City of Promise (22 page)

“Sign here,” the lawyer said. “You on the left side, Mrs. Brannigan. Mr. Turner on the right. All three copies, please.”

Josh waited for Eileen to sign and pass him the documents, one after the other. Each time he added his signature and passed the document back to Jeremy Duggan in turn.

For Josh that was the least understandable thing in this whole business. He remembered the day he’d first met Eileen Brannigan. With Mollie in the Tombs. That’s when he’d first heard Duggan’s name. He was the lawyer who somehow had not shown up to bail out his client, even though her arrest was front-page news. Josh asked about that the night of the urgent meeting Eileen requested, the one he was not to mention to Mollie. “Of course if this is what you want, I’ll do it. You’ve earned the right to a formal agreement, Aunt Eileen.”

After four months of marriage Josh was accustomed to calling her that, but not to how agitated she seemed on that occasion. Or to his sense that something had impaired her usually excellent judgment. “I’ll do whatever you like, as I said, but why use Duggan to draw up the papers? I seem to recall both you and Mollie thinking he was somehow in the pocket of whoever set you up for that phony arrest in the first place. I can recommend an attorney who—”

“I need this done quickly, Josh. And it’s a simple matter. I’m told such agreements are created every day.”

He’d had no argument to counter that then, and no reason now to think Duggan hadn’t done this exactly the way Eileen wanted it and Josh had agreed it should be. He’d read every word of each copy of the document. Eileen Brannigan nee O’Halloran had a twenty percent interest in the St. Nicholas Corporation, which corporation was established according to the laws of the state of New York for the business of building and managing real estate. It took less than half a page. Pretty sweeping he knew. He could have demanded it be hedged around with whereofs and theretofores and
excluding and not excluding. All the lawyer talk that some would argue—Zac for a certainty, his mother probably as well—would protect his interests in the future. Josh was not so inclined. Eileen Brannigan had handed him large amounts of money on nothing but his word. If for some reason she needed that formalized now, then so be it.

Duggan was a small man with a considerable paunch, to which he unwisely drew attention by draping a heavy gold watch chain across the expanse. He had as well an unfortunate, ferretlike face, with too-close-together brown eyes and a thin and pointed nose. A weasel if he’d ever seen one, Josh decided. But he seemed competent enough. The lawyer witnessed one signature. His clerk, a wraithlike figure who seemed to materialize whenever he was needed and disappear thereafter, witnessed the other. “Done,” Duggan said. “Is there anything else, Mrs. Brannigan?”

“Nothing, Mr. Duggan. You will keep one copy here, I presume? In my file?”

“Exactly so, Mrs. Brannigan.”

“Excellent. And I have my copy and my nephew has his. Good day to you, gentlemen.”

She nodded to Duggan and his clerk and stood up. Josh did as well, and offered her his arm. Eileen took it and they walked out of the office on William Street and into the late autumn sunshine. “I’ve got the phaeton, Aunt Eileen. I’ll take you home.”

“Thank you, Joshua. I’d prefer a hansom if you don’t mind.”

Holding him, he thought, at arm’s length. Much as she had seemed to do since this business began. “As you wish, Aunt Eileen.”

Then, after he’d handed her up into the cab, a moment before it pulled away, she leaned out the window and lay her hand aside his cheek. “All for the best, Josh. I promise.”

She was gone too quickly for him to reply.

Eileen waited a few minutes while the hansom struggled through the crush of downtown traffic, then leaned out and looked back to be sure she could no longer see her new nephew. Convinced there was no sign of him she pulled her head back into the cab and lowered the window separating her from the driver. He bent his head toward her. “Not University Place,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind. Fifth Street, please. And Avenue A.”

“So,” Ganz said, gazing at the document Eileen had laid on the table where her niece had spread out Eileen’s bracelets and rings and peacock brooch. “You have been quick, Mrs. Brannigan. I am pleased that you recognize the urgency of the situation.”

He reached for the paper, but she kept her gloved hand on it. “This is not yours, Mr. Ganz. It is mine.”

“I have no doubt, Mrs. Brannigan. I was simply trying to get a better look at the signature of the witness.” He leaned down. “It is that of Mr. Jeremy Duggan, I can see.”

“It is. I had him draw up these papers, exactly as you instructed.”

“Excellent, madam. You are a woman with whom it is a pleasure to do business. Everything as promised. I too have had the appropriate document drawn.” Ganz reached into a drawer and produced yet another piece of paper. “This one states that you make over to me fifty percent of your interest in the St. Nicholas Real Estate Corporation. We must both sign it. I have two witnesses available, my maid and my cook. Upstairs.” He started to rise. “Neither of them can read, but they make their mark and that’s—”

“Not so fast, Mr. Ganz. I am not ready to sign anything just yet. I have kept my part of our bargain. It is time for you to keep yours.”

“I promised,” Ganz said, “to give you information that would nullify the threat Mr. Theodore Paisley represents to you and yours.”

