House of Thieves (29 page)

“Eight thousand? You owe eight thousand? But just this morning, it was fifteen hundred.” Kitty fell to her knees on the carpet of her parlor and put her hands over her face, trying to stifle her sobs.

George stood above her in silence, his head bowed.

“I can't do this, George,” she moaned. “I just can't. Every day, you risk being beaten to a pulp or killed. I can't go through it anymore.”

“Kitty, this is the last time. I swear. I'll never—”

“Do you know how many times you've told me that? A million!” Kitty cried, her eyes blazing with passion. “And each time I believed you with all my heart. Because I love you with all my heart. But no more, George. No more. You're killing me.”

“Please…”

“Every day, we scramble for money. It never ends, and it's tearing me apart. One day, they're going to find your body in the river. I don't want to be there for that.”

“You know I've tried, Kitty. You know that.”

“And it's damn useless. You're powerless, George. You're like a drunk who promises with every sip that this will be his last drink. This sickness has hold of you, and I can't do anything about it.” Kitty's voice had gone soft. George had never heard her sound so defeated. “I'm watching the only person I've loved in my entire life destroy himself.”

“Kitty, I love you. I do. Together we can beat this. We can't give up.”

Kitty stood and looked into George's face. He tried to put his arms around her, but she pushed him away. “No. It's over. I won't do this to myself, not any longer. They say if you love someone enough, you can forgive anything, endure anything, but that's not true,” said Kitty. It was as if her entire being had been drained out of her body, and all that was left was a shell.

“You've said that before, darling.”

“This time I mean it. It's really over. I want you to leave.” Kitty spoke firmly, despite the tears welling in her eyes. “I can't see you again, George. Not ever.”

George stood before her, as still as if he'd been turned to stone.

“Please go, George,” Kitty said in a soft, defeated voice.

When he didn't respond, Kitty couldn't help herself. She started sobbing violently and pushed him toward the door. He tried to resist, but she kept pushing him. “Get out, damn you. Get out!”

George turned and walked out the door. Kitty slammed it behind him. The sound seemed to echo in his ears for a long time. In spite of himself, he waited in the corridor, hoping she would fling open the door and come after him.

Time passed. All he could hear was Kitty, sobbing softly on the other side of the door.

Alone, George walked slowly down the black iron staircase to the street.

The workmen grunted and cursed under their breath as they transferred gold bars into the wagon. By itself, a single bar wasn't heavy—perhaps five pounds. But the continuous loading was exhausting. Having performed this task countless times over the years, the thought of stealing a bar no longer entered the men's minds. They might as well have been loading bricks.

After the last bar was in the wagon, the men retired to a room in the corner of the cavernous warehouse for coffee and sandwiches. The driver and armed guards would be there in twenty minutes to take the gold to the pier. At 5:00 a.m., before traffic choked the Manhattan streets, they would leave the warehouse on Eleventh Street and First Avenue.

The driver and guards arrived, locked the rear double doors, and started their journey to the pier at Front and Spruce Streets on the Lower East Side. There, the gold would be loaded on a ship bound for Belgium. Instead of an armored wagon, the investment house of Kidder, Peabody & Co. were taking the precaution of transporting gold bullion in an old converted beer wagon, pulled by four dappled gray horses. The setup was meant to avoid unwanted attention. A Pinkerton guard with a revolver sat on top behind the driver, and another guard driving a small milk delivery cart rode ahead. Rather than uniforms, the men wore work clothes.

It was a cool late October morning, and as they clip-clopped slowly through the streets, people emerged onto the sidewalks to prepare for the business day. Men brought out stands of groceries, cranked open awnings over plate glass windows, and set out barrels of goods. As they rode, the men silently scanned the streets, looking for any possible sign of trouble. They had made the trip three times a year for many years, always varying their route. Every time, the early morning scene was the same. As usual, no one paid any attention to their passage.

They crossed Houston Street and turned east on Stanton. Up ahead, before the corner of Columbia, a large masonry warehouse was under construction. Rickety-looking wooden scaffolding had been erected up to the fourth story, where brick was being laid. On the street in front of the building, construction workers in overalls were milling about, getting ready to start the day.

