Chapter 4 - The Hollow Tower
The elevator at 84 Mount Vernon Street did not respond to Cole’s brass key.
He stood in the small, marble-clad lobby, the scent of fresh pine boughs from the building’s holiday display clashing with the sour, metallic taste of rising bile at the back of his tongue.
"Frank!" Cole roared, slamming the flat of his hand against the glass door of the concierge station. "Frank, open the damn gate! The key isn't engaging the cylinder!"
The door of the station didn't open.
The night porter—a sixty-year-old Irishman named Frank who had carried my grandmother’s trunks up from the carriage sweep when he was eighteen years old—stepped out from behind the mahogany partition.
He was not wearing his green uniform coat with the gold piping. He was wearing an old woolen sweater and his street trousers, holding a clipboard with four blue carbon forms attached.
He looked at Cole through the heavy plate glass for three seconds before depressing the intercom button.
"The unit is vacant, Mr. Sterling," Frank’s voice crackled through the small brass grill.
"What do you mean, vacant? My children are up there! My wife is—"
"Mrs. Bennett-Sterling and the infants departed the premises at zero-three-forty hours," Frank said. His tone was as smooth and unyielding as a marble headstone. "Under the supervision of Mr. Harris and Dr. Vance."
"Bennett-Sterling?" Cole’s voice cracked, rising an octave into a shrill, serrated squeak. "Her name is Sterling! I am the leaseholder of record!"
"Not according to the master trust documents filed with the management company at midnight, sir," Frank said. He held up a white sheet of heavy bond paper against the glass.
It was a copy of the Highland Wharf Realty Trust agreement, dated June 14, 2012.
At the bottom of the page, beneath my grandmother’s firm, upright script, was a single sentence in bold red ink:
“In the event of marriage dissolution, corporate malfeasance, or physical endangerment of the primary beneficiary, all right, title, and interest in the penthouse unit shall revert instantaneously to the Bennett Protective Trust, and any secondary occupant shall be deemed an unlawful trespasser without right of notice.”
"She signed it, Cole," Frank said softly, using his Christian name for the first time in five years. "Three hours ago. The sheriff’s deputies were here until four. They watched the boys from Vanguard carry the cribs down the service lift."
"My clothes," Cole whispered, his shoulder leaning against the cold glass. "My papers. The safe."
"The personal effects belonging to the Sterling estate have been inventoried and transferred to a bonded storage facility in South Boston," Frank said. "You can retrieve the receipt from Mr. Harris’s office on Tuesday morning. After nine."
"Open this door, Frank," Cole said, his voice dropping into a desperate, vibrating growl. "I have fifty thousand dollars in cash in that study. I have client files that represent eight hundred million dollars in municipal assets. If those files are compromised, the firm will sue this building into bankruptcy before the courts open on Thursday!"
Frank reached down and switched off the intercom.
The small red light died.
The lobby was dead quiet. Through the leaded glass of the street entrance, the snow had begun to fall again, dusting the hood of the Panamera where it sat idling by the yellow hydrant, its emergency flashers clicking with a dull, rhythmic tick... tick... tick.
Cole spun around, his hands clawing at his pockets for his phone.
He took out the corporate iPhone, holding the power button until the white Apple logo finally flickered onto the glass.
The cellular bars searched: Searching... Searching... No Service.
Across the screen, a red banner appeared:
CRITICAL ALERT: Device Remote-Wiped by System Administrator.
This terminal has been decoupled from the Bennett-Sterling enterprise network. All corporate data, contact registries, and access tokens have been purged per Compliance Protocol 14.
"No," he breathed. "No, no, no."
He opened his wallet with trembling fingers, pulling out the black Centurion card.
He walked five blocks through the slush to the Bank of America ATM beside the Charles Street station, his leather-soled dress shoes soaking up the grey, salt-laden water until his socks were frozen to his heels.
He shoved the card into the slot.
