by Jack Finney
Pickering's voice lowered. "Tweed is my reason; are you surprised? He is dead in prison; the Tweed Ring is smashed and already half forgotten. Yet only a few years ago no day passed—remember?—that the Times did not speak of 'the slimy trail of the Tweed Ring.' Well, who stole more than thirty millions from the city? Was it only Tweed? Or Sweeny, Connolly, and A. Oakey Hall? No. Tweed had hundreds of willing helpers still undiscovered, each of whom took his share of the swag, large or small. So why have I spent two years at unsuitable employment, a filing clerk at City Hall?" Pickering's voice lowered even more, dramatically. "Because that's where the slimy trails are."
I was alert, intent, breathing shallowly, not missing a word. Yet something nagged at the back of my mind, and when I recognized it I had to smile. In the way Pickering used his voice, in the words and phrases he chose, there was just a little more than drama; it edged toward melodrama. I think all of us generally act as we think we're supposed to. I had not one but two professors at college who would lean back in their chairs, listening and fitting their hands together fingertip to fingertip, professorially. I had a friend, a compulsive gambler, who often stood casually flipping and catching a coin, his face expressionless. And now Pickering and Carmody were acting their roles in a time when the melodramatic conventions of the stage were largely accepted as representing reality. Deadly serious, meaning every word, each of them, I think, was also appreciating his own performance.
"The slimy trails," Pickering was saying, "wind through aisle after aisle of filing cases. I realized that!" he said proudly. "I understood that Tweed Ring corruption was so widespread and with so many ramifications that the evidence could never all be destroyed. It must exist still, I knew, buried among literally tons of old records, if only I were cute enough to recognize it when I came across it, and to fit its pieces together like a Christmas puzzle. So I became City Hall's most industrious clerk!"
"Commendable. If you're looking for work, see my head bookkeeper." I heard a sound I'd come to recognize: the metallic snap of the gold protective cover of a watch lifted to reveal the face, then the very slightly different sound of its being snapped shut.
Pickering said, "Yes, you're a busy man of affairs. But you have nothing more important, Mr. Carmody, nothing, than to listen to what I have to say. At whatever length I wish to say it!" There was a pause, then Pickering continued quietly, "I've spent endless hours during month after month in the file rooms, hunting those trails through the dust of the years. Discovering and following them as they emerged, losing them, rediscovering them days or weeks later among tens of thousands of false invoices, canceled bank drafts, padded receipts, incriminating messages, memoranda, and letters. The very best of those trails, sir, I have preserved; removed complete from City Hall! A paper or two at a time, you understand, slipped into my pocket and taken to my modest office during my half-hour lunchtime. Or simply mailed to it, to be added to my files during many and many a long evening I've spent there at my desk studying and assembling those files.
"Yet most of what I've learned proved useless! The evidence full and complete! Irrefutable proof of the most blatant corruption. And then I'd find the rascal had died a month or so before. Others I didn't find at all; probably moved to the territories or Canada. Others I found still alive, still here in New York. But no longer rich—broke! While in still other instances the evidence I had assembled, although clear enough, remains insufficient. And search though I did, I could never supply final proof. So all those slimy trails, Mr. Carmody, come down to a very few. And to one above all: the obscure contractor who was paid to supply and install nothing less than Carrara marble to adorn the corridors, rooms, and anterooms of our Court House. Tons of magnificent Carrara imported from Italy—at least that is what the invoices and properly stamped customs receipts I have found say. Along with paid labor bills for dozens of workmen, listing their very names and addresses, who are said to have spent weeks installing and finishing it. Would you like to see one? Here is an invoice."
I heard the crackle of paper, there was a silence of several seconds, then Carmody said, "So I see."
"No, keep it, sir! As a souvenir. I have many many more."
"I have no doubt of that, which is why I offer the return of this."
"I don't want it. Are you thinking I might return it to my files? While you follow, and discover where they are kept? I assure you, sir, I will not return to my office except for a final visit. That will be for the purpose of handing over his entire file to the contractor of whom I speak.''
