House of Thieves

by Charles Belfoure

  Cross looked down at the gutter and discovered he was standing in a pool of oozing, blackish-brown filth. Stepping up to the curb to scrape the mess off his shoes, he saw an unconscious drunk sprawled out no more than six feet away. His jacket and pants pockets had been turned out. The crowds of boisterous people, many of them men and women arm in arm, stepped over him as if he were a piece of litter.

  Strange that McGlory’s music hall would be such an unassuming building. Cross had expected something much fancier, a grand entry, perhaps. To his right, he heard the sound of a scuffle. Walking toward an obscured doorway, he was shocked to see a man holding a filthy handkerchief over a well-dressed fellow’s nose. In the next instant, the latter collapsed, unconscious. With the help of another man, the thief took his wallet and began to strip off his clothes. The crowds continued to swarm along the sidewalk, completely ignoring them.

  Stunned, Cross stumbled toward the dingy double doorway of 158 Hester. As he reached the door, two men burst out, dragging a third man by his armpits. They heaved his body out into the middle of Hester Street like a sack of flour and strode back inside. Trembling, Cross entered and found himself in a narrow, unlit corridor. Like a blind man, he felt along the walls for almost twenty feet until he saw a crack of light beneath an opaque door. Opening it, he was astonished to see a huge dance hall, brightly lit, with dozens of tables and chairs and a bar the length of a city block. The hall was two stories high; a balcony lined with curtain-covered cubicles ran along two sides. There had to be at least five hundred men in the space, all shouting and laughing above the screeching music played by a piano, cornet, and violin trio off to the side. Young girls in garish makeup and short red-and-white dresses moved through the crowd, singing and carrying trays of drinks. Their skirts exposed their legs up to their plump thighs.

  At almost every table, even cheaper, more tawdry-looking women sat in the laps of the men, arms around their necks, laughing and kissing them full on the lips. To Cross’s astonishment, one woman drained a large stein of lager in one try.

  Did Kent really want to meet me here? Cross thought wildly. Shoving his way past the throng and weaving through the maze of tables, he finally found an empty seat. The second he settled down, two harpies were upon him. One plopped into his lap, and to his horror, Cross realized it was a man very unconvincingly dressed as a woman. His face was powdered white, his rouged cheeks as red as cherries.

  “Buy me a drink, handsome,” said the degenerate. Though Cross did not reply, two drinks appeared in front of him as if from nowhere. The fake female grabbed one of the drinks and disappeared into the crowd.

  “Two dollars,” a voice called out. To avoid any problems, Cross paid.

  “How about some quarters in my stocking for good luck?” said the other woman, stretching a shapely, gartered leg in front of Cross. Again, he immediately obliged. She had hair the color of a Florida orange and seemed to be a genuine female. Pleased at his quick response, she whispered in his ear, “Why don’t we go up to a private box, for a special cancan exhibition?” and she motioned toward the curtained alcoves lining the balcony.

  Cross looked up and saw a man in evening dress buttoning his fly as he left one of the cubicles. “That’s very tempting, young lady, but I’m here for a business appointment,” he said apologetically. The constant noise and loud music were giving him a pounding headache.

  The whore leaned over and wrapped her arms around Cross. “Surely a real gentleman like yourself can spare a little time for me.”

  In the next instant, the slut was yanked off him. A moon-faced man with a broken nose and a handlebar mustache roughly shoved her away by the wrist. “Mr. Kent will see you now, Mr. Cross. If you’ll come this way,” he said in the same polite tone Caroline Astor’s butler would have used. He then grabbed the woman’s other wrist and pulled a wallet from her hand. “And I believe this belongs to you, sir.” He handed him the wallet and slapped the woman in the face. The blow was so hard, so punishing, that she fell, the back of her head slamming against the damp, sawdust-covered floor.

