City of Promise (44 page)

Zac still could not quite believe that his younger brother had predicted the chaos, and managed to somehow protect them from the worst of the carnage. “So,” he said over mugs of grossly inferior dark and cloudy brew in a taproom on Fifty-Second Street and Fourth that catered to the workers in the block-square Steinway Piano-forte Manufactory across the road, “what do you have in mind for your next miracle?”

Josh chuckled. “It wasn’t me. I told you. Mollie’s aunt tipped me wise. If it were not for Eileen Brannigan, I’d be in as much trouble as everyone else. I suppose I told you I didn’t at first believe her.”

“I’m glad you were persuaded.” Zac looked around. One of Frankie Miller’s boys was standing by the door. “The beer in this place is god-awful and it’s up here in the back of beyond. I wouldn’t think they’d need a bouncer.”

Josh saw the direction of his brother’s glance. “He doesn’t work for the taproom. He’s with me.”

Zac shook his head in wonder. “I spotted Frankie’s potential when he was nine, but you’ve made more use of him than I ever did.”

“He credits you with making him what he is today. Worships you. In the matter of underworld connections, I’m destined to be forever in your shadow.”

Zac did not rise to the bait. “Tell me why you believe you need a bodyguard.”

“First, not just me. I’m arranging for you to have full-time protection as well.”

“Josh, I don’t need—”

“Yes, you do.”

Zac recognized that tone. It was his younger brother when nothing would change his mind. “Why?”

“Because I mean for us both to do very well out of all this misery. Some people are bound to be jealous.”

“That seems to indicate a plan. Mind telling me exactly what it is?”

“Not at all,” Josh said. “We are going to buy as much of Manhattan as we can get our hands on.”

“Even Macy’s,” Rosie O’Toole said, “is beginning to feel the pinch.”

“Bad times for everyone,” Eileen agreed.

Rosie looked at her friend with some degree of speculation. It was early November and the nip of oncoming winter was definitely in the air. They were in a tea shop on Broadway and Seventeenth Street. Eileen wore a small fur over her dark purple wool suit; a mink appeared to have draped itself around her neck. The creature’s mouth gripped its own tail in the effort to keep Eileen Brannigan from feeling a chill. And when she lifted her cup Rosie saw that the customary array of rings yet sparkled on Eileen’s fingers. “Some of us,” Rosie said, “more than others.”

Eileen set the cup back on its saucer without bothering to take a sip. “Are you having difficulties, Rosie. I could help if—”

The offer stung more than its omission might have done. A little wave of spite rolled in from somewhere, and for once Rosie didn’t beat it back for fear of rupturing this generally satisfactory friendship. “Oh no, I am managing very well, thank you, Eileen. I have a skill, don’t forget. A talent I can always call on. I still see a few select clients who prefer made-to-measure, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know.” Eileen’s antennae were quivering. “What sort of clients might they be? Anyone I know?”

“Well . . . Perhaps some as you should know.”

Eileen sat back, aware that Rosie was dying to tell her whatever she’d made up her mind to reveal.

“Down on Bowling Green,” Rosie said. “That rooming house your nephew-in-law owns . . .”

“The family residence. Yes, what about it, Rosie?”

“The woman in charge is quite good-looking in her way. A statuesque sort. The blond hair’s peroxide, of course, but I must say it suits her. Has me make her a gown now and then. Pale rose satin the last one was, and cut so low I had to put in extra stays to make sure it held up.”

“I can attest to your being very good at that, Rosie. You always were. I rather doubt the Good Lord has made a bosom too big for you to keep it from spilling out.”

Rosie smiled. “That’s true, Eileen. I daresay He has not. But in the case of Mrs. Wildwood as she calls herself—”

“And what do you call her? Is she not Mrs. Wildwood?”

“Who can say? When they make themselves out to be a widow, well, it’s anyone’s guess, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is.”

“Francie Wildwood.” Rosie spoke the name, then paused to see if there was a reaction. There was not. “Your nephew-in-law has never mentioned her, I take it?”

“He has not.”

“I see. Well, according to Mrs. Wildwood, Mr. Turner is specially nice to her. Much nicer than he need be simply because he’s her employer.”

“And she,” Eileen said quietly, “is nice to him in return?”

The other woman nodded and reached for the teapot, taking on the role of hostess though, in the usual manner of these outings, it would be Eileen who called for the check and paid the bill.

Later, sitting and thinking about the information which she knew was probably true, Eileen decided to do nothing about it. It would not, she decided, make Mollie any more inclined to mend things with her husband. Far from it. As for Josh, Eileen thought it quite good of him to choose such a relatively discreet liaison.

17

M
OLLIE HAD SURVIVED
playing hostess at a second Thanksgiving dinner, thankful that this year as last, she was not required to make Christmas at 1060. It would, she thought, have been more than she could bear. Josh did have two large fir trees delivered; one for the drawing room and one for the help’s enjoyment downstairs in the kitchen precincts. Mollie left the decorating of both to Tess, and avoided looking at either lest the shades that lived in her heart materialize with their nonexistent toys and ghostly joy and torment her further.

She had become adept at turning her mind from that which she did not wish to see. Not just the longing she could never entirely suppress, the reality as well. The occasional whiff of perfume from her husband’s clothing, for example. Or the blue box marked Tiffany that was once delivered to the door—she left it on the table in the foyer and it was gone next morning. An error, Joshua said in passing. He would deal with it. Perhaps he did so on one of the many evenings when he did not arrive home until well after midnight.

