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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In 1886 New York, a respectable architect shouldn't have any connection to the notorious gang of thieves and killers that rules the underbelly of the city. But when John Cross's son racks up an unfathomable gambling debt to Kent's Gent's, Cross must pay it back himself. All he has to do is use his inside knowledge of high society mansions and museums to craft a robbery even the smartest detectives won't solve. The take better include some cash too: the bigger the payout, the faster this will be over. With a newfound talent for sniffing out vulnerable and lucrative targets, Cross becomes invaluable to the gang. But Cross's entire life has become a balancing act, and it will only take one mistake for it all to come crashing down and for his family to go down too.
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Seitenzahl: 552
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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HOUSE OF THIEVES
CHARLES BELFOURE
For Chris
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
It was a perfect day to rob a bank.
The rain outside hammered the pavements like a monsoon. The river of delivery wagons, double-decker omnibuses, and carriages of all description that usually flowed in an unending torrent along West Thirty-Third Street had been reduced to a trickle. In place of the rush of pedestrians along the pavement, a few men with umbrellas hurried by the plate glass windows of the Manhattan Merchants & Trust Bank. Customers would hold off coming to the bank until the downpour stopped – and that wasn’t going to happen for hours.
All of which meant fewer witnesses.
Stick Gleason looked down the barrel of his Colt Navy revolver at the people lying face down on the shiny, white marble floor, then glanced over at Sam Potter, who was standing guard inside the massive oak-and-glass double doors of the front entrance. Potter nodded: things were going well. Though they both wore white muslin masks that hid their faces, Gleason knew Potter was smiling at him.
The woman on the floor in front of him started to whimper, reminding him of a hunting dog he’d once owned. When the dog wanted out of his crate, he’d give a high-pitched whine until Gleason couldn’t stand the noise any longer and freed him. Gleason could only see the top of the woman’s scarlet-coloured hat, which had a slanted brim with a sort of high mound on top, like a beehive covered with yellow and green cloth flowers. Must have been a society lady.
‘Keep quiet, ma’am. We’ll be through in just a few minutes,’ Gleason said in a soothing tone, tapping the top of her hat with the barrel of his Colt. She shut up immediately.
He was getting anxious himself. ‘Come on, Red. How much longer?’
‘Goddamn you, I told you never to rush me,’ Bannon said angrily, the words muffled by his muslin mask. He continued to pour the nitroglycerinee drop by drop from the small glass vial into the joints of the bank vault’s hinges. Beads of sweat slipped down his forehead, sliding over his eyebrows and into his eyes, making him blink uncontrollably. He kept wiping them away with his left hand.
It was dead quiet in the bank. Then Gleason heard a faint noise building quickly toward a screech, like a boiling tea kettle about to blow.
‘Listen, woman, I told you.’
An ear-piercing scream exploded out of the society lady’s mouth. Bannon flinched – and Stick watched in horror as the glass vial slipped from his fingers and fell to the marble.
The blast was like a white-hot fireball of a meteorite, streaking from the vault room to the front windows of the bank, incinerating everything in its path. Bannon was vaporised in a millisecond, along with Gleason, the society lady, four bank tellers, two customers, and the entire wood-and-marble interior of the banking hall. Potter was propelled like a rocket into West Thirty-Third Street and through a shopfront window directly south across the road.
A delivery driver and his bay horse lay dead and bloody amid the wreckage of a dray wagon. A cast-iron electric light pole was bent parallel to the street. Windows and shopfronts on the south side of West Thirty-Third Street were blown in too, leaving black holes that seemed to gape out at the newly silent street in astonishment.
James T. Kent, standing under an umbrella on the flat roof of the eight-storey Duckworth Building directly across from Manhattan Merchants & Trust, watched as a great plume of black smoke billowed up from West Thirty-Third Street, drifting past him and blending into the grey sky. The street below was a mass of confusion, with people running toward the building from all directions. The clanging of fire wagons could be heard in the distance. There won’t be any need for them, Kent thought. The blast had sucked the oxygen out of the space, which meant no fire.
From his vantage point, the men on the street looked like ants scurrying in and out of the blasted opening of the bank. They’ll find no bodies, he thought. Only tiny pieces of human flesh and bone.
‘Poor bastards,’ said Ben Culver, a short, stout, broad-shouldered man.
‘It was the nitro,’ Kent said, not a shred of emotion in his voice. ‘Handling it is like trying to hold quicksilver – almost impossible. But still better than using dynamite. Remember Maritime National? The cash, negotiable bonds, and stock certificates, all burnt to ashes by the blast. It took Red hours to sweat out that nitro from a dozen sticks of dynamite. He said blowing the vault would be the easy part.’
‘We’ll never replace Bannon, Mr Kent.’
‘No, we won’t. Red was the best cracksman in New York.’ Kent took a cigar out of his gold case with his black-gloved hand and tapped it idly against his palm.
‘These vaults are too damn hard to blow in the daytime, Mr Kent. Bank jobs are just too risky anyhow. The Company has to …’
‘Diversify?’
‘Yeah, that’s it.’
‘I agree,’ said Kent with a smile. ‘What do you suggest?’
Kent was a tall, thin man in his early forties, with greying hair and a commanding presence. He always wore a black frock coat with matching waistcoat and pearl-grey trousers, all ordered from Henry Poole & Co., the best tailor in London. He had schooled Culver, whose previous wardrobe could charitably be described as loud, in dress. A gentleman, he’d said, must always be so well dressed that his clothes are never observed at all.
Culver valued this advice almost as much as his cut from their jobs. These days, he was as elegantly clothed as his employer, though the juxtaposition of his battered and meaty red face with his fine, tailored outfits frequently struck one as very odd.
‘The army’s stopped guarding President Grant’s grave in Riverside Park,’ he said, brimming over with his excitement at offering a new business proposition. ‘They just have a night watchman. They haven’t started building the real tomb over it either, so we could snatch the body and hold it for ransom. Like they did with A. T. Stewart back in ’78. His widow forked over twenty thousand dollars for the body. For a department store king! Think how much we’d get for a United States president.’
‘I can find only two things wrong with your plan,’ Kent said amiably. ‘First, I served proudly under Grant in the war. And second … it’s incredibly stupid.’