There was a pause of a moment or so; then Pickering's voice dropped as he said, "For modest though they were by Tweed Ring standards, his profits made that contractor rich. Because he took them into New York real estate, and now only a few years later he has millions, millions. And a wife who, I am told, enjoys each dollar of those millions and the assistance they render her pretensions to society. Mr. Carmody, walk over to the Court House with me, if you care to." Pickering, I'm sure, had nodded toward the Court House just behind City Hall. "And we'll search it together, room by room. Just as I have searched it: sometimes sitting in court rooms as an apparent spectator at trials, my eyes roving the room for marble; or standing in bureau offices waiting my turn to ask a question, my gaze searching every surface of the room. I've examined it floor by floor, corridor by corridor; even the very janitors' closets and the accommodation rooms. And if you can point out to me one single square inch of that Court House which you covered with Carrara or any other marble, contractor Carmody, then I give you my word I'll trouble you no more."
The reply was an expressionless monotone. "What do you want?"
"One million dollars," Pickering said softly, his lips enjoying the feel of the words. "No more, no less; it is all I need to take the road you followed to far greater wealth."
"Not unreasonable, I suppose. When?"
"Now. Within twenty-four hours.... Don't shake your head, sir!" Pickering cried out angrily. "You have it, and more!"
"Not in cash, you idiot." Carmody's voice was quietly furious. "I have it, yes. And I'll pay it. If you can produce and hand over the evidence you claim. But my money is in property—all of it. I have no idle cash!"
"Of course you haven't. That is as I should expect. But the solution is simple: Sell some of that property."
"It is not simple." He said it through his teeth. "To extract a million in cash from my holdings cannot be done just now. Whether you understand that or not. In every way this is the wrong time. My money is tied up. In a large, unfinished French flat, a bargain but upon which work is necessarily stopped for the winter; even the plastering must await warmer weather. And in nearly a dozen sites for commercial buildings, the old houses upon them to be pulled down in the spring. In mortgages good as gold, and some better, but not yet due. In empty lots up north of the Central Park, waiting for the city to reach them. In a word, sir, I am overextended! Spread dangerously thin! If I were to attempt to raise a million now, I couldn't get ten cents on the dollar. And now you know more of my affairs than any other living man." There was a silence of several seconds, and when Carmody spoke again his voice was different, quiet and contained, almost friendly, as though he'd welcomed the other man into his confidence and now they were very nearly partners. "I will tell you a secret, known to no other. My greatest fear has been that somehow I would die during the next few months; for if that melancholy event should occur, I believe my wife would quickly be penniless. They'd be onto my fortune like wolves, ripping it asunder, and off to the four corners with the fragments. She knows nothing of finance, nor can a woman legally act in such circumstances with the speed, ability, and fine judgment required. I shall profit by the risk, and soon. But at this moment my affairs are balanced on the point of a pin: I don't dare take a journey these days! I should be afraid to become ill for as long as a week! Do you understand me, sir? The structure would collapse if demands were forced on it. And then all would be lost, everything. Wait," he said in an actually friendly ton
e. "Contain your patience, as you have done thus far, for a little longer. And in the spring—Don't you shake your head at me, sir!—I'll pay it! I've said I would! I'll pay more; a million and a quarter in the spring! But you must give me—"
Pickering chuckled, a comfortable sound. "Nothing; I'll give you nothing. Oh, you are a wonder! You must have talked yourself into that fortune! But I know a bluff when I hear one, and I'll give you till Monday, no more. I can't wait for months, and you know it! Did you think I would not know that? Or did you suppose the friendship between Inspector Byrnes and the wealthy men of this city was a secret from the rest of us? I'd end up in Sing Sing! On what charge I don't know, but there I will surely be if I allow you the time to arrange it."
Carmody's voice was strained with rage. "You may end up there yet. I am acquainted with Inspector Byrnes!" There was a pause, while he almost literally swallowed his rage. "From time to time I've been able to render him some small service, and I warn you—"
"No doubt you have. Every wealthy man in the city knows him; he is said to be rich through the market tips of Jay Gould alone. But I know him, too; do you know I was once turned back at the Wall Street deadline?"
"Were you indeed!" Carmody burst into harsh angry laughter.
