City of Promise (39 page)

Frankie Miller operated out of Roach’s Tavern on the bottom end of the Bowery. Used to be where hogs and cattle raised on farms in Queens or Brooklyn came across to be slaughtered and sold in New York City markets. Place had been the Bull’s Head Tavern in those days, but that trade was dead. First the Erie Canal, then the expansion of the railroads, made it easy to bring in beef and pork from bigger and better spreads in the West. Butchers were still a vital part of a city, but these days the purveyors and slaughterers congregated on the other side of town.

The portion of the Bowery to which Josh came in search of Frankie Miller was now a no-man’s land, hovering in the shadow of the colossus
rising a short distance away. The half-built Manhattan tower of what everyone called the Brooklyn Bridge already cast a perpetual pall over Roach’s Tavern.

Mr. Roach, however, seemed to be living in the past. A taxidermist’s steer stood at the entrance to the taproom, the beast’s hide mangy and moth-eaten, and both glass eyes lost over time. “Blind as well as deballed,” Miller said. “But you can’t expect old Roach to stuff one of his namesakes and put it by the door. What can I do for you, Mr. Turner? Everything all right at the foundry and the warehouse?”

“Everything is fine at both locations, Mr. Miller. Your men do an excellent job as far as that goes.”

Miller’s eyes narrowed. “What I hear you saying, Mr. Turner, is that maybe it doesn’t go far enough. What’s on your mind?”

Josh looked around. A pair of drinkers stood out of earshot at the far end of a long and heavily scarred wooden bar. There was no one else. “I want to know what happened when your man drove my wife home from Mama Jack’s place. Eddie somebody.”

“Eddie the Babyface.”

“Yes, he’s the one.”

“There was a small fuss of some sort,” Miller said. “But Eddie saw the troublemaker off. Nothing came of it.”

“Something indeed came of it. My wife nearly died. She’s still quite ill.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Turner.”

Josh had the impression Miller knew all about Mollie’s illness. There didn’t seem to be much he did not know. “This fuss you mentioned,” Josh asked, “what was it exactly?”

“Somebody followed Babyface and your wife. Took a few shots.”

“At Babyface?”

Miller shook his head. “The way I hear it, Eddie’s sure Lupo was after Mrs. Turner.”

“Good God, why should anyone want to shoot my wife?”

“I got no idea why, Mr. Turner. That’s your business. I figured if you
wanted to talk to me about it you’d bring it up. Only thing I know is Tony Lupo was after her.”

The only conceivable explanation was that somehow Clifford was behind it. It happened, after all, at precisely the same time the bastard was making his move on the foundry. Could be part of a larger scheme for taking over Josh’s business—leave him a grieving widower as well as tie him up in endless litigation. Or perhaps Zac was right, Clifford’s real aim was to exert further pressure on Zac and the assets he controlled. “This Lupo, I take it he’s a gunman for hire. Rather like your men.”

“Not exactly. Tony Lupo’s head of the biggest of the Sicilian gangs. The Eye-ties I told you about. From Mulberry Bend.”

“And it was he himself, you’re quite sure?”

“Eddie the Babyface wouldn’t make a mistake about that, Mr. Turner. He knows Tony Lupo. We all do. Kind of fellow, once you see him you don’t forget. Always dressed in the best. Tall. Good-looking. Wears an eyepatch, but a lady’s man despite that.”

Before her second son took himself off to war, Josh’s mother entertained the notion he might study at Princeton in New Jersey, as Zac had done. It was Nick who suggested Carolina’s expectations were unrealistic. “He’s barely surviving at the Trinity School. Frankly, if it were not for Zac having excelled in his day, and Simon looking to do quite well, I think I’d long since have been invited to educate Josh elsewhere.”

His lack of fitness for university had made Josh’s romantic notion of signing up with the cavalry less outrageous than it might have been. But however poor a student he’d been, Trinity had managed to cram a certain amount of Latin into his head.
Lupus
, he knew, was the Latin word for wolf. Italian being the modern language closest to Latin, it didn’t take a lot of imagination to get from lupus to
lupo.
So Tony Lupo and Anthony Wolf, or Wolfe as he’d insisted it be spelled, might
well be the same person with an Italian name translated into English. Add to that the presence of an eyepatch and it seemed certain.

Josh couldn’t remember any more about the man who’d come to look at the flats in the St. Nicholas, but never actually took one. Fortunately Mollie kept very complete records.

“ST. NICHOLAS FLATS—PROSPECTIVE TENANTS,”
she’d written on the cover of the ledger. Every inside page was filled now he’d rented all but three of the units, but Josh had no need to thumb through them to find what he wanted. Wolfe had been with the initial group of potential lessees who arrived at the building that Saturday after the storm. His name was on the first page. Two children and a third on the way, Josh read. Living with his in-laws on Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue.

Nonetheless, over an hour combing both sides of that block produced no sort of connection. “The gentleman I’m looking for lives with his wife’s family,” Josh explained repeatedly. “They have two children and possibly a third. A newborn. Or will have soon. And he wears an eyepatch. I simply want to ask him some questions.”