He smiled and patted Culver on the shoulder, as if to lessen the sting of his words. A disappointed expression twisted Culver’s face, and he looked down at his expensive, black patent leather shoes – the ones Kent had advised him to purchase. Culver wasn’t the brightest, but he was absolutely the most loyal employee of the Company, and Kent genuinely liked him.
‘I know those men had families,’ he said, pulling out his tan pigskin wallet and removing ten one-hundred-dollar bills. ‘Please divide this among them.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Mr Kent.’
Kent extracted his Gorham solid-gold pocket watch from his waistcoat and frowned. ‘The annual board of directors meeting for the Metropolitan Museum is at eleven. I’d best get going.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘John, you should be damn proud of this boy of yours.’
John Cross turned and stared at his son, who stood next to him in the entry foyer of Delmonico’s. It was hard to believe that this was the same toddler he’d once played with on the beach at Long Branch or taken to Central Park to sail boats. George was strikingly handsome. He had inherited his mother’s dark complexion and straight black hair and was at least three inches taller than his father. The twenty-two years of his son’s life blurred together in Cross’s mind. When had his boy grown into a man?
‘Thanks, Stanny. He turned out all right, I suppose.’
Stanford White, a six-footer with red hair and a thick brush of a moustache, roared with laughter. Beside him, Charles McKim, normally a very reserved fellow, also burst out laughing. White’s enthusiasm was always infectious.
Cross had met White and McKim many years ago, when they all worked for Henry Hobson Richardson as apprentice architects. Stanny and Charlie remained his closest friends, and he was particularly happy that they were there for his son’s graduation party.
‘Graduating from Harvard, captain of the baseball team. Not too shabby,’ said McKim. ‘In fact, I’m jealous. I sat on the bench when I played there.’
‘Yes, congratulations, Georgie. So, are you following in the old man’s footsteps and taking up architecture?’ White asked, giving Cross a wink.
‘No, sir. Unfortunately, I didn’t inherit my father’s artistic talent. I’m going to be a mathematics teacher at Saint David’s this autumn.’
‘George has been teaching part-time for the Children’s Aid Society downtown since the winter. Then next year, after Saint David’s, full-time at Columbia graduate school. On his way to becoming a brilliant professor,’ Cross said, voice full of pride.
‘Not a bad place to begin your teaching career,’ said McKim. ‘Saint David’s is the poshest school in town.’
As White nodded with approval, his face broke into a sly smile. ‘Ah, behold. The beautiful Helen of Troy.’
Cross’s wife, Helen, walked up to join the men. She was mesmerizing in a crimson evening dress from Worth of Paris; a lovely pearl-and-diamond necklace set off its deep décolletage, and a pair of large diamond festoon earrings framed her high cheekbones. Few women in New York society could challenge her beauty and charm. At parties and balls, men swarmed around her like bees to honey, making Cross proud and nervous at the same time. Having a beautiful wife was a double-edged sword – Helen was the object of pride and possible scandal. But he knew he didn’t have to worry about Stanny, whose preferences for female companionship tilted toward those below the age of fifteen.
Helen gave the group a steely look. ‘You gentlemen are blocking the way of Georgie’s guests. Take your masculine good fellowship into the grand dining room, please. John and Georgie, you stay where you are.’
White bowed, took her hand, and kissed it. ‘Whatever Helen of Troy commands.’
Cross looked out, past the glass-front double doors of the restaurant. ‘Do you think she’ll come?’
Helen rolled her eyes. ‘When she says she’s going to do something,’ she snapped, ‘she always follows through. For heaven’s sake, don’t worry.’ She straightened George’s white tie, brushed a bit of lint from his white silk waistcoat, and then ran her hands along the shoulders of the black cutaway tailcoat. Satisfied, she rose on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Later, I want you to be sure to talk to Granny – and Mary Morse.’
‘Oh, Mother.’
For the next twenty minutes, the trio greeted more guests. Finally, Cross nodded toward the doorway and said in a low voice, ‘Here she is.’
On Fifth Avenue, directly in front of Delmonico’s, a shiny black brougham pulled by two sleek chestnut horses in a gold-trimmed harness drew to a stop. The driver and attendant were dressed in gold and navy-blue livery and black top hats. The attendant hopped down from the box and opened the passenger door.
In the dusk of the warm July evening, a short, rather stout woman in a beautiful black silk brocade evening gown stepped out, holding on to the white-gloved hand of the attendant. She stepped onto the pavement into the circle of bright light cast by the new electric street lights, which had recently replaced their much dimmer gaslight predecessors. The glow of the light reflected in tiny sunbursts off her tiara of diamond garlands and her dog-collar necklace of hundreds of tiny diamonds on a band of deep purple satin. As she rearranged her black lace shawl over her shoulders, a crowd gathered on the pavement to gawk at her.
Cross watched as she marched with regal ease and confidence through the glass doors of the restaurant. She moved as if she owned Delmonico’s. And in a way, she did.
Caroline Astor was the undisputed queen – or despot, some felt – of New York society. She alone determined who belonged and who did not. If a person failed to meet her approval, he or she was condemned to social death.
In 1886, New York society had only two parts: old and new. The old, known as the Knickerbockers, were the descendants of the original Dutch founders of New Amsterdam, nicknamed for the knee-length breeches they once wore and headed by families with names like Schuyler, Schermerhorn, Van Cortlandt, and Van Rensselaer. There was also an old English flank of founders led by the Livingstons and the Phillipses. The rigid Knickerbocker social code demanded absolute propriety and strict conformity. They religiously obeyed this code, even dwelling in identical brownstone houses the colour of chocolate sauce, driven by the paralysing fear that they would be thought different and would thus become the subject of gossip.
Then there were the new, a nouveau riche class made up of millionaires who had made their fortune from businesses such as railroads, steel, or horse carts. Dirty, undignified pursuits, the Knickerbockers sniffed. The new displayed their wealth with outrageous extravagance, building luxurious mansions and amassing yachts, jewels, and clothing – luxuries universally condemned as vulgar by the old moneyed class. But undaunted, these parvenus came from all over America to New York City, where they stormed the walls of the Knickerbocker aristocracy.
