City of God (36 page)

“How long is she to be?” Parker asked.

“The
Houqua?
”

“No, the ship you want me to build for you.”

“My calculations say the optimum length would be one hundred and seventy feet stem to stern, and thirty-three across.”

The ratio, five times as long as she would be wide, was highly unusual; four to one was the norm. But all Danny said was, “And she’s to have one of these flat bottoms?”

“Yes. Concave sides that widen out as they rise above the water line, and below it a bottom as narrow as any keel, but flat, not V-shaped. I promise you, she’ll sail closer to the wind than any ship ever built and do it faster and carrying more cargo than either
Rainbow
or
Houqua,
if either of them is ever actually finished and launched.”

“And your ship will take more with her to the bottom if she founders.”

“True,” Sam said. “But if she does not founder she will be the finest thing ever seen afloat, Danny, and there won’t be a shipwright in the country who can touch you. You can have two more yards, three more if you want. String them right round the island of Manhattan.”

“Aye, maybe. Or I can lose everything.”

“I’m not denying it. That’s the thing about a dream. You win everything or lose the same amount. What do you say?”

“Pipe dreams,” Danny said softly, tamping his pipe, “like clouds, aren’t to be relied on. They blow away in a stiff breeze.”

It was the first Sam knew of any talk of opium beyond Cherry Street. “This is no pipe dream, Danny. We’re talking tea and silks, not opium.” Sam gestured at his sketches. “We’ll build her right here at the Thirty-fourth Street yard. Keep her under wraps at least until we raise the masts.” Impossible after that, but by then it wouldn’t matter.

“What about the men? They’re bound to talk.”

“Some will, but we’ll offer a bonus for work that’s not just flawless but speedy as well.”

The pair of them had been hunched over the drawings for nearly an hour. Sam stood up. His head almost touched the ceiling rafters of the mean little room. The coal stove was losing the battle against the late October winds coming through the chinks in the rough walls. “Tell you what, we’ll avoid union help. Only hire the born agains, the ones flocking to these revival meetings all over the town. Get them to swear secrecy on a Bible. What do you say, Danny?” he asked again. “In or out?”

A few seconds went by. “In,” Danny Parker said finally. “For thirty percent of the first three cargos. And sixty thousand in cash money before we lay the keel. Thirty-four thousand deferred payment until the sale of the first cargo.”

Ninety-four thousand dollars to build one ship. Madness. Except that Sam Devrey knew it was no such thing. “Twenty-five percent of the first three cargos,” Sam said. “And two deferred payments, not one. Seventeen thousand each after her first and second voyages.”

Danny closed his eyes for a moment, calculating. “Aye,” he said when he opened them. “My hand on it, Mr. Devrey.”

“And mine, Danny.”

“The sixty thousand,” Danny said after they shook, “how soon can you get it?”

Work on the
Rainbow
might be stalled until that second opinion came from London, but the
Houqua
was proceeding rapidly. Sam’s ship
had to sail soon after she did and race her to Canton and back, otherwise it would be many months before there would be a fresh tea crop to bring back and make their fortune. By then he’d be bankrupt.

“Start finding the lumber,” Sam said. “You’ll have your money in seven days.”

God help him, he had to make it be true.

T
HERE WAS ABOUT
a teaspoon of the brown powder in a twist of ordinary paper lying on the table in Jenny Worthington’s kitchen. And no one in the house except her and Sam Devrey, who had come in through the back door well after dark.

“You’re sure he won’t taste it?” Jenny asked.

“I’m told he will not. If he does, you simply toss everything out and say the tea must have molded and you’re sorry. He will suspect nothing.”

Sam had not himself gotten the poison from Taste Bad. He’d left that to Big Belly, after letting the man know that if he intended to continue encouraging white men to participate in the pleasures of smoking opium, he needed to make common cause with a white man who not only spoke proper English but had access to the sort of clientele who could afford the indulgence. Nineteen percent of the weekly earnings to come to the Lord Samuel. And to show good will, a business the lord wanted arranged with Hor Taste Bad.
And if you betray me now or at any time in the future, I’ll cut open that fat belly and strangle you with your own guts.

