House of Thieves

by Charles Belfoure

  The wagon lurched forward as the horses were led out of the freight car.

  George placed his hand on his father’s shoulder. “I’m very sorry I got you involved in all this. If I’d known, I would’ve let this bastard kill me,” George said, staring coldly at Kent, who just grinned at him.

  “I’m glad I didn’t, George. Without you, I never would have met your father and made all this money.”

  Cross scowled at Kent.

  “Sorry to interrupt this tender family reunion, gentlemen, but this train is about to leave the station,” Kent said.

  Brady shut the wagon doors and led the way out. The men followed him down the ramp to the concrete platform. The drivers removed the ramp, and one of them shut the freight car door. Two minutes later, the wheels of the freight cars began to squeak and squeal as the train crept slowly along the track.

  “Next stop will be Peekskill. Peekskill, New York,” Culver said, mimicking a railroad conductor’s announcement.

  “A quiet little town. The perfect place to unload gold,” Kent said, patting the side of the car as it moved out, “and take it to the foundry, where we can melt it down and recast it into something a little less conspicuous.”

  Ignoring Cross and his son, the men parted company and started to walk out to Hudson Street.

  “I’ll see you at McGlory’s at nine,” Kent said to Brady and Culver.

  “Stand where you are. You’re under arrest,” a clear voice shouted.

  Kent and his men halted, still deep within the shadows of the loading platform. Ten men stood across Hudson Street, pointing shotguns at them.

  “I told you to stand where you are. And put your hands up!”

  Culver, Coogan, and the driver pulled revolvers and began firing. Blasts from shotguns returned their fire. The other driver took off down the street.

  In seconds, the space was so filled with white gun smoke that neither side could see the other. Cross rushed to the edge of the opening. Between gaps in the smoke, he made out his brother reloading a shotgun across the street. To his right, Culver took a blast to the chest and fell down heavily. The driver came to his aid but was hit in the head. Cross could hear Coogan firing away; the reverberation of the pistol reports inside the loading dock was deafening.

  He ran back to George, who stood next to the moving train, frozen with fear.

  “Follow me,” Cross yelled. He grabbed his son by the sleeve and led him in the direction opposite that in which the train was moving. “We have to get on the other side,” he whispered.

  Gathering his strength, Cross ran along the side of the train and grabbed the brakeman’s ladder. In a tremendous effort, he swung himself up between the cars, onto the coupling, and jumped off onto the other side of the platform. George did the same. Cross then pointed to a stair enclosure in the rear wall. Running as fast as they could, he and George made it up to the attic space. Exposed iron roof trusses were lined up, one after another. Cross and his son ran to the south, hopping over the bottom chords of the trusses until they came to another stair at the end of the building. A door at the bottom led directly out the rear, onto Varick Street. At the corner of West Broadway and Grand Street, soaked with sweat and breathing heavily, they hailed a hansom.

  “You know your buildings,” George said.

  “You’re damn right I do.”

  • • •

  Dragging Culver’s limp form, Kent, Brady, and Coogan had hitched a ride on the rear platform of one of the cars as it pulled out of the terminal. At West and Morton Streets, they jumped off and ran. Two blocks away, they turned and saw that the train had stopped.

  Kent and Coogan, who held Culver by the arms, laid him down gently on the dirt of a side alley. Blood was pouring from his chest. Kent worked frantically to stem the bleeding with his jacket, but it was hopeless. Culver’s eyes rolled backward, showing their whites. He was gone.

  Kent let out a groan, dropping his head onto Culver’s chest. “The sons of bitches killed him,” he said, beside himself with anger.

  “Christ, that was a close call,” Brady growled.

  “And they’re taking my gold, goddamn it,” Kent yelled.

  Coogan bent and met Kent’s eyes. His face was grim.

  “Just before the shooting began, Burgess, one of the drivers, said a Pinkerton named Robert Cross was yelling at us. Man had arrested him once in Buffalo.”

