City Of Promise Part 9

"To pay Paul," Mollie said. "I understand."

He'd poured himself a small gla.s.s of sherry wine and one for her as well, and he brought them to the dining room table where they did most of their living and talking now that the parlor had been made into an office. "Besides," he added, "a hundred thousand's small change what with the cost of land these days. There's a piece not too far from Gramercy Park, Twenty-Seventh Street between Second and Third Avenues, where there are two vacant lots side by side and a third next to them with a ramshackle old two-story building I could take down. Three years ago I might have bought the lots for four thousand each and the building for fifteen. Now the building's forty-seven thousand and the owner of the lots is asking twenty thousand each."

Mollie nibbled on her lip.

"What are you thinking?" Josh asked. "You're always thinking something when you do that."

Mollie didn't know what he meant for a second, then she realized and stopped chewing. Thinking, meanwhile, that it was quite marvelous that her husband, a busy man of affairs, had noticed such a small thing about her. But she knew this moment was not about romance. "It occurs to me," Mollie said, "that the answer may be boldness. More even than you've already displayed."

"What I've displayed," he said, "might equally be called foolhardiness. C'mon out with it. What's your idea?"

"Your father's lots in the East Sixties," Mollie said. Then, before he could make the customary objection about that land being too far from the heart of the town, "That's what I meant about being bold. You must convince possible tenants that the city is moving north faster than they realized. You can do it, Josh. I know you can. And I'm sure you could work out favorable terms with Dr. Turner."

7.

CAROLINA INSISTED THE meeting take place in her bedroom. She was propped against a number of pillows, wrapped in a crocheted shawl, with her silver hair in a braid that hung over her shoulder. Looking, Mollie thought, pale and ill, except that her eyes twinkled rather like her son's, and she was obviously still as clever about business as ever.

"The biggest problem with Papa's lots, Josh," Carolina said, "is that they are miles from anywhere. How will these middling business types you plan to let to get from Sixty-Third Street to where they earn their living?"

"I'm expecting," Josh said, "Mr. Tweed to follow through on his New York Railway Company."

Nicholas Turner sat beside his wife, holding her hand. "Seems like a fair a.s.sumption," Nick said. "Apparently nothing whatever can stop Mr. Tweed from stringing an elevated railway right round all of Manhattan. He's got everyone who matters on his board, and the city's pledged five million toward construction."

"The city," Simon Turner said, "had best do something."

At twenty-one Simon was the youngest of Mollie's new family and the only one of Josh's siblings she saw regularly-Zac was still in Liverpool and Goldie had gone to visit him. Nonetheless, she found Simon the hardest to fathom. He had a coolness about him. At least where she was concerned. She didn't think he'd spoken two complete sentences to her since they'd met. Like his father, Simon was a doctor. He'd been graduated from Columbia Medical College a few months before, but had gone on living at home. Mollie thought that was probably because of Carolina's illness; Josh said he simply enjoyed having everything done for him. Whatever the reason, these days Simon traveled daily from Suns.h.i.+ne Hill to New York Hospital on Sixteenth Street and Fifth Avenue. "The horsecar I was on this afternoon," he said now, "had better than sixty people crammed into the s.p.a.ce meant for twenty-two. Fully half of them were hanging off the outside at peril to life and limb."

"All the same," his father said, "a railroad that runs over our heads, spilling smoke and cinders while we walk below . . . It seems a rather unsightly choice."

"It's that or we must travel under the ground like moles," Simon said. "There are folks suggesting that, you know. Though I would imagine the upheaval caused by all those tunnels would be as unsightly as Boss Tweed's elevated railway."

"When," Carolina said, "has New York City considered the sightliness of anything? At least when weighed against the possibility of profit. However, given that I've nothing to do but lie abed and read the papers, I can tell you I sense trouble brewing for Mr. Tweed. His enemies are gathering and I think they smell blood."

"May I ask a question?" The others turned to Mollie. All at the same time, rather like a music hall performance. She was still an exotic, a rare bird that had flown into their contented nest up here on distant Seventy-First Street. "When you moved your family to Suns.h.i.+ne Hill, Dr. Turner, did you not require to travel to the city?"

"At least three or four days a week," he agreed. "And my wife as well. She was responsible for all of Devrey s.h.i.+pping in those days." Patting Carolina's hand in a way that made it obvious he wasn't shamed by her legendary activities in the world of men.

