Lethal Legacy (12 page)

“Where could they possibly have been housed?”
Battaglia asked.

“Lafayette Street, Paul. That wonderful redbrick
brownstone where the Public Theater is today. That was the Astor Library,” Jill
said. “And the city’s other devoted bibliophile was James Lenox, who was also a
real estate mogul and a merchant. He built himself a palatial marble library on
the Upper East Side—today it’s the Frick. From Lenox we got the first Gutenberg
Bible brought to America, the original autographed manuscript of George
Washington’s Farewell Address, and the most complete first editions of Bunyan
and Milton.”

Jill Gibson was animated now, her eyes sparkling
as she expressed her obvious joy for these treasures.

“What brought the Astors and Lenoxes together?” I
asked.

“Samuel Tilden, actually, at the end of his life.
A bachelor with an immense fortune that he wanted to leave for the public
good.”

“Nothing like a politician,” Battaglia said.
“Tilden lost the presidential election to Rutherford Hayes, but he was one of
the finest governors of this state.”

“Tilden was also a leader of the civic movement
bemoaning New York’s lack of a great free public library and reading room. He
formed a trust to establish one as his legacy to the city, consolidating the
unique private collections already in existence and infusing them with fresh
funding. The Tilden Trust and Astor and Lenox libraries joined in 1895 to form
this new cultural entity—the New York Public Library.”

“Public?” Battaglia asked.

Jill Gibson smiled. “Open to the public, but a
private, nonprofit corporation governed by a self-perpetuating board of
trustees.”

“Tight-lipped and tough-minded, that group is.”

“Exactly, Paul. The power rests entirely in that
board, to this day.”

“And the building itself?” I asked.

“The board asked the city to supply a site and
maintain the building and grounds—the beginning of this public-private
partnership. The city chose Reservoir Square—the huge, gloomy, and obsolete
home of the Croton Reservoir, a central crossroads of Manhattan at the time,
between Fifth Avenue and Bryant Park.”

“Of course. The reservoir was demolished in order
to create the library,” I said, remembering the process that led to the
construction of the vast underground system of tunnels to bring water to the
city so long ago.

“You can still see the foundation of the reservoir
in our basement,” Gibson said. “Sixteen years after the trust was set up—in
1911—at the cost of nine million dollars, close to two hundred million in
today’s terms, the building was hailed as the greatest modern temple of
education.”

“What about the Hunts?” I asked. “Was their
collection part of the original gift?”

“Jasper Hunt the Second wasn’t so quick to get on
board. He was skeptical about relinquishing his father’s precious books—and
those he’d continued to acquire. That reluctance kept the original trustees
from inviting him to join the board.”

“Who were they?” Battaglia asked.

“Best described, Paul, as twenty-one rich white
men past their prime. Social status, gender, and economic standing were
intentionally homogeneous, to encourage a harmony of action and purpose,”
Gibson said. “Schuylers and Cadwaladers, Bigelows and Butlers. Jasper Hunt had
the money, but not the class.”

“Was it his eccentricity?” I asked.

Jill Gibson laughed. “The library papers suggest
that eccentricity was part of his charm. To this group of trustees the Hunts
were practically outlaws.”

“Even with the Astor business connection?”

“Jasper Hunt the First started life shoeing horses
for John Jacob Astor. You know the Astor quote about real estate?”

“No, I don’t.”

“‘If I could live all over again, I would buy
every square inch of Manhattan,’” Jill said. “And Astor came pretty close to
doing just that. He took a liking to young Hunt. Brought him into the real
estate company before Hunt was twenty years old, funded his first acquisitions,
and introduced him to extravagances like the rare books that gave Astor such
pleasure. Hunt was smart enough to follow in his master’s footsteps.”

“Sounds brilliant for a kid who started by shoeing
horses,” I said.

“Then Astor withdrew from the fur trade and most
of his other ventures to concentrate on purchasing land in Manhattan, investing
all the proceeds in pushing north of the city limits. His genius was in never
selling anything he bought, insisting that others could pay rent to use the
properties. Jasper Hunt went along with him, but the younger man’s greed
tempted him to go a bit too far.”

“In what way?” Battaglia asked.

Gibson sat back in her chair. “John Jacob Astor’s
fur business took him all over the Pacific Northwest, and then to China, where
he and his partners traded skins, as well as teas and exotic woods. Then he
began to purchase tons of Turkish opium, shipping the contraband to China to
smuggle into this country.”

“I didn’t know Astor dealt in opium,” I said.

“Wisely, on his part, he didn’t do it for very
long. But there was such a fortune to be made that Jasper Hunt couldn’t bring
himself to cut those ties, as Astor had. Even Junior kept his hand in smuggling
for a time.”

“And the book collection?” I asked.

“The New York Public Library was a stunning
success from the moment its doors opened. People like the Hunts who’d been
uncertain about participating began to change their minds.”

“Want to top off my coffee, Alex? It’s cold,”
Battaglia said.

I got up and waved a hand at Gibson, who’d raised
her eyebrows at the command. “It’s not personal. He’d make any of the guys on
the legal staff do the same thing.”

“You’re good at this, Jill,” Battaglia said. “You
probably know the first book a reader asked for opening day.”

