City of Dreams (10 page)

“Yeah. Get off at Grand Central.”

“Thank you.” She turned and went back to Peter. “Honey, the gentlemen says this is the right line after all.”

“Oh, good, honey.” Then he gave a wave. “Thanks.”

And now they heard the rumble of the train, felt the push of air, then the sudden roaring rise of sound and the screaming of brakes.

They headed for the rear doors of the third car, and as they expected,
Daily News
headed for the front doors.

Peter said, “The old step-on, step-off trick?”

“With a twist. I’ve confused him by talking to him.”

“Not the first time you’ve done that.”

“I’ve made him wonder if we’re really riding to Forty-second. And all we need to make this work is a bit of hesitation. So”—she took him by the elbow—“step on.”

Stand clear of the closing doors, please
.

“Now,” she said.

She jumped off. He squeezed through right after. If he’d had a tail, the door would have closed on it.

But someone blocked Mr.
Daily News
, and he couldn’t get off. In an instant, the train was gone.

“See,” she said. “I’ve learned a few things hanging around you.”

“Did you get a look at the tattoo?”

“Yeah.” She pushed through the turnstile and started up the stairs.

“What did it say?”

“It was a heart with an arrow through it and the words, ‘Boris loves Mary.’ So at least we know that his name is Boris.”

“Or Mary,” said Peter.

“Did you look at Joey Berra’s business card?”

He pulled it from his pocket and held it out so that they could both read the simplest business card a man could carry: the name, Joseph P. Berranova, and a telephone number.

“That clears up a lot,” she said.

T
HEY CAME OUT
on City Hall Park.

This had been the Common in the eighteenth century, the drilling ground for Washington’s troops and the place where they heard the Declaration of Independence. In the nineteenth century, the streets around it, Broadway on the west and Park Row on the east, had been the site of newspaper offices and entertainment, including the famous museum of P.T. Barnum, who proclaimed the philosophy that some of the newspapers practiced, too, the one about a sucker born every minute.

All of that was gone now, replaced by office buildings, businesses, booming traffic. But a fountain sent a jet of water sparkling into the May morning sun. Tourists took pictures and read the timeline of Manhattan history on the plaza around the fountain. Trees and shrubs gave some cover to the barriers and other security measures that protected City Hall from whatever the terrorists might try next in New York.

Peter pulled out his cell phone and started to walk.

“Now what?” said Evangeline.

“I’m calling James Fitzpatrick.”

“At the Massachusetts Historical Society?”

“I don’t have many friends at the New York society. But I think we need to get the story on this ten thousand dollar finial. James will know, or he’ll find out for us.”

“Ask him about old Revolutionary War bonds, too.”

“Let’s go step by step,” he said. “Finial first.”

“So where are we stepping now?”

“Over there.” He pointed to the little church.

Though it was at the southwest edge of the park, near the spot where Broadway and Park Row met, it was true north to Peter Fallon. It sat surrounded by concrete and limestone and glass, just like everything else in New York, but it was unlike anything else in America.

It was St. Paul’s Chapel, and it symbolized the resilience of the city, of its people, of the nation itself. That’s what Peter told Evangeline as they crossed Broadway and stopped at the corner of Vesey Street.

“This,” said Peter, “is one of the only eighteenth-century structures left in Manhattan.” Peter pointed down the street that bordered on the northern edge of the chapel property. “Vesey Street and Church Street were lined with whorehouses once.”

“Whorehouses? Around the church?”

“The bishop owned the land and made money from the rents. And the whores even worked in the graveyard behind the chapel. They called it the Holy Ground. If you were going to the Holy Ground, you might be going to get yourself right with Jesus or—”

“Get your ashes hauled?”

“Think of the souls spinning around this neighborhood. Some spiritual and—”

“Some carnal?”

“Maybe that’s why it’s survived. It says so much about us. God favored it when the Great Fire burned up the West Side in 1776, and he sure favored it again on 9/11.”

