House of Thieves (23 page)

“It's interesting. You never mentioned that you designed Cook's house…and the Fidelity National Bank.”

Cross sat across from his brother at a table at the Park Restaurant on East Sixty-First Street. He and Robert had gotten into the habit of lunching together once a week. They also went to ball games and the theater and sometimes took walks together in Central Park. For the first time in their lives, they lived near each other, and they were developing a deeper personal connection, even discussing their feelings about their parents, especially their father, and growing up in society. Cross felt a sense of relief and comfort when he confided in his brother about the past. He knew Robert felt the same way.

He wasn't shocked by Robert's question. He'd been expecting it. He was only surprised that it took so long in coming.

“I thought I told you I'd designed Cook's place.”

“No, I would've remembered that.”

“Mmm, thought I did. I don't think I mentioned the bank.”

“Quite a coincidence.”

Cross held his hands above his head and widened his eyes. “I confess! I robbed them both,” he wailed. He stuck out his hands, as if to receive handcuffs.

Robert roared with laughter. Around the restaurant, curious patrons looked up from their meals.

“I've designed lots of buildings in the city over the years,” Cross added. “So many that I sometimes forget about them.”

“There've been other big robberies of mansions.”

“Not my clients.”

“No, but the places were cleaned out in the same manner, probably by the same gang.”

“What are the Pinkertons going to do?”

“We've set up a network of informants that covers Fifth Avenue and the Upper East Side. They'll keep watch for us at night. And after so many massive robberies, the rich are running scared. They've hired watchmen to patrol their properties, whether they're at home or away.”

“And the banks?”

“We met with the New York City Commercial Bankers' Association to convince the cheap bastards to hire guards. I think most of them will. But we have people keeping an eye on some of the bigger ones nonetheless.”

Cross took a sip of his coffee and a bite of apple pie.

“You've got a real crime wave on your hands,” he observed. “No more help from your informant?”

As Robert paused, Cross watched carefully, trying to read his brother's reaction. If only he knew the man's name! The identity of the informant tormented Cross.

“Not a peep. And that's not the whole of it. Some prize racehorses have been stolen too. That's upset the hell out of the parvenus—more than the robberies even. You can rob his mansion, kidnap his wife and children, but you never steal a man's horse.” Robert gave a barking laugh. “It isn't sporting.”

“That's incredible. Any news about the horses?”

“They're probably somewhere in Europe. Their identities would never be discovered over there. We'll never find them.”

Cross finished his dessert, called for the check, and lit a cigarette.

“As if the crime wave wasn't enough, we have to coordinate gold bullion shipments for Kidder, Peabody & Co., the big Wall Street investment company.”

“They handle gold?”

“They act as brokers on gold exports out of the country. To countries like Spain or Italy. Say, how's George getting along? I never see him. Whenever I ask him out, he's busy.” Robert sounded disappointed.

Cross's family had truly become the center of his brother's life, Cross thought. To his dismay, Helen had even been playing matchmaker for his brother, introducing him to an assortment of wealthy widows and young heiresses. Robert played along good-naturedly, placating his sister-in-law by socializing. He'd even been to a tea at their house that Aunt Caroline attended. To Cross's surprise, the fact that Robert was a Pinkerton didn't bother her. She seemed to be very proud of him and steered several eligible ladies his way herself.

“I never see him either. George lives his own life. It upsets Helen.”

“Oh, he just wants to be on his own. You should be proud. He'll be a brilliant professor.”

“Yes. I should be,” Cross said, voice barely audible. He still hadn't been able to force himself to find out whether George was gambling again. He was a coward. Whatever the truth, he didn't want to face it. A father wants to believe he can trust his son.

“And Charlie. What a special kid! You should be proud of him too.”

• • •

Over the summer, Charlie had become an expert at stripping naked at a run and jumping off the pier into the East River. The most exciting part was leaping off the edge and being suspended in midair—it felt like he was flying—before crashing into the cold water of the river. On a hot day, it was as refreshing as a drink of cold beer, which he greatly enjoyed thanks to Eddie's tutelage.

It was a warm September day, one of the few Charlie had left before school resumed. He was determined to fill every remaining minute with fun. The rotting pier off Cherry Street was filled with skinny naked boys, either diving or pushing one another into the river. Charlie sprinted along beside Eddie, and together they flew off the pier and hit the water, just missing a floating hog carcass. The East River sported a continuous parade of dead creatures through its currents, including the occasional human body. The water was filthy with oil slicks, dead rats, floating garbage, and human and horse feces, but the cold water felt so good that one ignored such minor distractions.

