City of Dreams (33 page)

“Thank you for coming.” Magee was in his shirtsleeves. He wore blue and red suspenders color-coordinated with his blue bow tie. “As the compliance officer of Avid Investment Strategies, I’m expected to operate out of our Wall Street office, but my father rented this space just after World War II. And there’s no better view in New York.”

“Did you hear about the shooting at the Harvard Club?” said Peter.

Owen T. Magee shook his head. “Terrible.”

“That’s it?” said Peter. “Your accountant is killed and that’s your reaction?”

“He was the soon-to-be former accountant. We had philosophical differences.”

“You mean he knew where the bodies were buried,” said Peter, “and he was threatening to dig them up?”

“That’s rank speculation. There had been improprieties, failings, oversights,” said Owen T. Magee.

“We were there,” said Evangeline bluntly.

“There? Where?”

“In the Harvard club,” she said. “We saw him shot.”

Owen T. Magee gave her a long look, as if, with all the other news, this was something he could not process. “Why were you there?”

“We were thirsty,” said Peter. “We had a drink. How much danger are we in?”

“As we told you, there are numerous parties pursing these bonds.”

“How much did Carl Evers know about them?”

“Not enough to keep him alive, it seems.” Owen T. Magee picked up the television control and clicked on the flat panel against the back wall.

While a reporter did a remote in front of the Harvard Club, the crawl across the bottom offered snippets and details:
AN APPARENT BIG-BUSINESS ASSASSINATION . . . THE SHOOTER, DISGUISED AS WAITSTAFF, ESCAPED THROUGH A SERVICE ENTRANCE
. . .

They watched for a moment, then Magee said, “Killing him in the Harvard Club. That’s like putting a hit on someone in Saint Patrick’s.”

“Who killed him?” asked Peter.

“My answer would be purely speculative,” said Owen T. Magee.

Evangeline said, “Does Austin Arsenault have Russian clients? A guy named Boris followed us on the subway. The same guy was chasing Delancey later that day.”

“I would not be at liberty—”

Peter flew across the desk and grabbed Magee by the bow tie. “Listen to me—”

“You’ll get nowhere by roughing me up. There are three junior associates in the outer office who would insist that you let go of me if I call for them.”

Now it was Evangeline’s turn to make a gesture—calm down.

So Peter let him go.

Magee straightened himself and tugged at his bow tie. “We should have gone to you at the start, because of your proven ability to operate in dangerous environments.”

“I hate dangerous environments,” said Peter. “Give me a library any day.”

“Well, you can back out if you want,” said Magee.

Peter looked at Evangeline. “Do you want me to back out?”

“You’ve been asked to save America,” she said. “I don’t think you can back out.”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” Magee sat again and slid the papers across the table. “You’ll find everything in order here. But remember that you will be bound to silence with the media and other legal sources.”

“I don’t like gag orders,” said Peter.

Magee reached into his desk drawer and pulled out another envelope. “Sign and you’ll get this. Delancey’s research. With this and your skills, you might be able to find those bonds before the whole world goes hunting for them.”

Peter watched the envelope swinging between Magee’s fingers. Even if the bonds turned out to be worthless, he was now after a bigger truth, about money and business and New York power players. So he signed.

Then Magee said, “The answer is yes.”

“Yes to what?”

“There are some disgruntled investors who happen to be Russian.”

“Disgruntled?” said Peter.

“As Arsenault would tell you,” said Magee, “investing is not an exact science.”

Evangeline said, “That means he lost a lot of Russian money.”

“Or Russian
American
?” said Peter.

“Russian . . . American . . . what does it matter when we’re talking about money?” Magee got up and gestured for them both to come over to the curved window, to admire the Empire State Building and the other giants around Madison Square and the river of cars and people flowing down the streets. “Just look at it all. And think about it.”

“What I’m thinking,” said Peter, “is how do I find a small box of ancient bonds in all of that? It makes a needle in a haystack look like a fish in a barrel.”

“You’d better find it,” said Evangeline, “because with metaphors like that, you’ll never be a writer.”

Owen T. Magee said, “I don’t think either of you is approaching this with the proper seriousness.”

“The more serious it gets,” said Evangeline, “the more I joke.”

“Well, this is no joke,” said Magee. “Boston is history. Washington is power. L.A. is entertainment. But New York is the center of the universe. And that intersection below us, where the two greatest streets in the world cross, is the center of the center.”

“Mr. Magee, I know and love a lot of New Yorkers,” said Peter, “but you are the most provincial people in the world.”

Evangeline rolled her eyes. She’d heard this one before.

Magee hadn’t. “How can you say that people who live in the most cosmopolitan place on earth are the most provincial?”

“Because New Yorkers really believe that they live in the center of the universe. But the center isn’t real. It’s an idea. In America, it’s a lot of ideas.”

Magee didn’t miss a beat. “And what brings ideas to life, Mr. Fallon?
Money
. And Manhattan is money, plain and simple. It’s money growing, money spent, money divided to double and divide again, money tucked and trimmed and shaved so that a penny made on a bid-ask trade is multiplied mathematically, then exponentially, and then again until it’s grown into a fortune. It’s money from all across the country, from all across the world, money that comes here to work for all those American ideas. Money matters, Mr. Fallon. It always has and always will.”

“I know an old Boston bond trader who says that when you send your money to New York, nobody cares. It’s just more gas to run the greed machine.”

“He’s wrong. Money’s the gas, but it’s also the grease, the oil, the fine lubricant without which nothing else works. Every big idea, every invention, every advance in science, art, and the way we live . . . it’s all needed money to turn it from an idea to a reality. When Edison invented the electric light, the illumination of great cities was a dream. It wasn’t until he met J. P. Morgan and Morgan’s money that they formed General Electric and lit lower Manhattan. Now the whole world glows at night. Why?”

