City of Promise (15 page)

“In here.” Josh turned the key in the rusty padlock and ushered Tickle through tall doors into a large brick building behind the oldest of the Devrey docks, themselves an extended strip of waterfront at the place where Wall Street met the East River.

The few windows were narrow and high overhead, and spilled only murky light into what was essentially a shed without interior walls, depending instead on thick brick pillars to hold up a tin roof some twenty feet above their heads. Josh pointed to two stubs of what must have once been massive rafters protruding from the wall at their right, the remains of a long-gone second floor. “Until a century ago this was part of the old slave market. I expect the building was originally two floors.”

“Three, more likely,” Tickle said, craning his neck to survey the evidence of the original construction. “Cram in more nigras that way. Who owns the place now?”

“The land and the building belong to my family, to Devrey Shipping. It was let to Finnegan’s Ironworks for a time.”

The dwarf strode off on his short legs, inspecting the hulking metal equipment that loomed in the shadows, touching and tapping and grunting with sounds that conveyed sometimes approval and sometimes the opposite. Knowledgeable sorts of sounds. For his part, Josh could attach only the most general names to what he saw—furnaces and overhead trolleys from which were suspended enormous things that looked to him like huge scoops, everything coated in rust.

Tickle paused beside one of the scooplike things and scraped at the rust with a fingernail. “How long you say it’s been since any of this been used?”

“Three years. My brother took the equipment in payment of back rent when the ironworks failed.”

“Finnegan’s,” Tickle said. “Before my time here in New York. Never heard of ’em.”

“I’m told it was a small operation, though God knows this place looks vast enough to me.”

“Globe and Morgan,” Tickle said, citing two of the city’s largest foundries, “are at least ten times as big. And Novelty’s bigger still.”

Novelty Iron Works, Josh knew, was the city’s largest foundry. The plant where Tickle had been a foreman covered over five acres of Manhattan Island. “I’m told Finnegan’s is successful now they’re in Brooklyn. According to my brother, Finnegan was happy to leave this stuff behind. Set up with more modern gear in his new place.”

Do what you like with it, Josh. I’ve never had an offer for any of what that crafty old Irishman left behind.
A hurried conversation soon after the wedding ceremony, while Zac was changing out of the morning coat he’d worn as Joshua’s best man, and rushing to take ship for Liverpool. He’d pulled the key to the old ironworks off his ring and handed it over along with the one to his house.

Tickle moved off to inspect the furnaces. Josh wandered deeper into the gloom and came across a large, fenced-off square. Mostly empty, except for a small pile of gray and porous-looking nuggets of coal. He picked one up and walked to where Tickle stood. The dwarf was using a piece of string to measure the opening of a massive furnace.

Josh held out the lump of coal. “Seems Finnegan’s was burning coked coal in those things. I presume we must do the same.” Coked coal burned cleaner and gave more heat, but it cost considerably more than the ordinary untreated sort.

“We must, Mr. Turner. And a deal of it. Only thing burns hotter than a foundry furnace is hell. Can’t use regular coal. Don’t burn
bright enough for one thing. And the smoke would drive off Satan himself.”

Josh looked around again, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the ghostlike air of the old ironworks. “Can this place be salvaged, Mr. Tickle?”

“Some of it. Enough to suit your purpose. Big job, though. Take a lot of doing.”

“How long before it’s ready to go?”

Tickle hesitated. “Tell me again how much steel you need,” he said finally.

Joshua had brought the blueprints with him. He moved to a spot under one of the high, slitted windows and unfurled the drawings over the top of an up-ended barrel. “Here’s what I’m going to build, Mr. Tickle. And according to Mr. McKim, this is what I need to build it using steel rafters.” Josh slipped a second, smaller sheet out from under the first and handed it to the dwarf.

“I take it this Mr. McKim is your architect?”

“That’s right. At least in as far as I have one. We’re not attempting anything fancy, as you can see.”

McKim was a fellow his own age, met through a chance encounter riding in Central Park; a thing possible because Josh had a saddle fitted with a special stirrup, one with a hole that accommodated the peg. He wouldn’t call Charles McKim a close friend, but they got on well enough, and the other man was happy to earn a modest fee moonlighting, as they called it these days. McKim had quickly produced the blueprints for the rather simple structure Josh described.

