City of Dreams (41 page)

Mary Riley, fifty-three, was laid to rest yesterday at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, after a funeral mass at Sacred Heart on Fifty-first Street
.

She arrived from Kilkenney at the age of twelve and lived in Hell’s Kitchen all of her life, the last twenty spent on a fourth-floor flat on Forty-eighth Street. More than once, said neighbors, her sons had tried to move her, but she preferred to stay in the old parish, in the old neighborhood
.

After her husband, Richard, was murdered in 1893, she took in extra sewing to support her sons. Neighbors said that her Singer could always be heard, rumbling through the night. However, her sons soon took jobs and found success, one in business and the other in politics, and they eased their mother’s burdens
.

Timothy, twenty-eight, began as an office boy for J. P. Morgan and Co. At the age of twenty, he became a loan officer at West Side Workingman’s Bank on Eighth Avenue and Forty-second Street. At the age of twenty-five, he became the youngest bank president in New York
.

Edward, twenty-seven, began as an errand boy in Washington Hall, Tammany’s Fifteenth District headquarters, and rose in service to his political patron, George Washington Plunkitt. But in the 1904 election, Plunkitt lost his State Senate seat to Republican Martin Sax, which led to his defeat for Tammany district leadership at the hands of Assemblyman Thomas “The” McManus in 1905. Like his mentor, Edward is now out of politics but planning his return
.

After the funeral, Plunkitt said, “Mary Riley was a fine example of New York womanhood. No matter what life threw at her, she faced it with bravery and gave the city two strong sons.”

There was no public unpleasantness between Plunkitt and The McManus, as there has been on other occasions when their paths cross in public
.

The McManus said, “Mary Riley and her sons are the real backbone of the Fifteenth District.”

Plunkitt was heard to say to another mourner, “Half the folks here come to give a good send-off to a good woman. The other half come hopin’ that they’d see a corpse in the box and another one standin’ upright. Well, I might have lost my seat, but I’m far from dead, and they’ll be hearin’ from me again.”

“What does Antoine see in this?” asked Evangeline.

“I’m thinking he must have cross-referenced Timothy Riley and J. P. Morgan. This shows that they were still connected, even after Riley sold him the bond.”

“Which means he might have sold him more?”

“If he had more.” Peter read the rest of Antoine’s e-mail: “Checking obits now, cross-referencing
Times
archive stories on West Side Workingman’s, et cetera. Will deliver as I discover. Have also informed Cousin Scarborough that you might call for security.”

“Cousin Scarborough?” asked Evangeline.

“A little backup. If things get hotter.”

I
T WAS AFTER
ten o’clock when they left the Oyster Bar.

As they crossed the marble floor in the grand concourse, Peter called the front desk at Evangeline’s apartment.

Jackie Knuckles answered. He was working a double shift.

“Any calls or any visits from anyone that made you suspicious?” asked Peter.

“Nope. Nothin’ . . . Buck.”

That told Peter that people had been watching, or asking for them . . . the police? The Russians? Joey Berra? It would be best to stay away from the apartment, he thought, so where would they spend the night?

They went up the stairs at the west side of the station and headed for the cabs on Vanderbilt Avenue. At the top, Peter turned to admire the grand space and the half-acre American flag that had been floating above the crowd since 9/11.

Just then, two big guys—both drunk—lurched out of Michael Jordan Streak House on the upper level and bumped into Peter. Then one of them slipped and went stumbling down the steps.

This drew the attention of two police officers down on the concourse. They started up the stairs, which Peter took as a signal to stop admiring Grand Central and hit the street. He grabbed Evangeline by the elbow and led her outside.

A cab had just pulled away. There was another in line. The driver started to pull up. But suddenly a different cab shot into the space ahead of it.

A black guy was driving. He reached into the backseat and pushed open the door. “At your service, folks.”

That sounded a bit strange, and the cabbie he’d cut off leaned on his horn.

“But the other guy was in line,” said Peter.

“You snooze, you lose,” said the driver. “C’mon, man. Jump in.”

And suddenly, Peter heard another voice behind him and felt something jamming into his back. “Get in. This is not cattle prod. It is pistol.” Another Russian accent. “And I will use it. I don’t give any fucks.”

“And he ain’t shittin’,” said the driver.

Peter looked over his shoulder and had a thought for the second time that night: Draw three cubes. One for the body, one for the face, one for the nose.

“But you were in the bookstore,” said Evangeline.

“Bookstore have back door. And leaky gas pipe. Big pity. Get in.”

A moment later, they were speeding across Forty-second Street in an old yellow cab. The meter was running, but in this cab, the driver could lock the back doors.

The Russian was sitting on the left, Peter on the right, and Evangeline in the middle.

“You armed?” asked the Russian.

“No,” said Peter.

“I don’t like searching man. Don’t like touching crotch. You pull weapon, I pull off your nose and make girlfriend eat it.”

“We’re not armed,” said Evangeline. “And I don’t like nose.”

The Russian said to her, “My boss only want to talk. No need to kill anybody on Fourth Avenue. No need to run. No need to be smart-ass.”

Peter’s iPhone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and asked the Russian. “Can I read this?”

“Yeah. But no sending.”

It was a text from Joey Berra:

Can’t talk. Been running. Will meet you midnight. By bleachers in Times Square. If not then, same place, high noon tomorrow. But don’t call. Don’t text. Throw away phone and buy another. Phones are being tracked.

Evangeline read the message over Peter’s shoulder and said, “Now he tells us.”

Peter hit the Delete button.

The cab sped along Forty-second Street past the theaters and their spectacular marquees, past the massive McDonald’s and Madame Tussaud’s and the ice cream shops and B. B. King’s. Then it came to a red light on Eighth Avenue.

