Legacy of Secrets (42 page)

She strode confidently from the room, dazzled by the thought of fifty whole dollars a month. It was a fortune and she knew for a fact it was ten dollars more than he had paid Mrs. Hoolihan. She would send twenty-five dollars each month to the Sheridans for the baby and still have twenty-five dollars left for herself. She could throw away the dead woman’s gray cotton dress and the ugly stiff black boots. She could buy decent clothes, good French soap, maybe even some cologne. And she would have a proper room of her own, with a proper bathroom shared only with the new cook, whom she herself would appoint. There would be no more scrubbing steps for her. It would almost be like she was mistress of the house. Especially with Mr. Adams being a bachelor. The thought lingered speculatively
in her mind as she hurried back to the kitchen where the mailman was just delivering the morning’s mail.

And there, right on top, was a letter addressed to herself. A fat, bulky letter, from Ciel.

D
AN’S EMPLOYER,
M
ICK
C
ORRIGAN,
was a bachelor, but as he told Dan many a time when business was slow and he fell to reminiscing, that did not mean he had never had a sweetheart. “My mistake was to leave her behind in Cork and come out here by meself, to try to make a new life for us,” he said with a huge, sorrowful sigh. “Oh, she was young, Daniel, me boy—just eighteen and as beautiful as a sunset over Bantry Bay. Sure and didn’t I survive the voyage on one of the first coffin ships sailing to America, when all else was dyin’ from the typhoid? And wasn’t my love the unlucky one, to stay home and die of the very same disease?”

Mick was in his sixties. He had wispy gray hair and rheumy eyes and the faded pallor of forty years of tenement living. Dan thought he was an unlikely candidate for youthful passion, but Mick still lit a candle in memory of his lost love every day in St. Stephen’s. And he told his story endlessly to anyone who would listen.

Mick shook his head sadly, busily measuring flour into small brown paper sacks, twirling them between his gnarled fingers to seal them. “And the irony is that me, a starvin’ Irish fella, built up a good business selling food to more starvin’ Irishmen.” Tears misted his faded eyes. “Sometimes, Daniel, I ask meself, will it never end?

“And that’s why, when I saw your hungry face outside me store every day, there was something about you reminded
me of myself. Sure and it brought it all back again,” he said mournfully. Placing his flat cap firmly on his head he grabbed his stick and hobbled to the door. “I’ll be back at two,” he called, heading as he did every morning at this hour for Hegarty’s Saloon on the corner of North Street, where he met his cronies and reminisced endlessly about “the old days” over a jar or two.

Dan picked up a cloth and began slowly to polish the battered pine countertop. He replenished the barrels of sugar and tea and potatoes; he stacked the harsh carbolic-smelling blocks of soap, counted the candles and rearranged the kindling wood. He tidied the meager display of cabbages and carrots and onions set out in boxes on the trestle outside, and in between times he served a few customers, marking their credit in Mick’s notorious ledger, because come Friday those who didn’t pay had their credit immediately cut off until the account was settled.

And all the time he was thinking he should be doing this for himself. Frustrated, he glared at the man walking into the store carrying a satchel on his back. “We don’t buy from travelers,” he said stonily as the man deposited his satchel on the floor and leaned wearily on the counter.

“It’s a glass of water I’m needin’,” he retorted. Taking out a red handkerchief he wiped his sweating forehead. “I’ve been walking all night, and I’m just about beat. I spent every last penny on a ‘bargain’ and now I don’t even have the price of a meal.”

Dan brought him a glass of water and said curiously, “And so what was the bargain that’s sending you into a pauper’s early grave?”

The man bent down and opened his satchel. He took out a steel pocketwatch and laid it on the counter between them. “Two hundred of them I bought,” he said mournfully. “From the customs seizure office. They were selling off confiscated goods dirt cheap and I thought I saw my opportunity. I paid fifty cents each one, a hundred dollars the lot. I saw myself selling them for a couple of dollars to the stores, but I guessed wrong. Nobody wants to buy. I put
my own money
and
my wife’s brother’s money into the scheme, and now I can’t even go home again for fear he’ll kill me for losin’ it all.”