  Kent froze. “Cross?”

  66

  “So, Cross’s brother is a Pinkerton.” Oddly, Kent seemed more amused than angry.

  “A Pinkerton who killed Culver and took our gold!” Brady said.

  “It was Cross who tipped them off this morning. It had to be,” Kent said. “I thought he was the traitor after the bank job, but I wasn’t sure. Now…”

  “I told you Cross was the snitch from the very beginning, but you never believed me,” Brady said. He sounded hurt.

  Kent walked to the window of his apartment at the Dakota and looked out at the park. He never tired of the view, that vast expanse of green, with people and carriages coming and going. It was like living in the country without having to leave the city. When he was upset, it always had a calming effect on him.

  Grimly, he tied his red silk dressing gown more tightly around his waist and sat down on the sofa. Millicent, his wife, appeared at the sliding doors of the library.

  “Dinner at eight. Chicken à la Maryland, your favorite,” she said.

  Kent smiled and raised his hand in a gesture of approval.

  “Will Mr. Brady be staying for dinner?”

  “I’m afraid not, dear. He has some urgent business to attend to.”

  Millicent nodded, waved good-bye to Brady, and left quietly.

  “Cross has played us for fools. He knew I wouldn’t let him go, so he bided his time and sold us out to his brother,” Kent said bitterly. “That’s how he knew about the gold shipment.”

  “Cross has to die,” Brady said. He stood before Kent, posture stiff with determination.

  “Along with his entire family,” Kent said, looking up at Brady to make sure he understood his orders. “That’s what I promised him would happen if he betrayed us—and I never break a promise.”

  “It’ll be my pleasure.”

  “It’s a shame, though. We had a very lucrative run with Mr. Cross. From a business standpoint, I’ll be sorry to see him go. But you know, Mr. Brady, even if he didn’t tip them off, with a Pinkerton for a brother, he’s still too big a risk to keep on.”

  “What about his brother?”

  “I’m afraid he’s become a liability as well.”

  • • •

  “I wanted to thank you for your information about the gold robbery. Kidder, Peabody & Co. was most generous with their reward. It’s far more than Fidelity National Bank paid for your information. And it’s in gold, waiting for you in the usual location.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Gold is the sovereign of sovereigns.” The voice emerged from the darkness some fifty feet away.

  “If you could please provide me with more details about the robbery, I’d be very grateful. Who was involved, for instance.”

  “I’d be glad to. Come forward, and we’ll talk about it.”

  Robert Cross stood in the Stygian darkness of a storage pier that stretched out over the East River. He couldn’t see a thing, but he knew the source of the voice was directly in front of him. Standing very still, he tried to discern whether there was anyone else on the pier. He could hear only the sound of the river, beating steadily against the pier’s wooden pilings below.

  Slowly, Robert walked forward, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark. His feet kept shuffling through puddles, bumping into piles of trash and pieces of timber. He kept his hand on the trigger of his revolver—just in case his informant turned uncooperative. About twenty feet away, he coul
d make out the outline of a figure.

  The voice spoke again. “I can give you their names and tell you where to find them—for more gold, of course.”

  Robert paused, straining his eyes to get a better view of the man. The fellow remained indistinguishable, a mere black outline against the greater blackness of the pier. Robert inched forward, splashing inadvertently into a puddle. He felt a sudden jolt; it rocked his entire body as if he’d been hit in the chest with a two-by-four. But he didn’t fall down. He stood, stunned, as a strange sensation rushed through him.

  Finally, he fell face-first into the puddle. His lifeless eyes stayed open, as wide as if he’d seen a terrifying sight.

  From out of the shadows, Ned Brady appeared. He walked to an electric panel on the wall from which a long length of wire extended into the puddle and pulled the short metal lever up. Bending over Robert’s body, he reached down to his neck and felt for a pulse. Nothing.

  “Amazing thing, electricity,” Brady said. His words echoed in the silence of the pier.