“No doubt about it,” he’d said. “You could achieve what you’re after if you framed each of eight stories entirely with steel. Though I’m hard put to know who’d want to live there, Josh. Not considering the rent you’d have to charge if you put your building up anywhere a gentleman might be willing to call home. And not considering that you’re proposing he live under the same roof with three dozen others.”

Tickle seemed as doubtful as McKim had been. He didn’t look at the second sheet, the one that listed the steel required for the job. Instead
he spent many minutes studying the drawings, tracing out the lines with a hovering finger. Finally, “These here ain’t big enough units to be like them French flats over on Eighteenth Street. Not enough rooms. You’re building one of them there rookeries, ain’t you? One of them places as they cram the immigrants into. Just taller ’n’ most.”

“Nothing of the sort,” Josh said. “It is like the French flats, only a little less grand.”

“A rookery,” Tickle repeated stubbornly. “For foreign birds. All of ’em chirping different languages and stinking of whatever strange food they been eating wherever they comes from. Be the ruin of the country, all these immigrants will.”

Josh leaned against another of the barrels, securing his balance with his elbows, taking the weight off his good leg. “I would think, Mr. Tickle, that you’d know a bit about being the object of derision simply because you’re different from the folks around you.”

“Here now, ain’t no cause to think that. I’m a dwarf, but I’m an American, same as you. My great-granddaddy fought in the Revolution.”

In the land of the blind, Josh thought, the one-eyed man is king. No point in trying to change Tickle’s politics. They weren’t based on reason. “Look,” he said, “a rookery of the sort they’ve got down in Five Points or way uptown is a virtual barracks. Huge sheds, nothing more. The tenements are only a bit better, solid brick rectangles built to cover every inch of ground the landlord owns. Windows front and back, and the only other ventilation a foot-square air shaft up the middle. And, as you say, in both cases people jumbled together like rats in a nest.” He pointed to his blueprints. “This is nothing like either of those. These are separate units, each meant for a single family, and each with proper ventilation so there’s sunlight and air. And while we’ll build on three lots, we can get four flats across the frontage because of your steel beams and girders. It’s what we talked about that first day. If I use steel, I don’t need to build the bearing walls from brick. That’s what you said, Mr. Tickle, and Mr. McKim agrees.” The inventory of construction materials he’d handed Tickle remained in
the dwarf’s hand, the edges curled over his fist. Tickle still made no attempt to unroll and examine it, just kept looking at the blueprints. “I suppose,” he muttered after a time.

“Have a look at the list, Mr. Tickle. It will bear me out.”

Tickle still didn’t examine the paper. After a few moments Josh recognized the problem. The other man couldn’t read. “Here,” he said quickly, flipping over one of the drawings and taking a pencil from his coat pocket. “It’s easier to understand if we do it this way.” He began creating a graphic of what was required, indicating beams of different lengths with simple lines, and showing the numbers of each by a system of cross-hatching in groups of five. It took some doing, and once or twice he had to take out his pocket knife and renew the point of the soft lead.

Tickle stood quietly beside him all the while; watching, nodding occasionally as the scope of the project took shape. “Don’t need all what’s here to make as much steel as you’re wanting,” he said at last. “We’d only have to restore a few of the ladles,” nodding toward what Josh had thought of as giant scoops, “and maybe only two of the furnaces.”

“What about the pig iron?” Josh asked.

“We won’t try and make that here. Don’t make sense when we can buy it.”

“Cost?” Josh inquired, this time poising his pencil over a piece of paper meant for his own notes.

“I’ll get you the pig iron at a good price right enough. Say half of what it costs regular.”

Some sort of private arrangement, Josh realized. Arrived at through Tickle’s foundry connections. Everyone but the foundry owners a bit richer than they were before, and so little going out the door each time it wouldn’t be missed. “It has to be the best,” he said. “I know nothing about making steel, Mr. Tickle, or pig iron for that matter. But I know you can’t make first-quality products with inferior raw materials. I don’t intend this to be the last building I put up. It has to be safe and sturdy.”

“No cause to worry,” Tickle said. “Same pig iron as Globe or Novelty uses to make their cast iron.”

