The Kills (50 page)

"Not
anymore, Alex."

I put my
head in my hands and tried to shake the image that had appeared. I was thinking
of the photograph of Queenie and the Tripping boy, taken just before her death.
"You took Dulles with you when you killed McQueen Ransome? That's how
you-"

Liberty
was behind us now, and Hoyt was going full throttle into Upper New York Bay,
with Staten Island straight ahead. If he veered left, under the Verrazano to
the ocean, I would be running out of shoreline as fast as I was running out of
ideas.

"Don't
be stupid, Alex. You know how I feel about kids. He just came in for a bit of a
tease, to warm the old lady up, remind her of her lost little boy. See if she'd
part with her precious gold treasure, which was worthless to her anyway. That's
what she'd promised me, as long as I'd bring the kid by every now and then to
visit her. Pay some of her expenses. Find her a nicer place to live. Dulles
performed like an angel. Then I sent him out to the car, and-"

"And
Queenie changed her mind, didn't she?"

"Tough
old bird. She struck a hard bargain, then tried to welsh on it. She knew
something was up."

"So
Kevin and Tiffany were just the fall guys. You sent them to break in later on,
and if caught, they'd take the weight for what you had stolen-or who you had
killed."

"Every
plan needs a backup, Alex. I never intended to hurt Queenie. Why should I? She
was playing into my hands. I made a big contribution to the Schomburg just to
mount a permanent exhibit of her photographs."

Contributions
to child refugee organizations, contributions to inner-city art museums. Hoyt
was the desperate lawyer Justin Feldman had been telling me about as we talked
on the plane on the way to the Vineyard. The guy so far in over his head that
he was now killing people to support his lifestyle, to make the one big score
that would save his own neck.

"So
you have the Double Eagle," I said, "and the only thing you need is
some way to make it legitimate, some way to make it worth seven or eight
million dollars."

"Go
to the head of the class."

"And
you think that I have that? You're wrong, Graham. Paige never gave me-"

I was
twisting, trying to roll onto my knees so I could wrestle with Hoyt for the
steering wheel and turn the boat back toward the city.

Of course
Paige had given me something, I realized, as I fell sideways and cracked my
head against the handle of a fishing rod stowed under the gunwale of the boat.
She never
mailed
me
anything-didn't send it to me that last night of her life-which is what both
Hoyt and Robelon were assuming. But she'd brought something to my office
earlier that same day, something that was sitting in a drawer of my file
cabinet. Maybe that concealed whatever it was that this man would kill to
obtain.

I
struggled back to my knees, trying to loosen the rope on my feet while Hoyt
steered the boat. "I have an idea, Graham. Tell me what it is you're
looking for and maybe I can figure out where it might be."

Hoyt
looked down at me and laughed. A second later, he swerved the wheel to the
right, turning and turning as furiously as he could, sending me lurching
backward again.

"Why
don't you start, Alex? Paige obviously gave you something-that's where you
ended your last thought, midsentence. Hurry up, Alex. Tell me what she gave
you. We're almost there."

I picked
my head up, relieved to see that the turn had taken us away from the direction
of the Verrazano. Instead of going to the ocean, he had steered to the right,
to the body of water that separated Staten Island from New Jersey.

There was
land on both sides of us rather than endless fathoms of water, and I was
unrealistically euphoric at that thought. Then I made the mistake of asking
where he was taking me.

"The
Kills, Alex. Don't you know your geography? We're going to the Kills."

What a
fitting place to meet a violent end. The Kills. Much smarter of Hoyt than heading
out to the Atlantic, which had been my greatest fear. He probably figured that
Mercer Wallace would have marshaled every coast guard boat and NYPD harbor
launch in that direction. So vast and far too obvious. I had to give Hoyt
credit for his quick thinking.

The green
sign posted at the entrance to the waterway said
KILL VAN KULL.
I knew there once were
"kills" all over Lower Manhattan, a vestige from the Dutch
colonization that meant "channels" or "creeks." This one
was obviously a viaduct to the shipyards along the Jersey shore, so busy with
traffic that no one would give special notice to an innocuous little Whaler
weaving among the mix of commercial and sport vessels.

"Why
don't you anchor somewhere?" I asked, my voice trembling. "I can call
my office and someone can search for whatever it is you want."

"You're
not going back, Alex. You know that. And I'm not looking for a plea bargain
here. It's very simple. You tell me what I need to know, or you don't. And if
you don't, more people will have to die, don't you think?"

He was
talking about Mercer and Mike. Hoyt had to kill me, whether I told him what he
wanted or not. I knew too much about what he had done. He could still hope the
others hadn't figured everything out.

But if he
wasn't just going to dump me in the water, on the open seas, he must be
figuring to torture me before he finished me off. That's why he chose this
route.

There was
a small bridge ahead and a sign that said
SHOOTER'S ISLAND.
Hoyt opened the deep
compartment on the dashboard in front of him, the one from which he had pulled
the rope. He lifted something out, a metal tool that looked heavy as he hoisted
it and let it fall with a loud clang on the countertop. I guessed it was a
wrench.

"So
what's your plan?" I asked, sitting back on my heels, my arms bracing me
against the side of the boat behind me.

"To
find out where you've got it, Alex. A simple piece of paper. That's all I want.
Then no one has to get hurt. No one else, I mean."

