Chapter 3 - The DUMBO Redirection
The loft building on Water Street was an old, Civil War-era coffee warehouse that had been converted into forty-million-dollar spaces for the new elite of Brooklyn. The brick was red, thick, and salt-stained from a century of East River tides, and the massive arched windows overlooked the black steel web of the Manhattan Bridge.
At 11:14 p.m., the silver Lincoln Blackwood pulled up to the curb twenty yards from the entrance. The rain had stopped, leaving the cobblestones wet and black, reflecting the yellow streetlamps like rows of gold teeth.
Ryan didn't turn off the engine. He kept his foot on the brake, his eyes fixed on the glass-walled lobby where a young man in a leather jacket was sitting on a designer leather sofa, a newspaper open in his lap, his eyes scanning the empty street every time a siren wailed in the distance.
"The lobby guy is Tommy 'The Hook' Kelly," Ryan said, his fingers tapping a slow, military rhythm against the steering wheel. "He did three years in Attica for a warehouse heist in 2021. He works for Marcus’s freight company now. He’s got a short-barrel twelve-gauge in that duffel bag between his feet."
"I don't care about Tommy," I said, my hand resting on the heavy brass door handle of the Lincoln. "Stay with the car, Ryan. If anyone else comes down those stairs before I come out, put them in the river."
"Jack," Ryan said, his voice dropping into that serious, unblinking register that had kept us alive in the container yards of Rotterdam ten years ago. "Marcus is your mother's son. If you touch him in that building, the board will look at it as a coup. The old men from the union won't back you if they think you're clearing out your own blood to protect an ex-wife."
"The old men from the union don't have a child in Room 347, Ryan," I said.
I opened the door and stepped out onto the wet stones. The wind off the river was cold, carrying the smell of low tide, diesel fuel, and the wet iron of the bridge. I didn't walk quickly. I walked with that slow, heavy deliberation that I had spent ten years unlearning—the walk of a Callahan who had come to collect a debt that couldn't be paid in currency.
Tommy Kelly didn't see me until I was through the first set of glass doors. He began to stand up, his hand dropping toward the zipper of the canvas duffel bag, but I didn't wait for him to establish a stance. I hit the glass door with the full weight of my shoulder, the reinforced frame slamming into his chest and throwing him back onto the leather sofa.
Before he could clear his breath, I had my knee in his sternum, my left hand gripping the collar of his jacket so hard the leather groaned.
"Jack," Tommy choked out, his eyes turning white as the air left his lungs. "Jack... I didn't know... Marcus said you were in Connecticut—"
"Key for the elevator, Tommy," I said, my right hand resting lightly on the side of his neck, my thumb pressing against his carotid artery just hard enough to make his pulse flutter.
He didn't hesitate. He reached into his pocket with trembling fingers and pulled out a small, black plastic fob with the number 5B stamped into the plastic. "He’s up there alone, Jack. I swear to God. He’s just waiting for a call from the hospital."
"He’s going to be waiting a long time," I said.
May you like
I took the fob, stood up, and kicked the canvas duffel bag under the sofa where he couldn't reach it. I didn't look back at him as the elevator doors slid open. The interior of the car was lined with polished birch wood and mirrors, and as the cables began to groan, I looked at my own reflection in the glass.
The man looking back at me wasn't the husband who used to make Hannah tea when her migraines came on. It was the man who had spent his twenty-ninth year supervising the dismantling of the waterfront unions in Newark with a piece of lead pipe and a list of home addresses.