Peter wondered which corner had been the site of West Side Workingman’s.

Then the light changed, the cab accelerated through, and he wondered where they were going to end the night.

TWELVE

October 1907

It was the day after the Rileys buried their mother.

It was also the end of the month, and Tim Riley did not think that his family, or the country, or the country’s financial markets, would ever see a worse October.

The first tremors had reached New York eighteen months earlier, when an earthquake flattened San Francisco.

Soon, money began to flow out of the nation’s financial brain, out along the arteries, out to rebuild a ruined city that soaked up cash like stressed muscle soaking up oxygen. The cost of money rose. Credit tightened. The stock market slid. Most investors grew nervous, but a few saw opportunity. Some felt the first cold-sweat trickle of fear, while others experienced the warm tingle of greed.

Fear and greed
, mother and father of financial markets. The first lesson that Tim Riley had learned as an office boy at J. P. Morgan was about fear and greed and the intercourse between them. He had learned to substitute the words
prudence
and
opportunism
, which sounded more gentlemanly, but when prudence worked on opportunism, or fear on greed, the result could be as rewarding as a happy marriage or as destructive as an ugly divorce.

That fall, an opportunist named Heinze had tried to take advantage of growing prudence to corner the copper market. He failed, with quick and disastrous results for his own balance sheet and for the stock of United Copper.

The problem was that Heinze also headed the Mercantile Bank.

And the directors of the Bank Clearinghouse, a consortium of fifty-three New York banks, suggested that Heinze step down. That news erased gentlemanly
prudence
and replaced it with abject
fear
. And fear’s messenger was rumor. And rumor was that the Mercantile would be forced to close. So, on the second Wednesday in October, Mercantile depositors staged a run on the bank.

The Panic of 1907 had begun.

Then depositors turned to the Knickerbocker Trust. When the stately doors opened on Fifth Avenue on October 22, a crowd was beginning to build. By noon, the line twisted three times through the lobby, and people were carrying out cash in sacks. By one o’clock, eight million dollars had gone through those stately doors, and they closed three hours early.

Two days later, the newspapers ran a photograph of Wall Street. Thousands of men (and a few women) were lining up to withdraw their cash from the Trust Company of America, or they were milling about, or standing on the steps of the subtreasury, or leaning against George Washington’s statue, watching, waiting, and wondering what was happening to the money they had entrusted to all the august institutions around them.

And while New York banks tried to satisfy depositors, regional banks were pulling money out of New York by the trainload, because people all over the country were catching the panic. And panic fed upon itself, fulfilling its own prophesies.

On Friday, the twenty-fifth, the financial pages listed the failed banks like casualties from a Civil War battlefront: the Twelfth Ward Bank, Empire City Savings Bank, the Hamilton Bank of New York, the International Trust of New York, and four Brooklyn banks, too.

Through it all, things had remained calm at West Side Workingman’s on Forty-second Street at Eighth Avenue. Depositors trusted the smart young president who was, after all, one of their own. That, Tim feared, would change when news spread of a default on the worst loan he had ever made.

And the one person who could always give him a bit of confidence or a dose of common sense, the one who could bake him a soda bread and brew him some tea and listen calmly while he talked, was gone.

Tim stood in his mother’s flat and listened to the familiar far-off sounds—the rumble of the El, the clop of hooves on cobblestones, the chatter of a young mother and her toddler on a stoop—sounds to make the immediate silence seem all the more permanent.

But when living voices faded, they quickly became part of the music of the past. And in the silence, Tim could hear a hundred conversations, a thousand expressions of joy and sorrow . . . his parents murmuring in the night after the telltale thumping had stopped . . . his father leading the family in grace . . . his brother snickering when Uncle Billy farted . . . his mother keening . . . his parents discussing their dreams, especially one about a box of old bonds. . . .

For the first time in years, Tim wondered where his father had hidden that box.

Then he heard footfalls . . . on the stairs, in the hallway, through the door.

Eddie Riley could not help but announce himself. That’s what Plunkitt always said. If you didn’t know him by the high-pitched voice and wide-ranging opinions, the sound of that wooden foot and cane always proclaimed that Eddie was coming.

“Bad times.” Tim kept his eyes on the windows. “Getting worse.”

“Ma always said bad times don’t last,” answered Eddie. “But they do get worse.”

“Worse?”

“Plunkitt can’t keep me on the payroll. No matter what he says in the papers, after losin’ two straight elections, he don’t see the chance of winnin’ again.”

“Then we need to find you some banking work.”

Eddie laughed. “I’m bankin’ every night.”

“Bankin’?”

“Out of business as a Plunkitt coat holder, now a place holder.”

“What’s that?”

“A place holder figures out where the next bank run’s comin’. He goes there the night before, when the line starts to build, and offers to hold any man’s place for ten bucks. Most men’ll pay for a good night’s sleep. And nothin’ guarantees one like knowin’ you’ll be at the head of the line when the bank opens in the mornin’.”

“We need to find you something more dignified.”

“A man with two babies and no job can’t be worried about dignity.”

“Pa kept his dignity, even when we had nothin’.”

“Could he keep it with the whole world fallin’ apart?” asked Eddie.

Always more serious, Tim had traveled farther along that path in fourteen years. Always angrier, Eddie had lost much of his anger. People liked Eddie. They trusted Tim. Eddie dressed like a dandy, walked into every room as if it were a party, and always left with a joke. Tim favored dark suits and winged collars, parted his hair and his mustache in the middle, and proceeded into a conversation like a man walking down a dark alley.