"Then how," Mollie asked, "did you and Mrs. Turner manage to get back and forth?"

"By carriage," Nick said, looking as if he thought the question a bit odd. "There wasn't any other possibility. There still isn't really. Carriage or horseback. Simon rides every day as far as Forty-Fifth Street. Then leaves his mount at a livery stable and takes the horsecar."

"Exactly," Mollie said. "That's what I've been thinking. At least since you raised the point, Mrs. Turner. Josh"-he'd returned to sit next to her-"what about stables? The flats are to occupy three adjacent lots. Dr. Turner owns six. Could you not build a stable beside them?"

He shook his head. "No good would come of it. The sort of people we're hoping will rent our flats are unlikely to afford private carriages or even a horse. The units won't be grand enough to attract those who-"

"You're missing Mollie's point, Josh," his mother interrupted. "At least if I understand her. You mean a commercial stable, do you not, my dear?"

"Exactly, Mrs. Turner. I'm sure Joshua can prevail on one of the omnibus companies to do two or three runs a day from Sixty-Third Street, if they can stable their horses and lodge their cars at a favorable rate."

Josh smelled the smoke of Trenton Clifford's cigar before he heard his voice. "What's this then? Looks like a Yankee barracks. How are you keeping, Joshua?"

"Well enough." He'd wakened with a fierce ache in his left thigh, and a sharp pain in the right leg he did not have. Not uncommon, his father had a.s.sured him years before, to feel pain in the missing limb. Science could not explain it, but the phenomenon had been reported countless times. And occasional cramp in the leg that bore the brunt of his weight was to be expected. Worse always when the weather turned cold and damp as it had now that it was almost November. "You're a good way from your usual precincts, are you not, Clifford? What are you doing here?"

"I came to see if the rumors were true."

"What rumors are those?" Though he already knew the answer.

"That you're setting about building your human storage units up here on Sixty-Third Street amid the city's garbage heaps. I declare, son, I'm disappointed in you."

Joshua had pretty much the same thoughts each time he covered the distance between Grand Street and his construction site. Usually he did it on horseback, straight up the Bowery, which became Fourth Avenue, except for the stretch from Seventeenth Street to Grand Central which was called Park Avenue. The name change occurred because for those few blocks gra.s.s and shrubbery had been planted to conceal the grates above the tunnel that carried the trains beneath fas.h.i.+onable Murray Hill. Whatever he told Clifford and everyone else, after dark he'd not do the run without a rifle. "The city is moving north at a tremendous clip," he said. "It'll catch up."

"Possibly," Clifford allowed. He was craning his neck to examine the yet unfinished roof above their heads. "So this is what you and Ebenezer Tickle devised between you." Two steel girders stretched the thirty-foot back-to-front length of the brick-framed structure. "Seems a bit of a waste."

"This isn't the flats." He'd had the stable built first because it was much the easier project, and used the steel girders because, given that he was already producing them, there was little expense in doing so.

"I realize that. A livery stable. You've done a deal with old man Hopkins. I heard that as well."

"I expect that's common knowledge by now." The sign was to be delivered and hung outside this week, even though the interior of the stable remained to be finished. HOPKINS AND SONS OMNIBUS COMPANY-DAILY JOURNEYS TO NEW YORK. You want that in place as soon as ever it can be, Josh. So people will have confidence in the promise. It's what Mollie had said and he agreed with her.

"Also," Clifford flicked a thick nubbin of ash from the end of his cigar, "that you're counting on Tweed's scheme for an elevated railroad along Third Avenue."

"Eventually there's to be one along Second as well."

"So they say. But there's others as say different, son. You might consider throwing your lot in with theirs."

Josh felt himself beginning to totter; the good left leg had taken as much punishment as it could tolerate. His stick, meanwhile, lay atop a half-built stable wall some fifteen feet away. "I'm not, thank G.o.d, your son. Is that all our business, Captain Clifford? If so, perhaps you'll excuse me." Josh turned and started for the wall and knew when he took the first step he was more unsteady than he'd realized and might stumble and go down. He did sometimes. Not so bad if he was alone. He could always crawl to something st.u.r.dy enough to allow him to haul himself up. But now . . . Dear G.o.d, don't let him fall with that b.a.s.t.a.r.d looking on.

Clifford guessed what he was after and easily outstrode him and claimed the prize. "Nice walking stick," he said, holding it by the business end and offering it with the ornate horse's head first. "Looks like an antique."

