On Saturday mornings, Danny Fallon cooked breakfast. Sheila slept late. The kids watched cartoons. Tom worked around outside. Maureen baked bread. And everyone ate in Danny’s kitchen.
Peter filled his plate with bacon and eggs and his mother’s bread. Evangeline had an English muffin and coffee.
“No wonder she’s so skinny,” said Tom Fallon.
Maureen told him to be quiet.
“Hey, Peter,” said Danny, “remember when we were kids and Pa would ask us at breakfast what we were gonna do that day to make our first million?”
Peter nodded.
“If he asks you this morning, you might have an answer.”
The two brothers laughed, and a smile cracked across Tom Fallon’s face. None of the women at the table thought it was very funny.
“Peter.” Evangeline’s tone was enough to strangle the laughter. She had not slept well. She had spent the night thinking about her grandmother, her father’s death, and her family’s involvement with the Golden Eagle Tea Set. She had resolved nothing. “What are you planning for today, Peter?”
“Not much of anything. I’m going over to Cambridge to get a gray suit. Then I’m going to the New England Genealogical Society to look at the Pratt family tree. After that, I’m coming back here to wait for Jack Ferguson’s call.”
“What do you need a suit for?” asked Danny.
“For tonight. And Dad’s charcoal-grey suit will fit you. Just make sure you have a white shirt and a dark tie to go with it.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
Evangeline saw a trace of skepticism on Danny’s face. She had hoped to see more. She thought that a grown man with a wife and two children might exert a steadying influence on his younger brother. She was disappointed.
Peter turned to his father. “What kind of terms are you on with Uncle Dunphy?”
“The usual. Lousy.”
“Well, put the arm to him, because I need a hearse and a coffin for tonight. The biggest coffin he’s got.”
“What on earth do you want with a coffin and a hearse?” screamed his mother.
“I was thinkin’ that myself,” said Tom.
Evangeline knew what Peter was thinking, and she didn’t like it.
Peter stood. “You said you’d help me, Dad.”
Tom Fallon frowned. His bushy eyebrows came together to form an unbroken strip of hair across his forehead. “And I’m not supposed to ask questions?”
“Evangeline’s grandmother is being held in a rest home on the North Shore. If we can get her out, she’ll give us the key to the tea set’s location.”
Evangeline shook her head. “There has to be another way, Peter.”
“None I can think of that won’t take days,” he said. “We go in and out. The Pratts won’t do a thing to stop us, because they can’t afford the police interference themselves.”
“I don’t know about this,” said Tom.
Peter crouched down beside his father. “With you or without you, I’m going through with it. Help me, and I’ll help you.” He turned to Evangeline. “It’s nine o’clock. Ferguson said we should open the Green Shoppe today, just to make it seem that we’re getting back to normal.”
Evangeline finished her coffee. She wasn’t sure if she would go to the Green Shoppe or the police. She and Fallon left together.
“I don’t know about this,” said Tom Fallon to his wife.
“What can you do to stop him?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Danny slammed his fist on the table. “He’s got brains, and he’s usin’ them. I’m for that.”
“I’ll admit it’s the first time I’ve seen any initiative out of him in a long time.”
“That’s a harsh thing to say, Tom,” chided Maureen. “He’s shown initiative all his life. Now he’s just showin’ craziness.”
“And there’s laws against diggin’ up people’s cellars,” said Sheila.
“We’ll worry about that when we find the thing,” Danny responded. “Peter’s doin’ somethin’ most people wouldn’t have the balls to even think of, Dad. That’s what it takes, sometimes, if you want to get out of the hole. He deserves some help.”
Tom Fallon studied his massive hands. “I told him last night I’d help him.”
“You told him last night you’d help him, and I was glad to see you standin’ behind him,” said Maureen. “But if you don’t think this is right, Tom, don’t do it.”
“Me and Sheila could use the money, Dad.” He glanced at his wife. She didn’t say anything. She knew that once his mind was set, Danny would do what he wanted.
“Even if we found this thing,” said Tom, “the state would probably try to take it away from us.”
“They wouldn’t take all of it,” said Danny. “I was just readin’ about a big Spanish galleon they found down off Jamaica or someplace. They had to give the country half the treasure. We do that, and we still have a million and a quarter. Nice work if you can get it.”
Tom Fallen thought hard. “It sounds to me like risky business.”
“Sittin’ in your livin’ room catchin’ radiation from a color TV is risky business, but if you want to watch the Red Sox, you’ll sit.”
“Don’t be exaggeratin’,” said Sheila.
“He may be right,” said Tom softly, almost bitterly. “You have to take risks. A man works all his life, tries to build a business and keep to the straight and narrow, and he ends up in a corner. When one son comes along with a chance to turn everyone’s life around, and the other son is ready to pitch right in, I guess he’d be a fool not to join them.”
“Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,” said Maureen.
“Am, c’mon, Ma. Say an Our Father that we find the thing. Then you can pray the Rosary all winter in Florida.”
