House of Thieves (16 page)

“You're back so early.”

Cross's and Helen's separate but adjoining bedrooms allowed Cross to come in at all hours of the night without waking his wife. It also ensured that she kept out of his private life. But they shared a spacious bathroom, specially designed by Cross, with all the latest plumbing features, including the Deeco flushing toilet.

It was just past midnight. The going-over Brady had given Cross in the carriage had produced a noticeable swelling on his right cheekbone. He was patting it with a wet washcloth when Helen slammed open the door.

“What on earth happened to you, John?” she cried in an almost hysterical voice that made Cross cringe.

“I fell from the carriage on the way home, Helen. That's all.”

She came forward and studied his face. Some of Brady's other handiwork had resulted in small, angry red blotches.

“No, you've been in a fight.” Helen's eyes widened in horror. Men in society attacked with insults and cutting sarcasm, never their fists. Physical brutality was something ruffians on the Lower East Side did to one another, or to their wives and children. She put her hand over mouth, looking at her husband as though he had contracted leprosy.

Cross grew angrier by the second—at Helen and at the fact that he hadn't thought to design them separate bathrooms.

“Damn it, Helen, I'm fine. Leave me the hell alone,” he said.

But Helen stood her ground. She placed her hand under his chin, rotating his head side to side. “No, John. Someone beat the hell out of you.”

Instead of shouting at her, Cross stomped away to the other side of the bathroom, fighting the rage welling in his gut. Helen followed.

“Tell me what happened.”

“Nothing. I was set upon by robbers. That's all.”

Unexpectedly, Helen reached around Cross's side and felt for her husband's wallet. “They did all this to you, but they didn't take your wallet?”

“I…I got away from them.”

“All those men attacked you, and you escaped?”

“I just told you what happened,” snapped Cross, his back still toward her. “You will listen to me.”

“Tell me what
really
happened, John,” Helen said.

Despite his anger, Cross was touched by her concern. He bent his head, eyes on the black-and-white-tiled floor.

In his fraternity of society gentlemen, a man who faced a crisis or financial disaster would never tell his wife. Even if he went dead broke, his wife and family would know nothing—until the day the bank came to repossess the house and throw the children out into the street. The reasons for such silence would be the gentleman's sense of shame and the general perception of society ladies as overly emotional, useless dolts. A gentleman would confide in his friends at the club, his valet, or his favorite bartender, never his wife. The only woman to whom a man might tell his tale of woe was his mistress.

But in this matter, there was no one in whom Cross might confide, no one to turn to. He was hopelessly alone. Every day, he woke with a sense of dread—this would be his family's last day on earth; something would go wrong and force Kent to kill them. The pressure sometimes seemed unbearable. He didn't know how much longer he could stand it. And there was no way out. If he went to the police, his family would be dead within the hour. Griffith's frozen head had taught him that.

Robert's new involvement put the Crosses in even greater danger. Once Kent discovered who his brother was, he'd be out for blood. Cross had thought of confiding in Robert, but that would almost certainly mean his death. The fact that he was a Pinkerton wouldn't deter Kent.

He was lost, and he was alone. He looked into Helen's eyes, and the urge to tell her was overpowering.

Helen knew something was terribly wrong. She instinctively knew her husband's moods and feelings. “Please tell me,” she whispered.

Cross closed his eyes. At first, the words wouldn't come out. Was he doing the right thing, or was he condemning Helen to death? “We're in great trouble, my dear.”

“When you have bad news, it's best to get it out quickly,” Helen said.

“George has a gambling problem,” Cross said. “He owes thousands to a man who threatened to kill him if he didn't pay.”

Helen stepped backward, pressing her body against the sink. She gripped the edge of the marble counter until her knuckles turned white. “How much?”

“More than forty thousand dollars.”

Helen gasped and covered her face with her hands.

“When George couldn't pay, these men came to me to make good on his debt.”

“But we don't have that kind of money!”