“When will Randolf be here next?” Sam asked.

“The day after tomorrow.” Jenny’s voice betrayed nothing of what she was feeling. After all these years…Still, a mere five thousand, and that dependent on some insurance company making good on a most peculiar policy. “How do I know you will keep your word? About paying me, I mean.”

“You do not,” Sam admitted, “and I’m not about to put it in writing. But here’s a start.” He pushed a wad of bills across the table. “Four thousand now, eight thousand when it’s done.” That committed the last penny of ready cash he could raise, with nothing on hand to meet Danny Parker’s sixty thousand requirement.

His only other resource was the collection of jade. He’d taken them to the best of the numerous auction houses on Pearl Street, telling himself that building his ship was the only thing that mattered. Hell, after he’d gotten back his birthright he’d return to China, take Mei-hua and Mei Lin. It would be a fabulous journey. He’d buy all the jade he could stuff into a valise and bring it back. Build a new house someday, with a special room just to exhibit his collection of Oriental art. Make everything else worthwhile. Once he built a ship that would cross the seas as if she flew with the clouds everything would be wonderful.

The thought had been an enormous comfort while he watched the auctioneer take each piece out of its wrappings and examine it, finally running his exceedingly short and stubby fingers over a grinning monkey carved entirely of rose-pink jade and seated on a white jade throne. Mutton fat jade, the Chinese called the pale stone. The piece was not the rarest or even the finest example of the stuff, but it was exquisitely carved and enormously desirable. Sam had been ecstatic when he found it in Shanghai.

“Not the sort of thing most housewives fancy in their front parlors, Mr…. er…Smith,” the auctioneer had said. “Not at all the popular taste.”

“Of course not. These are uncommon, choice pieces. I’ve been collecting them since I was a lad. They’re worth a king’s ransom, man. This piece here,” Sam quickly unwrapped an exquisitely carved dragon made of the rarest, most translucent pale green jadeite, “is thought to
date from the Han Dynasty. That makes it almost two thousand years old. Worth a fortune.”

“Only as much of a fortune as someone’s willing to pay, Mr. Smith. Not a penny more or less.” The auctioneer was re-wrapping the jade monkey in the bit of silk Sam had brought it in. “Dragons and monkeys. Not your average sort of Chinee curio. How much did you say you wanted to place as a reserve?”

“Sixty thousand,” Sam said. “For the entire collection. There are thirty-two pieces.” He’d held back only two, another Han piece, a carp carved of jadeite and one pink jade Ming Dynasty vase of which he was especially fond. “If we’re to sell them separately I would think a reserve of between one and two thousand on each. I’d take your advice on that. Separately or as a single collection, I mean. You’re the auction expert. I realize that.”

“My advice, Mr. Smith,” the auctioneer had finished wrapping the monkey god and pushed it back across the table, “as you’re calling yourself today, is that you take these back to wherever they came from. I couldn’t promise you’d raise more’n a hundred on the lot.”

He’d gone to three more auction houses and got pretty much the same response.

Nothing for it then. The twist of brown paper was his only reliable course of action.

“No season more beautiful than autumn, dear Jenny. Crisp and invigorating. A man can’t ask for more.” Wilbur Randolf left his hat and his gloves and his walking stick on the table by the front door and kissed the cheek of his mistress. “We should go out for supper later. It’s bound to be a glorious evening. Perhaps Delmonico’s. You’re always saying how much you want to go there.”

“Indeed I do, and you always say we must be discreet.”

“Fiddle on discretion, that’s what I say now. I feel a new man, my love. Entirely new.”

“Oh, and may I ask why that is, Wilbur dear?”

“You may not.” He accompanied the words with a swift slap on Jenny’s generous buttocks. “Suffice to say I have made arrangements that please me. And now I wish to be otherwise pleased.”