Just as the wagons passed in front of the building, a low creaking sound could be heard, gradually intensifying in pitch. The drivers frantically looked about for the source of the sound and—to their amazement—saw a section of the scaffolding plunging down toward them. With a terrific crash, the brick-laden wooden structure smashed onto the sidewalk, spilling into the street in front of them. The horses screamed and reared, trying to bolt. The drivers barely kept them under control.

Suddenly, and from both sides, men carrying lengths of lead pipe appeared. The construction workers joined them as they leaped onto the wagons, striking the guards viciously. The driver of the beer wagon's skull was split open like a melon, and his guard was battered until he fell off the wagon. The milk cart's driver was yanked from his seat and beaten savagely on the sidewalk. As if in a piece of well-rehearsed choreography, the assailants dragged the bodies into the warehouse. Two men jumped into the driver's seat of the beer wagon and whipped the horses forward onto the south sidewalk, around the debris. The wagon turned south, traveling at top speed, bouncing along Columbia Street and turning west on Delancey. Slowing to match the pace of traffic, it continued on to Kenmare Street and then Broome Street. At Hudson and Laight Streets, it came to the huge Saint John's Terminal, the freight station built by Commodore Vanderbilt for his New York Central Railroad. Fifty feet tall and constructed of brick and granite, a loading platform ran the entire length of the massive structure, allowing the transfer of goods from wagons to the trains that entered the building.

The driver steered the wagon into one of the forty-foot-wide arched openings and drove up a wide wooden ramp right into an open freight car that was coupled to the many other cars of the New York Central. By yanking the reins hard to the left, the horses were forced to turn the wagon in a tight radius into the car, where the conveyance came to a halt.

As soon as the wagon was in place, Kent, Cross, Brady, and Culver ran up to the freight car and looked in. The horses were nervous and disoriented, stomping about and causing the wagon to rock back and forth.

“Get these goddamn horses off here,” yelled Brady to the drivers. “Fast!”

The men jumped down and began to unharness the team, working at top speed.

“This train leaves in ten minutes,” Kent said, looking at his pocket watch. “Let's check the goods. Bring a lantern; it's pitch-black in there.”

The four men walked up the ramp into the car and went to the back of the wagon. With a crow bar, Brady pried open the double doors. Culver went in first with the lantern.

“Holy shit,” Culver yelled.

“A big haul, eh, Mr. Culver?” Kent said.

“Look!” Culver sounded incredulous.

Standing next to a pallet stacked high with gold bars was George Cross.

The men stood, looking in amazement at George, who stared wide-eyed at his father.

“George, for God's sake, what are you doing here?” Cross said, absolutely astonished.

Kent burst out laughing. “The same thing we're doing here, Mr. Cross. Stealing the gold.
Our
gold, I should say.”

George jumped out of the wagon and walked up to his father. He swallowed hard before he spoke. “Is this true?”

No words emerged from Cross's mouth. He was in shock.

“What are you doing here, Father?” George asked.

“Your father happens to be my partner, George,” Kent said, smiling. The irony of the situation seemed to please him to no end.

George looked at his father, who had turned away from him. Slowly, he walked around and looked his father straight in the face. It was dark at the end of the freight car, and Culver held the lantern high, throwing spooky shadows that danced on the walls.

“But why?” George whispered.

“He was going to kill you if you didn't pay your gambling debts, son. I couldn't let that happen. So I paid off what you owed by planning robberies for him.”

“And he does it extremely well,” Kent said, lighting up a cigar.

George rubbed his hands over his face and walked slowly away.

“It's too bad, Georgie. Some of this gold might've paid off your current debts…which I understand are considerable,” Kent said, turning to smile at Brady and Culver.

Cross looked up at his son, his expression anguished.

George nodded, resigned. “An old classmate who works at Kidder, Peabody & Co. told me about their gold bullion shipments. After the gold was loaded and the workers left, I snuck into the back and hid. The plan was to fill a satchel with bars and break out the back while the wagon was moving.”

“Oh Christ, George,” Cross said.

“I couldn't come to you for help. I was too damn ashamed…and anyway, you didn't have that kind of money.”

“You kept on gambling after I begged you not to,” Cross whispered. “Why?”

His father looked like he was shrinking, being crushed to the floor by the weight of this revelation. George wanted to shrink himself, to collapse to the size of an insect and crawl away. Kent, who was enjoying every second of the confrontation, started laughing.