Caroline Astor was a proud Schermerhorn, but she straddled the world of old and new by marrying the grandson of John Jacob Astor, a German-born fur trader who had become America’s richest man. Helen Cross was a distant, relatively poor member of the Schermerhorn clan. John Cross, a distant and equally poor Livingston relative, helped cement the Knickerbocker connection. ‘Aunt’ Caroline liked them both and watched over them like a mother hen, and they had been taken under her wing and safely ensconced in ‘new’ New York society. She even insisted on paying for Helen’s wardrobe and jewellery. They lived modestly, however, in a wide three-storey brownstone house at the corner of Madison Avenue and East Thirtieth Street and had only four servants. Cross likened his lifestyle to the architectural scale he used in his drawings; he lived at one hundredth the full-scale life of the Astors.
But to her credit, Caroline had opened doors to the advantages and privileges of society, to him and especially to George, and John’s other two children, Julia and Charlie. Thanks to her connections, Cross’s architectural practice prospered. But Cross knew that if there were the tiniest hint of scandal about anyone in his family, she’d cut them off in a second and would have nothing to do with them again. These were the ironclad rules of their world. One malicious whisper could annihilate a family’s reputation and banish them from society forever. Completely shunned – people who were once your closest friends would never talk to you again, even to your children.
‘Aunt Caroline, thank you so much for coming,’ said Helen, meeting her at the door, arms outstretched. Helen was one of the very few people Aunt Caroline ever publicly hugged. She gloried in the fact that such an incredibly beautiful woman was a Schermerhorn.
‘Tonight I must attend a tiresome charity performance at the Academy of Music,’ said Aunt Caroline, ‘but I knew I had to stop by to see Georgie. Where is that handsome boy of yours?’
‘Aunt Caroline,’ said George, stepping forward, taking her hand with both of his and kissing her cheek.
‘Here’s a little something for my class of ’86 man,’ she said, handing him a small box wrapped in silver paper. George unwrapped the present in front of her, knowing she would want to see his reaction.
Others had made their way to the foyer, eager to curry favour with Mrs Astor. White, one of her architects, hovered about with Charles Crist Delmonico, the grandnephew of the founder who controlled the restaurant dynasty and had made it the best restaurant in the city.
Nestled in a wad of cotton was a magnificent gold pocket watch and chain. George pulled it out, eyes wide in wonder. Instead of the usual incised decoration, the tiniest of diamonds and rubies formed a sinuous, vine-like design on the watch’s cover and sides. The inside cover featured a similar raised motif in a vortex swirl, with a large diamond at the centre. The back of the watch was engraved: ‘To George, Harvard Class of 1886, From Aunt Caroline.’ Helen’s and John’s eyes met; their first reaction was not pride but fear. What if George lost such a beautiful gift?
Beside them, White let out a whistle. ‘That’s incredible.’
‘You know that workmanship, Mr White. I had Louis Comfort Tiffany design it specifically for Georgie,’ Mrs Astor said.
White had just completed a commission for the Tiffany family, constructing a huge mansion of golden-brown brick at the corner of Madison Avenue and Seventy-Second Street.
‘This is a work of art. Thank you so much.’ George bent to hug his aunt, who bear-hugged him right back.
‘It’s a pleasure, my dear boy. And now I must be off.’ Before anyone could bid her goodbye, Aunt Caroline turned, the train of her gown sweeping around, and marched triumphantly back to her carriage. Dozens of people were waiting to get a look at her and, more specifically, to see what she was wearing, for Caroline Astor also dictated New York fashion. If she decided to wear a Chinese coolie’s straw hat to dinner, Fifth Avenue’s shops would be flooded with them the next day.
As John and Helen stood at the front door, waving goodbye, Charles Crist Delmonico said, beaming with delight, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served in the grand dining room.’
Only Caroline Astor could have persuaded Charles Eliot, president of Harvard University, to stop by to say a few words at George’s graduation party. Eliot had been travelling through New York from Boston the day after commencement and couldn’t say no, especially to such an immensely rich donor. Besides, George had been both an academic and athletic star at Harvard, so Eliot was pleased to visit.
So that he might leave in time to catch his train to Washington, Eliot spoke briefly before the meal started. He rose to his feet at the end of the long dinner table, a slight and unassuming man in his fifties, with a long nose and bushy sideburns, the leader of America’s greatest university. The cacophony of the celebration was instantly silenced.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, George Cross exemplifies the kind of man Harvard produces. During my tenure at the university, I’ve seen a change in the Harvard man’s character. His sense of personal honour and self-respect has increased. Drunkenness has decreased. It still troubles me to see vices born of luxury and self-indulgence on the rise. But this doesn’t touch George Cross. Not only does George exemplify academic brilliance, but he’s also a man of great character and determination – as he showed last year at the Polo Grounds, when he drove in the winning run in the ninth inning against Yale.’
The dining room erupted into wild cheering and applause, and George shyly rose and waved to his admirers. President Eliot shook his hand, bowed to the crowd, and left the room, a signal that the eating and drinking could begin. Because Helen and many other ladies were present – and because Caroline Astor had paid for the dinner – it was not a wild male bacchanal that such an occasion might have prompted, but rather a luxurious society event. More than one hundred diners sat at a table that stretched the length of the room. Down its centre ran a deep trough bordered by high banks of beautiful summer flowers. In the trough swam three white swans, which glided up and down its length, oblivious to the diners on either side. The eight courses, served on silver, included consommé á l’Impériale, Maryland terrapin soup, red snapper, canvasback duck, fillet of beef, cold asparagus vinaigrette, a dish of sherbet to cleanse the palate, and then a saddle of mutton, truffled capon, and fresh vegetables of all kinds, followed by desserts and candies. Claret, Burgundies, Madeira, and champagne flowed into the guests’ glasses as from a spigot; in the background, an eight-piece musical ensemble played on and on, light sounds to enliven but not disrupt the burble of conversation.
The party came to an end at about 2:00 a.m., when Cross found his son saying goodbye to Stanford White, always the very last to leave.
‘George, your mother and I are going now,’ Cross said, clapping his son on the shoulder. ‘It was a wonderful party. Please be in touch in a few days.’
‘Thank you so much for tonight, Father. I’ll never forget it.’ George clasped his father’s hand, smiling.
