Richard Doetsch - The 13th Hour

Dreyfus looked at Nick and nodded. “Yeah.”

NICK DROVE HIS Audi up Route 22 with Dreyfus in the seat beside him, his briefcase in his lap, having grabbed it from the trunk of the blue rental car, still parked on the access road.

“Thank you,” Paul Dreyfus said. “I owe you my life, I think.”

“You’re welcome.” Nick nodded as he cracked the ice pack he had pulled from the car’s emergency kit and handed it to Dreyfus. “Again, my condolences on the loss of your brother.”

“You knew almost exactly what that guy Dance was going to do to me.”

“It’s kind of his MO.” Nick thumbed his swollen lip, hoping to avoid further questions about his foreknowledge.

“Listen, I don’t have much time, but I really need to know what’s going on,” Nick went on. “I need to know if you know anything about this robbery.”

Dreyfus looked out the window at the vacant town of Byram Hills.

“They’re going to kill my wife.” Nick’s tone was pleading, heartfelt.

Dreyfus pressed the ice pack to his eye and nodded. “My brother was responsible for the theft. He pulled all the info from my private files. He was the brains, for lack of a better term, of everything that happened. I only found out this morning what he planned. He took a flight up, got here at 10:15. Dance picked him up at the airport and they went to Hennicot’s place to rob it. I flew up here hoping I could stop him before he made the worst mistake of his life.”

“I’m sorry.” Nick couldn’t imagine how Dreyfus was feeling about this betrayal by his own flesh and blood.

“There were five of them, including my brother, who led them down into the candy store. They got in fine, got what they were each there for, but then the whole thing dissolved into disaster. Dance and his crew thought my brother was trying to screw them, my brother accused them of being ungrateful. A textbook meltdown of power and greed.”

“There’s hundreds of millions down there,” Nick said.

“Yeah, and nobody was really aware of that except for Hennicot, his attorneys, myself and, eventually and unfortunately, my brother. The people who helped him, that guy Dance and the others, wouldn’t know value if it smacked them in the face.”

“Why would your brother involve anyone else if he had the keys to the place?”

“You always have a backup security protocol. Sadly, my brother was a fool. Thinking some alarm might ring at the police station, he figured he needed them on the inside if he was going to pull this off, so he got Dance to put together a team. They planned it out, watched the place for activity, stood guard, and hauled the stuff out. My brother promised them, lured them really, with shiny gold and diamonds. He never told them what he was going for, thought it was none of their business. He let Dance and his men take the daggers and swords while he went for the safe.”

“They couldn’t just take the Monet on the wall?”

“Nice to see someone knows their art. The idiots he hired probably thought it was a finger painting. My brother, on the other hand, knew exactly what it was but he wanted something more.”

“What do you mean, more?” Nick asked.

“There was something else besides diamonds in the safe.” Dreyfus paused.

“What?”

Dreyfus was slow in answering. “He wanted Hennicot’s mahogany lock box.”

“What box?”

“My brother didn’t even know what was in it. He had only heard rumors but thought it worth the risk.”

“He wanted that more than the Monet, all the gold and diamonds?” Nick said with confusion. “What was in the box?”

“Did you ever hear of the concept of the perception of value?”

“No,” Nick shook his head.

“If I were to hold a box in my hand that I would desperately not part with, you would be curious about its contents. If I wouldn’t sell it to you for a million dollars you would have confirmation of its value. But that value may be only personal. Maybe it’s my father’s ashes in the box. Mere dust that would float away on the wind. Worth nothing to you. But to me… its all that I have left of my father. It’s priceless.”

Dreyfus turned away from Nick. He reached into his pocket, fumbled around, jingling his change for something, and then turned back.

He held out his two hands, one clinched in a fist, the other, palm up, with a quarter resting in its center.

“Look at my hands,” Dreyfus said. “Choose one but only one.”

Nick looked at the quarter, then at Dreyfus’s closed hand, and quickly touched it.

“That is what nine out of ten people do. They choose the mystery. Why?” he asked rhetorically. “For a host of reasons. To learn what is there, always thinking the unknown is more valuable than the known.

“How many people live in the moment? A few? How many people live for tomorrow at the sacrifice of today?” Dreyfus opened his fist to reveal it to be empty. “… When tomorrow is never a guarantee.”

Dreyfus’s words hit Nick hard as he thought of Julia, as he realized they were always looking toward the future at the expense of the moment.

“That is the box. That is why my brother is dead, that is why they will kill me if I don’t help them find it. Your wife will be killed to cover their tracks. And they don’t even know yet what it contains.”

“Dance had a trunk full of gold and yet would trade it for this box, and he has no idea what’s in it?”

“The whole thing went bad. Dance and his men were going for the antiques and the diamonds, which would have made them very happy. Then they saw the box. Not knowing what it was, and seeing my brother wanting it so badly, they thought its worth far exceeded what they were taking and thought they were being ripped off. Paid cheap for their help.”

“All over a box?”

“We all have a special box, something we hold dear. Something we dare not part with for any price. Yours is your wife, mine is my children. Shamus Hennicot’s was in a box; it weighed twenty-five pounds and was passed down from father to son to son. It was said to contain their philosophy, their family secrets.” Dreyfus took a deep breath. “We cling to our hearts, to what warms them, to what gives us hope, to things we can look upon and know the world will someday be okay again.”

“What could weigh twenty-five pounds and be held most dear?” Nick asked.

“Curiosity is infectious, isn’t it? You haven’t even seen the box and you want to know what’s in it.”

“Do you know what’s in the box?” Nick asked.

Dreyfus smiled a knowing smile. “You didn’t think this whole thing was about a handful of diamonds and some old swords, did you?”

THE REAR DOOR of the Taurus was open, Dance sat in the backseat, his hands cuffed, barely able to contain his anger.

The young National Guardsman stood outside the car, his M- 16 in one hand, his cell phone in the other pressed to his ear, waiting for his superior officer to answer.

Dance’s mind was working on overtime, looking about, weighing his options before a contingent of weekend warriors came to haul him away. He hadn’t come this far to fail.

Dance looked at his missing ring finger: They called it a down payment on his life.

No one knew it, but he had until midnight tonight or he would be dead. And that just didn’t fit into his schedule.

Dance had moonlighted on many jobs that were contrary to his profession. The sixty-thousand-dollar salary of a detective wasn’t enough to live on, not in Westchester, among the wealthy who looked to the police for protection but treated them as second-class citizens.

Little jobs supplemented his income-the thefts here and there, the shakedown and blackmailing of the young drug dealers, the kids whose millionaire parents would disown them if they knew what Biff and Muffy were selling to fourteen-year-olds.