"Yes, I was," Pickering said quietly. "Several years ago when I was without employment, and perhaps a little shabby in consequence, I was walking down Broadway toward Wall Street where I hoped to find work as a clerk. But at the Fulton Street deadline a copper stopped me."
"As he should have if you looked like a pickpocket or beggar; everyone knows Byrnes won't have them in the Wall Street area. And quite properly."
"I was no pickpocket or beggar! And said so! It was a young copper and he listened. Then someone spoke from a carriage at the curb. We looked over, and it was Byrnes's head out the window. 'If he argues, jug him,' he called, and the young copper's hand went for his billy, and I swung round on my heel and turned back. Don't smile! That moment will cost you a million! I turned back, Mr. Carmody, and my face was white; I could feel it. I could hardly see through the mist before my eyes. But it was then I knew, knew, that someday I'd come walking back to the deadline and the coppers would touch their helmets to me! Because I belonged on the other side with the Fisks and the Goulds and the Sages and Astors. It was on that day, though I didn't know it then, that I began the search for you."
There was a sudden change in the location of Pickering's voice; he'd stood up, I realized, probably turning to face Carmody. "I am very far from ignorant of financial matters, whatever you may think. You will need, certainly, several business days to raise the required sum. This is Thursday, and I am giving you through Monday, two and a half business days. Three, counting Saturday morning. Come back Monday night. Here. To this very bench. At midnight, Mr. Carmody, when the park and the streets of this area are deserted; I intend to be certain no one follows us. Be here with the money in a satchel or I'll expose you. I won't wait even an hour. Within that time I will be in the offices of the Times"—there was a moment's pause and I imagined he was nodding toward the building across the street—"with my documents."
There was a silence of six, eight, ten, twelve seconds; then I knew they were gone, and I walked out, around the base of the statue, and onto the path before the bench. They were walking swiftly out of the park along the angled paths, one to the east, the other north toward the Court House, and I stood watching them go, certain that neither would look back.
15
It wasn't certain, I supposed, that Pickering's private office was in the building I'd seen him come out of earlier. But it seemed likely, and I walked across Park Row and stood on the corner of Park Row and Beekman Street looking up at it. It had no distinction; just a plain, tired-looking, flat-roofed old building with storefronts on the street floor, and above them four identical stories of narrow, closely spaced windows. The storefront windows were dirty, and a lot of them had torn and faded summer awnings folded back against the wall; the bottom halves of some were protected by rusting metal grillwork. In lower Manhattan many a drab building just like it has survived into the second half of the twentieth century.
It was depressing to look at. In the windows of the New York Belting and Packing Company lay stacks of gray cardboard boxes and piled-up coils of leather belting; next to it was a dingy-looking stationer's: Willy Wallach. Jumbled together in another window stood big glass jugs in protective wooden cases; they were labeled POLAND WATER, whatever that was; OWEN HUTCHINSON, AGENT, it said on the window. And there was S. Gruhn, tailor, and Rodriguez & Pons, cigar dealers, and I don't know what all.
Under many of the upper-floor windows hung the usual long narrow signs, tilted downward so they could be read from the street. They were of varying lengths; as long, I supposed, as the office space rented by the business firms whose names were painted on them. TURF, FIELD AND FARM, said one under a row of fourth-floor windows; another said THE SCOTTISH AMERICAN, and another THE RETAILER. I saw SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN under a row of third-floor windows, and down at the far end of the same floor hung a sign I glanced at as casually as at the others, and which—I mean this literally—I later saw in nightmares, and still do. THE NEW-YORK OBSERVER, this one said.
I walked up a few wooden steps that needed painting, into the recessed entrance, and pushed through a pair of heavy wood-and-glass doors into a vestibule lighted only by the daylight from the street behind me. The building was worn out; inside there was no hiding it, and no one had tried. The wooden floor stretching on into a gloomy interior was worn, the nailheads shiny, and it was filthy: covered with tobacco spit, cigar butts, and permanent ground-in dirt. So was the wooden staircase at my left, the treads so worn they were scooped out at the centers. On the dark-green plaster wall, patched in soiled-white places, was a directory of tenants. The index finger of a large, carefully painted hand—each finger distinct, the sleeve cuff shadowed to seem rounded—pointed ahead into the gloom; behind the cuff was lettered a list of tenants' names and office numbers. An identical hand was painted on the wall of the staircase, pointing up, another longer listing of names behind it. On both lists some of the names had been professionally lettered, but they were faded now, sometimes chipped; these were the older tenants, I imagined. Newer names were often crudely lettered, paint dribbles actually running down from the letters of one of them. A good many names were scratched or painted out, others written in above them. Some of these were only scribbled; one was simply penciled longhand. And none of them read "Jake Pickering."
