City of Promise (48 page)

She’d read about beekeeping in her gardening books. These days the hives were not made of straw and didn’t look like the pictures in the books she’d read as a child. Modern hives were wooden boxes with
open slats on the top. When the keeper wanted to check on how much honey had been made he pacified the bees with smoke.

Her theory was instantly confirmed. The droning sound was lower, less angry. She could hear a murmuring voice. The keeper, she decided, was speaking to his creatures, almost crooning to them as if they were pets. So perhaps she could find an ally after all? She opened her mouth again, still unsure, but leaning toward making some kind of sound. Then she heard the footsteps she recognized as those of her jailer and a whispered conversation.

The beekeeper was in league with her captors. Mollie choked back tears of disappointment and, when she realized they were speaking English, strained to hear their words. She could get only fragments.
Not now . . . I told you . . . No matter about the bees . . . What do you think he will do if . . .

She did not hear anything that told her who “he” was, or what might be the penalty for disobedience, but apparently Mollie Turner was more important than honey.

The next time she was taken to the bucket she identified the faint resilience of the surface she was walking on. It was tar. She was not in a backyard. She was imprisoned on a roof.

Ollie could remember when there’d been eight or ten rookeries and a few shacks in the Sixties and Seventies. Nothing else. Things changed once Mr. Turner put up his tall buildings. Besides, Central Park was finished now, and so was St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the new Seventh Regiment Armory occupied the entire block between Sixty-Sixth and Sixty-Seventh Streets on Fourth Avenue. He’d heard that pretty soon some kind of fancy museum was going to move to Fifth Avenue at Eightieth Street. No place for rookeries in among all that. Most were gone, but three remained in the Seventies.

Ollie knew his way around such places better than Mr. Turner or his brothers, or even Frankie Miller and his gunmen. On Thursday
morning, the day after Mrs. Turner was snatched, Ollie began his mission. His intent was to prowl every hall and climb every stair within the dark and cavernous interiors of these worlds that were within the city but entirely outside its laws and customs. “You seen anything? Yesterday afternoon after two and before four? Anything or anyone looked like maybe he didn’t belong up here?”

“Don’t belong how?”

“I don’t know. If I knew I wouldn’t be asking you, would I? You want this or not?” Flashing a shiny nickel.

They always told him something. One boyo said he’d seen a big bird flying by with a woman in its beak. Another that a witch on a broomstick had ridden back and forth at ground level, then sailed off into the sky. He knew they were lying just to get some money, but though he reduced the bribe to two cents, Ollie kept on paying. “More where that came from,” he kept saying, “but you got to get me something works out to be the truth. How it really was.”

Once a couple of boyos tried to rough him up and get money without bothering to lie for it. At fifteen Ollie was still small for his age, but he’d not forgotten the survival skills required in the rookeries. He kicked the largest of his two assailants in the groin. Recently, Mrs. Turner had bought him new work boots. They were made of tough leather with a metal reinforced toe, so the tactic was particularly effective. The boyo he’d kicked howled in pain and doubled over. The other one started coming for him, but backed off when he saw the knife in Ollie’s hand. “I don’t care two turds about you,” Ollie growled, clutching the pruning knife with the lethally curved blade. He’d honed it for an hour before he set off on this venture. “I just want information. Get me something I can use and there’s a ten-dollar reward.”

He hadn’t cleared that with Mr. Turner, hadn’t even told him what he planned to do. But if his employer wouldn’t pay the reward, Ollie would. It was a week’s pay, but it was thanks to Mrs. Turner that his ma and his sisters no longer lived in one of these hellholes. Mrs. Turner sent his ma all the laundry from 1060, and paid her three dollars
every week for the washing and ironing. With that and what Ollie gave his ma out of his wage, she and the girls had been able to move to a couple of rooms in a tenement on Third Avenue and Forty-Eighth. There was a bathtub in the kitchen and a stove so they could boil a kettle to get hot water, and they had their own toilet in a tiny little closet beside the front door. The el went right by their fourth-floor windows. His ma didn’t like the noise, though his sisters thought it was exciting. Everyone agreed the new place was a palace compared to the rookeries.

He and his family had Mrs. Turner to thank for everything. Ollie wouldn’t give up.

“I didn’t wish to worry you, Aunt Eileen.” Joshua’s hand had been forced because it was Thursday afternoon. Every Thursday since they moved uptown Mollie had gone to visit her aunt. He’d been reluctant to leave the command post his study had become, but he could not allow Eileen to get such news from a messenger.

“They can’t want anything but money,” Josh told Eileen. “Once I pay they will bring her back.” He tried to sound confident; Eileen was nonetheless white-faced with shock. He poured a tot of brandy from the ever-full decanter on the table in her sitting room. “Here, drink this. It will help.”

