Holly stared at the money. There were rows of it, bound with rubber bands, twelve across and eight down—she lifted several stacks and counted—stacked six deep, all hundred-dollar bills. She quickly counted one stack. One hundred hundred-dollar bills—ten thousand dollars. She did the math: the case held five million, seven hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
Holly sat down and took a deep breath. She had never had her hands on so much money. For a moment she entertained the thought that she was a thief, stealing from bad people who deserved it, but she shook that off. She got up and, lugging the case, began to make her way back toward the golf course, following a slightly different route, so as not to beat down a trail that might be noticed later.
When she caught sight of the golf course through the trees, she stopped and looked around. She didn’t want all that money in the house with her; she needed to hide it. She was standing in a grove of live oaks, dripping Spanish moss, none of them more than about twenty-five feet high.
She looked closely at a number of them, then chose one, hoisting the case onto a low limb and climbing up to it. She repeated the process until she was a good fifteen feet off the ground, where she found an ideal cradle for the case—two stout limbs, one growing out of the other, making a fork—at just the right angle from the trunk. She hoisted the case up and wedged it tightly between the two limbs. A hurricane wouldn’t move it, she reckoned. And nobody ever looked up.
She climbed back down the tree, brushed the woods off her clothes, collected Daisy, and started toward the guest house. She waited before crossing the road to be sure no one could see her leaving the woods, then she and Daisy ran onto the golf course again. The man mowing the green was gone; they had the expanse of green grass to themselves. Holly found a stick and spent a few minutes tossing it for Daisy, who loved to retrieve, then she started back toward the house, thinking about what to do next.
When she arrived at the house there was a car parked out front. She walked into the living room to find Ed Shine and Willard Smith waiting for her. Daisy ran over to Ed and greeted him with a nuzzle.
“Hi,” Ed said. “We just dropped by to see if you’d have dinner at the club with a bunch of us tonight.”
“Sure,” Holly said, thinking fast. “Do you mind if I invite my friend Grant to join us? I sort of had a date with him tonight.”
Ed hesitated for only a moment. “We’d be delighted to have him. Shall I pick you up at eight?”
“I’ll call Grant and get him to pick me up.”
“Go ahead,” Ed said. He didn’t move from his seat.
Holly picked up the phone, dialed nine for an outside line, then Grant’s number.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hi, it’s Holly,” she said brightly. “Listen, instead of our going out tonight, how about we have dinner at Blood Orchid? Ed Shine has invited us to join him and a friend, Willard Smith.” She hoped he’d pick up on the name.
“Yeah, that sounds great.”
“Good. Pick me up at the guest cottage at seven-thirty?”
“Okay, see you then.”
Holly hung up. “All set,” she said to Ed. “Can I get you guys a drink?”
Ed stood up. “No, thanks. We’ll see you at eight, then?”
“You bet.”
“I’ll let the gate know Grant is coming.” The two men left. Holly went out to the back patio and called Grant on her cellphone, which was still chiming its low-battery news.
“Hi, it’s Grant,” the recording said. “Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.”
“It’s Holly. Will you bring the battery charger for my cellphone with you tonight? It’s on the bedside table. I have a lot to tell you; I couldn’t talk freely before.” She punched off and went back inside, suddenly tired. She fed Daisy and stretched out on the sofa for a nap.
Holly was awakened by a knock on the door, then Grant’s voice: “Hello? Anybody home?”
“Grant?” she said, sitting up. “Come in. My God, I’ve been asleep all this time. I’ve got to get dressed. Fix yourself a drink.” She went into the bedroom and quickly changed her clothes and freshened up, then returned to the living room.
Grant handed her a drink, but she refused it. “I don’t think we have time,” she said. “Let’s get going.”
As soon as they were in the car, Holly began talking, rapid-fire. “It’s money,” she said. “They’re bringing in money, just like I thought. I even stole some of it.”
“Holly . . .”
“Don’t talk, listen,” she said.
“Holly . . .”
“Grant, will you shut up? I have things to tell you.”
“No, you shut up. You’re going to want to hear what I have to say.”
“Oh, all right, say it.”
“My people in Washington have been working like beavers. They got a make on the prints on the glass.”
“Whose are they?”
“They belong to two people; one is Ed Shine.”
“Yes, go on.”
“The other is Gaetano Costello,” Grant said.
“Who the hell is Gaetano Costello?”
“He was in the files—he’s a second cousin to Frank Costello.”
“Who?”
“Frank Costello was the number-one man in the mob after Charlie Luciano got deported in the late thirties. You may remember that he starred in some congressional hearings many years ago.”
“So, tell me about Gaetano.”
“He emigrated from Italy in July of 1938, at the age of thirteen, quite legally; that’s when he got printed. Pretty soon, he had acquired the mob sobriquet of Eddie Numbers, because of his facility with math and money.”
“Go on.”
“Then, two years later, we have the appearance of Edward G. Shine on the scene. Little Eddie Shine entered a New York City public high school in September of 1940, giving his age as thirteen. His parents were listed in the school records as Mr. and Mrs. Alvin Shine, and here’s the good part. Mr. and Mrs. Shine lived in the same apartment building as Mr. and Mrs. Meyer Lansky.”
“Holy shit!”
“My very words when I heard about it. It appears that the mob recognized talent when they saw it, and they went to some trouble to hide little Gaetano’s light under a bushel. He graduates as Edward Shine, with honors, in June of ’forty-five, just in time to get drafted. Not surprisingly, little Eddie turns up at his physical with a perforated eardrum, making him ineligible. He applied for and was issued a passport the following year.”
“He was already a citizen?”
“Somehow, a birth certificate in his name appeared in the public records, stating that he was born in 1927 to Mr. and Mrs. Shine. I think we can attribute that to the fine Italian hand of Frank Costello, who owned many politicians. Little Eddie studies in Italy for a year, it’s not certain where, then returns to the U.S. and enters NYU, graduating in 1951 with a degree in accounting and business management. The following year, he builds his first office building.”
“What a precocious boy,” Holly said.
“From then on, he’s in the New York commercial real estate business big time, and he never seems to have any trouble getting financing.”
“Because his mob friends are laundering their cash through his projects?”
“Exactly.” Grant pulled into the parking lot of the Blood Orchid Club and parked. “And guess who he’s doing most of his business with.”
“Who?”
Then somebody opened the car door.