City of Promise (47 page)

Simon shrugged. “Even today people don’t think of medicine as science.” He broke off because a tall and fleshy man with a red nose and a swallowtail coat shiny with age brought his hammer down with a sharp crack on a sort of lectern, on top of a dais erected in the middle of the spacious foyer of the house Nick and Carolina had built in 1845 and named Sunshine Hill.

“Sold for fifty cents,” the auctioneer said, and a stranger claimed a box of old and rusty lanterns for which Nick and Carolina’s children had no use.

A practical way to dispose of what was left, Josh knew. Necessary. Nonetheless, incredibly painful.

A new Avenue A had been pushed up from Fourteenth Street. The effect was to level the steep driveway and leave the house on a precipice. Both it and the land on which it stood were slated for the wrecking ball. So nothing to do but get rid of the furnishings and personal effects none of them wanted.

“Lot number three,” the auctioneer intoned. “Two painted wooden chests. What am I bid, ladies and gentlemen? A dollar to my right. Can I have two? Excellent. Three fifty. Four. Four twenty-five behind you. Nothing more? Sold.” The hammer came down and a couple of porters hauled in two iron bedsteads that had been stored in the attic. “Lot number four, ladies and gentlemen.”

They had buried Nick in the winter of 1875, on the same day the hand of the huge monument to be called the Statue of Liberty was installed in Madison Square, in a ploy meant to help raise the capital needed to erect the full statue on Bedloe’s Island. Josh remembered thinking how much his father would have enjoyed seeing the thing. Not, however, this sad dispersal of the last of his possessions, however old and unloved.

The auctioneer was getting set to bring down the hammer on a carton of children’s books. Josh wondered if Simon might be going to bid. He and Rachel had two sons and expected a third child any
day. His brother, however, showed no sign of moving. Josh raised his hand.

“Pure drivel,” Simon murmured. “I had a look. Not a proper mystery in—”

“Mr. Turner,” a boy’s voice called from somewhere near the front door. “Mr. Joshua Turner.”

“That’s me.” Someone topped his bid for the books and Josh let them go and pushed through the crowd to where the lad who’d called his name waited. “Yes,” quietly, so he wouldn’t interrupt the auctioneer’s spiel, “I’m Joshua Turner. What do you have for me?”

“This note, sir.” The boy held out a small envelope.

There was no name written on the front. Nothing on the back side either. “How am I to know this is meant for—” He broke off because when he raised his head he discovered the messenger had disappeared.

“You cannot,” Zac said, “know that Trent Clifford is behind it.”

“My gut tells me he is.” Josh and both his brothers were in Josh’s second-floor study at 1060. The note was the only thing on the desk. WE HAVE YOUR WIFE. YOU WILL BE CONTACTED. “Using a defenseless woman is exactly the sort of thing he would do.”

“If it’s him,” Zac said. “And you’ve got no proof that it is, what do you think he wants? Look, I can talk to a few people. Find out which of the police is likely to be honest and—”

“No coppers,” Josh said firmly, repeating what he’d been saying all along. The unsolved murder of little George Higgins was as fresh in his mind as if it had happened yesterday not six years before. “If you find any that are honest they’ll probably be incompetent. And the others are all in Clifford’s pocket. I’ve sent for—”

There was a tap on the door. Frankie Miller opened it, said something to the two men with him, then stepped inside. “Evening, gents. Sorry to hear the bad news, Mr. Turner.”

Joshua had sent Ollie Crump to Roach’s Tavern with instructions
to explain what had happened and bring Miller back to 1060, glad to have something for the lad to do. Since Mollie disappeared Ollie had spent every minute downstairs in the kitchen, cursing himself for not being with his adored mistress when she needed him. Which only sent Tess and Agnes Hannity and Jane into further floods of tears.

“Is that the ransom note?” Miller asked.

Simon handed it over. “The nearest thing,” he said. “But there’s no demand for ransom.”

“Not yet,” Miller agreed, reading the terse message. “And nobody saw nothing?”

“No one,” Josh said. “My stableboy had gone downtown as he probably told you.” Miller nodded. “The rest of the household were all inside. Mrs. Turner was in the garden and no one thought to look for her until well after four when Tess went out to see if she wanted tea. Tess is—”

“Tess o’ the Roses,” Frankie Miller finished for him. “I remember. From when me and my boys was looking after you, Mr. Turner.”

Josh flushed; there was no mistaking the reproach. He had ended the bodyguard arrangements a year before, when the economy became more stable and New York City no longer felt like the Western frontier. He’d kept Miller’s men on as security guards in a number of his buildings, but no longer had anyone posted to 1060. Just now, however, he had no time for arguing past decisions. “I’m sure you remember everyone, Mr. Miller. But it’s your other contacts that make you valuable just now. We need to find out who’s behind this and what he wants.”

“My brother thinks Captain Clifford may be involved,” Zac said. “There’s bad blood between them from way back. I’m sure you remember that as well.”