“Very well. What about the workers? How many and where will you get them?”

“Seven,” Tickle said, “including me. Each of the others known to me personally. Experienced. Trustworthy as well.”

Josh was prepared to accept this. Being a foreman at Novelty meant knowing what sort of men he needed and where to find them. “And,” pencil poised, “I shall pay these seven foundry men how much per hour?”

“Fifty cents.”

“That’s ten cents over the going rate, Mr. Tickle.”

“It is. And they works an eight-hour day.”

“Impossible. I need this job done quickly.”

“No difficulty with that,” Tickle said. “We’ll work as many hours as it takes. Round the clock in shifts if necessary. Cost you time and a half for the overtime.” The dwarf looked again at the graphic detailing the numbers and sizes of the required steel beams and girders. “Once we get set up, take about three months, I figure. Maybe two if you’re a lucky sort of man and we’re lucky with you. But I can’t get men to leave the jobs they has now and come to work for you if I can’t promise a year’s steady work.”

It was a reasonable assertion, but there was no way Josh could prudently commit himself to employing Tickle plus seven others for a year. His scheme involved too many variables. At best he gave himself a sixty percent chance of succeeding. “Six months,” he said. “That’s the best I can do. But I’ll promise an increase of three cents an hour on the base wage if after six months I see my way clear to extend the contract.”

Tickle nodded. “Sounds fair to me. I expect the others will agree.”

Josh still hesitated to offer his hand on the arrangement. “One other thing,” he said. “And I know I’ve asked before.”

“Mr. Clifford,” Tickle said, anticipating the question.

“Yes. Trenton Clifford. Why won’t you tell me how you know him, how he happened to send me to see you?”

“’Cause it ain’t got nothing to do with this business between us. Like I said when you asked before, I ain’t never heard tell of you until the day you first came to my door.”

“Will you swear you’re not reporting to him, that he’s not some sort of silent partner in our arrangement?”

“A partner with me? Trenton Clifford? As God is my judge, that’s never how it will be.”

The dwarf spoke the words with a look so fierce it was plain Ebenezer Tickle had some dark history of his own with Trenton Clifford, a possibility Josh did not find hard to credit. So fair enough, no cooperation, nothing to do Josh damage. All the same, the dwarf probably wasn’t entirely free of Trenton Clifford. Any more than he was.

God knows he’d asked himself often enough why he met Clifford that first time in the bar at the Grand Union, why he kept the card the bastard gave him, why, ultimately, he went to see Ebenezer Tickle, the man Clifford recommended. It was because, Josh had eventually admitted to himself, whatever else he was, Trenton Clifford was a survivor, someone who knew how things worked. And he, Joshua Turner, had it in mind to be not just a survivor but a winner. Meaning he’d take any opportunity that came his way, regardless of the source. As for the dwarf and the onetime commandant of Belle Isle prison camp . . . No way he could know for sure what was between them since Tickle refused to tell him. Josh would just have to wait and watch, and be ready to move if at any time whatever it was seemed to threaten his affairs.

His leg was aching; he’d been standing on it too long. Time to set aside the speculation and move on. “Very well, we’re agreed then, Mr. Tickle. You shall make me first-quality steel beams to the exact quantity, dimensions, and shapes Mr. McKim has designated in these drawings. And I shall pay your workers fifty outrageous cents per hour for six months. Fifty-three cents if I’ve enough business to keep them on longer.”

“Up to eight hours in a single day, six days a week, for the base pay,” Tickle amended. “Time and a half apart from that.”

Josh considered for a moment, scratched a few figures on the notes he’d been making for his own use, then said, “Agreed. And what do I pay you, Mr. Tickle? I presume you expect a greater wage than you’ve negotiated for those who’ll work under you.”

Tickle was looking again at the blueprints. “This ain’t no rookery? You willing to swear to that?”

Josh put his hand over his heart, impressed that Tickle was apparently so determined to stand by a principle, even if it was a misguided distrust of foreigners. “It is not,” he said solemnly. “You and I, Mr. Tickle, are going to build something entirely new, flats for what are called middle-class gentlemen and their families.”

“You mean accountants and bank clerks and those sorts of people.”