He looked hopefully at Dan. “You wouldn’t care to purchase one yerself, would you?”

Dan stared thoughtfully at him. Figures with dollar signs jingled through his head like the ringing of a cash register and he said quickly, “I’ll do more than that. I’ll take the lot off your hands for fifty bucks.”

“Fifty bucks?” The man glared indignantly at him. “And didn’t I just tell you I paid one hundred for them?”

Dan shrugged indifferently. He turned away and began dusting his shelves. “Take it or leave it,” he said. “At least you could count your losses with your wife, instead of dying of hunger here on the streets of the North End.”

The man held out his hand. “I’ll take it,” he said.

Dan hesitated. “You’ll have to wait till later tonight for the money, but to seal the bargain, here’s four dollars on account.” The man pocketed the four dollars and swung his satchel over the counter. Telling Dan he would be back at seven that night for the rest of his money, he stepped jauntily out the door heading for the nearest bar to partake of a large ale and a plate of Irish stew.

Seeing his jauntiness Dan wondered worriedly whether he had just been taken. He picked up the watch from the counter and put it to his ear. It ticked merrily away and he sighed with relief. Taking a coin, he prized open the back and looked at the little cogs and wheels swinging briskly to and fro and around and around, and this time he smiled. He knew a bargain when he saw one.

He thought out his plan while he waited for Mick Corrigan to return. He no more had fifty dollars to his name than the next man in the North End, but he thought he knew where he might get it. When Corrigan returned promptly on the dot of two, Dan told him something urgent had come up and he needed an hour off. Removing his tradesman’s white apron, he put on his jacket and slicked his red curls down with a drop of water. Then he
shouldered the satchel and stepped briskly away in the direction of Prince Street.

It was a double irony that the man he was going to see on Prince Street was also a grocer. Thomas Keany was the Irish “boss” of the North End and a power in local politics. He had started his grocery store twenty-five years ago and had built it into the biggest in the area. A small room in back of the redbrick store served as his political headquarters, where the immigrants knew they could come at any time for the benefit of his advice. He was a big, bluff man with dark wavy hair and a walrus mustache, and the Irish trusted him with their secrets. They brought him their problems knowing they could rely on his help, and in return all he asked was their loyalty and their votes in the local elections.

Dan knocked on his door and was bidden to enter. Keany was busy with two other men, and Dan dumped his heavy satchel on the floor and stood, arms folded, patiently waiting until they finished their discussion. Keany shook hands with the men and turned his attention to Daniel. “How can I help you, lad?” he asked genially.

Dan took a pocket watch from his satchel and eagerly began his story of how he had a chance to buy them cheap. “It’s a steal,” he said triumphantly. “Only fifty dollars. And himself paid one hundred for them.”

Keany sat silently behind his big desk, looking at him over the steeple of his fingers. “A bargain is only a bargain when you can afford to pay for it,” he pointed out.

“It is,” Dan agreed solemnly. “But I’m a poor man and that’s why I’ve come to you for help.”

“Tell me about yourself,” Keany suggested, settling back in his chair to listen. And Dan told him the story of the shipwreck and their struggle for survival and he explained what he meant to do with the watches.

“I’ll become a tinker, going from town to town with a satchel on my back, selling my watches for profit—with no overhead except my own bootleather—so I can make enough to buy Corrigan’s store from him,” he said.

“And does Corrigan want to sell?”

Dan grinned confidently. “Not yet, he doesn’t. But he will. Once I talk him into it and show him the color of my money.”

“Even if you sell at a good profit, you’ll not make enough to pay for Corrigan’s store,” Keany pointed out.

“Then I’ll come to you for a loan of the rest,” Dan said triumphantly.

Keany laughed. The lad’s plan was as full of holes as a poor woman’s stocking, but he liked his brash eagerness and his confidence.

