City Of Promise Part 23

They were, of course, all trying not to think of Carolina's absence, nor the fact that Nick looked twenty years older now he had buried his wife.

For her part Mollie sat at the foot of the table and did everything expected of her. But she did not once meet Josh's glance, and she disappeared upstairs the moment the guests left.

On Friday she did not join him for breakfast and he saw her outside, bundled up against the raw November wind, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a long coat and a scarf that was whipped about by the wind. She was using a sharp stick to mark places in the soil, while the stable boy came behind her with a narrow spade, digging a hole in the places she indicated. She seemed to be issuing a string of instructions and she spoke to Ollie Crump, Josh noted, with more animation than she'd mustered for her husband in six months. Certainly more than she'd exhibited the other night when he shared her bed.

He went outside through the pair of gla.s.s doors McKim had added to the breakfast room as an afterthought. Given that your wife is making such a feature of the plantings, French doors might be pleasant, don't you think?

Neither the boy nor Mollie acknowledged his arrival. "I thought gardening was a warm-weather activity," Josh said. "What are you doing?"

"Planting tulip bulbs," Mollie said. "They arrived from Holland only a few days ago. They must be planted now if they're to flower in the spring."

"I see. And what's that?" He pointed to a small tree, its leafless branches showing above the burlap wrapping tied over its roots.

"A young Roxbury Russet apple from Sunshine Hill. Your father sent it over. We shall plant it later today. Over there."

She used her pointed stick to indicate a spot some ten feet from where they stood. It looked to Josh not unlike any other place on the lot and he started to ask her why that was the favored position, but she had turned back to Ollie and was saying something about the depth of one of the holes. Joshua had come out without a coat and the wind was freezing. He turned and went back into the house.

That evening he called on Francie Wildwood.

Francie was exultant. She'd bided her time and kept her mouth shut, knowing that to be a wiser course of action than simply telling of Mollie's arrival at the house on Bowling Green. (She'd suspected from the first the visit was made without his permission. Joshua Turner was far too proud to send his wife to drum up custom for his business.) At the time she had weighed her options carefully. If she told she would have the momentary satisfaction of seeing his face darken with anger and disapproval. But though the chief cause would be the almost-spinster who'd got him to propose marriage, the anger would quickly be directed at her as well. Francie, after all, was in charge of the rooming house, and she had allowed the meeting to take place. So she'd stayed silent. And here he was back in her bed not fifteen months after he married that skinny, drawn-out creature who, as it turned out, hadn't managed to give him a child in all that time, and according to what she heard never would. And thanks in part to Francie helping to rent those first flats and saying nothing of it to him or anyone else, the Joshua Turner who'd returned to her was a lot richer than the one who'd smacked her bottom and given her pearl earrings to mark the last time he took advantage of her charms. "I mean to keep my vows, Francie. But I'd be happy to have you stay on running this house."

"Course I will," she'd said. "And if you change your mind or just get lonely, I'll be here on Bowling Green like always."

And so she was.

16.

INSUFFERABLE HEAT ON the August day of 1873 when Eileen Brannigan summoned Joshua to tea at University Place. She let him in herself and ushered him upstairs to her sitting room, and sat him down to one of Hatty Ellis's sumptuous midafternoon repasts. Beaten biscuits on this occasion, and peach preserves with candied ginger. "Please have another, Joshua. You're looking quite peaky. I think you are working too hard." According to Mollie, the pattern of the nine months since they had moved into their new home did not include many meals taken in the opulent dining room Eileen had furnished with such care. Business, her niece said. Restaurants for both lunch and dinner most days. Joshua prefers it so, Auntie Eileen.

He nonetheless was falling with abandon on Hatty's home-cooked delights. So as not to draw attention to the fact, Eileen made constant small talk while he ate. "Do you think, Joshua, Mr. Darwin's latest theory is correct? He says human beings have also evolved, not just turtles and lizards and whatever else he reported on a while back."

"Evolved from animals, not simply like them," Josh said, heaping preserves on his fourth biscuit. "We, apparently, were once apes. Darwin is very convincing. Why does that make you smile?"

"I'm thinking that some men have not evolved all that far. Ah, I'm embarra.s.sing you. Never mind, I see you've finished your tea so I must get to the point before you go rushing off."

Josh sat back, content to wait until she spoke her piece. Eileen Brannigan never wasted his time.

"I have a . . ." Eileen hesitated, as if seeking for a word, "a colleague," she said. "He is very clever and has certain connections."

"As have you, yourself," Josh said.

"Indeed. But these days I don't see as much of the important gentlemen who once visited regularly. I have come to rely on this particular colleague for business advice." She had dinner with Sol Ganz once a month. Always at Delmonico's on Chambers Street where he arranged a private room. The food was unfailingly superb, but the talk still more interesting. Mr. Ganz, she had discovered, for all his folksy manner, was a man who knew just about everything about just about everyone. Their discussions always finished with him inquiring after her niece and nephew-in-law. Mr. Turner's business is still doing well? Very well, Mr. Ganz. Good, good. I am delighted to hear it.

