City of Promise (60 page)
“No, forgive me, I do not.” Perhaps, Josh thought, because he was concentrating so hard on Clifford and Lupo. “Look, can you just say exactly what it is that’s troubling you? I’m not doing well with guessing.”
“I don’t mean for you to guess. I’m referring to what happened after I was abducted, when you confronted Mr. Ganz. You told me you asked him why he was mixed up with such sordid people as Tony Lupo. Do you remember?”
“I suppose I do. Words to that effect at any rate. As I recall, I pointed out he didn’t live in luxury and he said—” Josh broke off, then spoke with conviction. “Ganz said, ‘I’ve got grandchildren.’ With one of those dismissive shrugs to which he’s prone.”
“Exactly. But he has none, Josh. Mrs. Ganz died never having given her husband a child. Tess told me so. Then she got all flustered because I looked shocked. I imagine she thought it was down to her having spoken of childlessness. Of course, that wasn’t it. I just realized quite suddenly that Mr. Ganz had lied. Perhaps it isn’t important, but it doesn’t seem logical, Josh. Why tell an untruth then, at the same moment he was offering you a million-dollar loan and trying to convince you he was a worthy business associate? And why a lie that has so little actual bearing on business?”
“I don’t know. About Tess, did you tell her what was in your mind?”
“No, of course not. It’s none of her affair. Why would you think—”
He was wondering if Tess would have thought it necessary to immediately run downtown and report the morning’s conversation to Ganz, but this didn’t seem the time to say so. Josh waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll explain later.” He would too. Should have told Mollie about Tess and Mr. Ganz years ago, he realized. But it wasn’t his first priority now. “I’ve just remembered your Aunt Eileen telling me Ganz told her the same thing. Something about sometimes bending the law for the sake of his grandchildren.”
Josh got up, motioning her to stay where she was, and went into his private office, returning moments later with a paper Mollie at once
recognized as a deed. “Hamish got this a couple of days ago. From the Brooklyn City Hall property clerk. Whom you’ve apparently been bribing for the past year, so he’s inclined to give Hamish whatever he asks for without making him wait weeks or months or plow through tons of illegible records.”
Mollie showed no remorse. “It’s not bribery. Just good business. Auntie Eileen taught me the importance of looking after those who can look after you.” He’d handed her the deed, meanwhile, and she was quickly scanning it. “A house on Water Street in Brooklyn. Owned by—”
“Trenton Clifford,” Josh finished for her.
“I thought he disappeared years ago. Probably went back to the South you said.”
“Yes, around the time you were kidnapped. Frankie Miller couldn’t find him anywhere and Zac and I presumed he’d gone back to Virginia since Reconstruction had just ended and there were business opportunities. But the other night, after the electrification ceremony, DuVal Jones came to see me. He lives in this building you may recall.”
“One D. Yes, of course. Why did he bother coming all the way uptown to Ninety-Second if he could see you here?”
“I don’t know. I’m unsure of any of his motives. But according to Mr. Jones, Clifford and Lupo are a team—which I suspected from the first—and right now they again present some sort of danger to me. And there,” he pointed to the deed she still held, “Jones said, is where Clifford can be found.”
“Josh, you won’t do anything foolish. You can’t pit yourself against—” Mollie broke off. She knew her glance had dropped to his peg. She wanted to bite off her tongue, but it was too late.
“I can’t take on the likes of Clifford and Lupo with one leg,” he said grimly. “You needn’t remind me. I know.”
“Josh, I did not mean—”
He put both hands on her shoulders and leaned in and kissed her forehead. “I know you didn’t. And you mustn’t worry. I’ve no intention
of being foolish. That’s what Frankie Miller and his men are for. Now go back home and leave this all to me. And thank you for the very useful information.”
She was on her way out of the building just as a small and very pretty woman was on her way in. Blonde and pink and dimpled, Mollie noted, dressed in ice-blue silk and feathers and ribbons. The sort Auntie Eileen always called a mantrap. And somehow familiar.
The woman seemed to share that impression. She paused. Mollie offered a polite nod. The blonde returned the courtesy. Neither spoke, but both wore looks that said,
I think I know you.
And the blonde—natural, Mollie decided, or at least only a touch of help from the peroxide bottle—seemed somehow agitated.
Mollie’s first thought was that perhaps, once upon a long ago, the woman had worked at Brannigan’s. Some of the prettiest had become respectable despite that. If so, running into someone who knew about one’s past would certainly be unnerving.
The woman turned away, walked down the hall as far as the door to One D, then produced a key. Mollie clapped a hand to her cheek. Of course! Amanda Jones, wife of DuVal Jones. They met the day Mollie went to Bowling Green to tell the wives about the St. Nicholas flats.
That’s what a wife and mother’s supposed to be. The angel of the hearth.
How could she have forgotten?
The woman turned the key, then paused before opening her door and looked back at Mollie, who guiltily dropped her hand to her side. A moment more, then the angel disappeared.
