“That’s a real smart idea. They won’t expect you to hit it twice in a row,” said Brady, nodding in approval.
They reached the bank of the river and tied up. As he stepped out of the boat, Gordon laid his hand on Bald Jack’s shoulder. “It was real white of ya to let me come along, and I won’t forget it. You should look me up at the Black and Tan on Bleecker. That’s my joint.”
“Sure thing, Gordie,” said Bald Jack, extending his hand.
As Gordon reached out to take it, Coogan and Brady grabbed him from behind and flung him facedown into the river. They held him under, Cross watching in horror as the man struggled with all his might to free himself, arms and legs flailing, splashing against the dark water. After two agonizing minutes, his body went completely still. Bald Jack watched impassively as Brady tugged the floating body by the back of the collar, gently guiding it into the fast-moving current. The black-and-gray form was carried away silently into the night.
“You bastard,” screamed Cross, his voice shattering the silence.
In a second, his own head was underwater. Gulping down what seemed like a gallon of river water, he felt hands forcing him down, down. He flailed his arms in panic.
Suddenly, he was released. He stumbled to the river bank, coughing and gagging.
“It’s late. Time to go home, Cross,” said Brady, watching him with impassive eyes.
22
“There’s a fellow out front who wants to see you, Mr. Cross. Says he’s your brother.”
Cross put down his pencil. He’d been working on a design for an office building on Broadway and Spring Street. Like his former master, H. H. Richardson, he would make a rough sketch of an idea and then hand it off to his assistants to refine and develop. But an avalanche of work had descended upon the office in the last month, and he was behind. He hadn’t even started the design for the new orphan asylum up in Westchester.
When he did sit down to work, he couldn’t keep his mind off of Gordon’s body, floating away into the night. It wasn’t so much the image of his corpse as the fact that Cross had watched him be murdered. Brady and Coogan had done it with such ease, such absolute lack of emotion. Still, Gordon’s death had a positive side. It had almost completely erased his anxiety over getting caught for the Cook robbery—what was a little jail time when he could be dead?
Cross approached the office reception room slowly, trying to see if it really was his brother or one of Kent’s men with a message. A week after the jailbreak, he’d received a call telling him he had a week to prepare the next job. Had Kent’s men come early?
But no. Standing there was Robert, his older brother, someone he hadn’t seen in years. Cross smiled when he saw how fit and well Robert looked. His full head of dark hair was showing some gray, but he still cut an imposing figure. Cross looked up to his older brother still, even though their father thought Robert a failure. He’d dropped out of Harvard after one year and drifted around the East Coast until the outbreak of the Civil War. He joined the Union Army, rising to the rank of captain and winning a medal at Gettysburg. His heroism had made Cross proud but at the same time ashamed for having sat out the war.
“Robert,” Cross cried, and every draftsman lifted his head and looked up. They embraced, and Cross found that he had tears in his eyes.
“You blackguard, I haven’t seen you in three years,” Robert said. “Before you start jabbering on about your architecture, tell me how Helen and the children are.”
“Fine, just fine. George graduated, Charlie’s ten and constantly in motion, and Julia’s about to make her debut.”
“Already? She was so little when I last saw her.”
“All grown up. Though she can’t stand wearing a corset.”
“I can’t wait to see them all. How’s the beautiful Helen?”
“Running around like mad, preparing for Julia’s coming-out ball.”
Robert checked his pocket watch. “It’s getting close to noon. Stop slaving away on those drawings and come out to lunch with me.”
“You’re in luck. I’m meeting George at Delmonico’s on Fourteenth Street for lunch. And you’re coming too,” Cross said, almost giddy with happiness. “He’ll be surprised as hell to see you.”
Seeing his brother was the best medicine he could have imagined. Growing up, Cross had adored his big brother, who always welcomed his company, unlike many older brothers who would tell their young siblings to get lost. Robert was a far bigger influence in his life than his aloof father, often giving him advice on how to play baseball or ride a horse, how to avoid getting bullied by classmates at prep school, and on the best methods to woo the opposite sex. Robert had the knack of knowing when something was troubling his brother and would immediately offer counsel on how to deal with sadness, disappointment, or anger over a particular problem. It bothered Cross that they had drifted apart over the last few years.
As it was a beautiful August day, they decided to walk from Broadway and Grand Street up to the restaurant. Robert had always been a good listener, and now he asked his brother insightful questions about his business. Because they had time on their hands, he graciously asked if there were any of Cross’s buildings nearby. There were, and the brothers took a detour toward a publishing company at Lafayette and Bond Streets.
“Damn, Johnny,” Robert said, staring up at the facade. “I wish I had talent like yours. To figure out all that decoration on those arches? That’s really something.”
Ever since he was a boy, Cross had loved his older brother’s praise. This time, the words gave him pause—the admiration suddenly reminded him of Kent’s.
“Does Aunt Caroline ever throw you work?” Robert asked with a sly smile.
“Lots of referrals, but no real Astor work.”
“Always keep on the old girl’s good side, Johnny,” Robert said. “Remember how she said I was acting common when she caught me smoking that cigar?”