"Stick's new, but the head's been in my family a time. Thank you." Josh took the stick and planted it firmly on the dirt floor and leaned on it. Most of his weight s.h.i.+fted to his arm. A fair amount of relief, and thank G.o.d he was still upright. Though he knew he'd been grimacing, and that his face was damp with sweat despite the autumn chill.

"My carriage is outside," Clifford said. "Why don't we go sit down and talk more comfortably?"

"I thought we were done talking."

"As stubborn as ever. No, Joshua, we are not done. I've come to make a proposition."

"There are no shares of the project for sale. So I'm not interested in any backing you-"

"Not why I'm here." Another glance at the steel girders. "I didn't steer you wrong the last time, did I? About the dwarf, I mean."

"You did not." There was little point in denying it with the evidence stretched above their heads.

"Then at least hear me out this time."

"I'm listening."

"The overhead railway's going to fail. The noise and the stink of it will prove little better than what we've got now with that G.o.d-awful clatter running past our front doors." A nod toward Fourth Avenue and Vanderbilt's infernal trains smoking and steaming their way north and south.

"You seem to forget," Josh said, "the Greenwich Street el's been extended up Ninth Avenue as far as Thirtieth Street."

"I'm not forgetting anything, son. But we are standing a considerable distance north of Thirtieth Street. And I declare to you, Joshua Turner, that the way men and indeed women and children are destined to get up and down this thirteen-mile island is in tunnels laid underground. My solemn word on it."

He could be right, Josh knew that. In which case his arrangement with Hopkins-he'd granted the man a twenty-year lease on very favorable terms-would prove to be folly. But Josh didn't think so. There was something a bit too far-fetched about the notion of underground tunnels, too exotic for gritty, workaday New York City. "Blown back and forth by pneumatic tubes," he said, not trying to keep the scorn from his voice. There was a thing of the sort opened the year before in a three-hundred-foot tunnel dug surrept.i.tiously under Broadway. It was a demonstration effort consisting of a single car fitted with velvet cus.h.i.+ons and candles, and a grand piano in the station under a building on Murray Street. So decent folk would feel comfortable descending below the earth.

Clifford shook his head. "Nothing like that. No pneumatic tubes, they're a diversion, a novelty show. I'm speaking of proper trains driven by steam and running underground where we neither smell nor see nor hear them. They're already doing exactly that in London. Here, on Manhattan, it will be a revelation, Joshua. A wonderment for the ages. Something that properly compliments your revolutionary ideas for housing the middling cla.s.ses."

"And who is to build these tunnels, Captain? They require, I warrant, an amount of capital well in excess of that needed to erect an apartment building." Even with the stick, he really could not go on standing much longer. Josh felt the blood draining from his face.

"Indeed. A considerable amount of capital. Here, you're looking a bit pale. Let me help you. We can-"

Clifford reached out to take his arm. Josh shook his hand away.

Clifford sighed. "Very well, Joshua. We shall do things in the direct and somewhat uncivilized way you Yankees prefer. I'm here to tell you to get a message to your brother. He's in England. He can have a look at what they're doing in London. Once he's convinced himself the enterprise is viable, as indeed it is, I want his backing. The Devrey name attached to it would make an enormous difference."

"I doubt Zac will be interested. He's a much more conventional business sort than I. Underground tunnels will seem entirely too futuristic."

Clifford shrugged. "All I want you to do is convey a proposal. You owe me that much," with another glance up to the steel girder. "Besides, if you've your brother's welfare at heart, you won't refuse."

"How so?"

"Use the brains G.o.d gave you, Turner. Devrey's is failing. The entire American merchant marine, if it comes to it. That's what their war of aggression cost the North, the destruction of their commercial s.h.i.+pping. The very lifeblood of their economic power. The English pretty much have the market cornered now. But there's still considerable worth in the Devrey fleet. I'm suggesting the s.h.i.+ps be sold, and your brother's company become a major part of a consortium to build underground transportation for New York."

"Wipe out Devrey's and invest the return in some wild scheme of yours? Zac will tell you to go to h.e.l.l."

"Maybe. Maybe not. He's in Liverpool, I'm told. Scurrying about looking for profitable alliances, and as I hear it, having little good fortune. I'd suggest you write him and convey my offer."

"Boss Tweed's behind the elevated. You won't get his backing for your tunnels."