Miller nodded. “Clifford’s the one who thought he could shut down the ironworks, I remember.”

“There’s something else,” Simon said. Miller and his brothers looked at him expectantly. “I’m not a detective or anything of the sort, but . . .” He sounded embarrassed.

“But you’re the one who has read every mystery story ever written,” Josh said. “What are you thinking?”

“The note,” Simon said. “It’s written in capital letters so presumably we shall gain no knowledge from the handwriting, but it doesn’t look to me to be the work of a thug or a lowlife.”

He looked apologetically at Miller, but the gunman—who as always looked more like an accountant than what he was—merely nodded. “Why’s that, Dr. Turner?”

“The letters are neatly drawn,” Simon said. “There are no smudges, no false starts. It looks rather as if an educated person was pretending not to be so.”

Miller picked up the note, looked at it again, then replaced it on the desk. “I’ll start asking some questions downtown. Let you know as soon as I find out anything.”

“That has to be very soon,” Joshua said. He was standing and leaning on his cane and his grip on it was white-knuckled. “I cannot imagine,” he said softly, “what Mollie must be going through.”

She could neither stand nor stretch out, only sit with her back against what felt like a wooden wall, her knees drawn up toward her chest. She was blindfolded and her hands were tied behind her back. Her ankles were also roped together, and her toes were pressed up against the other side of whatever this thing—Mollie thought of it as a cage—actually was.

After a while she realized she could hear street noise. A hubbub of people calling to each other, but in a language she could not identify, and the occasional clop of a horse’s hooves and the rumble of wagon wheels over cobbles. Apart from that her only company was her terrible, soul-destroying fear.

She had no real sense of time, only of anguish and cramping pain, but she suspected it was a couple of hours later when the door to her cage was opened a second time. “You need toilet?” the gruff voice asked.

“Yes, oh yes, please.” She had been praying she would not soil herself, praying that would not be added to her indignities.

The rope around her ankles was removed and a hand grasped her shoulder and pulled her free. “Stand up.”

There was sharp pain as the blood rushed back to her legs, and dizziness from being so quickly yanked to her feet. Mollie fought off both. She had to make the most of any opportunity to improve her situation. To do so she knew she must remain alert.

Her jailer had hold of her arm and was pulling her along. Mollie let him guide her steps, willing herself to get as much information as possible from this time of relative freedom. There was a certain resilience to whatever was underfoot. A carpet perhaps, but her senses rejected that conclusion. She thought herself to be outside. There was a dampness in the air, and the noises of people and traffic did not seem filtered through a window. She was aware of another sound as well. Less familiar. Steady though, a kind of constant drone.

She was distracted by the screech of metal on metal. After a second she recognized it as curtain rings moving across a rod. “Here,” the voice said pushing her forward. “There is bucket. Use it.”

“My hands,” Mollie said, “I can’t lift my skirts.”

This was greeted with a word she did not understand, though it was clearly a curse. She took that as confirmation of what she’d already supposed, that her jailer was a foreigner. And since the name on the side of the van had been DeAngelo, perhaps she’d been taken by Italians. That’s why she couldn’t understand what was being said on the street. Everyone was speaking Italian. Most likely she’d been brought downtown to the slum known as Mulberry Bend. Having divined that much despite the conditions of her captivity was a triumph of sorts. It gave her courage. “If you untie my hands,” she said quietly, “I swear I won’t do anything except what I must to use the bucket.”

“If you lie,” the voice said, “in your own filth you will sit. As long as it takes.”

The words were meant as a warning but they were a promise of an ending; her captors had a purpose other than to make her suffer. That
too was information. And given her circumstances the bucket was a luxury beyond price. Even when her hands and feet were once more tied and she was bent in that dreadful position in the cage, Mollie felt something other than despair. It might almost be called hope.

When her jailer came again she was unsure how much time had passed or whether she had slept. Once more she was pulled out of the place they’d left her, and her hands were untied and released from behind her back. “Here. Eat,” the gruff voice said. “Hurry.”

Coffee and bread. Breakfast, she decided. She was as tightly blindfolded as ever, but she could sense light, and there was a certain early freshness to the air. The street sounds were different as well, busier. So she’d been in this place for what . . . sixteen hours perhaps. She must be careful to keep count. That she decided was critical.

She took as long as she could over the food, but eventually it was gone and her hands were retied. “I come back soon,” her jailer said, “take you to the bucket.”

The door to the cage was closed after that. The darkness was again complete. Then, very soon, she heard more footsteps. Not those of her jailer. Someone else. They did not come toward her but stopped some distance away.

Should she cry out? If she did, would she gain an ally or merely enrage her captors, perhaps make things worse?

She smelled something. Smoke. Dear God, was someone setting a fire? She would be burned alive. She opened her mouth to scream, but bit back the sound. The constant drone that had been in the background since she was brought here had changed. It was louder, more insistent. A distinct buzz. Bees! Someone kept honeybees nearby. Perhaps she was in a yard behind a house.