Chapter 7 - The Boardroom at Pier 54
The conference room on the third floor of the Hudson River Harbor Commission building smelled of floor wax, stale Danish pastries, and thirty years of municipal corruption.
Through the massive plate-glass windows overlooking the piers, the river looked gray and swollen, the whitecaps chopping against the concrete pilings like jagged teeth.
Tony Vance sat at the head of the long mahogany table, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a silver fountain pen clicking against the polished wood as he signed transfer orders for three container berths in Red Hook. Around the table sat four directors of the port authority—men whose tailored suits and silver hair had survived three mayoral administrations and two federal investigations.
"The old man's out," Tony said, not looking up as the heavy oak double doors at the end of the room swung open with a slow, deliberate creak. "We’ve filed the missing person report with the marine division. The car was pulled from forty feet of water near the Battery at dawn. The coroner's report will show he had a cardiac event behind the wheel."
"And the ledger?" asked one of the directors, a heavy-set man named Callahan whose face looked like a ham left too long in the sun.
"The ledger is wherever the river wants to keep it," Tony said with a cold, easy smile. "The board will vote on the new operating charter at noon. By Monday—"
"By Monday," a voice from the doorway rasped, "you’ll be explaining to the grand jury in Foley Square why three hundred thousand tons of imported scrap metal were entered on the manifest as medical supplies."
The room froze.
Dante Vance stood in the doorway, his black overcoat unbuttoned, his shoulders squared, looking as though he hadn't spent the previous night bleeding onto a horsehair settee under the George Washington Bridge. Behind him, standing slightly to his left with her hands jammed deep into the pockets of her oversized coat, was Nora Kane.
Tony surged to his feet, the fountain pen rolling across the mahogany and dropping onto the carpet with a dull clack.
"You're dead," Tony whispered, his face draining of color until he looked like a plaster bust. "The car... the diver said the seat was empty, but—"
"The car was empty because I know how to kick a latch when the water starts coming in," Dante said, walking slowly down the center of the room toward the head of the table. His boots made a dry, steady rhythm on the parquet floor—clack, clack, clack—like a clock running down. "Something you would have learned, Anthony, if you’d spent less time at Wharton and more time on the docks."
Callahan, the heavy-set director, started to reach for the telephone base on the credenza behind him.
"I wouldn't," Dante said without looking at him, his gaze fixed entirely on his nephew. "Unless you want Callahan & Associates to be the primary subject of the federal audit currently sitting in the brown envelope my lawyer filed with the U.S. Attorney's office twenty minutes ago."
Callahan’s hand hovered over the plastic receiver, trembling slightly. "You don't have an audit."
"I have forty years of canceled checks, Callahan," Dante said, stopping two feet from the head of the table and resting his knuckles on the polished wood. "Every port fee, every grease payment, every phantom stevedore on the payroll since the Giuliani administration. It’s all there. Neatly indexed. In triplicate."
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Tony stared at his uncle, his chest heaving, his fingers clawing at the edge of the mahogany until his knuckles turned white. "You're ruining us. You're ruining the family."
"The family was ruined the day you decided that blood was just another line item on a spreadsheet," Dante said softly. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a single, heavy brass key, and tossed it onto the table in front of Tony. "Clear your desk by noon. The car is at the bottom of the river. You can take the bus."