  12

  The man escorted Cross through the smoke and cacophony of the dance hall to a rickety wooden stair leading to the basement. In the low, dimly lit passage, Cross almost scraped his head on the underside of the floor joists. They reached a door that opened into a large room with newly plastered walls. At least ten men sat around a long oak table filled with liquor bottles, growlers of beer, and glasses. Cross spotted Kent, who stood and spread his arms in warm welcome, as if he were meeting a long-lost relative.

  “Boys, meet John Cross. Our new business consultant.”

  Murmurs of polite welcome rose through the swirl of cigar and cigarette smoke that enveloped the room. Cross cringed at the sound of his name. Then he sank into an empty chair directly across from Kent and looked around the table. He’d never met any of these men at the Union League or the Knickerbocker Club. They were a mean-looking bunch, the scars of a rough and unhappy life permanently etched on their faces. One man’s face looked as though it had been beaten with a cat-o’-nine-tails; another’s was so pockmarked that it looked as if someone had hammered tacks into it. One man with a missing ear was nervously sticking a stiletto into the wood table, again and again, tiny, jabbing blows. Most of the noses present had been broken. Oddly, though, all the men were fashionably dressed in frock coats, waistcoats, and pinstriped trousers—most likely from Cross’s own tailor, Brooks Brothers. Some had gold-topped canes by their sides.

  At first, the only person Cross recognized was the man who’d paid a visit to his office. Then, to his surprise, he saw the man who’d held the handkerchief over the face of the fellow in the street. Some of the men were welcoming; a few remained expressionless, seemingly suspicious of the newcomer.

  Sitting next to him was a gimlet-eyed hulk of a man with bright red hair. He was fingering a set of brass knuckles. Cross could see blood on them. A short, meek-looking man rose from his seat and handed Cross a shot of whiskey.

  “Wet your whistle, Johnnie,” he said.

  Cross smiled and took the shot in a single swallow. His new friends nodded in approval. It was a good way of breaking down the barriers between them.

  The man with the handkerchief smiled at him. “I believe I saw you on the street earlier tonight.”

  “Yes, I do recall seeing you. You seemed busy.”

  “I had a client.”

  “Pig McGurk’s the best chloroform man in the city,” said the skinny bald man next to him, slapping Pig on the back.

  “Chloroform?” Cross asked.

  “Yep. I can sneak up behind anyone, place a hanky of ’form over their face, knock ’em out, and strip ’em clean. Ten seconds or less.”

  “Each of these gentlemen brings a special talent to our company.” Kent sounded as if he was boasting about his children. “Like you, Mr. Cross. I believe you have something to share with us.”

  From the side pocket of his frock coat, Cross removed a folded set of blueprints and flattened them out on the table so that Kent, who was sitting across from him, could see. He was about to speak but hesitated. It bothered him that so many people were in on Kent’s scheme. He’d thought they’d be speaking alone. The expression “no honor among thieves” came to mind. Then he remembered the ice delivery, and he knew that none of these men would dare betray Kent.

  “This is the Cook mansion. It’s one of the first built on upper Fifth Avenue, on the corner of Seventy-Eighth.” He showed the group the front elevation sheet, which displayed how palatial the house was, with its steep slate roof and tall chimneys, taking up half of the Fifth Avenue block. Cook owned the rest of the block, all the way up to Seventy-Ninth Street, allowing for a large open space behind the house for a yard and carriage access.

  “That’s a beautiful house. Indoor toilets, I bet,” said McGurk.

  “You better believe it! Imagine, living in a place like th
at and taking a shit out in an outhouse!” exclaimed the man with the missing ear.

  “Hey, isn’t that the house that has the big, wide ditch all around it?” asked another man.

  Cross paused, smiled politely, and said, “That’s exactly the house.”

  “Then how the hell are we getting in there?” countered the man.

  “That ditch is called a dry moat, and I designed it, including the drawbridges. They are lowered and raised by a new type of electric motor and steel cables—the same kind they used on the Brooklyn Bridge,” Cross answered, a note of pride in his voice. “I know how to operate them. So no one will see us from the street. We’ll work in the rear. I’ll lower the bridge, and then you’ll break in through the back door.”

