“So what have ya been up to?” Eddie asked the boy.
“Doin’ lookout work for the Whyos,” Sam said, voice brimming with pride.
“The Whyos are the toughest gang in town, next to Kent’s Gents,” Eddie told Charlie. “When they’re robbing a store at night, Sam here keeps an eye out for the cops.”
“Also been robbin’ Protestant churches.” As an aside to Charlie, Sam said, “We’re all Irish down here, so we hate Protestants.”
“That’s way better than what you used to do—pretending to be the kid of that wop organ grinder on Mulberry and gathering up the pennies people threw at him,” Eddie said, smiling at the memory.
Sam rolled his eyes—then lit up with an idea. “Say, I know a warehouse at the end of Grand where there’s boxes full of bridles and horse stuff. We can get in real easy. What d’ya say? We sell it and split it three ways.”
“Later. Charlie and me’s goin’ uptown to do a little wranglin’.”
• • •
Carrying a large canvas U.S. Post Office mailbag and a wooden billy club, Eddie led Charlie along Twelfth Avenue. Charlie had freed up his whole afternoon by telling his parents he’d be at dancing class. Last Thursday, he’d supposedly attended drawing lessons. Charlie’s newfound interest in the arts had delighted his parents. Praising his enthusiasm, they’d given him money—which Charlie had promptly pocketed for other ventures. Science classes at the Museum of Natural History will be next, he thought, smiling.
“It’s coming up on the right. All these places along the docks are good huntin’,” Eddie said with an air of authority. “But I’ve had the best luck here.”
They stopped in front of an abandoned four-story brick warehouse, once used to store cargo unloaded from the ships that docked across the street. Eddie pointed to the arched entry that no longer had a door, and they entered. Inside was an open space, the plank floor completely covered with debris and broken glass. The tall windows allowed enough daylight for the boys to see their way around.
Eddie positioned Charlie near the rear wall and handed him the club. “When I tell you, start banging this club like crazy all over the floor,” he whispered.
Eddie walked to a door in the rear wall and out into a tiny yard. Near the corner of the building, a small basement window with missing glass stood open. Spreading the mailbag wide, he covered the entire opening. “Start banging!”
At the signal, Charlie began to pummel the floor with the club. The sound was like pistol reports, echoing throughout the building.
Eddie heard the scurrying of tiny feet and high-pitched squeaking from the basement below. Then objects started hurling themselves into the bag from the window opening with great velocity, as if someone was throwing rocks.
The bag filled up fast, until it looked like a single, vibrating mass.
“Stop,” Eddie yelled. He yanked the bag to an upright position and pulled the drawstrings tight. Dozens of gray rats with long, pink tails raced past his feet into the yard.
Club in hand, Charlie ran to the back. “There must be a hundred in there,” he said, delighted.
“I dunno. I sure as hell ain’t putting my hand in to count ’em. Rat bites hurt like hell, and you can get rabies from ’em. Start foaming at the mouth like a mad dog.”
Eddie tied the drawstring around the neck of the bag, ensuring there would be no escapees. The bag was pulsating with rats, struggling in a mad frenzy. He took the club from Charlie and started beating on the canvas. “That’ll keep ’em in line,” he said.
The boys took hold of the bag and dragged it through the warehouse and onto the sidewalk.
“We don’t have far to go. The place is just a few blocks up, on West Twenty-Seventh,” he said.
“How much do you think we’ll get?” Charlie asked eagerly.
“The going rate is twelve cents a head, and I ain’t gonna take a penny less.”
Taking a rest every block, the boys finally made it to a saloon whose front was painted a bright blue. They dragged the bag through an alley on the left-hand side to a rear yard.
“Wait here, and I’ll get Nardello.”
Eddie eventually returned with a lean, swarthy man who had greasy black hair. “Put ’em in the corral for the count,” he ordered.
At the rear of the yard was a walled enclosure of wood boards almost four feet high. At the bottom was a sliding panel, which Nardello opened with his foot.
“All right, let ’em out.”