He was wearing bathing trunks and sunglasses. His wife was rubbing oil into his hairy shoulders. His butler was preparing bloody Marys. William Rule reclined on his balcony three stories above Lewis Wharf and sipped espresso. Behind him, the water of Boston Harbor flashed silver in the morning light. Power boats left tiny trails of foam in the water, and bleach-white sails stretched in the breeze. Later, Rule would be going out in the Peter, his twenty-five-foot cabin cruiser, to do some fishing while his wife stripped off her bikini and soaked in the sun. At the moment, he was awaiting a visit he had looked forward to for many years.
The door buzzer rang, and Edward announced the Pratts.
“Send them in,” said Rule.
“Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for stopping by.” Rule extended a hand. Calvin and Philip Pratt offered perfunctory greetings.
“Espresso, or something stronger? Not that there’s anything much stronger than the espresso I drink.”
“It’s the weekend,” said Philip Pratt expansively. “I guess I can have a bloody Mary before noon.” He sat down on a deck chair. He was wearing tennis shorts, jersey, and sneakers. He wanted Rule to believe that he was completely confident about retaining control of Pratt Industries and that he intended to spend all of Saturday on his tennis court. He looked casual, but Rule had outdone him.
Rule was wearing bathing trunks, sunglasses, and a film of tanning lotion. He had the Globe sports page in his lap. “A bloody Mary sounds good. I’ll have one, too. What about you, Calvin?”
“We haven’t come for drinks and friendly chit-chat,” said Calvin. “We’re bringing you a final offer, and we think you’ll want to consider it before Monday.”
Rule waved Edward away with the drink orders, then he smiled. “If you’ve come here askin’ me to keep your old man’s picture on the wall, forget it.”
“On Monday,” said Calvin, “we will have the tea set in our possession. I can guarantee it.”
“The museum has the tea set,” said Rule. “How can you have it?”
Calvin ignored Rule’s response. “We are offering you a final chance to back out. Drop your challenge now, and no one but the people seated on this balcony and my cousin’s personal staff will ever know that your Golden Eagle Tea Set is a forgery. If you don’t, we’ll reveal the fraudulent tea set.”
Rule laughed softly. Philip Pratt saw the sweat and suntan oil glistening in the fold of fat around Rule’s belly.
“I got two things to say. First of all, you’ll have to produce this tea set that’s supposed to be buried in the Back Bay before you can prove that mine’s a fake. And second,” he spoke with feigned, mocking indignation, “I’m really disappointed to think that the sons of Boston’s most famous family, and one of them a lawyer, have sunk so low.” He shook his head and sucked his teeth. “Whatever happened to integrity?”
“Let’s cut the shit, Rule,” said Philip Pratt angrily.
Rule leaned back and locked his hands behind his head in an attitude of complete relaxation. He had Pratt mad already.
“Don’t lecture us on integrity—”
Calvin interrupted Philip. He preferred to do the talking. In a meeting of this sort, he presented himself with a professional calm that usually unsettled men like William Rule. “We would like to avoid a scandal. The company has been suffering of late, and you know how sensitive the stock market can be when a company is not doing well. If a new board chairman is elected and the stockholders discover that he built much of his fortune on art frauds, the value of Pratt Industries stock might fall even more dramatically.”
Rule laughed again. “Then you’d better not tell anybody about it. Just let me take over and run the show the way it ought to be run.”
“We don’t want to damage any reputations, Mr. Rule—yours, the company’s, or Lawrence Hannaford’s. That’s why we’ve kept quiet this long and tried other means to convince our stockholders that you’d be bad for the company. If you’ll consent to surrender your proxies, we’re perfectly willing to keep this matter among gentlemen.”
“Gentlemen.” Rule repeated the word softly, almost to himself. “I’ve been called a lot of things by a lot of people, but this is the first time that one of the Back Bay Pratts has ever called me a gentleman.”
Edward arrived with the bloody Marys.
Rule took his and held it up. “To gentlemen. At last.”
“We have the utmost respect for you, Mr. Rule.” Calvin Pratt tried not to choke on the words.
“As you should.” Rule stepped to the balcony railing, folded his hands behind him like a sea captain, and gazed out at the harbor. “You know why I like it here? Because I can look out and imagine the clippers and cargo schooners that used to fill this harbor, and I can feel like a part of history. Yeah, that’s right.” He liked the phrase. He turned to the Pratts and repeated, “A part of history. An empire builder. Just like the Cabots and the Lowells and the Kennedys.”
Philip Pratt sipped his drink and tried not to listen.
Rule smiled. “Just like the Pratts. Except for one thing—my empire’s already built. I’m takin’ it away from you. On Monday, I’ll be elected chairman of the board. On Tuesday, I’ll move to have the president replaced. On Wednesday, you’ll be playin’ golf.”
Philip Pratt stood. He had come with a bluff. He would not leave until he was satisfied. “Save your daydreams for someone else, Rule. You’re not moving us out.”
“Monday morning, I start a new job, and once I’m in that office, don’t ever expect to get me out. My old man’s picture is gonna hang over that fireplace for the next two hundred years. And you want to know why?” He aimed a finger at Philip Pratt and forty years of hatred rasped out of him. “Because you built your fortunes on the sweat of men like my father, and when they asked you for fair treatment, you cut them down.”