‘Helluva party, Georgie, old boy,’ Stanny shouted as he left the restaurant with John and Helen. ‘The night’s still young, and I know a place on East Forty-Fifth that’s just beginning to heat up.’
‘We’re not going anywhere with that blackguard,’ Helen hissed into Cross’s ear as they made their way to a carriage on Fifth Avenue.
Cross just sighed. He had long since given up trying to change his wife’s stubborn opinion of Stanford White’s sybaritic character, especially his taste in women.
His guests gone, George walked downstairs to the restaurant’s open-air street cafe, settled into one of the carved wooden chairs, and lit a cigarette. After almost six hours in the dining room, the night air felt cool and refreshing. Fifth Avenue was deserted, and the pure silence soothed George after the hours of unending noise. He leant back and closed his eyes, savouring the triumphant evening.
‘Beautiful night, isn’t it, George?’
The voice came from directly behind him. George smiled and swivelled around, expecting to see an admiring classmate. Then his face turned pale, and the cigarette dropped from his lips.
James T. Kent sat at a table a few yards away, dressed in elegant evening attire, smoking a cigar and sipping a glass of white wine.
‘Just dropped in for a nightcap before heading home after the theatre. But now that I’m here, maybe I could have a word with you. It’s about a matter of some delicacy.’
George rose from his seat and started toward the low wrought iron fence that enclosed the pavement cafe. But a short, broad-chested man stepped out of the shadows, moving to cut off his exit.
‘I think you remember my business associate, Mr Culver.’
Culver smiled at George but said nothing.
‘Why don’t we take a little trip?’ said Kent.
CHAPTER THREE
Oh, he floats through the air
With the greatest of ease,
This daring young man
On the flying trapeze;
His actions are graceful,
All girls he does please,
My love he has purloined away …
Kent got such pleasure out of seeing his men enjoy themselves. He hadn’t realised Freddy Dugan had such a wonderful baritone voice. If he hadn’t become an extortionist, the man could’ve made it on the stage.
Kent and ten of his employees were standing inside the new cable car power plant, currently under construction on the East Side. It was a huge brick and stone structure with tall, arched windows and a cavernous central room, where steam machinery would be installed to pull the coils of steel cables that wound and twisted beneath the city streets. Cable cars were the latest fad in New York, and the wise bet said they would soon replace the horse cars entirely. Kent saw it as a great investment. A cable car didn’t have to be fed. It could work all day, and most importantly, it didn’t deposit tons of shit and an ocean of piss onto the streets. When the Brooklyn Bridge had opened three years before, cable cars had been installed, and they’d been a great success. And they were still the future.
The present object of his men’s delight, George Cross’s body, was swinging like a giant clock pendulum above the cement floor, bound and suspended upside down at the end of a thick rope whose other end was looped over a steel roof truss twenty feet above the men’s heads. Culver held the end of the rope, and Tommy Flannigan pushed George’s body, sending him in a wide arc. Back and forth he went. Kent’s men sang and roared with laughter at each swing. Kent had never seen them have so much fun sober. When George threw up his banquet from Delmonico’s, they whooped and howled.
Finally, Kent walked over to the swinging body and raised his hand, signalling for silence.
‘For a mathematician, George,’ Kent said as the boy swung by, ‘I thought you’d have a better head for numbers.’ He pulled out a cigar and lit it, drawing in and exhaling the smoke with great pleasure. ‘Figuring in compounded interest, what you owe me is forty-eight thousand dollars. Quite a bit of money. Let me put it another way. A master carpenter makes about a thousand dollars a year. You owe me forty-eight years of a carpenter wages.’
‘For God’s sake, cut me down, Jim.’
‘I know you love to gamble, George. But if you lose, you have to pay up. I warned you about the interest that was accruing on your debt, but you ignored me. And you can’t say I haven’t been patient. Or generous. I gave you the opportunity to forgive the whole thing by putting the fix on the Harvard–Columbia baseball game … but you didn’t come through, my boy. I lost on that bet, and I lost heavily. You’re lucky I didn’t add it to your total.’
‘I tried! I swear I did! But you can’t throw a game when no one else is in on it,’ George cried.
‘I can’t have you stiff me, George. It’s bad for business. If people see that I let you slide, they won’t have any respect for me, and they’ll try to stiff me too.’
‘Give me one more chance, please,’ pleaded George.
Kent watched George swing. Then he signalled Flannigan to bring the body to a halt. Flannigan grabbed George on each pass to slow him down until the boy hung there, slowly turning around and around like a slab of beef on a hook. Kent motioned for Al Carney, a mountain of a man with broad shoulders and fists the size of hams, to come over.
‘George, Al here once fought John L. Sullivan and lasted almost five rounds. Five rounds against the great John L. Imagine that. There was an article about it in the Police Gazette.’
Carney’s jowly face flushed red with embarrassment as he approached the hanging body. Then his fists let loose as if he was bashing a body bag in a gym. George cried out at each blow.
‘I’m most sorry to have to do this to a society gentleman,’ Kent said, his tone sincerely apologetic. ‘But you have to understand, George, that I live in a world that also has a strict code of rules. Just like in New York society, when one breaks the rules, one must be punished. And as you may well imagine, that punishment can be … severe.’ He gave a sly smile. ‘Let me introduce you to Abe Gibbons. In his former life, Abe was a butcher.’
A lanky, grey-haired man of about fifty walked over and placed a long knife to George’s throat. Carney continued to punch, ignoring him; the ex-boxer was enjoying himself too much to stop.
‘They’ll find pieces of your body from the Bronx to Cape May, George.’
‘Please – no!’ screamed George.
‘There’s no one you know who can pay off the debt?’ Kent asked, more irritated than curious. ‘What about your family?’
‘My family doesn’t have that kind of money. My father’s just an architect.’
Kent’s brow wrinkled, and he motioned for Carney to cease his pummelling.
‘I didn’t know your father was an architect. What does he design?’
‘Office buildings. Like the Chandler Building on East Fourth.’
‘Indeed? That’s a very handsome building. What else?’ Kent sounded genuinely impressed.
‘Empire State Life Assurance on Nassau Street. Saint Mary’s Church. Lots of big houses up on Madison Avenue and Riverside Drive.’
