City of Promise (32 page)

“Stanley Potter has given me a deposit on Flat Four C,” Josh said. “He wanted Four B, but I had to tell him that’s gone to the Jacksons.”

“Another one rented! Josh, that’s wonderful.”

“Yes, it is rather.” There was a bowl of apples on the dining room table and he reached out and took one. “These look like Roxbury Russets. From Sunshine Hill.”

“They are. Your mother sent them, along with a note that they’re the last of what’s been stored from the summer’s crop. We’re to savor every bite since we’ll have no fresh apples again until August next year.”

“Right.” Josh agreed. “Mollie, does it seem remarkable to you that
I’ve so far rented three flats, and each has gone to someone who presently lives in my Bowling Green residence?”

There was something in his voice, a quietness that was somehow more sober than his usual tone. She was embroidering tiny daisies around the hem of a white lawn, infant-size nightgown with a beautifully smocked top, and she went on stitching while she spoke. “Not really, Josh. After all, they’re exactly the sorts of people you intended the flats for, aren’t they?”

“Exactly the sort.” He took a large bite of apple. “Thing is, not every prospective tenant for a flat at the St. Nicholas is presently a resident in my place on Bowling Green. So it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Three out of three, as it were.”

Mollie kept sewing. “But one will probably have told the others. Besides, you spoke to those men, didn’t you? The ones you thought likely prospects.”

“Yes. Exactly.” He’d finished the apple and he tossed the core into the large brass bowl Mollie used to collect the bits of thread she discarded.

“It was an excellent idea.”

“I thought so. Thing is, how did you know?”

She didn’t look up. “Know what?”

“That I’d spoken with the men who live at Bowling Green.”

“I guessed. Because you’d underlined their names in the ledger.”

“Right. And you’ve been keeping the books for more than a month now. So it’s no surprise you looked back at my earlier entries.”

“Yes. That’s what I did.”

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s not. Because back in January, the day of the big storm, you weren’t responsible for the ledgers and at that time you’d had no call to look at them. But that’s the day you went downtown and talked with the wives of my tenants. That’s how come you got caught in the blizzard.” And when she didn’t say anything, only stopped sewing, “I know, Mollie, because Potter told me. Said you called at the house and spoke to all the women. Even discussed
finances, how much the flats would rent for and the terms of the offering. He didn’t say as much, but it’s obvious he thinks I must be a bit of a cad to have sent my wife on such an errand. Not the sort of thing a gentleman does. At least not in the opinion of Stanley Potter, Esquire.”

There was a long silence after that. Mollie secured her needle in the exquisitely soft fabric of her unborn baby’s nightdress, then folded it neatly and put it in the basket along with the rest of the layette she was so carefully preparing; the bonnets and booties she’d already made, and the knit bunting Auntie Eileen had finished and delivered a few days before. When she at last looked up her eyes were shiny with tears, and her husband was staring at her. He looked, however, perplexed rather than angry. “And you, Josh?” she asked. “What’s your opinion?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it all the way home. And it’s a good thing Midnight knows the way, because I was so preoccupied with the question I didn’t notice a single thing between Sixty-Third Street and here. But the puzzling did me no good. I’m no closer to understanding than I was when I started.”

“I wanted to help, Josh. I knew you were worried about the flats not renting, and I was sure getting the wives involved, getting them to tell their husbands they’d love to live at the St. Nicholas and it wasn’t financially out of reach . . . That would be sure to promote business.”

“According to the evidence,” he admitted, “it did.”

“Yes.” Two big tears were rolling down her cheeks. Mollie wiped them away. “But now you hate me.”

“No, I don’t. Far from it. I’m simply very disappointed. I can’t believe you’d lie to me in such a fashion.”

“I never lied to you. Not once.”

“You kept the truth from me, and that’s the same thing. It undermines my—”

There was a quick knock on the dining room door. It opened and Tess appeared. “Mrs. Hannity sent me up to lay the table for your supper.”

They didn’t say much during the meal. Tess was in and out serving it for one thing, and Mrs. Hannity herself brought up the custard pie she’d made for dessert. That way Josh could shower her with praise for making him all the things he liked best. A woman of any age, Mollie had long since noted, basked when Joshua smiled at her, missing leg notwithstanding.

Eileen Brannigan insisted that a clever woman could fix anything in the bedroom. Mollie didn’t get the chance to try. That night Joshua slept down the hall.

It had gotten to the point where the workmen at the St. Nicholas were tripping over each other as the different trades applied their diverse arts to the finishing of the building. Interesting as well, Josh thought, how various immigrant groups gravitated toward one or another skill. Just now the site was crawling with half a dozen Italians laying the tile floors of the lobby and corridors. Last week it had been all Irish carpenters, except for the two days when not one of them showed up. First because it was St. Patrick’s Day; second, because it was the day after St. Patrick’s Day.

“What do you think, Washington?” The black man was pulling a wagon piled high with stacks of tiles, heading for the elevator when Josh stopped him. “Are there any Italian holidays coming up?”

“Can’t say, Mr. Turner. Don’t know much about Italians. Never met none before.”

“Nor I,” Josh said. “But they do remarkable work if this is an example.” It was Charles McKim who had recommended the Italians to do the flooring, and their precision at executing the architect’s design was splendid. The center of the lobby had a sunburst pattern that required expert cutting and fitting of the tiles. Two older men had done all the work, leaving the four others to get on with the simpler checkerboard effect of the border and the solid sections between. Now that the sunburst was finished the pair of superior artisans were occupied with the precise trimming of the edges. “Those two,” Josh said nodding toward
them, “don’t speak a word of English, but I expect they won’t want for work here in New York.”

