City Of Promise Part 16

He took his time about it. He'd come up without his cane and his good leg was aching badly by the time he finished, but he was too elated to care. He had, he was quite certain, all but definitely rented three units.

"According to Wolfe, he's living with his wife's family on Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue. Seems they have two children and expect a third. No wonder they think it's time to move to a place of their own."

Mollie wrote down all the information, repeatedly dipping her pen and careful to blot away any excess ink. She was quite sure this was a ledger that would someday be a family heirloom. The first flats Joshua ever built and rented. When he was the king of Manhattan property she knew he would be, they would show it to their child. Their children, she amended to herself, keeping her free hand in her lap all the while, pressed tight against her belly. According to Tess and Mrs. Hannity she should be feeling a kick any day now and she was terrified she might miss it. "Which flat are the Wolfes to have?"

"Six A," Josh said. "Corner flat closest to Fourth Avenue. At least that's what he said he'd have if he decided to go ahead. Mind you, he's not yet put down a deposit. None of them did, unfortunately."

"It can't be expected, Josh. Not on the first visit. I'll make a column that indicates how many times you see a potential tenant before the lease is signed. That way you'll be able to establish guidelines. You can know what to expect for the future."

"Do that, Mollie. That's quite clever."

She smiled, but went on with the business at hand. "Mr. Elva Jackson, isn't it? And his wife's name is Margaret. They've three children as well, I believe."

Another glance at his notes. "The names are right, but I don't know how many little Jacksons there are. They may have said, but I didn't write it down."

He was looking at her quizzically. It was, Mollie knew, her moment. She could tell him the whole story right now when he was so happy about the enormous breakthrough that meant so much to the future of his business. He'd be sure to forgive her. Even if it turned out Francie Wildwood had spilled Mollie's beans and Josh had for whatever reason kept silent about it, she'd get credit for doing so herself. She could do it. She would. Except . . . "The ledgers for the house on Bowling Green," she said, her courage deserting her. "You've noted the numbers of children in each family in those records."

"That's right, so I have. Well remembered, Mollie. And after only a week." Despite his earlier reluctance, Josh had slipped into having her keep the books for the rooming houses as well as the flats. Hard not to when she did it with as much ease as skill. "You're a wonder, my girl."

And a coward, Mollie thought.

On the Tuesday evening following his first visit to Sixty-Third Street, Elva Jackson arrived at the house on Grand Street and placed a check for two hundred and fifty-five dollars in Joshua's hands.

The two men conducted their business in the drawing room turned office. Josh had been reluctant to use the room for some time after the murder, but nearly six weeks had pa.s.sed since he'd found George Higgins's body. Meanwhile the police had let the matter drop, and Jane had managed to scrub the carpet clean of bloodstains. After that the room had been thoroughly aired and put back together by Mollie, who refused to be either sentimental about a man she barely knew, or fearful about bad omens. Auntie Eileen's upbringing had given her a bit more spine than that. Besides, no one could arrange Josh's disturbed papers better than she.

Josh found it easier than he expected to slip into his old ways of doing things. He was waiting in his office when, as expected, the bell rang promptly at seven and Mollie showed Mr. Jackson into the front room.

After which she promptly ran around to the dining room where she could press her ear against the double doors and hear every word the men exchanged.

"Flat Four B," Joshua said. "To be leased to at a sum of eighty-five dollars a month payable in advance in quarterly installments of two hundred and fifty-five dollars each. This first payment to serve as a deposit against damages. The first quarter's rent due the day you move in."

Four B. A canny choice, Mollie thought. Cheaper because it wasn't a corner flat, and less expensive than the flats on the floors below. But three flights were manageable if one didn't wish to use the elevator. She heard nothing for a moment or two. Presumably both Josh and Mr. Jackson were looking over the lease. Then Josh asked, "Are we agreed, Mr. Jackson?"

"We are, Mr. Turner."

Mollie couldn't see the handshake, but she knew it had happened, and that both men had signed, and she twirled around the dining room in a single and silent waltz of triumph.

By week's end DuVal Jones had agreed to lease the ground-floor flat closest to Fourth Avenue. It was now well known that Vanderbilt would start sinking a tunnel for his trains come spring, and Josh had a.s.signed One D the highest rent of any of the units, one hundred and ten dollars a month. Mollie had paled when he mentioned the sum. "It's not as exorbitant as it sounds," Josh insisted. "For one thing it looks west to Madison and Fifth. They'll be grand avenues one day, even as far uptown as Sixty-Third Street."

"Still, Josh, it's so much more than they're paying at Bowling Green."

