House of Thieves

by Charles Belfoure

  The door to the room opened again. A mousy man wearing spectacles stuck his head in. “I’ve got a beer delivery for Mr. Spike Milligan,” he said. His voice was loud and silenced the room.

  Annoyed, Milligan walked up to the man. “Goddamn it, jackass, I’m not a saloon keeper. Deliver it upstairs to the owner,” he snarled.

  The deliveryman, who looked like he’d been cursed and insulted often in his line of work, smiled and waved his hand in a friendly way. “No, sir. This a special order from Mr. Croker.”

  Milligan’s face lit up. He looked at his men, who nodded and smiled in approval. Richard Croker was the Grand Sachem, or boss, of Tammany Hall. He was an Irish roughneck who’d used his fists to rise from the gutter and earn appointments as coroner and fire commissioner, positions for which he was completely unqualified. When Honest John Kelly had retired as Tammany boss two years before, Croker had been heir apparent. He held political power in New York with an iron fist. The New York City election for mayor was next month, and Croker expected the gangs to do what they did best—get out the vote for his candidate.

  The deliveryman rolled a huge keg on a hand truck to the front of the room. Staring at it, Milligan seemed to glow with pride.

  “Boys,” he said, pointing to the keg. “This is a token of Mr. Croker’s appreciation for how we’ve helped him in past elections. And it’s a reminder of what we have to do next month. Mr. Croker wants Abraham Hewitt as the next mayor, not that fuckin’ socialist shit Henry George or that fancy-ass Theodore Roosevelt. We have to bring out the vote for Tammany.”

  Nolan laughed. Milligan would get a person to vote—and then vote six more times. He was a master at getting bums, cripples, and beggars to turn up at different polling places in the various precincts. An array of costumes was provided to disguise repeat voters. In the last mayoral race, one man had voted fourteen times.

  “Mr. Croker says the greatest political crime is ingratitude, and the Cowboys ain’t gonna be ungrateful. Let’s do our part and not let him down,” Milligan called.

  The gang cheered and whooped in response.

  The deliveryman handed Milligan the tap for the keg and shook his hand heartily in Tammany solidarity. But outside the open door, he paused. “Mr. Kent hopes you enjoy the lager. And by the way, he’s voting for Roosevelt,” he shouted. Drawing a Colt, the deliveryman fired at the keg and slammed the door behind him.

  There was an earsplitting explosion, and an orange-red fireball engulfed the room. The men sitting closest to the keg were blown to atoms. Pieces of bodies shot into the walls and ceiling with the velocity of bullets. Shards of glass and wood penetrated skulls and torsos. The entire room filled with flames and sulfur-smelling smoke. Men screamed in agony as they burned to death. In what seemed like seconds, the wood beams holding the floor above creaked and began to give way. The first floor, filled to capacity with saloon patrons, came crashing down into the cellar.

  Then the noise stopped, replaced by a silence punctuated only by low moans. The room was so thick with smoke and dust that a man could not see his hand in front of his face.

  Nolan felt a crushing pressure on his stomach. He opened his eyes but saw only a thick, black cloud pressing down upon him.

  He could only think of Julia.

  60

  “The vault for the silver and linens was well concealed. So was the safe that held the jewelry. Who knew their exact location?”

  “The servants,” William Cook said. “Myself, my wife…and the architect who designed it, of course.”

  “Yes, the architect,” Robert Cross said softly. He knew very well who that was.

  “Have you recovered anything?” William Cook asked. Soon after the theft, he and his wife had replaced everything they had lost with even more expensive items, including a rare Dresden china service. It was the insult of the robbery that offended him, not the loss of money.

  “Two salad forks have turned up in Philadelphia, but that’s all, I’m afraid.”

  “It was that Russian son of a bitch, that phony bastard who stole the diamond. That’s who did this! Three times, I hosted him in my house. Well, I learned my lesson. No one will ever rob me again. I’ve installed one of those newfangled telegraphic alarms. It’s connected straight to the police precinct.”