Eileen was convinced Mr. Ganz already knew everything there was to know about Mollie and Josh, but since his fortunes were now in some measure tied to theirs, she no longer found his interest alarming. She believed instead that he was looking out for them. An opinion confirmed the night before when Mr. Ganz did more than simply ask after their well-being. "I have things to tell you. I can explain only a limited amount, but you must pay close heed to what I say and act on it swiftly." Following that announcement he spoke earnestly for a number of minutes.

As soon as she got home Eileen wrote to ask Joshua to come to tea at his earliest convenience.

So here he was, awash in excellent tea and stuffed full of delicious biscuits and jam. And though there was no one in the house other than the two of them and Hatty Ellis, Eileen got up and closed the door, then returned to sit across from him. "I have something of great urgency to tell you."

"I'm listening, Aunt Eileen."

She nodded, but she did not speak. In another example of that caution Josh found remarkable, Eileen reached for a piece of paper and a pencil, wrote something, and pa.s.sed it to him.

Josh was looking at two letters. A J and a G. Both capitalized. "Initials?" Josh asked.

"Precisely."

He thought for a moment. "I'm sorry. I can't think of anyone I know who-"

"Someone you know of," Eileen interrupted. "In the world of business and finance. Very high finance."

"Jay Gould."

She s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper back and began tearing it into tiny pieces. "Yes." Spoken quickly, as if it might be a curse and she didn't want the G.o.ds to overhear. "Him."

"Aunt Eileen, Mr. Gou-That particular gentleman operates in circles far above mine. I have no connection whatever to-"

"Please, just listen to me. I believe it is the intention of Mr. J. G. to arrange things so that he can acquire whatever he wants anywhere in the country at the lowest possible price."

"Nothing new in that," Josh said. "He's been doing it for years."

"This is different. More . . . extreme. The market, Josh . . ."

"Yes."

"At the moment it is not reliable."

He thought for a few seconds. "You're talking about a run, aren't you? A panic. Like '57, or even '37." Her silence was confirmation. "Aunt Eileen, I a.s.sure you, rest easy. There are new laws in place. The Treasury Department promises such an event can't occur again."

"My friend," she said quietly, "is extremely reliable. I am myself sometimes astonished at the extent of his knowledge. And his . . . influence." Mr. Theodore Paisley . . . found dead in his home . . . "Please take this information very seriously, Joshua."

So, his choices were Eileen Brannigan and the high-level friends she had cultivated over better than three decades, or a Washington politician who might well be gone in the next election. "I shall take it very seriously indeed, Aunt Eileen. I promise."

September 18th was a Thursday. Still warm for so late in the season. Sticky as well. It seemed the men on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street were doing business with something less than their usual exuberance. The weather, someone said. Another pointed to a character called Two-finger Tommy-the other eight digits had been lost at Second Bull Run-a trader known to act for a number of different princ.i.p.als. When the market was about to leap in one or the other direction Tommy inevitably got itchy. No explaining it, he insisted, but it was as if biting insects were crawling up and down his body. At just after ten that morning Tommy was scratching like mad and jerking up and down as if possessed by a devil.

There was never any evidence that Two-finger Tommy had advance knowledge of the meeting a short distance away at the New York office of Jay Cooke and Company, a Philadelphia investment bank believed to be among the strongest in the country. It was held in strict secrecy and only a handful of the most important bankers and brokers in the city, men who made the market, had been invited. Once a.s.sembled they listened to Cooke's senior people plead for an investment of capital to keep their bank from going under. It did not take long for the leading lights of finance to make clear their refusal to bail out a firm that was the victim of its own bad judgment.

Vanderbilt voiced the explanation most everyone believed. Jay Cooke had overreached. He'd hired fellows-advertisers they called them these days-to convince people that the stark badlands of the Dakota and Minnesota territories through which his Northern Pacific Railroad ran were ripe and luscious and accessible, a courtesan waiting to be enjoyed. The extravagant tale sold some stock in the short run, but the price collapsed once people saw the actuality. "If people will carry on business in this madcap manner," Vanderbilt insisted, "they must run amuck."

The moneymen left Cooke's office at eleven, convinced they had done the right thing. The bad tidings were telegraphed to Jay Cooke in Philadelphia. He immediately closed his doors and suspended all business at every branch of his bank.

The news was announced on the floor of the Exchange at 11:22, and like a wounded beast the market roared in pain and plunged into frenzy. The vast majority of traders couldn't sell fast enough. Jay Gould made an instant fortune on the decline. Vanderbilt opposed him and bought with abandon, desperate to start the bulls running. He succeeded in hanging on to the New York Central line, but Gould grabbed much of the rest of his rival's holdings. Brokers large and small failed in a matter of hours and a dozen banks collapsed.