"Jones didn't quibble over the price and he's chosen to pay me a year in advance. Plus the security deposit. That's sixteen hundred and fifty dollars cash money."

"If he can afford so much, Josh, why doesn't he buy a house?"

Josh shrugged. "Can't rightly say, but the price of real estate is on the rise everywhere in the town. Mr. Drexel of Philadelphia has just bought a building on Wall Street for three hundred forty-eight dollars a square foot."

"Good Lord."

"Exactly. Meanwhile, Mr. Jones is leasing six hundred and fifty square feet for what-?" Looking to Mollie to supply the sum.

"Two dollars a square foot per annum," she said instantly. "Plus a fraction." She picked up her pen to enter DuVal Jones's name in the ledger that listed the St. Nicholas tenants. "I shall mark it down as a bargain." Then, as her pen moved across the columns, "Do we know what Mr. Jones does for a living, Josh?"

"No idea. But he's never been late with the rent in the years he's lived at Bowling Green."

"And you gain a tidy bit in interest by having a year's rent in advance." She wanted to cut out her tongue as soon as she spoke the words. Never forget, Mollie, Joshua has more to prove than most men. You must not put yourself forward in the matter of business.

He didn't bristle, just said with the exuberance that marked him since things began going so well, "The devil with the interest. It's folding money, my love. Working capital. That's a lot more important to me right now. But," with a quick kiss planted on her forehead, "nothing for you to be concerned with in any case."

"So," she said, "the only one of the prospects we haven't heard from is the one-eyed Mr. Wolfe."

"Not another word from him," Josh said. "But two out of three's a fine result. I am certainly not grousing. And I'm told another prospect came by yesterday when I wasn't at the site. Mr. Stanley Potter who, according to Samuel, says he'll return next week."

"Stanley Potter, recently admitted to the bar? Who also lives at Bowling Green?"

"That's the one. And why are you smiling like a cat with a bowl of cream?"

"I'm thrilled for you, Josh. For all three of us," she added with a shy smile.

"All three of us," he agreed, reaching out to pat her swelling belly.

She had to find a way to visit other family residences. There were dozens in the city. Of course they weren't owned by her husband so she wouldn't have such easy access. Perhaps she should see if Francie Wildwood might introduce her. It might even be an opportunity to discover what it was Mrs. Wildwood wanted, and how come she had apparently kept Mollie's secret.

"I trust you don't object to bringing the papers here," DuVal Jones said.

He and Josh were in an oyster bar on South Street, typical of many on the waterfront. The sign outside said Hanrihan's and inside a long counter with stools accommodated men wanting a quick half dozen and a gla.s.s of beer. It was lunchtime and there were many more customers than stools. Josh and DuVal Jones, however, were seated at a small table beside a window. Jones sat with his back to the room. Josh where he could see everything. His topper, he noted, was pretty much the only one in the place. Some of the patrons were laborers in the nearby fish market, or men who worked on the ferry pier a few steps away. They wore caps. Like many of the others-men who managed the ferry traffic and the market stalls-Jones wore a hard round bowler, the sort of hat sometimes called a derby, and a black overcoat with a velvet collar. Proof against the cold March winds. "I'm not likely," Josh said, "to object to meeting a man any place he chooses when he's prepared to pay me a large sum of money."

Jones responded with a tight-lipped smile. It occurred to Josh that he'd known the man since he moved his blonde and dimpled young bride into the Bowling Green rooming house, but he'd never actually heard DuVal Jones laugh.

The clang of the bow slamming the dock announced the arrival of the Brooklyn ferry. A few of the men went out to meet it. The window was foggy with warm breath and Josh used the side of his hand to rub a clear s.p.a.ce. The gla.s.s was crusted with salt spray, but he could make out the crew securing the mooring lines, and beyond them, on the opposite sh.o.r.e, the rising tower of the audacious bridge some said would make the ferry obsolete. "Do I take it we meet here because you're on your way across the river, Mr. Jones?" Francie Wildwood had reported Amanda Jones saying her husband worked in Brooklyn. She never mentioned at what.

"No, Mr. Turner. On this occasion it happens I've just returned. It is a journey I make frequently." Jones took an envelope from his inside pocket.

"Am I to a.s.sume, Mr. Jones, your business is based across the river?"

Jones didn't answer, merely laid the envelope on the table between them and covered it with his hand.

"It might be thought," Josh said, "that a flat way uptown on Sixty-Third Street is particularly inconvenient for a gentleman who makes regular ferry trips to Brooklyn." He did not reach for the money.

"I do not expect to find it so, Mr. Turner." The envelope edged closer to Josh, but Jones kept his hand over it. "In any case, it is a trade I am willing to make."