Kent turned and walked slowly across the power plant. He made a wide arc, returned to George’s hanging body, and nodded at Gibbons, who lunged at George.
‘God help me!’ George screamed.
With a slash of the knife, the thick rope was severed. George fell hard and landed on his head with a groan that echoed throughout the empty plant. The men howled with laughter.
Kent walked over to Culver, who, relieved of holding the rope, was leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette and enjoying the festivities.
‘You remember George Leslie, don’t you, Mr Culver?’
‘Sure. The king of bank robbers. Planned the Manhattan Savings job on Bleecker in ’78. Got away with two million.’
‘Wasn’t he an architect?’
‘That’s what they say. I heard that he could read them building drawings of banks, could even draw ’em up himself.’
‘And didn’t they find him dead up in Yonkers?’
‘Yep, said he was fooling around with one of his men’s girls. The man was a genius. Shame to die because of a goddamn woman,’ Culver said, shaking his head.
Writhing in pain on the concrete floor, George yelled, ‘Just get it over with! Kill me and be done with it, you bastard.’
‘A Harvard man,’ Kent murmured, smirking. He turned to Flannigan.
‘Mr Flannigan, you’re going to take George on a little vacation.’
Visibly disappointed, Gibbons sheathed his blade.
‘Yes, sir,’ muttered Flannigan.
‘What are you going to do to me?’ George shouted.
Flannigan took hold of George’s feet.
‘Wait,’ said Kent.
Kent pulled out a handsome leather wallet from George’s inside pocket. He opened it, examined the contents, removed a card, and then returned the wallet. He nodded to Flannigan, who began dragging George out of the power plant.
‘Mr Culver, first thing tomorrow morning, I want you to deliver a message.’
CHAPTER FOUR
John Cross sat in the upper deck of the Fifth Avenue omnibus, the air already baked by the hot July sun. His eyes were vacant, his mind elsewhere as he mulled the strange events of the past two hours. He had never gotten new work in so peculiar a manner.
At around 9 a.m., a rough-looking man came into the office, asking to see him. The fellow had very crooked teeth but was dressed better than Cross, who felt himself taken aback when the man entered his private office. The clothes and the man seemed entirely at odds; it was like a pig wearing evening dress to the opera. The man explained that his boss admired Cross’s work and would like to talk to him about designing a building. Because he was going out of town, however, they had to meet that day, at 11 a.m.
The economic boom of the 1880s had set off an enormous amount of construction in New York City. Cross had received his share of this new work entirely by word of mouth. Men he knew from the Union and Knickerbocker Clubs, the riding club, his Harvard classmates, gentlemen from Saint Thomas Episcopal and Newport – they all recommended him. But this fellow certainly didn’t belong to that set.
The other requirement for the meeting was even odder. They were to meet in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. This intrigued Cross. Perhaps the project was work for the Archdiocese, which oversaw a lucrative group of churches, parochial schools, and convents. Though he was a society High Episcopalian, he didn’t mind designing for the Roman Papists, as his mother-in-law called them. Churches were a plum commission. Cross had designed just one, a Protestant church, early in his career, and he was eager for another opportunity.
The man tipped his expensive top hat and left. Cross left at once, walking from his office on Broadway and Eighth Street to Fifth Avenue, where he caught the omnibus. He enjoyed the ride; from the top, he had a grandstand view of the city.
Fifth Avenue was the backbone of his world. Its staid three- and four-storey brownstone buildings passed before his eyes, an unending line of high stoops, wrought iron railings, and striped canvas awnings extended out to block the summer sun. Cross watched as servants scurried in and out and families emerged from behind tall double doors of wood and glass. Broughams, hansoms, and victorias driven by men in top hats and black cutaway coats stood by the kerbs, waiting for their owners. Dray carts carrying goods of all kinds slowly made their way up the avenue, making deliveries from house to house.
At Madison Square, where Fifth Avenue and Broadway collided then separated, the building style shifted and became a mix of commercial and residential. The Fifth Avenue Hotel, currently the city’s most fashionable, stood on the left. The spire of the Marble Collegiate Church towered above Twenty-Ninth Street. Then, on the left, came a familiar sight: William Backhouse Astor II’s wide brownstone house. Aunt Caroline’s home. To the south was a large walled garden that connected to her brother-in-law John Jacob Astor III’s house.
The previous summer, Cross had stood in the garden with the Astors, looking over the high wall at President Grant’s funeral procession. Now, as he passed Aunt Caroline’s house, he smiled at its modesty. It was really only an extra large brownstone building, but that was the way it was supposed to be: unpretentious, dull, and respectable.
As the horse-drawn omnibus slowly rattled along on the cobblestones, halting to pick up and drop off passengers, Cross glimpsed the cathedral. Just north of Fiftieth Street, Saint Patrick’s was complete but for its two spires, finally under construction after a hiatus of almost eight years. Its architect was James Renwick Jr., a man Cross greatly admired. Both were in the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects. When he got the commission, Renwick had travelled around Europe for more than three years, observing and sketching twin-spired churches. Finishing Saint Patrick’s soaring towers would complete a magnificent design that rivalled the cathedrals of the Old World.
The Knickerbockers, Protestant to the core, were shocked that such a huge Catholic church could be built on Fifth Avenue. It dwarfed nearby elite Protestant churches like Saint Thomas and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian. Weren’t there laws against such a thing? the Knickerbockers protested. The fact that the church was paid for with the nickels and dimes of Irish immigrants, the same trash that washed the Knickerbockers’ floors and dishes, was even more galling. There was talk of building a Protestant cathedral on the West Side to put the Catholics in their place.
Sighing, Cross shifted his gaze. The daily promenade by the fashionable had begun. Men in elegantly tailored frock coats accompanied by women in beautiful walking dresses with tasselled parasols filled Fifth Avenue’s pavements. ‘Shoddyites’, the Knickerbockers called these ‘fashionable’ new people. They dress magnificently, Cross thought, making up in display what they lack in taste and education. He recognised a client but made no effort to wave to him.
In front of the cathedral, Cross got off the omnibus and walked inside. He’d been to the church many times, and on each visit he marvelled at the nave’s breathtaking vaulted ceiling, supported by rows and rows of Gothic arches. It ended at an altar in a full-height semicircular apse, lit by tall windows of stained glass. He felt as if he were in France. It was amazing how the thick stone walls of the church kept the interior so cool and refreshing, even on such a miserably hot day.