Rule looked at Calvin. “Pratt Winter Ball, 1933. You remember it, Cal? You must’ve been six or seven at the time. You remember the labor demonstration? The leader of that march was my old man.” He turned to Philip. “And the man who had him killed was yours.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Philip Pratt softly.
“But you’ll pay for it. I promise you that.” It was a moment of triumph, of bitter satisfaction, for William Rule. He folded his arms on his chest and watched the expressions. He saw bewilderment, confusion, and, on Calvin’s face, dim recollection. He smiled. “Chew on that for a while, gentlemen.”
“We will retain the office,” said Calvin firmly.
Rule ignored Calvin’s response. “They say the bluefish are making an early run this year, gentlemen. I want to be out of the harbor before the tide turns. Good morning.”
The Pratts left.
From his balcony, he watched them climb into a silver BMW parked on the wharf. Then he gazed out toward the harbor and wondered if the Pratts were close. Maybe they had a line through the student. He had been seen with the girl. He had talked to the Pratts. He had snooped around Hannaford. He had even witnessed the bartender’s murder. Rule decided not to take any chances. It would not be unusual for the witness of a gangland shooting to be shot himself.
Evangeline drove the Porsche to Cambridge. Peter wanted it to seem that they no longer cared if anyone was following them. They didn’t speak until she had pulled up in front of his apartment.
“Do you want me to wait?” she asked.
“No. Go to the Green Shoppe. I’ll see you at Quincy Market around one.”
Evangeline drove off toward Harvard Square. Then Fallon saw the black Oldsmobile swing past. He was surprised to see that Soames was riding with Buckley in the front seat. The Pratts were getting serious. He looked down Massachusetts Avenue and saw Henry Dill duck into a doorway.
Maureen Fallon answered the telephone in South Boston.
“Is Peter Fallon there?” It sounded as if the caller was in a subway station.
“Who’s calling, please?”
“Jack C. Ferguson.”
Maureen remembered the name. “He’s gone to Cambridge, to his apartment.”
Ferguson hung up before he swore. He didn’t want to frighten Fallon’s mother, but Rulick’s men had come after him again, and he figured they would be going after Fallon. He heard a train rumble through downstairs. He was at Park Street Station. It would take him ten minutes to get to Harvard Square. He didn’t have much time.
Evangeline circled through Harvard Square and back down Mt. Auburn to Central Square. She parked at a meter near the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Western Avenue, near the Cambridge police station. She left the motor running because she didn’t know if she was staying.
The black Oldsmobile drove past and parked on the other side of the square. Soames got out of the car.
Evangeline didn’t see Soames. She didn’t see anything. She was composing the story she would tell Lieutenant Maughan, a Harvard classmate who had studied law enforcement in graduate school and stayed in Cambridge to practice it. Nothing had happened within his jurisdiction, but she knew he could help her.
Soames was across Central Square and moving toward her car. He reached for the handle, and she saw him. The Porsche swung out of the parking spot, turned right, and headed down Western Avenue. She lost the Oldsmobile in the side streets between Central Square and the river, parked near Dunster House, and was back in Fallon’s apartment a few minutes after she had left him. He was listening to the tape of his phone messages when she arrived.
“I was followed,” she said.
“I know.”
“Soames tried to get into my car in Central Square.”
“What the hell were you doing in Central Square? I thought you were going to work.”
“I was thinking about going to the police.” She looked him straight in the eye, but she didn’t know him well enough to predict his reaction.
There was none. He simply stared at her. He couldn’t believe that she would end it just when they were closing in.
“I couldn’t do it,” she said. “At least not until we talked.”
“We’ve already talked, Evangeline. If you end it before we find that thing, don’t ever expect to know me any better than you do now, because I won’t know myself.”
“You can’t play a dangerous game with yourself and other people and expect that you’re going to learn how to get from one day to the next.”
The phone rang. It rang again.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
Fallon shook his head. “It’s probably Professor Hayward. He’s been calling for three days. I don’t want to talk to him.” Fallon hit the button on his telephone recorder, then played the message back.
Even on the tiny speaker, they heard the tension in the voice. “This is Ferguson. You’re in trouble. Don’t go out of the apartment, and don’t answer your door. If you’ve heard this message, pull down your shades.”
The shades in Fallon’s apartment snapped down. Ferguson stepped out of the telephone booth and looked across the street. He didn’t know the man behind the wheel of the late-model Chevy, but he knew the man who was entering the apartment house. He had seen the slender body, the receding hairline, and the gaunt, pockmarked face before. He knew that under the tweed sportcoat, the man carried a .22 caliber pistol.
Ferguson had to help them. As a rule, he worried about Ferguson first and let other people take care of themselves. He didn’t want to cross that street. He wanted a good stiff drink.
Fallon looked at Evangeline. They both heard the footfalls in the stairwell. Fallon took the baseball bat out of the closet. He didn’t know what help it would be. He didn’t know what was coming up the stairs. He stepped closer to the door. He cocked his head and listened. He shifted his eyes toward Evangeline. She was frozen; tension crystallized in the air around her.