Josh lay his hand over that of Jones. "In return for what? If you don't mind my asking."

"Not at all." Jones slid his hand out from under Josh's. "I believe Mrs. Jones will be most comfortable further uptown. If you care to count that, Mr. Turner, it is quite safe to do so here. And I will certainly understand your caution. I can a.s.sure you, however, that it is all there."

"I've no doubt of it," Josh said. He slipped the envelope into his pocket and produced the lease. Both men signed it and pocketed a copy of the doc.u.ment. Jones rose to go. "It's always a pleasure to do business with you, Mr. Turner."

Josh insisted the pleasure was his.

Stanley Potter, Esquire, was short and thin. Looked, Josh always thought, like a paper cutout of a man. As if you could fold him up and put him in your pocket. He had, however, a surprisingly deep voice. Twice the size of the rest of him.

"I have decided to lease one of your flats, Mr. Turner. I will have Four B. I am, as you know, an attorney, and I've prepared an agreement for the transaction." His comments were made on the site, in the hearing of every laborer within twenty yards.

Josh was delighted. Couldn't hurt for the men to know the flats were being spoken for. "That affords me great pleasure, Mr. Potter. You're precisely the sort of man to anchor a new direction for the city. With residents such as yourself, the East Sixties have a great future. I cannot, however, rent you Four B because it's already spoken for. Four A is available. Also Four C and D."

"Mrs. Potter will be disappointed. She told me Four B was the one she'd set her heart on."

"Four C is the same price, Mr. Potter." How the devil could his wife know which flat she wanted when she'd never been to the site? "And have you considered the advantages of Four A or D? They're corner flats. That means more light and air."

"More noise as well," Potter said firmly. "Mrs. Potter discussed the question with your wife. They agreed the middle flats would be quieter."

"My wife?"

"So I'm told, Mr. Turner. When you sent her to visit the ladies of your Bowling Green residence." The attorney had wandered over to the elevator shaft while he spoke, and was peering up at the newly installed cables and pulleys. The cab wasn't yet in place and the tall empty s.p.a.ce acted as an echo chamber for his booming voice. "I take it Mrs. Turner got home safely despite the storm. Took a bit of a risk, didn't you, sending a woman on that sort of errand? Though of course you couldn't have predicted the weather."

"Stanley Potter has given me a deposit on Flat Four C," Josh said. "He wanted Four B, but I had to tell him that's gone to the Jacksons."

"Another one rented! Josh, that's wonderful."

"Yes, it is rather." There was a bowl of apples on the dining room table and he reached out and took one. "These look like Roxbury Russets. From Sunshine Hill."

"They are. Your mother sent them, along with a note that they're the last of what's been stored from the summer's crop. We're to savor every bite since we'll have no fresh apples again until August next year."

"Right." Josh agreed. "Mollie, does it seem remarkable to you that I've so far rented three flats, and each has gone to someone who presently lives in my Bowling Green residence?"

There was something in his voice, a quietness that was somehow more sober than his usual tone. She was embroidering tiny daisies around the hem of a white lawn, infant-size nightgown with a beautifully smocked top, and she went on st.i.tching while she spoke. "Not really, Josh. After all, they're exactly the sorts of people you intended the flats for, aren't they?"

"Exactly the sort." He took a large bite of apple. "Thing is, not every prospective tenant for a flat at the St. Nicholas is presently a resident in my place on Bowling Green. So it's a bit of a coincidence, isn't it? Three out of three, as it were."

Mollie kept sewing. "But one will probably have told the others. Besides, you spoke to those men, didn't you? The ones you thought likely prospects."

"Yes. Exactly." He'd finished the apple and he tossed the core into the large bra.s.s bowl Mollie used to collect the bits of thread she discarded.

"It was an excellent idea."

"I thought so. Thing is, how did you know?"

She didn't look up. "Know what?"

"That I'd spoken with the men who live at Bowling Green."

"I guessed. Because you'd underlined their names in the ledger."

"Right. And you've been keeping the books for more than a month now. So it's no surprise you looked back at my earlier entries."

"Yes. That's what I did."

"No," he said quietly. "It's not. Because back in January, the day of the big storm, you weren't responsible for the ledgers and at that time you'd had no call to look at them. But that's the day you went downtown and talked with the wives of my tenants. That's how come you got caught in the blizzard." And when she didn't say anything, only stopped sewing, "I know, Mollie, because Potter told me. Said you called at the house and spoke to all the women. Even discussed finances, how much the flats would rent for and the terms of the offering. He didn't say as much, but it's obvious he thinks I must be a bit of a cad to have sent my wife on such an errand. Not the sort of thing a gentleman does. At least not in the opinion of Stanley Potter, Esquire."