“They knew that. They wanted me to help them rob the houses and businesses of my clients.”

Helen looked at him in astonishment. “We have no choice but to go to the police, John. They can arrest these criminals, and then we'll be safe.”

“I tried, but it didn't work. I know this beyond a shadow of a doubt: if I go to the police, all of us—you, me, George, Julia, Charlie, even your mother—all of us will be dead. These people aren't bluffing, Helen. They're cold-blooded murderers.”

Helen shook her head violently from side to side, her eyes filling with tears. “No, I won't let anyone hurt my family. Aunt Caroline can help. She knows powerful people, people who can help us. I'm going to call her right now.”

Helen ran from the bathroom into her bedroom, but Cross was on her in a flash. He grabbed her from behind, threw her on the bed, and pinned her down by her shoulders. “If you call Caroline—or Robert or anyone—we're dead!” he shouted, his face pressed close to hers. “Do you hear me? Dead!”

She looked into his eyes with a pleading, helpless look and asked in a low voice, “Then what can we do, John? What can we possibly do?”

Cross released Helen and sat next to her on the bed. “Until I can think of some other way out, I have no choice but to do what they say.”

Helen lay on the bed for a few moments, her body shaking with sobs. Then, as if gathering her will, she sat up and put her arms around Cross's waist. She pulled him close, settling her head against his shoulder. “Until
we
can think of some other way out,” she said.

Cross smiled and kissed her on the cheek. “I've had a long day, Helen. I need to get some sleep. Tomorrow, I must find a new place to rob.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I confess, though: I'm drawing a blank.”

Helen's eyes met his, and he saw in her gaze a flash of unexpected excitement. “Remember the Greenes on Fifth and Sixty-Fifth? They're up in the Berkshires for the month, and, John, Edith Greene just bought a tiara with a diamond the size of an almond!”

“Did your shot hit the robber, Uncle Robert?”

Annoyed that Charlie was more interested in Robert's account of the bank robbery than the baseball game, Cross said, “What did you think about that putout Dude Esterbrook just made at third, Charlie?”

“Sorry, Father, I missed it. Did any Pinkertons get shot, Uncle Robert?”

It was a perfect, sunny day at the Polo Grounds. Cross had kept his promise to go to the game with his son and brother, to please Charlie—and to get information from Robert.

The crowd cheered like mad as Smiling Mickey Welch struck out the Detroit batter to end the inning. It was an important game: the Giants were two behind the Detroit Wolverines, so if they won that game and the next, they'd be tied for first. The three-year-old stadium, directly across from the northeast corner of Central Park, stretched from 110th to 112th Streets and was filled to capacity with ten thousand rowdy fans. Along 112th Street, people stood atop their carriages, straining to see. As yet, very few buildings had been constructed so far up Fifth Avenue. The few taller ones near the ballpark also had spectators on their roofs.

“Did you see that fastball Welch threw?”

“I wasn't watching… Did any of your men get hurt, Uncle Robert?” Charlie repeated.

“No, Charlie, none of our men were hurt. One fellow sucked in too much smoke when the gang set a fire in the tunnel, but he's all right now.”

“Charlie, your uncle is here to enjoy the game. He doesn't want to keep talking about the robbery. Look, Ewing's the first batter up,” Cross said, winking at his brother.

“But it's so exciting.
My
uncle stopped a bank robbery. I can't wait to tell my friends.”

“Turn around and watch the game,” Cross said, exasperated.

Charlie did as he was told and was soon caught up in the action. Ewing, the catcher, rapped a single to right, and the crowd roared. Chip Ward advanced him to second on a bunt, and a single by Dorgan, the right fielder, sent Ewing home for a 1–0 lead. The Giants protected the lead with great fielding and scored again in the sixth on a three-run homer.

But soon Detroit had two men on. The crowd fell quiet. Could their star pitcher, Mickey Welch, throw his way out of the jam?