ENTER PIN:
His fingers hit the four numbers—his Harvard graduation year: 1-9-9-8.
The screen whirred. A mechanical pause that seemed to stretch into the grey clouds above Cambridge.
TRANSACTION DECLINED.
Card Status: Revoked by Issuer.
Reason: Account Terminated by Primary Trustee.
Please contact: Harris, Vance & Montgomery, Attorneys at Law.
He hit the balance inquiry button for his personal checking account—the small, private account he had opened at the Cambridge Trust Company to handle his squash club bills and the seasonal tips for the launch drivers in Marblehead.
The machine spat out a narrow paper receipt with a dry, metallic hiss.
AVAILABLE BALANCE: $32.14.
PENDING DEBITS: $14,250.00 (The Somerset Club — Holiday Dining Assessment).
OVERDRAFT WARNING: Immediate Deposit Required to Prevent Legal Action.
Cole crumpled the slip in his palm until the thermal paper tore against his signet ring.
"Sierra," he muttered, his lips blue and rubbery from the cold. "Sierra will have the liquid reserve in the marketing escrow."
He began to run.
Down Charles Street, across the frozen slush of the Boston Common, his navy coat flapping open, his silk tie whipped over his shoulder like a dead snake. The wind off the harbor hit him at the corner of Tremont, driving needles of sleet through his poplin shirt, but he didn't stop until he reached the brick sidewalk outside the Vaughn townhouse on Chestnut Street.
The house was four stories of restored Federal brick, with purple windowpanes from the nineteenth century and a wrought-iron boot-scraper by the granite steps.
Cole ran up the steps, his hands pounding against the heavy black door.
"Sierra! Open the door! Sierra!"
The door didn't open.
The parlor window on the second floor slid up three inches.
A man’s face appeared in the opening.
Julian Vaughn.
He was wearing his silk dressing gown, a cup of dark coffee in his right hand, his hair neatly brushed back from his high, aristocratic forehead. He did not look like a man whose wife had spent the night in Room 412 of the Liberty Hotel.
He looked like an underwriter who had just received an early delivery of the morning bond yields.
"Julian," Cole gasped, clutching the iron railing for balance. "Julian, thank God. My phone has been bricked. There’s an administrative error at the bank. I need to use your terminal to access the firm’s secondary wire codes."
Julian took a slow, measured sip of his coffee.
"There is no firm, Cole," he said.
The voice was not angry. It had that polite, slightly bored cadence of the Somerset Club reading room on a rainy Sunday.
"What are you talking about?"
"Mr. Harris called me at five-fifteen," Julian said, resting his forearm on the sash. "From the road to Hamilton. He was kind enough to provide me with a digital copy of certain... photographic assets... transmitted from your device at eleven-forty-seven last evening."
Cole’s stomach plummeted into an abyss that had no bottom.
"Julian... it wasn't... Sierra was upset about the—"
"Sierra is currently in the nursery on the third floor," Julian said, his voice entirely even. "Packing two suitcases. Her father—who, as you may recall, sits on the licensing committee of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers—has already spoken with the presiding justice of the business court."
Julian leaned forward slightly, looking down at Cole’s salt-stained shoes.
"The state pension fund canceled the ten-million-dollar commitment sixty seconds after the markets opened in London," Julian added. "They’re re-allocating the mandate to Morgan Stanley. And the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts has issued an investigative subpoena for the books of Vaughn-Sterling Global."
"Julian, please—"
"I’d suggest you find some dry socks, Cole," Julian said, his fingers beginning to pull the window sash down. "The temperature is dropping to twelve degrees by noon. And the locks on this door were changed forty minutes ago."
The window came down with a heavy, final thud.
May you like
The brass latch turned inside the dark glass.
Cole stood on the wet granite step, the sleet turning his hair into frozen spikes against his scalp, while from down the hill, the bells of the Church of the Advent began to ring for the eight o'clock Christmas service—clear, silver, and entirely indifferent to the dying.
