Chapter 6 - The Garage Beneath the Ash
The freezing rain turned into a blinding white squall that coated the limestone balustrades of the Costello mansion in sheet ice.
Arthur stood in the center of the bedchamber, strapping a heavy leather shoulder holster over his freshly bandaged chest with steady hands.
He did not look like a man dying of fever anymore; he looked like a soldier preparing his own execution.
"Your father was not just a mechanic who fixed carburetors on Eighteenth Street, Norah," Arthur said, pulling a dark turtleneck over his head.
"Thomas Hayes was my father’s designated confessor and the only civilian who held the keys to the city's private accounts."
I stood by the open safe with the faded photograph trembling between my cold fingers.
"Why did he never say a word to me?" I asked, my voice barely rising above the whistle of the gale outside.
"Why did he let Elena and me watch him cough up blood for two years without telling us who he really was?"
"Because silence was the only wall separating you two from a shallow ditch in the Cook County forest preserves," Arthur replied, checking the magazine of a matte-black automatic.
"When my father’s car was detonated in ninety-eight, Thomas took the syndicate's master ledgers and buried them where no audit could ever dig."
"Marco Rossi spent fifteen years trying to find them, smile by smile, bribe by bribe."
"He waited until your father was on dialysis, until his kidneys failed and the medical bills began piling up like cordwood."
"Marco bought every outstanding invoice your family owed, thinking financial starvation would force your father to unlock the vault."
"My father died with his mouth closed," I said, a wave of pride cutting through the numbness in my chest.
"He died penniless in a county ward, but he never gave Marco Rossi what he wanted."
"That is why he was a better man than anyone who ever bore the Costello name," Arthur muttered, his gray eyes locking onto mine.
"And that is why Silas King’s men are tearing your family garage apart with sledgehammers right now."
"They know Marco is dead, and they know the clock is ticking before the federal grand jury unseals the dock indictments on Monday."
Arthur reached out, his leather-gloved hand wrapping gently around my elbow, lifting me to my feet.
"If Silas finds those ledgers, he owns the mayor, the port authority, and every precinct commander in Cook County."
"He will wipe out everyone who ever knew my father, starting with you and Elena."
"Then we aren't waiting for daylight," I said, pulling my heavy wool coat from the back of the settee.
"I spent ten summers sweeping the concrete bays under my father’s hydraulic lifts."
"If there is an iron box buried in that foundation, you will never find the release latch without me."
Arthur stared at me for three silent seconds, the shadows under his eyes carving deep hollows into his pale skin.
He did not argue, nor did he tell me to stay behind in the relative safety of the golden cage.
He handed me a small, compact revolver with a wooden grip that fit neatly into the deep pocket of my coat.
"Keep the hammer down until you have no other choice," he said quietly.
We slipped down the servants' stairwell, avoiding the grand foyer where thirty heavily armed sentries stood watch behind boarded windows.
In the underground carriage house beneath the garage, a single unmarked gray sedan waited with its exhaust humming quietly into the ventilator.
Behind the wheel was Leo, an older Sicilian driver with silver hair and a crooked nose broken in some forgotten turf war thirty years prior.
Leo did not ask why the boss was riding with a scullery maid in the passenger seat.
He only engaged the clutch and steered the sedan into the subterranean tunnel that emerged into the industrial alleyway three blocks away.
The city of Chicago lay buried under four inches of dirty slush, the yellow streetlamps flickering through the blizzard like dying stars.
We took the secondary trucking routes through Bridgeport, running parallel to the frozen canal where barges sat locked in ice.
Nobody spoke inside the car; the only sound was the rhythmic thud of the windshield wipers scraping against freezing sleet.
Every shadow on the corner of Damen Avenue looked like a sniper waiting with a scoped hunting rifle.
My knuckles were white as I gripped the revolver inside my pocket, feeling the cold steel press against my thigh.
"Leo will stay three blocks south with the engine running," Arthur instructed, leaning forward between the front bucket seats.
"We go through the drainage alley behind the alley butcher shop."
"If you hear automatic fire, you do not turn back for me, Norah."
"You run straight to the Cermak station and take the train to Aurora."
"I didn't keep you alive in my basement just to watch you die on my father's garage floor," I replied, staring through the fogged glass.
The sedan slowed to a crawl half a block from Eighteenth Street, sliding silently against the frozen curb behind an abandoned brewery.
Arthur stepped out into the biting wind, his long wool coat whipping around his boots like black sails.
I followed him, the icy sleet instantly biting into my cheeks and soaking my hair.
We moved through the narrow alleyway behind the row of brick auto shops, our feet sinking into deep, unplowed snow.
The faint sound of iron striking masonry echoed through the freezing wind.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
They were already inside the shop, using heavy sledgehammers against the concrete foundation.
The back door of Hayes Auto Repair had been pried open with a crowbar, the splintered plywood frame hanging by a single hinge.