“You don't understand, Father. You can't just walk away from it. I couldn't help myself, and I—”

“Don't feed me that hogwash. You knew you had to stop, and you didn't. Goddamn it, do you know the calamity you've caused? Three people are dead because of you!” Cross grabbed his son by the lapels. But he didn't shake or hit him. Tears filled his eyes, and he placed his head against George's chest and sobbed.

The wagon lurched forward as the horses were led out of the freight car.

George placed his hand on his father's shoulder. “I'm very sorry I got you involved in all this. If I'd known, I would've let this bastard kill me,” George said, staring coldly at Kent, who just grinned at him.

“I'm glad I didn't, George. Without you, I never would have met your father and made all this money.”

Cross scowled at Kent.

“Sorry to interrupt this tender family reunion, gentlemen, but this train is about to leave the station,” Kent said.

Brady shut the wagon doors and led the way out. The men followed him down the ramp to the concrete platform. The drivers removed the ramp, and one of them shut the freight car door. Two minutes later, the wheels of the freight cars began to squeak and squeal as the train crept slowly along the track.

“Next stop will be Peekskill. Peekskill, New York,” Culver said, mimicking a railroad conductor's announcement.

“A quiet little town. The perfect place to unload gold,” Kent said, patting the side of the car as it moved out, “and take it to the foundry, where we can melt it down and recast it into something a little less conspicuous.”

Ignoring Cross and his son, the men parted company and started to walk out to Hudson Street.

“I'll see you at McGlory's at nine,” Kent said to Brady and Culver.

“Stand where you are. You're under arrest,” a clear voice shouted.

Kent and his men halted, still deep within the shadows of the loading platform. Ten men stood across Hudson Street, pointing shotguns at them.

“I told you to stand where you are. And put your hands up!”

Culver, Coogan, and the driver pulled revolvers and began firing. Blasts from shotguns returned their fire. The other driver took off down the street.

In seconds, the space was so filled with white gun smoke that neither side could see the other. Cross rushed to the edge of the opening. Between gaps in the smoke, he made out his brother reloading a shotgun across the street. To his right, Culver took a blast to the chest and fell down heavily. The driver came to his aid but was hit in the head. Cross could hear Coogan firing away; the reverberation of the pistol reports inside the loading dock was deafening.

He ran back to George, who stood next to the moving train, frozen with fear.

“Follow me,” Cross yelled. He grabbed his son by the sleeve and led him in the direction opposite that in which the train was moving. “We have to get on the other side,” he whispered.

Gathering his strength, Cross ran along the side of the train and grabbed the brakeman's ladder. In a tremendous effort, he swung himself up between the cars, onto the coupling, and jumped off onto the other side of the platform. George did the same. Cross then pointed to a stair enclosure in the rear wall. Running as fast as they could, he and George made it up to the attic space. Exposed iron roof trusses were lined up, one after another. Cross and his son ran to the south, hopping over the bottom chords of the trusses until they came to another stair at the end of the building. A door at the bottom led directly out the rear, onto Varick Street. At the corner of West Broadway and Grand Street, soaked with sweat and breathing heavily, they hailed a hansom.

“You know your buildings,” George said.

“You're damn right I do.”

• • •

Dragging Culver's limp form, Kent, Brady, and Coogan had hitched a ride on the rear platform of one of the cars as it pulled out of the terminal. At West and Morton Streets, they jumped off and ran. Two blocks away, they turned and saw that the train had stopped.

Kent and Coogan, who held Culver by the arms, laid him down gently on the dirt of a side alley. Blood was pouring from his chest. Kent worked frantically to stem the bleeding with his jacket, but it was hopeless. Culver's eyes rolled backward, showing their whites. He was gone.

Kent let out a groan, dropping his head onto Culver's chest. “The sons of bitches killed him,” he said, beside himself with anger.

“Christ, that was a close call,” Brady growled.

“And they're taking my gold, goddamn it,” Kent yelled.

Coogan bent and met Kent's eyes. His face was grim.

“Just before the shooting began, Burgess, one of the drivers, said a Pinkerton named Robert Cross was yelling at us. Man had arrested him once in Buffalo.”

Kent froze. “Cross?”