Most men hated what they did for a living – it was just a means to pay the bills – but Cross genuinely loved being an architect. He was proud that he’d chosen the right path in life and dreamt of being the best architect in the city (although he knew there was a lot of competition). He wanted someday to design something as magnificent as this cathedral, something that people would use for centuries after he was gone from this earth. Cross felt he had the talent to do it. He ran his hand over the cool stone of a column and smiled. Yes, he thought, one day I’ll do something truly great. He turned and looked around for his new client.
His odd visitor had told him that a Mr Kent would be waiting for him in the rear pew on the north-west corner. It seems so mysterious, Cross thought again, shaking his head. He walked towards the corner and saw a distinguished-looking man. He appeared to be about forty, clean-shaven, with swept-back hair and a sharp, almost hawk-like nose. Most encouraging, he looked like a very prosperous client.
‘Mr Kent?’
‘It must be a wonderful thing to be an architect, Mr Cross,’ Kent said, eyes fixed on the nave ceiling. ‘To think, you design and draw every square inch of a church like this. You decide what it will look like, down to the tiniest detail. Like that decoration atop that cluster of columns holding up the arch.’
Cross took an instant liking to this fellow.
‘Yes, it is wonderful,’ he said.
Kent stood and extended a hand, which Cross shook. ‘James T. Kent. Thank you for coming on such short notice.’
‘I’m glad to meet you, sir. I’m told you have a building you want designed?’
‘Mr Cross, although I do very much admire your work, I’m afraid you were brought here on a pretence.’
A frown replaced the smile on Cross’s face.
Kent continued. ‘I’ll get to the point. This meeting involves a personal matter. I’m afraid that your son George has been doing business with me for the last year or so. Now he finds himself in serious financial difficulty. You see, he owes me a great deal of money.’
‘He – how much money?’
‘Please sit down, Mr Cross.’
‘How much?’
‘About forty-eight thousand dollars.’
Cross stood for a moment, dumbfounded, and then slumped into the pew as though someone had clubbed him. He rubbed his hand over his mouth, unable to speak. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he finally forced out.
‘I’m afraid you must, Mr Cross. George will tell you himself that it’s forty-eight thousand dollars – and that he has no way of paying it back.’
‘How could he owe you that much, for God’s sake?’
‘Of course, I suppose you don’t know. George has a serious gambling habit, sir, and in very ungentlemanly places. The Bowery, the Tenderloin – you will see my meaning.’
‘No, no. That can’t be,’ Cross said through tightly clenched teeth.
‘Parents are always the last to know their children’s shortcomings.’
Cross stood, furious. ‘Who are you, scoundrel?’
‘A businessman, sir. Who expects to be paid back.’
‘You’re a criminal who took advantage of my son. There’s no way he can pay you.’
‘Then George is going to die, Mr Cross.’
Cross sat back down, gazing in stunned silence at the padded leather kneeler of the pew. ‘You can’t threaten me,’ he said at last, defiantly.
‘It’s not a threat, Mr Cross. It’s an ironclad guarantee. George will die if he does not pay me back.’
‘He’s only twenty-two! He just graduated from Harvard. He—’
‘And you must be very proud of him – at least until now,’ Kent said with a smile.
‘I won’t let you kill him, do you hear me?’ Cross said, his voice rising above the accepted volume for the hushed solitude of a church. A woman praying over her rosary in a nearby pew gave him a disapproving look. Now he understood why Kent had wanted to meet him in a public place, and he clenched his fists.
‘I know you won’t,’ Kent said. ‘You’re going to pay George’s debt for him. You’ll even pay the interest, which is accruing as we speak.’
Cross laughed derisively. ‘Do you really suppose I’ve got forty-eight thousand dollars?’
‘No, but you know where to get it – and more.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘You’re a successful architect, Mr Cross. You’ve designed mansions for the rich, office buildings for all kinds of big companies and banks. Places that hold things of great value.’
‘You damn fool, you expect me to go and rob them?’
‘Not at all. I expect you to help me rob them.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘Am I? If you don’t, pieces of George’s body will be found floating around the island of Manhattan tomorrow. I give you my word on that. But for the present, George is my guest.’
‘That’s a lie! He went home last night.’
‘Then how do I come to have this?’ Kent smiled and handed a slip of paper to Cross, who let out a groan when he saw what it was – George’s membership card to the Union League Club. ‘Impressive that someone so young is a member of the most prestigious club in the city, Mr Cross. Myself, I belong to the New York Club.’
Cross stood, grabbing Kent by the lapel of his frock coat. ‘You’re bluffing. I’ll go to the police about this, and you’ll be thrown in prison, you damn rogue.’
Unruffled, Kent gently removed Cross’s hand. ‘I urge you not to do that, Mr Cross. It will mean death for your son. In fact, I’ll kill him in front of you and then kill you. Please believe me. I trust you’ll understand that it’s best you cooperate and pay back the debt. Then the whole matter will be settled. But until you agree, George will remain with me.’
‘You can go to hell!’ Cross shouted and stomped out of Saint Patrick’s, the echo of his footsteps bouncing off the white marble walls.
On Fifth Avenue, he stood in a daze in the middle of the pavement. A flood of pedestrians from either direction swept around him, like a stream around a boulder. His mind spun. He felt as if he were being sucked into a vortex, a horrible nightmare. If only he could wake up in his bed, begin the day anew, realise with a sob of relief that none of this had happened.
It can’t be. This had to be some practical joke by George and his friends. That’s it! Cross thought with a mixture of anger and happiness. It was a joke, and he had been taken in. His son was alive and safe. Perhaps Stanny was behind the charade. If so, he’d curse his old friend up and down for putting George up to such a thing.
A feeling of relief swept over Cross. His breathing returned almost to normal, and he started walking south. But when he came to Forty-Ninth Street, he stopped abruptly.
Suppose this wasn’t a joke.
A man in a derby and dark grey frock coat collided with his back. ‘Damned idiot,’ the man muttered, stepping around him. Cross took no notice. With a sinking feeling, he replayed the events of the morning in his head. It was too cruel and elaborately staged to be a joke. But if it was all true – Kent wasn’t bluffing – he couldn’t stand by and let his son be murdered. He’d give his life in a second to save George or Julia or Charlie. The thought of losing his children was too horrible to bear.
