers anxiously as he gestures toward the shadows that cover the vaulted ceiling. Between the lack of light and the stains produced by the accumulation of soot, each arch is a floating dark cave.
"Have you been followed?" Shep asks.
I think for a second.
-No I dont think so. Unless… Shep puts his index finger to his lips signaling silence. Turning his neck repeatedly this way and that, he surveys the rest of the space with military precision. But it doesn't take years of Secret Service training to know what my guts are telling me. We all experience the same out-of-body sensation when we are being watched. And as Charlie nervously looks around him, a thick silence settles on the abandoned station and we can't help but feel that this place no longer belongs to just us.
"Let's get out of here," Charlie says.
But just as he turns toward the door, another noise is heard. Not a dull sound. It's more like a creak. I look up instinctively, but it's not coming from the ceiling. Or the walls. It's below.
There is another crack and we all look down.
"Behind you." Charlie points to Shep. He turns and examines an area of wooden planks that are embedded in the floor like a miniature life raft.
-What's that? I ask quietly.
—Vertical passageways. Underneath the wooden planks are passageways that lead to the lower tracks," Charlie explains. This is how they move heavy equipment and generators; they remove the timbers and lower them through the holes.
He tries to look relaxed, but from the wrinkles in his forehead—and the way he backs away from the planks—I know he's scared to death. And he is not the only one.
"Can we get out of here, please?" -I ask.
Shep leans to the ground and turns his head, trying to peer between the wooden planks. It's like looking inside an underground air conditioning duct.
"Are you sure the noise was coming from here?" -Question-. Or is it an echo that comes from somewhere else?
Charlie changes course and walks over to take a look.
"Charlie, get away from there," I tell him.
Another crack. Then another one. More spaced at first, then closer together.
Shep looks up and scans the entire tunnel again. If it's an echo, she has to start somewhere.
I quickly walk over to Charlie and grab his shoulder.
-Come on! I say as I head for the door.
Charlie follows me, but doesn't take his eyes off Shep.
Through the wooden planks, the rhythm of the noise quickens. Like a soft scratch...
-Come on! - I insist.
... of someone walking ... no, as if he was running. The sound does not come from here. It comes from outside. I stop dead and slip on the dusty ground.
"Charlie, wait!"
He walks past me and turns to look at me like I've lost my mind.
"What are you trying to...?"
At that moment there is a click in a corner and the door is thrown open violently.
"Secret Service, no body move!" a burly man yells; he walks into the abandoned station and points a gun at my face.
I back instinctively. The man stops and I can see him perfectly. Mr. Chubby. The chief investigator.
—He has said that nobody moves! yells a blond-haired agent who enters behind the first. Like his partner, he points his gun at us, first at me, then at Charlie, then back at me. All I see is the black barrel bore.
"We don't…" Charlie tries to say something, but can't.
My throat closes up and I feel like I've swallowed my tongue.
-Behind! the bull-necked agent yells, striding into the cavern.
As we slowly back up, my legs feel like they're made of jelly. I look at Charlie but that only makes things worse. His face is white as flour and his mouth is wide open. Like me, all he can do is stare at the gun.
"Officer..." I stammer.
-Agent! the bull-necked man corrects me.
"Sorry...I just..."
"You must be Oliver."
"How does he know...?"
"Did you really think you could get out of the bank twice without being followed?"
"What the hell are you doing, Rooster?" Shep yells. He was about to take them. He just needed...
"Don't give me that shit!" Rooster barks, and Shep falls silent.
Before we can react, Gallo steps between Charlie and me, his shoulders forcing us apart. Not too far apart. Just long enough to point his pistol at Shep. I'm not stupid, Shep," says Gallo. I know what you were up to!
My God, he thinks that we...
"It's not what it seems," I stammer as Gallo turns to me. We were about to head back to the bank! I swear, that's where...
"Enough," Gallo interrupts me. He has a thick Boston accent that doesn't apologize for any syllables. It's over, Oliver. Do you understand? He doesn't even wait for an answer. The only thing that can make your day better is if you save us a headache and tell us where you've hidden the money.
It is a simple question. Reveal the secret, hand over the money and take the first step to get our lives back. But the way Gallo has asked the question... the suppressed anger in his voice... the way he grits his teeth... anyone would say he has a vested interest. I've seen enough divorce settlements to know something's brewing.
I look at Charlie, who nods slightly. He has seen it too.
"Oliver, this is not the time to be a hero," Gallo warns me. Now I will ask you one more time: Where have you hidden the money?
-Do not tell her! Shep yells. "He shut your mouth!" exclaims Rooster. "When you've told him, don't let us
nothing will remain! Shep continues to yell. It is our only trump card to negotiate!
