City Of Promise Part 28

"You no take too long," the woman repeated as she tugged the curtain closed. "Hurry."

Mollie lifted her skirts with one hand and yanked the blindfold off with the other. She blinked furiously, willing her eyes to adjust to the return of normal sight. Then, in a voice as normal as she could make it, "I am done."

The woman pulled the curtain open. Mollie had a swift impression of black hair and all-black clothes. She flung herself onto that dark vision, using both hands to shove as hard as she could, widening her own stance to secure her balance. The woman lost her footing and fell to the ground.

Mollie ran across the roof, ignoring the stabbing pain in her legs. She looked back over her shoulder. The creature in black was scrambling to her feet and uttering a string of Italian curses. Mollie expected her jailer to shout for a.s.sistance, from the beekeeper perhaps, instead she seemed to deliberately keep her voice low. No time to worry about that now. Speed, Mollie had told herself when she made her plan. Run as fast as you can, however much it hurts. Speed and surprise are your only weapons. She knew that success depended on getting to the door before the woman caught up to her. And that-dear G.o.d in heaven let it be so-the door must be unlocked.

"You come back. b.i.t.c.h! I get you and I kill you!"

In English. As if she thought Mollie would obey if she understood.

"After this you sit all day and all night. No food. No bucket."

She was level with the beehives and the door was maybe a yard away. A hand grabbed her skirt from behind. "I got you, b.i.t.c.h!" An arm around her waist. Incredibly strong. Mollie jammed both elbows back behind her and made contact with soft flesh and hard bone. There was a whoos.h.i.+ng sound, like letting the air out of a balloon, then a thud.

Still not a shout, instead a kind of breathless whisper of rage. Mollie lurched forward. A hand clutched at the hem of her skirt. She reached out and pushed the nearest beehive. She was off balance and couldn't get much force into the gesture, but the thing tottered and half fell against the hive beside it. A swarm of angry, buzzing bees rose up and filled the air, forming a cloud around her head. Mollie bent one arm across her face to protect her eyes and pulled forward again. She heard the ripping sound as her dress tore free. She willed herself to disregard the stings and fumbled around the top of the hive. A frame heavy with honey came free in her hand and she held on to it despite the furious attack of the enraged bees. She half turned and saw her jailer getting to her knees and reaching out to grab her again. Mollie brought the frame cras.h.i.+ng down over the woman's head. Honey dripped down her hair and her face, and the bees swarmed in her direction. In seconds Mollie could no longer see the other woman's head, only the yellow and black bodies of the bees. She hurled herself forward and grabbed the handle of the door.

It turned. The relief-this had always been the thing she couldn't know-was almost too much. The calm she'd mustered deserted her and heart pounding she raced down the narrow stairs.

The stairwell was dark and the place smelled of things she could not recognize, but which were not unpleasant. Mollie went down one flight and then another. Despite everything she'd heard and read about the crowded condition of the tenements, she neither saw nor heard another human being. The house seemed entirely empty. On the first floor the door at the end of the hall was open and she could see pots boiling on what looked like a modern stove, all polished black iron and gleaming cream-color enamel. You hurry. I got business. The woman probably wanted to tend to her cooking. The only other door in the hall was closed, but she heard the soft drone of voices speaking on the other side. English she realized. She didn't care. Nothing mattered except getting away. She had to will herself not to run, only creep to the front door.

There was no stoop. As soon as she pushed open the door she was standing on a street bathed in suns.h.i.+ne and filled with bustling activity. A man was selling tomatoes off the top of a pair of overturned ash cans directly in front of her. The road behind him was lined with pushcarts. The sidewalk was thick with people. Most jostled past her, seeing nothing and caring less. One, a woman carrying a bag made of mattress ticking, stopped to confront her. "Pane," the woman said, pulling a round loaf of bread from her bag and waving it under Mollie's nose. "Bread. Good. Del giorno. Fresca. Five cents only." Mollie was hungry, but she had no money. She pushed past the woman, terrified lest someone appear from the house behind her and she be dragged back into captivity. She knew if that happened she would find no allies in this crowd. They would turn away because their survival depended on seeing as little as possible.