Eddie untied the drawstring, shoved the bag into the opening, and kicked the rear until every rat was out.
“Eleven cents a head.”
“Fuck you and the horse you came in on. Twelve, you dago bastard. Look at the quality there. Nice and fast,” Eddie yelled.
Charlie gaped at him. He had never seen a child talk to an adult in such a manner.
“Twelve, then. So I can get rid of your ass.”
Eddie hung over the top of the wall and began counting with his index figure, jabbing at the air.
Nardello did as well.
“I got forty-eight,” said Nardello.
“I got fifty-three,” snapped Eddie.
“Fifty, then,” Nardello said.
Eddie nodded.
The man counted six one-dollar bills into Eddie’s palm, and the boys exchanged triumphant smiles.
“We’re about to start. If you want to watch, I’ll let you in for free,” Nardello said.
“Nah, we gotta get downtown to get our papers,” Eddie said, placing three dollars in Charlie’s hand.
As Charlie and Eddie came out of the alley, Julia and Nolan entered through the front door of the saloon.
24
George hated cooking for himself. His bachelor apartment on West Fifty-Ninth Street had a small kitchen off the parlor, but he rarely set foot in it. If Kitty didn’t fix him a meal at her place, he’d eat in a restaurant or buy a sandwich. He could always go home to eat—his mother begged him constantly to come for dinner—but that would mean facing his father, and he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d thought the shame would diminish with time, but it had increased instead. Over and over, he relived the confrontation with his father. He felt physically sick every time he thought of it.
He loved his father more than anything. John Cross had spent many hours talking and playing with him. He was always there to help George when he was troubled. Although he was busy with his architectural practice, he never used it as an excuse not to spend time with his son. He was like that with Julia and Charlie too. All three children had a close bond with their parents, unlike most of George’s friends, whose nannies were more like their mothers.
Dodging his father meant not seeing his brother or sister, and this too gave George a profound feeling of emptiness. He enjoyed discussing literature with Julia and baseball with Charlie. He’d promised to take his little brother to the Polo Grounds to see a Giants game this summer, and he wasn’t going to let him down. He resolved to call him when he got home.
The question of where his father had found forty-eight thousand dollars to pay his debt was also deeply troubling. This weighed on George, a mystery he couldn’t solve. His determination to repay his father had become all consuming—and this intensified his gambling sickness. But he kept losing.
“Why, George Cross, haven’t seen you in a coon’s age. How’s my Harvard man?” a voice behind him called out.
George spun around to face Jack Bacon, a collector for Turk Holden, who owned the Silver Slipper gambling den on Houston Street.
“Good to see you, Jack,” said George, resisting the overpowering impulse to start running in the other direction. “What are you doing in this neighborhood?”
“Just conducting a little business for Holden,” the broad-chested thug replied. “You know, Georgie, why don’t you come with me? You might find it fun.�
��
“Well, Jack, I was just…”
“Only take a few minutes. Come on, old boy, keep me company,” he said in a cheerful tone.
Jack took hold of George’s elbow and steered him along Fifty-Sixth Street. While they walked, Jack chattered on about baseball and how well Brooklyn was doing, rattling off the season’s statistics and scores. He led George to a well-to-do apartment house. On the fifth floor, Jack knocked on a door.
A well-dressed, middle-aged woman answered. A look of sheer terror convulsed her face when she saw Jack.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Todd. Is William about?” he asked in the politest of voices.
“No, I’m sorry. He…”
Jack placed his shovel-size hand in the center of the woman’s forehead and shoved her violently to the floor. He walked through the doorway, turned, and beckoned George to follow him, smiling broadly.
The apartment was well furnished. The spacious parlor had a grand round table in the center, adorned with ornaments and a sculpture. Jack deliberately walked into it, sending it crashing to the ground. The woman cried out.
“Oops. So clumsy of me. My apologies.” Still smiling, he reached over and pulled a glass-fronted bookcase forward. It hit the floor with a resounding crash. While the woman wailed, Jack went from room to room in the apartment, looking under beds and in closets. George followed behind, unsure what else to do.