"We shan't need it," Clifford promised. "Everything's different now, I promise you." He started for the door, then paused and turned around. "One last thing. Please extend my compliments to Mr. Tickle. Tell him I was asking for him."

All during the Macy's years Mollie had gone to her aunt's every Tuesday evening to do the books. After her marriage the visit had been transferred to Tuesday afternoons. She had not, however, visited Eileen for the past three weeks, not since early October. She could not bear the question her aunt never asked-was she with child?-but which was telegraphed by her quick glance at Mollie's slim-as-ever waist. She'd no intention of going on this particular Tuesday either. There wasn't much bookkeeping to be done now that her aunt lived privately. And Mollie had started her monthly flow the day before, so she couldn't even pretend to be hopeful about the immediate future. Then, about three in the afternoon, the doorbell of the Grand Street house rang insistently, as if someone were tugging frantically at the chain. She opened the door herself because neither Jane the maid nor Mrs. Hannity the cook got there fast enough to quiet the summons, and found a small boy repeatedly yanking at the bell.

"Stop that racket this minute. What is it?"

"I've a message, ma'am."

Mollie immediately recognized Eileen's elegant Tiffany's stationery. "Come at once," her aunt had written. "A matter of urgency for your husband."

"Mr. Tweed's been arrested on charges of fraudulent activity," Eileen said when Mollie was hardly in the door.

"I know. I heard the newsboys." Boss tweed arrested! Bail set at one million dollars! "I didn't stop to buy a paper because I was sure you'd have one."

"I have, but I've better sources of information than that. Come upstairs where we can talk."

Even with no wh.o.r.es entertaining in the downstairs parlor, Eileen continued to think of her private sitting room as the appropriate venue for confidences. Mollie left her coat in the entry hall and followed her aunt up the stairs.

"Mr. Tweed's already posted bail and been released," Eileen said as soon as they were sitting by the fire. "I imagine he'd have done the same if they'd made the bail five million."

"I don't think anyone," Mollie said, "believes Mr. Tweed to be shy of resources."

"That's not going to matter this time," Eileen said. "The so-called reformers mean to get him and they will."

"Shall they bring down Tammany?" Mollie asked.

"I doubt it."

"Rather a shame. It won't be the same without Mr. Tweed, but if they're still functioning I suppose you must continue to pay seven hundred dollars a month."

"Three fifty since the start of last month," Eileen said. "As you'd know if you'd come to bring the ledgers up to date. I've less need of him these days, as Mr. Tweed agreed."

"Well and good, Auntie Eileen, but surely that's not what you meant when you said urgent. Josh's affairs are not directly involved."

"I know that." Eileen waved away the suggestion that her nephew-in-law's business depended on Tammany good will. "But what happens on Fourth Avenue does matter to him."

Mollie sat up straighter. "It does."

"There's to be a tunnel," Eileen said. "From somewhere just above Fiftieth Street to ninety-something. Ninety-Sixth Street seems to be favored."

"For the trains?"

"Of course for the trains. Whatever else?"

"But Mr. Vanderbilt has flatly refused to-"

Eileen waved that notion aside. "Mr. Vanderbilt has always known he wouldn't be allowed to run his disruptive and noisy trains along the Manhattan streets indefinitely. He is a clever negotiator. That's all his stubbornness was about. Now, with Mr. Tweed about to be brought down and the forces of 'good government' ready to take over, Mr. Vanderbilt's decided it's the right moment to make an arrangement. The proposed tunnel is projected to cost six million dollars. The city is putting up half and Vanderbilt the other half. Construction will begin in the spring."

"Auntie Eileen, are you sure? How do you know all this?"

"I am entirely sure. As I've told you before, Mollie, over the years I've had opportunities to make useful friends."

That was true. Mollie knew Auntie Eileen's influential acquaintances to have guided the investments that allowed her to continue living so well. Whatever information her aunt had, whoever it came from, it was likely to be accurate. "I must tell Josh."

Mollie half rose, but Eileen put out a hand to stop her. "You must, and time is indeed important. I am among the first to know, but I do not deceive myself that I'm the very first. Nonetheless, Mollie-"

"Yes?"

"Your husband is a ticklish sort, my dear. He needs to prove things. Josh copes remarkably well, but surely you realize his ambition is goaded by his loss."

Mollie folded her hands in her lap, looking at them rather than her aunt. "I think so, yes. And I try to be aware of his needs. Mostly without his knowing, though sometimes he discusses business with me quite openly."