City of Dreams (56 page)

She pulled out her ID, swiped it at one of the turnstiles, and headed for an express elevator. After the ’93 bombing, the Port Authority had secured the World Trade Center. Now you needed ID everywhere, and you never knew where Big Brother was—or wasn’t—because every floor, every hallway, every elevator had a security camera. And they had closed the garages to the public, too.

The terrorists would have to find other ways.

ii.

The offices of Intermetro were in a suite on the ninety-first floor of the South Tower with a view west toward New Jersey. It was quiet at eight thirty.

Nancy Torrez, at the reception desk, gave Jennifer a nod.

In the office beyond, Dmitri Donovan was looking out. He turned. His face was pale. He was plainly terrified about the upcoming meeting.

“We’ll set up in the conference room,” Jennifer said. Then she went down the hall. She looked in on Brink Leekman, who was going over papers in his office. He glanced up, his long face even longer than usual. He said he’d be with her in a minute.

She headed straight for Smith’s office. He was facing the window, but he wasn’t enjoying the view. He was bouncing a racquetball off the glass, leaving little smudges.

Typical, she thought. He never put the toilet seat down, either.

Bounce. Bounce
.

Without turning, he said, “Somebody dimed us out. I’m convinced of it.”

“Good morning to you, too,” she said.

He spun in his chair. Ten years since they met, and he still had the chiseled features, the surfer’s body, the casual Friday wardrobe on a Tuesday. She had told him to wear a tie for this meeting, but he never listened to her about that, either.

Bounce. Bounce
. This time off the wall. “I’d love to figure out who it was.”

“What does it matter? The SEC watched what you’ve done in the last year—”

“You were doing it, too.”

“I haven’t done anything that could be construed as illegal,” she said, maintaining the professional calm of a good lawyer.

“You sold stock with inside information.”
Bounce. Bounce
. “So . . . where’s your stash? Numbered Swiss account? Safety deposit box? Mattress?”

“Some reinvested,” she said. “Some in cash.”

He gave her a grin. “Safety deposit box. Hope you didn’t use your real name.”
Bounce. Bounce
. “And I hope you’re right about not needing outside counsel.”

“Haven’t you ever seen
Law & Order
?” she said. “The cop just wants to chat and the suspect says, ‘Should I have a lawyer?’ What does the cop say?”

Bounce. Bounce
. “‘Do you
need
a lawyer?’”

“Exactly. So . . . no red flags. Not yet.”

Bounce. Bounce . . . bounce. Bounce
.

She knew he didn’t believe her. So she took the letter off his desk and said, “This is very soft, just the opening gambit.” And she read, “‘In reference to your Intermetro stock options, the SEC has noted irregularities in your personal trading patterns over the last fourteen months. These may be easily explained. Therefore, our FBI representatives will be visiting your office on September 11, 2001, at nine
A.M.
Please have your compliance officer and chief financial officer in attendance, and all your company papers in order.’”

“I’m worried,” he said.

“Try not to show it. If we handle this right, we can make them go away.”

“Not likely.” Smith got up and started pacing and bouncing. “I didn’t want this to happen, you know.”
Bounce. Bounce
. “I just wanted to do something good.”
Bounce. Bounce
. “I just wanted to leave a mark.”

“You
are
leaving a mark . . . on the wall.”

Bounce. Bounce
.

She watched him for a moment, then said, “Just let me do the talking. And put the fucking”—she snatched it—“
ball
away.” She stuffed it into her purse.

He walked over to the desk and picked up another racquetball. “The SEC never would have noticed that we were dumping stock if somebody hadn’t tipped them off. I think it was Arsenault. He’s always been mad that we cut him out, since that day with my grandfather.”
Bounce. Bounce
. “Once Magee went off the board, he could have been feeding Arsenault.”

She didn’t say what she was thinking.

So he said it, with a lowered voice. “Or it could be Dmitri’s relatives. And I don’t mean the Irish side of the family. I told Dmitri to warn them, but he waited because he still thought we’d turn things around. He didn’t start to sell until the stock was dropping like the express elevator out there. His family must’ve lost a shitload.”