  After Cook left his office, Robert sat, looking at the architectural drawings Fidelity National had lent him. He saw how close the subbasement vault was to Broadway and the abandoned Beach tunnel. It was an extremely well planned robbery, nothing like the usual poor attempts by the none-too-bright criminals to which he was accustomed.

  His colleague, Pemberton, was hunched over his desk nearby, poring over a report.

  “You’ve worked here in the city for a while, haven’t you, Pemberton?”

  The white-haired man looked up and smiled.

  “About a million years. Since ’76.”

  “Remember George Leslie?”

  “Couldn’t forget him. Called that fellow the king of the bank robbers.”

  “Wasn’t he some sort of engineer or architect?”

  “Something like that. Came from a well-off family back in Ohio and studied engineering at the University of Cincinnati, I think. Good with building plans. Definitely the brains of the outfit.”

  Robert stared out the window, watching the traffic on Broadway. Then he picked up the telephone, rang up Greene, and got the name of the architect who’d built his city mansion. Flipping through the New York City directory, he jotted down addresses and telephone numbers.

  • • •

  “Mr. Ware. So nice of you to let me come by on such short notice,” Robert said.

  “Anything to help you find the bastards who robbed Mr. Greene,” James Ware said, showing Robert into the conference room where his architectural drawings were laid out. “I hope this is what you’re looking for,” he said. “It’s a complete set of the house on Sixty-Fifth.”

  “Thank you. I understand that you came up with a very innovative design for a tenement house…won a competition, in fact.”

  Ware beamed at the recognition. Robert could tell he was proud of his design.

  “Why yes. The whole idea was to produce a humane design, to let these poor wretches have more light and air. Perhaps even running water and indoor toilets.”

  “It’s an important step. Those unfortunates live in the most disgusting conditions. Like animals, really,” Robert said.

  “Indeed. The way those landlords convert old houses into rookeries and stuff a dozen families in them is downright criminal, but the law protects them. Then they build appalling tenements. No windows except at the front and back.” Ware’s voice was rising with emotion. “More than five hundred people per acre live down there.”

  “Exactly what I’m saying. Animals in the zoo are treated better. By the way, Mr. Ware, where were you on the night of the robbery?” Robert said casually.

  “I was in Boston that week,” Ware said. “When I heard about the robbery, I was outraged.”

  “Such a beautiful house you designed. Did you and Mr. Greene part on good terms? Did he pay your full fee, I mean?”

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Cross. And yes, he paid to the penny, even for the extra design work.”

  “Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Ware. I must be going now, but I should say how much I admire men like you. My brother John’s an architect in the city, you know.”

  Ware’s face lit up in recognition. “Oh, I’m a good friend of John’s. Please tell him I said hello.”

  “I will. And thank you again.”

  “John’s a talented man, but he always wants to learn more. That’s the sign of a great architect. He’s even been up here to look over my drawings,” Ware said, the pride evident in his voice.

  Robert stopped and turned. “Oh…recently?”

  “Perhaps a month ago. Wanted to
look at my tenement design because he said he was going to design one.”

  • • •

  Robert walked down Madison Avenue and turned east on Twenty-Eighth Street. In a small restaurant, he ordered coffee and a ham sandwich. Taking out a notebook, he turned to the page listing his current cases. Unlike most men he knew, he enjoyed his work. Every case was a challenge that he eagerly anticipated solving. He could never leave his work behind at the office; he spent hours every evening working on his cases.

  When he’d first come to work at the Pinkerton Agency, Robert had been amazed by the evil that dwelt in men and women alike. Before that, he had never known any truly bad people, people capable of committing heinous acts of violence and cruelty. Those kinds of humans soon became part of his everyday life, and instead of being revolted, he was fascinated by them. He admired their great ingenuity in committing crimes. Greed, it seemed, was the root of evil in 99 percent of his cases. The pursuit of money was never ending, like water cascading over Niagara Falls—wives poisoning husbands to inherit their fortune, children killing parents for the insurance money, clerks embezzling funds under their bosses’ noses.

