CHAPTER 70

Thursday, December 14, 1978

A scream tore out of her throat. Beatrice recoiled from the thin fingers she’d felt in the blackness of the tunnel. She lurched backward, right into the body connected to the hand. It was moving.

Beatrice leapt up to run and cracked her skull soundly on a steam pipe. Camera flashbulbs exploded in her head with pain, and she fell to her knees. She let out a sharp cry and doubled over. A flashlight clicked on, flooding the tunnel like a firebomb. Beatrice sucked in a scream and blindly scrambled through the muck away from whoever held the light.

“Beatrice?” a familiar voice croaked behind her. “Is that you? How? How did you . . . ?”

“Max?” Beatrice squinted at the light.

The body lying in a heap on the floor was Max. She looked like she’d been beaten with a lead pipe. Her eye was swollen shut, and half her face seemed crushed in blood.

“Oh my God! Max! What happened?” she gasped, and rushed back to her side.

Beatrice lifted her friend’s head off of the filthy concrete floor and held it in her hands. She searched the dirty water pooled around them for anything to stop the bleeding.

“They found me.” She coughed. Her lungs rattled with blood.

“Who found you? What happened?”

She just shook her head and smiled. One of her teeth had been knocked out. Beatrice’s stomach revolted at the sight. “They were too late. I think . . . I think I got ’em.”

As Beatrice’s eyes adjusted to the light, she registered the full damage. “We have to get you to a hospital.”

Max shook her head. “They’d find me.”

“How did you even get down here?” Beatrice asked helplessly. She wouldn’t be able to carry her friend out of the tunnel on her back. She wasn’t strong enough.

“I got away through the air shaft . . . They were arguing.”

“What air shaft? What are you talking about?”

“In the building. I’d been using the air shaft to move around. The grates are loose.” She coughed again.

“I’ve got to go for help. I’ll find Ramone or your brother.”

“No! . . . No, don’t drag them into this. They’d go and get themselves killed. I’ll be fine. I don’t think much is broken.” She struggled to sit and propped herself against the tunnel wall.

“Max, you don’t look fine. I need to go get help. You look like you might die or something!”

“Stay out of it, Beatrice. You should just leave. Leave town and forget all of this, okay?”

“Stay out of it? And how am I supposed to do that exactly? I have no clothes, no money . . . You sent me to the Lancer, and I nearly got attacked. If you wanted me to stay out of it, why did you give me this . . . this stupid key?” She wrestled the key out of her purse and brandished it at her.

“Oh thank God you still have it!” Max gasped. “I couldn’t risk having it on me. Whatever you do, you can’t let them get it. It would ruin everything.”

Beatrice slammed it into Max’s raw hand. “I don’t want it. All I wanted was a job. A normal life. I don’t want any part of this—stolen jewelry, missing money, or whatever the hell this is. I’m done! It’s none of my business anyway!”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“Excuse me?” Beatrice shouted.

“There’s a box in your name too.” Max flashed a broken grin.

“What?” Beatrice shrieked. “Bill doesn’t even know my name!”

“It was opened sixteen years ago. Box 256. You didn’t know?”

Beatrice collapsed against the wall next to Max and shook her head. Box 256. What had Doris done?

“Don’t worry. I got the keys. I think these are the last ones.” Max winced as she pulled handfuls of keys out of her pockets.

There was blood drying on Max’s bare legs. Beatrice shuddered. “More keys? How did you . . . ?”

Max coughed. “I have friends.”

“Ramone.”

“Yeah, Ramone, Ricky, Jamal. Half those guards are from the old neighborhood; the other half are ex-cops. Some even worked with my dad.”

“Bill was right? You were sneaking around, stealing things?”

“You’re one to talk.” Max spat blood onto the ground. “I wasn’t the one living there.”

“I . . . I had nowhere else to go. Someone broke in . . .”

“I know. I saw what they did. But they didn’t find a thing, and they’re never going to find these,” Max mumbled, and jingled the keys in her hand. Her eyes fell shut.

“Max? Max!” Beatrice jostled her shoulder.

“Hmm?” She didn’t open her eyes.

“What’s wrong with you? Is this some sort of game? You need a doctor! You’re bleeding! How can you just sit there and smile?” Beatrice snatched the keys from Max and threw them down the tunnel.

The sound of the keys hitting wet concrete roused Max back to life. She blinked her swollen eyes back open. “You have no idea what any of this is about, do you? Don’t be so naïve, Beatrice! It’s about money. Little slips of paper that decide who starves and who doesn’t. Who has a roof over their head and who doesn’t. Who gets to sleep in a cushy bed and who has to sleep with some filthy old man to survive. It’s who owns what and who owns who and who holds the keys to all of it. Well, I got the fucking keys, and they’re not getting them back!” Tears were making tracks through the blood on Max’s face.

“The keys to all of what?” Beatrice shouted. “Diamond necklaces? Other people’s jewelry? Is that what you want?”

“I think you have me confused with your aunt.” Max shot her an accusing look.

Beatrice shut her mouth and looked away.

“I want Bill and Teddy and Jim and those bastards to pay for what they did to all those people,” Max hissed. “Taking their homes, ruining neighborhoods, tearing down this city to line their pockets. I want to expose them for the crooks that they are.”

“How are you going to do that exactly? Stealing keys won’t do that. Locks can be changed.”

“Ha! They can’t change safe deposit locks without informing the customers. There are over seven hundred active accounts that will have to be notified. Seven hundred of the city’s wealthiest people will have to be told that the bank somehow lost the keys to their most precious possessions.”

Max closed her eyes and smiled. “They’re ruined. The bank is finished.”

Beatrice frowned. “What about Bill? He has everyone convinced you’re to blame for the robberies. For all of it.”

“And you believe him?”

“Of course not! I just . . . I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“Me neither. I thought you were my friend. Then I’m looking through the files two nights ago, and I find out you have this box. Tell me you knew nothing about it. Tell me you’re not going to go running to Bill right now.” Saying the words seemed to make her believe it might happen, and Max began crawling after the keys.

“I hate Bill,” Beatrice shrieked after her. “I hate Doris too for what she did. But she’s . . . she’s the only one I had, and she helped me. But it’s not right. None of this is right.”

“What do you know about right, huh? What, are you some sort of angel, Beatrice? You fly up from the shit hills to save us all?” Max shouted down the tunnel. “You and I aren’t so different, are we, Bea? Why did you leave home, huh? Why is your address a diner and your social security number stolen? Who the hell are you to tell me what’s right?”

Beatrice sat stricken in the dim glow of the flashlight. She smeared tears with her hand and finally managed, “You gave me the key, and I kept it safe. I could have given it to Bill days ago. What more do you want from me?”

“I want the truth. If you’re not helping dear old Doris rob the vault, what the hell are you doing here? Why did you steal my keys? Huh?”

“Your keys?” Beatrice pressed her back to the tunnel wall. She had taken over thirty keys right out of Max’s hiding place. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to find the one you took from my aunt.”