Balenger stared at Tod's watch, trying to disassociate, to distance himself from his emotions. It was an athlete's watch, the kind with several dials. Black rubber coated the case. Tilting his head, he was able to see that the time was a little after one. His heart pounded so fiercely, it seemed to fill his chest.
"Who's it gonna be?" Tod asked. "Anybody want to volunteer? No? Then I guess it's up to JD to decide."
"Tough choice," JD said. "Let's see now. Eenie, meenie… Moe!"
JD yanked Rick to his feet, jammed a hand behind his neck, clutched the back of Rick's belt, and rushed him toward the balustrade.
"No!" Cora screamed.
Rick wailed. Just as he was about to fly over the railing, JD pulled back hard on Rick's belt, spun him, and threw him onto the floor.
Cora's duct-taped hands were raised to her mouth in terror. Rick's face was ashen. His chest kept heaving as he hyperventilated.
"Did that get everybody's attention?" Mack asked.
The alternating heat and cold in Balenger's stomach made him nauseous.
"If we give you a few simple instructions, do you think you can follow them without making trouble?" JD asked.
Rick nodded weakly, blood dripping from his nose onto his Windbreaker.
"Then here's the drill," Tod said. "All of you are going to come slowly to your feet. No quick moves. Nothing to make us think you're attacking us."
Unable to use their hands to push themselves off the floor, they shifted to their knees, wobbled, raised one foot, then the other, and stood.
Balenger felt dizzy as blood rushed from his head. His stomach, side, leg, and forearm ached.
"You kept talking about a vault," Mack said.
"According to you, a gangster put it in," JD said. "Only three reasons to do that. Money, guns, or drugs."
"Six-ten." Mack rubbed his bald head. "We heard you say that was the number of the gangster's room. Move. We're gonna check it out."
Balenger nodded toward the professor on the floor. "We need to help him up the stairs."
"No," Tod said. "He's not going anywhere."
JD opened a knife. "Yeah, he's the weak link. He's the guy we kill to keep your attention."
"Wait!" Balenger said, his muscles cramping. "The professor did all kinds of research. He's an expert about this hotel. He can help you get into the vault."
Tod, Mack, and JD exchanged looks.
"What makes you so sure he can do that?" Mack asked.
"Because that's why he asked me to join the group."
Rick, Cora, and Vinnie straightened.
"You're not a reporter?" Rick said, glaring.
Balenger shrugged. "I once watched All the President's Men."
"You son of a bitch!" Cora said.
"The professor lost his teaching job. He got to keep his pension but not his health insurance. As you saw, he has heart problems. But there's no way his pension will pay for the treatment he needs. He's desperate. So he asked me to join the group and learn how to get into the hotel and watch how the vault was opened. Later, I was supposed to return on my own, follow the route we took, go back to the vault, and grab what's in there."
"And what exactly's in there?" Mack stepped close.
"If the professor's information is correct?" Balenger hesitated. "Gold coins."
"Gold…"
"The professor's been teaching me a lot about history. In particular, about gold coins in the United States. Ten- and twenty-dollar gold pieces designed by… let me think a second. Augustus…"
"Saint-Gaudens," Vinnie said.
"Yeah. That's the name. The ten-dollar gold coins were called eagles. The twenty-dollar coins were called double eagles. Until the Depression, people used them as currency. But then Black Friday happened."
"What the hell was Black Friday?" Tod asked.
"The great stock market collapse of 1929," Cora answered.
Balenger's heart pounded less frantically. That's right. Keep them talking, he thought.
"Get to the point." Mack rubbed the burn scar on his cheek.
"In the early 1930s," Cora told him, "the American economy was in such trouble, the government feared it would collapse. To keep the value of the dollar fluid, the government went off the gold standard."
"Speak English, Sweets."
"Prior to the Depression, the value of a dollar was linked to the value of the gold that the U.S. Treasury had in its reserves," she said. "In theory, you could go to a bank, put down thirty-five dollars, and ask for the equivalent in gold. One ounce of it. But during the Depression, the government wanted to say that the dollar was worth whatever the government decided it was worth, regardless of how much gold the government owned. So we went off the gold standard. That meant gold could no longer be used as currency. Under the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, it became illegal for private citizens to own gold bars or gold coins. Except for jewelry, all gold had to be surrendered to the Treasury."
"The government stole the gold?" JD said.
"People who turned in the coins and the bars got receipts that they could apply to their bank accounts," Vinnie said. "Since then, the only way an American can own a gold coin is by treating it as a historical collector's piece. You can look at it. You can hold it in your hand. You can buy and sell it at a rare-coin store. But you can't buy a tank of gasoline with it."
"Certainly, these days, the face value of a twenty-dollar gold coin won't buy a tank of gas," Balenger said. Keep the conversation going, he thought.
"What about the gangster?" Tod fingered the piece of pipe stuck under his belt.
"Carmine Danata was a mobster in the Roaring Twenties," Balenger said. "One of his trademarks was giving gold coins to his favorite hookers. When the Depression hit, he was sure the government was cheating everybody by confiscating the gold coins and gold bars. So he never surrendered his coins. Instead, he started hoarding them. Finally, he had so many hiding places, he couldn't keep track of them all. That's when he had the vault put into his suite in 1935."
"You're saying the gold coins are still in there?" Mack's eyes sparkled.
"Danata died in a gang shootout in Brooklyn in 1940," Balenger answered. "The suite was rented only to him. He paid for it year-round. His 'roosting place,' he called it. After his death, the hotel's owner-"
"Carlisle. We heard you talking about him. A nutjob with more money than he deserved."
"He never rented the suite to anyone else," Balenger said. "From 1940 to 1968 when the hotel closed and Carlisle lived here alone, it remained unoccupied. Carlisle had a thing about spying on people, about living his life through their lives. The professor suspected that Carlisle preserved the room the way it was when Danata was alive. The theory is that Carlisle enjoyed the idea of having a secret stash of gold coins in the vault, of looking at them when no one else could. They're supposed to be beautiful: a soaring eagle on one side, Lady Liberty carrying a torch on the other."
"The sick fuck didn't try to smuggle them out of the country and turn them into cash?" Mack asked.
"He had agoraphobia. He was afraid to leave the hotel. Another country would have been like another planet to him. Why try to turn the coins into cash you don't need when you can have the pleasure of owning more gold coins than any private citizen has looked at since 1934? Tonight, when we explored some of the rooms, we discovered Carlisle was obsessed with preserving them the way they looked when the last guests checked out. Maybe he started doing that as early as 1940 when Danata was killed."
"What's gold worth these days?"
"Over five hundred dollars an ounce."
"So we could melt the coins down and-"
"That would cost you. A double eagle, less than an ounce of gold, is worth more than seven hundred dollars on the collectors' market."
"Jesus."
"But listen to this," Balenger continued. "The 1933 double eagle was minted just before the U.S. government went off the gold standard. Before the coins could be released, they were declared illegal and had to be destroyed. Most of them. Several were stolen. Recently, one of the stolen coins was found by the government and put up for auction at Sotheby's. The winning bid was almost seven million dollars."
"Seven…?"
"Million dollars. The theory is, Danata got his hands on five of the coins."
Tod's eyes reflected the headlamps. He gestured for everybody to move. "I can't wait to see this vault."