  The cases Robert had been assigned since transferring to New York were without question the most challenging he’d ever faced. The fact that the robberies had been carried out by one gang was exciting as hell, and though the escape in the tunnel at Fidelity National still angered and depressed him, it had made him all the more zealous in hunting the criminals down.

  Robert ran his finger down the list to the latest case he had been assigned: a robbery in Newport. The local police had had no luck and, under pressure from the victim, had asked the Pinkertons to take over. He finished his coffee and paid his bill. Taking Madison Avenue south, he walked to Seventeenth Street and turned right. He came to 9 West Seventeenth Street, a narrow brick building that looked like a residence. Going up the stoop to the arched entry, he knocked and announced himself. A porter led him to a small waiting room furnished with overstuffed leather chairs, where a lanky man with thinning hair and spectacles greeted him.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Cross. Mr. Goelet said that we were to offer you our every assistance. Come into my office where we can talk privately.”

  “Thank you, sir. I have only a few questions. Do you know which architect designed Mr. Goelet’s house in Newport?”

  “Oh, that would be Mr. Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White. In fact, he did this little house here too, as the Goelet family’s business headquarters. It’s almost like a home, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Indeed,” Robert said, his eyes distant. “It’s quite charming.”

  • • •

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. White.”

  “Call me Stanny, Rob,” the redheaded architect bellowed. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you. Anything I can do to help catch those bastards, you let me know. And be sure to tell John I said hello. You must both come to my club for drinks some evening.”

  “I’d like that,” Robert said. “And I’ll be sure to tell my brother you said hello.”

  Solving a crime, he thought as he walked down Fifth Avenue, was like putting together one of those giant puzzles that were so popular these days. When the hundreds of pieces were first dumped out, it seemed impossible to fit them all together to form a detailed Adirondacks landscape or a Biblical scene. But slowly, piece by piece, the image became visible.

  The pieces in this puzzle had started to fall into place. But instead of the accustomed feeling of elation, Robert was very troubled.

  61

  When Nolan opened his eyes, he saw a gleaming sky of pure white. The brightness was so intense his eyes began to water.

  “It’s about time you woke up, Rip Van Winkle,” a man’s voice called.

  With great difficulty, Nolan lifted his head. He saw Dunn, a member of his gang, waving at him from a row of beds across a center aisle.

  At that moment, he realized he was in a hospital ward, not the afterlife. The dozens of beds were filled with male patients, some covered in bandages, some not. Above him was a ceiling of pure-white plaster, with suspended electric lights bouncing illumination off it.

  All Nolan could think of in that moment was how incredibly clean and bright the huge room was. Then he felt something on his face. When he lifted his arm from underneath the white sheets, a terrific pain shot up his right side. Wincing and touching his face, he discovered that there was a bandage covering his left temple and part of his forehead.

  “Didn’t think you’d ever wake up.”

  “Where the hell are we?”

  “New York Hospital on Fifteenth Street.”

  “Christ, what happened?”

  “Kent sent us a beer keg full of gunpowder and blew the shit out of the room in the Bucket of Blood. Don’t ya remember?”

  “I remember the keg being brought in…but after that, it’s a blank.”

  “I bet. You’ve been out almost two days. They shot ya up with a gallon of morphine.”

  “Where are the rest of the guys?”

  “We are the rest of the guys. Everyone else’s dead, the poor bastards.”

  Ignoring the intense pain, Nolan raised himself up on his elbows.

  “Everyone?” he asked incredulously.

  “Except Swanson and a couple others who weren’t there. Everyone else was wiped out: Milligan, Johnson, Pickle Nose, Brinkerhoff.”

  “Pickle Nose?”

