Time and Again (23 page)

Pickering chuckled, a comfortable sound. "Nothing; I'll give you nothing. Oh, you are a wonder! You must have talked yourself into that fortune! But I know a bluff when I hear one, and I'll give you till Monday, no more. I can't wait for months, and you know it! Did you think I would not know that? Or did you suppose the friendship between Inspector Byrnes and the wealthy men of this city was a secret from the rest of us? I'd end up in Sing Sing! On what charge I don't know, but there I will surely be if I allow you the time to arrange it."

Carmody's voice was strained with rage. "You may end up there yet. I
am
acquainted with Inspector Byrnes!" There was a pause, while he almost literally swallowed his rage. "From time to time I've been able to render him some small service, and I warn you —»

"No doubt you have. Every wealthy man in the city knows him; he is said to be rich through the market tips of Jay Gould alone. But I know him, too; do you know I was once turned back at the Wall Street deadline?"

"Were you indeed!" Carmody burst into harsh angry laughter.

"Yes, I was," Pickering said quietly. "Several years ago when I was without employment, and perhaps a little shabby in consequence, I was walking down Broadway toward Wall Street where I hoped to find work as a clerk. But at the Fulton Street deadline a copper stopped me."

"As he should have if you looked like a pickpocket or beggar; everyone knows Byrnes won't have them in the Wall Street area. And quite properly."

"I was no pickpocket or beggar! And said so! It was a young copper and he listened. Then someone spoke from a carriage at the curb. We looked over, and it was Byrnes's head out the window. 'If he argues, jug him,' he called, and the young copper's hand went for his billy, and I swung round on my heel and turned back. Don't smile! That moment will cost
you
a million! I turned back, Mr. Carmody, and my face was white; I could feel it. I could hardly see through the mist before my eyes. But it was then I knew,
knew,
that someday I'd come walking back to the deadline and the coppers would touch their helmets to me! Because I
belonged
on the other side with the Fisks and the Goulds and the Sages and Astors. It was on that day, though I didn't know it then, that I began the search for
you.
"

There was a sudden change in the location of Pickering's voice; he'd stood up, I realized, probably turning to face Carmody. "I am very far from ignorant of financial matters, whatever you may think. You will need, certainly, several business days to raise the required sum. This is Thursday, and I am giving you through Monday, two and a half business days. Three, counting Saturday morning. Come back Monday night. Here. To this very bench. At midnight, Mr. Carmody, when the park and the streets of this area are deserted; I intend to be certain no one follows us. Be here with the money in a satchel or I'll expose you. I won't wait even an hour. Within that time I will be in the offices of the
Times" —
there was a moment's pause and I imagined he was nodding toward the building across the street — "with my documents."

There was a silence of six, eight, ten, twelve seconds; then I knew they were gone, and I walked out, around the base of the statue, and onto the path before the bench. They were walking swiftly out of the park along the angled paths, one to the east, the other north toward the Court House, and I stood watching them go, certain that neither would look back.

15

It wasn't certain, I supposed, that Pickering's private office was in the building I'd seen him come out of earlier. But it seemed likely, and I walked across Park Row and stood on the corner of Park Row and Beekman Street looking up at it. It had no distinction; just a plain, tired-looking, flat-roofed old building with storefronts on the street floor, and above them four identical stories of narrow, closely spaced windows. The storefront windows were dirty, and a lot of them had torn and faded summer awnings folded back against the wall; the bottom halves of some were protected by rusting metal grillwork. In lower Manhattan many a drab building just like it has survived into the second half of the twentieth century.

It was depressing to look at. In the windows of the New York Belting and Packing Company lay stacks of gray cardboard boxes and piled-up coils of leather belting; next to it was a dingy-looking stationer's: Willy Wallach. Jumbled together in another window stood big glass jugs in protective wooden cases; they were labeled POLAND WATER, whatever that was; OWEN HUTCHINSON, AGENT, it said on the window. And there was S. Gruhn, tailor, and Rodriguez Pons, cigar dealers, and I don't know what all.

Under many of the upper-floor windows hung the usual long narrow signs, tilted downward so they could be read from the street. They were of varying lengths; as long, I supposed, as the office space rented by the business firms whose names were painted on them. TURF, FIELD AND FARM, said one under a row of fourth-floor windows; another said THE SCOTTISH AMERICAN, and another THE RETAILER. I saw SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN under a row of third-floor windows, and down at the far end of the same floor hung a sign I glanced at as casually as at the others, and which — I mean this literally — I later saw in nightmares, and still do. THE NEW-YORK OBSERVER, this one said.