“How about some rat wrangling today?” Eddie asked, his head bobbing up and down in the dark waters. “We can get thirteen cents a head.”

“We should try that warehouse on Thirty-Second. You can hear them squirming around from the sidewalk,” Charlie said, trying to float on his back. A partially decomposed horse drifted by a few feet away.

“Then let's get going.” They swam back to the pier and hoisted themselves up. Some boys were lying in the sun on the pier; others were soaping themselves down and then diving in to rinse off in the filthy water. This was the only time they got anything close to a bath.

After dressing, the boys stopped off at Eddie's to get the mailbag and club. It was a good haul, about eighty rats, exceptionally energetic and fast. The bag was heavy to pull, and Charlie had to continually beat the vermin about the head to prevent them from escaping. Despite his best efforts, three squeezed out, causing a woman on West Twenty-Ninth Street to scream.

“I hope one bites ya on yer tit,” Eddie yelled after her.

At the rat pit, Eddie haggled with Nardello over the price, calling him a dirty wop until he relented and agreed to thirteen cents.

“I got a tip for ya,” said Nardello as they readied themselves to leave. “We got a new dog named Mustard. A ten-to-one shot, but I seen 'em. He's a killer—can do fifty in eight minutes. You got time to lay down a bet. The action starts in five minutes.”

Eddie and Charlie looked at each other and smiled, doing the math in their heads. They went in through the back door to the amphitheater, which was filled to capacity. After Eddie placed two bets, they found seats in the second row from the bottom. The crowd was noisy and happy, impatient for the games to begin. Mustard was tugging hard on his leash, almost yanking his handler's shoulder out of its socket. His coloring looked like any fox terrier's: brown and black, with no sign of the yellowish color indicated by his name.

The chute opened, and the rats came flying into the arena in their usual frenzy. The crowd roared with delight as Mustard went to work, tearing into the rats with glee. It almost seemed as if he were smiling. With astonishing speed, he killed rat after rat, flinging the dirty gray carcasses through the air onto the dirt floor of the arena. At seven minutes in, he'd finished off an astounding forty-eight rats. He'd have gotten more than fifty kills if he hadn't run out of victims. Most people threw down their betting chits in disgust, defeated by the long odds.

Ecstatic, Charlie was hugging Eddie when he looked to his right. At the end of the row, he saw his sister, Julia. At that exact moment, Julia saw him. Looks of utter bewilderment gave way, slowly, to smiles. They both burst out laughing.

An instant later, Charlie ran up to Julia and hugged her.

“When Rome was just a swamp, children, the ancient Egyptians were beginning their greatest period. They built the mightiest and richest empire in the world, the New Kingdom, along the great Nile River.”

“Is that how they got this diamond?” Henry Kent asked.

The Kent family stood in front of the glass case housing the Pharaoh Blue Diamond, a huge gem with a mysterious blue-green glow. On loan to the Manhattan Institute of Science and Technology from the Alexandria Museum of Antiquities, thousands of New Yorkers had stood in lines that summer to see it. But because Kent was a member of the board of trustees, he and his family didn't have to wait in line.

“What a marvelous color,” said Millicent with awe. “It could hypnotize you.”

“It's so big,” gushed Bill Kent.

“Maybe the biggest in the whole world,” Kent said, affectionately mussing his son's hair.

• • •

Cross looked up into the night sky. Thick storm clouds were gathering; he heard thunder rumbling in the distance. Normally, a downpour would be just the thing to cool off after an unusually hot autumn day. But later, at 2:00 a.m., on the roof of the Manhattan Institute of Science and Technology, it wouldn't be welcome at all.

A week earlier, Kent had summoned Cross to a meeting and given him the plans for the building. As a trustee, Kent had been given a set of construction drawings when the Institute was built five years before. It was the first time since they had started working together that Kent had actually set up a job, and to his bemusement, Cross realized that instead of being relieved, he was miffed.

By setting up a job himself, Cross could foresee the dozens of ways the theft might foul up and get him arrested. Before a robbery, along with studying the drawings, Cross would prepare himself by standing near the building and just looking at it for at least an hour. Using his imagination, Cross transported himself inside and conducted the robbery step-by-step, then asked himself what could possibly go wrong at each step. Would a lantern be seen from across the street? He studied the entry point and envisioned the escape route. Was there enough cover at the exit, or could the neighbors see them leaving the building? Right off, he could see a few negatives about tonight's project—like what if someone had insomnia in the ten-story apartment building behind them, looked out their window, and saw men on the roof at two in the morning?