Cross walked blindly, covering block after block as if in a trance. He crossed streets without looking, lucky not to be run over by the parade of wagons and carriages. All the while, his mind raced with terrible images of how Kent would murder George. How had his son gotten into such a fix?
In that instant, Cross realised he knew as much about George as one of these strangers next to him on the pavement. His son wasn’t what he seemed. His handsome, charming façade masked deviant, illicit behaviour. Cross had thought he’d been a model father. Well, the joke was on him. If what Kent had told him was true, then he’d failed miserably. His knees almost buckled under him, nearly sent him to the ground right there on Fifth Avenue. A son’s faults are his father’s faults, his mind repeated numbly.
He realised he couldn’t face this alone, but he couldn’t tell Helen. At heart, she was a weak-willed, status-obsessed woman who’d collapse into hysterics if he told her what their son had done. Cross kept walking, passed Aunt Caroline’s house at Thirty-Fourth Street – and stopped dead in his tracks. Of course – he had the Astors, the most powerful force in the city, on his side. Surely they could save George.
Cross started sprinting up to the front porch but halted midway. What was he thinking? The thought of knocking on Caroline’s door and telling her what had happened filled him with shame. George’s dishonour would repulse her, and knowing Caroline, she’d slam the door on his family. If her son, Jack, had found himself in this kind of fix, it was merely a matter of writing a check and keeping the whole thing secret. But being poor, distantly related Schermerhorns and Livingstons only went so far. Society people walked on eggshells their whole lives to avoid the merest whiff of scandal. Cross had seen lives shattered by a mere whisper, no matter how untrue. And if it was true …
No, he couldn’t go directly to Caroline. But perhaps he could reach out to someone in her circle of influence, a person he wasn’t tied to by blood. Cross walked to the bottom of the front path and thought for a while. Then he walked slowly downtown to Madison Square, oblivious to the scorching sun that beat down upon him. Continuing on Broadway, he stopped in front of the recently finished Lincoln Building at Fourteenth Street. The office of Thomas Griffith, the Astors’ most trusted attorney, was located there. Griffith, the city’s paragon of the legal profession, would tell Cross what to do, and he’d never breathe a word to the Astors.
Finally feeling a small measure of relief, Cross entered the towering, ten-storey limestone building.
CHAPTER FIVE
Even if it hadn’t been a sweltering July night, Cross wouldn’t have been able to sleep. He was still too shaken and frightened by the day’s revelations.
After tossing and turning for hours, he finally gave up and rose. Thankfully, he and Helen had separate bedrooms. If they’d slept in the same bed, his wife would have known immediately that something was wrong. Cross usually slept like a rock.
Putting on his dark green silk dressing gown, Cross sat on the sofa in the parlour and smoked until dawn’s light streamed in through the gap in the heavy velvet drapes hanging over the tall windows. He couldn’t get his mind off what George had done. It didn’t seem possible that Kent was talking about his son. Did George really live in a secret world, one unfathomable to Cross?
Of course Cross knew what gentlemen of his class did when away from the prying eyes of their families. Stanford White was the supreme example of a gentleman’s penchant for extracurricular activities, and Cross was no saint himself. But even those debaucheries followed class boundaries. You’d never see White on the Bowery or in a Chinatown gambling den.
President Eliot’s words from George’s graduation party rang in Cross’s ears: ‘… vices born of luxury and self-indulgence on the rise.’ At the time, Cross had thought with self-righteous satisfaction that Eliot’s words didn’t apply to his boy. He’d seen high-society fathers destroy their sons with money, yachts, racehorses, and anything else they wanted – gifts that killed the boys’ ambition. Despite his own past, Cross had avoided this path. Yes, he came from a society family with all the Knickerbocker advantages: elite private schools, summers in Newport and the Berkshires, riding, shooting, European tours, servants, balls. He’d gone to Harvard too. But then, defying the Knickerbocker business tradition, he went to Paris to train in architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts. After apprenticing for one of America’s greatest architects, Henry Hobson Richardson, he’d set up his own practice. Cross had had a real goal in life. In turn, he wanted to set an example for his son. To his delight, George had great dreams too – to become a mathematician and teach, perhaps as a professor at Harvard. What the hell had happened?
None of that matters, Cross told himself. What mattered was keeping George alive. Speaking to Thomas Griffith yesterday had set Cross’s mind somewhat at ease, if only because it allowed Cross to share his desperate burden.
To Cross’s surprise, Griffith, a taciturn, granite-faced man of seventy, had turned ashen when he’d heard Kent’s name. Kent, he explained to Cross, was a well-bred, Princeton-educated man from a wealthy mercantile family in Baltimore. Rumour had it that he’d originally trained to be a doctor. His connections at the highest levels of business and government in New York made him a man of great influence and power. Even Tammany Hall, the political machine that ran the city, did what he told them to do.
Kent was a man to be feared. Although he was already so rich he didn’t need the money, he ran an extensive crime organisation that committed any kind of depravity that would turn a profit. His gang was nicknamed ‘Kent’s Gents’ because they dressed like society gentlemen, down to their gold-capped walking sticks, which were used more frequently for beating people to death than strolling about.
The attorney made Cross repeat the conversation they’d had at Saint Patrick’s word for word. Then, with a terrified look on his face, Griffith told Cross that they had to move quickly or George would indeed be killed. Kent did not make idle threats.
At these words, Cross groaned as if he’d been punched in the stomach and dropped his head, tears welling up in his eyes. Griffith went to the telephone on his office wall and asked for police headquarters on Mulberry Street. He was immediately connected to Thomas Byrnes, chief inspector of the New York City Police Department. From his tone, they seemed to be good friends. Griffith explained that he was calling on a matter of great urgency, and Byrnes agreed to see him first thing the next morning.