There was a break in the crowd and she could see a sign across the road that said BAYARD STREET SALOON. She was where she'd thought herself to be, in Mulberry Bend. She turned left because her instincts told her that was the way north. She'd have run except the throng of people made it impossible.

"Excuse me," she kept murmuring as she struggled through the crowd. "I'm sorry. Excuse me." No one paid any attention. There was a horse just ahead of her and it was harnessed to a hansom cab pulled up to the curb. That seemed miraculous in this neighborhood. Mollie pushed and shoved her way toward it. Finally, near enough to where she thought she could be heard, she called out, "You, cabby. Over here." And when the driver looked in her direction, "Can you take me please?"

She was level with the cab by then and the man peered down from his perch, grinning a mostly toothless grin. "Well now, can't say as I'd refuse if my time was my own, miss. Though looks like you been busy enough for so early in the day. Sorry, sweetness, I'm waitin' for the fellow already hired me."

Mollie put a hand to her head. Her hair was hanging loose. And she knew her dress to be torn and filthy. She made no apology for her appearance. "I am Mrs. Joshua Turner," making her voice calm and her tone as authoritative as if she were speaking from the security of her own home. "I will pay you fifty dollars if you take me to 1060 Fourth Avenue immediately."

The driver stared at her, obviously beginning to doubt his original a.s.sumption. "Show me the money," he said finally. "You don't sound like a doxy, but you don't look like you got no fifty dollars neither."

She started to respond, then saw him looking over her head in the direction from which she'd come. She had run out of time. Mollie reached for the door of the cab and hauled herself up and inside.

"Hey! I didn't agree to-"

"A hundred dollars," she said, slamming the cab door closed and shoving down the front window so she could talk to the driver. "But only if you get me out of here right now."

The driver made up his mind and cracked his whip over the horse's rump. They set off at a pace that scattered everything in their path. Mollie ignored flying fruit and vegetables and the clatter of overturned tin cans and peddlers' carts, and peered out the window as they pa.s.sed the house from which she'd just escaped. It was red brick, three stories tall and two windows wide, and there was a white granite lintel above each closely curtained window. She saw laundry hanging from the windows of buildings either side, but there was none in the house where she'd been held. And no number on the door. No matter, she knew she'd recognize it again if she saw it. More important, she realized with a profound sense of shock that she knew the man standing in the doorway staring after her.

"Mrs. Turner! It's you, ain't it?" Ollie flung open the garden gate and ran toward the hansom. "Mr. Turner! Come quick, it's Mrs. Turner. She's home!"

Two of Frankie Miller's men appeared out of nowhere and flanked the cabby, grabbing him by either arm. "No!" Mollie was almost too tired to speak but knew she must. "He helped me. He wasn't one of them."

Then Josh was there, lifting her out of the cab, refusing the a.s.sistance of any of the others milling about in the street.

"I promised the driver a hundred dollars," she murmured. "I'm sorry to have been so extravagant. It did seem required."

"He shall have two hundred," Josh said, "if he'll stay until I have time to talk to him." The cabby nodded eagerly. Josh turned to the stable boy. "Ollie, saddle Midnight and go at once to Dr. Turner. Tell him we need him." Then, remembering that Simon was waiting for his child to be born. "If he can't leave, ask him to send another doctor as quickly as possible. After that go to the Devrey Building and get word of what's happened to Mr. Devrey." All the while he was issuing these instructions the implications of the event-that Mollie had somehow escaped from her captors-were becoming clear in his mind. Josh turned to the gunmen, speaking over Mollie's head, lolling now against his chest. "Send someone to Mrs. Brannigan at fifty-three University Place. Please say her presence is urgently required at 1060, and I'd be grateful if she would return with you at once and be prepared to remain a few days."