  He picked up the body by the armpits and dragged it to the end of the warehouse, dropping it with a dull thud. Brady pulled up a trapdoor in the wood floor. Below the opening, the current of the East River flowed past in a muffled hush. Occasionally, a dead rat or piece of garbage passed by.

  Brady was truly sorry to see the Pinkerton go. He had been a very lucrative source of extra income. Kent had constantly brushed off Brady’s requests for a bigger cut on the jobs, refusing to acknowledge the value of his skills or his long service to the organization. But far more than that indignity, Brady loathed being bossed around by an upper-class swell, especially in front of the other men. Kent was rich and educated, so of course he always knew better. Brady hated Kent’s guts, but he’d kept his volcanic temper in check and bided his time for an opportunity for revenge. And it had paid off handsomely—at least for a while.

  With some difficulty, Brady lifted the body and dropped it into the opening. There was the barest sound of a splash. The Pinkerton’s body was silently caught up by the rush of water, and in a second, it was gone.

  67

  “You know he means to kill us all.”

  “Yes, George, I’m aware of that,” Cross said, his voice devoid of emotion as he ran his hand through his brother’s matted hair.

  Robert was laid out on a marble morgue slab in the basement of police headquarters at 300 Mulberry Street. The expressionless coroner stood behind Cross and his son. One could tell that he’d silently watched the grieving relatives of the dead hundreds, if not thousands, of times before.

  “I remember when I told him that I wanted to be an architect, but our father wouldn’t hear of it. Father said I should go into business and become rich, so I could boss the architects around. Robert told me that was nonsense, that I should follow my heart and go to Paris to study like I wanted.”

  “He was such a good man. I wish he’d come to New York earlier.” George shook his head, placing his hand on his father’s shoulder. “Uncle Robert loved being part of the family.”

  The coroner edged closer to Cross and said in a quiet voice, “Sir, may I ask you to identify the body?”

  “This is Robert Cross, my brother,” Cross said heavily.

  Nodding, the doctor stretched the white sheet over Robert’s head. As Cross and George turned away, an attendant handed them a sack containing Robert’s personal effects and his Smith and Wesson .38-caliber pocket revolver.

  “What should we do, Father? Tell the Pinkertons?” George asked, nodding toward the glass doors of the room. On the other side stood half a dozen of Robert’s colleagues, all of whom had angry, vengeful looks on their faces. No one murdered a Pinkerton and got away with it.

  Cross turned to look at them. “No. This is a family matter now. I must take care of this myself, George.”

  George blocked his path, staring incredulously at his father.

  “You can’t take on Kent. He may seem like a gentleman, but he’s an animal.”

  “I know that all too well,” Cross said, images of the three murders he’d witnessed flashing vividly through his mind. “That’s why he must be dealt with very quickly.”

  “But you can’t do it yourself,” George said. “You’re no match for him and his men.”

  “I have no choice. I can’t stand by and let him murder the rest of my family.”

  “Then let me help. Please, Father. I caused Uncle Robert’s death—I caused all this trouble. This is my fault. You must let me help. You can’t do this alone.”

  • • •

  With her face just inches from his, Helen said in a barely audible voice, “It wasn’t an accident, was it, John?”

  Cross walked to the parlor window. Outside, a fruit wagon trudged slowly up Madison Avenue. The driver’s head was bent over, as if he’d fallen asleep at his post. His brown nag also looked as if it were sleepwalking.

  Without turning to face Helen, he said, “No. Robert was murdered.”

  Helen took a step back, grabbing at the heavy, olive-green velvet curtains that shrouded the tall windows. She said nothing for almost a minute. Then she placed her hand on her husband’s.

  Cross put his arm around her waist and drew her close. He was proud of Helen for standing up so well to the news. He’d told her immediately after he returned from the morgue. From their experiences in the past few months, he knew she wouldn’t collapse to the floor in a faint or fly into hysterics. Rather, and as he expected, a steely calm came over her.

