House of Thieves (30 page)

“So, Cross's brother is a Pinkerton.” Oddly, Kent seemed more amused than angry.

“A Pinkerton who killed Culver and took our gold!” Brady said.

“It was Cross who tipped them off this morning. It had to be,” Kent said. “I thought he was the traitor after the bank job, but I wasn't sure. Now…”

“I told you Cross was the snitch from the very beginning, but you never believed me,” Brady said. He sounded hurt.

Kent walked to the window of his apartment at the Dakota and looked out at the park. He never tired of the view, that vast expanse of green, with people and carriages coming and going. It was like living in the country without having to leave the city. When he was upset, it always had a calming effect on him.

Grimly, he tied his red silk dressing gown more tightly around his waist and sat down on the sofa. Millicent, his wife, appeared at the sliding doors of the library.

“Dinner at eight. Chicken à la Maryland, your favorite,” she said.

Kent smiled and raised his hand in a gesture of approval.

“Will Mr. Brady be staying for dinner?”

“I'm afraid not, dear. He has some urgent business to attend to.”

Millicent nodded, waved good-bye to Brady, and left quietly.

“Cross has played us for fools. He knew I wouldn't let him go, so he bided his time and sold us out to his brother,” Kent said bitterly. “That's how he knew about the gold shipment.”

“Cross has to die,” Brady said. He stood before Kent, posture stiff with determination.

“Along with his entire family,” Kent said, looking up at Brady to make sure he understood his orders. “That's what I promised him would happen if he betrayed us—and I never break a promise.”

“It'll be my pleasure.”

“It's a shame, though. We had a very lucrative run with Mr. Cross. From a business standpoint, I'll be sorry to see him go. But you know, Mr. Brady, even if he didn't tip them off, with a Pinkerton for a brother, he's still too big a risk to keep on.”

“What
about
his brother?”

“I'm afraid he's become a liability as well.”

• • •

“I wanted to thank you for your information about the gold robbery. Kidder, Peabody & Co. was most generous with their reward. It's far more than Fidelity National Bank paid for your information. And it's in gold, waiting for you in the usual location.”

“I'm glad to hear that. Gold is the sovereign of sovereigns.” The voice emerged from the darkness some fifty feet away.

“If you could please provide me with more details about the robbery, I'd be very grateful. Who was involved, for instance.”

“I'd be glad to. Come forward, and we'll talk about it.”

Robert Cross stood in the Stygian darkness of a storage pier that stretched out over the East River. He couldn't see a thing, but he knew the source of the voice was directly in front of him. Standing very still, he tried to discern whether there was anyone else on the pier. He could hear only the sound of the river, beating steadily against the pier's wooden pilings below.

Slowly, Robert walked forward, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark. His feet kept shuffling through puddles, bumping into piles of trash and pieces of timber. He kept his hand on the trigger of his revolver—just in case his informant turned uncooperative. About twenty feet away, he could make out the outline of a figure.

The voice spoke again. “I can give you their names and tell you where to find them—for more gold, of course.”

Robert paused, straining his eyes to get a better view of the man. The fellow remained indistinguishable, a mere black outline against the greater blackness of the pier. Robert inched forward, splashing inadvertently into a puddle. He felt a sudden jolt; it rocked his entire body as if he'd been hit in the chest with a two-by-four. But he didn't fall down. He stood, stunned, as a strange sensation rushed through him.

Finally, he fell face-first into the puddle. His lifeless eyes stayed open, as wide as if he'd seen a terrifying sight.

From out of the shadows, Ned Brady appeared. He walked to an electric panel on the wall from which a long length of wire extended into the puddle and pulled the short metal lever up. Bending over Robert's body, he reached down to his neck and felt for a pulse. Nothing.

“Amazing thing, electricity,” Brady said. His words echoed in the silence of the pier.

He picked up the body by the armpits and dragged it to the end of the warehouse, dropping it with a dull thud. Brady pulled up a trapdoor in the wood floor. Below the opening, the current of the East River flowed past in a muffled hush. Occasionally, a dead rat or piece of garbage passed by.

Brady was truly sorry to see the Pinkerton go. He had been a very lucrative source of extra income. Kent had constantly brushed off Brady's requests for a bigger cut on the jobs, refusing to acknowledge the value of his skills or his long service to the organization. But far more than that indignity, Brady loathed being bossed around by an upper-class swell, especially in front of the other men. Kent was rich and educated, so
of
course
he always knew better. Brady hated Kent's guts, but he'd kept his volcanic temper in check and bided his time for an opportunity for revenge. And it had paid off handsomely—at least for a while.