Everyone moved in response to his orders and Josh started for the house, still carrying Mollie, his gait jerky and asymmetrical, but the great strength of his upper body and his urgency prevailing even over gravity.

She was so still he thought she might have fainted, except that as they approached the door she moved one hand to his shoulder.

Josh lowered his head and kissed that available hand. Mollie sighed softly.

Ten minutes later she lay on her bed in exactly the same position as he'd set her down, seeming not to have the strength even to move. He sat beside her and ran a gentle finger over the red and angry-looking b.u.mps on her cheeks and forehead. "What did they do to your face?"

"Nothing. Bee stings. How I escaped . . . I tipped over a hive and . . ."

The words stopped, dammed, he realized, by her total exhaustion. "It's all right. You'll tell me about it later. Tess will be up in a minute with hot water and cloths. And Simon will be here soon. You're a heroine, my dearest Mollie. Quite remarkable. And you are going to be fine. I shall not permit anything else."

She smiled but seconds later the expression changed to a wince of pain. "Josh, my shoes. Do you think you might . . ."

He started at once on the laces, but even after he'd entirely freed them from their hooks he couldn't pull the shoes off. He saw her grimace when he tried. "I need to cut them off. Scissors?" She directed him to the bottom drawer of a small chest and he found her old sewing basket sitting on top of a number of tissue-wrapped parcels. It occurred to him that it had been many years since he'd seen her with a needle in her hand, but the basket yielded a choice of scissors and he picked the pair that looked to be the strongest.

He'd freed her right foot, taking off her stocking as well as her shoe, and was finis.h.i.+ng the left when Tess arrived with piles of towels, a bar of lavender soap, and a large pitcher of steaming water. "Good Lord Almighty," she murmured looking at Mollie's swollen and purple foot. "However did she walk on that?"

"I'm guessing she ran on it," Josh said. The second boot came off while he spoke and he removed that stocking as well, revealing a left foot as deeply purple and misshapen as the right.

"The b.u.mps on her face and arms are bee stings, Tess." He was working hard to control his rage and the words came out quiet and subdued, but edged with steel. "I'll have Jane bring up some chamomile and the doctor will be here shortly. Meanwhile, please make her as comfortable as you can."

"Josh, wait . . ." Mollie's voice was a faint and exhausted whisper. "Something I must tell you."

He had to bend over to be sure her heard her. "Yes. What is it? I'm listening."

"I saw him," she murmured. "In the doorway, watching me leave." Then she told him the name.

"I've been working out the connections," Josh said, turning the pad on which he'd been making notes so Eileen, sitting across from his desk, could see what he'd written. Her name was on one side of the paper, that of Solomon Ganz on the other. A dark and purposeful line had been drawn between the two.

Eileen leaned forward and peered at what he'd shown her, then sat back. Her face was deeply flushed, a pink contrast to her white hair. "You cannot think I would be behind any kind of harm coming to Mollie. Or to you, for that matter. Surely you realize-"

"I know you would not consciously harm either of us. Far from it. But Mollie saw him. There's no mistake. Solomon Ganz really is the villain of the piece, and from the first his connection to Mollie and to me has been through you. Did you suggest him as the p.a.w.nbroker Mollie should approach?"

Eileen shook her head. "Absolutely not. I have no idea how Mollie chose him, but once she p.a.w.ned the jewels Mr. Ganz figured out they were mine and paid me a visit. I thought at first he was threatening you and Mollie, but I was wrong. He was after profit. For his grandchildren he said. It was a motive I understood. And there was something else." She hesitated. "Mr. Ganz claimed someone was going to print calumnious lies about you. He said he could prevent it."

"What sorts of lies?"

"That you colluded with the enemy during the war. The time you spent with your sister, on her plantation . . ."

