House of Thieves (33 page)

“Look at this wonderful sunburst pattern—all done in gold thread. Doesn't it look marvelous against the dark green satin?” Helen, walking slowly past the rows of gowns, had stopped to pull one out for closer inspection. “There are tiny pearls entwined in the embroidery. The House of Pingat always does such beautiful work.”

Satisfied with her selection, Helen handed the gown to her husband, who rolled it up and placed it in a long canvas bag. She continued walking and made six more selections.

Without saying a word to each other, she and Cross walked into Henry Linden-Travers's bedroom and entered his large, paneled dressing room. Cross made the selections, taking evening wear, cutaway coats, frock coats, waistcoats, and every pair of shoes and boots on the shoe rack. He then gathered every silk shirt and cravat. Everything went into another canvas bag.

Back in Mrs. Linden-Travers's bedroom, they retrieved a bag of jewelry that must have weighed twenty pounds. Walking down the monumental main stair, Helen smiled at her husband.

“Not a bad night,” she said happily.

“Yes. I might even call it a good night,” Cross said. Though weighed down by the bags, he managed to give his wife a kiss on the cheek.

Once their travails were over, Cross and Helen had realized that something was missing in their lives. Planning the robberies had brought them together in a way nothing else in their twenty-three years of marriage had ever done. And they made an excellent team. But best of all, they had both experienced the same sense of exhilaration Kent had described when Cross asked him why he was a criminal. It was a sense of ecstasy like no other.

Since Kent's death, whenever Cross designed a private residence or apartment building or bank, he couldn't help thinking about how he would rob it. At first, it was a parlor game, but after a time, it became a real plan that he and Helen put into action. Every other month, husband and wife planned and carried out a robbery. The anticipation was delightful. Though neither would admit it aloud, the robberies brought a renewed sense of love and commitment to their marriage. They were happy, deeply and purely happy.

On the first floor, the Crosses took a last turn around the parlor, just in case they had overlooked some item of value. When the social season ended in mid-February, the parvenus left New York for a warmer climate: Florida, California, even Italy. The Linden-Traverses were wintering in Saint Augustine. Their city mansion would be shut up for months. It was after 2:00 a.m., and the house was pitch-black. Cross and Helen used a small lantern for illumination.

In the main parlor, Helen picked up a gold cigarette case with a large ruby centered on its front and placed it in a bag. “I think we have enough for tonight, don't you?” she said.

“Mmm, maybe a bit more,” Cross said, raising the lantern to look around.

After they had brought down Kent's Gents, Cross and Helen had worried that George would go back to his old ways, putting his life at risk with his debts. They sat George down for a lecture about the evils of gambling. At first, they believed his uncontrollable habit was a moral defect, as the reformers of the day claimed. Soon, though, they came to understand the nature of their son's problem. George suffered from a disease for which there was no vaccine or cure. He was unable to stop, no matter how hard he tried; the craving for gambling in any form—faro, horse racing, dice—was too powerful to fight.

But somehow, Robert's murder had changed things. Stunned by the murder of his uncle, George hadn't gambled in a year. His mother and father were relieved but continued to hold their breath. George was walking on a tightrope. The tiniest slip would cause him to fall back into his old habits. Merely handling a deck of cards could be fatal. No matter how guilty he felt about the heartbreak he'd caused, he might not be able to fight the urge.

Still, since he had taken up his teaching position at Saint David's, George had seemed content. He had even acquiesced to his Aunt Caroline's and his mother's matchmaking efforts and had begun to socialize with some girls of his own set. All the same, Helen and Cross squirreled away some of their illicit earnings in a rainy day fund, fearful that a time when George was in danger would come again.

“Now I think we're finished,” said Cross. He extinguished the lantern, and together they walked down to the basement kitchen and out to the rear courtyard.

It was a crisp, cold March night. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, only a blanket of stars shimmering above them. Cross took a deep breath, savoring the quiet. A slight breeze rustled the naked branches of the trees in the Linden-Traverses' backyard. The fresh air was invigorating; beside him, Cross saw Helen with her head tipped back, smiling.

Slowly, he opened the wrought iron gate and poked his head out, surveying East Eighty-Seventh Street. At the corner of Park Avenue, Eddie Mooney waved, the signal that it was safe to proceed. On Fifth Avenue, Charlie did the same.

From around the corner, a brougham slowly clip-clopped toward Cross. The driver, John Nolan, carefully and quietly backed it up to the gate. Behind the bench seat, a removable wall panel hid a compartment in which the goods could be stowed. Nolan smiled at Cross, who began handing him the canvas bags.