In the momentary lull, Cross slipped in a veiled question to his brother. “I'm glad you're all right, Robert. That must have been a close call.”

“It didn't turn out the way I'd hoped,” Robert said. “We had them dead to rights, John, but every single one got away.”

“Were you able to see who they were?”

“No one I recognized. We're going through the rogue's gallery to see if any turn up. But I'm not optimistic. The clever bastard who saved them wore a mask. The one threatening to throw the nitro, I mean. If he hadn't had the nerve to do that, they'd all be in jail.”

“Was it really nitroglycerin?”

“Indeed. Luckily, we found the vial in the tunnel before anyone stepped on it. It would have blown the underground railway tunnel to bits and taken us along too.”

“A daring robbery.”

“It was a brilliant piece of planning. Would've worked like a dream if we hadn't gotten a tip.”

Cross stiffened in his seat.

The next batter up hammered the ball, bouncing it off the McCann's Celebrated Hats billboard in the center-field bleachers for a three-run homer. The crowd inside the stadium groaned. But several pitches later, Welch finally got the third out with a strike.

“Charlie, go down and get yourself a pretzel,” Cross said, handing his son a nickel.

“I don't want a pretzel.”

“Well, go get something else you like,” he snapped.

“How about a beer?” Robert said. He and Charlie burst out laughing. Cross glared ruefully at his son as he ran off to the concession counter under the stands.

“Who tipped you off?” Cross asked in a matter-of-fact voice, looking straight ahead at the field. “One of the gang?”

“I don't know. Someone telephoned on Saturday afternoon and told us about the robbery.”

Robert sounded evasive. Cross wondered if his brother was keeping the information close to the vest for professional reasons. Until he discovered the informant's identity, Cross knew he was in danger at every moment.

Connor, Ewing, and Ward all grounded out, and the Wolverines came up for their last at bat. Charlie returned with a bag of popcorn in time to see Welch get three quick outs to retire the side, and the game was over.

“Great game, huh, Charlie?” Robert said, clapping the boy on the back. “We win tomorrow, and we're tied for first! Let's do this again next week. What do you say?”

He's so happy to be with family
, Cross thought. The joy fairly radiated off of him. When he'd come to dinner for the first time, Robert had enjoyed himself immensely, chattering on with Helen, Julia, and Charlie, interested in every detail of their lives. He seemed to want to stay forever. Robert had since gone with them to social events and spent many quiet evenings at their home. Cross's children and wife were even pestering him to have Robert come live with them.

Charlie had liked his uncle from the beginning, but the robbery had sent Robert's stock soaring. He beamed up at him and said, “They play Boston next week. The Giants will beat the shit out of them.”

“Charlie,” Cross scolded.

Swear words had become a more frequent part of his son's vocabulary in recent weeks. Cross didn't know where Charlie picked it up. Probably the footman of that Mackay boy he'd been playing with.

“Let's look at the schedule by the ticket window,” Robert said.

At 109th Street, they tried to hail a carriage with little success. While they waited, Cross asked his brother about his rooms at the Benedick, an apartment house designed by Charlie McKim. They were most satisfactory, Robert said.

“It's good you've found a nice place to live. You can relax, perhaps get your mind off the robbery,” Cross said.

Robert smiled at him. “Little Brother, I'm obsessed with the robbery. And I guarantee you: I will catch that bastard with the nitro.”

The failure of the bank robbery had bitterly disappointed Cross. He knew he should be grateful for their skin-of-the-teeth escape from Robert and the Pinkertons, but he'd been counting on the take from the job to wipe out his son's debt. Without it, he needed new victims. And as Helen had suggested, the Greene mansion on Fifth Avenue and Sixty-Fifth Street was perfect. Not only were the Greenes rich and away for the summer, but they also weren't former clients.