I walked up a few wooden steps that needed painting, into the recessed entrance, and pushed through a pair of heavy wood-and-glass doors into a vestibule lighted only by the daylight from the street behind me. The building was worn out; inside there was no hiding it, and no one had tried. The wooden floor stretching on into a gloomy interior was worn, the nailheads shiny, and it was filthy: covered with tobacco spit, cigar butts, and permanent ground-in dirt. So was the wooden staircase at my left, the treads so worn they were scooped out at the centers. On the dark-green plaster wall, patched in soiled-white places, was a directory of tenants. The index finger of a large, carefully painted hand — each finger distinct, the sleeve cuff shadowed to seem rounded — pointed ahead into the gloom; behind the cuff was lettered a list of tenants' names and office numbers. An identical hand was painted on the wall of the staircase, pointing up, another longer listing of names behind it. On both lists some of the names had been professionally lettered, but they were faded now, sometimes chipped; these were the older tenants, I imagined. Newer names were often crudely lettered, paint dribbles actually running down from the letters of one of them. A good many names were scratched or painted out, others written in above them. Some of these were only scribbled; one was simply penciled longhand. And none of them read "Jake Pickering."

A man and then a messenger boy had come in after me and gone up the stairs, and I heard sounds back in the first-floor gloom. Now I heard steps coming down the stairs, then a middle-aged or early-elderly white-bearded man appeared, wearing an overcoat and a round cloth cap with earmuff flaps. He glanced at me, and I said, "Is there a building superintendent somewhere?"

He said,
"Ha!"
— a short bark of disgusted laughter. "A building superintendent! In the Potter Building! No, sir, there is no one here with either the title or office; there is only a janitor." I asked where to find him, and he said, "A question often asked, but seldom answered with any certainty. He has a den, a lair, under the Nassau Street entrance, and is sometimes caught there. There's Ellen Bull" — he pointed ahead into the building, and I saw a vague bulky figure silhouetted down the hallway. "She'll direct you." I thanked him, and he said, "If you find him, which is doubtful, tell him, pray, that Dr. Prime of the
Observer
reminds him once again that his offices are much too warm for comfort." He smiled pleasantly, gave me a short nod, and pushed through the doors to the street.

I walked into the building and found Ellen Bull, a tall very large Negro woman who must have weighed over two hundred pounds; she wore a bandanna tied over her hair and carried an empty pail and a mop. The janitor's cubbyhole, she said, was directly under the Nassau Street stairs to the basement. I thanked her, and she smiled, her teeth very white in the gloom; she was about forty-five, and as I walked on, it occurred to me that she had probably been a slave. I passed heavy paneled-wood doors, a few of them numbered, most of them not. Some were ajar, most were closed. Some were labeled with carefully painted names: AUGUST W. ALMQUIST, PATENT AGENT; J.W. DENISON; W.H. OSBORN, LAWYER. Others bore only a square of paper or cardboard, handwritten with a name and tacked to the door panel. In the middle of the building the hall was lighted dimly by gas jets behind globes, the gas turned low; nearer the entrances whatever light there was came from the street.

In the Nassau Street vestibule, under the stairs leading up into the building, a second narrower flight led to the basement, and I walked over and looked down it; it was completely dark. From somewhere overhead I heard the steady rasp of a handsaw and the nerve-jarring squeal, endlessly repeated, of deeply driven nails pried loose. "Anyone there?" I called down into the basement. Only silence; I'd have been surprised at an answer. I walked halfway down the stairs, but no farther; I wasn't going to blunder around down there in the blackness and break a leg. Overhead the squeal of the nails and the sound of the saw continued, and I cupped both hands at my mouth, and called again; more silence. Then I yelled "Anyone
down
there?" and got a distant squeak of a reply from somewhere below and far back. I walked up to the vestibule again, stood waiting, and presently heard feet shuffling along a floor for a dozen steps before they sounded on the wood of the stairs. I looked down and saw a skinny old man emerging from the basement darkness, his hand on the railing as he slowly climbed up. At first I saw only a bald head, freckled on top; then blue eyes lifted to squint up at me, needing glasses, I supposed; then wide green suspenders curving over the shoulders of a white shirt appeared; and finally the rest of him moved into view out of the darkness, knees slowly lifting as he climbed, pants much too big at the waist, hardly touching the old man, in fact.

I gave him Dr. Prime's message as he climbed the last few stairs up into the light, and he began nodding sadly. "I know. I know. Everyone's complaining. It
is
too warm!" He stepped up into the vestibule, sighing, and nodded toward the plaster wall beside me. "Feel!" I put my hand on the wall and nodded; it was pretty warm. "Flue goes up through there, and we're burning wood these days." He rolled his eyes up toward the squealing and sawing. "Cutting an elevator shaft through, and the owner's burning the old flooring," he said contemptuously. "Saving coal. Makes a hot fire, and a lot more work for me."

I listened, making sympathetic grimaces, then said I was looking for a tenant, Jacob Pickering. He sighed, and said, "Well, Mr. Pickering, what's
your
complaint? If it's too hot, I can't —»

"No, I'm not Pickering; I'm
looking
for him. Which is his office?"

But that was too much; he was shaking his head again, turning back toward the basement. "
I
don't know; how should I know? I know the
old
tenants; I knew every tenant when the paper was still here! Now the paper's gone, building's gone downhill.
Potter
Building it is now," he said contemptuously. "All the old tenants are leaving fast as their lease expires. Full of fly-by-nights now. They come and they go, some even sublet and don't tell me
or
Mr. Potter.
I
can't keep track of them; have you been upstairs?" I said no, and he shook his head at the impossibility of describing it. "Rabbit warren. Chopped up into new little offices with matchboard siding; you could spit through the walls! Even new hallways up there now, and be still more of them pretty soon, up on the top floors where the paper was. Who knows who's up there?"