  Traveling home in the carriage, Cross had realized that he’d never experienced the tragic, unexpected loss of a loved one. His parents and relatives had died of natural causes after a long life, which wasn’t the same thing. No one he knew well had died in the Civil War, perished of a disease, or died in an accident. He wondered whether the insulated, elite world of New York society had enveloped him and his family, their cocoon of privilege protecting them from the cruelties of the world, at the hands of which average people always seemed to suffer. The grinding poverty, disease, and filth that plagued the residents of the Lower East Side and the Bowery, just two miles away, was something one occasionally read about in the newspapers. An unemployed laborer kills himself and his family because he doesn’t want them to starve to death in their squalid tenement apartment. A homesick Irish housemaid is worked to death; she can’t bear life anymore and drowns herself in the lake at Central Park. Almost every week, a person was run down in the street by a runaway horse or wagon. But the victims were never of the society set. People in his world seemed immune to the random cruelties of life—until now.

  He’d looked at George then, sitting next to him in the carriage. Though losing Robert ripped his insides out, secretly he was glad that it hadn’t been George—or any of his children. That loss would have been too much to bear. Just the thought made him feel ill.

  And it made what he had to do next all the more urgent. He couldn’t lose any more of his family.

  “You know what you have to do,” Helen said, as if reading his mind. There was not a trace of emotion in her voice.

  Cross stared at her for a few seconds, amazed at the fury in her beautiful dark eyes. It was almost as if flames were shooting out them.

  “I have to think this out—and quickly.”

  “No. We have to think this out,” she said.

  He smiled at her. She buried her head in his chest and hugged him tightly.

  “We can’t fail at this, John.”

  • • •

  Cross knocked lightly on Charlie’s door. Entering, he saw that his son’s eyes were red and swollen. The boy had been crying since he’d heard the news from his mother. Across the hall, he could hear Julia sobbing in her room. Cross sat on the bed and put his arm around Charlie, who buried his head in his father’s chest.

  After a few minutes, Cross spoke. “Charlie, I need you and E
ddie to do a little detective work for me this afternoon.”

  Sniffling bravely, Charlie looked up into his father’s eyes and nodded.

  “I want you to follow some people and find out where they live.”

  68

  Cross waited an hour after the lights went out in the front apartment. Only then did he make his way into 181 Mott Street. It was almost 2:00 a.m. and raining. The street was deserted, save a few rats scurrying about in the gutter.

  As he approached the building, he couldn’t help noticing how nice its facade was. An inescapable professional habit, he thought wryly. There was elegant Queen Anne detailing on the brickwork, quite unlike the usual tenement design, and three glass-and-wood doors. The center one offered entry to the tenement. Cross looked across the street at George, who stood in the doorway of the Italian grocery at 178 Mott Street. George looked from side to side down the street and nodded. The coast was clear.

  Once inside, Cross hefted the burlap sack he carried and walked down the center hallway to the main stair in the middle of the building. One of the new dumbbell-style tenements, the building was pinched in the center to channel light and air into the interior apartments. Cross climbed the marble steps quietly, listening for the sound of anyone descending. On the third floor, he walked to the two bathrooms located opposite the stair. Indoor plumbing and running water were another innovation in the new design. Previously, one either went to a backyard outhouse or used a chamber pot that had to be emptied into the gutter.

  Cross pushed open both lavatory doors. Neither was in use. The layout was the same on every floor, he knew: two bathrooms and two one-room apartments in the front and rear. He walked silently down the hall to the front right apartment. At the entry, he put his ear to the door and listened for almost a minute, then walked back down the hall and stopped by the gaslight mounted on the wall. Standing on tiptoes, he shut off the gas jet. Pulling a large coil of narrow-diameter rubber hose from the sack, Cross fastened one end to the gas nozzle, then began to unravel the coil and carry it back to the apartment door. Kneeling, he bent the end of the stiff hose into an arc and slid about six feet of it slowly into the gap at the bottom of the door.