Chapter 9 - THE SAFE DEPOSIT VAULT
The First Trust & Savings Bank of Cairo, Illinois, did not look like the seat of a four-billion-dollar empire.
It sat on a crumbling corner across from an abandoned lumber yard, its red-brick facade stained with soot from the Ohio River barge traffic, its brass lettering tarnished to the color of dull mustard.
Seventy-two hours had passed since the levee.
I sat in a small, windowless conference room in the basement vault, wearing clean denim and a wool sweater Marianne’s attorneys had purchased for me at a department store in Paducah. My fingernails were still stained with cemetery mud that wouldn't scrub out, but for the first time in eight years, I had a valid Missouri state ID card in my pocket.
It read: MATTHEW VICTOR BENNETT.
Across the oak table sat two special agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, and Marianne.
Marianne looked different now. Her face was still pale, and she wore a soft cashmere scarf to conceal the burn scars along her neck, but her posture had transformed. She sat with her back straight, her hands resting quietly on a leather legal binder, her eyes calm and dangerous.
The bank manager, an elderly man whose glasses hung from a beaded cord, placed a long, narrow tin box on the table between us.
"Box four-twelve," he said, his voice hushed by the presence of federal badges. "Hasn't been accessed since October twenty-third, two thousand and six. The rental fees were paid twenty-five years in advance in cash by a Miss Rose Vance."
I reached into my pocket.
The brass key felt heavy, warm from my body heat. I slid it across the table toward the federal prosecutor.
"You open it," I said.
The prosecutor, a sharp-faced woman named Chen, shook her head gently. "It’s your name on the signature card, Matthew. Rose registered the alternate access under 'Matthew Carter-Bennett, upon his eighteenth birthday.' It belongs to you."
I looked at Marianne. She gave me a small, tight nod.
I took the key. My fingers didn't shake. I inserted it into the brass lock of the box, turned it until the tumbler clicked with a heavy, oiled precision, and lifted the hinged lid.
Inside lay three items.
The first was a thick stack of green stock certificates—five thousand shares of Class A voting stock in the Bennett-Vance Corporation, endorsed on the reverse in Julian Bennett’s unmistakable, spidery handwriting.
The second was a small, plastic micro-cassette labeled in black marker: JULIAN - OCT 12 2006.
The third was an unsealed envelope. Inside was a single sheet of cheap, lined notebook paper torn from a spiral binder. The handwriting was rounded, hurried, the ink smudged where someone’s wrist had rested while writing under a dim lamp.
I recognized the hand immediately.
Mattie, it read.
If you’re reading this, they finally caught up to me, or my lungs gave out like the doctor in Joplin said they would. I didn't take you for the money, baby. I took the money because I was starving and your father had just died and I was stupid enough to think I could play cards with devils. But the second I looked at you in that crib at St. Luke's, with your funny crooked eyebrow and them big brown eyes looking for your bottle, I knew I was never giving you to Julian’s people. I spent your whole life running because I was scared they'd take you away and put me in prison where I couldn't watch over you. I know I didn't give you much. We ate a lot of beans out of cans and you never got to finish a whole grade in the same school. But everything in this box belongs to you. You take it, and you make them pay for what they did to your daddy. Don't you ever be ashamed of your name. You’re a Bennett, but you’re my boy too. Love, Mom.
May you like
I stared at the paper until the blue lines blurred into watery tracks.
Beside me, Marianne placed her hand over mine. She didn't try to take the letter. She didn't say a word. She just let her fingers rest against mine, solid and warm, while two federal agents began logging the stock certificates into evidence bags.