“In her formal parlor! And you were ten,” Cross said, laughing.
They turned north on Fifth Avenue. Before Cross could ask about his brother’s life, Robert said, “The thing I envy most about you is your family. Sometimes I wish I had one.”
“Nonsense. There’s still time.”
“Not pushing fifty and in my line of work.”
“What are you doing now? Last I heard, you worked for the Remington Arms Company.”
“I’m a Pinkerton man.”
“Since when?”
“About two years ago. I ran into a man from my old regiment who was a Pinkerton. Said that with my military background, he could get me a job, and he did, in Buffalo. That’s where I’ve been all this time. But they transferred me to New York last week.”
“Do you like the work?” To Cross, being a detective sounded exciting and romantic, though in recent years, the working classes had come to think of the Pinkertons as a ruthless mercenary army used to break strikes. But society people loved them, for they kept the commoners in their place.
“I’ve finally found my calling,” said Robert, nodding. He slapped his brother on the shoulder and resumed walking.
“And you’re based in New York permanently?” Cross couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice.
“Yes. I’ve been promoted to the main office. I’m staying at the Hotel Brunswick for now. Perhaps you can help me find an apartment?”
“Of course. That’s wonderful, Rob. I can recommend a few places.”
“Wonderful. I’ve been assigned a very interesting case, you see. A rich fellow named Cook—of Cook Shoes, out of Saint Louis? Perhaps you heard of him. Had his place on Fifth Avenue completely cleaned out a few weeks ago. Never seen so thorough a job. The criminals strangled an unfortunate servant girl who happened to be there. The police found her body in the river.”
Robert looked to his side, but Cross wasn’t there. He turned and saw his brother, st
anding still as a statue in the middle of the sidewalk.
“What’s wrong, Johnny?” Robert asked, alarmed.
At first, Cross didn’t answer. He just stared off into space. His head was swimming; he thought he was going to faint.
Concerned, Robert walked up to him.
“I never saw anything about it in the papers,” Cross whispered, trying to pull himself together.
“Cook was embarrassed. He didn’t want any publicity. That’s why they called us in.”
“Any leads?”
“Not a one. Come on, I’m starving. I could eat a bear.”
• • •
This would be the first time since the graduation party that he’d seen George—and the first time since he’d found out about his debt. Despite his anguish regarding his son’s secret life, Cross had been looking forward to it. His anger toward his son had diminished, and he was slowly beginning to forgive him. A son’s faults are the father’s faults, he kept reminding himself. And every time he thought of leaving Kent, he saw his son’s corpse.
But Kent’s warnings about his son’s “weakness” haunted him. Although Cross was closer to his son than most society fathers, a wide gulf still yawned between them. Though he might wish it otherwise, and while he desperately wanted to believe George was staying out of trouble, he really had no idea if the boy had kept gambling.
Down deep, he didn’t want to know. The thought terrified him. He pushed it away, viciously sublimating it. Like Aunt Caroline, he thought grimly. Always ignoring anything unpleasant.
So, after all these weeks, the sight of George did not brighten Cross’s spirits. The news his brother had delivered crushed him; his mind reeled. While his son and brother chattered away, he kept thinking of the girl’s body, floating in the water. Just like Gordon.
Had she been like Colleen, the Cross’s servant girl? Pretty and sweet-natured, straight off the boat from Ireland? Girls like that spent their entire lives bent over washtubs and ironing boards, but incredibly, they still had a cheerful outlook on life. They were happy just to be in America. Cross thought back to that night in the carriage, watching Brady play with the length of piano wire. It wasn’t a nervous affectation.
Cross hadn’t touched his terrapin soup or the lamb chops. He swallowed hard and looked over at George, laughing and happy.
“John…John. Are you still with us, old man?” Robert asked.
Cross snapped out of his trance. “Why yes, yes, of course. What were you talking about?”
“That it’s incredible George played in the Polo Grounds in front of all those people.”
“He’s too modest to tell you he hit the game-winning home run against Yale.”
“Damn, I wish I would’ve seen that. And against those bastards from Yale too!”
But as Cross watched them speak and exchange easy smiles, his whole feeling toward his son shifted with the abruptness of a switch being thrown. He’d been fooling himself all this time. His family’s calamity was the result of George’s foolishness. Cross stared at his son, the brilliant Harvard academic scholar. It was all a facade, shielding a terrible secret. At that moment, there was not a shred of fatherly love in him. He felt like reaching across the table and throttling George. A father wasn’t supposed to hate his own son. Cross hated himself for feeling this way, but he couldn’t help it. He averted his eyes.
“Now that I live in New York,” Robert was saying, “we can go to the Polo Grounds to see the Giants.”
“Charlie’s going to love that,” said George.
“Robert,” said Cross. His voice was unusually loud and halted the conversation. “Please come to dinner tomorrow night to meet the rest of the family. George, I hope you can make it.”
“I’m sorry, Father. I’ve made plans.”