“I’ll lend you the fifty myself,” he said, reaching into his pocket, “because you’ve got more blarney than I’ve heard for a long time. And if you pull it off you can come to me about the loan to buy Corrigan’s shop, if Corrigan wants to sell.” He laughed again, thumping his fist loudly on the desk. “Dammit, boy, why in the world does an enterprising silver-tongued fella like yerself want to be a corner shopkeeper? You should be in politics.”

Dan pocketed the fifty and shook Keany’s hand. “Not me, sir,” he said, “it’s me brother Finn has the blarney needed for that game. But I’ll not be the owner of a corner shop for long. I’ll start with this one, then another, then another. I’ll have a whole chain of ’em, in Boston and Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago …” His blue eyes stared into the future as though he could already see the chain of shops stretching into infinity across America, and Keany shook his head, marveling.

“You’re a man of vision, and I wish you luck. Meanwhile you had better start selling those pocket watches so you can pay me back my fifty.”

“Yes, sir!” Dan picked up his satchel and strode to the door. He hesitated, then he turned and came back again. He took out a watch and laid it on the desk in front of Keany. “That’s for you, sir,” he said gratefully. “A gift. And I promise you that one day Dan O’Keeffe will replace that watch with one of pure gold.”

He strode back across the room and went out, closing
the door behind him. He paused, then opened it again. “And I’ll have it inscribed,” he added grandly. “To Thomas Keany. With thanks. Daniel O’Keeffe.” Nodding to himself, as though it were already an accomplished fact, he patted the fifty dollars in his pocket, shouldered his satchel, and strode back to Corrigan’s to give in his notice. Tomorrow he would be the first O’Keeffe to become a tinker.

F
INN WATCHED HIS BROTHER STRIDING
confidently away the next morning, his cap jauntily atop his red curls and his long legs covering the ground rapidly. He thought worriedly that it was almost winter and it was the wrong time for his brother to be changing his profession and becoming a traveler. And the freezing weather was no good for Rory either. He was coughing like a kennelful of sick dogs and some days he barely seemed to have the strength to set one foot in front of the other.

Still, he managed to keep on working, and Finn and Rory kept the Jameses’ coaches shined and the horses groomed. When Finn put on his gray coat with the flowing shoulder cape and the gray top hat with the curly brim and drove Mr. James to his office or to the railroad station to catch the train to New York, he knew there was not a finer turnout in the whole of Boston.

With each week that passed Rory grew sicker. Finn told him he should stay in bed but it was even colder at home than the stable yard, and besides Rory was too afraid of losing his job. So Finn left him sitting by the fire in the tackroom, shining up the bits and polishing the leathers, while he took on Rory’s jobs as well as his own. He came into work earlier and he left later every day, but the work was done and he made sure Mr. James had no cause for complaint against Rory.

Christmas came with no word from Dan, but Finn expected to see him walking back down the street with his profits bulging in his pockets any day now. On Christmas Eve he and Rory were invited into the house to sing carols
and then each was given a hamper of food and a five-dollar cash bonus. His heart filled with gratitude at their generosity, Finn stared around the garlanded hall, seeing how a rich man of Boston lived, and ambition flared in his heart. He was suddenly no longer satisfied to be Boston’s smartest coachman. He wanted a house exactly like this. He wanted to be a rich man even if he died achieving it. And in the season of peace and goodwill his heart burned with the desire for revenge on the Molyneux family.

Meanwhile, all he had besides his dreams were his job and a seven-by-nine-foot hovel in the North End that wasn’t a great deal different from the hovels his forebears had lived in.

New Year’s Eve brought a blizzard that obliterated the city overnight. The next morning Finn and Rory plowed knee-deep through the drifts, past unrecognizable white-covered landmarks. Rory coughed until he was red in the face and they stopped a dozen times to let him catch his breath. He was shaking with cold and sweating with fever, and Finn wrapped him in a plaid horse rug and sat him in front of the tackroom fire. He hurried to ask Cook for a mug of hot cocoa and coaxed Rory to drink it, and then he peeled off his jacket and set to tackling Rory’s jobs as well as his own.