It was like a jigsaw puzzle. Josh had all the pieces, but he could not put them together. He sat for a time in the inner office he’d made from Two D’s larger bedroom, writing the names on a series of pieces of paper: Jones, Lupo, Clifford, and Ganz. He kept pushing them into different configurations, but the pattern did not become clear.
Lupo and Clifford he could dismiss as men with no honor and
their eye always on the main chance. It was obvious now that Clifford had sent him into the world of Manhattan real estate as a stalking horse. When he’d come up a winner Clifford wanted his reward and used his cohort Lupo to try and get it. They shared other schemes as well. Witness the attempt to involve Zac in the building of an underground railway. So it was logical they would work together on the business of undermining Joshua Turner. Ganz had also confessed to working with Tony Lupo on occasion. But his motives were a good deal murkier, and made more so by what Mollie had just reported.
All the pawnbroker’s talk of making money for his “grandchildren” was rubbish. He had none. Moreover, for the last three years Sol Ganz had shown himself a totally reliable business associate, and seen exceptional profits as a result. There were, Josh knew, men for whom nothing was ever enough, but somehow he could not assign Sol Ganz to their ranks. So what in God’s name was he really after? As for DuVal Jones, he was a small-time crook who operated across the river in Brooklyn; the strong-arm man for a more important criminal, who nonetheless had, as far as Josh knew, no connections or concerns in New York City and . . .
And Clifford was the key. He had to tell Miller that. Emphasize the point. Lupo was one of the puppets, important, yes, but Trenton Clifford pulled the strings.
He’d brought his telephone here from his previous office. It lay on the floor, a useless wooden box since the company hadn’t sent anyone to connect it. And it made no difference since, like most people, Frankie Miller wasn’t on the exchange. Josh reached for his hat and his gloves.
The hansom slowed. Josh lowered the window of the carriage and peered at the colossus looming in front of him. The Brooklyn Bridge had changed the world. Six thousand feet long, it stood a hundred and thirty-five feet above the East River and was eighty-five feet wide at
its base, the expanse divided by a sixteen-foot pedestrian promenade raised a bit above the vehicular traffic flowing east and west either side. It had cost seventeen million to build—more than three times the original budget—and was said to weigh some fifteen thousand tons and to be the longest suspension bridge in the world. Certainly, in the matter of New York City, it cast a real and figurative shadow unlike any the island city had previously known. A marvel of civil engineering that some called the eighth wonder of the world, the Brooklyn Bridge had created a swathe of Manhattan that would never again see the sun.
The driver got down and came around to open the carriage door. “This is the place, isn’t it, sir? Roach’s Tavern.”
“Yes, this is it.” The shadows were so deep he could barely see the mangy old bull beside the door. “I shan’t be long. Please wait.”
Not long at all. Miller wasn’t at the tavern and no one could say when he’d return.
Josh climbed back into the carriage, looking again at the bridge meanwhile. It was clotted with people on foot and in slow-moving carriages. All of them shouting and waving and enjoying an adventure, not minding that it would take them hours to get across. Not an adventure he wished to share just now.
The driver lowered the window and leaned in, waiting for instructions. “The Brooklyn ferry,” Josh said.
Take the bull by the horns. Maybe, like Mr. Roach’s effigy, it would turn out to be blind and deballed.
T
HERE WAS A
small glove maker’s shop on Sixty-Ninth Street in the shadow of the Third Avenue El where Mollie was a frequent customer. Since she was so close she stopped there on her way home from Josh’s office and spent twenty minutes with her elbow on a cushion and her hand up in the air, while the craftsman fitted different models. She could have either smooth leather or sueded, she was told. And any number of shades were available. Eventually she selected particularly supple gray kid, and requested the same style be made for her in pale blue and in beige. It was nearly one when she got back into the waiting hansom, and close to half past the hour when she arrived at 1160.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Turner. There’s a lady waiting for you just over there.” The doorman nodded toward one of the velvet-covered banquettes that ran along the wall of the lobby.
Molly turned her head. Amanda Jones rose to greet her.
“I knew you recognized me as I did you.”
“Indeed,” Mollie admitted. “Not immediately, but when I saw which flat was yours I remembered meeting you years ago on Bowling Green. Please sit down, Mrs. Jones.”
They had ridden to the sixth floor in silence. Jane was waiting by the door—one of the wonders of the new electrification was a means for the elevator operator to notify the servants in each apartment when their master or mistress was on the way up—but Mollie had immediately dismissed the maid and herself showed her caller to the library. Now she glanced at the bell rope. “Will you take tea?”
“Thanks, no. But I wouldn’t mind a glass of that.” The blonde indicated a decanter of sherry.
Mollie poured a generous portion for each of them, then took the chair across from that of Amanda Jones. It seemed absurd to inquire after her visitor’s health or compliment her on her hat. None of the usual social norms felt appropriate. Mollie simply waited.
“It’s about me and DuVal,” the other woman said. “And someone else. I suppose you’ve already guessed that.”
“Not exactly. I have no idea why you would wish to speak to me about anything to do with your husband.”