The time would come, Cross knew, when Robert would discover that his brother had designed both the Cook mansion and the bank. He'd start asking questions. Henceforth, Cross's own clients had to be avoided in favor of his architect friends' rich clients. There was a good selection: McKim, White, and another successful colleague, Bruce Price, had a slew of them. The Greenes had been clients of James Ware, an architect Cross knew from the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Having made a fortune in steamships that plied the Gulf of Mexico, Andrew Greene was another classic parvenu, come to New York to buy his way into society. For his part, Ware was a talented architect who'd achieved national fame by winning a design competition for a new tenement model that allowed more light and air into the units. The tenements in the Lower East Side were unbelievably foul, inhumane hovels. Ware's design was nicknamed “the dumbbell plan,” because its squeezed-in form resembled an exercise dumbbell.

Cross called Ware to see if he could look at the plans. He was going to do some tenement work, he told him, and he greatly admired the dumbbell design. Architects loved to be flattered, and Ware enthusiastically agreed. Cross used the same ruse on Ware's draftsman as he had on Hardenbergh's, and paired with Helen's personal knowledge of the Greenes' wealth, he determined where everything of value was located in the house.

But at every moment, Cross was cautious. Someone was watching—and waiting to tip off the Pinkertons again. Cross had reconnoitered the Greene mansion in the middle of the night and insisted that Kent not tell his gang the next target until right before the job. Not wanting to repeat the violence of the Cook robbery, Cross took great care in determining that no servants had been left behind.

On a sultry August night, Kent and his men cleaned out the Greene house. They stole Belgian and Irish linens, Gorham silver, and seventeenth-century Sèvres china. Helen told Cross that the wives of parvenus loved to show off their jewelry to fellow society ladies, so she knew where Mrs. Greene's jewels were hidden. The Crosses had been there just a month prior. Mrs. Greene's prized tiara and the rest of her valuables were hidden in a secret compartment below the stone hearth of a fireplace in her bedroom. A long piece of marble was cleverly hinged so it blended in with the rest of the stone, unseen. By just tapping on it, it popped up like a jack-in-the-box, revealing a deep-purple, velvet-lined box. Cross thanked God for his wife's powers of observation. The hiding place wasn't shown on the drawings, and they never would have found it.

When Kent's men opened the compartment, it was like lifting the lid of Captain Kidd's treasure chest. Even the usually cool and calm Kent almost fainted when he saw the flash of gems and metals.

Every stitch of Mr. and Mrs. Greene's clothing was taken, including their silk underwear. This time, Kent made sure he had larger wagons to haul away the huge Meissonier paintings of epic Napoleonic battle scenes. Not one bottle of vintage wine was left in the wine racks. Every one of Mr. Greene's rare black-and-red ancient Greek vases was taken. To his delight, in Greene's immense, wood-paneled library, Cross discovered four priceless tapestries made at Gobelin, the official design studio of the French kings; along with three exquisite Persian rugs, these found a place in Kent's wagons. Cross had a solid knowledge of antique furniture, and he directed Kent's gang to take away the choicest seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French pieces.

Helen also knew that Mr. Greene's secret safe was located in the back of his medicine cabinet. His wife bragged that no thief would look there. Kent's men took his horde of cash and negotiable bonds, plus all his imported French cologne.

Strangely, Cross found he was enjoying himself. Walking about and barking orders gave him a power he'd never experienced before, a feeling of indescribable elation, and he liked it. In a way, he thought, architects were well-paid servants of the rich, complying with their every whim, no matter how stupid. They had to bow and scrape to get jobs and be paid. Clients often compromised Cross's design with ridiculous demands, catering to the momentary whims of their wives. How many times had Cross wanted to tell them to go to hell? But he didn't have the guts. He just smiled and took it.

This night was different. This night, he was in command.

• • •

Cross was not alone. Hidden in the shadows of the trees on Sixty-Fifth Street, Helen watched the loot from the Greene mansion being carted off. Seeing the robbery gave her an unexpected feeling of exhilaration, like drinking three glasses of champagne one after the other.