I was stuck for a moment, then I thought of something. "How do they get their mail if you don't know who's where?"

He mumbled, his head ducked, starting down the stairs. "Oh, I manage; I always manage somehow."

"I'm sure you do, but how do you manage?"

I had him now; he had to stop and look back and say it. "I keep a book."

I'd guessed that. "And where's the book?"

"Downstairs," he said irritably. '"Way back somewhere; I'm not sure where I —»

I had my hand in my pocket, "Well, I realize it's a lot of trouble." I found a quarter, remembering that it was more than an hour's pay for this man, and handed it to him. "But I'd be very grateful —»

"You're a gentleman, sir; glad to oblige. Be back in a minute."

It was more than a minute, but he came back upstairs with a pocket notebook, the cardboard cover curling back, the upper corners of the pages splayed out; it had a hole punched through a corner, a piece of dirty white twine tied through it in a loop. He opened it, scanning the pages as he turned them slowly, wetting a thumb each time. I stood looking over his shoulders; at least half the names had been scratched out, other newer ones overwritten. He mumbled all the time: "Ought to be torn down, build a new one. Elevator ain't finished; been like this for weeks, and won't help anyway. I can't keep track; somebody moves in, it's up to him to tell me his name if he wants his mail." He chuckled; in his old voice it was nearly a cackle. "And he generally does! Or if he moves out, and wants his mail sent on. And he generally does! Here he is: Pickering. Third floor, Number 27. That's right up above, next to the new shaft; can't miss it. He'll be complaining once the elevator's working, if it ever does; they're noisy devils, you know. I was on one."

I climbed upstairs, and on the second floor the door of the office immediately to my right beside the staircase stood open, the steady sound of the sawing and the regular shrieks of pulled nails came from the doorway, and I walked over and stood looking in. Two carpenters in white overalls knelt on the floor, their backs to me. One was sawing through the wooden floorboards between the joists, allowing the short sections of sawed-off tongue-and-groove boarding and wider subflooring to drop straight through to the basement — where the old janitor, no doubt, had to gather them up and burn them. The second carpenter was methodically prying loose the short stubs remaining nailed to the joists, using the claws of a hammer, and letting them drop through to the basement too. The two men were gradually working their way backward toward the doorway I stood in. Between them and the opposite wall the flooring was gone, the big wooden joists fully exposed. Presently they'd be cut off and burned, too, I supposed.

On the third floor, the heavy paneled-wood door of the room directly above the carpenters was fastened with a newly installed and very big padlock; painted on the door in red was DANGER! KEEP OUT! SHAFT-WAY! The door of the next office was stenciled 27, and was locked: I tried the knob cautiously, after listening at the door crack. There was no one else around. I was standing in a short corridor that branched off the main corridor at a right angle, and now I quickly dropped to one knee to look through the keyhole of Room 27. Straight ahead across the office I saw a tall dirty window, gray-white with winter daylight; directly under it stood a rolltop desk and a chair. My view to the left was blocked by something standing directly beside the door, so close it was out of focus. To the right I could see one edge of what had apparently been an open doorway connecting this office
en suite
with the padlocked office beside it. But now the connecting doorway was heavily boarded across, and it occurred to me that the carpenters cutting the elevator shaftway must be working upward so that each floor, as it was cut away, could be dropped through to the basement.

I'd learned all I was going to learn, and probably all I needed to learn, about Jake Pickering's office. For half a minute or so I stood there in the corridor — till I heard someone's footsteps coming down the stairs. I knew why I hated to turn and walk away; now my mission was completed, and I wished it weren't.

I walked back to the main corridor, then turned away from the staircase to walk on through the width of the building, passing the doors of Andrew J. Todd, lawyer; Prof. Charles A. Seeley, chemist; The American Engine Company; J.H. Hunter, notary. Then I came to the
The New-York Observer
offices facing onto Park Row, and the staircase to the street. Walking downstairs I was suddenly aware of how hungry I was.

I had lunch at the Astor House, across Broadway as Carmody had said, catercorner from the post office. But I almost turned around and left when I stepped into the lobby. It was packed with men standing in groups and pairs, talking, nearly every one of them wearing his hat, and the marble floor was covered, and I mean covered, with tobacco juice, as I knew they called it. Even as I stood in the entrance looking around, four or five seconds at most, a dozen men must have turned, each with a swollen cheek, to spit more or less expertly and more or less carefully at porcelain cuspidors scattered all over the big lobby floor; some didn't even bother looking. Trying to think of something else, I walked the length of the lobby past an enormous stick-and-umbrella stand, a railway ticket office, telegraph office, newspaper and cigar stand, and into an enormous, fantastically noisy counter restaurant, with a big oak-framed sign reading NO SWEARING, PLEASE. But I had two dozen Blue Point oysters fresh that morning from New York Bay, and they were absolutely great, and I was glad I'd come.