No one knew anyone in the neighborhood who met the description, whether the name was Lupo or Wolfe.

“Tony Lupo,” Josh said. “Head of some sort of gang from Mulberry Bend.”

“And he shot at Mollie?” Zac looked incredulous.

“So I’m told by Frankie Miller.”

“In God’s name, why?”

Josh paused, choosing his words with some care, “I suspect he might have been put up to it by Trenton Clifford.”

“Going after you, in other words, to get at me.”

“Possibly. Don’t look like that. It’s not your fault.”

“It is rather. I shouldn’t have given Clifford any reason to think I might go along with—”

Josh dismissed the words with a gesture. “No point in dwelling on that. Anyway, I know you don’t credit my business with much, but I promise you it’s going to be worth a fair bit someday soon. I believe Clifford’s of the same opinion. He might have been seeking simply more leverage over me.”

“Look, I didn’t mean to disparage—”

“I know. That’s not why I’m here. I was thinking you might ask around. Perhaps some of your waterfront people might know something.”

Zac nodded. “They might. And if they do,” he said quietly, “what will it gain you?”

Josh stood up, pacing the office without the aid of his cane, coming down hard on the peg every other step, so each time he moved off the colorful Turkey rug there was the staccato beat of wood on wood. “I want to know,” he said. “I realize it won’t change anything as far as Mollie and I . . . our future . . .” He saw Zac’s sympathetic nod and knew Simon must have told him that Josh and Mollie would now be forever childless, “but I want it nonetheless.”

“I’ll make some inquiries. Give me a day or two.”

“Excellent. Thank you.” Josh lifted his topper and his cane from his brother’s desk and started for the door, pausing just after he opened it. “One other thing, probably not relevant. A while back a man came to see the flats at the St. Nicholas. Happens he also wore an eyepatch, and he gave his name as Anthony Wolfe. Lupo’s Italian for wolf, so I thought maybe—”

“Good God.” Zac stood up and leaned forward supporting his weight on his knuckles. “Anthony Wolfe, you say? With an eyepatch?”

Josh closed the door. “You know him don’t you?”

“Not exactly. I saw him. Once. At a meeting Clifford convened to get backers for his scheme.”

“Did you speak with him?”

“No, nothing like that. I didn’t want anyone to know I was there. Told Clifford it would start talk about the stability of Devrey Shipping.
Actually, I didn’t want it to look as if I was ready to participate in his scheme. So . . .” Zac sounded a bit sheepish. “I hid behind a screen.”

“Pity,” Josh said. “You might know more if you spoke to him. As it is . . . Well, what did you think of him? Could it be the same man as came to look at the flats in the St. Nicholas?”

Zac shook his head. “It’s hard to credit it. He was slick, very well dressed. Well spoken. Not the sort to live in a place like your—Sorry, but you know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“And he certainly didn’t strike me as an immigrant criminal.”

“I don’t think,” Josh said, “the two words necessarily go together.”

“No, of course not. But . . . The fellow at the meeting, I presumed he had money. Everyone appeared to have been invited for the purpose of forming a consortium. But thinking about it now, whenever Wolfe opened his mouth it turned out to help Clifford make one or another point.”

“So acting for Clifford somehow,” Josh said, his face darkening with anger. “On both occasions.”

The next day the brothers went back to Fourteenth Street near Seventh Avenue, but though they prowled around for half an hour, there was no sign of Anthony Wolfe. Dead end. At least for the moment.

Josh might have spent longer on the problem had Eileen Brannigan not changed her advice and shifted his focus.

Eileen gave him lunch on University Place. It was, Josh noted, four weeks to the day since Mollie had lost the child. “I take it,” she said, “your wife remains unwell.”

She visited her niece three or four times a week; she was fully aware of the state of Mollie’s health. Nonetheless, Josh decided to allow her to guide the conversation. “Dr. Thomas says she is healing well, but that her spirits remain low.”

“And she still refuses to see you?”

Another thing he was sure she knew. “She does not wish me to visit her sickroom, no.”

“That must be difficult for you.”

“It is.” He was about to say something about his affection for Mollie when Francie Wildwood popped into his head. He shook off the vision and blamed it on some vestigial aura emanating from the walls of this onetime brothel. He’d been married for less than a year and been entirely faithful. He fully intended to remain so. Besides, that’s not what he’d meant. “I would like to share her sorrow,” he said. “It’s mine as well, Aunt Eileen.”

She said nothing, only lay her hand over his. Joshua had the extraordinary feeling he might weep. He couldn’t remember doing so since he was perhaps six. Not even when the farmer’s wife was hacking at his leg with the cleaver she used on the carcasses of her stuck pigs.

“More rhubarb pie, Joshua?”

“No, thank you, Aunt Eileen.”

She got up and carried the pie dish and the silver server to another table. By the time she returned to sit across from him, Joshua was composed. “It’s time,” Eileen said, “you did something to bring Mollie out of herself.”

“You’re the one who told me not to force the issue.”

“I did, Josh. Now I’m suggesting an alternative approach. She must do something other than sit in a chair in her room and brood. I was hoping you might think of some activity that requires her involvement.”