With some difficulty, Brady lifted the body and dropped it into the opening. There was the barest sound of a splash. The Pinkerton's body was silently caught up by the rush of water, and in a second, it was gone.

“You know he means to kill us all.”

“Yes, George, I'm aware of that,” Cross said, his voice devoid of emotion as he ran his hand through his brother's matted hair.

Robert was laid out on a marble morgue slab in the basement of police headquarters at 300 Mulberry Street. The expressionless coroner stood behind Cross and his son. One could tell that he'd silently watched the grieving relatives of the dead hundreds, if not thousands, of times before.

“I remember when I told him that I wanted to be an architect, but our father wouldn't hear of it. Father said I should go into business and become rich, so
I
could boss the architects around. Robert told me that was nonsense, that I should follow my heart and go to Paris to study like I wanted.”

“He was such a good man. I wish he'd come to New York earlier.” George shook his head, placing his hand on his father's shoulder. “Uncle Robert loved being part of the family.”

The coroner edged closer to Cross and said in a quiet voice, “Sir, may I ask you to identify the body?”

“This is Robert Cross, my brother,” Cross said heavily.

Nodding, the doctor stretched the white sheet over Robert's head. As Cross and George turned away, an attendant handed them a sack containing Robert's personal effects and his Smith and Wesson .38-caliber pocket revolver.

“What should we do, Father? Tell the Pinkertons?” George asked, nodding toward the glass doors of the room. On the other side stood half a dozen of Robert's colleagues, all of whom had angry, vengeful looks on their faces. No one murdered a Pinkerton and got away with it.

Cross turned to look at them. “No. This is a family matter now. I must take care of this myself, George.”

George blocked his path, staring incredulously at his father.

“You can't take on Kent. He may seem like a gentleman, but he's an animal.”

“I know that all too well,” Cross said, images of the three murders he'd witnessed flashing vividly through his mind. “That's why he must be dealt with very quickly.”

“But you can't do it yourself,” George said. “You're no match for him and his men.”

“I have no choice. I can't stand by and let him murder the rest of my family.”

“Then let me help. Please, Father. I caused Uncle Robert's death—I caused all this trouble. This is my fault. You must let me help. You can't do this alone.”

• • •

With her face just inches from his, Helen said in a barely audible voice, “It wasn't an accident, was it, John?”

Cross walked to the parlor window. Outside, a fruit wagon trudged slowly up Madison Avenue. The driver's head was bent over, as if he'd fallen asleep at his post. His brown nag also looked as if it were sleepwalking.

Without turning to face Helen, he said, “No. Robert was murdered.”

Helen took a step back, grabbing at the heavy, olive-green velvet curtains that shrouded the tall windows. She said nothing for almost a minute. Then she placed her hand on her husband's.

Cross put his arm around her waist and drew her close. He was proud of Helen for standing up so well to the news. He'd told her immediately after he returned from the morgue. From their experiences in the past few months, he knew she wouldn't collapse to the floor in a faint or fly into hysterics. Rather, and as he expected, a steely calm came over her.

Traveling home in the carriage, Cross had realized that he'd never experienced the tragic, unexpected loss of a loved one. His parents and relatives had died of natural causes after a long life, which wasn't the same thing. No one he knew well had died in the Civil War, perished of a disease, or died in an accident. He wondered whether the insulated, elite world of New York society had enveloped him and his family, their cocoon of privilege protecting them from the cruelties of the world, at the hands of which average people always seemed to suffer. The grinding poverty, disease, and filth that plagued the residents of the Lower East Side and the Bowery, just two miles away, was something one occasionally read about in the newspapers. An unemployed laborer kills himself and his family because he doesn't want them to starve to death in their squalid tenement apartment. A homesick Irish housemaid is worked to death; she can't bear life anymore and drowns herself in the lake at Central Park. Almost every week, a person was run down in the street by a runaway horse or wagon. But the victims were never of the society set. People in his world seemed immune to the random cruelties of life—until now.

He'd looked at George then, sitting next to him in the carriage. Though losing Robert ripped his insides out, secretly he was glad that it hadn't been George—or any of his children. That loss would have been too much to bear. Just the thought made him feel ill.

And it made what he had to do next all the more urgent. He couldn't lose any more of his family.