Walking north to Sixty-Sixth Street and over to Madison Avenue to hail a carriage home, Helen skipped along the pavement like a ten-year-old. She hadn't felt this alive in years.

• • •

Despite the rich haul, Cross discovered when he met with Kent that the debt had been reduced by only ten thousand dollars. Without losing his temper, he detailed the incredible value of the tapestries and the jewelry. Kent laughed in his face. If they'd stolen Michelangelo's
David
, he said, it'd still be sold at only a millionth of its true cost.

“This wasn't an auction at Christie's, Mr. Cross,” he added.

Cross demanded to know where his debt stood. A man with a head for figures, Kent scratched out some numbers on a scrap of paper and handed it to Cross, whose jaw dropped.

“Christ Almighty, man. Still twenty-six thousand dollars?”

“You keep forgetting the 15 percent weekly interest,” Kent said contemptuously. “I'd have thought an architect would better understand numbers. So tell me: What's the next job?”

There was no use arguing. Cross knew that when Helen heard about the amount of the outstanding debt, she would fly into a rage and want to confront Kent, but he'd convince her that to do so would be madness. To ensure her safety, Kent could never know she was aware of their business arrangement.

Besides
, Cross thought,
Kent
is
being
tough
on
the
debt
because
he
still
believes
that
I
informed
on
them.
If he told Kent it had been an anonymous tip, the man would ask who'd given Cross that information and grow even more suspicious.

In the days after the robbery, there was no mention of the crime in the papers. Greene, like Cook, wanted no publicity about the burglary of his home. The Pinkertons, and probably Robert, would be on this case as well, but Cross had no choice. He had to continue. He had to get out from under George's debt.

After meeting with Kent, he was in a foul temper. Instead of going home, he walked to the Union League Club on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Ninth Street. As he approached the building, he felt some of the weight on his shoulders lessen, and he smiled. His entry hadn't won the design competition, but he admired the domestic quality of Peabody & Stearns's Queen Anne building. It was much nicer than the renovated house of the rival Knickerbocker Club.
A
club
should
have
a
homey
feel
, Cross thought. After all, it was a gentleman's home away from home.

Built of beautiful, red, pressed brick and Belleville brownstone, the building featured a huge dormer window with a Tiffany glass oculus on the Fifth Avenue side. Cross entered and went directly to the reading room, the main social space on the second floor. It stretched the length of the Fifth Avenue facade and was also called the “ogling room,” as it allowed members to sit and watch the young female passersby. Cross settled into a large leather armchair and stared out the window. Members came and went, some using the adjacent smoking rooms or the bowling alley in the basement. Some had just finished dinner in the main dining room on the fourth floor and settled into a favorite chair in the reading room.

Many of the men, Cross knew, rarely went home. They lived in various bedrooms in a separate wing of the building. The club was their inner sanctum and was never violated by a woman's presence. Even the highest quality ladies of the evening were not allowed. The furniture was arranged in groups, allowing men to do what they loved most while in a club: bond in male comradeship and bonhomie. With servants fetching glasses of brandy and cigars, the members chattered on like the women they sought to avoid.

“It was Shelby's idea,” said a portly, middle-aged man with a brush mustache.

“And a grand one. A private banquet for our horses! It's never been done before,” said another man.

“Robertson will bring Storm Cloud.”

“What a horse. Paid twenty thousand for the animal, but he's paid off twice as much in purses,” said a scrawny man holding a glass of brandy and a cigar.

“I saw him run at Brighton Beach just last week. Won by eight lengths.”

“We've picked a place on West Forty-Ninth. The dinner will be catered by Delmonico's—canvasback duck and quail, oysters, roast sirloin.”

“Blue Day, who you'll recall won the Westminster Derby at Jerome Park, is coming. And Buckshot, Lemon Drop—the finest horseflesh in the land will be there.”

Though he pretended to look out the window, Cross was listening with great interest.