The man with the pockmarks reached the second floor and stopped. He took a silencer from the pocket of his tweed jacket and screwed it onto the muzzle of his Smith & Wesson .22. He looked down the hallway—front doors and emergency escapes for four apartments. Fallon’s was the first on the right, and Fallon was the assignment. The man didn’t want to kill the girl. He had orders not to kill the girl. But she had gotten herself into the middle of it. If she was in the way, he would have no choice.
Jack Ferguson saw the neck of a long, thin wine bottle protruding from a trash basket. Green Hungarian from a California vineyard, and a few ounces still sloshed in the bottom of the bottle. He held the bottle to his lips. He was tempted to drink, but he didn’t. He started across the street.
“Go into the kitchen,” said Fallon softly. “Wait until I’ve got them inside, then open the fire door and run like hell.”
She said nothing. Without taking her eyes off Fallon or the door, she backed slowly into the kitchen.
In the hallway, the man began to walk again. Very slowly, very cautiously.
Evangeline could hear the footsteps. She was petrified. She stood with her back hard against the refrigerator door and her arms drawn tight around her. The footsteps grew louder. She dug her fingers into the gasket so she would not tremble.
Jack Ferguson stumbled on the curb beside the Chevrolet. He put the bottle to his lips, but he didn’t drink. Then he pulled down his fly and leaned against the car. He was glad he was frightened. He didn’t have to wait at all. His stream hit the side of the car and washed down the dust on the rear quarter panel.
A broken nose and a crew-cut skull appeared at the window. “Hey, you fuckin’ rummy, stop pissin’ on my car.”
Ferguson didn’t stop.
The man started to get out of the car, and Ferguson smashed the wine bottle into the side of his head. The man was stunned. Ferguson took the bottle in both hands and swung. Two short, brutal strokes. He broke the broken nose again and fractured the block-shaped skull. Then he pushed the body back into the car and reached under the left armpit. He pulled out a .45 caliber automatic pistol. He took the morning newspaper off the seat, placed the pistol inside it, and went into the building.
In the hallway on the first floor, he pulled up his fly. The front of his pants was covered with urine. He looked up the stairs. Something inside him said not to go up. He wasn’t fighting for himself. He was sticking his neck out. Only fools stuck their necks out.
The man with the pockmarks pressed Fallon’s buzzer. The electric sound snapped through Evangeline and sent chills down Fallon’s neck. Fallon positioned himself against the wall by the door. If he released the lock, he’d have a clear shot when the door opened.
Evangeline gripped the refrigerator and wished she could climb inside it. Her whole body was shaking.
The man buzzed again.
From where she stood, Evangeline could see the end of the baseball bat swing slowly through the air as Fallon cocked it. She realized that Fallon was endangering himself for her while she cowered in the kitchen. Something outside the door was threatening both of them. It had entered her world and driven her into a corner, and if she did nothing, it would destroy her.
Fear became anger, then resolve. She released her grip on the refrigerator. She opened a drawer and grabbed a butcher’s knife. She appeared in the archway between kitchen and living room with the knife held threatening at her hip.
“Where do you want me?” she whispered.
Fallon studied her face for a moment, then gestured to the other side of the door. She took her position.
They heard someone else coming up the stairs. Fallon put his ear to the door. A familiar voice was humming “Sweet Adeline.”
The gunman stepped away from Fallon’s entrance, picked up the newspaper in front of the opposite apartment, and pretended to read.
Jack C. Ferguson staggered up to the second floor. His left kneecap was vibrating, and inside the newspaper, his index finger was squeezing the trigger. He hesitated for a moment at the end of the hall. He saw that the man was not holding his gun. He stopped staggering and took four crisp steps down the hall.
Rule’s assassin recognized another item on his hit list. He reached for his pistol, but he was too late. The Boston Globe exploded into his chest and blew him halfway down the hall.
Not one door opened on the second floor.
“It’s me, Ferguson.”
Fallon peered through the peep hole and opened the door.
“You two all right?” asked Ferguson.
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s go.”
Fallon threw his suit over his arm, Evangeline dropped the knife on the floor, and they stepped into the hallway. They were both trembling—equal measures of fear and relief. As they walked past the body, Evangeline tried not to look. She wanted to think of it simply as a force, not a man. But Fallon stopped.
The shot had spun the gunman around and he lay so that most of his face was obscured. Fallon sensed something familiar about the physique. He started to kneel beside it.
“He’s dead,” said Ferguson. “Let’s not hang around.”
They hurried down the fire escape, out of Henry Dill’s view, and headed for the subway.
Philip and Calvin Pratt sat beside the tennis court on the roof of the Back Bay house. Philip had wanted to play a set to work off his frustrations, but Calvin had been too distracted to return a serve. Instead, they sipped beers, and Calvin told the story of the 1933 Winter Ball.
When Calvin finished, Philip shook his head. “And now, he wants to pay us back for something that happened over forty years ago.”
“He may yet back out. The power of blackmail lies in its threat, in the knowledge that someone has or may have the power to destroy you. As long as Rule fears us—and I’m certain that he does, despite the bluster—there’s a chance he’ll back out, even if we don’t have the tea set.”