Sitting deep in the rear of the kitchen pantry, Jack found a paunchy, bald man of about fifty.
“So good to see you again, William,” Jack said, yanking the man out by his ankle.
“I’ll have something for you tomorrow, I swear! I swear,” William screamed.
Jack kicked the man full in the face, if he were punting a football. Then he kicked him repeatedly in the stomach while William’s wife screamed continuously from the front parlor. Pulling William upright, Jack leaned him against the kitchen wall and pummeled his face until blood splattered in all directions. William screamed for mercy, reaching desperately into his pockets to produce some money, but Jack was unmoved. He started working on his midsection.
Pressed hard against the opposite wall, George stood cringing at the sight.
Mrs. Todd came rushing into the kitchen to intervene, but as she approached Jack, he swung out his left arm and swatted her to the polished wooden floor with no more effort than he would have taken to strike a fly.
Growing tired of the effort, he let go of William, who slumped to the floor, and looked around the kitchen. Taking a knife from the kitchen counter, Jack placed the blade inside William’s left nostril and flicked up. Blood gushed like a geyser. Jack stood over him, viewing his handiwork, then shook his head and cut the other nostril. Satisfied, he kicked William hard in the groin as a parting gesture.
“I’m coming back tomorrow, and you better have my six hundred dollars, William. If you don’t, I’m going to have to hurt you,” Jack said over his shoulder as he walked toward the door. To the right of the entry, an expensive-looking vase sat on a console table. Jack grabbed it and smashed it against the wall.
At the door, George stopped and turned to view the carnage. Husband and wife were screaming in agony; blood covered the kitchen floor. It looked as though someone had slopped a bucket of red paint from one end of the room to the other. George felt faint. He steadied himself against the foyer wall, trying to breathe. An instant later, he started violently as Jack slapped his paw on his shoulder, guiding him down the iron and stone stairs.
“Now, like I was sayin’, Jeffries of Brooklyn is just as good a player as anyone the Giants got.”
25
Cross didn’t want to go to the Lees’ dinner party, but he and Helen had already accepted the invitation. A popular saying held that if a man who had accepted a dinner invitation died, his executor had to take his place.
Hand-lettered invitations on thick, white vellum arrived a full three weeks before the event. At the same time, flowers had been ordered, a French chef had chosen the menu, and Mrs. Lee had purchased a new silver service. Society parties were expected to be a show of magnificent ostentation, and the hostesses never failed to live up to this obligation.
The Crosses’ carriage pulled up to the Lee mansion the customary thirty minutes prior to the eight o’clock meal time. Located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Sixty-First Street, the house was a wide, four-story, French Empire model with an English basement. A dull, uninspired design, Cross thought. Footmen outfitted in black-and-gold livery stood by the red carpet that ran from the curb to the front door, opening the carriage doors and bowing to the guests, all of whom were dressed the same: men in white tie and tails, women in light summer evening gowns with long gloves. Honoria Lee, a middle-aged woman whose beauty had barely faded over the years, stood in the gilt-paneled reception hall, greeting her guests.
“Helen, how beautiful you look,” she gushed. It pleased Cross that instead of his wife having to flatter, she was always flattered herself. “And, John. So lovely to see you. Go see who you’re escorting.”
Cross walked to a table where small white envelopes inscribed with the names of the gentlemen guests were arranged. Locating his, he opened it to find a card: Elizabeth Burnham. The wife of an insurance company owner, she was beautiful, with raven hair and piercing blue eyes, but exceedingly insipid and dull. It would be like talking to a rock all evening. Still, in society, beauty excused a great many failings. And it was bad form for a gentleman to complain about his escort. Cross strolled into the drawing room, a palatial space adorned with Chinese vases full of red roses, mahogany paneling, a white marble floor, and a sparkling crystal chandelier.
