“They’re crazy.”
Grace and her men found nothing that first day except for more of the white substance that looked a bit like plaster. It had finally been identified as quicklime, which Kron had suspected all along. Later in the day, a sudden downpour of rain forced all the onlookers to head for cover inside Cocchi’s shop. There they stood, in the cool store, looking at the silent, single-eyed motorcycles. Grace gave the order for the men to come up out of the watery vault before it flooded. Grace politely asked Mrs. Cocchi if her men might use the inside door to the coal cellar by the front stairwell. Maria politely refused. As the rain blew down, the men had to be drawn out by rope, dripping wet, through the filthy outdoor chute. All of the people on the street felt worn out and cold. This grand display of digging was, like everything else thus far, an endeavor that led to nothing but more empty space. There was no evidence to be seen. Grace, wet, grimly vowed that digging “would be resumed to-morrow.”
The next morning, the police department put a hold on Grace’s promise until they could figure out if her permit was actually legal. By late afternoon, the assistant corporation counsel agreed that the borough could authorize such an action—the opening of the vault underneath the sidewalk—but only if there was no permit for its presence in the first place. The underground of New York was still relatively uncharted. Just as the city built up, some saw the world beneath as an untapped resource for train tunnels and living space. Some forward thinkers dreamed of pneumatic tubes swooshing passengers out to Coney Island. A permit for the vault was searched for, but none was found. So at five o’clock, the police obtained a digging permit from the commissioner of public works to allow Grace and her men to keep digging.
The next day, June 13, the skies had cleared, and it was hot again, though the rains had helped loosen the earth a little bit. As Kron, McGee, and his laborers dug, one of their flashlights caught something shiny. They fished out a tin sign, just like the ones hanging outside the motorcycle shop. It looked brand new. Then they hit an oil can. Then another sign. Kron pulled out a huge empty gasoline tin. These artifacts came out of the pit and were carefully placed to the side.
The next thing they found was a newspaper. They handed it up to Grace. It was an Italian paper dated July 15, 1916, almost one year earlier. At the bottom of the hole were hard, dark stones. They tried the pickaxes, but they just sparked against the rocks. They tried to lift the stones out, but they were too heavy. So they got a block and tackle from the toolbox and hooked it up. The men threaded the rope through the pulleys and worked them out, back and forth. Eventually, the stones came up and out and into the air. The men piled them into the corner. They looked into the blackness and saw something small. It was white.
The thing looked like a flower. Once it was free, they passed it up to Grace. She shook it loose as clumps of dirt fell to the ground. It was small and light. She turned it over in her hands lightly and recognized it as an embroidered corset cover, once beautiful, now crumpled and dirty. It had not been long in the ground. Their stomachs were in their mouths.
Someone shouted. They had found something else. Kron lifted the small object out and stared, speechless. He brought it up to Grace, slowly. It was a small piece of rounded, discolored bone. Grace turned it in her hand like a jewel. No one could see her face under the black hat. She handed it over to Kron. He placed it in his pocket.
As a crowd gathered to peer down the chute, Grace looked at her watch. The vault was almost completely cleared, as far as they could tell. She headed for the car. Where are you going, they asked.
A wedding, said Grace. They stared at her in disbelief. But Grace didn’t care. She was already late.
Before she left, Kron spoke with her in private. “There’s no guesswork there,” he said. “Cocchi didn’t bury a ten-gallon tin of gasoline under that load of coal for any other reason than to fill up the space.”
“That hole was intended for a grave,” Kron said.
There was just one problem: no one was in it.
“Station three or four guards outside the place before you leave,” Grace ordered. “Give them instructions to note everyone who calls at the place and to follow anyone who leaves with any suspicious-looking bundle.” Grace gave another quick look around. “So long, Kron,” she said.
Some of the men couldn’t understand how the lead detective on a case this big could leave for a wedding, but Kron understood. That was Mrs. Humiston.
The men kept digging until they heard the shovel hit something hard and loud. The worker tapped it.
“A box, probably,” McAntee said, wiping his forehead. “Might take about half an hour to get it out.” He paused. “But it’s 5 o’clock now and my quitting time.”
They seemed so close now to what everyone was thinking, but no one was talking about. This wasn’t a secret chamber. It wasn’t an elaborate hiding place. It was a hole in the ground. It was something they didn’t want to say.
“No,” said Kron. “It will take a good four hours to get that box out—if there is one—at the rate we’ve been digging to-day. Better call it a day’s work, and we’ll go at it again in the morning.”
When they emerged into that late afternoon light, McGee went last, padlocking the chute. By this time, real crowds had gathered in the streets about the shop, and the police had thrown a cordon of lights around the cellar entrance. Someone made an announcement to the crowd, which had grown with each passing hour. The crowd groaned and murmured, some among them even offering to pay for the workers’ overtime. There were plenty of reporters. But Kron was adamant. He was not authorized to pay for any overtime.
“I’m bossing the job,” he kept saying.
“What are you going to do now?” McGee asked. “We’re on the right track, I’m telling you.”
“We could go ahead and dig,” Kron said. “But I’m hungry and awfully tired.”
Kron wasn’t lying. But he wasn’t completely telling the truth, either.
Kron was indeed hungry, and certainly tired, but he was by no means off the clock. So after leaving his partners and workers, Kron worked his night hours. That was the only time he could get any real work done by himself. McGee was all right, for a cop, but Kron had some things that he had to do for Grace first. So Kron took the bone over to Doctor Alling of Columbia University.