by John Shirley
Bill heard them say it, through the door, after they’d dismissed him: “Another limey grease monkey…”
All right then. So he was a grease monkey. Just a mechanic and, lately, a freelance plumbing contractor. A dirty little job screwin’ pipes for the nobs. Heading up to some rich bloke’s penthouse. There was no shame in it.
But there wasn’t much money in it either, working on assignment for Chinowski’s Maintenance. It’d be a long time before he could save up enough to start a big contracting outfit of his own. He had a couple of lads hired on, from time to time, but not the big contracting and engineering company he’d always envisioned. And Mary Louise had made it clear as polished glass she was not really interested in marrying a glorified plumber.
“I had enough of fellas that think they’re the cat’s meow because they can fix the terlet,” she said. A pretty girl from the Bronx was Mary Louise Fensen and raring to go. But not terribly bright, after all. Probably drive him barmy anyway.
The moment he’d got home the phone rang, Bud Chinowski, barking about getting his ass to an address in Manhattan, on Park Avenue. Their building maintenance was AWOL—probably drunk somewhere—and the Bigshot at the penthouse needed plumbers “fast as you can drag your lazy ass over there. We’ve got three bathrooms to finish installing. Get those witless wrench-jockeys of yours over there too.”
He’d called Roy Phinn and Pablo Navarro to go on ahead of him. Then he’d changed out of the ill-fitting suit, into the gray, grease-stained coveralls. “Limey grease monkey…” he’d murmured, buttoning up.
And here he was, wishing he’d taken time for a cigarette before coming—he couldn’t smoke in a posh flat like this without permission. He stepped glumly out of the elevator, into an antechamber to the penthouse, his toolbox clanking at his side. The little wood-paneled room was scarcely bigger than the elevator. An artfully paneled mahogany door with a brass knob, embossed with an eagle, was its only feature—besides a small metal grid next to the door. He tried the knob. Locked. He shrugged, and knocked on the door. Waiting, he started to feel a little claustrophobic.
“’Ello?” he called. “Plumbin’ contractor! From Chinowski’s! ’Ello!” Don’t drop your Hs, you bastard, he told himself. “Hel-lo!”
A crackling sound, and a low, forceful voice emanated from the grid. “That the other plumber, is it?”
“Uh…” He bent and spoke briskly into the grid. “It is, sir!”
“No need to shout into the intercom!”
The door clicked within itself—and to Bill’s amazement it didn’t swing inward but slid into the wall up to the knob. He saw there was a metal runner in the floor and, at the edge of the door, a band of steel. It was wood on the outside, steel inside. Like this man was worried someone might try to fire a bullet through it.
No one was visible on the other side of the open doorway. He saw another hallway, carpeted, with some rather fine old paintings, one of which might be by a Dutch master, if he remembered anything from his trips to the British Museum. A Tiffany lamp stood on an inlaid table, glowing like a gem.
This toff’s got plenty of the ready, Bill thought.
He walked down the hall, into a large, plush sitting room: luxurious sofas, a big unlit fireplace, more choice paintings and fine lamps. A grand piano, its wood polished almost mirrorlike, stood in a corner. On an intricately carved table was an enormous display of fresh flowers in an antique Chinese jade vase. He’d never seen flowers like them before. And the decorations on the tables …
He was staring at a lamp that appeared to be a gold sculpture of a satyr chasing an underdressed young woman when a voice spoke sharply to his right. “The other two are already at work in the back … The main bathroom’s through here.” Bill turned and saw a gent in the archway to the next room already turning away from him. The man wore a gray suit, his dark hair oiled back. Must be the butler. Bill could hear the other two lads, faintly, in the back of the place, arguing about fittings.
Bill went through the archway as the man in the suit answered a chiming gold and ivory telephone on a table in front of a big window displaying the heroic spires of Manhattan. Opposite the window was a mural, done in the sweeping modern-industrial style, of burly men building a tower that rose up out of the sea. Overseeing the workers in the mural was a slim dark-haired man with blueprints in his hand.