  The men all nodded their heads in admiration and exchanged smiles.

  “Wait—after we crack this place, won’t they know you used the bridge, since you thought of it?” asked McGurk.

  The men stopped smiling and looked at Cross. All of them were thinking the same thing—if Cross was picked up by the police, he’d squeal on them in a second.

  “Mr. McGurk,” said Cross, “there were scores of workmen involved in constructing this building, plus all the servants who’ve seen how the bridges work. They’ll be the prime suspects. And there’s one more important point you have to understand—they’d never suspect a gentleman.”

  Kent smiled at this last observation.

  “Now, let’s move on,” said Cross. “Here’s the subbasement. Right next to the wine room is a large vault that holds the silverware, chinaware, and, in an adjoining room, all the linens. The Cooks have an unusually large English silver service by Garrard and complete sets of real Dresden and Sèvres china. There are very expensive sets of embroidered Irish and Belgian lace linens in this separate cedar-lined room.” Cross pointed to a space in the middle of the plan. “The door to the vault is hidden behind a wall rack of bottles. It swings out on hinges.”

  “Combination lock on the vault?” Kent asked.

  “No, just a padlock that can be pried off with a crowbar.”

  The gang had risen from their seats and hunched over the plans. Cross wondered if any of them besides Kent could actually read them. Most of his rich, well-educated clients couldn’t decipher the drawings. But intent on making a good first impression—and stealing the most he could, the better to repay George’s debts—Cross laid out the second-floor plan on top of the basement plan.

  “The second floor contains the family’s private spaces—the bedrooms, study, a sitting room where they gather informally.”

  “That’s goddamn amazing, a big place like this for one fuckin’ family,” said a rotund man in a dark-gray frock coat with an elegant pearl-gray waistcoat.

  “In Mrs. Cook’s bedroom is a safe. It holds all her jewels.”

  “The woman has her own bedroom?” McGurk said.

  “Yes, all husbands and wives have separate bedrooms.”

  McGurk and his colleagues exchanged smiles at this arrangement.

  “The family’s up in Newport now, and a society woman never takes all her jewelry with her. She leaves the best for the social season that begins in mid-November. I happen to know that Mrs. Cook has a Cartier tiara. Five large diamonds, each mounted with a freshwater pearl. It’ll be there.”

  “And the safe?” Kent asked. “Behind a painting?”

  ‘That’s where you’d expect it to be. So I put a false front of a safe behind a painting. The safe is actually right here.” Cross pointed to a solid square drawn in the corner of the bedroom.

  “What’s that?” asked Kent.

  “It’s a Roman marble statue of Diana, goddess of the hunt. I put a small portable safe in its base with a removable panel at the back.”

  “The lock?”

  “That has a combination lock. But the safe’s not anchored to the floor. You can take it with you.”

  Grinning, the gang members started chattering among themselves, excited at the potential of such a big robbery. Cross looked down, conflict roiling in his belly. The Cooks had been excellent clients; they were down-to-earth and kindhearted, unlike most of the society folk he dealt with. Bill Cook had grown up dirt poor on a Missouri farm and had never forgotten his humble beginnings. Last month, he’d been kind enough to remember Charlie’s birthday and had sent him an expensive present.

  But Cross had no choice. The Cooks would survive. George might not.

  And he had one more surprise for Kent’s men.

  “This room next to Mrs. Cook’s bedroom is her dressing room. Here’s the closet for her clothes.”

  “Christ, that’s as big as her bedroom,” said the red-haired man with the brass knuckles.

  “It’s bigger than this room we’re in now,” Cross agreed, eliciting whistles and a few “holy shits” from the gang. “It has to be, because society ladies change their clothes at least four times a day.”

  “Four times a day? Holy hell, my wife don’t even change her underwear every day,” said a man with unusually large ears and a pointy nose. He looked like an elf from a children’s book.