“A very slim chance.”
“Slim, but better than announcing to the world that the tea set is a fraud. Once we’ve done that, Rule will have nothing to lose by charging ahead, and he still might find enough votes to overthrow us.”
“I still think Rule is too seasoned to back out in the face of a few empty threats. He knows that it may well be impossible for us to find the tea set, because he’s looked for it himself.” Philip laughed. “Or maybe he knows it will be impossible to find because he’s already found it. The tea set in the museum has been officially accepted by a lot of people, from Revere experts right down to members of our own family.”
None of the discussion was new to them. They were simply talking to fill up the time and distract themselves from the heat. They had forty-eight hours and no solutions. Calvin hoped Rule might crack. Philip was relying on Isabelle to find the missing link in Sean Mannion’s family history.
After a while, Philip spoke again. “I think we should be preparing to lose on Monday.”
“If it happens, I’ll immediately begin to structure a tender offer and we can try to buy a controlling interest in the stock. Christopher wanted us to do that from the outset.”
“I’ve never considered a tender offer, Calvin, and neither have you. It would mean buying outright another twenty percent of Pratt Industries. It would force us into alliances that we’ve never cared to make with banks and bonding institutions, and they’d end up controlling Pratt Industries.”
For a time, they sat silently and listened to the noise of the city traffic.
Philip picked up his tennis racket and a ball and absent-mindedly began to bounce the ball on the strings. “No, William Rule was the first person ever to make a serious challenge against us, and I believed we could turn him back, either by convincing the stockholders to stay with us or by scaring the bastard out of his hairpiece. So far, we’ve failed on both counts.” He paused. “Maybe the mistake was made back in 1876, when Artemus Pratt decided to go public.”
“Then, Pratt Rail and Mining, or whatever it was called back then, would never have grown into Pratt Industries,” said Calvin. “Even if we lose, we’ll still have all the stocks, bonds, and comforts that Pratt growth has provided for us. And there will be other worlds to conquer.”
Philip laughed. “Other worlds to conquer.” He bounced the ball higher on the racket and tried to turn the racket over between bounces. “How can we expect to conquer other worlds when we can’t even hold onto this one?”
“Philip,” Calvin spoke sternly. “If you believe that you’ve lost, you have.”
Philip continued to bounce the ball. “No pep talks, Calvin. I’m just trying to face facts. Twenty years ago, we would’ve rattled our saber, and a nobody like Rule would’ve run for cover. Now, we have to try bluff and blackmail.”
“Don’t start getting philosophical on us, Phil. Not yet, anyway.”
“But consider the absurdity. The president of a major corporation, his father’s hand-picked successor, and unless he can find some clues from a three-hundred-year-old poem, he’ll be out in the street on Monday.” He stopped bouncing the ball and thought for a moment. “Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad after all. Maybe it’s time I remade my life. I’ve always dreamed of stocking up the Gay Head IV and trying to sail her around the world. Maybe this year.”
Isabelle appeared at the roof entrance and walked across the court. She was smiling. She seemed excited. “We’re closer than ever,” she announced. “I’ve been reading birth certificates all day, and I think I’ve done it. Sean Mannion’s last known descendant is a man from South Boston named Kenny Gallagher.”
Tom and Danny Fallon followed Peter’s instructions with care. At nine-thirty that night, Danny dressed in a gray suit and dark tie. He and Tom sneaked out the back door of their duplex, made sure that no one was watching them, and walked to Kelleher’s Funeral Home. With Tom following in a rented Mercury sedan, Danny drove the hearse to a spot in the South End near the Herald-American newspaper plant.
Fallon, Evangeline, and Ferguson were waiting for them under a light rain that added more humidity to the heat. Peter, in a dark suit, and Ferguson, in his usual rags, climbed into the hearse. Evangeline got into the rented car; white shoes, stockings, and the hem of a white dress showed beneath her raincoat. Tom Fallon wished them luck and watched them as they headed for the expressway. Then, he went home to wait.
Peter had tried to prepare Danny for Jack Ferguson, but Ferguson had to be seen to be appreciated. For a moment, Danny stared at the big man on the other side of the front seat. Then Peter introduced them.
“You’ve got a damn nice hearse here.” Ferguson greeted Danny with a friendly handshake and a broad smile, and Danny warmed up to him.
“We had a helluva time gettin’ it,” explained Danny. “Uncle Dunphy had a shit fit when we asked him to lend us a hearse. So Dad asked Dunphy who gave him the loan to buy the funeral home, and Dunphy came around, although he made us change the plates so the hearse couldn’t be traced.”
“Nice idea,” said Ferguson. “This whole thing’s a nice idea. I gave my approval the minute I heard it.”
“Your approval?” Danny sounded surprised. “Which one of you guys is the boss?”
“We’re partners,” said Ferguson. He was beginning to like the concept. He had always been a loner. “Now that you’re in it, you’re a partner, too. Every partner gets to have a say, but since I been lookin’ for five years, and your brother’s only been at it a week, I think my say counts for a little more.”