“A young émigré came in to request a
Russian-language study of Tolstoy. Not what anyone expected, but a sign of the
changing culture of the community. This library is really the soul of the
city,” Gibson said. “I just love it there.”

“I take it that Jasper Hunt Jr. rose to the
occasion,” I said.

“Two things happened. Within a decade, the library
had risen to the front ranks of research institutions, here and abroad. The
collections grew in size to more than a million volumes.

“Then, in 1917, the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie
retired to embark on a massive philanthropic distribution—his ‘gospel of
wealth.’ He wanted to give his money away in his lifetime, saw libraries as the
best gift to any community, and in 1917 promised to build sixty-five branch
libraries in New York, provided that the city would maintain them. Can you
imagine?” Gibson asked. “Carnegie’s plan established more than twenty-five
hundred libraries in the English-speaking world.”

“So then Junior kicked in,” Battaglia said.

“Yes, he did. With his father’s rare book
collection as well as his own, which he continued to add to for the rest of his
life. They’ve got good genes for longevity, those Hunts,” Jill said. “Junior
died in 1958, well into his eighties. He hoped that his possessions would buy
him a place on the board along the way. But that never happened.”

“Jasper the Third finally made it,” Battaglia
said. “The old boy is still kicking around.”

“The family had divested themselves of the
smuggling operation, contributed a few million dollars to the library, and
become model citizens by the 1920s,” Jill said.

“And Tally?” Battaglia asked. “Do he and his
father get along?”

“In the boardroom,” Jill said, “everyone’s on his
best behavior. The real intrigue doesn’t happen inside the library walls.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the small color
photograph on a document to the right of Battaglia’s hand as I refilled his
mug. It was a copy of an employee identification tag from the New York Public
Library, dated earlier in the year. The woman who’d posed for the camera to get
her security clearance was the elusive Tina Barr.

TEN

“I’m going to step out and let you finish your
business with Jill,” I said. “Why don’t you call me when she’s gone, Paul?”

I was reeling from seeing Barr’s face on a library
document just moments after Gibson told me she didn’t know the girl.

“What’s the matter? You see a ghost?” Battaglia
asked.

“Yes, I did. The one I’ve been trying to channel
since you told me to find her.”

I was angry about being a pawn in the middle of
their deal. Jill Gibson had lied to me, and the district attorney let her do
it.

Jill leaned over and tapped her finger on the
table. “You’ve tipped your hand, Paul. It’s the photograph.”

Battaglia wasn’t rattled. He had a reason for
playing this the way he had chosen, and irking me was of no consequence to him.

“Sit down, Alexandra. Pouting doesn’t become you.”
He waved at me with the lighter that he held to the tip of the cigar. “Jill’s
in the middle of some professional difficulties and I’d just agreed to open an
investigation when the Barr girl got herself tied up the other night.”

“
Got herself what?
Not exactly the way I’d
describe that attack, Paul. What do you know that I don’t? I understand how
sensitive the issues are at an institution like the library.”

“We’ve spent so many decades dealing with the
renovation and modernization of the building itself, Alex, that we’ve dropped
the ball on most of the other problems,” Jill said. “They’ve festered and
grown.”

“Tell her why you were brought in,” Battaglia
said, puffing on the cigar that was plugged into the middle of his mouth.

“I spent the first twenty years of my career at
the NYPL, so I know the collections—and the characters—quite well. In the
century since we opened, there was never any relationship between the research
library—this central building—and the branches. I’m heading the long-overdue
consolidation of the two divisions. There are now ninety-three branches, so
that’s a big enough undertaking of its own. But at the same time I’ve walked
into a firestorm.”

“Why?” I took my seat across from Jill Gibson.

“There are personal issues involving some of our
trustees that have spilled into the boardroom. Battles over family fortunes
have us in and out of court. A century ago, Samuel Tilden’s nieces and nephews
fought tooth and nail to break his testamentary trust so that the library would
never be created, from the first day of probate. Brooke Astor’s estate wasn’t
the first to be dragged through a court of law—by her own son, no less—and it
won’t be the last.”

“That can’t be unusual for museums or any other
institutional beneficiaries, can it?”

“Certainly not. But we aren’t a museum, Alex.
That’s one of the things that makes our situation unique.”

“What do you mean?”

“Very often, when trustees or benefactors of the
library die, we inherit not only their manuscripts and books. We get other
works of art, too. But we’re a library and a research institute. We can’t care
for great art, nor can we curate it. Most of the time, we can’t even hang it on
our walls. And yet, if we violate the wishes of the dearly departed, we’re
likely to lose everything else bequeathed to us.”

“So there’s been trouble in-house because you’ve
been selling art that the library owns?”

Jill looked to Battaglia before she answered.

“That’s part of it. I think it’s what Paul refers
to as our lack of transparency. One of the committees made the decision to
deaccession a major painting a few years ago that had been left to us by one of
our most famous donors, and after the full board learned about the transaction,
some of the trustees really thought it was grounds for murder.”

“Tell me more about it.”

“Forget it, Alex,” Battaglia said, drawing back
his lips around the cigar. “I’ve got someone on that.”

“From the U.S. Attorney’s Office?” I asked. The
feds had jurisdiction over matters involving culturally significant works of
art, but it was unusual for Battaglia to want to share a major investigation
with them.