But with Kent running the show, Cross had no control over how the job was run. And there was another thing that bothered him. He
wanted
to plan the jobs. It gave him a sense of satisfaction and enjoyment—and Kent had taken that pleasure away.

For all his acumen, though, Kent couldn't read the drawings. He relied on Cross to figure out a way of getting the coveted prize: the Pharaoh Blue Diamond. When Kent told him about the job, Cross thought he'd gone mad. Stealing such a famous gem? It was crazy. But trying to talk Kent out of it was useless; he had no choice but to cooperate.

“Always steal in a way that's admired, Mr. Cross,” Kent had told him sanguinely.

Because of the enormous value of the diamond and its provenance in another country, armed guards sat in a carriage directly opposite the Institute twenty-four hours a day. The rear of the building, on Forty-Sixth Street, was watched as well. Such a guard was easy to get around, though. The institute was a hundred-foot-wide, four-story, marble structure that sat midblock, flanked by buildings of about the same height. The gang would enter a building two doors down, go up to its roof, and cross over to the institute.

Kent, Brady, Cross, Culver, and another gang member named Lacey were standing on the flat tar roof. Next to them was a fifty-foot-long pitched skylight. Kent, not Cross, had decided this would be the easiest entry point, though not the safest. The skylight was twenty feet above the gallery floor.

Carefully, Cross opened one of the skylight's pivoting glass panels. He fastened the hooked end of a rope ladder to the edge of the opening and lowered it to the floor below. Based on the drawings, Cross knew exactly how long the ladder had to be.

Lacey, a lithe bantamweight, climbed down with the agility of a circus acrobat. On the gallery floor, he steadied the ladder for the others to descend. Cross made his way down slowly, causing Brady to curse him viciously. The ladder swayed back and forth, and Cross had to hold on for dear life. The others followed with little difficulty, which embarrassed him.

The institute was a science and technology museum. Tall glass cases containing all manner of scientific and archaeological displays lined the walls. Down the center of the gallery stood long display tables topped with flat glass.

Lighting a match, Kent looked at his pocket watch. “Right on schedule, gentlemen. We need to be on the third floor,” he said, nodding at Cross, who knew the layout by memory and led the way.

In pitch darkness, they waited in an alcove off the hallway. Down the hall came a flickering light, moving slowly toward them. The men backed into the alcove as a rotund night watchman of about sixty passed by, carrying a newspaper. He shuffled to the end of the hallway and opened a door.

“Good old Collins. You could set your watch by his bowel movements,” Kent whispered.

Culver walked to the door. From a canvas sack, he pulled out a flat iron bar and wedged it into both sides of the doorjamb. “He's not goin' anywhere for a while,” he whispered, rejoining the group.

Cross led the men down to the second floor and through a corridor to the south side of the building. “We're going to drop down from here into the main heating duct that's hidden in the south wall of the gem room on the first floor,” he said over his shoulder. “And then pop out the heating grille near the floor, and we're in.”

From the drawings, he knew the building had a new kind of heating system in place. Instead of sending the heat from a huge cast-iron furnace in the basement through the building by gravity via floor gratings, the furnace used sheet metal ductwork to transfer heat. These ducts were big enough for a man to fit through. When he got to a point down the corridor, Cross stopped in his tracks. He walked farther down the hall and then back again.

“I was positive the duct opening was here. This is where we were supposed to enter the main duct and go down,” he said.

The men looked at him but said nothing. Sighing, Culver lit a small kerosene lantern and handed it over. A circular pattern of yellowish light washed the walls of the corridor.

“Where the hell did it go?” Cross asked no one in particular. He turned to Kent. “When did you get those drawings?”

“Before we started construction,” Kent said, annoyed.

“But were any changes made?”

Kent thought for a moment. “Well, yes. The damn architect came in with a cost so far over budget that we had to make some cuts.”

“Did you ever get a set of revised drawings?”

“That was the only set I got.”

“Then those weren't the final drawings,” snapped Cross. “They don't show what was actually built. I'll wager the heating system was changed back to a gravity system to save money—which means there's no goddamn ductwork.”

“So what?” growled Brady.

“So what? That was how we were getting into the gem room—through the ducts,” Cross said.