Bill looked for the WC, saw a hallway with a gleaming steel and white-tile bathroom at its end.
That’s my destination, Bill thought bitterly. The crapper. A fine crapper it might be, one of three. My destiny is to keep their WCs in working order.
Then he caught himself. No self-pity, now, Bill McDonagh. Play the cards you’re dealt, the way your Da taught you.
Bill started toward the door to the bathroom hall, but his attention was caught by the half-whispered urgency of the man’s voice as he growled at the telephone.
“Eisley, you will not make excuses! If you cannot deal with these people I will find someone who has the courage! I’ll find someone brave enough to scare away this pack of hungry dogs! They will not find my campfire undefended!”
The voice’s stridency caught Bill’s attention—but something else about it stirred him too. He’d heard that distinctive voice before. Maybe in a newsreel?
Bill paused at the door to the hall and had a quick look at the man pressing the phone to his ear. It was the man in the mural—the one holding the blueprint: a straight-backed man, maybe early forties, medium height, two thin, crisply straight strokes of mustache matched by the dark strokes of his eyebrows, a prominent cleft chin. He even wore a suit nearly identical to the one in the painting. And that strong, intense face—it was a face Bill knew from the newspapers. He’d seen his name over the front door of this very edifice. It never occurred to him that Andrew Ryan might actually live here. The tycoon owned a significant chunk of America’s coal, its second biggest railroad, and Ryan Oil. He’d always pictured a man like that whiling the days away playing golf on a country estate.
“Taxes are theft, Eisley! What? No, no need—I fired her. I’ve got a new secretary starting today—I’m elevating someone in reception. Elaine something. No, I don’t want anyone from accounting, that’s the whole problem, people like that are too interested in my money, they have no discretion! Sometimes I wonder if there’s anyone I can trust. Well they’ll get not a penny out of me more than absolutely necessary, and if you can’t see to it I’ll find a lawyer who can!”
Ryan slammed the phone down—and Bill hurried on to the bathroom.
Bill found the toilet in place but not quite hooked up: an ordinary Standard toilet, no gold seat on it. Looked like it needed proper pipe fittings, mostly. Seemed a waste of time to send three men out for this, but these posh types liked everything done yesterday.
He was aware, as he worked, that Ryan was pacing back and forth in the room outside the hall to the bathroom, occasionally muttering to himself.
Bill was kneeling to one side of the toilet, using a spanner to tighten a pipe joint, when he became aware of a looming presence. He looked up to see Andrew Ryan standing near him.
“Didn’t intend to startle you.” Ryan flashed his teeth in the barest smile and went on, “Just curious how you’re getting along.”
Bill was surprised at this familiarity from a man so above him—and by the change in tone. Ryan had been blaring angrily into the phone but minutes before. Now he seemed calm, his eyes glittering with curiosity.
“Getting on with it, sir. Soon have it done.”
“Is that a brass fitting you’re putting in there? I think the other two were using tin.”
“Well, I’ll be sure they didn’t, sir,” said Bill, beginning not to care what impression he made. “Don’t want to be bailing out your loo once a fortnight. Tin’s not reliable, like. If it’s the price you’re worried about, I’ll pick up the cost of the brass, so not to worry, squire…”
“And why would you do that?”
“Well, Mr. Ryan,
no man bails water out of privies built by Bill McDonagh.”
Ryan looked at him with narrowed eyes, rubbing his chin. Bill shrugged and focused on the pipes, feeling strangely disconcerted. He could almost feel the heat from the intensity of Ryan’s personality. He could smell his cologne, pricey and subtle.
“There you are,” Bill said, tightening with the wrench one last time for good luck. “Right as the mail. These pipes, anyhow.”
“Do you mean the job’s done?”
“I’ll see how the lads are getting on, but I’d guess it’s very nearly done, sir.”
He expected Ryan to wander back to his own work, but the tycoon remained, watching as Bill started the water flow, checked it for integrity, and cleaned up his tools and leftover materials. He took the receipt book from his pocket, scribbled out the cost. There’d been no time for an estimate, so he had a free hand. He wished he were the sort to pad the bill, since he gave a percentage to Chinowski and Ryan was rich, but he wasn’t made that way.