“She,” said Evangeline.

“What?”

“She
sure favored it.”

He laughed and looked up at the little church, separated from the world by a fence, surrounded by oak and sycamore trees that cast cool shadows onto the street and the graveyard. But there was a powerful light at the rear of the property, a light that the trees could not shield, an unnatural light that seemed to emanate from the earth itself, from the massive, thirteen-acre hole that stretched from Church Street all the way to West Street.

That was where the World Trade Center had been.

When the towers collapsed, said Peter, they sent down a horrifying cascade of debris that destroyed buildings all around them. Then had come the cloud that surged along the streets and spread out onto the rivers and across the harbor. Nothing, Peter had thought as he watched that day on television, had ever looked more like the end of the world. Nothing could have survived beneath that.

But when the cloud had settled onto Lower Manhattan, when it had buried the little cemetery and City Hall Park and every surface for blocks in a blizzard of concrete, steel, glass, paper, aluminum, gypsum, plastic, electronics, avionics, human remains, hopes, and happiness, all of it pulverized to dust, the little chapel still stood.

She tugged his elbow. “Let’s go in. Say a prayer. Thank God for outwitting Mr.
Daily News
.”

“And thank God for this building. Then we’ll go up to Book Row and talk to Delancey.”

As they walked into the old church, Peter’s iPhone buzzed. He pulled it out: a text message:

Mr. Fallon: Friends speak well of you. Can I interest you in saving America? Avid Austin Arsenault.

FOUR

September 1776

B
Y DAWN
, G
IL AND
J
AKE
had hidden their muskets and shot pouches under a rock on Greenwich Road. Then they had come down Broadway and stopped at the corner of Vesey Street, right in front of St. Paul’s Chapel.

They wanted to visit the Shiny Black Cat, but the street was overflowing with British sailors queued up in front of the Cat and Quaker Fan’s and all the other whorehouses that ran down to the Hudson.

While the rebels had been retreating the previous day, the military governor had landed with a detachment of Royal Marines. Tories who had been housebound for months—or confined aboard British ships—had come out to cheer them, and now, even the whorehouses were flying the Union Jack.

“Nothin’ makes a man so randy as conquerin’ a city,” said Big Jake into Gil’s ear, “but we need to talk to Loretta. If there’s gold to be got, we’re gettin’ it. Won’t be much good livin’ in this city otherwise.”

“Might not be much good anyway, but easier with gold.”

The sight of two Yanks peering down Vesey Street attracted a redcoat corporal who was standing in front of the chapel. “Oy, you there. What are you after?”

Gil touched the brim of his hat. “We was hopin’ to get a bit of the old in and out, but you lot have been away from the ladies a lot longer than us, so we’ll just be on our way.”

“You look a touch suspicious to me.” The corporal came off the sidewalk and unshouldered his musket. He was tall and rangy, red-faced and pockmarked. He and the others leaning against the chapel fence wore the leatherneck collars of the Royal Marines. “You ain’t spies, are you?”

“Spies?” Big Jake laughed. “Us?”

The redcoat leveled his musket at his hip. “Spies.”

“They’re not spies.” Reverend Inglis, the rector of Trinity and St. Paul’s, stepped out of the chapel.

Gil had not seen him in some time. He had left the city shortly after the Declaration of Independence. But here he was back, a tall, slender, spectral presence, all in black but for the white wig and priest’s collar.

“They’re handymen about the town,” the rector went on, “and they’ve done a goodly share of grave digging for this parish. So rest easy, Corporal Morison.”

That much was true.

Gil and Big Jake both doffed their hats and thanked “his Reverence.”

“They’re good Loyalists, then?” said the corporal.

“They’re loyal members of our church.” Inglis arched his eye at Gil. He could arch his eye as well as anyone in New York.

Corporal Morison put up his musket and gave them a jerk of the head. “Be on your way, then, but I’ll be watchin’ your faces.”