A crowd had assembled around the Tarletons, the guests of honor, who had recently arrived from London. Everyone in Cross’s set was a rabid Anglophile, loving every intricacy of British aristocratic life, from cricket to pheasant shooting to tweed suits. Sir Henry was regaling the crowd with descriptions of the renovation to Castle Twickham, his ancestral home. Tarleton, John understood, was one of the few British elites who still had a substantial fortune. Many British lords had seen their riches frittered away by prior generations and had had to sink to the humiliating state of marrying young American heiresses—“dollar princesses,” the press called them—who might rejuvenate their fortunes and save their estates.
Sir Henry and his plump wife, Deidre, were basking in the glow of New York society’s admiration. They interrupted their boasting to meet Helen, with whom the couple was immediately captivated.
On the outskirts, Cross milled about, nodding to people he knew, paying compliments to ladies, and conducting an informal architectural survey of the house. He enjoyed appraising the proportions, detailing, and finishes of all the houses he was invited into.
He felt a tap on his shoulder, and there was Stanford White.
“Hello, Stanny. I knew you’d be here. You did their place in Newport, I recall?”
“Oh yes. And I never turn down a good meal,” White said, patting his belly. It had grown considerably since the two men had worked together at H. H. Richardson’s office.
“What are you currently working on?” Cross asked.
“Christ, I just came from Columbia Bank, a job I did on Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second. They want alterations to the banking hall. Idiots. It’s fine the way it is.”
Cross nodded. All of White’s buildings were special. Though he envied his friend’s incredible talent, he had long ago acknowledged that he could never surpass him as a designer. The bank building was unique and original—all Stanny’s work was. Done in the Classical Revival style, it had a pair of balconies covered by flat roofs and supported by slender Ionic columns, which gave the big building a wonderful sense of lightness.
“Where’d you put the vault?”
“They wanted it in a subbasement. That’s where the safe-deposit boxes are.”
“Is the vault all steel or encase
d in cement?”
“Steel.”
“Did you put in one of those new alarm systems?”
“It’s just an electric line connecting to a police precinct. Why? You got a bank project?”
“Ah, yes…I’m looking into any new vault systems,” Cross said. He added in a low voice, “Maybe I could look at your drawings?”
Avery Lee, their host, approached. Beside him was a man sporting a magnificent waxed mustache.
“Gentlemen, this is Count Sergei Aleksandrov, of the court of the Czar in Saint Petersburg. I’m privileged to have him as my house guest.”
Both men bowed, impressed by the man’s aristocratic bearing. The count was the very model of what an aristocrat should look like—very tall, lean, and strikingly handsome.
“Count, these are two of New York’s finest architects. Perhaps they might design a home for your visits to America?”
“That would be wonderful. Much more pleasurable than imposing on friends or living in a hotel,” the count said in perfect but heavily accented English. Bowing, he excused himself.
“Stanny, John, have you heard about these robberies in the city?” Lee growled as soon as the count was out of earshot. “It’s unbelievable. A whole mansion cleaned out! Where the hell are the police?”
Cross stared down at the polished marble floor.
“What do you make of it, Mr. Cross?” Lee asked.
A butler called out, “Madame, dinner is served,” saving Cross from having to answer. He and the other men in the room scurried about like mice, looking for the women they had been assigned to escort. As per strict custom, Mr. Lee led the way into the dining room with Lady Tarleton. The rest of the guests followed, with Mrs. Lee and Sir Henry entering last. On the dinner table sat twenty-four place cards, arranged to ensure that husbands and wives were well separated and that the guest of honor, Sir Henry, sat to Mrs. Lee’s right.
Cross thought the table impressive, even by New York standards. Down its center and raised a few inches above the white embroidered damask tablecloth was a continuous sheet of plate glass. Beneath it, dozens of tiny electric lights glowed, giving the cut-glass bowls of carnations spaced every three feet a magical aura. Each seat had a setting of Sèvres china, laid with ten pieces of engraved silver from Gorham that included a fork for oysters, a fork for fruit, and separate knives for bread, fish, and meat. Five different kinds of glasses for the sparkling water, wines, champagne, hock, and claret flanked the setting.
House of Thieves Page 14