“Do you now? Just what do you have in mind, you big strong man? Must I be punished for all my naughty ways when you’re not here?” He hadn’t wanted to spank her for ages, but Jenny Worthington had gotten as far as she had by always knowing what a man desired before he did, and it seemed her instincts were still sound.

“Absolutely,” Wilbur was removing his frock coat as he spoke. “Severely punished. Now upstairs with you. And you will bring me the hairbrush yourself.”

Afterwards he wouldn’t let her be on top, though that too was the way things usually went these days. No, no, he insisted, she must lie yielding beneath him, and he would show her what a raging bull he could still be. He was, too, until he rolled off her and lay panting on the bed, red-faced and sweating.

“Oh my, Wilbur. That was really quite wonderful. I’d no idea you could still—”

“Frankly, neither had I. It’s peace of mind that does it, Jenny. But I think we must forego a trip to Delmonico’s this evening. I’m not up to it.”

“Not to worry, dear heart. I’ve everything ready for a nice supper. What you need now is a nice cup of tea. Put the life back in you.”

Wilbur agreed that it would and that he’d rest up here a bit while she went down and got the food ready. “Ring your little bell when everything’s prepared and I’ll come down.”

Fifteen minutes later Jenny rang and rang and wondered if the tea would be more likely to taste odd if it cooled. “Do come, Wilbur,” she called. “Everything is ready.”

In the end she went upstairs to get him. Wilbur lay on the bed staring at the ceiling. Not moving and definitely not breathing. But he was smiling.

Jenny left Wilbur where he was and dumped the pot of tea outside where the chamber pots were usually emptied. Then she went upstairs
and got Wilbur dressed. Quickly, before he stiffened. That done, she summoned the copper now on duty on her stretch of Bleecker Street. Fearless Flannagan, as it happened—or to put it more accurately, as she had arranged with the alderman who served her district. None of her doing that Fearless had been one of the first men hired by Tammany as soon as they set about forming the new force of city police. But once that happened, well, Jenny had never been one to let an opportunity pass her by.

“I’ve gotten him dressed, Fearless, but you’ll have to get him back to his house in Washington Square. Then go up to Fourteenth Street and tell his daughter he’s passed. Better coming from you than from me.”

“No doubt about it,” she would say later, remembering that smiling corpse, “Wilbur Randolf died a happy man.” That was not, however, what she said to Sam Devrey. To him she described a horrific scene of agony and screams. “What I went through,” she said, sniffling and dabbing at her eyes. “It’s worth every penny, Mr. Devrey. Every penny.” That last spoken while she made Sam’s eight thousand in ready money, coin and paper in a small leather pouch, disappear down the front of her dress. “It was absolutely dreadful. Now I’m without my dearest friend and support, but you’ve got what you wanted.”

“So have you, Mrs. Worthington,” Sam said. “So have you.”

“As security, Mr. Belmont, the deeds to two properties. Numbers thirty-seven and thirty-nine Cherry Street.” Sam didn’t like coming to the Jews for money, but he saw little choice. It had to be someone he knew was not in Astor’s pocket.

August Belmont, a Prussian by birth, was the Rothschilds’ man. Belmont had arrived in New York in May of 1837 just as the panic broke and the price of everything was tumbling, long before his employers back in Europe knew what was afoot in the New World. Within a day and on his own initiative the twenty-two-year-old Belmont began buying depressed bank notes and securities, using the Rothschilds’ credit and gambling on their approval. It came. Fulsome praise, in fact, and a salary
of ten thousand a year. These days Belmont, still in his twenties and ensconced in a Wall Street office, traded both for the Rothschilds and in his own name.

“And these properties are worth…What do you imagine, Mr. Devrey?”

“Twenty-five, possibly thirty thousand.”

“Less, I think.” Belmont’s English was almost without accent. “Cherry Street is not the best part of town. But you are asking for a loan of sixty thousand. That is correct, no?”