She took the glass. “Mollie disappeared yesterday, you say?”

“Yes.” The mantel clock showed twenty past two. “As near as we can make it, some twenty-four hours ago exactly.”

Eileen tossed back the brandy. When she put the glass down her hand trembled, but her color had improved. “But why . . . Who . . .”

“I don’t know, Aunt Eileen. I thought perhaps you might make some inquiries. Among your influential friends.”

“Most of them are dead,” she said with some bitterness. “Or forgotten they once knew me. Or they’re so old they’ve lost what wits they had.” Eileen was fifty-eight. Her hair had turned entirely white but
her face was unlined and her mind undiminished. “There is, however, someone who may be useful. I shall speak to him immediately.”

“Anyone,” Josh said. “Any possible ray of hope. Please, Aunt Eileen.”

Eileen was silent for a time. Then, “Go home, Joshua. Whoever has taken Mollie will try to contact you there or at your office. Not here certainly.”

“Yes, you’re right.” He stood up. “You’ll do—”

“Whatever I can,” she said. “Immediately. You can rely on it.”

Half an hour later a hansom cab discharged her at Avenue A and Fifth Street.

The bell above the door tinkled when she opened it, but the pawnshop was empty. “Mr. Ganz,” Eileen called. “It’s Mrs. Brannigan. I wish to speak with you on a matter of some urgency.”

Sol Ganz appeared from the rear. “Ah yes, my dear Mrs. Brannigan. I have been expecting you.”

There was no point, Ollie decided, in offering a nickel or a dime to a lady like this. Not even ten dollars. She lived in a splendid new house on Fourth Avenue and Sixty-Ninth Street, and she wore a lace shawl around her shoulders and a dress made of shiny silk, and her white hair was perfectly arranged. But according to the man in the house next door, this old lady sat at the window all the time and watched the street. So she was a good prospect to answer his questions. “Please,” Ollie said. “It’s real important.”

“A lady being taken somewhere against her will. I should think it’s important. And you’re quite sure she didn’t live in one of the rookeries? Those sorts of women might choose to be carried off somewhere by a stranger.”

“No ma’am. This lady absolutely didn’t choose to go away. She’d never leave her garden. Maybe you seen it. Up on Eighty-Seventh Street.”

The woman clapped a hand to her cheek. “Oh, of course. I thought
I’d seen you somewhere before as well. I don’t get out much, but my nephew comes sometimes and takes me for a drive. We always go up to see the garden next to 1060 Fourth. I’ve seen you working there. And your mistress. That lady. My goodness. Who would do such a thing?”

“Nobody knows. Not Mr. Turner—he’s her husband—nor nobody. There ain’t been no ransom note nor nothing like that. But I thought if somebody seen something, I could maybe tell Mr. Turner and that would help.”

The woman pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “I must say . . . This did occur to me as soon as you asked, but I didn’t want to get anyone in difficulty without knowing . . . It’s such a beautiful garden. Those pink roses that bloom over the fence on the south side—”

“Those are the damask roses,” Ollie supplied eagerly, seeing that talk of the garden seemed to produce the effect he was after. “We grow Bourbons and Gallicas as well, but Mrs. Turner had two damasks sent over from England. Tiny little things they was when they came, but now they’re doing fine. The damask rose comes from Persia originally. Mrs. Turner told me.”

“Persia, my word . . .” The woman had gone back to clutching her shawl with both hands, as if she thought maybe he was going to try and pull it away, and she stared over his shoulder for what seemed a long time. “Yesterday afternoon,” she said finally. “It happens there was one delivery van . . . Of course, there are often delivery vans on Fourth Avenue, but this one looked not exactly the sort one sees here. This neighborhood is becoming quite fashionable, you know.” And, after Ollie nodded agreement, “At least I’m sure I’ve never seen this particular van before . . . DeAngelo Brothers. I remember quite clearly. That’s what was written on the side.”

“Thanks, lady. I’ll bring you a bunch of the damask roses soon as ever I can.” Ollie turned and began running up the avenue.

There were only three hitching posts outside the St. Nicholas. Josh had balked at more. He said he liked the clean sweep of the pavement, and that anyway Hopkins’s stable was right next door and a horse that needed tethering for a short period could be left there. He had, however, no need of the stable when he rode up to the building a few minutes before seven in the evening. All of the hitching posts were available. Josh secured Midnight’s reins to the first of them and went into the lobby.

An elderly couple were waiting for the elevator. He joined them, murmuring a greeting and touched the brim of his topper. Moments later the elevator arrived and Ebenezer Tickle opened the doors.