In the year that he'd spent getting to know him, Cross had grown fond of Nolan. To their mutual surprise, he didn't hold the boy's background or profession against him. In fact, with his good looks and poise, Nolan blended right into society. He'd even charmed Aunt Caroline, though she remained in utter ignorance as to his true identity. He and Julia continued to share each other's company while she was up in Poughkeepsie attending Vassar. For now, they were happy.

With the brougham loaded, Cross helped Helen up onto the seat next to Nolan, and they rattled off down Park. The few large houses amid the vacant lots in the neighborhood were dark, hazy silhouettes against a bluish-black sky. At that hour, not a soul was on the streets.

That was what all their jobs were like. Not once had anyone stopped them. If they had, they would see only a well-to-do family returning home for the night. Charlie and Eddie had melted into the darkness; soon, Charlie would find his way home. Cross had offered Eddie money to find a real room, but the boy stubbornly refused to give up his boiler.

As they rode, Cross thought about how much their lives had changed in the past eighteen months. They weren't the same people. Julia was right: their lives had been a facade, hiding a secret. He smiled at the apt architectural metaphor. There were no secrets in his family anymore.

Their double lives were known to each other, but not to the society world they still inhabited, a universe governed by unforgiving rules. But they would gladly take that risk; their clandestine life was liberating and exhilarating, and they refused to give it up. At the same time, they enjoyed the privileges of society. If it seemed hypocritical, so be it. He was proud that his family had challenged the Knickerbocker code. And Cross had no regrets about what he had done.

And he was a full-time architect again, designing some of the best buildings of his career, producing work that was truly creative and original, done in his own vision, no one else's. But every time his ego puffed up about his architecture, he'd stop himself and realize how it paled in comparison to what he'd done for his family.

At Madison Avenue and Thirtieth Street, Helen and Nolan disembarked. Cross waved to his wife as she went up the front stoop and then nodded to Nolan, who disappeared down the street. He gave the reins a snap and headed downtown.

Tonight, he would convince Bella Levine to take forty-five cents on their goods.

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1. In order to save his family, John Cross must do something he finds morally reprehensible. Would you resort to criminality to save your family from death?

2. This is a story about the double lives a family chooses to live. Which was your favorite?

3. Until 1914, Americans could ingest any drug they wanted, including dangerous drugs that are outlawed today. What did you think of Granny's preference for opium?

4. James T. Kent, a well-bred gentleman from a wealthy family, is a cold-blooded killer and gets an almost sexual satisfaction from committing crime. Was he a compelling villain?

5. New York high society had a very strict code of behavior that one had to obey or be banished. What did you think of that code? Why did that code devolve into the less-stringent rules of behavior we have today?

6. How does poverty in America today compare with that portrayed in the Gilded Age in New York City?

7. Homelessness is a great concern in our cities today. What did you think of the fact that about twenty thousand children roamed the streets of New York in the 1880s?

8. Cross's children form friendships with people they normally would never come into contact with. What did you like about Julia and Nolan's friendship? Charlie and Eddie's? George and Kitty's?

9. George's gambling addiction was the source of all the troubles. How did you feel about George and his illness? Were you angry with him?

10. Cross was devastated when he learned of his son's secret. What would you as a parent have been thinking and feeling?

Read on for an excerpt from Charles Belfoure's

A NOVEL

Available now from Sourcebooks Landmark

Just as Lucien Bernard rounded the corner at the rue la Boétie, a man running from the opposite direction almost collided with him. He came so close that Lucien could smell his cologne as he raced by.

In the very second that Lucien realized he and the man wore the same scent, L'Eau d'Aunay, he heard a loud crack. He turned around. Just two meters away, the man lay facedown on the sidewalk, blood streaming from the back of his bald head as though someone had turned on a faucet inside his skull. The dark crimson fluid flowed quickly in a narrow rivulet down his neck, over his crisp white collar, and then onto his well-tailored navy-blue suit, changing its color to a rich deep purple.

There had been plenty of killings in Paris in the two years since the beginning of the German occupation in 1940, but Lucien had never actually seen a dead body until this moment. He was oddly mesmerized, not by the dead body, but by the new color the blood had produced on his suit. In an art class at school, he had to paint boring color wheel exercises. Here before him was bizarre proof that blue and red indeed made purple.

“Stay where you are!”

A German officer holding a steel blue Luger ran up alongside him, followed by two tall soldiers with submachine guns, which they immediately trained on Lucien.

“Don't move, you bastard, or you'll be sleeping next to your friend,” said the officer.

Lucien couldn't have moved if he'd wanted to; he was frozen with fear.