Mollie asked no questions. Why bother? She knew the answers, and she did not pretend she could expect it to be otherwise.

The new year brought bitter cold but no snow. It had been a not-quite white Christmas, with only the remains of a couple of early December dustings. In January Mollie walked around the bare and brown garden finding it hard to imagine that anything would be green again.

The Gardeners’ Chronicle
had taught her that most plants could winter over successfully no matter how extreme the weather, if they were insulated from rapid changes in temperature.
Contrary to intuition, snow is therefore the gardener’s friend.
Their first winter at 1060 there had been snow from December right through to the middle of April; this winter of 1874, the garden’s second, there was only brown earth. Mollie imagined she could see the bare branches of her trees and shrubs and vines shivering in the icy wind, and the cut-back plants in her perennial border shaking with cold.

“Perhaps hay,” she said staring out the window of the breakfast room in mid-January.

Breakfast was the single meal they regularly took together, and while Josh might comment on something he read in the paper, it was rare for Mollie to initiate a conversation. The sound of her voice caused him to look up from
The
Times.
“What about hay?”

“Can you spare any from the stable?”

“I suppose so. And there’s more to be had in the town if necessary. What do you want it for?”

“Tucking in my garden,” Mollie said.

Josh shook his head. “I do not understand what—”

“Plants need insulation from the cold,” she began. “It’s the thawing and freezing at the roots that causes—”

He had given up trying to muster any enthusiasm for the details of horticulture. The results were quite pretty, but the minutiae failed to interest him. “That fellow Edison,” he said, returning to the paper. “Says here he’s close to inventing a single wire that can carry four messages.”
Mollie looked blank. “It will revolutionize communication,” he added. His wife went back to spooning up her soft-cooked egg. Josh suppressed a sigh. “Take as much hay from the stable as you like.”

“Thank you. I shall tell Ollie.”

He turned the page of
The
Times
and found an announcement, prominently displayed and impossible to miss. The Bethlehem Iron Works in Pittsburgh wished to inform its many customers and the general public that it was now Bethlehem Steel.

Josh read the words a second time. No mistake. And next to that notice, an article saying the name change made perfect sense since these days steel accounted for the company’s major output. Mostly for the railroads according to the reporter, but it was thought likely that once the slump ended—and business cycles inevitably end—there might be call for steel to be used in “. . . constructing newer and taller buildings than are currently common in our city.”

Mollie had finished eating. She stood up to go.

“Listen to this,” Josh said. She paused and turned to him, but her expression lacked any genuine interest. “Never mind,” he said. “Go see to your hay.”

In the face of the terrible economy that followed the financial panic of September, the kinds of men for whom the Carolina had been designed were fortunate if they were still working. They were not inclined to take on new burdens of heavy debt. Joshua had seen that coming. He was prepared to wait out the slump in terms of new tenants, but not to cope with mass defaults on the leases already in place. “I cannot,” he told Zac, “survive empty flats and buildings allowed to go to ruin.”

“What do you propose to do?”

“A few things,” Josh said.

He’d begun by sending a notice to the residents of every flat. Henceforth they would be able to pay their rent monthly, even weekly
if that made budgeting any easier. “I’m dealing with men who live on their salaries. In hard times it’s got to be difficult for them to come up with a large quarterly payment.” Additionally, he announced he was taking two dollars off the monthly rent of each flat for the next year. The twenty-four dollars of additional debt would be added to the final payment. A loan of sorts, and interest-free.

Inevitably, word of the new arrangements got around. “How come,” Ebenezer Tickle demanded, “I didn’t get one of them letters you sent?”

Josh didn’t mention the fact that Ebenezer could not read. “Why should you have, Mr. Tickle? According to our arrangement you pay no rent for another three and a half years.”

“Me and Mrs. Tickle won’t be able to stay here,” the dwarf said glumly, “if all the other tenants pack up and go back to boarding. Who’s going to run the elevator and clean the halls and the lobby and such? Word is, you’re going to cut back on the building staff.”

“I shall have to do so, Mr. Tickle. But the point of the letter was to prevent a mass exodus from the building. I believe it will be successful and the flats will remain occupied.”

“Even so,” Tickle said, “seems to me you won’t be doing any more building for a time.”

They were conducting this conversation in the foundry, where not a single furnace was operating and the repaired Kelly converter hadn’t been used since well before the holidays. “That may be so, Mr. Tickle.”

“They tell me nobody’s hiring down at Novelty. Not over at Globe neither. Nothing doing at any of the ironworks.”

“There are few businesses in the city hiring these days,” Josh said. “But that’s not your worry, is it, Mr. Tickle? You are still being paid your weekly wage.”

The dwarf nodded. “I am.”

“Well then?”

“How long?” he asked. “I’m a married man. Got responsibilities. I need to know if you’re planning to let me go.”

“At the moment, no,” Josh said. “I plan to keep my original crew
intact as long as I can. With any luck, until things are on the uptick again. This is New York City, Mr. Tickle. There is always an uptick.”

“But we won’t be making steel, will we?”

“Not for the moment,” Josh admitted. He had clipped the article about Bethlehem Steel from the paper. It was in his pocket as they spoke.