Cross glared at his son. An uneasy silence fell upon the table. A waiter came to take dessert orders and serve the coffee and brandy. Robert tried to resurrect the conversation, to no avail. After Cross saw his brother off in a carriage, he hailed one for himself.
“I’ll drop you off uptown, George.”
“I wasn’t heading that way, but…”
“Get in,” Cross snapped.
They sat in silence as the horses clip-clopped up Fifth Avenue. Progress through the morass of afternoon traffic was slow. As he stared at his son, anger built up within Cross like red-hot magma in the throat of a volcano. He took a deep breath and turned his head to look at the stream of pedestrians on the sidewalk. Not one of them, he thought, could have as great a burden as the one he shouldered at that moment.
“So you have plans for tomorrow. Do they involve numbers?”
“No, Father. I don’t have to teach.”
“What about numbers on playing cards? The five of diamonds, the three of spades?”
Cross saw the puzzled look on George’s face change to panic. His son shifted his body uncomfortably on the leather bench seat of the carriage.
“Even as a child, you had an affinity for numbers. You could do the most complicated puzzles, add large sums in your head. I was so damn proud of you. I knew you’d become a scholar—and you did.” Cross spoke without looking at George. His gaze was fixed on the passing storefronts along the street.
“Yes, I was always fascinated by numbers,” George said, his eyes full of worry and suspicion.
“I suppose there’s one number that’s of particular fascination—forty-eight thousand.”
For a second, Cross thought George would throw open the carriage door and bolt. But the boy froze in his seat and looked his father straight in the eye.
“I have a gambling debt of forty-eight thousand dollars,” he said in a loud, clear voice.
Instead of exploding in anger, Cross was actually pleased by his son’s candor. He could tell George was shaken down to his boots, but he was fighting hard to put up a brave front. It was impressive.
“You did have a gambling debt of forty-eight thousand dollars. I paid it. Mr. Kent and I have reached an agreement that ensures no harm will come to you.”
George’s brave facade crumbled. His hands covered his face. He bent over as though the shame had punched him in the stomach.
“No one in the family knows of this—and they never will.”
Still bent double, George began to sob. “I’m so sorry, Father. I—”
“I don’t understand how you got mixed up in this. You’re an adult, and I respect that. I would not attempt to meddle in your personal life. But you can never gamble again, George. It’s over. It has to be!”
George looked up at his father. “Thank you so much,” he said in a trembling voice. “You don’t know how grateful I am. I’m…so sorry for what I’ve done to you.”
Cross could see the shame and embarrassment breaking his son in two. It was painful to watch, but he had no intention of letting up. “It’s what you’ve done to yourself. You don’t know how close you came to destroying your life—and your family’s. You have a brilliant academic career ahead of you, George. I won’t allow you to throw that away. We’ll put this behind us, but I forbid you to gamble again. You must promise me, son.”
“Yes, yes. Of course. I know what I did was foolish. I swear to you, it won’t happen again. I swear.”
When the carriage reached the corner of Fifty-Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, George reached over and hugged his father, pulling him close. Cross embraced his son, tears filling his eyes. He didn’t want to let him go. It was like George was six years old again. He wanted to hold him, to protect him from all the bad things in life.
As George walked away, he turned and waved to his father. Cross’s anger toward his son vanished. He loved George with all his heart. He would do anything to save him.
• • •
George walked to the north side of the street and into Central Park. Running off the stone path, he stumbl
ed into the undergrowth, fell to his knees, and threw up his lunch. His head was spinning. He turned onto his back, looking up through the canopy of trees at the cloudless sky.
His worst fear had been realized—his father had discovered his secret. He wished Kent had killed him that night in the power plant. The shame and humiliation of what had happened ate away at George’s insides like a horrible pain, the likes of which he’d never felt in his life. In their world, fathers and sons weren’t supposed to be close, but George and his father were, which made the revelation all the more unbearable.
He was lucky, George knew. A tyrannical father would have exposed him and cast him out of the family forever. Instead, his father had forgiven him. He was even giving him another chance—as long as he gave up gambling.
George wanted to keep his promise with all his heart, but he knew it was almost impossible. There was an illness inside him. He hadn’t attempted to explain that to his father in the carriage; he knew people didn’t understand, that they thought gambling a moral failing. But it was a sickness, he thought wildly, one that caused men and women to destroy themselves like a drunk or drug addict would. He didn’t know if he had the strength to withstand it.
Where did my father get forty-eight thousand dollars? he wondered, staring up at the trees. His first thought was Aunt Caroline, but he knew his father could never go to her; such a request would have meant certain expulsion from her world. Did his father borrow from friends or clients, sell the house on Madison, or even place a bet? The amount was easily three years of his income as an architect.
Wherever he’d gotten the money, George swore he’d pay him back—after he wiped out the nine thousand he still owed.
23
“Charlie, meet my friend, Injun Sam Kelly.”
Charlie, who had never met an Indian, stared at the boy, looking for some trace of Indian blood. But he seemed to be completely white, a pale, blond-haired boy of about eight. He wore a man’s plaid shirt that hung past his knees.
“Glad to know ya, Charlie. Call me Sam.”
House of Thieves Page 13