So Graham
Hoyt and Peter Robelon both thought Paige Vallis had the means to legitimize
the little gold coin that they both coveted. A legal form, signed by the
secretary of the treasury more than half a century ago, that would monetize the
Double Eagle. One sheet of paper, smuggled out of Egypt by Paige's father,
perhaps, after King Farouk was deposed. The document that together with
Queenie's coin would make their possessor a multimillionaire.

Why
couldn't there have been two Eagles validated for the great Farouk? An
identically matched pair, one of them undiscovered until now? No one had ever
been sure of the exact count of the handful of coins smuggled out of the Mint,
then or now.

"I
meant your plan for me," I said.

Graham
Hoyt had studied the lives of the great collectors, the greedy Farouk among
them. There were newspaper accounts at the time of the king's lover, the exotic
dancer from Harlem. He had schoolmates like Tripping and Robelon, who also knew
the legends and the myths of the accumulated treasures. They'd all heard the
story of the tutor who didn't want gold or jewels, but who busied himself with
Farouk's documents. Then, too, Hoyt must have followed the great auction, the
amazing story of a twenty-dollar piece of gold that fetched millions because of
the paper that made it legal.

He was
slowing the speed as we neared Shooter's Island. There was no sign of any human
life ahead. No people around, no one to call out to. It looked like a wildlife
preserve.

"Terrible
place for an accident," he said, steering with his left hand and picking
up the wrench in his right.

"The
cops won't buy it. You told your captain I wanted to see the Statue of Liberty,
not some goddamn bird sanctuary." I was fidgeting wildly now, trying in
vain to make him worry about people doubting why we were here. I glanced at the
desolate scrap of land, nestled off the northern coast of Staten Island, New
Jersey's border in the distance, and nothing but the Kills behind me.

"Funny
thing about that. My captain will probably remember-once I remind him-that when
you were on board yesterday I mentioned this little island to you. How curious
you were about its spectacular heyday a century ago, when Teddy Roosevelt came
here to launch the
Meteor III
-Kaiser Wilhelm's racing yacht. You asked to see it and I obliged."

"So
now you have a problem with the steering, you crash-land on the shore, and I go
overboard, which accounts for the terrible crack in my head," I said,
pointing at the wrench. "An accidental drowning."

"Save
a friend, Alex. Just tell me what Paige gave you, one last time?"

He was
maneuvering the boat into place, looking around behind him to make sure that no
one was anywhere near us on the wide side of the Kill, far from landfall in
Jersey. On my right, the only living things were egrets and herons, surrounded
by tall stands of salt-marsh cordgrass.

Hoyt was
making his last reconnoiter before, I assured myself, he got ready to use the
wrench to torment me into some kind of cooperation.

With my
left arm balanced on the side rail, I pulled on the plastic line of the fishing
rod that I had found when I cracked my head against it, stowed in its place
along the length of the boat. I yanked it until I could grasp the cold metal
hook in my right hand. Sitting back on my haunches, I lunged at Hoyt's left
hand, ripping the skin with the long, sharp claw of the silver hook.

He
screamed, and the wrench dropped to the floor as he reflexively grabbed at his
bloody left hand with his right. I stabbed again, catching on a bone in his
right wrist this time, doubling him over and bringing him to his knees as he
shrieked in pain. A cacophony of birds began mocking him from the island,
screeching in reply to his ungodly sounds.

I reached
behind me and pulled my feet out of the noose he had made. I looked up and
there was blood everywhere. Hoyt had buried his face in his hands and was
trying to bite out the hook that was embedded in his wrist.

I didn't
know how to stop the boat, which was moving slowly past the tip of Shooter's
Island, headed south into the next kill that separated Staten Island from New
Jersey. I crawled across the floor and picked up the wrench, striking Hoyt on
the back of the head. He collapsed onto the floor and continued to writhe and
moan.

Once on
my feet, I checked our distance from the small island preserve, which was
blessedly close. I sat on the side of the boat, swung both legs over, and,
careful to avoid the engine, kicked away and threw myself into the water. I
swam the ten feet to shore, startling all the wildlife, and pulled myself up
onto land to catch my breath.

I looked
back and the boat was still moving, farther away, with no sign of Hoyt at the
wheel.

As fast
as I could travel in my bare feet, I ran in the opposite direction from which
we had come. The brush and rocks were rough on my soles as I tried to pick my
way through the under-growth. Bird droppings were everywhere, and my feathered
companions squawked and flew off as I invaded their habitat. Gulls circled
overhead in protest, and I plugged along as best I could, until I finally
caught sight of a tanker coming toward the entrance to Arthur Kill.

My
frenetic gesticulations did nothing to stop the larger vessels that passed
through the channel, but someone must have radioed to the authorities the sight
of a human trespasser on Shooter's Island. Fifteen minutes later, an NYPD
harbor launch was steaming at me, and I waded out into the chilly water to
greet it.

I only
had to say my name and the cops on harbor patrol knew what to do with me.
Mercer had called headquarters when Hoyt cut off my cell phone, which started a
search of the waterfront. Then he'd spoken with the
Pirate
's captain, who mentioned the Statue of Liberty as a
possible destination. Mercer and Mike had met up at the East Thirty-fourth
Street heliport and been choppered to Liberty Island to set up a command post
there.