Friday, despite a driving rain, seething crowds churned the downtown streets into mud as they dashed from one bank to another trying to withdraw their funds. Lines formed around entire blocks and the police had all they could do to maintain order. The banks, meanwhile, had pretty much run out of cash. Their vaults were stuffed with railroad bonds, each of which was losing value as the seconds ticked by.

On Sat.u.r.day at eleven a.m., forty-eight hours after the panic began, the governors of the Exchange shut down trading. Someone asked for how long. The answer was a shrug.

Zac found Josh at the foundry. Frankie Miller's men, usually hidden, were in plain view around the perimeter. "You're expecting trouble?" Zac asked. "Here?"

"Not really," Josh said. "I'm just being cautious."

"Well, you've been right so far. Prescient I might call it." Zac's voice betrayed a new respect for his younger brother. "How the h.e.l.l did you know?"

"I can't tell you a lot. Just that Mollie's Aunt Eileen has some remarkable connections."

"Jesus G.o.d Almighty. It certainly seems so."

Zac had not at first credited Josh's warning. Until in mid-August, a few days after their initial conversation, his brother brought four suitcases full of currency to Zac's office in the Devrey Building. "Except for 1060 Fourth, my rooming houses, my flats, and the land each stands on, I'm now entirely in cash. And not a penny of it is in any bank. This is it, Zac. All I possess. In four leather satchels."

Zac stood up, peering into the cases as Josh snapped them open. Each was full to the top with greenbacks.

"United States bills," Josh said. "Every one, so our government a.s.sures me, backed by gold."

"The gold," Zac said, "is in Fort Knox. With an army to protect it. What are you proposing to do with all this?"

"I think Mama will look after it for me."

"Now I know you're mad. Surely you don't mean to bury-" Zac had broken off and sank back in his seat, the light of revelation dawning in his eyes. "The Carolina clock," he'd said softly.

"Exactly."

Three hours later, eleven minutes before nine in the evening and the building all but empty, Zac went through the door beside his office and up a short ladder into the rooftop structure that housed the clockworks. Josh rested his left foot on the ladder's second rung and his peg on the floor and hoisted one satchel at a time for Zac to stow away. At two minutes to nine the brothers were on Ca.n.a.l Street, gazing upward, intent on seeing that nothing they had done had interrupted the clock's functioning. The seconds ticked by, with the hands moving in what appeared to be an entirely normal fashion. The hour struck. h.e.l.l Witch sailed majestically across the sky, followed by West Witch and East Witch and the clock chimed nine times. "Mama," Josh said, "approves."

The next day Zac began raising as much cash as he could-less than Josh's stash he was fairly certain-and hid his suitcases next to his brother's.

Now, some four weeks later, the whole incredible drama was playing out exactly as Joshua had predicted. Pandemonium on Wall Street and a run on the banks.

The tension in the foundry that September Sat.u.r.day morning was real, but more controlled than what was happening on the streets. Zac had arrived on an old swaybacked nag. He'd added seven hundred to his supply of cash when he sold a fine mare a month previous.

There were only four men standing near the Kelly converter-Tickle and the other dwarf, McCoy, and two normal-size men he didn't know-because Josh had cut back on his payroll over the last few weeks. The four continued working, but Zac knew they were eyeing him with apprehension, anxious for any word from the world of finance.

"What's the latest?" Josh asked.

"Well, it took me about an hour to get from Ca.n.a.l Street down here. Crowds everywhere, and I heard thirty-two different stories along the way. Only thing I'm sure of is that Grant and Richardson are in the city. At the Fifth Avenue Hotel, meeting with the governors of the Exchange. Apparently the federal government is being asked to put some forty million in cash into the banks."

Josh turned to his men. "You hear that? The president and the secretary of the treasury have come to New York to help us. We'll be fine." Never mind how rapidly he'd dismissed the promises from Washington when Eileen issued her warning. Nor how right he'd been.

No different this time as it turned out. The administration announced it would not pony up hard cash in the form of deposits-not morally defensible, Richardson said, to reward the profligacy that had created the situation-but Washington would buy government bonds on the open market and that would put some cash in the system.

The Exchange stayed closed for a week. The bears ran rampant nonetheless. Men traded on the street under the trees as they had in Colonial times. And always, it seemed, they were forced to sell for less than they'd bought. Stocks sank to new lows. Brokerage houses disappeared overnight, their clients finding them open for business one day and their premises empty and bolted shut the next. Banks defaulted one after the other-in a few cases the bankers disappeared with what little cash the bank still had. A week later a number of the insurance companies closed their doors. By then the crisis had spread from New York across the nation. Chicago, for one, was entirely without a banking system and the town resorted to barter.

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 G.o.d-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."