Josh nodded. The pieces were beginning to come together. The article from nine years earlier, The Times of November 1871, was still in his desk drawer. Mr. Theodore Paisley, a naturalized American citizen immigrated from Ireland many years ago, was found dead in his home . . . "I presume the someone of whom you're speaking was Teddy Paisley," he said. "And Paisley appears to have died shortly after Mr. Ganz paid you a visit."

"Josh, I did not-"

"Of course you didn't. Such an idea never occurred to me. But there is a connection, is there not? Between Ganz and Paisley's murder."

"I have always thought so." Eileen was pale now, but her cheeks were stained with two bright red dots. "I had no choice, Josh. I could not allow you and Mollie to suffer at the hands of someone who wanted only to use you to get at me. All her life I have protected Mollie. I hope you understand."

Josh leaned forward and covered Eileen's hand with his own, then withdrew. "You said Ganz was after profit. How was that to be arranged?"

"I sold him half my interest in the St. Nicholas Corporation. I thought that way he would have a reason to want you to succeed. I was right, Josh. Solomon Ganz has earned thousands from your ventures these past six years." She glanced at the piece of paper that had started the conversation, the one that showed a connection between her and Solomon Ganz and was meant to be related to Mollie's disappearance. "Why do you think he would be involved in such a terrible scheme?"

"First because two different sources told me so." He would not try to explain about Mama Jack or DuVal Jones. "More important, Mollie says she saw Ganz standing in the doorway of the house where they kept her. Right after she ran away. And the cabby who brought her home was only on Bayard Street because the fare he'd picked up on Avenue A asked to be brought there, and required that he wait to bring him home. Mulberry Bend is, after all, an unlikely place to get a hansom."

She shook her head, still unwilling to grant his interpretation of events. "Five years ago. The panic. Mr. Ganz was the one who warned me it was coming and instructed me to warn you."

"Protecting his investment," Josh said. "Until such time as he decided it should be cashed in. Eight city blocks, Aunt Eileen. On what many believe destined to be one of the finest avenues in all New York. A king's ransom. In this case, a queen's. Mr. Ganz, as you pointed out, is in this for profit."

"Joshua, I cannot believe he-" Eileen stopped speaking, drew a sharp breath, and pressed a hand to her face. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

I have never seen my Auntie Eileen actually cry, Josh. She is the strongest woman I know. "You've thought of something, Aunt Eileen?"

"As soon as you told me what had happened." She whispered the words. "The moment you left. I went to Mr. Ganz. I knew him to be a man of extraordinary resources and I wished to enlist his aid. But . . ."

"What is it?"

"He knew," Eileen said. "About Mollie having been taken. I've been so distraught, I never made the connection, but . . . I remember now. I called out to him as soon as I walked into the shop, and he said, 'Come in, Mrs. Brannigan. I have been expecting you.'"

20.

"SHE'S SLEEPING NOW," Simon said. "I gave her something, so it will be a good long while before she wakes. I gave your Tess a sedative as well, incidentally. Couldn't stop her sobbing otherwise."

"What about Mollie's feet?" Joshua asked, unable to shake the memory of those purple stumps so distorted they looked like hooves.

"Three and a half days should not have done any permanent damage. Mollie is strong, not to mention determined. Do you know how she actually got away? She said something about having knocked over a beehive and covering someone in honey."

"That's more than I know. Why would honey be a weapon?"

"The bees, I expect." Simon was meanwhile repacking his black bag with various pincers and wooden sticks, all the gear modern medicine demanded physicians carry with them to a house call. "Think about it. The little stingers are going to descend en ma.s.se wherever their stolen honey lands."

"Good G.o.d."

"Quite resourceful, I must say. I think perhaps you'd best not make your wife angry." Simon grinned as he tucked away his syringes and needles, then remembered that Josh and Mollie had been angry at each other for a number of years. "In a manner of speaking, of course. I don't mean she would defy your auth-"

Josh waved away the awkward apology. "It's all right. I know what you meant. She was indeed astonis.h.i.+ngly resourceful, as well as brave."