“Really!” Ryan said, looking at the bill, eyebrows raised.
Bill just waited. Strange that Andrew Ryan—one of the richest, most powerful men in America—was personally involved in dealing with a plumber, scrutinizing a minor bill. But Ryan stood there, looking first at the bill, then at him.
“This is quite reasonable,” Ryan said at last. “You might have stretched your time, inflated the bill. People assume they can take advantage of wealthy men.”
Bill was mildly insulted. “I believe in being paid, sir, even being paid well—but only for the work I do.”
Again that flicker of a smile, there and gone. The keen, searching gaze. “I can see I’ve struck a nerve,” Ryan said, “because you’re a man like me! A man of pride and capability who knows who he is.”
A long, appraising look. Then Ryan turned on his heel and strode out.
Bill shrugged, gathered up the rest of his things, and returned to the mural room, expecting to see some Ryan underling awaiting him with a check. But it was Ryan, holding the check out to him.
“Thank you, sir.” Bill took it, tucked it into a pocket, nodded to the man—was he mad, staring at him like that?—and started hastily for the front door.
He’d just gotten to the sitting room when Ryan called to him from the archway. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
Bill paused. Hoping it didn’t turn out that Andrew Ryan was a poof. He’d had enough of upper-class poofs trying to pick him up.
“Where do you think a man’s rights should end?” Ryan asked.
“His rights, sir?” A philosophical question asked of a plumbing contractor? The old toff really was mad. McDonagh humored him. “Rights are rights. That’s like asking which fingers a man should do without. I need all ten, me.”
“I like that. Now—just suppose you lose one or two fingers? What would you do? You’d think yourself unable to work, and you’d have a right to a handout, as it were, eh?”
Bill hefted the toolbox as he considered. “No. I’d find something to do, with eight fingers. Or four. Make my own way. I’d like to be able to use my talents more—that’s right enough. But I don’t take handouts.”
“And what talents are those? Not that I discount a gift for plumbing. But—is that what you mean?”
“No sir. Not as such. I’m by way of being an engineer. In a simple way, mind. Could be I’ll start me own … my own … building operation. Not so young anymore, but still—I see things in my mind I’d like to build…” He broke off, embarrassed at being so personal with this man. But there was something about Ryan that made you want to open up and talk.
“You’re British. Not one of the … the gentry types, certainly.”
“Right as rain, sir.” Bill wondered if he’d get the brush-off now. There was a touch of defensiveness when he added, “Grew up ’round Cheapside, like.”
Ryan chuckled dryly. “You’re touchy about your origins. I know the feeling. I too am an immigrant. I was very young when I came here from Russia. I have learned to control my speech—reinvented myself. A man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb—if you’re not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend.
“But by ascending,” Ryan went on, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and taking a pensive turn about the room, “one makes one’s own class, do you see? Eh? One classes oneself!”
Bill had been about to make his excuses and walk out—but that stopped him. Ryan had articulated something he fiercely believed.
“Couldn’t agree more, sir!” Bill blurted. “That’s why I’ve come to the USA. Anyone can rise up, here. Right to the top!”
Ryan grunted skeptically. “Yes, and no. There are some who don’t have the stuff. But it’s not the ‘class’ or race or creed that they were born into that decides it. It’s something inside a man. And that’s something you have. You’re a true mugwump, a real individual. We’ll talk again, you and I…”
Bill nodded good-bye, not believing for a second that they’d speak again. He figured a rich bloke took it into his mind to have a natter with “the little people,” patronizing a chap to prove to themselves how fair and kindly they could be.
He headed to check on Pablo and Roy before he made his way to the lobby and went about his business. This had been an interesting encounter—it’d be a story to tell in the pub, though no one would likely believe him. Andrew Ryan? Who else did you hobnob with—Howard Hughes? Yer ol’ pal William Randolph Hearst?
* * *
Bill McDonagh’s head was only moderately sore the next morning, and he answered his flat’s clangorous telephone readily enough, hoping for work. A good sweat always cleared his head.