A portable halogen work light cast harsh, blinding yellow beams through the grimy glass windows of the service bay.
Arthur flattened his back against the wet brick wall, pulling his suppressed pistol from his shoulder holster with fluid grace.
He peered around the edge of the doorway, his jaw tightening into a razor-sharp contour.
"Four men," he whispered into my ear, his warm breath the only heat in the freezing air.
"Two on the pit with rotary saws, two watching the front garage doors with carbines."
"The release isn't in the pit itself," I whispered back, my heart pounding so loudly I feared the guards would hear it.
"My father was paranoid about city water line leaks ruining his tools."
"The counterweight is hidden behind the cast-iron compressor tank beside the tire-balancing bench."
"If they cut through the main pit floor, they will trigger the emergency drainage valve and flood the vault with sixty gallons of waste oil."
Arthur glanced down at me, a rare, terrifying smile curving his pale lips.
"Your father was a devious bastard, Norah."
"He was an honest mechanic who worked for crooks," I retorted, adjusting my grip on the small revolver.
"There is a substantial difference."
"Stay behind the tool chests until I clear the bay," Arthur ordered, his voice dropping into the icy register of an executioner.
Before I could answer, he pivoted around the doorframe and entered the blinding glare of the halogen lamps.
The first shot was no louder than the cough of an old furnace.
The guard standing by the tire racks collapsed instantly, his carbine clattering against a stack of aluminum rims.
The second guard turned with a shout, his rotary saw screeching against concrete, throwing up a shower of white sparks.
Arthur fired twice more through the smoke, the heavy rounds dropping the second man across the steel workbench.
The two sentries watching the front bay doors swung their rifles upward, shouting in panic as muzzle flashes lit the dark shop.
Bullets tore through the wooden shelves above my head, raining brass washers, spark plugs, and shattered glass across my shoulders.
I dropped to my knees, crawling through the dirty oil and sawdust toward the cast-iron compressor tank in the corner.
Arthur moved through the service bay like an iron ghost, firing with methodical, devastating precision from behind the hydraulic lift pillars.
A third man fell, clutching his chest, while the fourth scrambled toward the front glass bay, desperately trying to unlock the roll-up door.
Arthur caught him at the threshold, slamming the butt of his pistol into the man’s temple with sickening force.
The shop went dead quiet, save for the sputtering hiss of an oxygen tank nicked by a stray bullet and the whine of the halogen bulb.
Arthur walked back toward me through the drifting gray cordite smoke, stepping over the fallen men without looking down.
"Where is the latch, Norah?" he asked, his breathing slightly labored as fresh blood blossomed across his wounded left arm.
I scrambled behind the massive industrial air compressor, reaching deep into the dark gap between the tank and the brick masonry.
My fingers found the cold, grease-crusted handle of an ancient three-quarter-inch drive breaker bar welded directly into the foundation pipe.
I threw my entire body weight downward against the iron bar, gritting my teeth as my boots slid on the oily floor.
A heavy, metallic groan reverberated beneath the concrete floor of the service bay.
Behind the secondary oil-draining pit, a square slab of concrete two feet thick slowly swung upward on counterbalanced hydraulic struts.
Beneath the slab lay an unpainted steel lockbox wrapped in thick vulcanized rubber and sealed with industrial grease.
Arthur knelt beside the opening, his gloved fingers slicing through the rubber with his pocket knife.
He threw the steel latches open, revealing three thick, leather-bound accounting ledgers and a bundle of yellowed audio cassette tapes.
On top of the first ledger lay a handwritten envelope addressed to my father, sealed with red sealing wax bearing the initials D.A.V.
"District Attorney Vance," Arthur read aloud, his voice dropping an octave into pure, murderous fury.
"Julian’s uncle."
"The man who presided over the inquest into my parents’ deaths twenty-eight years ago."
Suddenly, the radio clipped to the belt of the fallen guard by the workbench crackled with static.
A voice roared through the small speaker, distorted by rain and panic.
"Strike team two, report in!"
"Silas just secured the girl from the north gatehouse!"
"We have Arthur’s leverage!"
"Pull back to the dock terminal immediately!"
The air in the garage froze solid.
I dropped the rubber wrapping from my hands, my blood turning to pure ice in my veins.
"The north gatehouse..." I whispered, my voice breaking into a shriek of raw agony.
"Elena."
"They didn't come here just for the books, Arthur."
"They used this garage as a decoy to pull you out of the estate."
Arthur’s face went completely dead, the rage vanishing behind a mask of absolute, terrifying stillness.
He grabbed the three ledgers, shoved them into a heavy canvas tool bag, and slung it over his uninjured shoulder.
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"Get to the car, Norah," he said, his voice flat as a funeral bell.
"We are going to burn Silas King's world until there is nothing left to bury."