“Off the peak. But they made a shitload off their original investment.”

“Do you know what they call Dmitri’s uncle? Avenging Antonov.”

She looked at him a long time, then she blinked and hoped that she didn’t look too frightened. “But Yuri was on the board. Yuri’s reasonable.” She looked at her watch. “What you need to focus on right now is this: the FBI is coming to interview us in a little more than fifteen minutes.”

The telephone buzzed, and he picked it up.

Jennifer watched his expression change:

Neutral: “What is it?” Puzzled: “Two men? One has red hair, the other has a stainless-steel tooth?” Shocked: “Nancy!” Then frantic, turning to Jennifer: “Get under the desk.”

“What?”

“Just
do
it!”

Then they heard two
pops
and someone falling.
Dmitri?

Then came Brink Leekman’s voice. “What the hell is going on out—”

Pop. Pop
.

Brink appeared in the doorway to Smitty’s office. He was holding his pile of papers. He looked at them as they turned red with his blood. Then
pop
. A bullet struck the left side of his head and blew most of his brains out the right.

Smitty turned and gestured frantically—under the desk. Get under the desk.

Now she did what he told her. And she listened.

Smitty’s voice: “What the hell is this?”

A deeper voice: “Business.”

“Business?”

“Where is lady lawyer?” Another voice, a Russian accent.

Smitty tried to cover for Jennifer: “She’s late . . . no!”

Pop. Pop
.

She heard Smitty fall back, bounce off the edge of the desk, hit the floor.

If she had moved, she would have seen his eyes peering under the desk. Lifeless.

Instead, she was wedged into the leg hole, her head twisted toward the window, her breathing as shallow as she could make it, her hand to her mouth.

“Where the fuck is girl?” said one of them.

“Hello?” called the other. “Miss Wilson?” The voice went down the hallway, calling, “Hello! Hello!” Then it was back. “Not in office. Not in ladies’ room. Maybe she’s late?”

Jennifer could almost hear them thinking, see them scanning Smitty’s office. Then footfalls came closer.

Her purse
. She had left her purse on the desk. Right in front of them.

One of them said, “What’s this?”

What’s
what
? The purse? She held her breath . . . and her bladder.

“That’s a racquetball,” said the other one.

“Look like handball. I handball champ of Brighton Beach.”
Bounce. Bounce
.

If they’d found a raquetball, they would find the purse, then they would find her.

Then one of them sniffed. “You smell perfume?”

She almost whimpered.

“Aramis,” grunted the other one. “On me.”

“Vitaly, I know you are a fucking Russian pussy, but I smell lady perfume.”

She stared into space and waited and—

Suddenly, inexplicably, horribly, the fabric of blue sky beyond the window was ripped by flame.

Jennifer gasped, but the sound was lost in the low, muffled thud of an explosion.

The flame inflated into an obscene red-orange balloon right outside the window.

She could not tell where it was coming from because the windows were only twenty-two inches wide. There were no panoramas from the World Trade Center, no hundred-and-eighty-degree views, unless you were in Windows on the World or you had your nose pressed against the glass.

One Russian said, “What the fuck?”

The balloon of flame lifted as debris came flying past the window—shards, slivers, chunks, pieces . . . plastic, metal, glass, paper, people.
People?
And now smoke came billowing, deep and deathly black, darkening the office.

Jennifer stayed absolutely still as one of the Russians went to the window and craned his neck. She could see him now. He looked like a cube in a blue windbreaker. He was wearing a blue ball cap and sunglasses, to shield him from the security cameras.

He said, “Holy fuck my mother.”

“How many times I tell you, Vitaly, swearing in America is like poetry. ‘Holy fuck my mother’ . . . this is doggerel.” The other Russian was leaner. He wore a hooded sweatshirt that did not entirely cover his flaming red hair. “You got to be—holy shit!”

“Holy fuck my mother,” said Vitaly. “Bomb go off over there. Big bomb.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“What about lady lawyer?”

“Worry about her later. We know where she live.”

“But boss—”

“Fuck him,” said the redhead. “Stupid to lose money on stock, then shoot company bosses. Good way to lose more money. We should shoot him and his son, then we take over, eh?”