“So you did. That’s what I’m waiting for.” Eileen folded the document signed by herself and Joshua and placed it in the black faille pocket clipped to the waist of her elegant suit of gray Donegal tweed.

“I have it right here.” Ganz withdrew something else from the drawer, an envelope this time. It wasn’t sealed.

Eileen took it. “I presume I’m to open this?”

“Indeed,” with another nod of his head. “Please, Mrs. Brannigan. Go right ahead.”

There was a single small bit of paper inside. Eileen withdrew it, putting the envelope on the table before she unfolded what it had contained. She read what it said, glanced up at the pawnbroker, then back at the paper that she might read the words a second time.
READ
THE
TIMES
ON
WEDNESDAY
. Written in block capitals. Today was Monday.

“So,” Ganz said quietly.

“So . . . That’s all you can say? I presume that is when Mr. Paisley intends to publish his despicable—”

Ganz shook his head and held up his hand. “No, no, Mrs. Brannigan. Forgive me for interrupting, but your presumption is not correct.”

“I see. What then is the correct interpretation of this . . .” Eileen put the scrap of paper on the desk, as if it were somehow contaminated. “This unpleasant missive.”

“It is exactly the information I promised, Mrs. Brannigan. You need only follow the instructions and you will see that you have no further cause for alarm.”

“This is unacceptable, Mr. Ganz. Totally unacceptable. We had an agreement.”

“Indeed we had, Mrs. Brannigan. You have kept your part of the bargain, as you said. I can assure you I have kept mine. Why would I not? After you and I sign that paper,” nodding to the statement that Eileen Brannigan made over to Solomon Ganz one half of her holdings in Josh’s company, “it will be as much in my interest as yours to protect your nephew’s business.”

That was true. But what he was offering as payment for his participation was virtually nothing. Teddy Paisley had shown himself able to do her great harm. Sol Ganz had somehow found out about that and come to her with a story that revealed he knew not just that Teddy was her
mortal enemy, but things about her nephew-in-law that, though perfectly innocent, could be interpreted as damning. Never more so than in Teddy’s hands. Now the pawnbroker insisted this cryptic and uninformative note somehow protected Josh and thus Mollie.

“Unacceptable.” This time she mouthed the word softly to herself, knowing even as she did so that she had little choice but to accept whatever Solomon Ganz was offering because however slim a hope it might be, it was the only one available.

Eileen had tried every way she knew, used every ounce of influence she possessed, to neutralize Teddy. She’d been doing so for years, never with more determination than during the last few days. Nothing she could do had been effective. Teddy was a businessman with small interests in a great many different activities. No one of them was sufficiently important to him to make crippling it of sufficient importance to control his behavior. Shut off one source of his income and he had a dozen others. No one she knew, no one she could imagine, had such a reach as to systematically interdict Teddy’s activities one after the other until every one of them was destroyed. At least not on the say-so of Eileen Brannigan.

READ
THE TIMES
ON
WEDNESDAY
.

Five words. In block letters written in black ink. On a sheet of tissue-thin paper without any identification. It was nothing. But it was all she had. She felt the unmistakable sensation of someone walking over her grave. And possibly—God help her—Mollie’s.

A quill pen sat in a brightly polished silver holder on Sol Ganz’s table. Eileen reached for it. “Summon your witnesses, Mr. Ganz.”

It was at last Wednesday.
The
Times
lay folded on the table in front of her. Eileen had been staring at it for nearly half an hour. She was unable to open it.

What if there was nothing? What would she do then? Go running back to Ganz yelling “You tricked me”? What good would that do?

What if he had not tricked her, simply failed in whatever he’d attempted. Some sort of preemptive scandal probably. Something that would so blacken Teddy Paisley’s name as to nullify his accusations concerning Josh.

What could do that?

A dozen things. New Yorkers sought out scandal almost as avariciously as they chased profit. Whatever it was, they would pounce on it. Devour it. Shun the object of the scandal. Make him or her an outcast.

Until when?

Until they forgot. New Yorkers inevitably forgot. They moved on to the next exciting thing.

But Ganz had been so positive. So sure. And, as he pointed out, it was in his best interest now. As well as hers.

Perhaps Teddy Paisley was to be implicated not in a scandal but a crime. Sol Ganz was a member of a profession that had close ties to the underworld, to the worst gangsters and thieves. He might not be a fence, but he doubtless knew plenty of them.

A crime could send Teddy to jail. Perhaps for years. Maybe for life. That had been a fantasy of Eileen’s back when he first announced her background to the city and nearly brought her down. Certainly she’d thought of it again when he sent her to the Tombs on a trumped-up pickpocket charge. She’d had no idea how to arrange that then and she didn’t know now. Possibly Sol Ganz did.

Eileen took the paper in hand and unfolded it. She was in her sitting room, beside a lively fire, listening to a cold rain beat against her windows. She lay the paper on her lap and scanned the first page. Shipping news mostly. A story about a diplomatic mission to Spain. And inside, on the next page, a discussion of the proposed Amnesty Act, restoring the civil rights of rebellious Southerners now that the war had been over for nearly six years.