Chapter 23 - Shadows on the Avenue
I didn't run. Running invites pursuit, and in this city, Diane Vance held every card when it came to law enforcement and city surveillance.
Instead of taking the main boulevard back toward Elmwood Terrace, I drove my sedan into the subterranean parking garage beneath the city public library—a labyrinthine, dimly lit structure built in the late seventies that had no digital license-plate readers.
I parked in a blind corner behind a concrete pillar, locked my phone in the glove compartment, and took the service stairs up to street level.
The rain that had threatened all afternoon had finally broken over the city. A relentless summer downpour lashed against the storefronts, turning the asphalt into mirrors of neon and brake lights. I pulled my trench coat collar tight against my neck and walked four blocks to a public phone booth outside the old central rail depot.
I dialed Marcus’s private home line from memory.
It rang four times before a breathless voice picked up. "Hello?"
"It’s me," I said, rain drumming against the metal roof of the booth. "Are they still outside Elmwood?"
"Thomas, thank God," Marcus exhaled, his voice trembling so violently I could hear his teeth chattering. "They aren't just outside Elmwood. A half hour ago, two men in raincoats came to my home. They didn't knock. They stood on the sidewalk taking photographs of my living room window until my wife noticed them and called the precinct. The dispatcher told her there were no patrols available in our sector. Thomas... they own the dispatch."
"Pack a bag for you and Sarah," I said, my voice dropping into a hard, cold register. "Take the back road through the valley. Do not use your credit cards, and do not go to a hotel. Go to Sarah’s sister’s cabin in Green River. Stay there until I call you."
"What about you?" Marcus cried. "Thomas, you don't realize what you kicked over. Diane Vance isn't Arthur Whitmore. Arthur was a social climber who forged documents because he was desperate for status. Diane Vance has federal judges on her speed dial. Her family has controlled the port authority since the New Deal. If she feels threatened—"
"If she kills me now, the court immediately freezes Parcel 4 under probate contention," I interrupted. "That’s the one thing she cannot afford. The transit funding has a hard deadline. If they don't break ground on the tunnel by the first of next month, the federal infrastructure grant expires, and the state comptroller audits the entire project. An audit means external inspectors on the site."
Marcus was quiet for several seconds. "You’re betting your life on a federal grant timeline?"
"I’m betting my life that Diane Vance is more afraid of an independent audit than she is of me," I answered. "Did you reach the retired port foreman I asked about?"
A paper rustled on Marcus's end. "Peter Callahan. He’s seventy-eight now. He lives out on the marsh road near the old dry docks. He was your father's chief salvage diver back in the nineties. But Thomas... Callahan hasn't spoken to anyone about the company since ninety-eight. Some people say he lost his mind after the crash."
"Give me the address."
Marcus rattled off the coordinates on the edge of the industrial marshland south of the city. "Be careful, Thomas. If they're watching Elmwood and watching me, they’re watching Callahan too."
"They don't know Callahan exists in this equation," I said. "My father never put Callahan's name on the dredging permits. He hired him off the books under maritime salvage cash. That was in the lockbox notes."
I hung up the receiver without saying goodbye.
I took the subway two stops south, bought an umbrella and a flashlight from a twenty-four-hour hardware store using cash, and caught an independent city cab to the perimeter of the south marshlands.
The air out here tasted of rotting salt grass, stagnant water, and the pungent chemical residue of thirty years of chemical run-off from the decommissioned shipping plants. A single gravel road cut through the reeds, illuminated only by the intermittent sweep of a distant harbor lighthouse.
At the end of the road sat a weather-beaten wooden bungalow perched on stilts above the high-water line. A rusted Dodge truck sat in the driveway, its tires sunk deep into the black mud.
I walked up the creaking wooden steps. Rain dripped from the tin awning overhead. Before I could even raise my hand to knock, the front door swung open three inches, held by a heavy brass security chain.
Through the crack, the double barrels of an old twelve-gauge shotgun stared directly at my chest.
"I don't buy magazines, and the county already told me the property taxes are paid," a gravelly, smoke-ruined voice barked from the dark interior.
"Mr. Callahan?" I said, standing completely still with my hands raised in plain view. "My name is Thomas Sterling."
The shotgun didn't waver. But inside the dark cabin, there was a sharp intake of breath.
"Julian’s boy?" the old man muttered.
May you like
"Julian’s boy," I confirmed. "I have the tape, Mr. Callahan. And I know what you pulled out of the basin twenty-six years ago."
The shotgun lowered slightly. The chain rattled as it was slipped from its track, and the door swung wide.