A man and then a messenger boy had come in after me and gone up the stairs, and I heard sounds back in the first-floor gloom. Now I heard steps coming down the stairs, then a middle-aged or early-elderly white-bearded man appeared, wearing an overcoat and a round cloth cap with earmuff flaps. He glanced at me, and I said, "Is there a building superintendent somewhere?"
He said, "Ha!"—a short bark of disgusted laughter. "A building superintendent! In the Potter Building! No, sir, there is no one here with either the title or office; there is only a janitor." I asked where to find him, and he said, "A question often asked, but seldom answered with any certainty. He has a den, a lair, under the Nassau Street entrance, and is sometimes caught there. There's Ellen Bull"—he pointed ahead into the building, and I saw a vague bulky figure silhouetted down the hallway. "She'll direct you." I thanked him, and he said, "If you find him, which is doubtful, tell him, pray, that Dr. Prime of the Observer reminds him once again that his offices are much too warm for comfort." He smiled pleasantly, gave me a short nod, and pushed through the doors to the street.
I walked into the building and found Ellen Bull, a tall very large Negro woman who must have weighed over two hundred pounds; she wore a bandanna tied over her hair and carried an empty pail and a mop. The janitor's cubbyhole, she said, was directly under the Nassau Street stairs to the basement. I thanked her, and she smiled, her teeth very white in the gloom; she was about forty-five, and as I walked on, it occurred to me that she had
probably been a slave. I passed heavy paneled-wood doors, a few of them numbered, most of them not. Some were ajar, most were closed. Some were labeled with carefully painted names: AUGUST W. ALMQUIST, PATENT AGENT; J.W. DENISON; W.H. OSBORN, LAWYER. Others bore only a square of paper or cardboard, handwritten with a name and tacked to the door panel. In the middle of the building the hall was lighted dimly by gas jets behind globes, the gas turned low; nearer the entrances whatever light there was came from the street.
In the Nassau Street vestibule, under the stairs leading up into the building, a second narrower flight led to the basement, and I walked over and looked down it; it was completely dark. From somewhere overhead I heard the steady rasp of a handsaw and the nerve-jarring squeal, endlessly repeated, of deeply driven nails pried loose. "Anyone there?" I called down into the basement. Only silence; I'd have been surprised at an answer. I walked halfway down the stairs, but no farther; I wasn't going to blunder around down there in the blackness and break a leg. Overhead the squeal of the nails and the sound of the saw continued, and I cupped both hands at my mouth, and called again; more silence. Then I yelled "Anyone down there?" and got a distant squeak of a reply from somewhere below and far back. I walked up to the vestibule again, stood waiting, and presently heard feet shuffling along a floor for a dozen steps before they sounded on the wood of the stairs. I looked down and saw a skinny old man emerging from the basement darkness, his hand on the railing as he slowly climbed up. At first I saw only a bald head, freckled on top; then blue eyes lifted to squint up at me, needing glasses, I supposed; then wide green suspenders curving over the shoulders of a white shirt appeared; and finally the rest of him moved into view out of the darkness, knees slowly lifting as he climbed, pants much too big at the waist, hardly touching the old man, in fact.
I gave him Dr. Prime's message as he climbed the last few stairs up into the light, and he began nodding sadly. "I know. I know. Everyone's complaining. It is too warm!" He stepped up into the vestibule, sighing, and nodded toward the plaster wall beside me. "Feel!" I put my hand on the wall and nodded; it was pretty warm. "Flue goes up through there, and we're burning wood these days." He rolled his eyes up toward the squealing and sawing. "Cutting an elevator shaft through, and the owner's burning the old flooring," he said contemptuously. "Saving coal. Makes a hot fire, and a lot more work for me."