“This Bill McDonagh?” said a gruff, unfamiliar voice.
“Right enough.”
“My name’s Sullivan. Head of Security for Andrew Ryan.”
“Security? What’s ’e say I’ve done, then? Look here, mate, I’m no crook—”
“No no, it’s nothing like that—he just set me to find you. Chinowski didn’t want to give up the number. Claimed he lost it. Tried taking the job himself. I had to get it from our friends at the phone company.”
“What job?”
“Why, if you want it, Andrew Ryan’s offering you a job as his new building engineer … Starting immediately.”
2
The Docks, New York City
1946
Sullivan sometimes wished he were back working the Meatball Beat in Little Italy. Ryan paid him well, sure, but having to dodge G-men on the docks was not his idea of a good time.
It was a bracing, misty evening, supposed to be spring but didn’t feel much like it. The waves were choppy and the gulls were huddled on the pylons with their beaks under their wings, their feathers ruffled in the cold northeast wind. Three hulking great ships were tied up at the beat-up old dock, all freighters. This was not one of the fashionable wharfs, with passenger liners and pretty girls waving hankies. Just a couple of red-faced, sour-looking salts in pea jackets tramping by, trailing cigarette smoke, boots crunching on old gull droppings.
Sullivan walked up to the gangplank of the Olympian, the largest of the three ships in the fleet Ryan had bought for his secretive North Atlantic project. He waved at the armed guard, Pinelli, huddled into a big coat on the top deck. Pinelli glanced down at him and nodded.
Ruben Greavy, head engineer for the Wales brothers, was waiting on the lower deck at the top of the gangplank. Greavy was a fussy, pinch-mouthed, bespectacled little man in a rather showy cream-colored overcoat.
Sullivan hesitated, glancing back down the dock—just making out the dark figure of the man who’d been following him. The guy in the slouch hat and trench coat was about seventy yards down the wharf, pretending to be interested in the ships creaking at their moorings. Sullivan had hoped he’d dodged the son of a bitch earlier, but there he was, lighting a pipe for a bit of realistic spycraft.
The pipe smoker had been tailing Sullivan since he’d gotten a cab at G
rand Central and maybe before. There wasn’t much the guy could learn following him here. The ship was already loaded. The feds would never get an inspection warrant before it sailed at midnight. And what would they make of the prefabricated metal parts, giant pipes, and enormous pressure-resistant sheets of transparent synthetics? It was all stuff you could legitimately call “export goods.” Only it wasn’t being exported across the ocean. It was being “exported” to the bottom of the ocean.
Sullivan shook his head, thinking about the whole North Atlantic project. It was a crazy idea—but when Ryan put his mind into something, it got done. And Sullivan owed the Great Man a lot. Almost ruined him, getting kicked out of the NYPD. Shouldn’t have refused to grease those palms. They’d set him up to look like a crook, fired him, and taken away his pension. Left him with almost nothing.
Sullivan took to gambling—and then his wife ran off with the last of his dough. He’d been thinking about eating a bullet when he crossed paths with the Great Man, two years earlier …
Sullivan reached into his coat pocket for the flask—then remembered it was empty. Maybe he could get a drink from Greavy.
Sullivan waved at Greavy and climbed the gangplank. They shook hands. Greavy’s grip was soft, fingers puny in Sullivan’s big grasp.
“Sullivan.”
“Professor.”
“How many times … I’m not a professor, I have a doctorate in … never mind. You know someone’s shadowing you on the dock back there?”
“Different gumshoe this time. Probably FBI or IRS.” He turned his collar up. “Kind of chilly out here.”
“Come along, then, we’ll have a drink.”
Sullivan nodded resignedly. He knew what Greavy’s idea of a drink was. Watered brandy. Sullivan needed a double Scotch. His father had sworn by Irish whiskey, but Sullivan was a Scotch man. Sure, the black betrayal of yer heritage, it is, his pa would say. A steady liquid diet of Irish whiskey had killed the old rascal at fifty.
