Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [51]
“Over. This is Vets Twenty-two. I’m at Mad Ave and five-two. I’ll pick up and take Ms. Austin. I know the old chick. Be there in approximately five minutes. Over.”
“Thank you kindly, Vets Twenty-two…. Okay, here’s another hot one. I have a corporate account at Twenty-five Central Park West. Account T-21. Mr. Sidney Solovey is headed for the Yale Club at fifty Vanderbilt. Mr. Solovey used to work for Salomon Brothers. Before somebody blew the living shit out of Wall Street, that is. Over.”
“Over. Vets Nineteen. I’m CPS and Sixth. I’ll take Mr. Solovey to Yale.”
Nick Tricosas stood up. He stretched another three inches into his body, and rubbed the small of his back. He needed a break from the taxi dispatcher radio clatter, the constant radioman duty since five that morning.
Tricosas lit up a cigar, gently rolling it between his thumb and index finger.
Then he wandered down the winding back stairs of the Vets building, trailing clouds of expensive smoke. He climbed down another twisting flight of stairs to the main garage itself.
The basement floor was thick with collected filth and debris. It was a typically rat-infested New York cellar. There was a second dispatcher’s office flanked by cabbie waiting benches. Off to the left were rusted candy and soda machines, and an unpainted gray metal door.
Tricosas squinted and started down the serpentine, dungeon-like hallway. He sighed out loud. Colonel Hudson had said nobody was to go inside the locked basement room under any circumstances.
Tricosas produced a key anyway. He turned it into the stout Chubb mortise lock, and heard the releasing click-click-click. He pushed forward the creaking door.
Then he finally peeked inside Colonel Hudson’s forbidden holy of holies …
Nick Tricosas couldn’t help smiling, almost laughing out loud. His breath got completely sucked away. His deep brown eyes might have doubled in size. His head tensed and felt like it might actually explode, blow off his shoulders. Right back up three flights of stairs to the claustrophobic radio dispatcher room.
Nick Tricosas had never actually seen four and a half billion dollars before! What he was looking at, staring at with what he knew must be a dumbfounded expression, just didn’t seem possible.
Four and a half billion. That was correct, Nicko.
Billion!
Chapter 36
COLONEL DAVID HUDSON did a highly unusual thing: he hesitated for once before acting. He reconsidered one final time as he waited in the phone boom at the southeast corner of 54th Street and Sixth Avenue and stared at the condensation on the glass panes. He understood that he was taking an unnecessary chance, asking for the same girl again.
He tapped a quarter against the black metal box, then finally let it drop.
Ding. Ding. Connection made.
Yes, he wanted to see Billie again.
He wanted to see her very much.
Less than an hour later, she glided into the buzzing, and crowded O’Neal’s on West 57th and Sixth. Hudson watched her from a stool at the bar.
Yes, he wanted to see her again.
Billie…. Just Billie.
She had on a long, speckled-charcoal coat, and black leather boots to her thighs. A soft, pearl gray beret was carefully placed on the side of her flowing blond hair. She stood out in the side of young and middle-aged businesswomen crowding into the popular bistro.
She smiled when she finally saw him and smoothly moved his way.
“They set an hour for your appointment. Should we go some place? An hour isn’t that long,” she said.
“I’d like to have a drink here with you. We have time. One drink.”
Hudson signaled for the bartender, who came immediately in his crisp white shirt and black bow tie, like a man answering a very urgent summons. Hudson seemed to have a way of getting whatever he wanted, Billie had already noticed.
She ordered the