His brother nodded. "I was a bit concerned she might be concussed, but there's no indication of that. She's simply suffering from complete exhaustion. As near as I can make out, they kept her in some kind of wooden rooftop structure where she could neither stand nor stretch out. She was bent into an accordion shape and had to remain so."

Joshua clenched his hands into fists, but said nothing.

"You're looking rather beaten and bent yourself," Simon said. "You need to get some rest." He folded his stethoscope away, but hesitated before closing the bag. "Would you like something to help you sleep?"

"I think you are considering drugging this entire household. No, thank you."

"Fine. But I mean it, Josh. You must get some proper sleep."

"I shall," Joshua promised. He walked Simon to the door, pausing just before he opened it. "Thank you for coming so quickly. I know it wasn't an easy time for you to leave."

"Rachel," Simon said smiling, "does this sort of thing rather on her own. With no help from me and as I understand it, not much from Dr. Thomas. But," checking his watch, "I think I may have a third child about now. So I'll go home and become acquainted."

It was after nine when Josh had his last consultation of the day with Frankie Miller and dragged himself up the stairs. There was a soft glow coming from beneath Mollie's door and it was not closed all the way. He pushed it open and stepped inside. An oil lamp was lit but turned low. Eileen was sitting in a chair beside the bed. A book lay open on her lap but she appeared to be dozing. Josh put a hand on her shoulder. "Go to bed, Aunt Eileen. I'm going to stay with Mollie."

She blinked a few times, then looked up at him. "If you're quite sure . . ."

"I am. Go on."

Mollie lay on the bed, rather as he'd last seen her, but the lacy edge of a pale blue nightdress peeped out from beneath the summer quilt, and her hair had been brushed to its customary dark gleam and curled softly around her face. She seemed to him to look as young as when he'd first seen her, when all that silly talk of spinsterhood at twenty-two had her believing he wouldn't want to marry her. But he'd wanted to very much indeed, and looking at her now he could remember the exhilaration of that extraordinary trip to the Tombs to rescue Eileen. Followed by the bargaining over Mollie, which he'd allowed because it tickled him to see her so discomforted by it-and the way he'd dared to pat her bottom because he knew they were going to be betrothed when the little game he was playing with her aunt was done.

She sighed and s.h.i.+fted her position slightly. Josh watched for a moment, then decided she was as deeply asleep as before. He sat in the chair Eileen had occupied and began taking off his clothes. They felt stuck to him after this long and emotion-filled day. His peg as well. He had to yank it off and the stump itched something fierce when it was finally gone. "Ma.s.sage, don't scratch," his father had told him early on. "You mustn't tear at the scars or they'll fester. It's loss of circulation that causes the itching. Rub the stump hard to get the blood flow back." After they'd been married for a time Mollie cottoned on to the routine and offered to rub it for him. He'd refused at first. Permitting her to touch what was left of his right leg was in a way a more intimate thing than even their s.e.xual congress, but he'd come to allow her the liberty. Even to celebrate it. Almost always such encounters finished with her yielding to him with that breathless eagerness that had marked their early years together.

Dear G.o.d, how had they come to where they were now? At least where they'd been until three days ago when she was s.n.a.t.c.hed away. All unbidden, Josh seemed to see a parade of perhaps irrelevant visions of Mollie throughout the years he'd known her. The prim dark dress of her days as a Macy's employee, the saucy hat she wore the first time he took her coaching, the ruffles and bows of her bridal dress as she stood beside him in Grace Church. Then, with a stab of intense feeling, the memory of how she'd come naked to their marriage bed. A tremendous act of trust and giving, exceeded only by the audacity of the purple chiffon frock she'd worn to Ebenezer Tickle's wedding, designed quite obviously to flaunt his male prowess. Only one leg, but he can get it over . . .