Vitaly said, “You shoot boss, I shoot you. Antonov get me into America.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Loyal Vitaly. In America, you don’t be loyal. You look out for number one.” The voice was echoing down the hallway now. “Is business, Vitaly, and in America, in business, you grow or die. So fuck everybody . . .”

Jennifer heard the words but was listening for the sound of their footsteps. She could not tell if the killers were going, or if they had decided to make one more sweep through the office, because the phones were ringing on Smitty’s desk and in every office up and down the hallway. And people were leaving voice mails on all the telephones. Smitty’s mother was saying that she hoped everything was all right. Then his latest girlfriend called . . . then . . .

Jennifer stayed there, curled up in a ball under the desk, watching the world end outside the window. She did not move for two minutes . . . three . . . five.

The phones kept ringing. The messages kept coming.

From her own office, she heard Joshua’s voice. She couldn’t tell what he was saying because she couldn’t leave that little wooden box, because she knew what she would see when she emerged. A body, another body . . . and down the hall . . .

She stayed there, trembling, watching the black smoke boil past. And for some reason she remembered falling from a tree when she was a little girl. She remembered hearing a pop, knowing that something terrible had happened to her wrist . . . but she never looked at that wrist until it was in a cast.

Get up
.
Stop thinking about your girlhood. Get up and get out. The shooters are gone. You have to get help. Smitty might still be alive, or Brink, or Dmitri, or Nancy. Poor Nancy, just doing her job. Get up
.

But she just kept trembling in that wooden cocoon while the blackness boiled outside the window.

Then another terrifying sound caused her spine to snap and slam her head against the top of the desk. It was a high-pitched, electrical wail:
Whoop-whoop! Whoooop! Whoop-whoop! Whoooop!
The building alarm.

Then a voice came over the PA: “Your attention, please, ladies and gentlemen. Building Two is secure. There is no need to evacuate Building Two. If you are in the midst of evacuation, you may use the reentry doors and the elevators to return to your offices. Repeat, Building Two is secure.”

Secure from what? She still didn’t know. But she stretched a leg and crawled out from under the desk. She went to the window and craned her neck. Something had happened in the other tower. But what?

The phone was ringing in her office again.

Go to it. Don’t look at anything else. Don’t look at Smitty. But—oh, my God. Two shots. Right in the forehead. Step over him. And poor Brink. Oh, God
.

She wished her mother were calling, but her mother had passed away. Her only relatives were in California. They weren’t even awake and wouldn’t know where she worked anyway.

She grabbed the telephone in her office. The caller ID: her own number. “Hello.”

“Oh, Christ, Jen, get out of there.” It was Joshua again.

“What happened?”

“A plane hit Tower One! Get out of there.”

“But they just made an announcement. They said Tower Two is safe.”

“Look out your window, for chrissakes!”

“Okay. Okay. I’m going. And Josh, get out of my apartment now. Take the dog.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just
do
it. Do it now. Go to your loft. I’ll meet you there.” She almost said, “I love you.” But she didn’t, because she didn’t.

He was right. She couldn’t stay with the dead bodies and the blackness blowing past the windows, no matter what the PA told her. But what if the killers were in the hallway? What if they were coming back in? Then her phone rang again. She read the caller ID:
COOK MEDICAL CENTER
.

She knew who it was, and she couldn’t bring herself to talk to him, because she would have to tell him what had just happened. But she listened to his message.

The voice was older, out of gas, or maybe just out of bourbon and vermouth. “Hello, Jen. Ol’ Doc Gary here. I just wanted to see if you kids are all right. I’m watching on television and . . . I’m hoping you’ve left. . . . Take it from an old pilot . . . this was no accident. It’s terrorists. We’re at war, honey. And if Bush is smart, he’ll call for war bonds to pay for what’s ahead. Just like they did in the Revolution, only this time, they’ll pay off”—he chuckled—“not like our 1780 bonds, eh?”

She hadn’t thought of them in fourteen years. Suddenly, she had to talk to him. She reached for the receiver, but he was signing off: