House of Thieves (2 page)

• • •

His guests gone, George walked downstairs to the restaurant's open-air street café, settled into one of the carved wooden chairs, and lit a cigarette. After almost six hours in the dining room, the night air felt cool and refreshing. Fifth Avenue was deserted, and the pure silence soothed George after the hours of unending noise. He leaned back and closed his eyes, savoring the triumphant evening.

“Beautiful night, isn't it, George?”

The voice came from directly behind him. George smiled and swiveled around, expecting to see an admiring classmate. Then his face turned pale, and the cigarette dropped from his lips.

James T. Kent sat at a table a few yards away, dressed in elegant evening attire, smoking a cigar and sipping a glass of white wine.

“Just dropped in for a nightcap before heading home after the theater. But now that I'm here, maybe I could have a word with you. It's about a matter of some delicacy.”

George rose from his seat and started toward the low wrought iron fence that enclosed the sidewalk cafe. But a short, broad-chested man stepped out of the shadows, moving to cut off his exit.

“I think you remember my business associate, Mr. Culver.”

Culver smiled at George but said nothing.

“Why don't we take a little trip?” said Kent.

Oh, he floats through the air

With the greatest of ease,

This daring young man

On the flying trapeze;

His actions are graceful,

All girls he does please,

My love he has purloined away…

Kent got such pleasure out of seeing his men enjoy themselves. He hadn't realized Freddy Dugan had such a wonderful baritone voice. If he hadn't become an extortionist, the man could've made it on the stage.

Kent and ten of his employees were standing inside the new cable car power plant, currently under construction on the East Side. It was a huge brick and stone structure with tall, arched windows and a cavernous central room, where steam machinery would be installed to pull the coils of steel cables that wound and twisted beneath the city streets. Cable cars were the latest fad in New York, and the wise bet said they would soon replace the horse cars entirely. Kent saw it as a great investment. A cable car didn't have to be fed. It could work all day, and most importantly, it didn't deposit tons of shit and an ocean of piss onto the streets. When the Brooklyn Bridge had opened three years before, cable cars had been installed, and they'd been a great success.

But cable cars were still the future. The present object of his men's delight, George Cross's body, was swinging like a giant clock pendulum above the cement floor, bound and suspended upside down at the end of a thick rope whose other end was looped over a steel roof truss twenty feet above the men's heads. Culver held the end of the rope, and Tommy Flannigan pushed George's body, sending him in a wide arc. Back and forth he went. Kent's men sang and roared with laughter at each swing. Kent had never seen them have so much fun sober. When George threw up his banquet from Delmonico's, they whooped and howled.

Finally, Kent walked over to the swinging body and raised his hand, signaling for silence.

“For a mathematician, George,” Kent said as the boy swung by, “I thought you'd have a better head for numbers.” He pulled out a cigar and lit it, drawing in and exhaling the smoke with great pleasure. “Figuring in compounded interest, what you owe me is forty-eight thousand dollars. Quite a bit of money. Let me put it another way. A master carpenter makes about a thousand dollars a year. You owe me forty-eight years of carpenter wages.”

“For God's sake, cut me down, Jim.”

“I know you love to gamble, George. But if you lose, you
have
to pay up. I warned you about the interest that was accruing on your debt, but you ignored me. And you can't say I haven't been patient. Or generous. I gave you the opportunity to forgive the whole thing by putting the fix on the Harvard–Columbia baseball game…but you didn't come through, my boy. I lost on that bet, and I lost handily. You're lucky I didn't add it to your total.”

“I tried! I swear I did! But you can't throw a game when no one else is in on it,” George cried.

“I can't have you stiff me, George. It's bad for business. If people see that I let you slide, they won't have any respect for me, and they'll try to stiff me too.”

“Give me one more chance, please,” pleaded George.

Kent watched George swing. Then he signaled Flannigan to bring the body to a halt. Flannigan grabbed George on each pass to slow him down until the boy hung there, slowly turning around and around like a slab of beef on a hook. Kent motioned for Al Carney, a mountain of a man with broad shoulders and fists the size of hams, to come over.

“George, Al here once fought John L. Sullivan and lasted almost five rounds. Five rounds against the great John L. Imagine that. There was an article about it in the
Police
Gazette
.”

Carney's jowly face flushed red with embarrassment as he approached the hanging body. Then his fists let loose as if he was bashing a body bag in a gym. George cried out at each blow.

“I'm most sorry to have to do this to a society gentleman,” Kent said, his tone sincerely apologetic. “But you have to understand, George, that I live in a world that also has a strict code of rules. Just like in New York society, when one breaks the rules, one must be punished. And as you may well imagine, that punishment can be…severe.” He gave a sly smile. “Let me introduce you to Abe Gibbons. In his former life, Abe was a butcher.”

A lanky, gray-haired man of about fifty walked over and placed a long knife to George's throat. Carney continued to punch, ignoring him; the ex-boxer was enjoying himself too much to stop.

“They'll find pieces of your body from the Bronx to Cape May, George.”

“Please—no!” screamed George.

“There's no one you know who can pay off the debt?” Kent asked, more irritated than curious. “What about your family?”

“My family doesn't have that kind of money. My father's just an architect.”

Kent's brow wrinkled, and he motioned for Carney to cease his pummeling.

“I didn't know your father was an architect. What does he design?”

“Office buildings. Like the Chandler Building on East Fourth.”

“Indeed? That's a very handsome building. What else?” Kent sounded genuinely impressed.

“Empire State Life Assurance on Nassau Street. Saint Mary's Church. Lots of big houses up on Madison Avenue and Riverside Drive.”

Kent turned and walked slowly across the power plant. He made a wide arc, returned to George's hanging body, and nodded at Gibbons, who lunged at George.

“God help me!” George screamed.

With a slash of the knife, the thick rope was severed. George fell hard and landed on his head with a groan that echoed throughout the empty plant. The men howled with laughter.

Kent walked over to Culver, who, relieved of holding the rope, was leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette and enjoying the festivities.

“You remember George Leslie, don't you, Mr. Culver?”

“Sure. The king of bank robbers. Planned the Manhattan Savings job on Bleecker in '78. Got away with two
million
.”

“Wasn't he an architect?”

“That's what they say. I heard that he could read them building drawings of banks, could even draw 'em up himself.”

“And didn't they find him dead up in Yonkers?”

“Yep, said he was fooling around with one of his men's girls. The man was a genius. Shame to die because of a goddamned woman,” Culver said, shaking his head.

Writhing in pain on the concrete floor, George yelled, “Just get it over with! Kill me and be done with it, you bastard.”

“A
Harvar
d
man,” Kent murmured, smirking. He turned to Flannigan.

“Mr. Flannigan, you're going to take George on a little vacation.”

Visibly disappointed, Gibbons sheathed his blade.

“Yes, sir,” muttered Flannigan.

“What are you going to do to me?” George shouted.

Flannigan took hold of George's feet.

“Wait,” said Kent.

Kent pulled out a handsome leather billfold from George's inside pocket. He opened it, examined the contents, removed a card, and then returned the billfold. He nodded to Flannigan, who began dragging George out of the power plant.

“Mr. Culver, first thing tomorrow morning, I want you to deliver a message.”

John Cross sat in the upper deck of the Fifth Avenue omnibus, the air already baked by the hot July sun. His eyes were vacant, his mind elsewhere as he mulled the strange events of the past two hours. He had never gotten new work in so peculiar a manner.

At around 9:00 a.m., a rough-looking man came into the office, asking to see him. The fellow had very crooked teeth but was dressed better than Cross, who felt himself taken aback when the man entered his private office. The clothes and the man seemed entirely at odds; it was like a pig wearing evening dress to the opera. The man explained that his boss admired Cross's work and would like to talk to him about designing a building. Because he was going out of town, however, they had to meet that day, at 11:00 a.m.

The economic boom of the 1880s had set off an enormous amount of construction in New York City. Cross had received his share of this new work entirely by word of mouth. Men he knew from the Union and Knickerbocker Clubs, the riding club, his Harvard classmates, gentlemen from Saint Thomas Episcopal and Newport—they all recommended him. But this fellow certainly didn't belong to that set.

The other requirement for the meeting was even odder. They were to meet in Saint Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. This intrigued Cross. Perhaps the project was work for the Archdiocese, which oversaw a lucrative group of churches, parochial schools, and convents. Though he was a society High Episcopalian, he didn't mind designing for the Roman Papists, as his mother-in-law called them. Churches were a plum commission. Cross had designed just one, a Protestant church, early in his career, and he was eager for another opportunity.

The man tipped his expensive top hat and left. Cross left at once, walking from his office on Broadway and Eighth Street to Fifth Avenue, where he caught the omnibus. He enjoyed the ride; from the top, he had a grandstand view of the city.

Fifth Avenue was the backbone of his world. Its staid three- and four-story brownstones passed before his eyes, an unending line of high stoops, wrought iron railings, and striped canvas awnings extended out to block the summer sun. Cross watched as servants scurried in and out and families emerged from behind tall double doors of wood and glass. Broughams, hansoms, and victorias driven by men in top hats and black cutaway coats stood by the curbs, waiting for their owners. Dray carts carrying goods of all kinds slowly made their way up the avenue, making deliveries from house to house.

At Madison Square, where Fifth Avenue and Broadway collided then separated, the building style shifted and became a mix of commercial and residential. The Fifth Avenue Hotel, currently the city's most fashionable, stood on the left. The spire of the Marble Collegiate Church towered above Twenty-Ninth Street. Then, on the left, came a familiar sight: William Backhouse Astor II's wide brownstone. Aunt Caroline's home. To the south was a large walled garden that connected to her brother-in-law John Jacob Astor III's house.

The previous summer, Cross had stood in the garden with the Astors, looking over the high wall at President Grant's funeral procession. Now, as he passed Aunt Caroline's house, he smiled at its modesty. It was really only an extra-large brownstone, but that was the way it was supposed to be: unpretentious, dull, and respectable.

As the horse-drawn omnibus slowly rattled along on the cobblestones, halting to pick up and drop off passengers, Cross glimpsed the cathedral. Just north of Fiftieth Street, Saint Patrick's was complete but for its two spires, finally under construction after a hiatus of almost eight years. Its architect was James Renwick Jr., a man Cross greatly admired. Both were in the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects. When he got the commission, Renwick had traveled around Europe for more than three years, observing and sketching twin-spired churches. Finishing Saint Patrick's soaring towers would complete a magnificent design that rivaled the cathedrals of the Old World.

The Knickerbockers, Protestant to the core, were shocked that such a huge Catholic church could be built on Fifth Avenue. It dwarfed nearby elite Protestant churches like Saint Thomas and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian. Weren't there laws against such a thing, the Knickerbockers protested. The fact that the church was paid for with the nickels and dimes of Irish immigrants, the same trash that washed the Knickerbockers' floors and dishes, was even more galling. There was talk of building a Protestant cathedral on the West Side to put the Catholics in their place.

Sighing, Cross shifted his gaze. The daily promenade by the fashionable had begun. Men in elegantly tailored frock coats accompanied by women in beautiful walking dresses with tasseled parasols filled Fifth Avenue's sidewalks. “Shoddyites,” the Knickerbockers called these “fashionable” new people.
They
dress
magnificently
, Cross thought,
making
up
in
display
what
they
lack
in
taste
and
education
. He recognized a client but made no effort to wave to him.

In front of the cathedral, Cross got off the omnibus and walked inside. He'd been to the church many times, and on each visit, he marveled at the nave's breathtaking vaulted ceiling, supported by rows and rows of Gothic arches. It ended at an altar in a full-height semicircular apse, lit by tall windows of stained glass. He felt as if he were in France. It was amazing how the thick stone walls of the church kept the interior so cool and refreshing, even on such a miserably hot day.

Most men hated what they did for a living—it was just a means to pay the bills—but Cross genuinely loved being an architect. He was proud that he'd chosen the right path in life and dreamed of being the best architect in the city (although he knew there was a lot of competition). He wanted someday to design something as magnificent as this cathedral, something that people would use for centuries after he was gone from this earth. Cross felt he had the talent to do it. He ran his hand over the cool stone of a column and smiled.
Yes
, he thought,
one
day
I'll do something truly great
. He turned and looked around for his new client.

His odd visitor had told him that a Mr. Kent would be waiting for him in the rear pew on the northwest corner.
It
seems
so
mysterious
, Cross thought again, shaking his head. He walked toward the corner and saw a distinguished-looking man. He appeared to be about forty, clean-shaven, with swept-back hair and a sharp, almost hawk-like nose. Most encouraging, he looked like a very prosperous client.

“Mr. Kent?”

“It must be a wonderful thing to be an architect, Mr. Cross,” Kent said, eyes fixed on the nave ceiling. “To think, you design and draw every square inch of a church like this. You decide what it will look like, down to the tiniest detail. Like that decoration atop that cluster of columns holding up the arch.”

Cross took an instant liking to this fellow.

“Yes, it is wonderful,” he said.

Kent stood and extended a hand, which Cross shook. “James T. Kent. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

“I'm glad to meet you, sir. I'm told you have a building you want designed?”

“Mr. Cross, although I do very much admire your work, I'm afraid you were brought here on a pretense.”

A frown replaced the smile on Cross's face.

Kent continued. “I'll get to the point. This meeting involves a personal matter. I'm afraid that your son George has been doing business with me for the last year or so. Now he finds himself in serious financial difficulty. You see, he owes me a great deal of money.”

“He—how much money?”

“Please sit down, Mr. Cross.”

“How much?”

“About forty-eight thousand dollars.”

Cross stood for a moment, dumbfounded, and then slumped into the pew as though someone had clubbed him. He rubbed his hand over his mouth, unable to speak. “I don't believe you,” he finally forced out.

“I'm afraid you must, Mr. Cross. George will tell you himself that it's forty-eight thousand dollars—and that he has no way of paying it back.”

“How could he owe you that much, for God's sake?”

“Of course, I suppose you don't know. George has a serious gambling habit, sir, and in very ungentlemanly places. The Bowery, the Tenderloin—you will see my meaning.”

“No, no. That can't be,” Cross said through tightly clenched teeth.

“Parents are always the last to know their children's shortcomings.”

Cross stood, furious. “Who are you, scoundrel?”

“A businessman, sir. Who expects to be paid back.”

“You're a criminal who took advantage of my son. There's no way he can pay you.”

“Then George is going to die, Mr. Cross.”

Cross sat back down, gazing in stunned silence at the padded leather kneeler of the pew. “You can't threaten me,” he said at last, defiantly.

“It's not a threat, Mr. Cross. It's an ironclad guarantee. George will die if he does not pay me back.”

“He's only twenty-two! He just graduated from Harvard. He—”

“And you must be very proud of him—at least until now,” Kent said with a smile.

“I won't let you kill him, do you hear me?” Cross said, his voice rising above the accepted volume for the hushed solitude of a church. A woman praying over her rosary in a nearby pew gave him a disapproving look. Now he understood why Kent had wanted to meet him in a public place, and he clenched his fists.

“I know you won't,” Kent said. “You're going to pay George's debt for him. You'll even pay the interest, which is accruing as we speak.”

Cross laughed derisively. “Do you really suppose I've got forty-eight thousand dollars?”

“No, but you know where to get it—and more.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You're a successful architect, Mr. Cross. You've designed mansions for the rich, office buildings for all kinds of big companies and banks. Places that hold things of great value.”

“You damn fool, you expect me to go and rob them?”

“Not at all. I expect you to help
me
rob them.”

“You're mad.”

“Am I? If you don't, pieces of George's body will be found floating around the island of Manhattan tomorrow. I give you my word on that. But for the present, George is my guest.”

“That's a lie! He went home last night.”

“Then how do I come to have this?” Kent smiled and handed a slip of paper to Cross, who let out a groan when he saw what it was—George's membership card to the Union League Club. “Impressive that someone so young is a member of the most prestigious club in the city, Mr. Cross. Myself, I belong to the New York Club.”

Cross stood, grabbing Kent by the lapel of his frock coat. “You're bluffing. I'll go to the police about this, and you'll be thrown in prison, you damn rogue.”

Unruffled, Kent gently removed Cross's hand. “I urge you not to do that, Mr. Cross. It will mean death for your son. In fact, I'll kill him in front of you and then kill you. Please believe me. I trust you'll understand that it's best you cooperate and pay back the debt. Then the whole matter will be settled. But until you agree, George will remain with me.”

“You can go to hell!” Cross shouted and stomped out of Saint Patrick's, the echo of his footsteps bouncing off the white marble walls.

On Fifth Avenue, he stood in a daze in the middle of the sidewalk. A flood of pedestrians from either direction swept around him, like a stream around a boulder. His mind spun. He felt as if he were being sucked into a vortex, a horrible nightmare. If only he could wake up in his bed, begin the day anew, realize with a sob of relief that none of this had happened.

It
can't be.
This had to be some practical joke by George and his friends.
That's it!
Cross thought with a mixture of anger and happiness. It was a joke, and he had been taken in. His son was alive and safe. Perhaps Stanny was behind the charade. If so, he'd curse his old friend up and down for putting George up to such a thing.

A feeling of relief swept over Cross. His breathing returned almost to normal, and he started walking south. But when he came to Forty-Ninth Street, he stopped abruptly.

Suppose this wasn't a joke.

A man in a derby and dark gray frock coat collided with his back. “Damned idiot,” the man muttered, stepping around him. Cross took no notice. With a sinking feeling, he replayed the events of the morning in his head. It was too cruel and elaborately staged to be a joke. But if it was all true—Kent wasn't bluffing—he couldn't stand by and let his son be murdered. He'd give his life in a second to save George or Julia or Charlie. The thought of losing his children was too horrible to bear.

Cross walked blindly, covering block after block as if in a trance. He crossed streets without looking, lucky not to be run over by the parade of wagons and carriages. All the while, his mind raced with terrible images of how Kent would murder George. How had his son gotten into such a fix?

In that instant, Cross realized he knew as much about George as one of these strangers next to him on the sidewalk. His son wasn't what he seemed. His handsome, charming facade masked deviant, illicit behavior. Cross had thought he'd been a model father. Well, the joke was on him. If what Kent had told him was true, then he'd failed miserably. His knees almost buckled under him, nearly sent him to the ground right there on Fifth Avenue.
A
son's faults are his father's faults
, his mind repeated numbly.

He realized he couldn't face this alone, but he couldn't tell Helen. At heart, she was a weak-willed, status-obsessed woman who'd collapse into hysterics if he told her what their son had done. Cross kept walking, passed Aunt Caroline's house at Thirty-Fourth Street—and stopped dead in his tracks. Of course—he had the Astors, the most powerful force in the city, on his side. Surely they could save George.