The Assassini Read Online Free PDF Page A

acute.
    They were rescued by Harry Helmsley, who offered to lease the Villard houses and the adjacent Church-owned properties to construct a hotel. The Archdiocese assisted Helmsley with the red-tape problems, and, in the end, the houses were saved intact, the Church still owned the site, and Helmsley had a long-term lease. He built his hotel around the houses.
    Like a Renaissance prince, he called it The Helmsley Palace.
    It was this palace that Curtis Lockhardt entered beneath the nineteenth-century bronze and glass marquee on Fiftieth. He went directly through the hushed reception area with its mirrors and the rich French walnut paneling, turned abruptly right, and went into the small enclosure that contained a concierge’s desk and the out-of-the-way elevators servicing the topmost floors, the penthouses.
    It was typical of Andy Heffernan to have reserved the Church’s triplex penthouse for the meeting. In the highly political world he inhabited, Curtis Lockhardt was one of Monsignor Heffernan’s trump cards, and he wanted to maintain as much secrecy as he could. Lockhardt was talking about a sum of money so large that not a shred of rumor could be permitted to leak out. The choice of the next pope was on the table, nestling up close to the money. Had they met across the street at St. Patrick’s, the rumors would have beaten them to the street. Power, luxury, worldliness, and secrecy: that was Monsignor Heffernan.
    Lockhardt knew that the Dunhill Monte Cruz 200 cigars and the Rémy Martin cognac Andy favored wouldbe ready. Monsignor Heffernan often remarked off the record that you took all the perks you could get and the more you took the more there were to take.
    Lockhardt got out of the elevator at the fifty-fourth floor and padded through the deep carpeting to the end of a long hallway running parallel to Madison Avenue. There was nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary behind any of the doors. He pressed the buzzer and waited. A voice from a small speaker said: “Come in, Curtis me lad.” It sounded as if the good monsignor might have enjoyed a two-martini lunch.
    Although he was accustomed to luxury, Lockhardt was always impressed by the sight of what lay before him. He stood at the top of a curving staircase with an elaborately carved banister. The huge room below was two stories in height, completely glassed in, with Manhattan spreading out beyond like an isometric map.
    The Empire State Building, the suave art deco spire of the Chrysler Building, the pristine modernity of the World Trade Center towers, beyond them in the bay the Statue of Liberty, Staten Island, the Jersey shoreline …
    Radio City, Rockefeller Center, the luminous patch of the ice rink … and almost straight down was St. Patrick’s, its twin steeples rising majestically above Fifth Avenue.
    He felt as if he were standing on a cloud. He held the carved railing as he slowly descended the thickly carpeted stairs. He couldn’t look away from the view. It made him feel like a child confronted by toys beyond his wildest dreams.
    “I’m having a quick pee.” Heffernan’s voice floated out from behind some hidden door. “Be with you in two shakes.”
    Lockhardt turned back to the view, almost mesmerized by the clarity and detail of the city. He was standing with his nose nearly pressed to the glass, staring down at a view of St. Patrick’s that its builders must never quite have imagined. God’s view. It was like looking at a blueprint that had come to life, developed a third dimension rising up at you.
    “God bless our little home.” Monsignor Heffernan, alarge man with thinning red hair and a nose that seemed to have been pilfered from a clown, lumbered toward him. He was red with sunburn that was peeling. He was wearing a black shirt and a priest’s dog collar, black trousers, and black tasseled loafers. His watery blue eyes blinked behind a scrim of cigar smoke. He had battled his way up from Irish poverty, South Boston