The lawyer looked all wrong in a hoodie and sweatpants, jittery about the sudden callout. Ben met him on the Upper East Side outside the Carlyle, under the awning. Ben only knew the place because he’d attended a kitchen fire there once, figured the lawyer would know it because he was rich. Ben remembered the fire, people standing on the street crying with worry about the hand-painted murals on the walls. Some woman with an ancient poodle on her lap had sat out the whole fire in a dining room, drinking martinis, unmovable. The panic had receded, morphed into an appreciation for them putting the blaze out, then morphed again into an annoyance for how wet they were getting the carpet while dragging the hose out.
The Carlyle’s blaze, and the threat to the fancy art, made the evening news. Two kids died in an e-bike fire up in Harlem that same day but fuck them, the network only had room for so many fire stories.
Ben stepped into the dark outside the awning to meet the lawyer so they wouldn’t be on the doorman’s camera. The guy had dropped a couple of pounds just in the day or two since Ben had seen him at the art gallery. The cancer was hungry.
Ben put the key in his bony palm and the lawyer stared at it.
“Make the call,” Ben said.
Ichh glanced from the key to Ben.
“What?” He surveyed the street, looking for help. “Now?”
“No, let’s wait for the fall. It’ll be prettier then.”
“But I can’t—”
“Yes you can,” Ben said gently. He inched closer to the lawyer. The little man shrank away. “Pick up your phone. Dial the Freeman son. Tell him you need access to the safe tonight.”
The lawyer looked at his watch. It was big and gold and he had to slide it around his wrist to get it to face up. “But it’s eight o’clock.”
“You’re a smart guy. Yale, right? You’ll think of something.” Ben let the man see into his eyes, and what he saw in there did more to get him moving than Ben’s hand sliding into the weighted pocket at the front of his own hoodie ever could. The lawyer dialed, and Ben pulled out a cigarette and lit it and listened to the call.