“You know what you have to do,” Helen said, as if reading his mind. There was not a trace of emotion in her voice.

Cross stared at her for a few seconds, amazed at the fury in her beautiful dark eyes. It was almost as if flames were shooting out them.

“I have to think this out—and quickly.”

“No.
We
have to think this out,” she said.

He smiled at her. She buried her head in his chest and hugged him tightly.

“We can't fail at this, John.”

• • •

Cross knocked lightly on Charlie's door. Entering, he saw that his son's eyes were red and swollen. The boy had been crying since he'd heard the news from his mother. Across the hall, he could hear Julia sobbing in her room. Cross sat on the bed and put his arm around Charlie, who buried his head in his father's chest.

After a few minutes, Cross spoke. “Charlie, I need you and Eddie to do a little detective work for me this afternoon.”

Sniffling bravely, Charlie looked up into his father's eyes and nodded.

“I want you to follow some people and find out where they live.”

Cross waited an hour after the lights went out in the front apartment. Only then did he make his way into 181 Mott Street. It was almost 2:00 a.m. and raining. The street was deserted, save a few rats scurrying about in the gutter.

As he approached the building, he couldn't help noticing how nice its facade was.
An
inescapable
professional
habit
, he thought wryly. There was elegant Queen Anne detailing on the brickwork, quite unlike the usual tenement design, and three glass-and-wood doors. The center one offered entry to the tenement. Cross looked across the street at George, who stood in the doorway of the Italian grocery at 178 Mott Street. George looked from side to side down the street and nodded. The coast was clear.

Once inside, Cross hefted the burlap sack he carried and walked down the center hallway to the main stair in the middle of the building. One of the new dumbbell-style tenements, the building was pinched in the center to channel light and air into the interior apartments. Cross climbed the marble steps quietly, listening for the sound of anyone descending. On the third floor, he walked to the two bathrooms located opposite the stair. Indoor plumbing and running water were another innovation in the new design. Previously, one either went to a backyard outhouse or used a chamber pot that had to be emptied into the gutter.

Cross pushed open both lavatory doors. Neither was in use. The layout was the same on every floor, he knew: two bathrooms and two one-room apartments in the front and rear. He walked silently down the hall to the front right apartment. At the entry, he put his ear to the door and listened for almost a minute, then walked back down the hall and stopped by the gaslight mounted on the wall. Standing on tiptoes, he shut off the gas jet. Pulling a large coil of narrow-diameter rubber hose from the sack, Cross fastened one end to the gas nozzle, then began to unravel the coil and carry it back to the apartment door. Kneeling, he bent the end of the stiff hose into an arc and slid about six feet of it slowly into the gap at the bottom of the door.

After inserting the hose, he walked along the hallway, pushing its length flush against the baseboard, where it wouldn't be noticed. From the sack, he pulled out long strips of rag and began stuffing them tightly in the gaps around the door. It took almost five minutes. When he finished, he turned the gas jet on as far as it could go and returned to the stair, checking the bathrooms again before he descended.

Back in the street, he met George in the doorway.

“No one's come in or out,” George whispered.

Cross buttoned his jacket against the cold and leaned on the door of the grocery store. They waited in silence. Having discovered each other's secrets, a wall of shame separated father and son. They had not discussed what had happened since the confrontation at the gold wagon. It was too painful, and Robert's death had made it yet more unbearable. It seemed there was nothing to say.

After about a half hour, Cross checked his pocket watch.

“I think we can go,” he said.

“Maybe we should wait a bit longer,” George said worriedly.

“No, I think it will be all right,” Cross said, taking his son's arm and guiding him out onto the sidewalk.

“How'd you know where the bedroom was?” George asked.

“Nick Gillesheimer did the building. He's a friend of mine, and he showed me the drawings.”

They were almost to Kenmare Street when they heard an earsplitting explosion. Cross and his son spun and saw a fireball shoot out of the right front apartment windows on the third floor. A second later, a figure dove out the window, engulfed in flames, screaming its lungs out. The body landed on the sidewalk with a dull thud and lay there, burning away like a pile of kindling.

“That's a shame,” Cross said, shaking his head. “I'd wanted it to look like suicide. A nice peaceful death in one's sleep.”

Scores of people were running out of the buildings that surrounded 181 Mott Street. They watched the body burn in silence. Finally someone brought a blanket to douse the flames.

Fire bells began ringing off in the distance.

“Mr. Coogan must have woken up and wanted a smoke,” Cross said with a smile.