He knew he bore the blame for the deed that precipitated all that came after. Mollie lost their child and the possibility of any others because someone-Trenton Clifford, he was more than ever sure-wanted to harm Josh and thus hold Zac hostage. Now Clifford was the reason his wife had been abducted, and subjected to such terror and misery.

Josh did not shrink from those truths, but what of the intervening years, the estrangement that had sometimes bordered on overt hostility? Partly his fault as well, but also partly hers. How much? He was honest enough to know he couldn't say. It was impossible for him to compare his absence of fatherhood to her loss of motherhood. He regretted not having an heir, but he didn't fool himself that meant he knew what she felt.

He was undressed save only the bottom half of his undersuit, and he declined to remove that. Instead, as he was, he slipped silently and easily under the covers and into the bed beside her. Mollie sighed and moved a bit, then settled. Josh propped himself on one elbow and looked at her for a few long moments, seeing the way the veins traced faint blue lines in her temples, and how the pink of her cheeks looked normal now, no longer the feverish flush of earlier in the day. He bent over and kissed her forehead. She sighed again. Josh turned and lowered the wick of the oil lamp, watching the flame die and the glow disappear. Then he put his head down beside that of his wife, sharing her pillow and putting one gentle hand against her breast, and allowed himself to sleep.

"Thirty-two Bayard Street," Miller said, handing Josh a carefully drawn sketch. "As much detail as that daguerreotypist would have gotten. With a lot less chance of making trouble."

The photographer had been Josh's idea. Miller had discouraged him. "Don't matter how many other pictures he takes, walking around with that big box and putting that cloth over his head . . . it won't work. Not down in Mulberry Bend, Mr. Turner. I know someone who can do as well with a pad and pencil."

That someone had improbably turned out to be Miller's younger brother. "He's a budding artist for sure," Josh said, examining the drawing. "And you don't think anybody spotted him?"

"Never said that." Miller shook his head. "Course they spotted him. But everyone knows Joe's my brother and n.o.body bothers him. He's always walking around the city drawing things. Ill.u.s.trations he calls 'em. Sells 'em to Leslie for his journal, sometimes the newspapers. So no one's likely to have taken any special notice."

Josh was not entirely sure that was accurate. Solomon Ganz, he was beginning to believe, had eyes everywhere. Josh, however, was more focused on getting information than he was in concealing his interest. He knew which house was likely the right one because the driver of the hansom that brought Mollie home had been able to describe it. "No number on the door, sir. And all my fare said was, 'Bayard Street just near Mulberry.' But I'm fairly certain the one where that gentleman went in and Mrs. Turner came out was third from the downtown corner. Looking north, I guess you'd say. Oh, and on the west side of the street. I'm certain of that." Then, by way of a second thought, "Could have been the fourth house from the corner. Sorry, sir. I'm just not sure 'bout that part of it. Never seemed important until after everything happened the way it did. And by then we was driving up Bayard Street as fast as Bessie could take us and I didn't think about nothing else."

"So it's number thirty-two," Josh said, bending over the sketch.

"That's what Joe thinks. But he made a sketch of thirty-four as well." Miller pa.s.sed over another drawing. "According to Joe, thirty-six sells bread on the ground floor, and n.o.body said nothing about that. So it's not likely, is it?"

"No, it's not." Mollie would surely have mentioned a bakery. "What about the roofs? Did he manage to see those?"

"Absolutely. Joe's clever. Like I said." Miller reached out and turned over both sketches. "Number thirty-five across the road is five stories, so he climbed up to the roof there. That's what he saw across the street. Roofs of thirty-two and thirty-four. Respectively, like they says."

"No beehives," Josh said, examining the reverse sides of the drawings. "He's quite sure?"

Miller shrugged. "Joe ain't sure he knows what a beehive looks like. Me neither, come to that. I mean . . . here in the city . . . But he says he drew exactly what was there, and you can rely on that, Mr. Turner. Joe wouldn't give you nothing wasn't the straight stuff."