The next morning, on Saturday, Solan, disguised as a laborer (at Grace’s suggestion), followed Kron and McGee to the cellar. Grace was late, as usual, but Kron knew they had only so much time left before their permit expired. He looked at his watch. The streets were clear so they started without her. They looked at the door, which was locked, and the stairs, which were now impassable because of all the dirt and debris. They would have to go through the coal chute.
Solan, because he was short, went down through the sidewalk first and into the vault. He was surprised by all the dirt that had been dug up. When he got to the basement door leading to the cellar, he shouted up to the street and asked McGee if he could go in. McGee stuck his head in and told him to hold on; there was something going on outside.
Up on the street, Kron stared at the front of the motorcycle store. Something was different. He had been looking at that store for so many weeks now that even the slightest difference was glaring. Then Kron saw it—Mrs. Cocchi had taken away the SELLING OUT sign. Kron asked around the crowd. Someone said she had sold it to an auctioneer. One of the diggers groaned. A new owner could make things infinitely worse for them, especially if it meant the property would have to go through a lengthy auction procedure first. Some wondered if it wasn’t a ploy to get out from under the permit that was expiring today. Or perhaps Mrs. Cocchi knew what was coming and wanted to make herself scarce. Normally, she would be watching over them like a hawk. Kron looked around. She was nowhere.
But Kron, who had spent some time around very smart people the past years, saw a brilliant plan at work. By selling her store, Maria Cocchi could now make the case that Grace’s digging had ruined her sole means of income. She would then have a good case when she sued Grace—and perhaps Kron—for trashing her store. This might be Maria Cocchi’s last-ditch attempt at cashing out before she had nothing—destroying her enemies in the process. Kron guessed that this would probably put a halt on their permit until the property changed hands. They would be stuck yet again.
Grace finally arrived, customarily late, and Kron rose to tell her the bad news. She saw the men sitting in the dirt and dust. Grace pointed for them to get down there.
Into her basement.
While they had been digging under the sidewalk, Grace had contacted Edward Lind and Charles Greenbaum, the real estate auctioneers in charge of selling the Cocchi store. For weeks, Grace had been using her secretly planted aide, Marie Vanello, to try to urge Mrs. Cocchi to put her house on the market. When she finally did, Grace immediately began the paperwork to buy it. The plan came together flawlessly, and the property was sold on June 16 to Mrs. Grace Humiston, Esq. Mrs. Cocchi had no idea. Kron smiled. At least he was right about this being a brilliant plan.
Grace couldn’t make it down the narrow coal chute, so she watched as her men, with flashlights, were lowered into the vault. Entrance through the chute would be difficult and require a bit of elbow grease, but they had most of the day. So instead of staying and being useless, Grace went to her downtown office to check the morning mail. She knew that this whole process would take a good long while, and she had other work to do.
As soon as Grace walked into her office, her phone was ringing. Grace picked it up. It was Kron.
“Mrs. Humiston,” her old friend said. “Hurry back here.”
Grace drove as fast as she could. When she got close to the store, she stopped because of the sea of people who had come out of nowhere. It looked like a parade was going on. She stopped, got out of her car, and ran the rest of the way to the store. There had to be over a thousand people here, draped over one another, looking at something in the center of it all.
When Grace finally arrived at the store, there were reporters and people everywhere. There was a kind of ladder set up over the broken stairs. Grace, under her black hat, pushed her way into the cellar and disappeared from view.
Minutes later, when Ruth Cruger came out of that cellar, into that beautiful June afternoon, she was carried in the air by the men who had spent so long looking for her. Her body was held in a thin cardboard box, closed tight with a belt. A single dark glove lay crumpled on top of the interim coffin. As she was raised up, the men in the street took off their hats.
Their sons, watching their fathers, all did the same.
*
Earlier, after Grace had left for her office, the men descended into the silent cellar. Kron scrambled down first into the darkness. A single electric bulb looped down off the uneven ceiling of the basement. It sparked hot white. The brightness lit the scar on his face.
Kron ducked his head so that it missed the edge of the stone ceiling. He palmed his hat and snapped on his unlit cigar. He surveyed the entire room, looking into its webby corners.
Hello? he asked.
The room smelled of damp cement, oil, and wood. There was no furniture. The compactness of the room seemed to freeze everything. McGee and Solan followed Kron in. McGee barely fit. Solan, in overalls, was darting around. He looked at everything with purpose.
As the men moved around and kicked at the floor, it felt like an underground church.
They looked up to see a chute that reached all the way to the first floor. There should have been a flue, but it wasn’t there.
There were pipes and a tin sign and some saws, but otherwise the room was empty except for a huge workbench against the wall. There was a large bag in the corner of the room that looked like quicklime. Kron stepped in slow circles on the planked flooring. They walked into the corner, where exposed brick lay against the bottom half of the wall. These New York basements were forgotten places, with everything stretching up. The down of things was always left behind. The cop started taking off his coat, then his drenched vest.
Solan examined the massive workbench. He motioned, and everyone helped him move it. They pushed it to the side and stared downward. The floorboards were gone. Instead, in the cement floor, they saw a door, set into the ground like a gate.
Kron pulled back the door and stared into a black space. He couldn’t see or sense the bottom. Kron jumped straight down.
It was almost impossible to breathe. He kept going.
Several feet down he saw her.
When they lifted her out, they did so in silence and as delicately as they could. She was tied up. Her legs had been pushed up parallel to her chest, where they were tied around her body. Kron immediately cut the ropes. On her left hand he saw a ring with the initials W.H.S. Kron left to make two calls.
She had a bruise on her forehead.