City of Promise (58 page)

Josh’s laugh trailed after her as she made her way downstairs to the front door, the apartment darkening behind her.

There had been electric light on a number of New York streets and avenues for a few years. Ornamental, twenty-foot-tall cast-iron posts topped with arc lights that lay down a broad carpet of brilliance were distributed one per block and fed current passed along overhead wires. The lighting was a great success, credited with reducing crime and contributing to the population’s general health and well-being, but such an arrangement could not be used inside a man’s home. Josh hadn’t considered electrifying his new buildings until in the autumn of 1880, soon after construction began, Thomas Edison gave a banquet, at which he demonstrated his latest invention, the incandescent bulb.

Josh was at the banquet—he and Mollie were seated across from Sarah Bernhardt—and certainly he was impressed. So were the politicians. The city gave Edison permission to install underground wires in the square mile from Wall Street to Canal. “He’s bought two old ramshackle buildings on Pearl Street near the fish market,” Josh told Hamish Fraser a few weeks later. “They’re to house the steam generators that will produce his power.”

“Och, I heard as much, Mr. Turner. I’m told the asking price for the pair was a hundred and fifty-five thousand. It’s a fearful amount o’ dollars to light the inside o’ a man’s wee house when gaslights do the job.”

Josh thought the same. Until he saw Edison’s own four-story brownstone illumined by a hundred of the small and softly glowing globes. Two nights later he brought Mollie to see it as well. They arrived on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue in deep
dusk and stood waiting with all the others who came every night to exclaim at the sight. When at last the dark descended and—as if a fairy had waved a wand—the house came instantly alight, there was a universal gasp of wonder. “Convinced?” Josh asked. “Despite the expense?”

“I didn’t think it would be so different from gas lighting,” she admitted. “But it’s steadier and infinitely brighter. With a whiter light. Undoubtedly an amenity the rich will soon expect. You must do it, Josh. Regardless of the cost. If an ordinary brownstone can look like this, your stretch of buildings will be . . . magical. That’s the correct word, I’m sure.”

Magic came at a price.

Josh’s crew dug the necessary trenches the length of his eight blocks. Edison’s men came after them and laid massive copper power mains and insulated them with a mix of asphalt, linseed oil, paraffin, and—Mollie shuddered when she heard—beeswax. Wires were fed from the mains to the buildings, buried in the walls, and connected to the lighting sconces originally intended for gas. Finally, a steam generator was installed in the basement of one building on each block. It raised the rent on every apartment something close to fifteen percent. They were snapped up despite that. Wall Street bankers and doctors—not the ordinary sort but the specialists who these days earned fortunes—and lawyers with partnerships in the town’s most prestigious firms, even a few foreign dignitaries all showed themselves willing to break new ground and live in this isolated stretch of glory. After all, whatever else they were New Yorkers, convinced that wherever they went, the rest of the world would soon follow. The first tenants took occupancy in early ’81. Josh supplied an abundance of oil lamps at his expense and guaranteed electric light by Thanksgiving of ’83.

He was six months ahead of schedule.

Something to celebrate indeed. And by God, the hordes come to marvel were themselves a sight.

Here as downtown in Murray Hill, the median that ran the length
of the avenue had been planted with trees and greenery to mask the vents of the train-tunnel underground. Josh had arranged for a podium—potted greenery and flowers and velvet ropes—as well as chairs on the grass along his entire eight-block stretch, but the crowd had swelled so there was only standing room.

Mollie was waiting for him in the magnificent marble lobby. The liveried doorman as well. That rendition of the old-fashioned concierge—the nosy old biddy guarding the front door—had become one of the things that persuaded the elite to live in apartments rather than private homes. It was like having a butler without having to pay his wage.

“Go on,” Josh told the doorman. “You’ll have a better view of things outside. Mrs. Turner and I will be along straightaway.” The man touched his peaked cap and left. Josh drew Mollie to the tall window beside the mahogany double doors. A sea of people waited. The men’s ties and boiled shirtfronts gleamed white in the encroaching dark and the ladies’ jewels sparkled. “Well,” he murmured, “what do you think?”

“You know what I think. It’s quite wonderful, and no more than you deserve, and—oh, Josh, look! The Tickles and the others. In the front row about half a block south. They look quite splendid.”

Indeed they did. Maude Pattycake wore a blue gown and a tiara. Both Ebenezer and Israel McCoy were in evening dress, as were Obadiah and Henry and Washington and Sampson who stood just behind them. The finery had been made to measure and cost him a fair bit, but looking at them now Josh smiled. “Quite splendid,” he echoed.

He felt suspended in time, as if he could stand where he was indefinitely, but after a few seconds Mollie nudged him forward. “Everyone’s waiting, dearest.”

He drew a deep breath, tucked his cane under one arm—he would cross the damned street under his own power, by God—and swung open the door. Mollie stepped outside. He took his place beside her and she linked her arm in his.

The dais had been erected directly in front of 1160 for the same
reason Josh and Mollie lived there. The building was on the southwest corner of Ninety-Second Street, and as such pretty much in the middle of the St. Nicholas stretch. Josh and Mollie didn’t have far to go, but they walked to the platform on a wave of thunderous applause, and thanks to having Mollie on his arm Josh didn’t need his cane to climb the steps. Instead he could stretch out his right hand to greet the visiting dignitaries.