Danny smiled. “Just so long as we find it, I don’t care who says what.”
“That’s the way to talk.” Ferguson liked a positive attitude. He reached across Peter, who was sitting in the middle, and slapped Danny on the knee.
Danny grinned. “You know somethin’, Jack? You don’t smell half as bad as I expected.”
Ferguson laughed.
Evangeline got to Lynnewood Manor ten minutes ahead of the hearse, at about eleven o’clock. It had stopped raining. She tucked her hair up under her nurse’s cap and put on her glasses, a pair of heavy hornrims which considerably changed her appearance. She took off the raincoat, smoothed out the wrinkles in her nurse’s uniform, and headed to the entrance.
The nursing shift changed at eleven o’clock. The central desk would be surrounded with white uniforms and Evangeline might have a chance to slip past.
She stopped at the foot of the steps which led into the reception hall. For a moment, she thought of the madness of it all. But she was committed now. She knew that the only way out was straight ahead. She would recover the tea set and learn the truth about her family’s relationship to it. She did not want to spend her life wondering what had killed her father and her brother. She refused to spend her life wondering what might come to her door. She had always relied on herself. She would rely on herself to end it.
She smoothed the uniform once more and reminded herself to act confident. If she looked nervous or self-conscious, she wouldn’t have a chance. She took a deep breath and strode up the steps. The reception area was a large, circular room, paneled in gumwood, with comfortable furniture scattered all about, with recreation rooms and library opening onto it. The main desk was located beside the hallway that led to the back of the house. A dozen nurses and orderlies, part of the evening shift, clustered near the desk, and Evangeline had to walk past them to reach her objective.
She stopped briefly just inside the door. No one paid special attention to her. No one seemed to be waiting for her. She knew she could make it. Then she wondered if her grandmother had been moved, leaving no need for a guard at Lynnewood.
A nurse’s aide walked past and said hello. Evangeline realized that she was hesitating. She smiled pleasantly to the aide, then crossed the reception area. As she approached the nurses’ desk, she looked straight ahead. If anyone stopped her, she planned to tell them she was a private nurse called in on short notice to care for the man in bungalow eighteen; Fallon had gotten the name from the lunch list. But no one stopped her. Although a nurse or two glanced up, they were all busy with clipboards and doctors’ reports, and the staff was large enough that new faces were not conspicuous.
Evangeline walked crisply down the hall. She felt her heart pounding as the adrenaline coursed through her. She had passed the first obstacle. She did not look back.
She glided past four patient rooms to the solarium at the back of the house. The solarium was in darkness, but two floodlights illuminated the porch on the other side of the full-length windows. She had been hoping for complete darkness. She put on her raincoat again. It was navy blue and would make her less visible.
She stepped outside and hurried to the end of the porch. One of the floodlights was directly above her, but its beam angled outward so that she was in shadow. Just beneath the floodlight, the telephone wire ran from the main building down to the gatehouse. It was exactly where Tom Fallon had anticipated she would find it, at the corner closest to the gatehouse, about eight feet above the porch.
She carefully stepped onto the railing, which brought her within reach of the wires. She gripped the corner of the building with her right hand and balanced herself precariously on three inches of wood. She didn’t look down. She didn’t want to see the twenty-foot drop to the doctors’ parking lot. With her left hand, she carefully reached up toward the wire. She didn’t look up. She was afraid of losing her balance. She found the wire, then brought her hand back down, reached very slowly into her pocket, and froze.
Someplace below her, a door opened and a man walked out of an entrance on the basement level. Evangeline listened as the man moved up the sidewalk a short distance and stopped. It seemed to her that he was standing directly beneath her. She felt her knees begin to tremble. She hoped she wouldn’t fall. Then, she heard keys jangle. A car door opened, an engine kicked over, and the man drove off.
Evangeline forgot her fear of heights. She wanted to get down from that railing, and fast. She pulled a set of wire cutters from her pocket, reached up, and snapped the telephone line. She jumped down and hurried to the other end of the porch, where the drop to the ground was much shorter. She climbed over the railing and lowered herself into the shrubbery, where she left her raincoat. She smoothed her dress again and started down the lawn to the gatehouse.
In the gatehouse, two guards were playing gin rummy. They were Lynnewood Manor security people, an old man and a boy of about twenty, both unarmed.
“Excuse me,” she said cheerily.
Both men looked up, and both looked as though they liked what they saw.
She smiled. “Hi. They sent me down from the main desk to tell you that your phone’s out of order. They’ll have it fixed in a while. They also want to tell you to be expecting a hearse soon.”
“Second one today,” said the old man.
“I haven’t seen you before.” The young man wasn’t suspicious. He was trying to be charming.
Evangeline acted interested. She took out a cigarette, and the young man offered her a light. She stepped back into the middle of the driveway. The young man followed her with his lighter. She put her hand gently on his, drew the flame into the cigarette, the smoke into her lungs, and almost choked.
“Nothing like a butt to tear up your lungs,” said the young guard.