Washington braked the wagon with his foot and looked at his employer. “Got something going for them ’sides how good they does their jobs,” he said.

Josh was intrigued.

Washington didn’t turn his head, but his dark eyes darted in every direction. No one seemed to be paying them any attention, but there were workmen everywhere.

Josh nodded toward the wagon. “Leave that,” he said. “Come outside with me. I want you to carry something over from the stables.”

And once they were on the street, standing between the St. Nicholas and the Hopkins horsecar barn, “All right, no one can hear us out here. What are you saying?”

“Nothing. I ain’t saying nothing ’cause I don’t know nothing.”

“Yes, you are, and yes, you do.” And when the other man made no reply, “I’ve treated you fairly, haven’t I? You and Sampson. No different from the others. Seems to me it’s in your interest as well as mine to see nothing gets in the way of our getting this building done on time and as it’s supposed to be.”

“Don’t know any reason why it won’t.”

Josh was unwilling to credit that denial. “Tell me,” he urged. “Whatever it is, whatever I do about it, I won’t involve you. You’ve my word on that.”

Washington turned and looked back at the entrance to the St. Nicholas. One of the Italians came out carrying a bucket of something—grout it looked like—and dumped it on the road. “Them fancy flats as is going up downtown on Broadway,” Washington said, pitching his voice a bit louder than it needed to be and looking at the tile mason.

“Mr. Hunt’s flats,” Josh said. “What about them?”

“Got a canopy over the front door. So as folks is protected from rain and snow and like that. When they come and go.”

“That’s a good idea,” Josh said, “but Hunt’s building is much grander than ours. Still, I’ll consider it.”

The tiler had gone back inside and they were again alone. Josh waited.

“The Italians,” Washington had gone back to speaking in a tone barely above a whisper, “they got protection.”

“From whom? And from what?”

“Ain’t nobody going to ride ’em about not speaking English or nothing like that. Got other Italians what looks out for ’em. For a fee o’ course. Way I hear it, they pay twenty, maybe thirty percent of everything they earn to an Italian gang. Protection.”

Josh nodded. “Could be true,” he said. “There are enough other gangs in this city. Why not one made up of Italians? But that’s got nothing to do with you or me, has it?”

Silence.

“Maybe not directly,” Washington said finally, and then, after a few more seconds of hesitation, “Back in Eddyville, when Sampson and me first knowed Tickle and Higgins and the rest, when we were all working for Mr. Kelly . . . You know about how Mr. Kelly sold his patent for almost no money?”

“Yes. Ebenezer Tickle told me about that.”

“He tell you there weren’t no way that made sense? How that Englishman what bought the patent, he didn’t go to school to learn about steel like Mr. Kelly did?”

Josh nodded.

“Man named Trent Clifford,” Washington said. “You know about him as well?”

“I do. What’s more, I think you know that I do. You know a lot about what goes on, don’t you, Washington?”

“Keep my eyes and ears open,” the other man said. “Don’t mean my mouth got to be open too.”

Joshua again nodded agreement. It seemed to be enough to keep Washington talking.

“Captain Clifford,” the black man said, “he spent a lot of time hanging around the Kelly brothers’ foundry in Eddyville. He was there a lot the year before the Englishman showed up and said he’d take the Kelly patent, since Mr. Kelly, he was broke. Didn’t pay a lot for it, mind. Didn’t have to since he said he already knowed how to make steel in a converter.”

So far he was confirming Tickle’s entire story. “That’s what I heard,” Josh said. “You think Captain Clifford told the man from England how to make a converter? That he figured out the process just from hanging around the Kelly brothers’ foundry?”

Washington shook his head. “That ain’t sensible. I think . . .” One more glance up and down the street, and when he saw that they were entirely alone, “I think George Higgins told him.”

“For money?” Josh said.

“Course for money. Ain’t no other reason any dwarf had for getting mixed up with Captain Trent Clifford.”

“What about Tickle? Couldn’t he have been the one to tell Clifford how the converter worked?”

“Could have been, but he wasn’t. Known him a lot of years and that ain’t Tickle’s way. Never takes a crooked path when there’s a straight one available. George Higgins, he was a different sort. Not bad long as things was going how he wanted them to, but not one to pass an opportunity by neither. Long as it didn’t mean he had to get whipped and maybe killed.”

“You know about the races then, the dwarfs being used to—”

“I know. Ain’t nobody was in Eddyville back then don’t know.”

“Fair enough,” Josh said, “and say you’re correct about it likely being George Higgins and not Ebenezer Tickle who sold out the Kellys, what’s any of it to do with me or the St. Nicholas?”

“Captain Clifford started coming to the old ironworks down on Wall Street, hanging around. Couple of times I seen him talking to Higgins. Outside when they didn’t think there was anyone around.”

“But you were around,” Josh said quietly. “Watching and listening.”

“Tell you something about being a black man in a white man’s world, Mr. Turner. Far as white folks are concerned, if you’re a Negro, you be pretty much invisible.”

Josh had no difficult believing that and he let it pass. “Are you saying you think Clifford was paying Higgins to spy on my business, and that somehow caused Clifford to murder him?”