The officer walked over to the body, then turned and strolled up to Lucien as if he were going to ask him for a light. About thirty years old, the man had a fine aquiline nose and very dark, un-Aryan brown eyes, which now stared deeply into Lucien's gray-blue ones. Lucien was unnerved. Shortly after the Germans took over, several pamphlets had been written by Frenchmen on how to deal with the occupiers. Maintain dignity and distance, do not talk to them, and above all, avoid eye contact. In the animal world, direct eye contact was a challenge and a form of aggression. But Lucien couldn't avoid breaking this rule with the German's eyes just ten centimeters from his.

“He's not my friend,” Lucien said in a quiet voice.

The German's face broke out into a wide grin.

“This kike is nobody's friend anymore,” said the officer, whose uniform indicated he was a major in the Waffen-SS. The two soldiers laughed.

Though Lucien was so scared that he thought he had pissed himself, he knew he had to act quickly or he could be lying dead on the ground next. Lucien managed a shallow breath to brace himself and to think. One of the strangest things about the Occupation was how incredibly pleasant and polite the Germans were when dealing with their defeated French subjects. They even gave up their seats on the Metro to the elderly.

Lucien tried the same tack.

“Is that your bullet lodged in the gentleman's skull?” he asked.

“Yes, it is. Just one shot,” the major said. “But it's really not all that impressive. Jews aren't very athletic. They run so damn slow it's never much of a challenge.”

The major began to go through the man's pockets, pulling out papers and a handsome alligator wallet, which he placed in the side pocket of his green-and-black tunic. He grinned up at Lucien.

“But thank you so much for admiring my marksmanship.”

A wave of relief swept over Lucien—this wasn't his day to die.

“You're most welcome, Major.”

The officer stood. “You may be on your way, but I suggest you visit a men's room first,” he said in a solicitous voice. He gestured with his gray gloved hand at the right shoulder of Lucien's gray suit. “I'm afraid I splattered you. This filth is all over the back of your suit, which I greatly admire, by the way. Who is your tailor?”

Craning his neck to the right, Lucien could see specks of red on his shoulder. The officer produced a pen and a small brown notebook.

“Monsieur. Your tailor?”

“Millet. On the rue de Mogador.” Lucien had always heard that Germans were meticulous record keepers.

The German carefully wrote this down and pocketed his notebook in his trouser pocket.

“Thank you so much. No one in the world can surpass the artistry of French tailors, not even the British. You know, the French have us beat in all the arts, I'm afraid. Even we Germans concede that Gallic culture is vastly superior to Teutonic—in everything except fighting wars, that is.” The German laughed at his observation, as did the two soldiers.

Lucien followed suit and also laughed heartily.

After the laughter subsided, the major gave Lucien a curt salute. “I won't keep you any longer, monsieur.”

Lucien nodded and walked away. When safely out of earshot, he muttered “German shit” under his breath and continued on at an almost leisurely pace. Running through the streets of Paris had become a death wish—as the poor devil lying facedown in the street had found out. Seeing a man murdered had frightened him, he realized, but he really wasn't upset that the man was dead. All that mattered was that
he
wasn't dead. It bothered him that he had so little compassion for his fellow man.

But no wonder—he'd been brought up in a family where compassion didn't exist.

His father, a university-trained geologist of some distinction, had had the same dog-eat-dog view of life as the most ignorant peasant. When it came to the misfortune of others, his philosophy had been tough shit, better him than me. The late Professor Jean-Baptiste Bernard hadn't seemed to realize that human beings, including his wife and children, had feelings. His love and affection had been heaped upon inanimate objects—the rocks and minerals of France and her colonies—and he demanded that his two sons love them as well. Before most children could read, Lucien and his older brother, Mathieu, had been taught the names of every sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rock in every one of France's nine geological provinces.

His father tested them at suppertime, setting rocks on the table for them to name. He was merciless if they made even one mistake, like the time Lucien couldn't identify bertrandite, a member of the silicate family, and his father had ordered him to put the rock in his mouth so he would never forget it. To this day, he remembered bertrandite's bitter taste.

He had hated his father, but now he wondered if he was more like his father than he wanted to admit.

As Lucien walked on in the glaring heat of the July afternoon, he looked up at the buildings clad in limestone (a sedimentary rock of the calcium carbonate family), with their beautiful rusticated bases, tall windows outlined in stone trim, and balconies with finely detailed wrought iron designs supported on carved stone consoles. Some of the massive double doors of the apartment blocks were open, and he could see children playing in the interior courtyards, just as he had done when he was a boy. He passed a street-level window from which a black-and-white cat gazed sleepily at him.

Lucien loved every building in Paris—the city of his birth, the most beautiful city in the world. In his youth, he had roamed all over Paris, exploring its monuments, grand avenues, and boulevards down to the grimiest streets and alleys in the poorest districts. He could read the history of the city in the walls of these buildings. If that Kraut bastard's aim had been off, never again would he have seen these wonderful buildings, walked these cobblestone streets, or inhaled the delicious aroma of baking bread in the boulangeries.