Evangeline agreed between gasps. She hated cigarettes, but the lighting of the cigarette was her signal for the Fallons. She thanked the guards, turned, and walked back toward the main building. When she was out of sight of the gatehouse, she cut back across the lawn and strolled past bungalow sixteen.
Nurse Harriet Burnham, a carbon copy of her sister, Nurse Drexel, was in Katherine Carrington’s bedroom preparing her patient’s nightly injection. Katherine Carrington was preparing to make her nightly scene. Katherine Carrington’s bodyguards, dressed as orderlies, were watching a Kojak rerun on television.
The gatehouse guards waved the hearse ahead, and Peter directed Danny to a small lot near the bungalows. Evangeline saw the hearse pulling through the gate, and she hurried down the walk to meet it.
Peter jumped out of the car. A smile broke across his face when he saw her. He had been worried about her.
“We can do it.” She spoke firmly, more to convince herself than Fallon. Then she described the arrangements at the bungalow.
“Were there any Pratt men watching the door in the main house?” asked Peter.
“Not that I could tell.”
“Then I guess we’ll be up against it with the guys in the bungalow.” He sounded as though he wanted to meet them.
“Let’s stop shootin’ the shit and get goin’,” said Danny. “The more I stand around thinkin’ bout this, the stupider it gets.”
They opened the back of the hearse, and the coffin rolled out as smoothly as a drawer in a file cabinet. They placed it on its folding metal cart and started up the path to bungalow sixteen. They walked slowly, almost respectfully, with the cart wheels clicking rhythmically over the joints in the concrete.
An old man peered out of his bungalow to see a white angel leading two dark figures and a coffin through the night. He watched the cortege curiously, then moved toward his door, as though he were thinking about joining the vision.
Danny saw the man outlined in the pale-blue glow of a television set. “We’ll be back for you later,” he whispered.
“Shut up,” rasped Peter.
“He didn’t hear me.”
“I did,” came the voice from the coffin.
“You shut up, too,” said Peter.
Evangeline knocked on the screen door of bungalow sixteen.
One of the guards appeared. He studied her from behind his Fu Manchu mustache. “Yeah?”
“Hello. I’m…” Her nerves caught the words in her throat. She swallowed. “I’m a special for an old gent next door. He’s in the tub at the moment and I can’t seem to get him out. I was wondering if one of you gentlemen could help me.”
“We’re private. Call the main house if you want an orderly.”
“My telephone isn’t working, and if he stays in the tub much longer, I’m afraid he’ll start to pucker up.”
The guard glowered at her, then he turned to his partner. “I’ll be back in a minute, Benny.”
Evangeline heard the Fallons moving into position in the darkness behind her. For a moment, she pitied the guard.
He unlatched the screen door.
“Thank you so much,” said Evangeline. She swung the door wide open and stepped out of the way.
The coffin hit the guard full force in the groin and knocked him halfway across the room. Before Benny could react to the sight of a coffin flying through the door, the lid flew open and Jack Ferguson aimed a pistol at his head.
“Move or make a sound and you’re dead. And you better believe me, because anybody ridin’ around in a coffin is fuckin’ crazy to begin with. Got it?”
The other guard rolled to his feet.
“And tell that friend of yours that if he don’t stay right where he is, I’ll leave you all over the wall.”
Benny saw the glint in Ferguson’s eye. He believed everything Ferguson said. “Back off, Sonny.”
In the bedroom, Nurse Burnham grabbed the telephone. Katherine Carrington reached over and pulled the wire out of the wall.
Peter heard the scuffle. He stepped into the bedroom, and the nurse started to scream. He couldn’t let her scream. He came to her and clamped a hand over her mouth. She tried to bite him, to wrestle away from him, but he held tight. He wasn’t going to let her ruin everything. She began to swing and kick at him, and he tried to tell her she would be all right.
“Cold-cock the bitch,” said Katherine Carrington. Her own language surprised her.
Fallon threw the nurse into a headlock and dragged her into the living room. Wrestling with her wasn’t quite as exciting as fighting with Harrison, but he had to settle her down. He hauled her right up to the muzzle of Ferguson’s .45. When she saw the man behind the gun, she stopped moving.
“That’s better,” said Ferguson, still sitting in the coffin.
“Easy work, scarin’ women,” said Sonny.
“Even easier to keep an old lady penned up when she don’t want to be,” said Ferguson.
They bound and gagged the guards and the nurse and locked them each in a separate closet. It was easy. Sonny and Benny had both been around long enough to know they didn’t argue with a man holding a .45.
Evangeline threw her arms around her grandmother’s neck. “I’ve worried about you, Grandmother.”
“I’ll be all right, darling. You’re so brave to help me.”
“Let’s save the speeches for later and get the hell out of here,” said Danny.
“What about the quotations?” asked Peter.
“When we get to the airport,” said Katherine firmly. “How are we going?”
“There’s only one way out,” said Ferguson.
She studied the strange-looking man sitting in the coffin. “Do I know you?”
“We met a long time ago, and before this trip is over, we’ll be best of friends.”
“It’s tight quarters,” said Peter. “But you’ll only be in there for a few minutes.”
She looked at Ferguson and joked, “I’ll have no hanky panky, young man.”