Mollie had questioned the wisdom of planning the occasion for the day after the formal opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. Josh thought they could profit from some of the grandeur of that occasion. “From what I hear,” she’d said, still resisting, “most of the carry-on will be in Brooklyn. New Yorkers are predicted to be largely unfazed.”

“Only according to the business community. They prefer not to acknowledge what they see as a great siphon that will suck their custom across the river. The press will nonetheless use barrels of ink to describe it. The president is coming after all, and Governor Cleveland of course. I’ll invite both to our electrification ceremony. You never know, they might come.”

Chester Arthur had sent congratulations and regrets—they arrived on very impressive Executive Mansion stationery—but Grover Cleveland had turned up. And Thomas Edison, of course. Josh suspected him to be the real reason for the crowd. Two-thirds of the units were sold; nonetheless the number of people was far too great to be only the owners and their guests and staffs. Such a turnout had to be down to Edison. In money-crazed, kick-up-your-heels New York an inventor and entrepreneur of his stature figured to be a much greater draw than any politician.

He delivered Mollie to her seat. The applause died away. Time for the speeches. Josh went first, offered his few words of welcome, and presented the mayor. He rambled on for a while, then introduced the governor. Cleveland’s speech was bound to go on for a time; word was he had a run at the presidency in mind. That gave Josh an opportunity to examine that part of the assembly he could see. Eileen was seated
to the left of the dais, with Zac and Simon and the rest of the family. She was nodding off. At sixty-one, that was to be expected. Solomon Ganz was also in that section of the audience. Josh had invited him to a place on the dais, but Ganz had refused. “Thank you, Mr. Turner, but I prefer a less obvious position.” Josh had no idea how old the pawnbroker was, but he seemed wide awake and listening to every word.
Everything I know, Mr. Turner, is usually because someone has told me.
He wondered what the governor might be saying that he was missing, and how Sol Ganz might turn whatever it was to profit.

More applause. Cleveland was finished. It was time for Josh to introduce Edison. He started to get to his feet. A hand touched his arm from behind. “Gentleman gave me this,” Ollie Crump said quietly. “Claims he lives in one of your other buildings.”

Josh palmed the note and slipped it into his pocket. Ollie was a likely messenger. Josh had set him up as manager of a public stable on Third and Ninety-second.
A lot of our residents will own carriages, Ollie. It’s ready-made custom. Do a good job and I’ll sell you the place in a few years.

“He said to tell you it was urgent, Mr. Turner.”

Josh nodded, but still did not read the note. Whatever the urgency might be, it would have to wait. Everything about this event had been meticulously planned, and timing was the key to all else. He took his watch from his vest pocket. Three minutes to eight. They’d guessed correctly about how long the governor would speak. He didn’t need to draw things out and neither would Edison. He rose and stepped to the podium.

“Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, as those of you who live in the St. Nicholas buildings know, we have been planning for this night since our great upper Park Avenue adventure began. And let me explain for any who don’t already know, the reason you see no flicker of light in the windows across the way is because the oil lamps in every apartment have been deliberately extinguished, and by design every sconce connected to electric power and provided with that
miracle of our time, an incandescent bulb. Tonight, also by design, those sconces have been switched on and every curtain left undrawn. We await only the golden touch of the remarkable wizard we all know as Mr. Thomas Edison.” He turned to where Edison waited, hand on a large brass lever.

It was, Joshua knew, an utter fake.

The power would be switched on in the basements of the buildings containing the generators at precisely eight o’clock. Another glance at his watch. Josh raised his hand. “Count with me, ladies and gentlemen, and Mr. Edison will light up our world when, in ten seconds’ time, the clocks of New York strike the hour. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six . . .”

“One!” the crowd at last shouted in a roar of anticipation. Edison threw his sham switch.

The St. Nicholas apartments on Park Avenue came to life in a blaze of shining light that must, Josh thought, resemble the first day of creation.

They had tested the systems repeatedly in each building and on every floor, but until this moment no one could have predicted with certainty that what Mollie called his P. T. Barnum imitation would work.

It had. Josh achieved his moment of triumph. But what he saw in the dazzling illumination of the world he had brought into being was the face of DuVal Jones, standing at the foot of the dais with his back to the newly lighted buildings. He was staring up at Josh with a look of concentration stunning in its intensity.

“You’re absolutely certain the house is occupied by Trenton Clifford?” Josh asked. “I heard he’d returned to the South years ago.”

“He did,” DuVal Jones said. “Now he’s come back.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

Even if it were true, it was hard to see why Jones had come to him
with the information. “Your glass is empty, Mr. Jones. I’ll get you another brandy, shall I?”

They’d not come upstairs to his study until after the electrification celebration finally ended, and that had taken a number of hours. Delmonico’s had catered a full banquet served in the lobby of each building, then swept it all away to make room for six-piece orchestras that provided music for dancing. He and Mollie had shown up at every party. Nearly two in the morning now. Josh’s household had retired, Mollie included. He took Jones’s snifter as well as his own and made his way to the decanter on the table across the room. The task gave him a few moments to think.

Jones meanwhile was staring up at the elaborate rococo-style plaster ceiling, all swirls and seashells. “Outdid yourself here, didn’t you, Mr. Turner? Nothing like this down on Sixty-Third Street.”