  “Morning dresses, afternoon dresses, tea dresses, riding habits, blouses, skirts. But the most expensive items are her evening dresses and ball gowns, which are in this cedar-lined closet here. Mrs. Cook’s are from Worth’s, the very best fashion house in Paris. Twice a year, she orders a completely new set of gowns and accessories. They’re made from the most expensive silks, satins, brocade, velvets, and lace money can buy. The rest of the closet is filled with hats, shoes, gloves, silk lingerie, and furs.” Cross tapped his finger on the dressing room image for dramatic emphasis. “This will be your biggest take, even more than the jewels and silver.” He looked up to see Kent smiling appreciatively at him.

  “Very impressive, Mr. Cross,” he said. Many around the table raised their glasses in response.

  But then a tall, physically imposing man with a haggard but handsome face rose. Cross had noticed him earlier, twisting a length of what looked like piano wire in his hands. He slammed his fist, which sported a large diamond ring, down hard on the table.

  “How can we trust this goddamn swell?” he cried. “We don’t know this guy from Adam. Suppose he’s a Pinkerton?”

  “For Christ’s sake, calm down, Brady,” one of the men yelled.

  The smile vanished from Kent’s face, and he turned to look at the dissenter. “We can trust him because I said we can, Mr. Brady.” Kent’s voice was icy. The man scowled but backed off. “One question, Mr. Cross,” Kent said, the smile returning to his face. “Did the Cooks leave any staff behind?”

  “No, they went to Newport with the family. And no watchman.”

  Cross didn’t want to wait for any more questions. He wanted to get the hell out of there. “Well, gentlemen, it was a pleasure to meet you,” he said, picking up his hat from the table. “You will no doubt want to examine the drawings further and discuss things, so I’ll get out of your way. Good night to you all.”

  He was almost to the door when Kent intercepted him.

  “Just a moment, Mr. Cross. Culver here will get you a carriage. I don’t believe the Lower East Side is quite your milieu.” Kent waved his gold-topped cane toward Culver. “Let’s wait in here, shall we?”

  Kent led Cross into another room, filled with what were probably the hall’s excess tables and chairs. Most were damaged. As they waited, a slow trickle of ragged, dirty men and women entered. A blind beggar wearing black glasses and carrying a cane sat down at a table. He took off the glasses and began counting coins and paper money from a tin can. Another filthy-looking wretch wearing a leg prosthesis limped in—and took off the false limb, exposing a perfectly healthy leg. When he saw Cross’s expression, Kent started laughing.

  “Billy McGlory is kind enough to let these unfortunates do their day’s accounting here.”

 
“But that man can see as well as I can. And that man there is no cripple!” exclaimed Cross.

  “Welcome to my world, Mr. Cross,” Kent said, laughing uncontrollably. As more fake cripples straggled in, he continued to speak, tapping his palm with the head of his cane. “We’re off to a good start,” he said. “You did very well, made a good impression on the boys. We’ll go over your drawings and start to prepare. Preparation is everything in this game, Mr. Cross.”

  “Where’s my son?” Cross demanded, his patience worn thin. His voice drew curious glances from the cripples, but they quickly returned to their money.

  “You delivered the goods tonight. I will keep up my end of the bargain and deliver George. He’ll be home by late tomorrow morning.”

  When Culver appeared at the door, Cross started toward him. But Kent blocked his way with his cane.

  “Before you go, there’s one more small favor I’ll ask of you.”

  • • •

  It was Ned Brady’s habit to stop at the Hurdy Gurdy for a drink on the way home. Being a regular, he was given his own private cubicle at the back of the bar. Though he had a common-law wife at home, many women vied for his attention and affection. He was a strapping, good-looking man, generous with money. Only a select few were allowed his company, however.

  But tonight, Brady desired no female companionship. He finished his shot of rye and left. As he walked west on Stanton Street, a filthy white-and-brown dog leaped from the shadow of a doorway. It attacked his leg viciously. Enraged, Brady shook the mutt off—and saw a ragged old man in his seventies standing nearby.