His revelation was met by silence. All of them knew they were stuck, and Cross knew that they expected him to think up a solution, even though this wasn't his fault.

Running his hand through his hair, he leaned back against the white plaster wall. Minutes passed like hours as he racked his brain for an answer. As he paced back and forth, he inadvertently swung the lantern up, shining the light onto the ceiling.

“Come on. We're going to the first floor,” he announced.

The institute had a large interior room on the first floor used exclusively for special exhibits. It was there the diamond was kept. Trying to breach its double bronze-fronted doors would have been useless; they were as strong as the doors to a bank. Blowing them with nitro would bring the guards in from the street.

Cross led them into a room to the left of the exhibit hall. He lifted the lantern toward the ceiling. “See that truss?”

Above them was a five-foot-deep iron truss that spanned the entire width of the building. It was one of six supporting the load of the second floor, like a very wide ladder laid on its side, with diagonals connecting the rails. Its ironwork was exquisitely crafted and had beautiful ornamentation on every segment. Because this was a museum devoted to science and technology, the architect had deliberately exposed the trusses to show the engineering structure.

“We're going to get up there, walk along the bottom edge, break through where the truss intersects the wall, and get inside the gem room. There's only a thin infill around the truss penetration there.” Cross spoke like a general barking out orders for battle. He would not brook any dissent. “Mr. Lacey, there has to be a ladder in the basement. Mr. Culver, we'll need that ax and length of rope you brought along.”

The men did as exactly as they were told.

A ladder was placed against the wall, and Cross climbed up, then carefully inched along the edge of the truss, holding on to the struts. Where the truss intersected the wall, he chopped a small hole in the plaster infill, inserted the saw, and began to cut a hole the height of the truss. Plaster dust showered down. Having cut a rectangular shape barely wide enough for a man to fit through, he pulled it out and let it fall to the floor.

“All right, follow me,” he commanded.

One by one, the four men climbed the ladder onto the truss. Because the bottom edge was only six inches wide and it was almost fifteen feet down to the marble floor, they crept along cautiously to the opening Cross had cut.

Somehow, Cross was experiencing no fear at all, only that wonderful sense of exhilaration he got while thieving. He was a circus acrobat on a high wire, no net beneath him. His confidence seemed to propel him along like a steam engine.

They were in the gem room. Cross took the lantern from Culver, lowering it toward the floor. Below them was the Pharaoh Diamond, enclosed in a small glass box on a tall, stone pedestal in the center of the exhibition room. The multifaceted gem caught the light of the lantern, throwing off a brilliant iridescence. The men turned to one another, smiling and nodding in appreciation.

“She's a beauty,” whispered Culver. “A real beauty.”

“The glass case is fastened to the top of the pedestal. We'll have to unscrew it,” Kent said, eyes fixed on his prize.

Without being told, Lacey tied a length of thick ship's rope to one of the struts of the truss. With a screwdriver in his pocket, he began to shimmy down toward the floor.
He
must
have
been
handpicked
for
this
assignment
, Cross thought. He was nimble and quick, unlike the generally stout, heavyset members of the gang.

Lacey was almost to the end of the rope, which dangled about two feet above the floor. Cross's heart leaped into his throat.

“Stop,” he yelled. “Don't go any farther.”

“What the hell is your problem?” Brady said, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder and almost making him lose his balance.

Cross crouched on the bottom of the truss and lowered the lantern as far as he could, staring at the floor. “Something's wrong,” he said, swinging the lantern back and forth. “Don't drop down yet.”

An annoyed Lacey stayed where he was, about three feet from the end of the rope.

“The floor doesn't look right,” Cross murmured.

“What the hell do you mean?” Kent asked.

“A marble floor wouldn't reflect light like that. Look: it's almost as if it's wet.”

And indeed, the men saw an odd reflective sheen coming off the floor, which had a kind of rippled texture. Cross swung the lantern, trying to throw more light.

“There,” he said, pointing. Beneath the spot where he had cut through the wall, he could see tiny fragments of plaster bobbing gently up and down.

“It's covered with water. Why the hell did they do that?” Brady hissed.

Lacey looked down and laughed derisively. “Yeah, it's water, but it's barely an inch deep. It ain't like I'm gonna drown.” He resumed his descent.

Above, Cross walked the length of the truss to the opposite wall, lowering the lantern as much as he could. He stopped abruptly and turned back toward the gang.

“Lacey, if you don't want to die, get back up here. Now!”