“You won’t see nothin’ on ’em but smiles,” said Big Jake.

The two Waterfront Boys pulled their hats low and put their eyes on the ground. There were plenty in town who knew that they had been part of Stuckey’s company, and plenty waiting to trouble any rebel who had troubled them. The wheel of vengeance and victory was turning. When Gil and Jake saw two men painting the letters
GR
on a house, they simply walked on.
GR
stood for
George Rex
, which meant that the house, which had belonged to some departed Son of Liberty, now belonged to the king.

I
T WAS NEAR
seven thirty when they sneaked down an alley from Broad Street into a little backyard. Chickens were pecking about. The door to the privy was closed. The door to the kitchen was open.

Gil peered in. A pot of cornmeal mush was bubbling on the grate, and it set Gil’s empty stomach to growling. He swallowed and whispered, “Hello?”

In answer, the privy door slammed open and a man holding a brace of pistols stepped out. “Hands up.”

“We’re friends.” Gil shot his hands into the air.

“Friends of Rooster Ramsey,” said Big Jake.

“We’ve come to see his mother,” said Gil.

Haym Salomon lowered the guns, and the boys lowered their hands.

Gil had only seen the Jew once or twice before. His face was symmetrical, his cheekbones high, his nose a bit stronger than most. Only the accent, which sounded German, marked him as an outsider.

“The one called the Bookworm, he brought bad news last night.” Salomon looked from face to face. “But Rooster’s mother, she did not cry. She said she always expected him to die hard. She never expected he would die fighting for his country.”

“Fighting for his country?” Gil glanced at Big Jake.

“We may all die fighting for our country.” Salomon set the pistols down. “The British are arresting some of us and watching the rest.”

“Why don’t you leave?” asked Gil.

“I should. I’m a Son of Liberty, but”—Salomon shrugged—“I have a business here . . . and a girl.”

Gil nodded.
Business and women
. Those were things a man could understand more easily than windy ideas like liberty. “Where did Augustus go?”

“Back.”

“Back?” said Gil and Big Jake together.

“Back to find his friends on Harlem Heights. He meant you . . . yes?”

Gil said, “We come lookin’ for
him
.”

“And we ain’t goin’ back,” said Big Jake.

“But it may be dangerous for two deserters,” said Salomon. “I will hide you if you want.”

“We won’t be hidin’,” said Big Jake. “This is our town.”

“We work for Sam Fraunces,” said Gil, “so we have reason to be out and about.”

“And if the British stop us,” added Big Jake, “we’ll say that we’re doin’ his biddin’, deliverin’ wine to the whorehouses.”

“Right,” said Gil, “so British officers’ll have somethin’ to tickle their palates while the girls tickle their pricks.”

“Pricks?” Salomon nodded. “Pricks are something they can understand.”

Big Jake gave him an elbow. “Something every man can understand, eh?”

Salomon offered a thin smile and said that Rooster’s mother had taken to her room with a bottle of whiskey. They could have a bowl of mush and wait for her to come out, or they could come back later.

Gil doubted that there was much they could say to her. And if the Jew was being watched, best not to be seen with him. They could eat later.

Salomon said it spoke well of them that they would endanger themselves to comfort an old woman. He wished them luck as they hurried off. Then he kicked the chickens out of the way and went back into the privy.

A
FTER A SHORT
walk, Gil and Big Jake ducked into another alley and peered across Broad Street at the Queen’s Head, Sam Fraunces’s tavern, where half a dozen Royal Marines were taking their ease in the early morning sunshine.

Fraunces ran the best tavern in New York—the best food, the best wines, all served in a four-story brick building that contained the most comfortable attic that contained the most comfortable bed that Gil ever slept in—and after digging and fighting and retreating and digging and deserting and returning, after covering twenty-four miles up the island and back in twenty-four hours, his eyes were starting to spin . . . and his legs . . . were . . . feeling . . . just . . . a . . . bit . . . wobbly. . . .