The Dead Key Part 36

"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 G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed the keys from Max and threw them down the tunnel.

The sound of the keys. .h.i.tting 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 nave, 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 f.u.c.king 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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 s.h.i.+t 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l 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."

"Why's it so important to you? Huh? What are you doing down here in a tunnel in the middle of the night?" Max pointed the flashlight into Beatrice's eyes.

"I . . . It was cold. I had to get someplace warm."

"Bulls.h.i.+t. You're honestly telling me you don't have anywhere else to go?" Max motioned to the puddle they were both sitting in.

"No, I don't." There was no point in holding back the tears now. Beatrice let them pour down her face. "I'm . . . I'm only sixteen. I ran away from home, and then Doris got sick and now . . . I can't go back."

Max lowered the flashlight and crawled back to her side. "Why did you leave home, Beatrice?"

"There was this man. He was living with my mother . . . and he used to . . ." Beatrice couldn't utter the words, and she buried her face in her hands. "I got pregnant, and he made me go and . . . lose it."

Max wrapped an arm around her. "Hey, it's okay. It's okay, sweetie. I had no idea. I'm sorry."

"No, it's not okay . . . I'm not okay . . . I'll never be able to get married or have a . . ." She was crying too hard to say "family."

Beatrice hadn't spoken of it to anyone, not even her aunt. For all of her faults, Doris had taken her in without asking questions, despite the fact that they had never met. The only way Beatrice even knew how to find the woman was from the return address on the birthday card she'd received that year. Doris had always sent her a card on her birthday.

Beatrice shook with sobs.

"We're more alike than I thought." Max kissed the top of her head.

Beatrice struggled to regain her composure. She couldn't bring herself to look Max in the eye.

"I lost a baby too." Max wiped blood from her chin.

"Tony told me. I'm so sorry, Max."

"Tony." Max shook her head, then cleared her throat. "I had nowhere to go. I slept under bridges and in bus stops. And then I met this guy. At first I thought I was getting a real leg up. He got me off the street. He gave me a job. I could go home and face my parents. He even talked about helping me get my daughter back. Just a few nights at the hotel, a few nights in the office, a few nights with his buddy. It was never enough. After a while, he stopped talking to me about Mary. Eventually he stopped talking to me at all. After a couple years, he even stopped sleeping with me."

"Bill?"

"No, Teddy Halloran." Max grimaced with pain and stifled a cough. "I met him back when I was hustling. He was always at the Theatrical Grille. I thought he was a gangster at first. All those Covelli boys would come out to hear the music and meet the girls. He seemed to know everybody. Then he told me he worked at this big, fancy bank. He took me to his big, fancy house. G.o.d, he was a sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d. But he got me the job."

Beatrice stared at the far wall. Max had been a prost.i.tute. That's what she had done when she ran away from home. That's why that strange woman in gold lame knew her.

"After Teddy was through with me a few years ago, I took Bill out for a drink. I thought with his money and connections he could help me with Mary, that sleazy son of b.i.t.c.h. It was just more of the same. I hired lawyers. I spent all my money." Max wiped a b.l.o.o.d.y tear angrily.

"I thought Mary was adopted," Beatrice whispered.

"That's what they said. But I didn't believe it. After six years I found her down at St. Vincent's. The birth records were sealed, and the legal fees were a mile high. With my record and now all of this mess, it's going to take a fortune to get her back."

They sat in silence with their backs against the brick wall. The only sound was the dripping of water somewhere down the tunnel. It was like the ticking of a clock. They were running out of time. They were both in a world of trouble. Max had taken the keys. The boxes would stay shut unless there was a warrant to drill them open-that's what Tony had told her. Without Doris's journal, no one would be able to sort out what had happened or which boxes contained what anyway. It would be all right, Beatrice tried to tell herself. But she didn't believe it. Bill still had his files incriminating Max, Doris, and a number of other women. There were still safe deposit boxes rented in their names.

"What's the blank key for?" Beatrice finally asked, already knowing the answer.

"It's the master. It opens every box in the vault."

"Where did you find it?"

"Where do you think?" Max turned a black eye toward Beatrice.

"It was in Doris's box, wasn't it?" Beatrice didn't have to have Max confirm it. Doris was the inside man. The blank key was how she had opened the boxes of strangers. "Did you go to the FBI?"

"Yeah, I tried. I even brought them a solid-gold brick to prove Teddy was up to something big. They wouldn't listen. They held me for twenty-four hours instead, as if I were the thief, then they kept the gold. Just figures, doesn't it? You can't even trust the G.o.dd.a.m.ned FBI."

Beatrice knew no one would believe her either. "Why did you give me the key? That night? Why did you give it to me?"

"I knew you'd help me. You're my friend. Besides, no one would ever suspect you had anything to do with this mess. You're practically invisible in that office-a ghost. People always underestimate women like us."

The files in Bill's office still hung in her mind. "Max, are you sure they won't still be able to trace the boxes back to any of Bill's girlfriends? Or you? Or me?"

Max looked down at the keys she had picked back up from the tunnel floor. "I'm sure they'll pin it on me, but it doesn't matter. Not really. It'll break my mom's heart, and Tony . . . poor Tony."

Beatrice reached down and grabbed her friend's hand. There had to be a way to get her out of there.

"I have to find a way to get Mary and just disappear. They'll never stop looking for me, not after what I've done. Not after what I've seen. Teddy was going to kill me tonight."

Looking at Max's battered body, Beatrice was seeing her own future. The odds of her landing a job and finding a place to live at her age were slim. The police would send her back home. She pictured herself turning to petty theft or prost.i.tution, just like Max. There was no hope for a girl like her, or Max, or maybe Doris even.

The meek shall inherit the earth, Beatrice thought to herself. Another tear fell down her cheek, and she wiped it away. Maybe someday, but she couldn't afford to wait. She would not be meek. Not ever again.

"We have to get whatever is in your box and mine out. It's not enough that the keys are gone. They could make up some story about modernizing the vault and issue new keys," Beatrice thought out loud.

She wasn't going to let Teddy or Bill blame Max or anyone else for what they'd been doing. There had to be a way to make sure. Then something that Ms. Cunningham had said came back to her. "'A bank is only as good as its records.' That's it!" Her voice echoed down the tunnel. "If they lost the safe deposit records, the investors would be furious. The bank would be ruined."

Beatrice reached into her pocket and pulled out the three-karat diamond ring Doris had stolen. She couldn't bring herself to drop it in the collection box back at the church. It was her last hope of getting out and starting over.

"In case I don't make it back here, take this. I hope it helps you get Mary out, I really do." She put the ring in Max's swollen hand. "Now you need tell me how to open the boxes, Max. Give me the keys."

CHAPTER 71.

Beatrice tiptoed across the red carpet in the lower lobby toward the vault. Her eyes scanned the security station. The monitors were off. No one was watching, not tonight. She clutched the large handbag on her shoulder and the heavy key ring in her fist. The keys were tinged with Max's blood; they'd left angry red marks on her hand. Beatrice almost lost her nerve.

Voices were coming from the vault corridor. She froze in her tracks.

"I don't give a f.u.c.k, Teddy!" one man bellowed. "She got away."

The voices were getting louder. Beatrice spun and scurried silently across the carpet away from the sound.

"We'll find her. She couldn't have gone far. Just stay focused, all right?"