Cross had breathed a great sigh of relief when he heard the policeman’s name. Byrnes was a ruthlessly efficient Irish cop who had transformed the New York City police, weeding out corruption and modernising investigations with innovations like mugshots, which created a photographic gallery of known criminals. Before Byrnes’s arrival, the New York underworld had seen the city’s police force as a joke. But all that had changed. Wall Street, for instance, had always been a rich hunting ground for criminals, who preyed on bank messengers, robbing them of the bonds, securities, and cash they carried from bank to bank. Byrnes declared that Fulton Street, the northern boundary of Wall Street, would be a ‘dead line’, below which all criminals would be arrested on sight. He was true to his word, and robberies on Wall Street soon dropped to zero.
Byrnes, Cross realised, was the only man who could save his son.
It was 6 a.m. He heard Colleen, their maid, moving about in the kitchen on the ground floor, lighting the fire in the cast-iron stove and getting ready to set the table for breakfast. Mrs Johnston, the housekeeper, and Mrs O’Shea, the cook, would be down soon. Cross hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday’s meeting with Kent. Now, he found that his appetite had returned.
As Cross walked into the centre hall to the stairs, he heard the telephone ring. Odd to get a call so early in the morning.
‘It’s for you, sir,’ said Colleen in her chipper Irish brogue as she passed him on the staircase.
Cross picked up the receiver in the kitchen.
‘Good morning, Mr Cross,’ a man’s voice said. ‘We wanted to let you know that we just made an ice delivery.’
The phone clicked off. Cross turned to look at the refrigerator on the far wall of his kitchen, a thoroughly modern room with the latest in newfangled technology, befitting an architect. The refrigerator was clad in dark walnut and lined with cork insulation; it had extra shelves and a space at the top to hold a block of ice weighing about two hundred pounds. A little door in the back faced another matching door that Cross had cut into the outside brownstone wall on the Thirtieth Street side. The iceman could place the ice directly in the refrigerator without coming into the kitchen. But Mrs O’Shea usually placed a card in the kitchen window to tell the iceman when ice was needed. It was odd that he would call the house.
Cross slowly walked to the refrigerator and opened it. He saw nothing unusual on the shelves, just the ordinary perishable foodstuffs. Cheese and lettuce. Puzzled, he opened the door of the top compartment – and stepped back with a gasp. Inside, encased in a block of ice, was the severed head of a man. After a few seconds, Cross recognised Thomas Griffith, the Astors’ attorney. Griffith’s eyes were wide with terror. His severed flesh was tinted bluish, the lips purple, his white hair floating above his skull like he was under water.
Heart pounding, Cross wheeled, made sure no one else was in the kitchen, and quickly pushed the door of the refrigerator shut. At that moment, the telephone rang again. He ran to it before Colleen could answer from upstairs.
‘Mr Cross? We must apologise. We delivered the wrong ice to you this morning. But don’t worry. We’ll replace it right away.’
Cross slammed the receiver against the holder and fell to the slate floor like a building collapsing in on itself. Crumpled and hyperventilating, he stared at the refrigerator in horror. As if from very far away, he heard the doors at the back open and then the sound of blocks of ice being moved about. The telephone rang for the third time. Cross stared at the dark oak telephone box for a long moment. Then he slowly reached for the receiver.
‘Good morning, Mr Cross. Please meet me at the Dakota today at 3 p.m. Apartment 7G.’ Cross recognised the voice of James Kent, who hung up abruptly.
Mrs O’Shea, a gaunt Irish woman in a dark grey dress and white apron, came into the kitchen, humming to herself.
‘Why, Mr Cross, whatever are you doing down here this early?’ Without waiting for his answer, she went right to the refrigerator and opened the top compartment to check the ice, as she did every morning.
The block of ice was crystal clear.
CHAPTER SIX
‘When you present your calling card to the butler, Julia, you must wait to see if the lady of the house will receive you. If the butler tells you, “She’s not at home to callers”, that’s perfectly acceptable. Don’t take it as a slight. Leaving your card fulfils your obligation. Now, if she does receive you, never stay for more than thirty minutes. And never pay a call before two or after four.’
Helen Cross delivered her lecture in a stern schoolteacher’s voice. Her daughter wrinkled her brow, took the calling card from her mother, and examined it.
‘No lady ever leaves just her own card on the first visit. She must always include her husband’s,’ Helen continued.
‘This is so complicated, Mother. Why must I know all this absurd social arithmetic?’ Julia asked, her tone a combination of scorn and amusement.
Her grandmother, a slender and graceful Knickerbocker matriarch who still retained her beauty after seventy years, took Julia by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. ‘My child, calling cards are the alpha and omega of social intercourse. You must remember this.’
‘You won’t get your own cards in your first season, mind. Your name will be on mine,’ Helen said. ‘It seems complicated, but you’ll soon learn the rules. We all had to go through this.’
‘The most important rule to remember is that an unmarried woman never receives a gentleman caller without her mother or a chaperone present.’ Granny spoke with an earnestness that startled Julia. ‘A chaperone knows the world; a young girl doesn’t.’
Aunt Caroline Astor placed her arm around Julia. ‘Remember, my dear, you’re a Schermerhorn. We’re held to a higher standard.’
‘Why yes, of course, Aunt Caroline.’
‘You’ll have the most brilliant coming-out ball in the city. At my place, of course. I’ll see to everything.’ Aunt Caroline spoke confidentially to Helen, who beamed with delight. That meant that from now on, Caroline would pay for Julia’s wardrobe. To Julia, she added, ‘You’ll be the most beautiful debutante of the season.’
‘So much work to be done. We must make the list of guests, and then I’ll make a personal call on every one,’ said Helen, who didn’t consider this task work. She looked forward to seeing all two hundred people in advance of this, a truly special occasion in her life. A daughter’s coming-out meant that the mother had decided she was ready to be accepted by the world as a fully mature woman – and more importantly, ready to receive homage from rich, eligible men.
‘What about me? Where’s my invitation?’ asked Charlie Cross, Julia’s ten-year-old blonde brother, sliding down the black walnut banister of the front staircase in the entrance hall of the Cross home, where the women stood.
‘You, little boy, are not coming,’ said Julia with a frown.
‘I wouldn’t want to come to your dumb party. I bet no one shows up,’ Charlie said, dismounting before he collided with the ornate newel post. He leapt to the floor with the agility of an acrobat.
‘Charlie, aren’t you going to play in Madison Park?’ his mother asked.
‘On my way,’ yelled Charlie as he crashed through the front doors.