Farther down the rue la Boétie, he could see shopkeepers standing back from their plate-glass windows—far enough to avoid being spotted from the street but close enough to have seen the shooting. A very fat man motioned to him from the entrance of the Café d'Été. When he reached the door, the man, who seemed to be the owner, handed him a wet bar towel.

“The bathroom's in the back,” he said.

Lucien thanked him and walked to the rear of the café. It was a typical dark Parisian café, narrow, a black-and-white-tiled floor with small tables along a wall, and a very poorly stocked bar on the opposite side. The Occupation had done the unthinkable in Paris: it had cut off a Frenchman's most basic necessities of life—cigarettes and wine. But the café was such an ingrained part of his existence that he still went there daily to smoke fake cigarettes made from grass and herbs and drink the watered-down swill that passed for wine. The Café d'Été patrons, who had probably seen what had happened, stopped talking and looked down at their glasses when Lucien passed, acting as if he'd been contaminated by his contact with the Germans. It reminded him of the time he'd been in a café when five German enlisted men blundered in. The place had gone totally silent, as if someone had turned off a switch on a radio. The soldiers had left immediately.

In the filthy bathroom, Lucien took off his suit jacket to begin the cleanup. A few blobs of blood the size of peas dotted the back of the jacket, and one was on the sleeve. He tried to blot out the Jew's blood, but faint stains remained. This annoyed him—he only had one good business suit. A tall, handsome man with a full head of wavy brown hair, Lucien was quite particular about his clothes. His wife, Celeste, was clever about practical matters, though. She could probably get the bloodstains out of his jacket. He stood back and looked at himself in the mirror above the sink to make sure there wasn't any blood on his face or in his hair, then suddenly looked at his watch and realized his appointment was in ten minutes. He put his jacket back on and threw the soiled towel in the sink.

Once in the street, he couldn't help looking back at the corner where the shooting had taken place. The Germans and the body were gone; only a large pool of blood marked the spot of the shooting. The Germans were unbelievably efficient people. The French would have stood around the corpse, chatting and smoking cigarettes. Full rigor mortis would have set in by the time they had carted it away. Lucien almost started trotting but slowed his pace to a brisk walk. He hated being late, but he wasn't about to be shot in the back of the skull because of his obsession with punctuality. Monsieur Manet would understand. Still, this meeting held the possibility of a job, and Lucien didn't want to make a bad first impression.

Lucien had learned early in his career that architecture was a business as well as an art, and one ought not look at a first job from a new client as a one-shot deal but rather as the first in a series of commissions. And this one had a lot of promise. The man he was to meet, Auguste Manet, owned a factory that, until the war, used to make engines for Citroën and other automobile makers. Before an initial meeting with a client, Lucien would always research his background to see if he had money, and Monsieur Manet definitely had money. Old money, from a distinguished family that went back generations. Manet had tried his hand at industry, something his class frowned upon. Wealth from business was considered dirty, not dignified. But he had multiplied the family fortune a hundredfold, cashing in on the automobile craze, specializing in engines.

Manet was in an excellent position to obtain German contracts during the Occupation. Even before the German invasion in May 1940, a mass exodus had begun, with millions fleeing the north of the country to the south, where they thought they'd be safe. Many industrialists had tried unsuccessfully to move their entire factories, including the workers, to the south. But Manet had remained calm during the panic and stayed put, with all his factories intact.

Normally, a defeated country's economy ground to a halt, but Germany was in the business of war. It needed weapons for its fight with the Russians on the Eastern Front, and suitable French businesses were awarded contracts to produce war matériel. At first, French businessmen had viewed cooperation with the Germans as treason, but faced with a choice of having their businesses appropriated by the Germans without compensation or accepting the contracts, the pragmatic French had chosen the latter. Lucien was betting that Manet was a pragmatic man and that he was producing weapons for the Luftwaffe or the Wehrmacht. And that meant new factory space, which Lucien could design for him.

Before the war, whenever Lucien was on his way to meet a client for the first time, his imagination ran wild with visions of success—especially when he knew the client was rich. He tried to rein in his imagination now, telling himself to be pessimistic. Every time he got his hopes up high these days, they were smashed to bits. Like in 1938, when he was just about to start a store on the rue de la Tour d'Auvergne and then the client went bankrupt because of a divorce. Or the big estate in Orléans whose owner was arrested for embezzlement. He told himself to be grateful for any crumb of work that he could find in wartime.

Having nearly forgotten the incident with the Jew, Lucien's mind began to formulate a generic design of a factory that would be quite suitable for any type of war production. As he turned up the avenue Marceau, he smiled as he always did whenever he thought of a new design.