“You have my word.”
She squeezed into the coffin, the lid was closed, and Katherine Pratt Carrington was smuggled out of the Lynnewood Manor.
At twelve-thirty, she was standing with her granddaughter, Peter Fallon, and Jack C. Ferguson in the Eastern Airlines lounge. She was wearing a powder-blue jumper, bought by Evangeline, accented with a dark-blue scarf. She looked again like the vibrant old woman Fallon had first met at Searidge. She was in her seventies and beginning a new phase of her life.
“I feel like a schoolgirl going off on a great trip.” She laughed nervously. “Of course, the last time I felt this way, I was eleven years old, and we were about to embark on the Titanic.”
Evangeline embraced her. “Oh, Grandmother, I’m so afraid to send you off alone.”
Katherine put her arms around Evangeline and patted her gently on the back. “I should be worrying about you, leaving you here in the middle of all this.” Her hands stopped moving and she looked at Evangeline. “Do you realize I used to pat you like this when you were a baby?”
“Where will you go, Grandmother?”
“Away from here. I had to leave that place.” She smiled at Ferguson. “Even if it meant hiding in a coffin with a strange man.”
Ferguson smiled back, almost sheepishly. He was still in awe of Katherine Carrington.
Evangeline drew her grandmother to her and held tight. “I can’t just let you fly off.”
“Nonsense.” Katherine’s voice was growing stronger as departure approached. “If I were younger, I’d stay and help you clear this up. I’m convinced now that the only way is to find the tea set, and I’m too old to do that.”
The public-address system announced departure, and people in the lounge scurried for the plane.
Katherine took an envelope from her purse and put it into Ferguson’s hand. She took Evangeline’s and Peter’s hands in her own and held them tightly. “Find it and rid us of it for good. But be careful, darlings, please.” For a moment, she didn’t want to leave them in danger, but she knew that until the Golden Eagle was found, they would always be in danger. Let them find it together. She had done all that she could to help them.
She threw her arms around Evangeline again. They held each other silently for a moment, then Katherine broke away and picked up her suitcase. There were tears in her eyes. She turned and started down the tube.
Evangeline ran after her. “Grandmother, where will you go?”
“I’ll visit cousins in New York for a few days. Then I’m going to Hawaii.”
“Hawaii?”
Katherine kept walking. “Cousin William has invited me a hundred times. He runs a school for the retarded on one of the outer islands.” She reached the plane. She stopped and looked back. “I still have my music and my love of children, dear. I can still be of use.” She stepped onto the plane and the door was closed.
Evangeline walked back to Fallon and Ferguson. “I never even asked her about my father.”
“I can fill in a few of the details,” said Ferguson. “It’s a long story.”
Fallon’s attention had already shifted to the envelope in his hands. “Does it have anything to to with Paradise Lost?”
“I’ve always though so.”
It was one o’clock in the morning when the Peter returned to Lewis Wharf. Before Rule cut the engines, Lawrence Hannaford jumped from the wharf onto the main deck.
“Hey, Larry. How ya doin’?”
“Terrible.”
“Too bad you didn’t come out with us. We didn’t catch many fish, we got a little wet, but we beat this heat and had a real nice time anyway.”
Rule’s wife jumped off the boat and secured the stern to the dock.
“Help me tie ’er up, Larry, then we’ll go upstairs and have a drink.”
“It’s late, Rule, I didn’t come here to socialize.” Hannaford’s slender voice cracked with anger. He threw the early edition of the Sunday Globe, which came out on Saturday night, onto the table in Rule’s cabin. He flipped back the comics and pointed to a story on the bottom of the front page. “Do you know anything about that?”
The headline read, “Gangland Assassin Found Dead in Cambridge Apartment Building.” Above the headline was a police photograph of the man with the pockmarks and the receding hairline.
Rule cursed softly.
“You tried to kill the student, didn’t you?”
“Anybody I knock off is as much of a threat to you as he is to me.” Rule pointed a stubby finger at Hannaford. “Before I came up with the tea set, we were both smalltime. I did you a favor, and you did me one. We’re partners, right down the line.”
“I won’t be partners with a murderer. I won’t permit you to kill anybody else.”
“I’ve waited too long, Larry. I’m too close.”
“You can kill a whore in Los Angeles and a bartender in South Boston and a young lawyer—”
“We didn’t kill Carrington,” interrupted Rule.
“Somebody did, but the spread among the three of them is wide enough that you can get away with it. Kill any more people, and you’ll end up in jail instead of at the head of Pratt Industries.”
“You’ll be right along with me, Larry.”
Hannaford sensed Rule’s contempt. He hated Rule. He hated himself. “I have a better solution,” he said softly. “We can solve all our problems without killing anyone else, and we can do it once and for all.”
Rule studied him for a moment, and then leaned against the bulwark. “Convince me.”
From the fold of the newspaper, Lawrence Hannaford took a large manila envelope. It continued a sheet of paper, which he unfolded and spread on the table in front of him. Rule studied it quizzically. The paper was covered with floor plans and circuitry diagrams. Lawrence Hannaford explained his plan.