"Do you want to see a bargaining chip?" Gallo explodes, his face flushed with anger. Standing between me and Charlie, he raises the gun and points it directly at Shep.
"Come on, you must be kidding," Shep says.
-That makes? Charlie asks, taking a step forward.
-Do not move! Gallo yells, swinging the gun at Charlie's face. My brother steps back with his hands up. DeSanctis…" Gallo yells at the blond agent standing by the door.
"I'm aiming at him," DeSanctis says, pointing his pistol directly at Charlie's back.
Unable to turn, Charlie looks at me for perspective on what's going on behind him.
Don't move, I tell him with my eyes.
"Don't tell him," he replies. He tries to play strong, but I see the way he breathes. He lacks air.
"This is your last chance, Oliver," Gallo warns. Tell me where the money is or we'll start with Shep and continue with your brother.
Charlie and I look at each other. Nobody says anything.
"It's a bluff," Shep says. He would never do something like that.
Gallo keeps pointing at Shep, but he doesn't take his eyes off me.
"Are you sure you want to take that risk, Oliver?"
"Please put the gun down..." I implore.
"Don't be fooled," Shep says.
—. They're secret service, not assassins. They are not going to kill anyone. He turns to the blond agent standing by the door and adds, Isn't that right, De Sanctis? We all know the procedure.
Gallo looks at DeSanctis, who returns one of those subtle nods that I usually reserve just for my brother. I know that gesture. Storm clouds begin to form. There's a lot more here than a little wasted money.
Without opening his mouth, Gallo takes the safety off the pistol.
"Come on, Jim," Shep says, laughing. The joke is over...
But as we all instantly understand; Gallo is not laughing. He grips the gun tightly and his finger slips on the trigger.
"I'm waiting, Oliver.
I am completely paralyzed; I have the feeling that someone has sat on my chest. It's hard for me to breathe. If I don't talk, he'll pull the trigger. But like Shep said... if I hand over the money, we lose our only chance. Great... it's better than playing with our lives.
-Tell her! Charlie yells.
-Do not tell her! Shep warns me. Turning to Gallo, he adds. Can we just get this over with? I mean, you already got us, what else do you expect...?
The two men face each other and Gallo smiles slightly.
Shep's expression changes completely. He is very pale. As if he had seen a ghost. Or a thief.
"You want to keep the money, right?" -He says.
Rooster does not answer. He just points at you.
-Do not do it! -I beg-. I'll tell you where the money is!
"So, all that dough was yours?" Shep asks. Who got you into this? lapidus? Quincy?
But the answer does not come. Rooster licks his lips.
"Bye, Shep."
"Jimmy, please…" he implores and his voice cracks. You don't…" She can't get the words out. Big and burly as he is, his entire body trembles. He has tears in his eyes. Not in the head...
-No...! Charlie yells.
Rooster does not hesitate. Simply
he pulls the trigger.
-Please no...! -scream.
It's too late. The shot hisses like a dart thrown from a blowpipe. Then another. And other. All three explode in Shep's chest, sending him staggering back until he hits the concrete wall. He puts both hands to his wounds, but his blood spills everywhere. He covers his hands and it gushes out of his mouth. Shep tries to breathe, but only manages to come out with a wet, empty wheeze. Yet he remains standing... looking at Gallo... at all of us... with the eyes of a dead man. They're wide open with fear, like a child who knows he's hurt but hasn't made up his mind to cry yet. He stumbles, he tries to step forward...try to hold his...come on Shep...you can get it...
Gallo raises the gun again but understands that he doesn't need to. Unable to support his own weight, Shep's legs buckle and, as if he were a giant oak tree, the big, burly man falls forward, directly onto the cracked floorboards. And when he slams into them, as the noise spreads through the dark tunnel, the wood shakes, but he manages to support his body.
"Shep! Charlie yells, running, falling to his knees next to Shep's prone body. You are well? Please, man... please, you have to be okay! Looking through a sea of tears, Charlie taps Shep's shoulder, looking for some reaction. Nothing, not even a spasm. Come on Shep... I know you're here... please, you have to be here! Ignoring the pool of blood trickling down Shep's body, Charlie slides her hands under his shoulder and waist and tries to turn him over.
"Charlie, don't touch it!" -scream.
"You two... no body move!" rooster yells.
Charlie lets go of the body and Shep falls face down again. The pool of blood is already beginning to seep between the cracks in the wooden planks. I look away and feel the vomit rise up my throat. Then I see the syringe next to Shep's head. Charlie sees her too.