Chapter 13 - The hidden safe in the study
Arthur Vance stepped toward the grandfather clock standing beside the penthouse library doors. With a crisp, practiced motion, the old butler pulled the ornate pendulum forward, triggering a concealed hydraulic hinge behind the mahogany paneling. The wall parted with a soft hiss of compressed air, revealing a hidden alcove containing a heavy steel floor safe that Ethan Mercer had tried to drill open for three consecutive years without success. Ethan had always assumed it held Frank's private collection of bearer bonds or diamonds.
"Ethan brought three different safecrackers from Chicago last winter while you were recovering in Vermont, sir," Arthur reported, handing Frank an analog brass dial key that had hung around his neck for thirty years. "None of them could bypass the pneumatic tumbler system. He was convinced you hid the primary voting shares inside this vault." Frank slipped the key into the tumbler and rotated the heavy dial three times counter-clockwise, then once clockwise until a heavy metallic bolt slammed open with the authority of an artillery shell.
The safe door swung open. Inside was no glittering pile of jewels, nor stacks of hundred-dollar bills. There was only a single, grease-stained architectural blueprint and an old cassette recorder wrapped in faded electrical tape. Frank pulled out the blueprint, laying it across the polished desk. It detailed a subterranean level beneath the third parking basement—a sub-level that did not exist on any modern municipal blueprint filed with the city planning department. "Level Zero," Arthur whispered, his eyes widening. "You never sealed it, Mr. Calloway?" Frank stared at the faded red ink marking the central structural pillar of the skyscraper. "I couldn't seal it," Frank said, his voice tightening with grave dread. "The main support column for Calloway House rests on a granite fault line. When Ethan authorized the illegal sub-basement excavation last month to build his private nightclub, he wasn't expanding floor space. He was digging directly toward the support pins."