There was a long silence after that. Mollie secured her needle in the exquisitely soft fabric of her unborn baby's nightdress, then folded it neatly and put it in the basket along with the rest of the layette she was so carefully preparing; the bonnets and booties she'd already made, and the knit bunting Auntie Eileen had finished and delivered a few days before. When she at last looked up her eyes were shiny with tears, and her husband was staring at her. He looked, however, perplexed rather than angry. "And you, Josh?" she asked. "What's your opinion?"

"I don't know. I've been thinking about it all the way home. And it's a good thing Midnight knows the way, because I was so preoccupied with the question I didn't notice a single thing between Sixty-Third Street and here. But the puzzling did me no good. I'm no closer to understanding than I was when I started."

"I wanted to help, Josh. I knew you were worried about the flats not renting, and I was sure getting the wives involved, getting them to tell their husbands they'd love to live at the St. Nicholas and it wasn't financially out of reach . . . That would be sure to promote business."

"According to the evidence," he admitted, "it did."

"Yes." Two big tears were rolling down her cheeks. Mollie wiped them away. "But now you hate me."

"No, I don't. Far from it. I'm simply very disappointed. I can't believe you'd lie to me in such a fashion."

"I never lied to you. Not once."

"You kept the truth from me, and that's the same thing. It undermines my-"

There was a quick knock on the dining room door. It opened and Tess appeared. "Mrs. Hannity sent me up to lay the table for your supper."

They didn't say much during the meal. Tess was in and out serving it for one thing, and Mrs. Hannity herself brought up the custard pie she'd made for dessert. That way Josh could shower her with praise for making him all the things he liked best. A woman of any age, Mollie had long since noted, basked when Joshua smiled at her, missing leg notwithstanding.

Eileen Brannigan insisted that a clever woman could fix anything in the bedroom. Mollie didn't get the chance to try. That night Joshua slept down the hall.

It had gotten to the point where the workmen at the St. Nicholas were tripping over each other as the different trades applied their diverse arts to the finishing of the building. Interesting as well, Josh thought, how various immigrant groups gravitated toward one or another skill. Just now the site was crawling with half a dozen Italians laying the tile floors of the lobby and corridors. Last week it had been all Irish carpenters, except for the two days when not one of them showed up. First because it was St. Patrick's Day; second, because it was the day after St. Patrick's Day.

"What do you think, Washington?" The black man was pulling a wagon piled high with stacks of tiles, heading for the elevator when Josh stopped him. "Are there any Italian holidays coming up?"

"Can't say, Mr. Turner. Don't know much about Italians. Never met none before."

"Nor I," Josh said. "But they do remarkable work if this is an example." It was Charles McKim who had recommended the Italians to do the flooring, and their precision at executing the architect's design was splendid. The center of the lobby had a sunburst pattern that required expert cutting and fitting of the tiles. Two older men had done all the work, leaving the four others to get on with the simpler checkerboard effect of the border and the solid sections between. Now that the sunburst was finished the pair of superior artisans were occupied with the precise tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of the edges. "Those two," Josh said nodding toward them, "don't speak a word of English, but I expect they won't want for work here in New York."

Washington braked the wagon with his foot and looked at his employer. "Got something going for them 'sides how good they does their jobs," he said.

Josh was intrigued.

Washington didn't turn his head, but his dark eyes darted in every direction. No one seemed to be paying them any attention, but there were workmen everywhere.

Josh nodded toward the wagon. "Leave that," he said. "Come outside with me. I want you to carry something over from the stables."

And once they were on the street, standing between the St. Nicholas and the Hopkins horsecar barn, "All right, no one can hear us out here. What are you saying?"

"Nothing. I ain't saying nothing 'cause I don't know nothing."

"Yes, you are, and yes, you do." And when the other man made no reply, "I've treated you fairly, haven't I? You and Sampson. No different from the others. Seems to me it's in your interest as well as mine to see nothing gets in the way of our getting this building done on time and as it's supposed to be."

"Don't know any reason why it won't."

Josh was unwilling to credit that denial. "Tell me," he urged. "Whatever it is, whatever I do about it, I won't involve you. You've my word on that."

Washington turned and looked back at the entrance to the St. Nicholas. One of the Italians came out carrying a bucket of something-grout it looked like-and dumped it on the road. "Them fancy flats as is going up downtown on Broadway," Washington said, pitching his voice a bit louder than it needed to be and looking at the tile mason.