“It is.”

Belmont smiled. “I know your reputation as an astute man of business, Mr. Devrey. So I am sure there is other collateral, something you have not thus far mentioned.”

Sam was not such a fool as to offer the jade. A man of August Belmont’s perspicacity would immediately recognize the real value of the collection. And there was no way he would ever get it back once Belmont had his hands on it. And thanks to Sam’s daring and Jenny’s greed, he need not pay such a huge price to get what he needed. “There is another house, Mr. Belmont. Number three East Fourteenth Street. At the corner of Fifth Avenue. It is worth considerably more. I will produce the deed to it shortly.”

“I see. May I ask why you did not bring it this morning? Along with these others.”

“The Fourteenth Street house was a gift—or rather the promise of a gift—to my wife from her father, on the occasion of our marriage. My father-in-law has just died. My wife is his only heir. Therefore, as her husband, I will acquire the deed, which will come into my possession in the next week or two, as soon as the will goes through probate and his affairs are settled. When it does, I will give it to you. But if the venture in which I’m interested is to go profitably forward, I need the cash now.”

“And your late father-in-law”—Belmont glanced at the notes Devrey had prepared for him, though Sam had the feeling he already knew much of what they contained—“was Mr. Wilbur Randolf. A landlord as well as the proprietor of a leather goods firm.”

“That’s a rather modest description of Mr. Randolf’s position. He had a virtual lock on the whole of the trade in leather in the town.”

“Yes, I believe I have heard that. But you, Mr. Devrey, have no interest in leather, I think. And no particular expertise in the details of your late father-in-law’s enterprises.”

“That’s correct. I’m in shipping.”

“Devrey’s Shipping. Yes, of course. So the leather business will…”

“That remains to be seen. What counts, Mr. Belmont, is that once my wife inherits I will not require additional funds. It is to provide the funds I need now that I’m coming to you.”

“On the strength of your…or perhaps I should say your wife’s expectations.”

“My wife. Just as you say. That is a technicality, is it not?”

“It is.” Belmont reached for his checkbook. “Twenty-one days, Mr. Devrey. Then payment in full with twenty percent interest.”

Extortion. Nonetheless. “Done, Mr. Belmont.” Sam relaxed for the first time since he’d walked into the office.

Carolina had known Gordon James all her life. He’d been her father’s attorney for as long as she could remember. He always came to the house to deal with Papa’s affairs. This day was no different. They sat in Papa’s front parlor, the one with the long windows looking out on Washington Square Park. The trees were all bare now. Soon the branches would be frosted with snow. Then it would be spring again. Life went on as it always did, except that poor Papa was in his grave.

“Probate in this matter will be more than usually swift,” James said, looking across at the couple. Carolina was pale, a bit tired-looking, the lawyer thought. Mourning didn’t suit her. As for her husband, Sam Devrey looked to James like a vulture. Black suit, white shirt, and white stock. Handsome when young, he was growing gaunt as he aged. His nose seemed sharper as his cheeks became more sunken. A bird of prey waiting to pounce. Well, Mr. Devrey, we shall see about that.

“Wilbur Randolf’s will is exceedingly simple and very clear,” the lawyer said. “In fact, he remade it shortly before he died.”

“Remade,” Sam said. “What was there to alter? My wife is his only heir.”

“Not exactly, Mr. Devrey.”

Good Christ Jesus, what if Wilbur Randolf left a bundle to Jenny Worthington after all? “But—”

James waved away the interruption and cleared his throat. “If you’ll permit me to continue.” He knew he was drawing it out longer than he needed to. Hell, he’d really had no reason to arrange this formal reading, the document was plain enough. He could have let Carolina know how things stood and been done with it. He’d done it this way because he suspected it’s how Wilbur would have wanted it. Wilbur couldn’t abide Sam Devrey, not these last few years. It would have given him enormous pleasure to see the man squirm. “I’m pleased you brought young Master Zachary with you, Carolina my dear.”