  “The only way they knew it was him was that big honker of his. They had to scrape bodies off the walls. Some people who were on the first floor when it collapsed bought it too.”

  “Pickle Nose…dead.”

  “I was at the far end of the room getting a deck of cards when the explosion went off. Still got thrown against the wall and broke my fuckin’ leg.”

  Nolan began touching his torso, flinching in pain.

  “I heard the doc say a couple ribs are broken, and ya got a big gash on your skull. Still, you’re pretty fuckin’ lucky to be alive. Good thing you was standing toward the back of the room.”

  Nolan collapsed back against his pillow and started sobbing. He couldn’t help himself. Though they were dishonest, ignorant scum, the members of his gang were the only family he’d ever had. He’d grown up with most of the men and had come to have great affection for them. They’d relied on each other in times of trouble. Pickle Nose had been like an older brother: he’d looked out for Nolan and taught him the ways of the street. Nolan would not have survived without his help. Pug Johnson had helped him refine his pickpocketing skills. As a sign of respect, Milligan, who had treated Nolan like a son, had let him keep a large percentage of his earnings.

  Nolan could barely remember his real family. What he did recall was the shouting, beatings, and near starvation doled out by his drunken father. Sometimes, he’d thought that getting kicked out into the street was the best thing that could have happened to him. All those good men who’d sheltered him were gone, never to be seen again. And it was his fault. He had brought his fate on by killing Murdock before the man could murder John Cross.

  What had he done? He had acted impulsively for the love of a girl—the blood of more than a score of men stained his hands. The thought crushed Nolan. As he stared up at the ceiling, an anger deep within his chest ignited and began to burn. Gangs in New York frequently skirmished with one another, but Kent’s act of revenge—murdering so many men in cold blood—was reprehensible.

  “Kent’s a fuckin’ animal. He deserves to die,” Nolan said, his voice cracking.

  Dunn was distracted by movement near the door. “Here she is. Hello, my beauty,” he yelled.

  “Good to see you, Mr. Dunn.”

  The sight of Julia at the foot of his bed filled Nolan with joy. In an instant, his anger drained away. He tried to lean forward to greet her but fell back.

  “This
little girl’s been here three times today, waiting for you to wake up.”

  Julia knelt by the bed, took Nolan’s hand, and kissed it.

  “John, I was so worried you wouldn’t wake up. Oh God, it’s so good to see you.” She choked out the words between sobs.

  Nolan ran his fingers through her hair but said nothing. For the time, her mere presence eased his pain. “What day is it?” he asked softly.

  “It’s noon on Tuesday.”

  “Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asked, still stroking her hair.

  Julia raised her head and smiled. “I played hooky today. When I went looking for you at the Bucket of Blood—or what’s left of it—they told me what happened. But don’t worry. I won’t get in trouble—I already forged the excuse note, just like you taught me.”

  62

  “There’s a lot of building going on in the city. Business must be good, John.”

  “Best it’s ever been. There’s the theater, the hospital, a few office buildings,” Cross said. He wasn’t a man who boasted, but as always, Robert’s praise was uniquely affirming.

  “I’ve noticed quite a few tenements getting built too. Doing any of that sort of work?”

  “Sadly, no. But I’d like to try my hand at a tenement project. There’s a lot of room for improvement when it comes to their design.”

  The two brothers were finishing dinner at Sherry’s. In the last few months, Cross had never missed a dinner or a lunch with Robert. His reasons were twofold. He loved the company—and he wanted to know what the Pinkertons were up to. Were there any leads on his robberies? What about the informant who’d spoiled the bank job? It was odd that he hadn’t struck again. The thought of that betrayal was a constant torment to Cross.

  Adding to his dilemma, Robert’s dragnet of informants throughout the city had made robbing the wealthy almost impossible and lining up robberies for Kent yet more difficult. Seeing no way out of his predicament, Cross and Helen had continued to wrack their brains for possible targets.