“Because of Edison.”

“Because of money. That’s why New York is the center of the universe. Because we use money to fashion reality out of ideas.”

Evangeline actually thought his voice cracked as he spoke.

“Money matters.” And Magee dropped down into his chair, as if all that talk about his favorite subject had exhausted him. He took two or three deep breaths.

Evangeline said, “If I smoked, I’d offer you a cigarette.”

Magee straightened up, smoothed his hair, and said, “Of course, we sometimes make mistakes, even in New York. And some clients don’t understand. If all they wanted was a sure thing, they should have put their money in a bank.”

After a moment, Peter asked if they could see the envelope of research.

Magee handed it over.

Peter pulled out a pile of papers. First was a page copied from a ledger from the New-York Historical Society. It showed state bond sales from 1780 to 1783, including the purchase of two hundred bonds, numbers 2510 through 2709, by a Loretta Rogers.

Peter looked at Evangeline. “That’s L. R.”

“That’s what we’ve always believed,” said Magee. “The one who wrote the letter that was stolen. Read the next page.”

Peter turned to a bill of sale recorded in a ledger at the Morgan Library.

Purchased of Timothy Riley of 436 W. Forty-eighth St., one New Emission Bond, number 2510. Face value $100. No redemption value. For the sum of ten dollars. J. P. Morgan
.

Just then, Peter’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Another text:

We have plenty to talk about. Can you come to the store now? Call from outside. I’ll let you in. Delancey.

Peter texted back:

Ten minutes. Where the hell have you been?

Delancey’s answer:

Trying to save America.

TEN

July 1893

F
ROM THE MOMENT
T
IM
R
ILEY KNEW
that his father was dead, he resolved not to cry.

He held himself together all that hot afternoon, so that he could tell the police what he had seen. But he was an honest boy, so he admitted that he had not seen the killers’ faces or recognized their voices. He could not even say how many there were because the oak tree that shielded him also blocked his view.

And he held himself together at the wake, when his father’s body lay by the windows in the front room, beneath the framed picture of Jesus that his mother had cut from a calendar, and people climbed the narrow stairs and packed the stifling flat and brought buckets of beer and food, and all told him to be brave because he was now the man of the house.

That night, he and his brother tried to sleep in their parents’ windowless bedroom while their mother kept vigil with the keening lady, a professional Irish mourner who sat by the coffin and chanted the low, haunting song that reminded every Irishman of some windswept Gaeltacht moor, even if he’d never been to Ireland or heard a word of Gaelic . . . a low, haunting, repetitive song that echoed through the tenement and kept everyone awake, except the corpse.

Around midnight, Eddie whispered, “Who’ll help us now?”

“Boss Plunkitt,” answered Tim. “Pa always said if we ever got into trouble and had nowhere to turn, we should go to Boss Plunkitt.”

“Did Plunkitt say anything tonight about that funny old money?”

“He said I should come and see him on Monday. And that Tammany would pay our rent for six months. So we can stay here.”

“Stay here? Who cares about stayin’ here?” Eddie sat up. “Let’s take some of that funny old money and buy a gun. We’ll kill the McGillicuddys and go.”

“We don’t even know if it
is
money, and we don’t even know where Pa hid it, and we don’t even know if it was the McGillicuddys who killed him.”

“We know. You know. You was there. It was the McGillicuddys. The fuckin’ McGillicuddys.”

“Don’t let Ma hear you swearin’.”

“She ain’t listenin’. She’s keenin’ right along with that old Irish banshee. All that moanin’ sing-songin’ is givin’ me the willies.” Eddie elbowed his brother. “It don’t matter if folks at Tammany saw Strong make peace with Pa. It don’t matter if folks lied and said the McGillicuddys was someplace else when it happened. It was
them
.”

“Okay,” answered Tim, “say it was. Where are two kids gonna get a gun?”

“I know places. I know guys. We shoot ’em both and leave New York.”

“And go where?”

“Out West. Out where the cowboys are. Out where we can be cowboys.”

“You mean . . . ride horses and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“You can’t ride a horse. You only got one foot.” Tim was sorry that he said that as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

Eddie rolled over and quietly cried himself to sleep.

D
ICK
R
ILEY HAD
been a man with a good reputation, an earned respect, so his friends and neighbors turned out for the funeral.

But in a church that could hold hundreds of people, a polished pine box with brass handles could look very lonely unless a crowd surrounded it. And a good ward boss made certain that every loyal constituent got a send-off worthy of a wealthy man. So George Washington Plunkitt put out the call for three hundred mourners.

And a hundred more appeared at the back of the church because a neighborhood lawyer named Sunny Jim Maguire was planning to run against Plunkitt in the fifteenth, and a funeral was a fine place to garner a few votes. With his blond hair and pearl-gray suits, Sunny Jim appeared to some as a source of light, but others said that no man who counted McGillicuddy’s Saloon as a power base could ever shed light on anything. Sunny Jim had put out the word and handed out black armbands, and his “people” had crowded into the back of the church as if Six-Pound Dick had been one of their best friends.

At the end of the service, Father Higgins led the coffin and the family down the aisle, through the fog of sandalwood incense, while the voices of the Tammany Choir filled the church with “Faith of Our Fathers,” a grand old Catholic recessional. Father Higgins waited for the hymn to end, then he performed the final blessing. Then he said to the dearly beloved, “There’s a song Dick Riley loved. We did not sing it at the Benediction, and so I’ve asked a young lady of the parish to sing it for us now.”